How to make a hit podcast, according to Danny Robins, Alice Levine and more

It’s a warm Friday evening and I’m in Sheffield with a hope in my heart and a dream in my head. My hope is that if I spend enough time here at the Crossed Wires festival – the biggest podcast festival in the world – talking to podcasters, producers and industry insiders, I might learn what it takes to create a successful show. My dream is to pitch my idea to a few A-List podcasters to see what they think. Crossed Wires was founded by Dino Sofos, who also runs Persephonica, the company behind such hit podcasts as The News Agents and Dig It with Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley. He seemed the perfect person to tell me what it takes to create a hit. “There’s a secret sauce,” he says. “It’s a combination of a great idea, brilliant talent and the community that builds around both of those elements. I think if you lock those three things in, you have the magic.” I was desperate to suggest my idea, but I didn’t quite have the nerve yet. Instead, I wandered off to ask some super-successful podcasters what made a great concept. Danny Robins, whose Uncanny podcast is one of the biggest in the country, had been a “jobbing writer and a Jack of all trades” before ghosts became his subject. In Uncanny, Robins investigates real-life stories of paranormal encounters, such as ghosts and UFOs, with a sceptic and a believer on hand to assess the evidence. “This was a subject I’ve been obsessed with since I was a kid,” he told me. “What people look for in podcasts is authenticity, and having a story that’s very personal to you, that you care about.” Alice Levine co-hosted My Dad Wrote a Porno, the comedy podcast in which Jamie Morton reads aloud the erotic novel his father secretly wrote, while he and co-hosts James Cooper and Levine react with horrified hilarity. The podcast was downloaded more than 400 million times. Levine now co-hosts Bad Chat with Greg James, where she and James swap listener-submitted confessions, petty grievances, and everyday mishaps, and British Scandal with Matt Forde, which digs into infamous scandals from the murkier side of the British elite. She is also the co-founder of Crossed Wires. Danny Robins’s ‘Uncanny’ had a live show at Crossed Wires (Photo: Carver PR) “All the podcasts I like have at their core a unique idea that the hosts genuinely believe in,” she tells me. “You feel they’re doing this idea for a reason.” Her co-host Forde, who also presents three other podcasts, adds that “the podcasts that do really well are the ones where you can tell they are a true reflection of who the hosts are”. Jemma Sbeg presents The Psychology of your 20s, which uses academic research and evidence-based psychology to unpack the topics and universal experiences that define being in that age group. It has clocked more than 100 million listens and 2.5 million subscribers. She started the show at 21, freshly heartbroken and staying with her grandmother. “It was basically to think of the challenges of our 20s as academic problems, and looking at them through a psychological perspective,” she says. “I knew this was a podcast I would want to listen to.” She started recording episodes by speaking into her phone and releasing them online. The show now has more than 2.5 million subscribers and is broadcast on Netflix. It was interesting to me that none of the podcasters started out expecting or assuming they would reach a huge audience – or any kind of audience at all. “I remember thinking, This is probably a thing that we will do at six o’clock on a Wednesday and it will have a small audience,’” recalls Dominic Sandbrook, co-host, with Tom Holland, of the world-conquering The Rest is History (who is not at Crossed Wires but whom I speak to later). “We had no concept that it would in any way impinge on the rest of our lives.” Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball’s ‘Dig It’ celebrated its one-year anniversary at the festival (Photo: Carver PR) I had always assumed that a hit podcast started with a good idea – but what I had not appreciated was the work needed to attract an audience. The big mistake aspiring podcasters make, Sofos tells me, is not thinking deeply enough about who they’re creating their show for. “That’s a common mistake,” he says. “Not thinking about the audience. Ultimately, when you launch a podcast – who’s it for?” He cites Dig It – where Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball chat candidly about the messy everyday realities of midlife – as an example of an idea born from noticing a gap in the market for a show about Gen X women. “We thought they were underserved in the podcast space,” he says, “so we asked ourselves, ‘Who are the two best people who could possibly host that show?’” That was how they ended up with Whiley and Ball presenting. That pair, though, were already famous, and it makes me wonder if the secret to having a hit is simply to be a household name already. No, says Sofos: “There are so many shows where celebrities have launched podcasts and then they fizzle out.”. He was too tactful to name any but he might have been thinking of Meghan Markle, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan as celebrities whose podcasts crashed and burned soon after launch. Maybe, says Brett Spencer, senior lecturer in podcasting at City University and creative director at Spiritland Productions. “You don’t need to be famous to have a hit podcast, but it helps,” he says. “If you’re not well known you can still put the hard yards in and be successful down the line – it will just take more work.” Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, presenters of ‘The Rest is History’ are on Gary Lineker’s network Goalhanger (Photo: Chris Floyd/Goalhanger Podcasts) It’s time to muster up my courage and pitch my podcast idea. I decide to suggest it to Sbeg, because she started hers in the most basic way, and to Sandbrook – not just because The Rest is History is a monster hit, but because if he likes it there’s a greater-than-zero chance he might mention it to Gary Lineker, in whose Goalhanger stable The Rest Is History resides. My idea is for a father/daughter show presented by me and my 14-year-old daughter Laila, where we talk about a range of subjects light and heavy – anxiety, parenting, television, friendship – from a Gen X and a Gen Z perspective. It comes from an honest place – to try and understand her better – and I feel like the show could be helpful, hopeful and hilarious. “I think it’s a great idea,” says Sbeg. “You would have a great listenership amongst parents. You should totally do it.” Emboldened by her encouragement, I share the idea with Sandbrook. “Oh I like that,” he says immediately. “It’s the kind of show I could really see working.” Still, although Sbeg started her podcast recording on a phone, I worry that those DIY days are over. Most of the chart-toppers come from a handful of major players – Sofos’s Persephonica, or Lineker’s Goalhanger, which is also the company behind The Book Club (also co-presented by Sandbrook), The Rest Is Politics, The Rest Is Entertainment and seemingly half the UK podcast charts. Without Sofos or the former England legend behind me, what chance do I have? Then it hits me, the one thing all successful podcasters had in common: they didn’t let the fear of failure stop them from starting.