Panic World - Is the future of politics "influencers"?

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

Today we’re talking about the relationship between “influencers” and politics. The two have perhaps never been more entwined, but what is the difference? Is there one? Who were the original influencers in politics over the years? Both influencer and political candidate, Kat Abughazaleh, joins us again to talk about how her experience tangling with right-wing commenters online prepared her for running for office, and what it’s like trying to transfer internet popularity into political support. If you want to support our guest Kat Abughazaleh’s run for Congress, learn more about her campaign at https://www.katforillinois.com/ or join her Discord at https://discord.com/invite/katforillinois. EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/panicworld Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for a membership at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, Ryan from the future here. Just a heads up before today's episode. This was recorded before Kat was federally indicted for protesting at an ice facility in Chicago. So obviously, we did not ask her about that because that would have been impossible because it hadn't happened yet. But I do think this episode does go into a lot of the realities that Kat is facing as an extremely online congressional candidate, which leads right into how she ended up getting indicted by the FBI. So without further ado, here is our episode. How are you, by the way? I feel like you've had a pretty rambunctious month or two.

Yeah, yeah. Honestly, a year, but the last month or two has been nuts. I'm sure. I'm good. Good. Well, we're going to talk more about that, but I want to welcome you back to the show. This is your second time. Welcome to the two-timers club.

And my question for you. is now that you're running for office, how has the nature of people being mean to you online changed? Are they being mean to you in a different way, the same way? Like, how does that work? Kind of the same way. I say a lot of times that the best practice for running for Congress is covering Nazis for half a decade.

Sure. Because you understand what, like, weird hate is. and you understand what happens when people try to like docks you and stuff like that. You don't have to grow a thick skin while you're running, which is nice. So it's like doing what you've done online for the last, however many years, has prepared you for being a politician more so than the politicians that are now going through this the first time? A hundred percent. I mean, I think that's part of why I'm running is because so many of our politicians don't understand the right

and they don't understand conspiracy theories and how right-wing media ecosystems change and affect our narratives and affect individuals. Part of why I'm running is they used our industry as a dry run for what they're doing to the federal government, but the difference is we chose to do this job

and now every American is being subjected to the same threats. I think the biggest difference is now we have entire governmental wings tweeting about me, like DHS posted about me for one of their ICE recruitment ads. they had someone in handcuffs in one of our volunteer shirts. Hey, no such thing is bad publicity, right?

Like, that's... Ask me when I'm in a gulag. Sure. Yeah, I'll be probably nearby. Well, we're talking today about influencers and politics. What is the difference? How did we get to this point where, like, the only way it feels like to capture an audience of any kind political, financial attention-based is you have to put yourself out there online.

And so we're going to be talking about that today on. This show, Panic World, is show all about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. My name is Ryan Broderick. With me, sometimes you will hear our producer Grant Irving when I allow him to speak, when I unmute his microphone. But joining me on today's show is a returning guest, Kat Abugazale. Welcome back to Panic World.

Thank you for coming on. This is so great to have you back. And as you said, you've had a pretty wild time since you were last on this show. Yeah, I think when I first came on the show, I wasn't even running for Congress. You weren't. No, you hadn't you had it yet. So thank you for I know that you're your big time now. You know, I thought maybe you'd come back on, but thank you. I want to start with like just like basic like what is the most surprising thing that you've, you've encountered since you started running for office?

Great question. I knew that running for office would be inaccessible for people that aren't like already rich. I didn't realize the extent that goes. And honestly, the most stressful thing of running for office is like the debt hole that I know that I am getting myself into. And like my job is a conflict of interest. And I've demonetized all my platforms because I don't think that our campaign should be behind a paywall. Sure. That means that my only income is a Patreon where people give me a dollar a month to look at a picture of my cat.

And I don't publicize it because I don't want people to feel pressured to do that. It's unbelievable how much of this system is built for the rich, not just with tax breaks. But did you know that if you're not an incumbent candidate, you can take a candidate salary if you're running for Congress? I didn't know that. It's calculated by half of your average income over the last five years. So if you've been making 200K over the last five years, cool. Sure, it comes from your donations, but you have a 100K cushion.

Pretty nice. Right. If you're a parent and a family of four and you're making the federal poverty line for a family of four, which is 32K, that's slashed to $16,000. Someone that's already been making $200K probably doesn't need the money as much as someone that's been making $32,000 but still wants to represent people. It's insane. That's how the system works.

And we calculated mine. So I graduated into the pandemic. And then any income you've made before announcing that year is subtracted. Right. Since a lot of my payments came on like Jan 2 for the month before, I would be making like $12 dollars a day. And after payroll, it just wasn't worth it. And so just not taking a candidate salary. That's wild. I did not know about that at all. That's nuts. I feel like you are a great person to talk to you at this very moment, especially though, because you have at least been

experimenting with how do you transfer internet popularity into political influence, political audience, political support. And a lot of people it feels like right now are trying to do that. And so I wanted to start at what we could figure was the very first person to ever do this. So have you ever heard of Victoria Woodhull? Maybe. She was born in 1838 in Ohio. And she is as best as we can tell, the first person to ever try such a thing. She divorced a cheating husband when she married at age 15. And she is actually the first woman to run for president in the U.S. in 1872, almost 15. years before women were even allowed to vote. Was she racist? I bet she was racist.

I mean, I assume everyone was racist at this point. But her story is interesting. So she gained attention and notoriety because she was the first woman to run a stockbroker firm on Wall Street. So yeah, probably racist in 1870. And she had been, okay, this is where it gets really fun. She was the personal spiritualist and medium of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the richest man on Wall Street. Oh, we love a spiritual grifter. Yes, yes.

Yeah, this is good, right? Incredible. Nothing changes. But apparently she was good. She was like, because one of the deals that Vanderbilt's companies made while she was like, you know, advising him made like half a million dollars in stock in six weeks. It's cool how coincidence can work out like that. It's very fascinating.

She uses her money to start a newspaper, Woodhull, and Claflin's Weekly, which was very controversial because it was very feminist and also socialist. It published the first English translation of the Communist Manifesto in 1871. And, you know, she then immediately starts a presidential campaign, you know, understanding that she has this platform. So how are you feeling about Ms. Woodhull right now? Because it does, it feels like she'd be very at home on Instagram today. Yeah.

I mean, I think that she, like, one of the things I'm seeing right now in terms of people translating online influence to political influence is a lot of people don't realize how to, A, effectively communicate in political spheres and especially communicate to people that aren't just in their echo chamber. And then also don't understand how to take that online influence offline. Sure. Because it doesn't, you have to do that. That's how you get votes. And it sounds like she understands communication. that way, which is cool. I also think it's not an accident that she had a non-traditional path towards influence. And I think I've said this on the show before, but a lot of the discourse around influencers in particular, that word influencer, I think is very gendered. I was just about

to say the same thing. Like a lot of people will be like, you're the influencer candidate. And like, no hate on influencers. I have never described myself as that. I am a researcher and journalist who does my work online. I realize that people don't get their information from text as much anymore. They get it from video. And I was like, oh, I want to make sure people hear what I think they should hear. It feels very much like, oh, a young woman is doing this thing online. Like you aren't describing Ezra Klein as an influencer. I mean, we should. We should, but we're not, even though it's like still, I don't want to make my work similar to Ezra Klein's at all. but like person in front of a mic on the internet, it's very gendered.

And for simplicity's sake today, I do want to use the word influencer as an umbrella term for anyone with influence online because I think in a lot of ways. The Pope, for instance. I think the Pope is, I think the Pope was possibly the first influencer. Maybe Jesus. Actually, that would be Jesus. Yeah, and probably be Jesus. The Pope would be the first aggregate.

Use pastor voice. Yeah. You know what the first influencer was. Jesus. Exactly. Uh, yeah, the Pope would have had a great block. I think he does have a blog, actually. Anyways. Chicago Pope.

Chicago Pope, exactly. So the path towards influence and the path towards fame and notoriety, I think has always been non-traditional, particularly for women, particularly for working class people, because they have to create a new framework for getting it, just as you said in the opening talking about salaries. Like you don't have the same options that someone like Nancy Pelosi would have or, you know, it's a different system for everyone else.

And Miss Wardhole, going back to our story here, immediately causes a lot of chaos. Thomas Nast, one of the most influential political cartoonists of the time, had a caricature of her called Mrs. Satan. We're going to pull up an image for you. Okay, never mind. I love her. Yeah. This goes so hard. This goes so.

Someone made like a weird AI TikTok of me talking about I have a shadow demon behind me all the time. Sick. That's like the modern version. of this, I, that goes so hard. Oh my God. It rips. And there's tons of gossip and cartoons about her. Well, here, let me show you another one.

This is her, this one is hard as hell. This is her whipping a carriage full of, uh, with man as the horses. And, and what does it say here? Hold on me just zoom in. The text is kind of hard to read. The Wall Street hippodrome. Yes. So this is her whipping.

This is her whipping a carriage, uh, pulled by. by Wall Street tycoons. So the author's just showing their kink here. Exactly. Yeah, we all want to be whipped by her. But this is not dissimilar, I think, from what you're saying. The constant attacks. I mean, can you talk a little bit about your relationship with Laura Loomer, who I think would probably have a, if she could draw or had any talent at all,

I think she'd probably be creating similar content about you. Yeah. I mean, I think this is something you especially see with women anywhere in any space whatsoever. I mean, our work is devalued. Someone will always either you're too much of a slut or you're too much of a prude. There is this picture of me in fishnet leggings and I'm wearing an outfit that I was wearing while I was bartending and I was goofing off with my coworkers and I'm sitting on top of the cooler and I look great. Like that is the picture though that so many people including

Laura Lumer will post and be like, this woman wants to be in Congress. And Laura Lumer last thing she said communist and Palestinian pick a struggle which like one of those I am and also those are not like the same thing she's also called me a communist jihadist want to be whore want to be hooker communist jihadists want to be hooker want to be hooker okay and at that point I think like a communist hooker is just doing it for the love of the game that's true it's mutual aid at that point I think it's mutual aid at that point yeah And like what I, what they either realize and don't care or don't seem to realize is every time they do this, I get to fundraise off of it. Right.

Like I remember one time when I first launched, someone posted that picture and they were like, look at her and she wants free preschool. And it was like, yeah, no, don't tell all the voters that I'm based and have fun and have worked like the quintessential working class job. Like, please don't tell everyone that. When Laura Lumer calls me a communist jihadist wannabe hooker, which is a very woman. very all of those words make sense together people are like oh that's if she hates that candidate we actually have an anti-endorsement section on our website because it's like if they hate that person that's pretty much an endorsement when fox news or laura attacks you does it make that it works that way does it make politics feel more like professional wrestling to you where like everyone's

kind of a cave politics has always been professional wrestling and anyone who wants to say otherwise is lying. There's a lot of times where the like Fox who's in particular will describe something and I'll be like, that sounds so awesome. They did an article about this yesterday. They were like squad 2.0 radical Democrats taking over the party and like the thumbnail was me and Zeran, both with bullhorns. And it was like, sounds good to me. Thanks, Fox. I didn't know that you endorsed people. That's awesome. Yeah, that's great. That's great to hear. Unfortunately, things did not work out as well for Ms. Woodhull. Obviously, she did not become the first female American president. So Woodhull couldn't vote for herself on Election Day because she was in jail for obscenity

charges. W&C. Weekly had published a few days before the election an exclusive story that Henry Word Beecher, a preacher and big cultural figure, who was a major critic of Woodholes, was having an affair. And he was very mad that they had reported such a thing. And so she was eventually acquitted. And we get all the modern obscenities. laws after the trial, which is kind of interesting. I love her. It's an interesting sort of corollary to, you know, what we're seeing now. And I want to flash forward about 100 years here.

You're like, let's bring on Kat, who is a whore, who is whipping men in the streets, and let's talk about the one to one. You could easily Photoshop yourself, you know, whipping a carriage with like, you know, I don't know, whoever you want. I don't have to Photoshop myself on that. Someone else is going to do it. I'm sure. Yeah.

So the next person I want to bring up is Bella Abzug. She was a New York City member of Congress in the 1970. She was outspoken, Jewish, progressive. She's someone that AOC gets compared to now. Her slogan for her first election was a woman's places in the house, the House of Representatives. I used to have a shirt with that on it, but it was a Republican, like, women's convention that my grandmother took me to.

Oh, that's cool. That's neat. She offered daycare for her campaign staff and volunteers, which was totally unheard of and is still pretty. rare now. And she was very far to the left of the Democratic establishment of the time. So with Ed Koch, she led Congress to pass the first ever federal gay rights bill. She passed the pre-80 wheelchair access laws. She was one of the first people to call for Nixon's resignation. And so she was like a really effective politician. Yeah. But she was like most known, she was known

for having a gravely Bronx laced voice, a voice that Norman Mailer said could boil the fat off a taxi driver's neck. Wow, that is descriptive. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of rules. Once again, it's the same story, which is that like if a woman runs for for anything in politics, it gets reduced to more of a cultural fascination. It doesn't mean that that woman can't, you know, excel. It just, it is still something that we've been doing this for 200 years. I mean, you've talked a little bit about it, but like, what are the moral policing that you're sort of seeing about you, how you speak? Like, I mean, What are they throwing at you right now? I mean, like what you just said, if she had had the most like delicate prim voice in the world,

they'd be like, wow, look at this pris over here. Like she doesn't want to like make any waves. You know, there are a lot of like, because I'm in a very progressive district. This is a solidly democratic district. A lot of people have a lot of progressive values. But there are still these like little subtle instances of sexism that we see. For instance, one of my opponents, when we're in the same headline for a local outlet, it's just one outlet that does this

but it'll say use his last name and my first name and I get that my last name is 11 letters but that's not how journalism works I have had like some weird people that want to tell me to be less confrontational and there was like this guy that was just very clearly a Republican

like the one in a five mile radius that came to our booth at a street fair and he was like I don't think that we should have more housing and I was like why and then he was like well and then gave me a nonsensical answer and I was like okay but why and then he just kept going and I was like you're obviously not going to vote for me but why and he was like you know you need to stop asking why and be a little more polite say you know sir why do you think that and I was like I'm not going to do that you you're just here to annoy my volunteers but that's like always how I've been my whole life been called not

lady like enough which is ironic because I'm very trod wife coated I'm always wearing dresses and heels I did. I have a little 1950s apron that I wear when I cook. But that's just like women's lives. Whatever you do will be wrong. So might as well do what you want. Yeah. And this was true for Abzac too. And there was a ton said about how she spoke and how she dressed. She always wore a hat and dressed a lot more feminine than other Congresswoman. And then was parodied by an impersonator. So an all-male New York Press Club hired like a like a basically like kind of like a drag queen. to dance and sing, I guess I've never been the high fashion kind, Mother Nature gave me a big behind.

That's so straight. That's so straight that they did that. They were very mad about how she spoke. Apparently she yelled a lot. It's exactly what you're describing, which is like, this is not new. And what is also really interesting about her story is that she was very tapped into pop culture. Like there was not really the concept of what we now call an influencer back then. obviously like media was different, but Andy Warhol did do a promo painting for her Senate campaign,

which is pretty sick here. We'll poke the photo. Hell yeah. Yeah. And there's a big hat. So it's like she understood, you know, how pop culture and how politics interact with each other, which is now something everyone has to do. I think one of the most interesting moves and I would say that you're part of this trend as well,

particularly on the left and on the Democrat side in the last 15 years. is like the sign, like Zoran's sign, Beto O'Rourke's sign, your sign, like the idea of breaking from the red, white, and blue, the sort of like making a brand. How much do you think about the imagery and like how your campaign performs online? Because I've always wanted to know, like, exactly how much are you going, like, okay, like, we can A, B, test this and this has got to look good for Instagram or like, how, like, what are those decisions like? I mean like normal stuff like fitting something for Instagram has different ratios than another platform.

But so much of the campaign is experimental because I wanted to be like, okay, I have a big platform. I can use it to run a campaign the way I want to. And so every time we think about doing things in that more traditional like let's focus group test this message, I'm like, wait, no, that's not the point of the campaign. People like have asked who runs my social media. I do. Cool. I run my social media. I just post as I.

do. Our creative director, Mia, who has designed a lot of the posters behind me, they're amazing and will sometimes post like, you know, if we have a video that's going out across platforms, but like a lot of the posts are just me and my thoughts. And, you know, when we came up with the design for the campaign, me and Sam, Sam asked me, Sam's my campaign manager, you know, what color scheme do you want? And I was like orange because orange is my favorite color. You can see it on my chair. I see the chair, yeah. Orange headphones here. I love orange. I think it's a delightful full color. I think that it's underrated. It just is warm and happy for me. And then he was like, okay, we need a second color. And I was like blue. I wanted kind of this contrasting look. And it kind of

reminds me of like summer camp, like very summer, very like Michigan. And, but it wasn't like something that we tested. It was just what I like, what I want to do. I mean, I hear a lot about Zoran and Graham Platner and myself being like, how are these people communicating so effectively? We're not we're talking like normal people. Like, that's really all it is. I have people be like it sounds. It reads like your platform was written by, you know, you. And I was like it was.

And we have the most comprehensive platform in my race. And it was written by me and Sam. And that's why it sounds like it was written by us because it was written by us and not a bunch of consultants. And I think there's in 2024 at the DNC, I got asked by like some consultants and some dem operatives because like my work was known for its authenticity. I actually don't really watch much video content. I just communicate how I'd want to be communicated.

to and they were like, how do we make authenticity? And I was like, oh. Jesus Christ. You are fundamentally misunderstanding the thing you are trying to achieve. Yeah. It's just be you as someone on Zoran's team said, like, let him cook. And if you don't have the Riz, sorry. Well, after the break, I want to talk about the first Democrat to try this in the modern age.

But first, a word from our sponsors. Grant, who should our fake sponsors be this week? I think we have to test it, you know, do an A-B test. Sure, yeah. Our sponsors will be whoever our Democratic think tank decides test the best with our audience. Tesla. Tesla, exactly, yeah. We love their tax credits.

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Do you know much about Howard Dean? Yes. And actually, a lot of people talk about the Dean's cream. And I talked to multiple people who were there. And they were like, first off, it didn't sound that weird. My thing is like outwardly progressive person, obviously anything will be manufactured to take them down. Well, before the Dean screen, Howard Dean was running a really interesting internet-based campaign. We've dug through this for a couple episodes now.

It's such a fascinating treasure trove of like someone who clearly understood where things were headed, but like was either too early or not quite right. So this is how political insiders described Howard Dean. and his internet falling at the time. The big irony from my perspective from following online politics is that a lot of politicians have been loath to get on the web because they don't like losing control. Howard Dean learned the biggest one,

stop being an asshole. We learned about the insular nature of this medium. It can do miraculous, wonderful things, but it can't win an election. It can change the world, but it can't win an election, which obviously we don't think is true now. But Dean was experimenting with a lot of really interesting tools. So his primary website was meetup.com. He was like using it to like get people to go to his rallies and his events.

And so Dean went to a New York City campaign event that was organized in 2003. 300 supporters showed up. He kept using it. So Zephyr Teachout, who's now like a local New York City politician, was Dean's director of Internet organizing and she helped Dean's meetup group become the number one on the site. The group went from 3,000 members in 03 to 140,000 in November. And here's a fun one for you. The previous number one group on Meetup.com at the time was witches.

Hell yeah. Just witches. Yeah. So it ended up correlating really closely with donors. So they would create small dollar donation events, use Meetup.com to promote them. And he ended up with $115 million in small donations in Q3 of that year, which is pretty wild. He also started experimenting with fundraising emails by asking people to like give him money online and he immediately got a reputation for having fans that were weird freaks. They were

called the Deaniex or the Deanie Babies. So you know about the scream. Do you remember like in culture at the time? No. No, not at all. No. I vaguely remember it. In my head, I sort of like put it in the same box it's like the john carry waffling thing like all of those like really early bush era memes jib jab do you remember jib yeah yeah um and it just felt like really easy to pick apart democrats at the time for some reason and i i i i wasn't old enough to like i'd have to go back and like figure out like why that was so 9-11 you think it was 9-11 yeah probably no yeah a lot of things in that time are because of 9-11 yeah because 9-11 i mean in fact that's that's like almost the answer to like all the mysteries on this show that we do

It's just like, oh, it's like probably 9-11's fall. Probably 9-11. I can attest as an Arab kid growing up in Texas in 2000s, 9-11. Probably 9-11, yeah. Dean obviously gets screamed out. Doesn't really make much of a splash afterwards, but his playbook is then taken by Obama, and Obama just professionalizes the hell out of it.

They bet big on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube. How do you decide what platforms you're using? Because I saw, and I wanted to check, back in on this with you because I saw at the beginning of your campaign, you were going to focus on Blue Sky. You were going to say, we're not going to focus on X or Twitter. Blue Sky is going to be our major text-based platform. One, how do you stay sane using Blue Sky all the time? And two, has it worked? Yeah. So, you know, there's been a lot of discourse around Blue Sky over the last year or so, a lot of it from especially like centrist groups that are like people are mean to us on there.

And I personally like Blue Sky because it has, it's instead of like cutting down on moderators, they're actually increasing that. It's much more transparent than pretty much any other major social media side out there. And it's super customizable. You can make a lot of feeds. It's just very user-friendly in a way that a lot of social media companies seem to be moving away from. And one of the things we hear from like political operatives that complain about Blue Sky is there's no money there. Right. Blue Sky is the single largest raiser of money in terms of like by site for us. That's crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. We have raised more on Blue Sky than any other website. And I have been posting less on Twitter or X because it's a hellhole. Sure. Yeah. It's awful. Before you move on, are you comfortable like ballparking a figure there? I mean, I'm just so curious. Yeah. Let me see. Hold on. Yeah. And I guess like how? Like this is wild how like I guess like what do you find that works? What's your script for blue sky? Because I it feels like such an untapped I mean the major criticism I get from any institutional person I deal with is that I pretty much only share my stuff on blue sky now and so it doesn't exist. And like I I don't know yeah like how are you doing it? So we post across platforms you know. But like when I'm just thinking about something or writing about something I post on blue sky and we. We post across platforms. You know. Uh, but like when I'm just thinking about something or writing about something I post on blue sky. And we. usually post there first where is blue sky on here do do um yeah we've raised almost two hundred thousand dollars on blue sky since we launched that's amazing and that is just like i

a huge thing for this campaign is i hate spammy fundraising posts and emails and texts but like we still need money because we're a grassroots campaign i'm not getting it from rich people i were actually ditch call time entirely which is how most politicians get their money they literally sit in a room and call people, like rich people nonstop and ask for money, most elected officials and candidates will do this for at least four hours a day. So we've ditched that for live streaming, which has been super successful. We have another stream tonight as we're recording this on Tuesday the 14th. But for Blue Sky, I'll just like post something.

And if it feels like something that if I read it, I would be like, yeah, that might make me want to donate to a candidate. I'll just put a link underneath of like, you want to support a candidate, like that Fox News piece that came out yesterday about me and Iran. underneath. It's like, donate to a candidate that Fox News hates. And then I just put the link. That's amazing. I think the reputation that Blue Sky has is probably unfair, but it's one that I think is hard to shake for the site, which is that like it is, well, actually, it's much like what Howard Dean was accused of building in the 2000s, which was this insular community of

internet freaks. And what's fascinating, and I think this speaks to the kind of larger bias that we've been talking about this whole episode, which is that Romp, Hall comes along like a basically year after Howard Dean does the exact same thing. But because he's tapping into like disaffected angry men on 4chan and Reddit and like Bitcoin Maxis, he's heralded as like this great visionary. Right. And it's a thing where we're like, oh, well, Twitter is the normal site to go on when every time I log on Twitter, there's someone pushing like overtly pro-Holocast bullshit in my Discover feed or the Department of Homeland Security is quote posting me.

Like, why is that the default normal? Yeah. And I mean, obviously when we're talking about how the Democrats are approaching this, the Obama win is massive for them and I think also freezes them in time, right? So is it fair to say that like you kind of got your start, your political awakening during the Bernie era? Does that feel right? Yeah, but it wasn't because of Bernie. It was because of Trump in terms of not liking him.

Yeah. So I grew up Republican. and then Trump came on the scene. That was when I had moved to Tucson, which is much less segregated by income than like Dallas, Texas is. And so I had friends who were smarter than me that couldn't go to college, even with like a full ride. And that was when I was like maybe Ronald Reagan isn't right about everything.

And then Trump came on the scene and my parents and I were like, ooh, we don't like him. Maybe Marco Rubio will save us. But like my parents voted for Hillary. I was 17 so I couldn't vote, but we did like go to registration drives and things like that. At that point, I was still like a little scared of, you know, the S word.

Socialist. Oh. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Can you talk of it about not being scared of that word anymore? Because I think if we're looking at this story of American politics as the left and the progressives. And I never know.

Like to me, they're not the same thing. But I think for an average person, like the left includes Democrats. In my mind, they don't. But like, it doesn't matter. America doesn't have a leftist party. Anyways, not a real one. But, okay, so if we're talking about the story of, like, how they learn to embrace influence. And the fact that, like, you know, they are struggling with it through most of the 19th and the 20th century.

And then Obama wins and they go, okay, like you said, like, how do we create authenticity? And that, to me, is the story of the last 15 years is, like, trying to create authenticity, trying to force Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris into this authentic real person box that they were really never politically they were never meant for. So, you know, how did you become more comfortable talking about, let's say, like, political beliefs that don't fit inside the mainstream Democratic box? Because it feels like all the, like a lot of the other candidates, better or work even to a degree, felt like they were trying to reverse engineer that. They were trying to go backwards. And it feels like you're sort of starting from first principles.

Like as a candidate? Yeah. Yeah. Or I guess even before being a candidate. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it, like, when I started to be like, oh, maybe my values don't actually align with this party that I claim to be a part of. Because my parents, you know, I didn't grow up in like a Christian nationalist household. They raised me. They probably wouldn't have used this term at the time, but like I was raised in a very feminist household. There was not a second growing up where I didn't feel like I could do anything I wanted when I grew up. So there were a lot of ideas that just like a lot of Americans that I was like, oh, yeah, that would be good in terms of like, free college or universal health care or all these things, but we're taught as Americans that we don't

deserve good things. That misery is almost like fetishized, you know? Yeah. You should struggle for your kids to have a better life instead of just your kids having a better life and you also having a better life. That safety and security are things that are dependent on how much you make and not human rights. So for a long time, for like the, you know, last year of high school, first year of college, I was still trying to get over that hump of like, oh, wait, actually, what if we realize all of this is fake and engineered by people richer than us? So that way, we don't question them. What if we're the richest country in the world? Why can't people afford health care? And I think right now, those ideas are more on the table for the average American because we're seeing so much disparity

in wealth. We are seeing so many people struggle. I mean, I am struggling to pay my bills just like so many other people out there. And being able to communicate that, I feel like a lot of times, especially the Democratic Party, takes the wrong lessons from things, like the manufacturer authenticity thing. But like Obama and his successful, you know, digital program, the lesson was, okay, we should spam every person that has ever donated to any candidate and sell the data to each other. So that way we can spam them even more. So that way everyone's phones are completely unusable because you're getting 20 texts from James Carville asking for a five. $5 donation or else this house will be personally set on fire by Trump.

Like that's not the lesson you should take. The lesson you should take is these are tools that you can now use and not just for fundraising. Like our fundraising firm, the people that we work with is really, they're super cool. They're down to try some new stuff. Like they send out emails and texts that don't have a donate link. That does not help them at all. They get nothing from that.

But we want to update people on the campaign or will, when someone donate to the campaign, we send them a thank you text with a. picture of my cat and we give them like a bunch of different unsubscribe options like you can receive fewer texts or no text at all and we have people asking us to send more texts and emails which means that they're engaging with the campaign especially if they're local that translates to votes and so i think part of the authenticity discussion a lot of it is just like if there is not a time to say fuck it like if now is not the time to say fuck it and just try something new yeah and try to push for a much better

a future and not just the status quo. I don't know what time that would be. I feel like when things, when Democrats are in power, we can't challenge the status quo because then, you know, we're undermining the party. And when they're not in power, it's like we can't challenge the status quo because then, you know, we won't get in power again. So when are we supposed to challenge the status quo? Because guess what? It might be working for your job security. It's not working for the rest of us. The thing that I find so fascinating and frustrating about looking back at basically, how we got here is that you know the republicans lose to obama but they learn the right lessons in a way that is like absolutely maddening because like john mccain total wet fart like the history will

forget his presidential campaign but the tea party and the ron paul movement were able to become this internet community that i think has been very effectively weaponized over the years and and created like a really, the Republicans created a very effective playbook for using, you know, at first, like, the Ron Paul people were called, like, they were a joke. They were called like Paul bots. They were considered just like total weirdo redders who, I mean, they probably were. And the Tea Party people, it's something that at the time I did not think of as an internet-based movement, but like the more research that we've done during this for this show during this part of history, like they definitely were. They were organizing on Twitter. And so you have Republican thinkers, Steve Bannon, being chief among them,

like realizing that like if you tap into that if you create if you create a version of authenticity for those people if you find the people who can talk to those people you can mobilize them and if you look at any of the Democrats at this time talking about this stuff they are totally dismissive even after Obama wins and that's I think how you end up with like the car crash of 2016 and the total dismissiveness of 2018 when Bernie is surging and you have this like derp bag leftist sort of right off vibe from mainstream Dems. And obviously like, yeah, were there problems with how that movement was working? Sure, whatever.

But like, they clearly did not understand what was happening. And it's, it's, I feel relieved that there are Democratic candidates like yourself, like Zoran, who are like actually like understanding how to talk to people about things that matter. But it is crazy that it took this long. Yeah. It's crazy, especially because it just seems like common sense to me. I spent so much of last year as a progressive and as a Palestinian trying to use any capital, any influence I had to change the narrative and pressure Democratic leaders, especially behind

the scenes, like trying to be like, hey, I get, I've been Palestinian my whole life. I get that there are things you can't say or that you're worried about saying, but like you have to speak to a Palestinian person publicly. You have to do these things. otherwise you are going to lose a lot of voters that would vote for you otherwise. And no one listened or cared. I was in rooms. I was asked by a PAC that was really involved in the Harris campaign to lead outreach to

Arab voters in swing states. And I said, I will do it for free if you get me 10 minutes on camera with Kamala Harris. And we can talk about it beforehand. Like, this is not a gotcha. I you're talking with the whitest looking Palestinian you'll ever see and unfortunately that's less controversial than talking to like my cousin and a hijab and you guys know this is wrong you guys know that this is hurting the campaign and they were like yeah we do like they knew it no they knew it and the worst part is is like the people that are coordinating those things are like lower level

people and they were like but they know that their bosses know it's wrong and not just morally but electorally they know that it was costing them politically and yet they did it anyway can you say why they just kept avoiding the issue of palestine anyway even though they knew that it was the glaring thing dividing their party yeah i mean like that's the thing is it's dividing the base like it's not there are a lot of people that would have voted for kamala but just didn't and so like the people that i was I was talking to, you know, I think a lot of it is just like worry about what the outreach could be. But I, you're watching children starve to death. I don't know, like the American people are watching this.

We know that our tax dollars are paying for it. And, you know, I felt bad because I was talking to like a bunch of like lower mid-level staff in this call. But I was like, just so you all know, I'm going to go off for a second. because the people that contacted me were the ones that were coordinating creators at the DNC. And I had called them multiple times leading up to the DNC and said, hey, I am a Palestinian person and I need to talk to a surrogate. I would love to talk about it to a surrogate. Once again, this is not a gotcha, but you need to have like some honest conversations about this,

just like any of them. And then I realized I learned later that none of my requests for surrogates went to any of the offices I requested them from. And so those people contacted me and they were like, we remember how passionate you were about this issue. And that's why we wanted to reach out. And I was like, okay, guys, can we just all for a second pause? You guys know this is wrong. Like you know this is wrong and you know that you're using me.

Like you know it. And I frankly don't mind being used if it means not having Trump in office and also moving the needle a little bit because I know there is nothing more convincing. to my family, people in my family who did not vote because they did not feel like either nominee saw them as human, nothing would convince them more than Harris just talking to a Palestinian person. And if that person has to have fake blonde hair and blue eyes, I'll do it. But frankly, you already had vetted Democratic elected officials who are willing to speak to you at the DNC on stage that for some reason we were able to discriminate against for their

ethnicity. If you plugged in any other ethnicity, race, religion, sexuality and said that type of person can't speak at the DNC, there would be outrage. But for some reason, it's fine when it's Palestinians. I was like, you know that nothing that you want to do on this outreach thing is going to work, as well as just talking about it. And they were like, yeah, we do. Has there been any acknowledgement to you from establishment people saying like, yeah, we've learned the lesson that being cowards was not a good idea? No, I think the lesson a lot of our leaders have gotten were actually the voters were wrong and we should blame Arabs, Muslims, and anyone who's anti-war.

The voters are wrong. The voters are wrong and we should always blame the voters according to so many of our leaders. And also like, it's so crazy because if this contingent of voters was big enough to change the course of the election, then you should have considered them. Or were they small enough that they didn't matter? And so actually it wasn't wrong to ignore them. It's like Schrodinger's fucking anti-war movement. I have no idea.

Well, thank you. I'm glad that frustration has been expressed here. I will respect off the record nature of my meeting with this world. Garbage Day myself was invited to the White House in December 2023. and basically to talk to Biden's digital strategy team at the time. And so, yeah, I'll keep the exact details off the record. But what I will say is I walked out of that meeting being like Biden's going to lose. And that wasn't even his campaign team.

That was just like the people running his day-to-day socials. And I spent probably about two hours in a room talking to them and getting a sense of like how they saw the internet, what they thought about. A big conversation topic was Twitter. the use of Twitter, should they stay on Twitter? They seemed completely incapable of understanding that 2023, 2024 was not the same as 2015, 2016, which or even 2020. No, but I'm saying even further back because for them, like, I could have had that conversation, like their side of the conversation, I could have had that conversation

in my first newsroom during the Obama era about like how do you get, how do you make content go viral on the internet that's the thing is like stop trying so hard to make it go viral just do it but that's the problem i think for these people which is that like you can't you know actually i'm going disagree with the point that i almost just made because i think you're right and i and i think the proof is tim walls and for the rest of my life i will be an old man in chair being like we were so close to keeping democracy in america if they had just let tim walls continue to talk on camera let him cook because like i remember that their freak speech and for me me that was just like, oh, like, this is the blueprint.

This is the, like, this is an establishment dem in middle to late, you know, middle age, almost a senior citizen, getting up and just being like, I'm a normal person. He did a subway takes where he talks about how to do couponing at Menards. I was completely charmed by this guy because he just was a person. And I think that a lot of establishment dems are saying, you know, Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer, they're saying, well, they can't be relatable. But it's like, no, like, they can just be human beings and human beings are naturally relatable. Like, that's how this works.

Because if you have hobbies beyond call time, which I hope you have, you should be talking about, like, be a person. I think we both demonize and lionized politicians too much to the point where they don't even seem human. That's why I try to be like really open about my interests and things that I like and just being a person. Because then people realize that the people that are in charge are just people too. and elections are when you get hired or fired. Yeah, I think so too. And after the break, which once again, our Democratic think tank is crunching the numbers to decide which ads you, the listener, would like more and then thus like us more for hearing. But after the break, we're going to talk about Bernie Sanders and how he learned how to be a person in public right after the break.

I want to end talking about Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns because I think that they are the first. first version of the playbook that AOC would use and then from AOC you get sort of like the modern wave. First, I mean, do you feel like that's fair? Oh my God, absolutely. I mean, they kind of walked so we could run. I think a lot about AOC in terms of like being a young woman. She had to like fight tooth and nail for respect that should have just been given. And that has helped people like me, especially young women, run as well. Yeah. And I think that a lot of the attacks that were used on her in the beginning are now being used again. Like the photo of you as a bartender is not that different from the AOC dancing video.

They also literally say, oh my God, another bartender in Congress. And it's like, once again, I thought you liked the working class. They don't. They want to, they want to, they want their, they want the working class to die. They want to kill them like dogs. Everyone that complains about a bartender in Congress is the worst tipper you have ever known. 100%. 100%.

So Bernie's campaign, for those who don't remember, had no TV ads until November 2015. Hillary was spending twice as much on TV ads than digital ads. And his fundraising was completely online pretty much as well. He only $14 million of the $230 million that his campaign fundraised was from offline. And 43% of the denominations were made on mobile, which is also interesting. And his big strategy in the pre-primaries was targeting high schoolers who would be 18. by election day, which I think is very clever. And his Twitter account was run by a 27-year-old, and there is a very funny Business Insider

article about it. It opens with Bernie commenting on the Republican presidential debate. The 74-year-old candidate would sort of talk to his 27-year-old media director, Hector Zagala, and Sagala turned Bernie's endless commentary into Twitter thread. So he was like reciting stuff into Twitter, basically. And this is what it reads. It says, some 17 million people read. during the debate, according to the campaign's Twitter data reviewed by Reuters.

It was the first in a string of Twitter wins by Sanders during the presidential campaign contest, widely viewed as a coming-of-age moment for social media in national politics. Sanders didn't even stop when the debate was interrupted by commercials. When an ad for a new Tom Hanks film appeared, he tweeted Tom Hanks, finally, somebody who makes sense. And it was considered very anti-establishment. and I think most importantly authentic. It captured the voice of an old man watching TV,

and it turns out people like that. That is, I think, the playbook that leads directly to AOC. She is, you know, often thought of as modernizing Obama, but I think a lot of the digital work was started with Bernie. Her campaign team made Reach, which was a new canvassing app that totally changed how they were fundraising. The video of her dancing as a teenager ended up being huge for her. And I think this is something that a guest on this show brought up that I wanted to throw to you too.

So we recently did an episode with Maxwell Frost and he talked about capturing attention. And I think it's something that Bernie was really good at. AOC is very good at. Obama sort of, but Maxwell Frost talked about this idea of like when the Trump spotlight or the MAGA spotlight points at you, your job as a politician is to figure out how to transfer that energy into something useful for you. Does that feel correct? 100% I mean you know we kind of referenced it at the top of this but that video of an ice agent

picking me up and throwing me on the ground that was actually a third time an ice agent has thrown me they really like Jesus me yeah they love dragging my friend and throwing me and I don't know why anyways it went unbelievably viral and I think a lot of it what I've referenced a lot is kind of feeling like

upton Sinclair with the jungle like you aim for the heart and you hit them in the stomach because the jungle was the reason we have like food safety laws when it was really about the abuse of workers. And you know, I've been protesting outside the Broadview Ice Detention Center every Friday for weeks now. And it's because of the conditions that are in there because like that's what ICE is willing to do in front of cameras. What are they willing to do behind windows that are literally covered up with plywood? 100%. And so, you know, we had all of this attention and we were like every interview I had second sentence was exactly what I just told you like let's get it

where it should be and we actually had so many people donate to the campaign which was you know unbelievably moving but it also felt kind of icky because we're there to try to help immigrants and shed light on this and so we ended up donating 10,000 dollars to local immigrants rights groups. So I sir the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant Refugee Rights, Sanctuary Evanson, Sanctuary Niles, and the National Lawyers Guild. But what it comes to that capturing attention thing, that's something that I think you Ryan probably understand really well as well. Like if you have a background in media, not media training TM, but a background in media, you understand how these narratives work and you understand what is going to happen and how to preempt it.

I saw what was happening and I was like, how can we shift this attention to where it really should be? And we were able to, uh, you know, get a lot of people there for our press conference, uh, the week before last last week, Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin finally came to the facility. Uh, we have a lot more elected officials showing up. And that's the type of movement we need. But a lot of, we also see this thing in the Democratic Party where it's like being afraid of embracing the right, not embracing the right as in moving right, but embracing the right. as in you call me some crazy radical antifa socialist whatever the hell you want to call me

be like yeah sure anyways right correct out my campaign yeah the i'm on stream like whatever yeah i remember these convert i remember the conversations about this idea starting like 10 years ago where they started in newsrooms as i think you you know as well where it's like okay what do you do do when the mob comes through you. And a lot of editors started with this idea of like put out a statement, throw the reporter under the bus, you know, kowtow to the, to the Republicans like Ted Cruz who kind of come in at the end after all the Nazis have had their fun. And I think the attitude has shifted, maybe not at the institutions at that level. But I do think for most people who've been through this, you kind of know that unless they're calling in bomb threats or

swatting your house, you kind of don't have to care about them. Yeah. And like, look, they have tried that with me. My partner, Ben, has dealt with that even more. And these people are dangerous. I think that, you know, kind of what we're talking about at the top of like they have now subjected the entire country to what disinformation reporters have been dealing with the last decade, but we like chose to do that.

but a big part of my campaign, whether it's like using our resources to materially improve the community or doing this type of communication shit, is supposed to provide like a blueprint for Democrats, even the most cynical of consultants. Like if you can't just do something good for the community because it's good to do,

then do it because it makes people want to come to your campaign office. It makes people want to volunteer because they feel helpless and your campaign is doing food drives or car washes or whatever it may be, coat drives like great way to help a campaign we uh i was at a drag queen story hour counter protests because some you know insane people were yelling at children that they were going to hell and i flipped off a lady for doing that and uh republicans tried to make it this big thing being like oh wow you know this is so disrespectful and a lot of people you know that i've been talking to

throughout the campaign who i very much love and respect who have been kind of like mentors throughout all this we're like you know you should probably put out a statement being like i'm sorry for talking with my thinkers rather than my words and then one of them who was amazing bill he's like just middle-aged white dude was like no you're not sorry yeah and if you're telling kids you're going to hell they're going to hell they deserve to be flipped off and so i made a video that said no i'm not sorry and then we said you know what if we reach this fundraising goal we have we'll make merch because we had a bunch of people asking if we can make merch and our creator director put something together and it has been to date our most successful merch drop of me

flipping off this bigot that's cool and just says we're not sorry and it's like if you can't stand with trans people because it's the right thing to do if you like feel the urge to walk back a statement but might not consider not making that statement because hey maybe people want to fight her now And that wasn't my intention going in. But like, look, if the right is going to try to act like I'm the antichrist for literally flipping off a woman who is telling children they were going to go to hell. Sure. That's eyes on our campaign.

I want to end today's episode sort of with a question that I've had, you know, tied to what we've been talking about. So if we can acknowledge that like the word influencer extremely gendered and it basically just describes like anyone that figures out how to use non-traditional paths to politics. And it's something that now, because of the internet, effectively, any young candidate or really like any almost any candidate probably like there's there's a good chance that after this next election

if we have it there's a world where like someone who doesn't have some kind of online following can't really win they have to figure out how to do it and I guess my question is like is that good for democracy and part of me says like yes it opens doors for people that could have never been involved in politics which is good

But it also changes, it changes the function of democracy in ways that I think are very unpredictable. And it's something that I keep coming back to where it's like, okay, cool. Like for every Zorin, we get a Marjorie Taylor Green, you know, or we get someone like John Federman who can like walk the walk of an influencer but can't talk to talk. And once they get into office, all that sort of like, I'm your big goofy, Philly uncle disappears because they had a really crack, you know, a crack shot social team. Yeah. Shout out to Annie Wu. She's, I mean, what she did was unbelievable because that guy is nothing like that. And look, she'll say the same thing.

Yeah. I mean, to be fair, he had a stroke. Yes, to be fair. No other prominent politicians may be suffering mental problems from their strokes right now. That's definitely not happening. So I guess like my question for you is like, do you think that this is like a good path to go down? The idea of 2032 being an all influencer primary. Yeah. You know, I don't think that's going to happen.

But I also think there are shades of gray here. You know, we're talking about authenticity. People are really sick of everything. Sure. Yeah. And there is part of it where like, especially when it comes to like the young people are going to save us. I'm like, there are young people that are grifters. Just like, please be aware of that when you're looking at the young people that you want to save us. I can say on my end, like we've had unbelievable digital digital. reach and we have translated that to amazing ground support. But like this is still very much an election, especially because I'm going up against 15

years of name ID for, you know, we're polling second, but the person ahead and behind me both have like years of yard signs and campaign ads and all of that stuff. It doesn't make this any easier. And that is very true with the money aspect too. We need public funding of elections. We need to have to overturn. Citizens United and we need to make running for office more accessible because there are a lot of young candidates that are trying to run campaign similar to my own, which is awesome and especially

ones at the local level that are doing a lot of mutual aid stuff. We're really thrilled to see it. It's still extremely difficult to do so if you don't already have the existing platform that I started out with. I don't think we will ever get to a point where it's just an influencer election. There are still so many people that don't get their information from the internet, even young people. Thank God. Yes. Thank God. Like if you were just banking on the internet to win you an election, I got really bad news for you.

Tons of people won't show up to vote. Tons of people won't show up to vote. It's true. People hate voting. And you also get into your own echo chamber, whatever algorithms you're showing up on. You might be like, wow, I have all of this support online. But a lot of times, those are people that already follow you. A lot of times, especially if it's like the same view number, the same like number, you're just

reaching the same people over and over again. It might be flattering to your ego, but you're not actually reaching new people and especially people in your district or your state. I tell that to Grant all the time when he wants to do things for our audience. And I say that the people who are already listening are worthless to me. They're lower than dogs to me. But the new people who come in, I love them because they're new. And I think that's important.

That's a good, that's a good rule. Is this I mean I'm like a dog shit guest because I've already been here? No, you're good. You're good because you've already been here. Yeah, you, but you're the guest. Okay. The listener, get out of here. If anyone sends an email saying, been listening for a long time, here's my thoughts.

Ryan goes, get it out of here. I feed it into chat, GBT immediately. And I say, tell me, tell me how to respond. He drives up the electricity costs for an entire town just to get rid of your letter. Exactly. I ether an entire Texas town with. with my electricity consumption, yeah. But yeah, as you were saying.

But I think so that, I think that like, this is a long way to say. I think that there are good things about the internet and politics is that it can be an equalizer. You can fundraise on it, even if you're not already rich. You can reach people that you wouldn't have reached if you,

unless you were already like an incumbent politician or someone that was really wealthy that has maybe like donated to a bunch of places. all over your area. Bad things is all stuff we know that are bad about the internet. Misinformation. Sure. Certain characters that might not be all in good faith trying to take control of things.

We see this over and over and over again. And so like I think it's just kind of, it's like when people are like, AI is going to ruin all of our jobs. I personally think AI needs a lot more regulation, but I also don't think it is the end of the world because it is not good at doing things. I think it's going to wreak a lot of havoc, but there is no way to replicate the human mind, body, and soul. We're going to see kind of a new way of doing politics. And I'm really excited to be a part of it. But I'm really trying my hardest, even when I know it could be so much easier to be like

a little griftier to work with, you know, this firm or do that strategy. I'm very cognizant of how people are watching our campaign and how things might be copied. And so I'm trying to, you know, to stick to my morals the best I can, which has always been my life motto is like, it's always better to stick to your morals, even to your own detriment. But it is hard if you haven't already worked in media, understand the right, and have an existing platform. So let's make running for office a lot easier. Let's have public funding of elections and fuck citizens unibed. I think we've been talking about a lot recently is the vortex of Democratic cringe, which I think Obama's relatable, cool,

was trying to be copied is been a part of it. Have you been involved in any conversations about like trying to explain to people that what they're doing is cringy and like is working in reverse? So I said in my campaign launch video that Democrats need to grow a fucking spine and that's just how I talk.

And now we have seen a lot of Democrats start cursing, but it sounds kind of like a 13-year-old. It's like when Taylor Swift swears. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And it's like, no, the point isn't that you're cursing. It's not that you're saying, fuck. It's that you sound like a human being. And if you are outraged at something, people believe you. Sure. That makes fucking sense to me. And that was Ryan's least authentic sounding fuck. He's ever said on the show. I swear a lot on this show. I have a curse word problem. Like I do have a problem. I've been told I'd be, I'm fired if I curse at Ryan again on the show.

That's right. That's right. Well, I'm excited to see what kind of AI candidate establishment Dems create rather than have to do any soul searching. I'm sure that will go well for them. And I want to thank you for coming back on the show. I love our second time returning guests so much more than our one-off guests, who I don't care for.

If people want to... Has Maxwell for us been on twice? He's only been on once. That was not on purpose. He's only been on once and he was fine. He's fine, but I won't, I won't say how I feel about him until he comes back on. Then we can, we can decide. But if you want to follow you on the internet, I know we've talked a lot about where you are

on the internet these days, but where should they follow you? The best way to follow me and also to support the campaign or learn more about my campaign is at catfor illinois.com. That's K-A-T-F-O-R-I-I-Linois.com. And if you want to be involved in our campaign, you can join our campaign volunteer Discord. You don't even have to like live next door to me. you can help from wherever you are, Discord.g.g. slash cap for Illinois. Panic world is a production of Courier.

It is written and produced by Grant Irving and hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Josh Fielstedt is our production coordinator, and our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. From Courier is Shane Verkes, who edits our video episodes, along with our producer, Devin Maroni, and National Managing Director and Executive Producer Kevin Dreyfus. R.C. DeMezo is their VP of Brand and Social. Charlotte Robinson is their deputy director of brand and social.

Marianne Couga is their director of marketing, YouTube, and podcast growth marketer, Samantha Hollos. And Tracy Kaplan is the senior vice president of sales and distribution. If you want to sponsor the show or give us products to sell, she's the one to talk to. You can email her at Tracy at courier newsroom.com. Be sure to check up the Panicworld YouTube channel, which you can find at YouTube.com slash at PanicWorld pod. and please give us some nice ratings on podcast apps and leave a funny review.

Lastly, here's my advice for you. Chill out and touch grass while you still can.