Apologist Trent Horn gives a behind-the-scenes look at what it took to reach over 1,000 episodes of The Counsel of Trent. He shares the story, the strategy, and key moments that shaped the rise of one of Catholic YouTube’s most influential channels.
Transcript:
I don’t know if Trent’s going to be too big for his britches this show because he’s now done one thousand episodes of the Counsel of Trent. One thousand episodes reaching hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people. Congratulations on that, Trent.
Thank you, Cy. It was quite a journey. So, the Counsel of Trent began in 2018 as just an Audio Podcast. That was back in the field when audio podcasts were still kind of the big thing. People were still doing stuff on YouTube, but I felt like the YouTube sphere didn’t really explode until 2020 in COVID, when everybody was locked in, locked down, and just on the computers all the time.
So, yeah, it was an audio podcast for about two years. Then I started doing some videos in 2020, and then in 2022, started doing all of the episodes as videos to put on YouTube. So, we have, I think, about like 500 episodes or, you know, 450 episodes or so on the channel on YouTube. But, yeah, we’ve overall done a thousand since 2018.
I think it’d be fun to get the behind the scenes of how the whole thing came together. What, what, what, what the process has been like. It’s an institution now. I mean, the Council of Trent is an institution now. How do you go from being a guy with an idea to being an institution?
You have to keep at it. You have to be consistent, and you have to be willing to be open to feedback and see what is working and what is not working. Lean into your strengths, things that are going well, and move away from things that don’t go as well. But also, you have to really find a thing that a lot of people want, but isn’t really being provided as much to them, and just grow really well in that particular area.
And so what I saw that a lot of people wanted was just really solid orthodox, efficient commentary on the faith and how to defend it, presented in like a reasonable, level-headed way. I’m not trying to just complain about church drama, and we’re not having a long-winded, rambling podcast.
It did start as kind of a long-winded, rambling podcast, where I would just talk about stuff. But I think the Counsel of Trent really started to take off when I treated the YouTube element of it more as a video essay channel. So I scripted all of the episodes, and I’ve now just tried to create, you know, short 15-20 minute episodes that really give people edifying content in as efficient and entertaining a way as possible.
So what’s the growth like? I mean, you must have started, you know, you already had books and you were well known from the radio program and from other things that you have done. So where did you start with your numbers? Where did your numbers get to over those thousand episodes?
Well, I think when we started, I just had a few metrics on the podcast to see how many listeners we have. But it seemed like it was like, you know, 5,000 per episode, 10,000 per episode. I was also trying to figure out how many episodes to do. So I started with just like one episode and then a Free-For-All Friday because I wanted to do something fun.
Then it was two episodes and a Free-For-All. There was one period where I tried to do daily, Monday through Friday, and I burned out on that real fast.
That’s hard.
And it’s hard because it’s not like, oh, I’m just spitballing or I’m just taking callers and responding to them. I’m coming up with all the content. So it’s like, oh, all right. That was killing me. So eventually, I settled into a groove of Monday and Wednesday episodes and then Friday, it’s the Free-For-All Friday. I started doing that, 5,000, 10,000 views. Some of the big audio episodes maybe got 30,000. But then when I started it, it was hard to track. It’s very hard to track audio podcasts. I think it was more than that.
When we started going to YouTube, though, I think when I started, I was getting, you know, 10,000 subscribers. And I was like, oh, cool. 10,000 subscribers is awesome. And we’re growing. I was just happy when an episode would get 10,000 views. I was like, wow, this is so cool. But normally it’s like 3,000 views, 5,000 views. And it just starts to grow, and it takes word of mouth to share it.
And I had real- What’s hard is it was not visually aesthetically pleasing. I had a large tech webcam in my closet.
I remember.
Yeah, I was rough. I was rough.
What, were there a door behind you for a period on the show?
The closet door.
Yeah. My kids would sneak in through it. It was the only spot in my house where I had peace and quiet.
And then, but as the show grew, people, you know, we’re getting higher views on the episodes. There were more patrons of support us on trenthornpodcast.com. Then we had the funds to be able to expand. And then we had to use that to get the office set up where I have.
And then from there, I started to edit the episodes to be more like compelling video essays. And now it’s taking me 60, 70 hours a week. Now I was getting, it was a lot. I was editing at night. I was about to die. It was terrible. But I was getting returns.
I was getting like 40,000 views for some of these episodes. I’m like, wow, this is. It’s really people like. When they want to watch something, the YouTube game, you’ve got to keep people’s attention. Like you can’t just, you can have you just talking, and that’ll work. But to really bring people in, you got to visually draw them in.
So I was working on that. And I was just overloaded. I was dying. But the patrons came through. We raised enough funds. We hired Thomas West to redesign the studio and to be the editor. So I could just focus. Why am I editing? I’m an apologist. I have a background in it. But now I could focus solely just on the episodes.
And that was great. And now since the new year, you know, what was it though? Growing with subscribers. I felt like it took us like three years to get to 100,000 subscribers. And then it took 18 months to get to 200,000 subscribers. And now we’re on track to get to 300,000 subscribers, I think in about nine months.
So it compounds and it doubles. It’s like Moore’s law for technology, semiconductor chips. Like computing power doubles every five or ten years or something like that. So we’re doubling now. And now since the new year, the majority of the episodes clear at least 100,000 views, and we’re getting about over two million views per month total.
That’s so fantastic. It’s really, I have seen this since I have known you. And you have a kind of freakish work ethic. And I’m glad you mentioned that 60, 70 hours a week to get these videos edited because it’s not like Trent just said, oh, I’ll make myself a podcast and I’ll become a podcast YouTube star. This has been hard work. Real work.
And you put the work in. And so I feel very gratified to see the success you’ve had. But I do want to say, there have been periods where I was like, as I see the numbers going up, as I see you growing, I’m thinking, all right, when’s he going to go off the rails? Because all these guys go off the rails at some point.
They get popular enough and then they say…
um, you know, sorry, I, I hold on for you just one second here though.
Are you going reconsider that?
No, no. Normally during my show, because you’re right. Things can get crazy out there. And when life gets crazy, you need to have your investments secure. So Trento coin is the investment that you want. Trento coin is a fully backed currency. Yeah. If you want Trento coin.
So, so, yeah, my, exactly what I mean.
Am I going to do cryptocurrency or vitamin supplements?
Yeah, like, I mean, there’s, there’s, it’s not, um, I don’t know. There’s, you, the drama of the faith is the greatest drama. You are not a drama queen. You are not doing that thing that a lot of people do of, like, just trying to become clickbaity.
And there is a certain amount of, you know, anger makes money online. And we see a lot of angry Catholic voices. And then, you know, I know you go out on the talk. People ask you, did you hear what, you know, and then they name the angry Catholic podcast of the week and they said about this and you think, this is just ruining people’s peace.
Like you see the consequences of it. But still, it’s a lot of money. And I haven’t seen you go for the coin like that.
No, because, and that’s something I think people have been really appreciative about Counsel of Trent is that I try to be very level-headed. I’ve grown more bold though, as I get older. I’m not the fresh-faced 28-year-old anymore.
So, I do, I, you know, I’m definitely bolder in some of the rhetoric I use, but I still always try to be fair. I try to be fair and understand both sides, see where people are coming from, and criticize both sides.
I had an episode today criticizing conservatives where they idolatrously fanboy over certain politicians or influencers. So, I will, when I see error, I’m not going to play favorites. I’ll call it out wherever I see that because I want to help people flee from error.
But I noticed that on the idolatry episode, the comments you’ll see, I love this episode that it’s level-headed. I love this channel because it’s level-headed. You know, it really is fair to people.
What’s also cool about the Council of Trent YouTube channel is when you look at the comments, there are so many comments that say, I’m a Protestant, but I love this channel. I’m a Muslim, but I love this channel. I’m an atheist, this is my favorite channel. We get a lot of support from people who are not Catholic that still appreciate the true things that we’re putting out there.
Alright, I’ve only got about a minute left with you. It’s going so fast. But what give us a peek behind the curtain? What do you want to let us know that we don’t know about the behind the scenes for Trent Horn?
Well, I do wear a suit jacket and a button-down shirt. But sometimes I’m in here at 11 o’clock at night if I didn’t get it done and I’m wearing pajama pants. I’m wearing my sweatpants. I’m wearing my flip-flops. I’m recording late at night to send it off to be edited.
No, also the other thing, I quit social media, but I lurk a lot on social media to see what’s going on. So when you watch an episode, you’ll see me connect the dots on a lot of different clips and quotes and things that are out there. So a lot of time for the episodes, the thing that’s easiest for me is recording. I record off a teleprompter. So Joe Heschmeyer has more of a lecture style, so it’s more work when he gives the talk. So it’s more work when I write, create, edit, and try to find all those sources all over to connect to a holistic, edifying episode.
And you know what? One, another thing I’ve noticed is a lot of people referring to Trent Horn, which I think is a great sign. You know, people saying, as Trent said on his podcast, or you know, they’re picking up their podcast with some of the stuff that you’re putting down.
Congratulations! More than a thousand episodes coming up on 500 episodes on video for the Council of Trent. Just look for Trent Horn. You can’t miss it. He’s out there on the internet. You’ll bump into it.