Sock it to Rogan: Steven Bartlett grabs YouTube’s podcast crown

Nine years ago, Steven Bartlett recorded a podcast in his Manchester bedroom on a cheap microphone, with a sock over it as a pop shield. About 40 people listened. Most of them were his friends.

The Diary Of A CEO is now the most-subscribed podcast on YouTube’s podcast charts. It had 21.3 million subscribers on 1 November 2026, just ahead of The Joe Rogan Experience on 21.2 million.

The lead is narrow. YouTube rounds public counts to three significant figures, so the real gap could be anything from a rounding error to about 200,000 subscribers. Still, a lead is a lead, and for now it belongs to Bartlett.

The channel’s growth has been steep. Subscribers rose from about 14.2 million on 29 December 2025, an increase of roughly 7.1 million, or 50%, in under a year. Across all formats, including Shorts, the channel recorded more than 1 billion YouTube views between 1 January and 30 October 2026. That’s about 2.6 times the 399 million it recorded in the same period of 2025, according to YouTube Studio data from producer FlightStory. The figure came from 87 full-length video episodes.

READ MORE: From credibility to clickbait: what Diary of a CEO's YouTube strategy signals for podcast publishing

From Manchester bedroom to the Top of the Chart

The Diary Of A CEO started in 2017 as an audio diary about Bartlett building a business, then grew into an interview show. It became a regular weekly video podcast on YouTube in 2020, when it was his pandemic passion project. Episodes now cover business, psychology, health, relationships, science, technology, and global affairs.

Bartlett’s guests have included Michelle Obama, former US Vice President Kamala Harris, Jada Pinkett Smith, Matthew McConaughey, and US Vice President JD Vance. A team of researchers, producers, guest bookers, editors, and strategists now does the work Bartlett once did alone.

Josh Butt, executive producer at Myrtle & Pine and The Gingerbread Man, says that order of events is the main reason for the show’s success.

“It’s worth noting the way he got there. He was audio first. He made a show for him, for his friends,” Butt told Mediaweek.

“By being audio first, it was his own storytelling style. He then expanded into interviews, then video a few years after the audio version started. He really got into the thing that made him unique.”

He says you can still see that in the video version: “Because he’s an audio-first storyteller, you can hear it.”

Lost in translation? Not quite

The biggest driver of growth isn’t English-speaking listeners. About 261 million of the show’s 2026 YouTube views, or 23.3%, came through audio tracks in other languages. Spanish led, followed by Russian, German, Portuguese, and French.

The interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, released on 22 October 2026, shows how this works. It was recorded in Ukrainian with two human interpreters, then released in more than 20 languages using AI voice technology. It passed 7 million views in 10 days.

“Strategically, translating every episode of the show into more than 20+ languages has been an incredible unlock and allows us to reach the rest of the world,” Bartlett said.

The scoreboard

The show’s YouTube numbers aren’t the only measure of its success:

• No.1 by average audience per episode in Podscribe’s podcast rankings for March 2026 (about 3.3 million estimated downloads and views per episode) and July 2026 (about 4.4 million). These figures are Podscribe estimates.
• No.2 in Spotify’s global Top Podcasts list for 2025
• The 2026 Webby Award for Individual Creator: Podcast, won by Bartlett in April
• Best Business & Finance Podcast at the 2026 iHeartPodcast Awards in March

‘Don’t Try and Copy Steven Bartlett. That Is Boring.’

For broadcasters and brands hoping to build the next podcast hit, Butt’s advice is simple: copy the process, not the show.

“Don’t try and find the next Steven Bartlett. Don’t try to copy Steven Bartlett. That is boring,” he said. “He is distinctive, and we need to remember that it took a while for him to grow.”

He says the industry is going after the wrong thing.

“Everyone’s chasing money, and they’re copying formats rather than copying the process by which the successful people have operated,” Butt said. “There are so many shows that are chat shows and interview shows, talking to CEOs about how they got there, or another interview show about pop culture.”

He is most critical of traditional broadcasters.

“Radio and TV just do not seem to be blooding talent. There are very few crazy ideas out there. Very few crazy ideas are given development money. Crazy ideas are distinctive. They allow unique voices to flourish,” he said.

“Steven Bartlett at one point would have been told he was crazy. Who does he think he is? He’s not a podcaster. He’s not a radio star. He’s not a TV presenter.”

Butt’s answer is to give new talent room to develop, with “a show that can be theirs, one that’s free from sponsors, free from metrics, so that they’re able to take a chance”.

“There are loads of people out there who have talent. But what they need is a place, and they need guidance to nurture that talent.”

‘We do feel like we’re just getting started’

Bartlett seems a little surprised himself.

“When I started The Diary Of A CEO, I was sitting in my bedroom in Manchester, recording into a microphone. About 40 people listened to those first episodes. It’s quite difficult to comprehend where it’s got to today,” he said.

He credited the show’s growth to what the team calls the “one percents”, meaning small, constant improvements to the next conversation.

“How we can make the next conversation better, ask better questions and give people something genuinely valuable. That’s what we’re going to keep focusing on, and we do feel like we’re just getting started.”

Bartlett also said the show will change as his life does. He has warned his friends to “prepare for the parenting episodes” if he becomes a dad. If those episodes follow the same pattern as the rest, they’ll be available in Portuguese long before the first nappy is changed. Anyone hoping to compete with them should, as Butt suggests, make something else.