Podcast Corner: Joe Rogan reigns supreme in 2025 with chart-topping show   

US podcaster Joe Rogan may polarise opinion but he's still attracting huge audiences internationally. In Ireland, the 2 Johnnies topped the Spotify chart 

The Joe Rogan Experience topped the podcast charts in 2025; Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy has fallen from second to fourth.

As we enter the home strait in 2025, the best-of culture lists have been dropping — we’ll have our annual list of the best new Irish and international podcasts over the next two weeks. Apple, Spotify, and YouTube have all released their top-10 charts in the past week, so let’s take a look at the trends.

For the first time, The Joe Rogan Experience tops all three. In 2025, it feels like the monoculture is a thing of the past — our personal cultural best-ofs likely look vastly different from each other — yet JRE reigns supreme. Almost every week, a clip of the show goes viral. Depending on your algorithm, it’s either a display of fake news or straight-talking, a celebrity oversharing, or a meandering rant; maybe even all three at once. That split reaction is the point: Rogan is a lightning rod people encounter whether they want to or not.

Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy — the queen of 2021-24 — has fallen from second to fourth on Spotify, leapfrogged by Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO and The Mel Robbins Podcast, which  lands in the top three on both Spotify and Apple with her self-help show. Neither Cooper nor Robbins feature in the YouTube top 10, however.

Eleven years on from the release of Serial, a rich age of podcast storytelling already seems to have passed. The top-10 lists are now a sea of microphones and meandering banter: This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von features on Spotify and YouTube (video podcasts for the win?), alongside a whole constellation of conversational and comedy shows. These long, rambling podcasts aren’t chasing intricate narratives but easy-listening banter.

In Ireland, Spotify released its most-streamed podcasts for the year. We Need to Talk with Paul C. Brunson is a new arrival — his Diary of a CEO-meets-self-help/relationships advice show launched in late 2024. The 2 Johnnies continue to dominate, helped by high-profile guests like Ed Sheeran, who plays Dublin’s 3Arena on Tuesday. And RTÉ Documentary on One shows that audiences still crave narrative storytelling in the vein of Serial.

Spotify: Most-Streamed Podcasts in Ireland

• The 2 Johnnies
• The Diary of a CEO
• The Joe Rogan Experience
• Crime World 
• The Louis Theroux Podcast
• My Therapist Ghosted Me 
• The Mel Robbins Podcast 
• RTÉ Documentary on One 
• We Need to Talk with Paul C. Brunson 
• Indo Daily