So This Is Love, the Julia "Jules" Gaitho podcast, has crossed 9 million streams — and shot a milestone episode at Workable, booked through Book Mahali, just as Workable became Africa's first WELL Coworking Rated space. Part 1 of the Book Mahali Creator Partnership Series.
Nairobi's biggest conversations about love, relationships and modern intimacy have a new number attached to them. So This Is Love, the podcast hosted by Julia "Jules" Gaitho, has crossed 9 million streams, a milestone that places it among the most listened to independent shows to come out of Kenya's creator economy. It is also the first entry in a new Book Mahali magazine series that goes beyond the numbers. Every installment will spotlight one of the hosts behind a creator partnership, the space that shaped the work, and what that space is doing to raise the bar for its category. For So This Is Love, that host is Workable, and the timing could not be better.
So This Is Love built its audience the way most durable Kenyan media brands do, through consistency, candor and a willingness to sit in uncomfortable conversations about relationships, sex, family and self. Jules has hosted guests ranging from public figures to first time storytellers, and the show's growth reflects a wider shift in how Kenyan audiences consume long form audio and video.
Passing 9 million streams is not just a vanity metric. It signals sustained listener retention, a growing back catalogue that keeps pulling in new audiences, and a level of production consistency that is hard to fake. For a Book Mahali partner, it also validates a thesis the platform has held since launch: creators need reliable, professional space as much as they need an audience, and the two compound each other.
A conversation as candid as So This Is Love needs a room that can hold it, good acoustics, natural light, comfortable seating and an atmosphere that puts guests at ease before the microphones even go on. For one milestone episode, that room was Workable, booked through Book Mahali. Workable did not host every episode of the show — one episode was shot there as part of a creator host partnership — but it is the kind of booking the platform was built for.
Workable is a coworking and flexible workspace operator with a growing footprint, and its spaces on Book Mahali are built for more than desks. Teams book Workable for meetings and offsites, brands and communities book it for events, and creators book it for content shoots and podcast recording, all through the same platform. That range is exactly what made it the right fit when Jules needed a room quiet and well lit enough to shoot in for this episode. As the host for this milestone story, Workable is stepping into the spotlight for an achievement of its own that reaches far beyond hospitality for one episode.
New research from Niche Human Capital Advisory has put a hard number on a problem most Kenyan professionals already feel: 87 percent of employees report workplace stress, with burnout and disengagement now recognised as leadership and business issues rather than side concerns for HR. Regionally, the picture is similarly stretched, with over 80 percent of employees across the region reporting moderate to extreme stress and roughly two thirds reporting emotional exhaustion.
Against that backdrop, Workable has become the first coworking operator in Africa to earn the WELL Coworking Rating, a certification awarded by the International WELL Building Institute in partnership with The Instant Group. The rating evaluates a workspace against evidence based standards covering air quality, lighting, thermal comfort, water quality, movement, nourishment, mental wellbeing, materials and community, building on the operational sustainability work Workable had already done through its earlier EDGE certification.
Workable's founder and chief executive Samir Patel framed the achievement as bigger than square footage. As he put it, businesses have always measured the cost of office space, and now they have to measure the cost of unhealthy workplaces too. IWBI's Senior Vice President for EMEA, Ann Marie Aguilar, called the milestone proof that African operators are embracing globally recognised standards for healthier workplaces, and a signal of the role workplace design plays in supporting people and organisations.
For a show like So This Is Love, which asks guests to be emotionally open on record, shooting inside a space engineered around wellbeing is not incidental. It is part of why that episode landed the way it did.
Book Mahali exists to close the gap between Kenyan creators and the physical spaces their work depends on. The So This Is Love and Workable partnership is a clear example of what that looks like in practice, a creator with real audience traction paired with a host operator setting the regional standard in its category, connected through a single booking platform. This is also the first of several planned features connecting Book Mahali's creator partners to their host spaces. Future entries in the series will continue to profile the operators, venues and studios behind the platform's biggest creator moments, and what each of them is doing to earn that place.
The same rooms used for that episode are available to book for a range of uses: content shoots, podcast recording, video interviews and photo shoots, just like Jules; meetings and offsites, from small team check ins to full day strategy sessions; and events, including launches, workshops, panels and community gatherings.
Creators, teams and businesses looking for a recording space, meeting room or event venue with the same standard of care can browse Workable and other verified hosts directly on Book Mahali. Explore the Workable spaces below.
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