It’s universally accepted that the best podcasts involve some sort of revelation. Whether it’s Anna Faris opening up about the end of her marriage to Chris Pratt on her Unqualified podcast, or Elon Musk outing himself as a pot smoker to Joe Rogan, a good audio interview requires openness, candour and a few juicy anecdotes.

Podcasting is an intimate medium and we’ve come to expect a certain level of self-disclosure from big-name guests.

The podcast booth can operate as a confession box of sorts, a place where celebrities reveal their innermost fears, hopes and disappointments.

But it seems some podcast listeners are no longer taken with the ‘tell-all’ interview. They want to hear people spill their deepest, darkest secrets. They want to hear startling confessions that guests would otherwise take to their grave.

Over the last couple of years, a trend for ‘shared secret’ podcasts has emerged. Providing a window into the secret lives of Joe Public, these podcasts replace big-name guests with anonymous callers and focus on the stories people have never before said out loud.

Take Luminary’s “voyeuristic and affirming” The Secrets Hotline, which encourages listeners to share an intimate secret by calling a hotline number and leaving a message on the answerphone.

Recent divulgences include a woman who, aged 13, spiked her mother with LSD (“I know she had quite an experience but as I’ve never told her, I can’t be sure what it was like for her”); a man who doesn’t know what love feels like; and a woman who hasn’t showered for eight days.

It’s safe to assume that The Secrets Hotline was at least partly inspired Spotify’s Best Kept Secrets with Lele Pons, which was launched last August.

The YouTuber speaks to ordinary people with extraordinary stories, including a woman who has squirrelled away over €400,000 into a secret savings account that her husband of 22 years doesn’t know about, and a woman who reads her best friends’ diaries (“I really can’t help it”.)

Another YouTuber, Alfie Deyes, turned his hand to shared secret podcasting when he launched The Secret’s Out in September. Deyes asks the public to anonymously submit their most “embarrassing, hilarious and down-right-weird secrets” and then invites a celebrity guest to chat about them.

A recent episode with husband and wife Robbie Williams and Ayda Field takes toilet humour to a whole new level...

Some shared secret podcasts probe for deeper understanding. Chris Gethard — arguably one of the pioneers of the genre — launched the podcast Beautiful/Anonymous in 2016 with a simple yet compelling premise: “One phone call. One hour. No names. No holds barred.”

The comedian answers phone calls from strangers and, over the course of an hour, elicits dark confessions, warped world-views and everything in between.

Some podcasters have framed the shared secret genre as a process of catharsis.

The Confessional with Nadia Bolz-Weber, billed as a “carwash for people’s shame and secrets”, asks guests to share stories about times when they were “at their worst”, and how they changed as a result.

Others see it more as an opportunity to go out on a limb and reveal your innermost self.

The beautifully produced Risk! podcast, which started as a live storytelling show, encourages people to “tell true stories they never thought they’d dare to share in public”.

Some of the stories are unintentionally hilarious; others are unexpectedly devastating.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a genre without an exploration of the genre itself.

The Apology Line, a new podcast by the team at Wondery (Dirty John; Dr. Death) tells the story of the late conceptual artist Allan Bridge, who allowed strangers to leave confessions on his telephone answer machine in the 1980s.

The podcast is narrated by his wife, who says her late husband “had no idea what he was getting himself into”.

The podcast format has always encouraged self-revelation, but it seems there’s an emerging market for blisteringly candid and uncensored stories, told by ordinary people.

Maybe we’re craving deeper human connection in a time of social distancing.

Or maybe we just love juicy secrets.