Former Fox News star Tucker Carlson’s show was named the “top new” podcast of 2024, according to Apple’s year-end charts for podcasts on its platform.
The overall top five podcasts on Apple’s popular app, available across its devices, were: The Daily, Crime Junkie, The Joe Rogan Experience, Dateline NBC, and SmartLess, according to Mediaite.
Spotify’s year-end podcast charts differ somewhat from Apple’s, with Joe Rogan’s podcast maintaining its dominance on the platform. Rogan signed a new $250 million multiyear deal with Spotify at the beginning of the year, which ended its exclusivity on the platform.
Spotify ranked Carlson’s podcast, hosted by the controversial former Fox News anchor, at number three. Carlson launched his show on X in June 2023. Apple’s top five new podcasts of 2024 were: The Tucker Carlson Show, Three, Mortal Sin, Drowning Creek, and The Rise and Fall of Ruby Franke.
Carlson also claimed the most-shared podcast episode of the year with The Tucker Carlson Show episode titled “Calley & Casey Means: The Truth About Ozempic, the Pill, and How Big Pharma Keeps You Sick.”
Joe Rogan’s interview with Donald Trump ranked as the second most-listened-to podcast episode of the year, following Crime Junkie’s “SERIAL KILLER: The Alphabet Murders Part 1.”
In an interview released earlier this month, meanwhile, Carlson described a violent encounter with a “demon” while he was sleeping in bed—an experience that prompted him to buy a Bible, which he says he has read and reread since.
“It was a transformative experience. I got attacked while I was asleep with my wife and four dogs in the bed … and mauled. Physically mauled by a demon or by something unseen that left claw marks on my sides,” the renowned podcast host said.
Carlson noted further that now, a year and a half later, the marks on his sides are still visible.
“I woke up. I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was going to suffocate,” he explained. “I had these terrible pains on my rib cage and on my shoulder.”
As he was trying to figure out what had happened, Carlson said he went to a bathroom, turned on the lights and found “four claw marks on either side, underneath my arms and on my left shoulder. And they were bleeding.”
“I’m not from a world where things like that happen. I never heard of anything like that happening before,” he emphasized. However, “I knew it was spiritual immediately,” he added.
“I’m not from a faith tradition that talks about things like that or even acknowledges their existence,” Carlson said. “I’ve never heard anybody say anything like that in my whole life. The next morning, I woke up and thought, ‘That was the weirdest dream I’ve ever had.’ And then I saw blood on my sheets and realized that was not a dream at all.”
Afterward, Carlson said he was “seized with this very intense desire to read the Bible, which I then started without any study aids or anything.”
“So, I spent a year and a half reading it, and then I started re-reading it, and it was just a transformative experience for me.”
“No one has to believe me. I don’t care,” Carlson said. “But that happened to me.”
Rod Dreher, an Orthodox Christian and author of the “Benedict Option,” quickly confirmed Carlson’s story on the X platform.
“Tucker Carlson has gone public with the news that he was physically attacked by a demon,” Dreher noted. “This is true. He told me about it a year ago. Terrifying stuff.”
WATCH:
Carlson’s podcast soared to the No. 1 position on Spotify shortly after he formally launched it earlier this year.
