A PAIR of best friends with a thirst for knowledge have reached listeners in almost 50 countries through a new podcast.

Ollie Wright and Liam Stacey have known each other since they were 11 and decided to start Two Guys One Topic to stay in touch during lockdown. 

Despite doing so remotely and only launching the podcast two months ago, it has become a global success. 

Ollie, who grew up in Liden, said: “We see each other quite a bit and have been putting quizzes together in lockdown. We really enjoy learning new information and so we thought we would put it on a podcast for others to learn from too.

“There are buzzwords like cryptocurrency, nanotech or Mount Everest and you always think you know a lot about it, but can you actually hold a conversation about it?”

Each week the duo talk about a different topic that they hope people find interesting and can learn something from. 

They also invite an expert to join them to answer additional questions so listeners can discover more. 

Guests have included Bonita Norris, who is the youngest female in Britain to reach the summit of Mount Everest, Michelin Star chef Michael O’Hare and Moriba Jah, formerly of NASA and now the world’s leading scientist on space junk. 

Ollie added: “We let everyone know we are not experts in the topics that we cover. In our podcast, we have a week to research a topic and then share the best information with our listeners, with our own spin on it.

“The response from people has been amazing. It has shocked us as we weren’t expecting this, we just thought a few people would listen. But it turns out a lot of other people share our interest to learn about different topics too, which has really taken us by surprise.”

The friends attended Churchfields Academy – now Lawn Manor.

Now 37, they both have families with young children and were best men at each other’s wedding. Ollie works for an IT company and Liam is a maths teacher. 

Liam, from Old Town, said: “It’s been nuts as we only started it a few months ago. It’s just about learning because as you get older you don’t so much, you just know what you know but we quite like learning stuff.

“We rip off each other quite easily and finish the other’s sentences so it does have quite a nice flow.

“If anyone shares the knowledge from it and someone says ‘where did you hear that?’ and they have a five-minute conversation about the topic from the podcast then that would be amazing.

“It’s nice to do and not too stressful as we can record it around our kids. My boy, Lawson, thinks it’s hilarious – he asks for Two Guys One Topic on the Alexa and my voice comes through. But my daughter, Lemon, is too young.”

Both men entered the Race to Stones along the Ridgeway but Ollie had to pull out because of an injury. During training, Liam received a bizarre text from is friend asking whether there was any topic he would like to hear about. 

He said: “I assumed Ollie wanted me to tell him about a topic while we were running to pass the time like ‘tell me about oil rigs’ so then I suggested we record it for a podcast instead. So it went from there.” 

They say they are getting more comfortable each week and family members have told them it sounds more professional than they thought.

Liam added: “It would be cool if the podcast is recycled for a TV channel like Dave and we’re asked to be in it.

“With a podcast based on a book, once you’ve exhausted that content it runs out but with our podcast, there are an infinite number of topics to learn from and we have started getting requests in.”

The podcast comes out every Tuesday, with the next five episodes already planned for.

Listen at www.linktr.ee/TwoGuysOneTopic