Ad-free and loving it

Explore how Supercast helped this top-ranked health podcast build a sustainable business from listener support.

Peter Attia recording a podcast

Peter Attia is a podcast pioneer

Peter Attia is a doctor who focuses on the applied science of longevity. His podcast, The Drive, is one of the top-rated and fastest-growing health podcasts.

Translating the cutting edge of the science of longevity into something accessible, digestible, and actionable for everyone, Peter’s interviews with leading medical experts were highly valued by his audience—and a lot of work to produce. Peter and his audience both wanted more. 

As one of our first customers, we worked with Peter to turn his podcast into a sustainable subscription product that better serves his audience. He is now a Supercast advisor and investor. 

Podcast Artwork for "The Drive" podcast
After launching a membership, listeners to The Drive converted into premium subscribers

Peter created one of the world's best deep-dive podcasts

Every episode of The Drive showcases why it's one of the highest-rated health podcasts. Episodes run for hours, and the interviews are as in-depth as Peter's subjects are diverse. In one episode, he interviews Dr. Tom Catena, a physician to nearly one-million patients in a remote region of Africa. In another, he chats with entrepreneur Tim Ferriss about depression, psychedelics, and emotional resilience. 

Because The Drive is such a high-quality product, listeners were eager to become paid subscribers when Peter began offering exclusive content via a paid membership. Initially, Peter’s premium membership had no private podcast feed, instead offering exclusive content as videos via members-only pages of his website. 

Feedback from listeners was twofold: They loved the extra content, but they desperately wanted an easy way to listen to and enjoy the bonus content right in their podcast players. This feedback is what drove Peter and The Drive to add Supercast to their paid subscription model; "When we launched a private feed with Supercast, it quickly showed us how important it was to deliver content to listeners where they want to access it, as opposed to trying to get them to access it where we could provide it." said Peter.

Peter values trust over ad revenue

Most podcasts can supplement their membership revenue with ads. But not only did Peter not want to read ads, he had serious concerns about how they could compromise his audience’s trust in him as a physician. 

Because The Drive is audience supported, Peter gets to focus on improving the podcast and serving his audience—not selling someone else’s product. 

Mobile Phone playing Peter Attia podcast
Peter's paid subscribers are highly engaged, with over 66% of them regularly listening to Peter's premium content when it releases


Peter’s audience is his business

Peter’s goal with premium memberships was for paid subscribers to get more than they give. He and his team listened to his audience’s feedback and used Supercast’s subscriber analytics to better understand which types of content consistently performed best.

These insights have helped Peter continue to deliver premium content that listeners care about, like The Qualys, a member-exclusive podcast published four times a week. While The Drive is a long-form and in-depth podcast, The Qualys is a short-form companion podcast that saves premium member’s time by highlighting the main show’s best questions, topics, and takeaways.

Premium members also receive access to bonus episodes of The Drive, including regular “Ask Me Anything” podcasts where Peter answers the top-rated questions submitted by members. They also get discount codes and exhaustive show notes detailing each topic, paper, and person discussed in every episode of The Drive

The Drive’s subscription model now supports Peter and his team’s work to produce the podcast.

Peter’s podcast is his product

By using Supercast, Peter was able to transform his podcast into a sustainable, growing business that supports him and his team. 

"Supercast made it easy to deliver exclusive podcast content to our fast-growing community of paying members, and scale subscription revenue."

— Peter Attia, MD.