Meghan Markle’s debut into the podcasting world has seen her show shoot to the top of the Spotify rankings, unseating reigning champion Joe Rogan from first place.
The long-awaited debut episode of the Duchess of Sussex’s feminist-themed podcast, Archetypes, overtook perennial top performer The Joe Rogan Experience on Thursday in the Spotify rankings in the United States, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, according to Forbes magazine.
The early success of Markle’s podcast comes despite the programme being widely panned by critics, who slammed the podcast as a vanity project in victimology from a “D-List celebrity who married well” — a reference to her marriage to the increasingly wayward Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex.
In the show, the former Suits actress discussed with tennis star Serena Williams the struggles and “pain” she has experienced since marrying into Britain’s Royal Family.
Markle said that future episodes will attempt to “rip apart the boxes women have been placed into for generations” by examining phrases such as “slut”, “diva”, and the “b-word”.
The woke royal added that she will be drawing on her education, through which “feminist ideology trickled down… into every aspect of my life.”
Continuing her feminist theme, she went on to claim that she did not “ever remember personally feeling the negative connotation behind the word ambitious, until I started dating my now husband,” adding that “apparently ambition is a terrible, terrible thing. For a woman, that is, according to some. So since I felt the negativity behind it, It’s really hard to unfeel it.”
For the privilege of hosting the podcast, Swedish streaming giant Spotify reportedly paid $25 million to the woke couple in December 2020.
It remains to be seen if the podcast will have staying power, given the less than stellar performance from other left-wing political figures’ podcasts, such as the one featuring former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama, the future of which has been thrown into doubt after failing to be renewed by Spotify.
It is not the first time that The Joe Rogan Experience, which reportedly garners 11 million listeners per episode, has been ousted from the top spot of the podcast rankings. In September of last year, gaming podcast Banter With Sapnap and Karl Jacobs briefly overtook the podcasting king. He was also unseated in May of this year by the Batman Unburied series.
On Thursday, Rogan sat down with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for an interview from his Texas studio, during which the Meta CEO admitted that the FBI had pressured his company to censor the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop prior to the 2020 presidential election in the United States.
Rogan and Markle have previously engaged in public spats, with the UFC announcer branding the Duchess as a “little American hussy” who was trying to turn Prince Harry “into a Kardashian”.
During the Chinese coronavirus crisis, Harry and Meghan joined the likes of Canadian rocker Neil Young in calling for Spotify to censor supposed “Covid misinformation” in response to Rogan bringing on scientific figures who were critical of the mainstream narrative on the pandemic.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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