Political podcasts are booming: these are the ones worth your time
This year in politics has been... a lot, I'm sure we can all agree. What with the UK waving goodbye to the Tories after a 14-year reign following July's general election, and with an equally high-stakes vote playing out pretty much concurrently in France. Oh, and let's not forget the ongoing presidential race in America, which saw Joe Biden step aside in favour of Kamala Harris, and a deified Donald Trump, ear bandaged post-assassination attempt, pumping his supporters with messianic messaging at the Republican National Convention and appointing his running mate, J.D. Vance.
Given the noise of it all, no wonder there’s a tug-of-war for audience's attention going on. But among it all, one area of political reportage that has seen unprecedented growth is podcasting.
From the announcement of the UK general election through to the week of the election itself in July, podcast production and hosting company Acast noted that its political podcasts saw an average growth of 53% – and Spotify, one of the biggest podcast hosting platforms in the UK, noticed a similar increase.
The hours played of news and politics podcasts in the UK has increased by 49% over the last 12 months. Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart’s The Rest is Politics, is the platform’s top-performing political podcast, while the BBC’s Newscast (and its sister podcast, Americast) has increased its listenership by 64% since the beginning of 2024.
In the saturated world of news, podcasts are somehow managing to defy the fatigue felt by audiences. Their recipe of long-form interviews, concise, yet in-depth, discussions and snappy commentary on current affairs that traditional forms of media often don't have the resources to fund is providing a solution to the disillusion many feel with mainstream outlets.
Another political podcast that has exploded in popularity is The News Agents, and its American counterpart The News Agents USA, all of which are hosted by former buttoned-up BBC stalwarts, Jon Sopel, Emily Maitlis and Lewis Goodall. Listens to the daily podcast, which is recorded five days a week and functions as a pseudo-news bulletin, have increased by 45% since the general election was called in May 2024. Just three months after it launched in 2022, the podcast hit 10 million downloads. The show’s appeal lies in its ability to connect with younger audiences who often feel ignored by mainstream media outlets, believes Goodall.
"We are living in this hyper-polarised age and there is a real desire from younger people for news and politics content that’s not being well served by more traditional outlets," Goodall told ELLE UK. "People like the immediacy of just sitting down, listening and feeling like they’re part of a podcast, but crucially it doesn’t take itself so seriously. Traditional news in Britain and around the world is very pious; it takes itself extremely seriously. We take the news seriously and we take what we do seriously without taking ourselves too seriously."
The informality that podcasting nurtures is also a defining characteristic of the digital age, as Marianna Spring, who features on BBC’s Newscast and Americast explains. "In the age of social media, people are used to watching YouTube videos or TikToks and hearing people talk to them in a way that feels the same as it would if they were having a conversation with someone they know," the BBC’s first-ever disinformation and social media correspondent says. "It's important to tell people things that are revealing and insightful, but do it in a way that feels like they're having a conversation with you and in a way that builds that relationship with them."
Social media content of the podcasts themselves has fuelled their audio counterparts' popularity too; a 2023 report by Oxford University's Reuters Institute noted that in the UK, 41% of 18 to 24-year-olds say social media is their main source of news, up from 18% in 2015. The report noted that TikTok, where one in five 18-24 year olds admitted sourcing their news from, ‘is the fastest growing social network in our survey’.
Conscious that the beating heart of television was its ability to provide visual elements to its coverage, Sopel, Maitlis and Goodall knew from the beginning that social media videos had to be at the core of The News Agents. "We were very keen from the very beginning that it was fully visualised and wasn't just an audio product," Goodall explains. Earlier this year, for instance, Maitlis’ name was trending on X, formerly known as Twitter, due to an interview she did at in Milwaukee at the RNC with Trump loyalist Kari Lake, who told the journalist that she needed her ‘head examined.’ Just months before, Maitlis also secured an interview with fellow Trump acolyte Marjorie Taylor Greene, which concluded with the conspiracy theorist telling Maitlis to 'f*** off.' As well as featuring on the podcast, the snippets were posted on The News Agents’ TikTok channel, where they have been played more than 3 million and 800,000 times respectively.
In its two year existence, The News Agents has amassed a digital audience of 24 million a month, which includes an average of 5 million TikTok views. For context: that's more than the print circulation of most newspapers.
Spring says podcasts also give people the opportunity to interact with presenters and their version of events. It is when she reports on her 'undercover voters'' feeds on Americast that Spring receives the most questions and support from listeners. "A lot of what I investigate is a by-product of distrust in the media and authority, some of which is really legitimate. People feel let down. People feel like they've been misled," she says. "What we need is greater transparency and accountability for social media companies, who are having more of an influence over people's believes than traditional outlets now."
Political podcasts are carving out a different and future-focussed form of news. From the rubble of lies and broken records comes a sprout of hope, and it can be found wherever you get your podcasts.
The best political podcasts
The News Agents and The News Agents USA
The podcast you'll find yourself recommending to your mum, your friends and your hairdresser. What former BBC journalists Jon Sopel, Emily Maitlis and Lewis Goodall don't know about the state of the world isn't worth knowing about, which makes their daily, five-days-a-week podcast, The News Agents and its American counterpart, a dream to listen to.
Pod Save America
Billed as a 'no-b******* conversation', listening to Pod Save America, which is hosted by former Obama aides Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor, feels like being at the pub with friends as they piece together the international happenings of the week.
The Rest Is Politics and The Rest Is Politics USA
Hosted by former journalist-turned-strategist for Tony Blair and New Labour, Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart, former Minister of State for Prisons, Parole and Probation under David Cameron, The Rest Is Politics has become a podcasting juggernaut. When Campbell and Stewart aren't selling out the Royal Albert Hall with their in-person recordings, they're assessing the political landscape both here and across the pond with an incisive eye.
Over The Top Under The Radar
For the hot-takes that are woefully underserved on other political podcasts, Gary Younge and Carys Afoko's weekly podcast, Over The Top Under The Radar, covers the stories that may well go unreported elsewhere. Tune in for discussions on everything from identity politics in America to electoral reform in the UK.
Americast
Hosted by the BBC's North America Editor, Sarah Smith, its North America Correspondent Anthony Zurcher and Radio 4's Justin Webb, along with appearances from 'Miss Information' herself, Marianna Spring, Americast is a one-stop-shop for everything you could ever dream, wish and hope to know about American politics. Its Q&A sessions, when its hosts answer questions from the public, are when it particularly comes into its own.
Electoral Dysfunction
Tune in for the tongue-in-cheek name of the podcast, stay for the conversations that cut through the noise. Hosted by a trio of the UK's most familiar female faces, Beth Rigby, Jess Phillips and Ruth Davidson, Electoral Dysfunction gets to the heart of the disarray unfolding in Westminster.
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