Pod Save The UK, the UK-based spinoff of popular politics podcast Pod Save America, will premiere on 4 May, creator Crooked Media has announced.
The weekly series, which will be published as audio on all podcast platforms and video on the Pod Save The World YouTube channel, is an adaptation of the original “no bullshit conversation” politics series Pod Save America, hosted by four former Barack Obama aides. This is the second adaptation of Pod Save America, after Pod Save The World, which focused on American foreign policy and global political news.
Pod Save The UK will feature comedian Nish Kumar and journalist Coco Khan as co-hosts. Each episode, Kumar and Khan will sit with a number of activists, politicians, political experts and journalists to keep listeners updated about the latest happenings in the news as well as offer different perspectives and spark debate. A trailer for the new show has been released in the run-up to the launch next month.
The show’s initial announcement was made at the IAB Podcast Upfronts in October last year by Crooked Media, who announced that the same team behind Pod Save America will be involved in the project as well as independent production company Reduced Listening, which is behind award-winning music analysis podcast Decode.
“I’ll be keeping you updated on everything that’s happening in the UK and across Europe as my country tries to do the political equivalent of poisoning itself for reasons that remain unclear,” said Kumar in a video shown at Podcast Upfronts. “I will be talking to experts across a wide variety of fields as I try to keep you from the fact that I am a stand-up comedian who knows absolutely nothing, but is a real cute guy.”
The launch of Pod Save The UK follows a growing trend for news-based podcasts in the past couple of years. A report by Global on news and current affairs podcasts in the UK proved that 66% of survey respondents said that they consumed more news podcasts in 2022 compared to the year before and that they were likely to listen more this year.
Global’s daily current affairs podcast The News Agents, which became popular for keeping listeners up to date on the current political climate, reported at the end of last month that it hit 24 million downloads in just seven months since it launched. This trend has also been led by The Rest Is Politics, whose use of former political insiders as co-hosts is itself reminiscent of Pod Save America.
