words RM Clark
A gym owner and personal trainer from central Iowa, Joe clocks an average of three y’know’s for every sentence spoken and within minutes of his podcast’s first episode has identified that whilst “one person can have a peanut butter sandwich and be fine”, another person might be left facing an “epipen nightmare”. It’s a metaphor. His point being that “not everybody is the exact same”.
Thus, he’s assembled four experts with four differing life experiences and four different points of view, and brought them together to share their knowledge and help us mere, slobby mortals to live healthier lives. Real Talk Nutrition’s debut episode rattles along for a well intentioned – if punishingly unedited – 45 minutes, before concluding with a brief tease of next week’s edition, entitled: what the heck is a calorie?
In an interview conducted over email, Joe told me that whilst he hopes that some listeners will sign up for one-to-one coaching, his main motivation is simply to help others – “to have a resource where frustrated people can learn”. It certainly is a noble idea. But he is just one man, launching just a single podcast.
In 2023, there were an average of 500 podcasts launched every day, totalling more than 200,000 across the whole year, meaning that Joe is but a drop in a vast and fiercely competitive ocean.
But what can be learned from these statistics? 500 per day, 200,000 per year?
No more than from learning there are 1.35 sextillion litres of water in the ocean; like deducing the character of a nation by its population count alone. For a real sense of life, we must zoom in much closer to the specifics. If 500 new podcasts are launched every day, then who are the people making them?
Let’s take Monday the 20th of May for example. In addition to Real Talk Nutrition, there were debut episodes released by an economics columnist at the Financial Times, East Africa’s leading real estate agency, a second-tier Scottish football club, a hobbying street pianist, a Science Communication graduate, a full-time veteran podcaster, and an internet dominatrix.
“I’ve been considering it [starting a podcast] for a couple of years, since I have many exciting friends in the industry,” says internationally renowned dominatrix, author and ‘kinky life coach’, Goddess Lilith. On her podcast, Lilith hopes to interview entrepreneurs from within adult entertainment, asking how they got to where they are today, as well as sharing safety and mental health advice for those working in the industry. Similarly to Joe at Real Nutrition Talk, Lilith is already a successful business owner in her field, running her own agency in addition to creating content herself.
Launching her podcast at a much earlier stage of career is the California-based Science Communication student, Allison Lamoureux. Her podcast, The Science Buffer, had been gestating as an idea for years before she decided to take the plunge.
“For me, this podcast is a way for me to reach more people and get them interested in science while also developing my own skills as a communicator. Over the course of the [final] semester, I had begun to develop my confidence in using a digital medium to communicate science and learned more about using narrative in our communication approaches.”
After briefly dabbling in podcasting during her Bachelor’s Degree, it is a combination of Allison’s passion for the medium and her love of the subject matter that has led her to commit to launching one of her own.
“Podcasts are also a form of content that I enjoy consuming as well. I like feeling like I am having a conversation with the hosts, laughing along to jokes someone makes, or just learning more about an interesting topic. If I could create a fraction of that feeling in my own audience and get them passionate about science, then I think I’ll have done an excellent job.”
Clare Sudbery is a professional keynote speaker and host of The Street Pianist podcast, based in Manchester. She is also the 20th of May’s only new podcaster whose project is unrelated to her career. After being selected to appear on Channel 4’s reality TV show, The Piano – in which hobbying musicians play piano before an assembled crowd of passers-by, celebrity judges, and the lower half of Claudia Winkleman’s face – Clare was left wondering whether the experience might lead on to anything further.
“Suddenly, I had the idea for the podcast, and once I’d had the idea, it had a hold of me and wouldn’t let go. I was up til 3:30am on Monday morning editing and fiddling and getting the trailer ready”
For Clare, an audience for the podcast would be little more than a happy bonus.
“What’s more important is that it provides a way for me to continue my involvement in the creation and consumption of music. I know from experience that I enjoy making music much more if it’s a collaborative community thing. For instance, I love singing in choirs. What the podcast is already doing for me is introducing me to this whole fabulous community of street pianists who play duets with each other and support one another. I’m making new friends and finding new avenues to play piano and sing without having to worry about being ‘successful’ at it.”
For others, such as full-time content creator and founder of the Evolution of Horror network, Mike Muncer, an audience is something of a necessity. His newest podcast, The Detective & The Log Lady, is an episodic watchalong of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. After years of balancing his podcast work alongside a day job in television, he took the decision to move full-time into podcasting in Spring 2022 when his monthly Patreon income had grown higher than his salary as a producer at the BBC.
“TV is so rigidly formatted, it’s hard to get things made,” he says. “And when you do, you have to stick to particular durations, rules [and] guidelines. You also have producers, executive producers, commissioners, and other layers of management having their say, making changes and signing off [on] whatever you make.”
“I’m entirely independent, my podcast has no ads, and all the money I make is from Patreon and listener subscriptions. Obviously this is a bit of a riskier model. If my patrons unsubscribe or lose interest in my podcast, I can’t pay my mortgage anymore! So the pressure is on to keep creating content that they want to hear and pay for.”
Although Mike is something of a heavyweight in comparison to his peers, he is far from alone in possessing a broadcasting background. Both Clare and Joe have produced podcasts previously, whilst Lilith has extensive experience both as a live streamer and on YouTube. I suspect that these people should be considered creatives first and podcasters second; that their drive to produce content has been channelled into this particular format because of its grassroots accessibility compared to finding funding for a television show or a publisher for a book.
“As much as I loved working in TV, and having rules and guidelines was great for building those key skills, I wanted to start a podcast to have the opportunity to make something entirely my own, with completely creative freedom,” says Mike. “I think this still exists in 2024: anybody can make a release podcast about anything they like. It’s very accessible. That’s why there are so many [of them] out there.”
We may not be able to glean much detail from the statistic of more than 200,000 being launched every year, but we are left without any doubt as to the sheer volume. Yet the number is rising exponentially. Every new launch is not only competing with its peers, but also with the backlog of millions of episodes released over the previous two decades. In such a competitive environment, to make a podcast at all is an act of optimism. Roughly 90% of new podcasts don’t even make it past episode three.
There is perhaps an element of self-preservation in our podcasters’ humble aspirations. A sense that they know what they’re up against, that dreaming any bigger could be seen as an act of folly. Joe only wishes to be helpful; Allison hopes to share a fraction of the connection that she has experienced as a listener; Clare’s drive is rooted in a passion for music and community rather than any more traditionally quantifiable success. But as far as I see it, the foolish thing would be to have the dream and to leave it unattended. And in that regard, each of these podcasters are running laps around the rest of us.
With thanks to:
Joe Laxton – Real Nutrition Talk
Goddess Lilith – www.GoddessLilith.com
Allison Lamoureux – The Science Buffer
Clare Sudbery – The Street Pianist
Mike Muncer – The Evolution of Horror
