Offline with Jon Favreau - 1 Offline Host vs. 1 Jubilee Founder

Episode Date: August 15, 2026

Can the internet foster productive debate in the rage-bait era? Jubilee founder and CEO Jason Y. Lee joins Offline to talk about his company’s massive YouTube channel, known for its viral political debates in series like Surrounded and Middle Ground. He and Jon talk about the moral quandary of platforming people like Charlie Kirk, what young people find so captivating about these conflict-ridden videos, and why Jason views his content as chocolate covered broccoli.Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.You can request a transcript by emailing [e-mail]. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.

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Questions like, why did prices go up or what do robot chefs mean for the restaurant industry? Planet Money helps you find answers by digging into the places and the people at the center of the story, asking the questions that make the economy easier to understand. Listen to Planet Money wherever you get your podcasts. We've never had Nick Fuentes on. That's not for lack of interest necessarily from Nick. But it is something we, the question becomes if what I said is true, which is we want to have honest conversation. And just because we have someone on, is not us. So there's no thumb on the scale, right?

Jubilee is not saying, hey, because we have this perspective on that, we're validating that viewpoint necessarily. We're creating the circumstance where these conversations are happening. At what point does a viewpoint become big enough or a perspective become big enough that we need to hold it to account? Right. And I don't know. And we haven't had Nick on.

Would you? Right now, we haven't. And I think there's a reason why. Yeah. I'm John Favreau, and you just heard from today's guest Jason Lee, the founder and CEO of Jubilee, the massive YouTube channel that's become known for its viral political debates. You've almost certainly seen a Jubilee clip, specifically a clip from their famous or infamous debate series called Surrounded, where one person sits in the center of a room, and a circle of about 20 people takes turns running up to debate them.

Surrounded features political commentators, many of whom you are certainly familiar with. My next claim is that trans women or not women. Okay. What's your name? Sam. Nice to meet you. Let's define our terms. A woman is an adult female of XX chromosomes.

You tell me what is a woman? I think a woman is somebody who identifies as a woman. Got it. So that's not a definition. That's like saying a table is something that identifies as a table. Give me an objective definition. No, it's not. A table is an object.

Well, tell, a table can't identify as anything. It doesn't have choice. Whether it's freedom of speech. What is the declaration saying? Trump is attacking that. Trump is attacking that. He's not attacking. freedom of religion. How is the attacking freedom of religion? We had a Muslim ban. No, we had

an actual Muslim ban. That is an insane claim by you. Yes, we did. That is an insane claim. It had to be overturned by the Supreme Court. But you don't condemn Nazi persecution of the Jews. I think that there was a little bit of persecution. We may have to rename the show because you're a little bit more than a far right Republican. Hey, what can I say? I think you say I'm a fascist. Yeah, I am. And more recently, it also features politicians, particularly Democrats who were thinking about running in 2028. So why should I be incentivized to vote if I know for a fact that nobody is going to live up to the expectations that they're going to change when nothing has? Because every single year, you're going to have budgets that are either going to reflect you or not. Every year laws be passed that are either going to help you or not.

And so our, if we just disengage in that process, not only we're not helping ourselves, we're not helping our families, we're not helping our neighbors. Bad things will happen. And then we cannot just scratch our heads and wonder why. I think we should probably give people work visas, but I don't agree with you necessarily getting citizenship because what other path, why would other people take the better route, which is not to be undocumented and actually apply for a visa? So tell me, here's where I get hung up.

What do we do for those kids who were brought here through no fault of their own, without their consent. They now live here in America. This is the country they know. They know no other country. What are we doing about their parents? Do you think you have a little bit of an innate bias because you know her well or somewhat well? Well, I'm definitely on her side. Like obviously, right? That's why I'm here. Yeah, yeah, but there are people in my party who I don't think of as kind of the ideal public servant, right? Just because we're in the same, don't get me in trouble. I'm kidding. There has of course been quite a bit of debate about these debates. Are they useful? Are they harmful? Are they a good faith attempt at discourse? Are they just viral rage bait?

Jubilee, and especially Jason, argue unsurprisingly, that these debates are productive, that its videos have a rawness and authenticity that young people are desperately seeking. Personally, I've been genuinely unsure. I'm a big fan of debate. I don't think we have enough of it. And I think ultimately, it's one of the few tools we have to persuade people. So I really like that Jubilee is trying to facilitate more political debate. On the other hand, I don't think a clip of a fascist yelling at Medi Hassan is doing anyone much good, except maybe the fascist. But I wanted to hear Jason out. And so I invited him on the show today to make his case for why Jubilee is an important and productive part of our political discourse. We talked about that and so much more, including Jubilee's plans to upend the 28 presidential race. It was a fascinating conversation.

We'll get to it in a moment. but before we do, if you want to get this episode and all your favorite Cricket Media podcasts, ad free, head on over to cricket.com slash friends and become a paying subscriber to Friends of the Pod. In addition to ad-free episodes, subscribers get access to our great substack newsletters, discounted tickets to our live events,

including CricketCon, which is fast approaching, and special behind-the-paywall shows like Polarcoaster, terminally online, and Potsave America-only friends. Plus, it's the best way to support pro-democracy, independent media. head on over to cricket.com slash friends to subscribe. All right, here's Jason Lee. Jason, welcome to the show.

Appreciate it. Thanks for doing this. So I've watched a lot of Jubilee's surrounded debates. I'm fascinated by what you guys are doing. I'm also torn. So I very much believe we need more thoughtful political debate. I think that includes debating people with politics that you can't stand. I'm also not a fan of viral rage bait.

So my hope is that you can maybe talk me through what you guys are hoping to accomplish, answer some questions about the format you've landed on. Sure. Maybe we can just start with what you've actually built because I bet some people have seen the clips without thinking much about the company behind them. So, like, how did Jubilee come to be? Yeah, so Jubilee I actually started in 2010. I initially started a nonprofit called Jubilee Project in 2010. Okay.

And then that was actually a 501c3 where we would create content that would raise money in and amours for various causes. And it wasn't until 2017 that I launched Jubilee Media. And that was actually in the aftermath of the Hillary and Trump election. And it was in a world where we felt like the world felt at the time the most divided it had ever been. And why can we create content that might bring people together, but not in this like, not in this kind of saccharine way, but in a way that really resonates with young people in a way that people would actually tune in. And we said, okay, can we speak to culture? Can we speak to identity?

Can we speak to the broadest possible audience and show that we have, far more income than we might think. And that's when I launched Jubilee Media. So it was with that kind of vision of let's provoke human conversation. And that's kind of burst out of these echo chambers. So with that, we started creating some of our initial viral formats, things like middle ground. We had shows like Spectrum. We have some dating shows called like Versus 1 or Swiper Sawup. And now, of course, a lot of folks know us were surrounded. Was surrounded part of the first group of shows? How did that come about? You know, we constantly pilot new shows. We kind of think of ourselves as a digital first studio. So if you think of, you know, we've got all these shows that kind of are ongoing, but every quarter will pilot two or three new formats or shows. And when something pops off, we'll continue to do them, of course. And at the core of the idea what's surrounded was this idea of like,

what happens when the mighty and the many kind of have conversation. So a lot of times the person in the center is the mighty. They've got a lot of expertise. how do we have them encounter a lot of people who might be lay or who might have a lot of different perspectives and what might that look like and how can we almost like equal the playing field as it relates to discourse debate and then it wasn't naturally it wasn't only a political kind of format for us and we've done other episodes skip bailiffs was great you know we've had dr mike but right now of course during like the midterms and with with the election seasons like it's become a lot of politics

yeah give people a sense of the size here like subscribers views a mom sure sure Yeah. On YouTube, we've got about 12 million plus subscribers. So we're hitting, yeah, across our channel every month, we're hitting hundreds of millions of views, not just YouTube, but across all of our social platforms. And I think in a lot of ways, we're one of the largest Gen Z and young millennial media companies on the internet today. And I think the reason why a lot of folks like us is because, you know, right now we live in a world of, you know, really big. echo chambers with algorithms that are kind of like pushing us, I think, into different spaces. And I think we're one of the few media companies who are trying to bring folks both on the left and the right to into the same room. And as a result, I think our audience is actually reflecting that too. So our audience is quite diverse politically. When you talk about a lot of young people tune in, you've called it Gen Z MTV. Is that audience who YouTube decided to serve you to or was, were you guys built?

for that audience? I'd like to say both. Okay. I think, you know, I've got a past where I've done a lot of political content. I was in politics for a little bit. I don't know if you know that we crossed past. You were on the Obama campaign. I was on the Obama campaign.

2007. Were you in? Where were you in? I was in New Hampshire. New Hampshire. There's no way that you would know who I am because at the time you were John Favre. You were who you are. And I wasn't in.

And I didn't spend too much time in New Hampshire. Well, not only that, it's like I was an intern on the field side. So my job literally was I would sleep on a futon. And every day it would be calling 100 people or canvassing a thousand houses, right? So my experience was very much like being on the front lines of like speaking to all these different individuals about their expenses and their kind of political views. And it was a really fascinating experience. And I think that actually informed a lot of what built you believe today. In what way, just because.

Yeah, I'll give you a quick example. At the time, obviously, this was the primary, right? So, of course, like Hillary, as you know, it was like 10 points up. No one knew who Senator Obama was. McCain was also doing really well. And, you know, New Hampshire voters could vote for whoever they wanted. They can kind of cross lines. And one of the big things that we had been talking about at the time was how Obama was against the Iraq war, right?

And that was like a big differentiator against Hillary. And that was something that was really, really proud of. And it was something I was like excited to talk about. And I remember canvassing this one door, I was an elderly. gentleman, his name was Bob. And I was like, he said, you know, I'm open to listening. And these New Hampshire ians are like amazing, right? Because I really like to engage. And he said, tell me why I should vote for Obama. And I said, well, he was against the Iraq war. And it went on for like maybe three or four minutes about why that was so important. And he said, son, do you know, what do you know about the Iraq

war? I go, well, everything I just said, and this is why you should now vote for Senator Obama. He said, son, I had a child who was in the Iraq war. And I lost the child in Iraq war. And I was, when I say like smacked in the face with just how stupid I felt. And I think it was because I had spent so much time in this like little microcosm where we were like so proud, you know, you're drinking the Kool-Aid and you're like, of course, of course. And then you meet someone, you're like, oh, these are real issues for real individuals, of course. And we then proceeded to have like a 45-minute conversation about the war and all this. And he was really gracious to me.

It was really, really kind. And at the end, he said something really interesting where he said, you know, I really appreciate this conversation. I don't know if you've quite changed my position, but if I don't vote for McCain, I'll vote for Obama. And it was beautiful. That's a win. Exactly. And I think. It also is like the, I think, and I've realized this, the times that I've canvassed as well and you're out in the field is just actual voters, people that you talk to on the doors and on the phones are so much more complex.

Yes. And then you would assume from the political discourse. 100%. And even sometimes we get a little glimpse or a little snapshot, and sometimes are the things that go viral from Jubilee. You get a little glimpse on X or on threads or where have you. And what we are actually doing are two-hour-long conversations that are much more in depth and deep.

And of course, like, is not always as productive or as cordial as we would like. But I think that that exercise of interacting with different perspectives and voices feel so foreign today that we're like, that is a necessary exercise. And might that still be better for democracy than what is happening today with the status quo? Well, so I want to talk about that. There's a sign on your wall that says provoke understanding and create human connection. You've said that the mission is not to just make viral content. But, you know, in order to fulfill your mission of creating more connection and understanding,

you want those videos to reach as many people as possible. You've made design choices in Surrounded, the title cards, the countdown, the race for the chair, the clips that you highlight. Sure, sure, sure. That are geared towards grabbing people's attention. How do you square those two things? I really describe it to our team as we need to create chocolate-cover broccoli.

That the folks who love broccoli are eating broccoli already. And that's fantastic. And those are not the people that we're trying to reach. And by the way, when I say we're trying to reach people, we're not reaching them in an effort to convert them or to evangelize them a certain perspective. It's to actually help them with this exercise of dialogue, human conversation. I think today we have almost a proliferation of commentary on our feeds.

If you look and you're swiping, you see so many individuals, green screen, talking to an audience that all generally agree with them because the algorithm has made it And it's very, very difficult to find discourse where whether it's political or not, that people are kind of like encountering some pushback or some resistance or some friction, some uncomfortability, God forbid. And I think in the world of commentary, we need more conversation. So the reason I say all that is I think that the best way to feed people of chocolate or feed people broccoli is you still have to cover with chocolate. Meaning we still need to use the mechanisms. We still need the AB test titling. We still need to use things that are honestly entertaining and interesting to watch.

And that's why we reach, frankly, a lot of our audience is not super political. They're not like these political junkies who know every single thing that's happening in every single space. We reach a lot of lay people who are like, you know what? I actually don't know what I think about X or Y or C. And something that we hear so often is people say, Jason, I watch the content. Some people say, I watch the content just to see my person win or blah, blah, blah. of course. But other people say, I watch the content mainly because I want to understand both sides of this argument and I want to be at a dinner table and I want to be able to articulate

and understand what's happening. And I don't want to look stupid, frankly. Are you worried that people will just, in the sort of nature of the media ecosystem now is everything is clips? Are you, do you worry that people are just going to enjoy the chocolate and not get the broccoli because they're just seeing, because we worry about that. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's always a balance that we're trying to figure out on Pons Save America's, like, okay, we can talk about this very funny thing that happened or Trump did something stupid again. Wow, that's new.

And then, but then we want to talk about sort of deeper, more interesting issues. And then the Trump clips and the funny clips and the YouTube titles that we've A-B tested, like that goes more viral than the other stuff. And so we're like, well, we've got to pull back on that, you know. And it's frustrating sometimes, right? When you're like, there's so much broccoli here, well, why is everyone just like eating, the smorgasbord of chocolate. I do worry about that sometimes. And it keeps me up

a night when I think about, like, how do we make sure that this balance is right? Not just, like, the political balance is right, but also that, like, the nutritious balance is right. But something that helps me is, when we look at our analytics, for example, like our YouTube videos were surrounded, maybe a typical episode will be an hour,

hour and a half, sometimes up to two hours. The average view duration for one of those videos is over 45 minutes. Okay. So there's this kind of... People are really tuning in for the movie. Yeah, and there's this stereotype that young people are just swiping.

They're disengaged. They're not interested. And I think what we at Jubilee are really, really good at is creating formats and scenarios and shows that get people to lean in and they stay. And they're interested in watching another one.

So the number of people who are like, I wanted to watch this one episode. I watched three different episodes this run, and this is why, and this is what I learned. And not only that, now I watch it with my mom. And the reason is she and I are very different politically. But this is the thing that we get to watch and we get to discuss.

We're like, ah, that's exactly what we want to have happen. You said you want to build the Disney for human connection. Yeah. What does that actually mean? I don't, when I think of Disney, I don't think of an intense political debate. You know, it's funny because I started saying that maybe 10 years ago, and I think that the perception of Disney has evolved quite a bit over that time. What I mean by that is that I think that in a lot of ways, Disney,

is synonymous with a lot of things and is kind of considered maybe the leader of storytelling or a leader of imagination for young people by some people. When I say that we want to be the Disney for human connection or human conversation, what I mean is that when people think

about interacting with different perspectives, whether it's digitally or even in person, we hope that Jubilee can be a part of that. And that, you know, it's something we're starting to experiment. I know you guys do some amazing events. we're starting to experiment with events because we want people not only to watch the content,

not only watch the content with someone else, we want them to now start to participate in the content. So that's been really cool. We actually just did an event at UCLA. It was a dating show where we had one of our dating formats and literally a thousand UCLA students showed up. And it wasn't just because they wanted to watch it's because we're going to now send our friends on stage to participate.

So John's going to go up. We're going to root for him to get the girl, blah, blah, blah. But I imagine that we're going to do that on the political side. thing as well. And it's something that we're really excited about working with a lot of different individuals and partnering in that way too. Is there a metric other than views that you use to judge whether an episode worked? It's a great question. We do a lot of surveys, which are not, I don't know if anyone would be like these are scientific, like, if they with us, then, if they hold like water as it relates to the scientific method and such. But we do a lot of,

a lot of surveys because we want to understand people's experiences in the in the episode and we also do like periodic surveys just for our audience to understand like how people are perceiving us and and that so that is one small gauge um beyond that we we do quite a good job i think of listening to our audience is there an episode that you're like really proud of that didn't do numbers so many unfortunately and they're like but look at this one um man there's like Just too many to count. It's, this is not in the surround ecosystem, but I'll give you kind of a story about a video that we made that I think kind of got us to where we are today as it relates to

chocolate versus broccoli. We spent a ton of money. This was maybe like seven or eight years ago making this incredible documentary about this doctor in India. And we like went, we shot it. It was like damn near like Oscar. It felt like that. And then when I watch it, like this was really, really well done.

And we spent a ton of money in time on it. And it was this woman in India who was like saving children from blindness. And we're like, oh, and if we can raise awareness, if we can raise money for this, it would be so incredible. And we put it out, and we got maybe like 2,000 or 3,000 views, which was really frustrating because at the time we were getting maybe on average 200,000 or 300,000 views. And what I started to realize is that we cannot think about our content,

like on this linear line of, is it going to be impactful or is it going to be savvy? What we need to start thinking about of it as a Y and X axis, and can we do both and can we be a top right corner? Would I say that every single piece of our content sits in this corner, not necessarily, like varying degrees, but that is our aim, and that's what I think Jubilee is quite good at. How do you pick the clips? You do a 90-minute video, I mean, you do a two, three-hour conversation, turn into a 90-minute video, and then the internet turns it into like, you know, 40-second clips. Well, probably a lot of the clips that you or other folks who are seeing are not clips that we've chosen. Yeah, right. So that is something that I'm sure you know about the internet quite well.

is that it is just like a moving river and you don't really have control over that. And that's frustrating at times, right? Because it's like, well, this was actually quite an interesting conversation, quite helpful, quite nuanced. And this three second moment is not. Or this 10 second moment, 30 second moment is not. And if this is all you know jubly for, then I can kind of understand why you might have a lot of criticisms

or have a lot of questions at least. But to answer your question actually is we look at a lot of analytics around retention, around your YouTube graph of like what are people like the most interested and what are the questions or what are the things that they're going back to and re-listening to? And that often drives a lot of our cutting.

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perception of the world and the strange reality of who is signing up to work for ice. All in less time than it takes to roast a chicken. And now what a day episodes will be hitting your YouTube and podcast feeds in the afternoons. You'll get the breaking news even faster. Check out what a day. Now dropping in the PM on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. So I know Medi has some pretty well, friends with Tim Miller. Okay. Tim and I actually did some, we did some last minute prep when he was here to do surrounded before.

Which I think is amazing. I've watched people who sit in that chair thinking, that looks kind of fun and interesting. It also looks absolutely terrifying and maybe a little enraging. So make the case why, if you're a commentator or politician or whoever the person is being surrounded, it's worth doing this. I think I'll start with politicians,

which is to some degree. I think we should as citizens have a baseline expectation of politicians to be able to interact and field questions from constituents and our audience. And I think the fact that we're not seeing that more frequently is a disservice to all of us, regardless of a political party, right? And the more and more that we see politicians, particularly I think very savvy politicians, recognize that Jubilee is almost like a necessary stop for young people, at least. the more I think that we are helping the ecosystem.

And that's why we welcome folks from both sides. We say, hey, we would really like to have you here. Even if, honestly, the viewership doesn't perform as well, some of the other content. So it doesn't matter, right? Like, it's part of the mission. The other thing I'll say is that what I have found is that the tone of the episode and the response from the people in the circle is a reflection of the tone of the person in the center. and that is no judgment.

It is really what you bring. By the way, I would love to have you in the center one day. I've thought about it, but I think it requires a lot of prep for me. Well, that's the thing is I think that in a lot of ways it is frightening to think about. But on the other hand, I think folks who have a good faith expectation or intention of having conversation, they are received with that expectation. I'll give you an example. There are so many examples of episodes that will happen, and in the moment, it gets incredibly fiery.

And people are like, oh, this is kind of bad. And we're like, well, let's see what happens. And right after it's over, 80% of the episodes, there is a line of all the individuals who are in the circle, wanting to say hello, wanting to say thank you, and want to take photos. And usually what happens is that happens for about 30 minutes, and we say, guys, we've got to close out on the set.

So they'll move out to the parking lot, and they'll continue. and then the number of times it ends up at the bar down the street is quite frequent. And I think it's just a reflection of this is not a very typical experience. People, I think, are seeking it out, not just to wash it, but to participate in it. And it's different. And I think the reason why it's novel, and yeah, at times it can be controversial for sure or very spicy or kind of like it can be eye-catching is because I think we need more of it.

So yes, if I could choose, I would not. It's not like we're like, hey John, let's get it more spicy here. Right. Hey, John. There's none of that. Yeah. Do you think the METI episode was successful? You know, I spent a lot of time talking my team and thinking about that episode.

I think there's a lot of things about that episode we could have done better, actually. And we've been pretty transparent about that. And we've changed a lot of our processes around casting and a lot of our guidelines around it. So there will be a lot of things we would do differently As a Relative Media episode. That being said, I think what that episode taught us is that there is no longer a universal line. It's something I would be curious to your perspective on too.

What feels like a very fringe perspective to one is starting to be a very mainstream perspective for a lot of folks in different pockets of the internet. And I'm not of the opinion that that means, okay, let's just throw it all on and just see what happens. We still want good faith. We're still like looking for balance.

That being said, I'm also, I don't necessarily believe that ignoring perspectives or keeping us in different rooms is solving for polarization or making any of these perspectives go away. I think in a lot of ways, a lot of these perspectives need to be held in account in public. And, you know, sunlight can be the best disinfected.

It is a tricky tension that we reside in, something that we spend a lot of time thinking about, and we haven't always gotten that line right. Well, yeah. I mean, well, let's start here. What did you, what were the learnings from the METI episode, and what did you guys change after that? Are you a fan of The Bachelor? I've seen Bachelor episodes for sure. You know, like on The Bachelor when they're like, he's not here for the right reasons. She's not here for the right reasons.

Yeah. I think that that started to happen not with the first episode, a first season or the first 10 seasons, but that starts to happen once a series becomes big enough. You start to get folks who want to be in the chair or in the circle for the wrong reasons, quote unquote. That's something that. Because they're going to be like, because some of the people in the many episode went on to be influencers or were influencers before. 100%. And a lot of well-intentioned people, good faith debaters on both sides have gone to have huge careers because of Jubilee or are known as Jubilee debaters, right? And I think that's great.

I think that's totally fine. I think we have learned to be a better discern of who is here for the right reasons. We've also, so that's a bit of a casting process. I think we've been a lot more explicit about what our. kind of guidelines are for what we think kind of fits within the rules of, hey, we want everyone to be able to be at this table, but what are the rules that would get someone removed from the table, for example? What are those rules? Yeah, to be honest, it's, it's changing all the time. So we don't, yeah. Also like on the many one, right, this is what got the most

attention. Sure. Um, is several participants told him that they, he shouldn't, doesn't belong in the country, right? He's a U.S. citizen. Dual citizen. And some, the kid with the backwards hat was like, you'll be the first to be deported. And so then there was the kid who said, self-identified as a fascist in the middle of the episodes. Yeah.

Like, would you have any of those people back? Did you have any of those people? We haven't. No. We haven't. So is anyone from that episode? Because I saw that, like. There have been people from that.

From that episode, it came back. And I want to be, this is a bit nuanced, but I want to be clear that there were several moments and individuals who I think were not invited back. But there were several people in the room, I think that we're acting in good faith. So I think it's, I don't think personally, it's fair to say, hey, this whole circle, let's like dismiss all of it. Yeah. There's this guy, Kai, who met he debated towards the end. It was like 10 minutes. And he, it's interesting because I think he's an interesting example, because.

he and Medi had like a pretty heated debate he didn't tell Medi like you don't belong here go home whatever but afterwards you like look into the guy and he's like a huge Nick Fuentes fan and I know he just did something recent with you guys not Nick Fuentes I was like I don't believe he has

so for someone like him is it is it behavior when you're on the show or is it like how much do you look at their life their posts their presence what they do outside of when they come on surrounded. Now it ends up being a pretty comprehensive, like all those are part of the ingredients

that we are contemplating. So someone like him, like the, being a Fuentes, like fanboy is not, like, that doesn't cross the line. Not necessarily, I'm not saying yes or no. But it is the right question

that I think that you and I both should be contemplating, right? Someone like a Nick Fuentes is a good example. We've never had Nick Fuentes on. That's not for lack of interest necessarily from Nick. But it is something we, the question becomes, if what I said is true, which is we want to have honest conversation. And just because we have someone on, is not us. So there's no thumb on the scale, right?

Jubilee is not saying, hey, because we have this perspective on that, we're validating that viewpoint necessarily. We're creating the circumstance where these conversations are happening. Yeah. At what point does a viewpoint become big enough or a perspective become big enough that we need to hold it to account? Right. And I don't know. And we haven't had Nick on.

Would you? Right now, we haven't. And I think there's a reason why. Yeah. I think that is a question we have to continue to ask ourselves of where, not just Nick, but there are several people, I think, that we think about. Of where does that line exist? Again, there's no universal line. And also, it constantly is shifting.

have, I mean, I know your colleague, John Regalado told the Atlantic that internally, you've actually debated whether to do like Holocaust survivors versus Holocaust deniers and he'd be willing to see that conversation happen. You said you wouldn't. I absolutely wouldn't not, yeah. Why not? Would you? I would not. Yeah. But I'm just very, what I'm trying to get at here is like, and obviously the line is difficult and there is no black or white. this is on one side line, and the other.

I do wonder about sort of coming up with a set of values and just having sort of, you know, fencing around the whole thing where you're like, okay, this seems like it's an abhorrent view, but it's out there a lot. And so we should debate it versus, okay, this is now over the line. 100%.

I think those are the questions. that keep me up because I don't think that there is always a correct answer. And no matter who we speak to, people will disagree. And I think that that's natural and that's fair. Does that absolve us any responsibility? Absolutely not neither, right? I think right now in this given time and place, we are more on the side of not interacting with folks than we do in having discourse. In general, in society. In general. Yes. And with technology and in the spaces that we reside in, in the media that we interact with, myself included. So I'm constantly asking myself the question of,

am I doing that thing that Jubilee is asking me to do, which is being open, empathetic. Acknowledgement is not agreement to me. So it is the question, and that's the reason I can't give you like this straight answer, which is like very frustrating, I think, because I think in a lot of ways it feels like I'm just like filibustering. But it is just constantly the question we discuss.

But I think what John is pointing to is that there's a value within Jubilee of he and I want the same thing, which is we actually want to provoke human conversation. And therefore, we do have a lot of conversations in earnest about where that line is at the moment. And whether an individual, it would be responsible to have them on. So it's something that I would love more of your perspective on too. Well, it's tricky because I was, you know, so I was watching a lot of them to prepare for this. and I've seen them before.

I know I was going to have you on anyway, a bunch of them. But, like, you know, Westmore was on recently. Sure. Yeah. And I thought he had, first of all, it was just a cool setup because he was talking to non-voters and trying to get them to understand why voting is important. Yeah. Which is a tough thing to do.

Yeah. And it's amazing. Did you see that there are several people who actually subsequently said, hey, I've decided to vote? Oh, that's great. So MPR did this story. Oh, that's great. They followed up with several of them. And they're like, oh, yeah, Governor Moore.

And we were like, and that was not our objective, by the way. Because even that, if we're saying voting is important, I think there's a reason why young people in particular really like Jubilee is because we really represent independent media in a strong way. With almost all these traditional media, there is a feeling of everything is so produced. And there's a thumb on the scale, one way, shape, or form. And with us, I think that people, despite some of our mishaps,

our flaws, they know that we really, really do care about featuring honest, fair conversations for both sides and treating sides equally too. But go ahead. Sorry. Well, so then I looked and I was like, oh, this Westmore episode got 330,000 or something around that views. Sure. And then you look at Medis and Charlie Kirch. Sure. Medi's is like 17 million, right? Charlie Kirch is the, I think, the most popular one. Probably, yeah. And that I think, obviously, other reasons, now that he was killed. But even when you look through Medi's episode or through everyone else's episode,

the parts that people watch the most, that get reshared the most, are the parts where you and I might wince. Sure. That, like, it's not, they're different perspectives, but it's not, like, an interesting debate about different perspectives. It's someone being racist or mean. or whatever it may be. And I wonder how you think about that from a business perspective, right?

Because if those are, you know, you're going to look back at your episodes and you're like, oh, this one got 17 million views. That's amazing. Yeah. That's going to be why advertiser, whoever else comes to us. Sure. And yet that's probably not what we're proud of as much as we are the, you know, the discourse or the debates we have. that don't get that kind of use?

It's an interesting question. I think if we're in the business of making as much money as possible, we wouldn't be doing this work. It's the first thing I'll say. And if we just wanted to make viral content, our content slate would look very different. And it would include a lot of individuals that we've talked about, right? So I think that there's a, I think for folks who say that,

I'm like, maybe you should take a look at our content, because I don't think that you'll see that that's the case. And frankly, like, that's not the point. And sometimes, like, I get, you know, it's weird because we'll get the feedback of, oh, this is just capitalistic. Like, you just want to make as much money as possible. And on the other hand, I also get feedback of, like, oh, it's too much. Like, you still need to reach the masses and something that we, so it's something that. Look, we do.

I ask for because. Yeah, I'm sure you think about it. Yeah. And we have also received this criticism as well, right? Right? Like that, oh, you just talk to the more extreme people on the left because that gets you more clicks and your audience wants that. And, you know, when it's you, when it's your company, and you're the host, you're like, that's not what I'm trying to do at all. Right. Right. So it's tricky because you both have to be very, I feel like as, you know, with a company, I think you have to be as focused on your North Shore as possible while listening. to the signals around you, right? And those sometimes can be very paradoxical

or very contradictory. So it is something, and that's why, you know, at the end of the day, I think what we are really good at Jubilee is featuring humans. And I think humans are very complex. They're changing all the time. As a very human company,

we will make mistakes too, and we're pretty transparent. We're not like, oh yeah, F you guys, like, no, we're constantly changing what we are doing. But again, that I think is the reason why our brand and the trust in Jubilee is so large among Gen Z. Among young people because they desperately seek that and they want that. Right. So, yeah, I'm learning all the time. Let's talk about the people who get in the room that are not the person in the chair.

Sure. Like, walk me through how people get there. I know these casting calls are like open calls, participants are volunteers. There's a small travel stipend. And so what kind of people say yes to that? Who gives up a Saturday to argue with a stranger on camera for free? Scypen, travel stipend. Right, right, right.

They do it for the trouble stipend. You'd be surprised. I think that what we're finding with young people today is that they are more open-minded. They're more interested in participating. They're more interested in discourse than ever before. And it's the opposite of a lot of the stereotypes that people will say about young people. It's like, they're checked out, they don't care, they're lazy, and we're like, we just don't find that to be the case. I think that in a lot of ways, they are far more self-aware, far more astute than we give, than the general public gives Gen Z credit for.

So in that way, I mean, I only have these casting calls, but we've got these links that's just like, hey, if you'd like to be a part of an episode, just like, let us know who you are. My name is John. I'm a father of two. I've got a dog, blah, blah, blah, right? And we have literally hundreds of thousands of people who are raising their hands saying, hey, I would love to participate. And I think that's great. I think it's a sign of people wanting to engage in this huge kind of human experiment in a lot of ways.

So, yeah. And then so through the process of actually getting onto an episode, we'll do like a series of now, not only interviews, but now we'll do a lot of checks. Yeah, like your recent calls asked for people who articulate, can hold a well-formed point of view under pressure. and you say you're looking for professionals and academics and community leaders. Has that description always been the description or have you like evolved it a little bit? That might be for a specific episode

because frankly, if there is a circle, let's say we were to surround you with conservatives. I think the best episode, but also the most informative and the most entertaining episode, is actually one that has a large spectrum of different conservatives. Yeah.

So if we gave 25, of this one version of a conservative that maybe is a stereotype or maybe is the most provocative or the maybe is the most spicy, it actually doesn't make for great content. And it's not helpful. Yeah.

So I don't know. I think a lot of the questions that people assume about our casting process is actually, once you kind of get one level deeper and you say, well, do you think that actually would make better content or do you think people would actually watch that at all? And you're like, no, you wouldn't

because there's not, it's almost like we're just going to set everything on fire. Like what's the point? So there is a lot of, again, chocolate, broccoli. There's a lot. And I think that we've just learned over the last, you know, we're about to hit our tenure next year. And it's just all of this, all of these learnings, all of these mistakes, all these lessons that have just gotten us to where we are today. And now I think we're at a point, which is nice, is that we're, we've got the credibility that there are folks like Governor Westmore.

You know, we had people to judge. And we've had other prominent folks on the right and the left who are very interesting coming on because they know that this is one of the few spaces where they're not only going to be able to speak to their constituency, but they're going to reach a wider, much, much wider swath of people who maybe are unengaged. Maybe they're not sure if they're going to vote or at least are undecided. And I think that's where you want to play when you are not only a politician, but when you're wanting to kind of reach the masses, so to speak. Offline is brought to you by Running Mate by Civitech. You know the feeling we talk about all the time, the doom scroll, the sense that you're absorbing a lot of politics and doing very little about it. Here's the antidote.

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running mate.io slash offline. That's running mate. dot I.O. slash offline. The What Today podcast you know and love is shaking things up. You already know that five days a week, I, Jane Koston, bring you the need-to-know news and expert analysis on the big stories shaping today and tomorrow. Stories like how social media warps our perception of the world and the strange reality of who is signing up to work for ice. All in less time than it takes to roast a chicken.

And now, What-a-day episodes will be hitting your YouTube and podcast for in the afternoons. You'll get the breaking news even faster. Check out Water Day, now dropping in the PM on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. I mentioned Charlie Kirk earlier. Still the most popular episode of Surrounded. I know he was booked to come back on when he was killed. Basically doing a version of an in-person kind of surrounded that college. what was the conversation inside your company that week? It's tough, right? It's like, I think political aside, my perspective is like when anyone is killed, I think that is something that saddens me, particularly someone that I would not call him a friend.

I would not call him someone I knew well at all. So it is a weird circumstance, I think, that we found ourselves in. It was just a weird sentiment. Yeah. Of like, we knew who he was. Interestingly, when we first put Charlie, he was in the first episode of Surrounded. Yeah. So that was the pilot episode of Surrounded.

And it was fascinating because when we first came out with that episode, we had a lot of folks on the left who would say, why did you guys have Charlie on? Like, who is this guy? Why would you have this person on? They're like, who the F is Charlie? Like, blah, blah, blah, right? And I think over time, and what we said was, hey, we are trying to feature folks who we think have a, not only a point of view, but are quite mainstream in their various pockets. And later on, you know, Trump goes on to say, you know, Charlie is one of the top three most important people who got me elected. And for me, it wasn't a validation of that decision, but it was a representation of where we are in the country such that this individual who is so important to, let's call it 50% of the country.

country and to the election of the president, a whole 50% of the other side say, he should not even have a voice in this sphere. And I think that's fascinating. And by the way, at any given point, I'll get feedback from both sides, folks on the right who say, how dare you have this person on? I'm like, wait, this person? Really? You don't know who that person is? And it happens all, which, and then I kind of feel like, okay, we've gone to a point where it's generally balanced, because I'll hear just the same amount of murmuring on both sides. Well, as you say, even when I saw the Charlie Kirk one before he was killed, and I thought that was entirely within the bounds of...

And I actually thought that the people you got for who were surrounding him were great. Like, they, you know, they gave it to him pretty good, and it was a good exchange. I think it's such a different people will just say such different things. Yeah. And that's where I've learned, again, that there's, there's no universal line for any individual. And that's what we're grappling with. And here we are at the center, trying our best to do service to as many people as possible.

I've heard you say that progressives who think that your debates tilt right may just be reacting to sort of an imbalance in the wider culture and that the right simply has more practice in that kind of arena. I agree with that. Where do you think it comes from? Well, you know, I thought that the 2024 election was pretty telling. about not the outcome necessarily, but by where we saw Trump show up and where we saw Kamla show up. And even in our interactions with both of the political parties, the approach was pretty distinct to us. Where on the right, it was kind of like a hell yes, let's try to figure out something. And we didn't have Trump on, but would we have? We would have.

And when we were reaching out to the left, it was very chilly. It was very frigid. And I was surprised because based on my background and folks I knew, I was like, this feels like actually the thing that maybe the folks on the left would be a lot more savvy to. And I think Obama was really, really great at thinking in a very creative way, I guess, and figuring out how to reach people in a much wider scale. And in 2024, I think that Trump and the Republican and the right did a far better job, frankly. since then I think what we're starting to see is a lot of progress on the left too where people are catching up and Tala Rico was on our episode right West Moore is on there's so many people who I think are really really savvy and smart and articulate and they're not afraid to interact with constituents. It's funny now because now there's this imbalance where you guys have had Democratic politicians on you haven't had a Republican politician on and I know or at least I've read that that's just because no one has a agreed yet and maybe you're in conversations with them? We are in equal conversations with both

sides and we are earnestly trying to get both sides. I think what you're seeing right now is probably there are just if you just think about the election that's coming up is that there are far more people on the left who are much more interested in having a national footprint than the right as it relates to where there's 2008. 28, exactly. But on the commentator side, it does seem like it's, it was, you started with more right people than left people. people. This is why we need you. We need you on. You know, what I'm what I'm happy about is when we kind of zoom out on a macro scale, I think it's quite balanced. At any given point, yeah, in a month or in a three month period, sometimes you're like, oh, this feels a little and

it's something we're talking about all the time. Yeah. But yeah, that is our aim and I think we generally do a pretty good job. Do you think the show teaches people how to disagree or what disagreement looks like? I think all of the above. I think it's an example of like Socratic seminar in some ways. I think that there are a lot of examples. I think first of all, there's a lot of incredible, beautiful, nuance conversation that happens. And I think that there is a lot more on Surrounded than some of our critics give credit for. I think there are also examples of very ineffective and very like, you know, difficult conversation.

And there are some that are just like incredibly like not effective at all. And I think in a lot of ways, what it does is it shows people different examples of discourse and debate. And frankly, if you are really trying to have good conversation of like what is working and what is not. And not everyone is watching with this like intent of like learning how to discourse better. But I think for a lot of young people at least, again, a lot of people are coming not with this like preconceived viewpoint of which side they sit on. they are really coming with the exercise of like wanting to understand arguments on both sides and kind of form their own opinion. And I don't necessarily think, and this is maybe my bias, I don't necessarily think when

someone's coming super hard, very aggressive, and they're like, I'm trying to dominate you. Those are not the individuals who end up persuading a lot of viewers, right? And I think that that goes back to like... They could get a big audience. Sure. So again... That is the... Yeah, are they here for the right reason, right?

that's the right that's the question and I think that goes back to our canvassing days right like i think that story i shared about um the father who lost his son is i came in with this like if i just articulate it fast as strong enough with enough passion that is the way to convince and i think i've learned is actually the way you know people talk about like deep canvassing right this this idea that the more we uh ask good questions and have real connections that is actually the way for progress to happen I mean, the other thing that's required often for persuasion is time. Yeah.

And do you, have you thought about how the format, because surrounded is, you know, can go very quickly? 100%. And I know you have other formats as well. But how do you think about sort of the necessity of giving a conversation between two people who disagree sort of the space and time to get into the nuance? That's exactly the way question. And that's precisely the insight that led us to then our next show face off, which what it is, it's two individuals may be debating, but we actually literally have a chess clock. Yeah.

And you've got 20 minutes. And you can like filibuster all you want, but you are just losing time. And if I run out of my 20 minutes, now you've got this like five minutes of, I think that you'd be great on that as well. My invitation would be actually, I think you and Ben Shapiro did a great job. Because I know you guys are friendly and you guys are both really, really smart. I'm interested in the sort of just the difference between the politicians and the commentators. I do feel like the Tala Rico, Buttigieg, Westmore, Roe, they have been, I feel like the guests have been on better behavior than some of the commentators. And also the politicians themselves are maybe not as they're politicians, right?

And so I think that crop of politicians in particular are like some of the better communicators in politics for sure. But there's still, it's a noticeable difference between them and the commentators and the tenor of the whole episode. How do you think about that? That's why when I say that often the episode reflects the tone of the individual coming into the circle, it is so true. And you can kind of tell, I think a lot of people are really. smart to prepare. And a lot of not only commentators, but politicians are preparing and they're like, government, you know, like folks are saying they create their own mock surrounded room and they'll do the whole thing. And we're like, oh, that's incredible. That's awesome.

But I think that politicians recognize what they want is to not only be able to kind of somewhat convince the folks in the circle, but they also want to be able to convince viewers of their perspective. And by doing so, what they're not trying to do is, like, create this spicy moment necessarily. I think they're trying to demonstrate how they can listen and represent and be a good politician, frankly, or be a good leader. I know you said you wanted to host a presidential debate in 28. Yeah. What does that look like? I'll start with what I think is the problem with presidential debates today. One, no young people are watching them. Yeah. Two, for me, what it feels like is two stump speeches that are just cut together. And when there are

follow-up questions or even questions between there's not any room for real human responses, or God forbid, a politician says, huh, you know, there were debates back in the day, and I sound like such an old person. No, I, yeah. But there were debates back in the day. I was like, oh, I think I agree with you on that. And, like, I call me maybe, like, naive or, like, too, like, romantic. But I think that that is actually what we want to see from individuals who are going to

leader a country, which is real humans. who think, respond, listen. And I don't think that current debates are built that way. And what I propose, and we are having a lot of really exciting conversations, which is that people are recognizing, oh, the way to engage young people is by creating debate formats and working with partners like us who are going to be able to do that and already have a built-in audience who are accustomed to that. So I think we should demand it from our politicians of why is it too scary

to have a real conversation, think. Campaigns are all about control. I know. They want to control everything and anything that is a risk that they can't predict how it's going to go. But I think with the Internet now,

don't we find that that due diligence is done at some point? Yes. Is it done at this stage or is it done once they're really close to the election and they have to drop out or once they're actually in office

and we're like, oh my God, we didn't know? It's like, why don't we do better? And then the last, the thing I wanted to mention is, to your point about like brevity, are we doing good enough conversations? Something that started happening when we started Jubilee was all around the country, high schools and colleges started to reach out to us. And young people would say, hey, we want to start a Jubilee Club. Hey, we started a Jubilee Club.

And we're like, so hundreds of Jubilee Club started popping up all around the country. And they said, can we do that? We're like, sure, what are you doing? And they would say, oh, what we do is we'll watch the latest episode. and then we'll have our own debate. And we'll say, oh, we're watching guns, anti-guns, all right, divide the room, and then they just start to do the whole thing themselves. And we're like, ah, yes.

So, yeah, part of the point is to create the content. Part of the point is to have people watch the content. But the coolest version of becoming the Disney for Human Conversation or the Disney for a Human Connection is that we are starting to model formats that teach young people to actually have discourse in an interesting way and come to perspectives, which I think is really important. Where's the company in five years? Hosting a presidential debate.

I think in a lot of ways, I'm sure you're experiencing this suddenly, like traditional media is like, oh my God, we have to have a YouTube strategy. By the way, YouTube strategy does not mean just taking whatever you've made for linear and putting it onto YouTube. It's like the social strategies for... Yeah, exactly. And it's slowly starting to happen. And I think there are going to be, like your company and our company,

I think a lot of digital first studios who know how to create formats, IP at the widest scale that are digital first. And by the way, digital first will not mean anything in five years. Yeah, right. We are just going to be the folks who create the best formats that are the most viewed for this generation, and that will be Jubilee and Crooked. Yeah. Jason, thank you for doing this.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, those are fun. Offline with John Favro is a crooked media. production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Emma Ilick Frank, and Anisha Bannergy. Our team includes Dallon Villanueva, Mia Kelman, Charlotte Landis, Eric Schute, Rachel Gaieski and Will Jones with support from Adrian Hill and Matt DeGroat. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. The What a Day podcast you know and love is shaking things up.

You already know that five days a week, I, Jane Koston, bring you the need-to-know news and expert analysis on the big stories shaping today and tomorrow. Stories like how social media warps our perception of the world and the strange reality of who is signing up to work for ice. All in less time than it takes to roasted chicken. And now, What Today episodes will be hitting your YouTube and podcast feeds in the afternoons. You'll get the breaking news even faster.

Check out Water Day, now dropping in the PM on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.