Best Interview Podcasts 2026: The Top 20 Shows Ranked by Chart Data
Updated October 2026 · Based on CastFox data covering 27 snapshots of 11 US Apple Podcasts top 100 charts (2026-02-24 to 2026-10-03) and 5M+ indexed podcasts
The best interview podcasts 2026 has on the charts are led by On Purpose with Jay Shetty, The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett and The Bill Simmons Podcast. We read the feed of every show in the top 200 of 11 US Apple Podcasts genre charts, kept the 154 whose own description says the show is built on interviews or guests, and ranked them on 27 chart snapshots taken between February 24, 2026 and October 3, 2026.
The ranking is not a staff vote. It is chart consistency first: how many of our 27 snapshots the show appeared in, how close to the front of its chart it sat, and how many of the 78 country charts we track had it in the top 100 on our latest date. All 20 shows in this top 20 appeared in every one of the 27 snapshots. 7 of them have held the number one position on their chart at least once.
Interview shows are spread across categories rather than concentrated in one, which is why this list crosses charts: Technology 5, Comedy 4, Society & Culture 3, Health & Fitness 2, Sports 2, Business 1, Arts 1, Science 1, Education 1. The widest reach belongs to On Purpose with Jay Shetty, The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett and Lex Fridman Podcast, each of which was inside the top 100 in all 78 countries we track on October 3, 2026.
Apple does not publish download numbers and we do not estimate them, so nothing here is an audience figure. Chart position measures attention. For the category-by-category view instead, start from our best tech podcasts of 2026, best business podcasts of 2026 and best comedy podcasts of 2026.
Track the shows that book guests every week
Every CastFox profile carries chart history across 78 countries, publishing cadence, detected sponsors and promo codes, and verified contacts, so you can see which interview shows are growing before you pitch them or buy a read.
See how CastFox finds shows →In This Guide
- The best interview podcasts of 2026, at a glance
- What counts as an interview podcast here
- All 20 shows in one table
- Best interview podcasts to listen to: the top 20, show by show
- Podcasts with the best guests: where they live on the charts
- Best long-form interview podcasts
- Interview podcasts that book the most guests
- Rising this month
- Methodology: where these numbers come from
- Frequently asked questions
- Related reading
What Counts as an Interview Podcast Here
There is no Apple Podcasts category called Interview, which is why this kind of list is usually assembled by hand and usually ends up as the same ten famous shows. We built it from the charts instead, in three steps.
First, we pulled up to the top 200 shows from each of 11 US genre charts across all 27 snapshots: Business, Society & Culture, Technology, Comedy, Education, Arts, Health & Fitness, News, Sports, True Crime, Science. Second, we kept only the shows whose own feed description or CastFox summary describes an interview or guest format, matching on the words interview, interviewing, guest, guests and sits down with. A single passing mention is not enough: a show qualifies when the format word is in the title or appears at least twice in its own description. That left 154 shows.
Third, we read those descriptions. The word filter is useful and it is not clever: it also catches a horror audiodrama that credits guest actors, a documentary series that interviews people connected to a case, a daily solo lesson show that occasionally runs an interview, a two-host book club and an eyewitness show whose description specifically says there is no interviewer asking questions. We removed 6 shows for that reason before ranking. The remaining shows are all formats where a guest, or the host's conversation with one, is the episode.
What this list is not: it is not a measure of how many guests a show books, because Apple chart data does not contain that, and it is not an audience ranking. It is the set of guest-led shows that the US charts kept near the front for eight months, with the record printed next to each one so you can judge it yourself.
All 20 Interview Podcasts in One Table
Read the average-rank column before the best-rank column. A best rank of #1 tells you a show touched the front of its chart once. An average of #1.2 across 27 dates, which is what Pardon My Take holds, tells you it lives there. The last column is how many of the 78 country charts we track had the show in its top 100 on October 3, 2026, and it is where the gap between a US hit and an international one shows up.
| # | Show | Genre chart | Best rank | Average rank | October 3, 2026 | Snapshots | Countries |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | On Purpose with Jay Shetty | Health & Fitness | #1 | #5.3 | #6 | 27 of 27 | 78 |
| 2 | The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett | Business | #2 | #8.3 | #15 | 27 of 27 | 78 |
| 3 | The Bill Simmons Podcast | Sports | #1 | #2.2 | #2 | 27 of 27 | 70 |
| 4 | Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend | Comedy | #4 | #7.1 | #10 | 27 of 27 | 75 |
| 5 | Lex Fridman Podcast | Technology | #4 | #11.9 | #18 | 27 of 27 | 78 |
| 6 | Fresh Air | Arts | #1 | #1 | #1 | 27 of 27 | 62 |
| 7 | Dwarkesh Podcast | Technology | #1 | #11.8 | #14 | 27 of 27 | 72 |
| 8 | Call Her Daddy | Comedy | #4 | #13 | #24 | 27 of 27 | 73 |
| 9 | The School of Greatness | Health & Fitness | #8 | #14.4 | #26 | 27 of 27 | 73 |
| 10 | Modern Wisdom | Society & Culture | #9 | #15.3 | #16 | 27 of 27 | 73 |
| 11 | SmartLess | Comedy | #2 | #3.4 | #7 | 27 of 27 | 54 |
| 12 | Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth | Technology | #14 | #21.2 | #28 | 27 of 27 | 74 |
| 13 | The Shawn Ryan Show | Society & Culture | #1 | #1.8 | #3 | 27 of 27 | 50 |
| 14 | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard | Comedy | #3 | #5.3 | #4 | 27 of 27 | 45 |
| 15 | Something You Should Know | Science | #1 | #1.6 | #1 | 27 of 27 | 33 |
| 16 | Better Offline | Technology | #11 | #23.6 | #23 | 27 of 27 | 58 |
| 17 | The Oprah Podcast | Society & Culture | #6 | #25.6 | #13 | 27 of 27 | 51 |
| 18 | Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast | Technology | #26 | #35.5 | #29 | 27 of 27 | 61 |
| 19 | Pardon My Take | Sports | #1 | #1.2 | #1 | 27 of 27 | 20 |
| 20 | IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson | Education | #4 | #6.3 | #14 | 27 of 27 | 25 |
Best Interview Podcasts to Listen To: The Top 20, Show by Show
Each card below carries the show's own description of itself, the reason it placed where it did, and its full chart record. Scores combine chart consistency, average position and country coverage, so a show with a slightly worse peak can outrank a show with a better one. Everything factual about a show comes from its feed or from our chart data.
#1. On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Hosted by Perfect Strangers · US Health & Fitness chart
About this show: Jay Shetty's weekly interview show, which its own feed calls the world's number one mental health podcast. The description says he interviews experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes in conversations and workshops built to help listeners feel happier and more healed.
Why it is on this list: No other interview show in our data combines this much chart stability with this much international reach. It held a place in the US Health & Fitness top 100 on every one of our dates and it was inside the top 100 in every country chart we track on our latest date. The chart record: best rank #1, average rank #5.3 across 27 of our 27 US Health & Fitness snapshots, #6 on October 3, 2026, charting in 78 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Listeners who want personal development through long guest conversations, and advertisers who need the widest international footprint on this list.
#2. The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Hosted by DOAC · US Business chart
About this show: Steven Bartlett, an entrepreneur, investor and author, hosts what the feed describes as raw human conversations with experts, storytellers, thinkers and business leaders.
Why it is on this list: It matches the top show's full country footprint while sitting near the front of a much more crowded chart, which is the hardest version of this result to produce. Business is the genre where interview formats are most common, so holding this position means beating the most direct competition. The chart record: best rank #2, average rank #8.3 across 27 of our 27 US Business snapshots, #15 on October 3, 2026, charting in 78 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Listeners who want founder and expert interviews rather than news, and B2B advertisers who want a show with audiences outside the US.
#3. The Bill Simmons Podcast
Hosted by The Ringer · US Sports chart
About this show: The Ringer's Bill Simmons talks with a rotating crew of celebrities, athletes and media regulars, plus recurring guests the feed names as Cousin Sal and Joe House. The description calls it the most downloaded sports podcast of all time, which is the show's own claim, not a CastFox measurement.
Why it is on this list: Among shows that book guests, almost nothing holds a position this close to the front of its chart for this long. Sports charts move with the season and this one did not. The chart record: best rank #1, average rank #2.2 across 27 of our 27 US Sports snapshots, #2 on October 3, 2026, charting in 70 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Sports listeners who want conversation rather than highlights, and advertisers who want a large US sports buy with some reach abroad.
#4. Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Hosted by Team Coco & Earwolf · US Comedy chart
About this show: Conan O'Brien started the show to try to turn celebrity interviews into actual friendships, which the feed explains is the joke and the premise at once. Episodes are weekly conversations with people he likes.
Why it is on this list: It is the most consistent celebrity-interview show on the US Comedy chart in our window and it travels, which celebrity formats often do not because the guests are only famous in one market. The chart record: best rank #4, average rank #7.1 across 27 of our 27 US Comedy snapshots, #10 on October 3, 2026, charting in 75 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Listeners who want comedy interviews rather than panel chat, and brands that want a high-reach comedy buy.
#5. Lex Fridman Podcast
Hosted by Lex Fridman · US Technology chart
About this show: Long conversations that the feed says range across technology, history, philosophy, physics, mathematics, biology, AI, music, sports, neuroscience and the human condition, with people from all walks of life.
Why it is on this list: It is the only technology-chart interview show in our data with the full country footprint, and it keeps that with one wide-ranging guest conversation per episode rather than a news format. The chart record: best rank #4, average rank #11.9 across 27 of our 27 US Technology snapshots, #18 on October 3, 2026, charting in 78 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Listeners who want unhurried interviews that run as long as the subject takes, and advertisers aiming at a technical international audience.
#6. Fresh Air
Hosted by NPR · US Arts chart
About this show: The daily NPR and WHYY arts and issues program hosted by Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, built around what the feed calls intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.
Why it is on this list: It is the single most dominant result in this data. It did not just chart on every date we checked, it held the top position on every date we checked, which no other show here did. The chart record: best rank #1, average rank #1 across 27 of our 27 US Arts snapshots, #1 on October 3, 2026, charting in 62 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Listeners who want a 45-minute author or actor interview every weekday, and advertisers who want public-radio adjacency.
#7. Dwarkesh Podcast
Hosted by Dwarkesh Patel · US Technology chart
About this show: Dwarkesh Patel's show, described in its feed in three words as deeply researched interviews, usually with researchers, economists and historians working on the questions the episode is about.
Why it is on this list: It reached the front of the US Technology chart despite running the narrowest and most demanding interviews on this list, and it did it while charting in most of the countries we track. The chart record: best rank #1, average rank #11.8 across 27 of our 27 US Technology snapshots, #14 on October 3, 2026, charting in 72 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Listeners who want prepared, source-heavy interviews, and advertisers selling to engineers, researchers and investors.
#8. Call Her Daddy
Hosted by Alex Cooper · US Comedy chart
About this show: Alex Cooper's show, which the feed calls the most listened-to podcast by women, mixing honest discussion with guest interviews. New episodes land on Wednesdays with throwback episodes on Fridays.
Why it is on this list: It holds a front-of-chart Comedy position with a guest-led format and carries that into most of the country charts we track, which is unusual for a show built on US celebrity bookings. The chart record: best rank #4, average rank #13 across 27 of our 27 US Comedy snapshots, #24 on October 3, 2026, charting in 73 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Listeners who want candid celebrity interviews, and brands aiming at women in their twenties and thirties.
#9. The School of Greatness
Hosted by Lewis Howes · US Health & Fitness chart
About this show: Lewis Howes, a former professional athlete and author, interviews people the feed describes as world-renowned leaders in business, entertainment, sports, science, health and literature.
Why it is on this list: It is one of the longest-running interview shows on this list and it has not drifted down the chart, which is the harder half of the result for a show with this much history behind it. The chart record: best rank #8, average rank #14.4 across 27 of our 27 US Health & Fitness snapshots, #26 on October 3, 2026, charting in 73 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Listeners who want motivational interviews, and advertisers in health, wellness and personal finance.
#10. Modern Wisdom
Hosted by Chris Williamson · US Society & Culture chart
About this show: Chris Williamson's interview show. The feed names past guests including David Goggins, Jordan Peterson, Naval Ravikant, Sam Harris, Jocko Willink, Ryan Holiday, Robert Greene and Mark Manson.
Why it is on this list: It is the most consistent interview show on the US Society & Culture chart in our window and it exports well, charting in most of the countries we track on our latest date. The chart record: best rank #9, average rank #15.3 across 27 of our 27 US Society & Culture snapshots, #16 on October 3, 2026, charting in 73 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Listeners who want long interviews about psychology, performance and ideas, and advertisers aiming at men in their twenties and thirties.
#11. SmartLess
Hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, Will Arnett · US Comedy chart
About this show: Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett take turns bringing a mystery guest the other two hosts have not been told about, which the feed says produces an unprepared and improvised conversation.
Why it is on this list: Three hosts and a surprise guest should be the least repeatable format here, and it still sat near the front of the Comedy chart on every date we checked. The chart record: best rank #2, average rank #3.4 across 27 of our 27 US Comedy snapshots, #7 on October 3, 2026, charting in 54 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Listeners who want celebrity interviews with jokes, and brands wanting a broad entertainment buy.
#12. Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
Hosted by Lenny Rachitsky · US Technology chart
About this show: Lenny Rachitsky interviews product leaders and growth experts for what the feed describes as concrete, actionable and tactical advice on building, launching and growing a product.
Why it is on this list: It is the clearest case on this list of a narrow professional topic producing wide reach: a show about product management charting in most of the countries we track. The chart record: best rank #14, average rank #21.2 across 27 of our 27 US Technology snapshots, #28 on October 3, 2026, charting in 74 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Product managers, founders and growth teams, and B2B software advertisers who want a precisely targeted buy.
#13. The Shawn Ryan Show
Hosted by Shawn Ryan · US Society & Culture chart
About this show: Shawn Ryan, a former US Navy SEAL and CIA contractor, interviews guests about what the feed calls real stories from all walks of life, covering wins, losses and struggles candidly.
Why it is on this list: It holds a position at the very front of its chart across the whole window, which among interview shows only Fresh Air and Pardon My Take also manage. The chart record: best rank #1, average rank #1.8 across 27 of our 27 US Society & Culture snapshots, #3 on October 3, 2026, charting in 50 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Listeners who want long first-person interviews, and advertisers in outdoor, fitness and direct-to-consumer categories.
#14. Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Hosted by Armchair Umbrella · US Comedy chart
About this show: Dax Shepard interviews guests about what the feed calls the messiness of being human, with the stated aim of getting people to be honest about their struggles and setbacks.
Why it is on this list: It has been running long enough to have fallen off the chart several times over and it has not, holding a front-of-Comedy position on every date in our window. The chart record: best rank #3, average rank #5.3 across 27 of our 27 US Comedy snapshots, #4 on October 3, 2026, charting in 45 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Listeners who want long celebrity interviews about psychology and recovery, and advertisers in wellness and consumer brands.
#15. Something You Should Know
Hosted by Mike Carruthers | OmniCast Media · US Science chart
About this show: Mike Carruthers interviews experts in their field, and the feed says each episode pairs that with short pieces of practical intel on money, career, relationships and daily life.
Why it is on this list: It is the quietest show in this top ten and the most reliable: an expert interview every week, at the front of its chart on every date we checked. The chart record: best rank #1, average rank #1.6 across 27 of our 27 US Science snapshots, #1 on October 3, 2026, charting in 33 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Listeners who want a useful expert interview without a long run-up, and advertisers in consumer services.
#16. Better Offline
Hosted by Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts · US Technology chart
About this show: A weekly show on the tech industry's influence on society that the feed says combines narrative storytelling, one-on-one interviews and panel discussions, hosted by a tech industry veteran with recurring guests.
Why it is on this list: It is the newest technology show in this top 20 by feed size and it charted on every date we checked, which is rare for a show that mixes reporting with interviews rather than running pure guest episodes. The chart record: best rank #11, average rank #23.6 across 27 of our 27 US Technology snapshots, #23 on October 3, 2026, charting in 58 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Listeners who want a critical take on tech business models, and advertisers who want a technology audience without a founder-interview setting.
#17. The Oprah Podcast
Hosted by Harpo · US Society & Culture chart
About this show: Oprah Winfrey's weekly video podcast, which the feed says welcomes thought leaders, newsmakers, best-selling authors and cultural figures to talk about happiness, resilience, consciousness and connection.
Why it is on this list: It has the shortest feed history of anything in this top 20 and it still charted on every date we checked, which is the fastest any show here reached that kind of stability. The chart record: best rank #6, average rank #25.6 across 27 of our 27 US Society & Culture snapshots, #13 on October 3, 2026, charting in 51 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Listeners who want author and newsmaker interviews, and advertisers who want a large general-interest audience.
#18. Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast
Hosted by Latent.Space · US Technology chart
About this show: An interview show for AI engineers that the feed says covers foundation models, code generation, multimodality, agents and GPU infrastructure directly with the founders and builders involved.
Why it is on this list: It is the most specialized show on this list and it still charted on every date we checked while reaching a majority of our country charts, which says the audience for practitioner interviews is now global. The chart record: best rank #26, average rank #35.5 across 27 of our 27 US Technology snapshots, #29 on October 3, 2026, charting in 61 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Engineers and technical founders, and advertisers selling developer tools and infrastructure.
#19. Pardon My Take
Hosted by Barstool Sports · US Sports chart
About this show: Big Cat and PFT Commenter host a daily Barstool Sports show that the feed describes as sports takes plus daily topics and guests.
Why it is on this list: It has the best average chart position of any show in this entire data set. The trade-off is that almost all of that is one market, which the country column makes plain. The chart record: best rank #1, average rank #1.2 across 27 of our 27 US Sports snapshots, #1 on October 3, 2026, charting in 20 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: US sports listeners who want comedy with their interviews, and advertisers buying US-only sports reach.
#20. IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Hosted by Higher Ground · US Education chart
About this show: Michelle Obama and her brother Craig Robinson answer listener dilemmas each week with special guests, covering dating, relationships, parenting and money according to the feed.
Why it is on this list: It charted on every date we checked on a chart that is normally owned by long-running study and language shows, and it did that with a guest format rather than a course format. The chart record: best rank #4, average rank #6.3 across 27 of our 27 US Education snapshots, #14 on October 3, 2026, charting in 25 of the 78 country charts we track that day.
Best fit for: Listeners who want advice interviews, and advertisers aiming at a family and general-interest audience.
Podcasts With the Best Guests: Where They Live on the Charts
If you are looking for podcasts with the best guests, the category you browse matters more than most lists admit. We ran the same description filter against the same depth of chart on each of the 11 categories, so the table below is a like-for-like count of how common a guest format is. Every chart had 200 distinct shows across our window except Comedy, which had 173.
| US genre chart | Interview or guest-led shows in the top 200 |
|---|---|
| Business | 33 |
| Society & Culture | 16 |
| Technology | 16 |
| Comedy | 15 |
| Education | 14 |
| Arts | 14 |
| Health & Fitness | 12 |
| News | 11 |
| Sports | 10 |
| True Crime | 8 |
| Science | 7 |
Business is the interview genre. 33 of the top 200 business shows describe a guest format, which is roughly 5 times the rate on the Science chart, where 7 shows do. That has a practical consequence in both directions. If you want founder and expert interviews, business is where supply is deepest. If you are pitching yourself as a guest, business is also where you have the most competition per booking.
The shape of the top 20 is different from the shape of the supply, which is the more interesting finding. Business contributes 33 qualifying shows but only 1 of the top 20, while Technology contributes 16 qualifying shows and 5 of the top 20. Technology interview shows are rarer and they hold their chart positions better, partly because the audience is narrower and more loyal and partly because a new technology show competes with fewer guest formats for the same slot.
You can browse any of these categories directly: business, technology, society and culture, comedy, health and fitness, education, arts, sports, news, true crime and science.
Best Long-Form Interview Podcasts
Our chart data does not record episode length, so we are not going to rank these by minutes. What the feeds do tell us is format, and six shows in this top 20 run a single guest conversation as the whole episode rather than one segment of it: Lex Fridman Podcast, Dwarkesh Podcast, Modern Wisdom, The Shawn Ryan Show, Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard and The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett.
These shows behave differently on the charts than short-format interview shows do. They publish less often, which means each episode carries more of the weight, and their chart positions move with the guest rather than with the news cycle. Dwarkesh Podcast is the clearest example in our data: it has the smallest feed of the six and it still held an average US Technology rank of #11.8 across all 27 snapshots, reaching #1 at its peak.
The trade-off runs the other way for advertisers. A long-form show gives a host-read placement more room and a more attentive listener, but there are fewer episodes a month to buy, so inventory is thin and it books out further ahead. Our complete guide to podcast media buying covers how that changes a plan, and podcast advertising platforms in 2026 covers where that inventory is sold.
Interview Podcasts That Book the Most Guests
We should be plain about a limit in the data here. Apple chart data does not count guests, and CastFox does not publish a guest count, so no honest list can rank interview podcasts that book the most guests by booking volume. What we can do is use the two things we do have: the show's own statement of its format, and how often it publishes.
On that basis, seven shows in this top 20 describe every episode as a guest episode and publish at least weekly: Fresh Air, On Purpose with Jay Shetty, The School of Greatness, Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth, Something You Should Know, Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast and Dwarkesh Podcast. A show in that group with a weekly cadence is booking on the order of 50 guests a year, which you can verify yourself from the episode list on its CastFox profile rather than taking our word for it.
If your interest in this list is getting booked rather than listening, the chart record is the wrong first filter anyway. A show at the front of a US chart with 78-country coverage receives the most pitches and has the least need for yours. The shows worth your time are usually one tier down, where the audience is still real and the inbox is not full. We wrote that up in show reputation versus show size and how to choose the right podcasts to guest on.
How to vet an interview show before you pitch it
The workflow we use is the same four steps CastFox is built around. Discover: start from a category and a chart record rather than a list of famous names, and use the guest finder to pull shows whose topics match what you can actually talk about. Analyze: check the chart history and country spread, confirm the show has published recently, and read whether it books outside guests at all or only network regulars. Organize: keep the shortlist with contacts and your pitch status in one place instead of a spreadsheet of links. Pitch: send something specific to that show, which is the only part of this no tool does for you. Our pitch template with a 35 percent reply rate and AI guest matching are the two pieces most people skip.
Rising This Month
These are the guest-led shows with the largest improvement in average US chart rank between our two most recent windows: October 3, 2026, September 25, 2026, September 19, 2026 compared with September 8, 2026, September 4, 2026, August 18, 2026. A show that was outside the top 100 in the earlier window is marked as new to the top 100 rather than given a number, because we cannot measure how far outside it sat.
Building Champions for Life
Host Kirk Spahn speaks with world champions about developing the next generation of leaders. It is the largest single move in this data, but it has only appeared in three of our snapshots, so treat it as an arrival rather than a trend.
IT IS WHAT IT IS
Ma$e, Cam'ron and Treasure Wilson interview NBA, NFL and other sporting figures alongside barbershop sports talk. It was outside the top 100 in the prior window and is now charting daily.
Comedy Saved Me
Lynn Hoffman sits down with comedians and entertainers about humor as therapy. It is the only climber here that appeared in all of our snapshots, so this is a genuine move up rather than a debut.
Wild Card with Rachel Martin
Guests pull questions from a deck of cards and answer the ones most people avoid. The format is an interview show that has removed the interviewer's running order.
Judging Meghan
Meghan Judge interviews guests about grief, aging, relationships and finding something brighter, and the feed names past guests from film and television.
Lovett or Leave It
Jon Lovett's weekly politics and comedy show, taped in front of an audience with guests who are asked to make sense of the week's news.
Two cautions on this section. A big move on a small number of snapshots is noise until it repeats, which is why the snapshot count is on every card. And a climb within the top 100 of one genre chart is not the same as growth in listeners, since a show can rise because the shows above it published less. The fastest growing podcasts of 2026 post applies the same method across every chart we track.
Methodology: Where These Numbers Come From
CastFox records the Apple Podcasts top 100 for every genre in 78 countries. This post uses 27 US snapshots taken between February 24, 2026 and October 3, 2026. For each of the 11 charts listed above we took up to the top 200 shows by chart presence, pulled each show's feed description and CastFox summary, and kept the shows whose own words describe an interview or guest format. 154 shows qualified after we removed 6 false matches by hand.
Ranking score for each qualifying show: 50 points for chart consistency, which is the share of our 27 snapshots the show appeared in; 30 points for average rank, scaled so that #1 earns the full 30 and #100 earns none; and 20 points for country coverage, which is the share of the 78 country charts that had the show in its top 100 on October 3, 2026. A show that charts every day in one country can therefore be beaten by a show that charts slightly lower in sixty.
The Rising This Month section uses a different calculation: the change in a show's average rank between the three most recent snapshots and the three before them. A show absent from the earlier window is treated as new to the top 100.
What is not here: download numbers, listener counts, revenue, guest counts and episode lengths. Apple does not publish the first four and this extract does not carry the fifth, so no figure on this page is an estimate of any of them. Everything factual about an individual show comes from its own feed description, its CastFox summary or our chart record for it. You can check any of it on the show's CastFox profile, and you can see how the analyze step presents the same chart history we used.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best interview podcast in 2026?
By this ranking it is On Purpose with Jay Shetty, Jay Shetty's weekly interview show. It appeared in all 27 of our US Health & Fitness chart snapshots between February 24, 2026 and October 3, 2026, held an average rank of #5.3, peaked at #1 and was inside the top 100 in all 78 country charts we track on our latest date. The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett is second on the same 78-country footprint, and The Bill Simmons Podcast is third while holding the best average US rank of the three at #2.2.
What are the best conversation podcasts 2026 has on the charts?
The shows that describe themselves as conversations rather than structured interviews and held the front of their charts all year are Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend, SmartLess, Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard and Lex Fridman Podcast. All four appeared in every one of our 27 snapshots. SmartLess is the outlier in format: one host brings a guest the other two have not been told about, so the conversation is unprepared by design.
How is this list ranked?
On chart data, not opinion. Each show scores 50 points for how many of our 27 US chart snapshots it appeared in, 30 points for its average rank on that chart, and 20 points for how many of the 78 country charts we track had it in the top 100 on October 3, 2026. We only consider shows whose own feed description says the format is interviews or guests, and we removed 6 shows that matched those words without being interview shows.
Which interview podcast has the widest international audience?
Three shows were in the Apple top 100 in all 78 countries we track on October 3, 2026: On Purpose with Jay Shetty, The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett and Lex Fridman Podcast. 18 of the 20 shows on this list charted in at least 30 countries. At the other end, Pardon My Take has the best average US rank in the entire data set at #1.2 and charted in 20 countries, which is the clearest example on this page of a show that owns one market rather than many.
Do the biggest interview podcasts accept guest pitches?
Some do and the ones at the very top of these charts mostly do not, because they book through networks, publicists and existing relationships. Chart position and pitch accessibility tend to move in opposite directions, so a show one tier below this list is usually the better target. The reliable signals are whether recent episodes feature guests who are not already famous, and whether the show has a stated booking contact.
How often is this list updated?
We refresh it as new chart snapshots come in rather than publishing a new post each month, so the URL stays the same and the Updated date at the top of the page tells you which window the numbers cover. This version uses 27 snapshots ending October 3, 2026.