“Figuring Out with Raj Shamani,” the India-made interview podcast hosted by entrepreneur Raj Shamani, has reached 22 million YouTube subscribers and passed both Steven Bartlett’s “The Diary of a CEO” and “The Joe Rogan Experience,” according to a November 13 press release from the show, less than two weeks after Bartlett’s team claimed the top spot.

The release puts “The Diary of a CEO” at 21.9 million subscribers and Rogan’s channel at 21.2 million, and says “Figuring Out” added 8 million subscribers in 2026 alone. “22 million subscribers is an incredible milestone, but what excites me more is knowing that millions of people across the world share that ambition,” Shamani said in the release. “We’re still just getting started. My ambition is to build Figuring Out into a global media institution.”

Daily channel snapshots from ThoughtLeaders, a YouTube sponsorship data platform, support the count. They show the channel at 14.0 million subscribers on January 1 and 22.0 million on November 12. It passed 20 million on October 23, moved ahead of Rogan’s channel on November 5 and edged past Bartlett’s on November 12. In the 30 days to November 12, it added 2.2 million subscribers, compared with 1.4 million for “The Diary of a CEO” and 100,000 for Rogan. YouTube rounds public counts to three significant figures, so the current lead over Bartlett’s channel is within about 100,000 subscribers.

The subscriber lead does not carry over to recent views. The same ThoughtLeaders data shows the “Figuring Out” channel gained about 114 million views in those 30 days, against 124 million for “The Diary of a CEO” and 44 million for Rogan. Since January 1, the channel’s lifetime view count has risen by about 1 billion, compared with 906 million for Bartlett’s channel and 405 million for Rogan’s. The release separately claims 1.4 billion monthly views “across platforms” and says international audiences make up 22% of its YouTube subscribers. It did not say which platforms or accounts the larger figure includes. Clip networks can account for part of that gap: Indian creator Varun Mayya has described fan pages for Shamani’s show run by small teams of clippers across 10 to 20 pages.

The Ranking Rests on One Public Number

Bartlett’s own claim on November 2 came from a comparison by FlightStory, the company that produces the show, ran across shows on YouTube’s U.S. Top 100 podcast chart, which put “The Diary of a CEO” at 21.3 million to Rogan’s 21.2 million. Shamani’s release calls “Figuring Out” the platform’s most-subscribed podcast but does not describe how the comparison set was built. YouTube’s podcast chart itself ranks shows by watch time and excludes clip and Shorts playlists, while subscriber counts cover a whole channel.

Subscriber totals also say little about earnings. Forbes ranked Rogan the highest-paid podcaster of 2026 at an estimated $82 million, citing more than 80 million monthly downloads and views. Rogan’s YouTube channel grew by 600,000 subscribers this year, according to ThoughtLeaders, and much of the show’s audience listens through Spotify and other audio apps.

WME Deal Points the Show Outward

The milestone follows Shamani’s October signing with WME, which represents Shamani across all areas and territories outside India. Shamani launched the podcast in 2020 from Indore and has grown Figuring Out Media into a media and education business with more than 120 employees, including the Figuring Out Academy for emerging creators. Guests this year have included French President Emmanuel Macron, Andrew Huberman, Scott Galloway and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who said on the show that India had overtaken the U.S. as ChatGPT’s largest market, according to the release. The company says it has partnered with brands including Levi’s and ASUS.

The release describes the show as “a gateway between India and the wider world.” Figuring Out Media has not disclosed revenue, a country breakdown of its audience beyond the 22% international figure, or any specific deals made through WME.