The Bossticks - Jon Favreau On How Be A Better Public Speaker & Have Your Ideas Heard

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

#965: Join us as we sit down with Jon Favreau – co-founder of Crooked Media, co-host of Pod Save America, and former presidential speechwriter for Barack Obama. Jon has crafted some of the most memorable speeches during President Obama's tenure, and has since launched his own media company while hosting a top political podcast that breaks down current events and U.S. politics in a more conversational, accessible way. In this episode, Jon shares what it takes to craft powerful messaging that resonates with millions, how to simplify complex political issues without losing nuance, and why storytelling is one of the most important tools in shaping public opinion. He also opens up about the transition from the White House to building a media company, the current state of political discourse, and how to stay informed without feeling overwhelmed.   To Watch the Show click HERE   For Detailed Show Notes visit TheBossticks.com   To connect with Jon Favreau click HERE   To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE   To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE   Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE   Head to our ShopMy page HERE and LTK page HERE to find all of the products mentioned in each episode.   Get your burning questions featured on the show! Leave the Him & Her Show a voicemail at [phone].   This Episode is sponsored by The Skinny Confidential  Shop the limited edition Eden Rock x The Skinny Confidential collab at https://boutique.oetkerhotels.com and at http://shopskinnyconfidential.com. While supplies last.    This episode is sponsored by Branch Basics  Get 15% off the Premium Starter Kit at http://BranchBasics.com with code SKINNY15.   This episode is sponsored by Alice + Olivia Visit http://aliceandolivia.com/skinny for 15% off. Exclusions may apply.    This episode is sponsored by Batch Go to http://hellobatch.com/skinny and use code skinny at checkout.   This episode is sponsored by Troscriptions Give it a try at http://troscriptions.com/SKINNY or enter CODE at checkout for 10% off your first order   This episode is sponsored by Neurogum For a limited time, you can get 20% off your first order at http://neurogum.com by using code SKINNY.   This episode is sponsored by Xyzal Visit http://xyzal.com for more information.   This episode is sponsored by Running Point Watch Running Point S2, Now. Only on Netflix. Produced by Dear Media

Welcome to the Bostics, starring Lauren Bostic and Michael Bostick. Together, they are the Bostics. Welcome to the show. I want to keep rolling what we were just talking about, which is this is your world. But everything these days feels like it's getting blended into some political conversation. This show is 10 years old now. We started health, wellness, marketing, relationships, how to build an online brand. And now you find yourself navigating these potholes of conversation.

So I would love your perspective. Because it's like, obviously this is your world. You're in politics. But does everything these days have to be political? Shouldn't have to be. It's a real careful what you wish for situation because, you know, I was in politics for many years. And I believe very deeply in organizing and the power of politics to change people's lives. And so I've always wanted more people to get involved and participate in politics.

Not quite like everyone is today, which is, you know, it's like crisis to crisis. And it has infected almost every area of people's lives and not for, not always for good. And it's not like everyone's having, you know, thoughtful conversations and debates about the best way to change the world. And so I think to the extent that politics has invaded everything in a way where it's like hobbyism, like people are sort of viewing it like they view sports and who's winning, who's losing, and what's the drama of the day and it's like a reality show. Like I don't think that is obviously very helpful. But what we try to do is help people who may be following the news but are not political junkies like us.

to sort of make sense of what's going on. You give it in layman. You make it digestible for people to understand. I think what's challenging in media these days, not just on this platform, but just in media in general, is to your point, like it's become this spectator sport where there's one side or the other.

One's going to win, one's going to lose, one's good, one's bad, depending on which side you're on. And we've largely got to a place where, I think we're around the similar age. When we all came up, you could have different conversations with different people

with different thought patterns. Now doing something like this, like we'll put a trailer out sometimes depending on someone leaning left or right. And like you, son of a bit, you know, like before the content even comes out, and it's almost like you're allowed to talk to some people, you're allowed to not like depending on which side

of the audience you're on. And I think that's a challenge, it's a challenging time to be in media, navigating all of that. I think the internet has played a huge role there as well, because I still find that when I talk to people in person and people who may not share my politics, I can have like very reasonable conversations with them. Yeah. Like we may walk away disagreeing. Usually we do. But you can have a civil conversation. I think when you are having all these conversations mediated by all of these algorithms, then what you're exposed to, and especially if you're someone in media,

is you're exposed to the most extreme opinions on both sides. And it would be nice to say, oh, that doesn't have an effect on you as someone who's in media, but it does. It affects all of us. Like none of us are impervious to like seeing all that crap all the time. And so I think that actually, unfortunately, continues to like polarize the conversation more deeply. and that's something I talk about that a lot on I have one podcast called Offline where we sort of talk about how the internet is breaking our brains and society and making

democracy harder and you know there's a lot of research on it that it's just it's not a healthy thing both for for us and for the country for the world to just be getting all of our information through our screens all day long yep we have to talk about the art of speech writing. Yeah. Can you tell when a speech is written by chat GPT? Yes, for now. Okay. Because first of all, a lot of speeches aren't very good before chat GPT came along. They were very good. And so, but, you know, now that we've had, I don't know, a couple years of large language models, especially chat GPT, you can tell the the m-dashes. and it's not this, it's that.

And you know, you're not just right. You're really right. Like it's just very recognizable. Like a rhythm. Yes, it's a rhythm. I don't think it'll be like that forever, at least according to all the people who are building AI. They think it's going to get smarter and smarter.

But I do think that AI will be able to replace a lot of speeches because, like I said, I think a lot of speeches were pretty pedestrian. I think it will then incentivize people who are really creative to write better speeches and to give better speeches. And I think that will sort of be the test. You should launch a speech AI chat. I'm sure that will come along. If you have to do it yourself, I feel like it would crush it by you. I view it as like the early, remember the early days of social when like people would squeak in those ads that were like they were scammy and people would like think it was.

real and then like over time you just get really good at recognizing like hey that's that's that's that's that's bs or it's not good same with like the a i slob i think that is what will happen with i i think we'll just get really good at recognize because a lot of people take a more pessimistic people like oh my god we're never going to be able to tell what's real and what's not i think the opposite i think humans are going to get very good at being able to distinguish like that's human that's human that is and i think we'll crave more of the human i think that's right you become the youngest political speechwriter in history that's crazy what was that like for you I mean, it happened by accident.

I was, so I was in college, which was the College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts. I grew up in Massachusetts, just north of Boston. And there was an internship program, my junior year in college. I interned for Senator John Kerry, who was my home state senator. And I did that because I thought maybe I'd be interested in politics, but it was a good opportunity to take an internship and go to D.C. for a semester with a lot of my friends who were going.

So I did that. I sat in the communications. office and I sat next to his Senator Kerry's communications director who also happened to be a speechwriter and just learned a lot from him, especially as they were preparing to launch John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2003. And, you know, he gave me the opportunity to start writing constituent letters, maybe an op-ed in a local newspaper. And so I got the taste of like writing for someone else. And I thought, oh, this is kind of cool. Graduated college. joined the Kerry campaign as an assistant.

That was the press assistant to six different people in the press office and that was like, wake up at 4 a.m., get all the news clips, fax them to everyone because it was 2002, 2003, and get everyone lunches and all that kind of stuff. But at one point in the campaign,

John Kerry was losing in the primary. Howard Dean was winning. They thought Howard Dean was going to be the nominee. Got about Howard Dean. Yeah, I know. A lot of people did. Someone mentioned today, like, remember Howard Dean was too crazy because he yelled a little loudly at the end of a speech. Yeah, he seems pretty tame now.

But when John Kerry was losing, a bunch of people quit the campaign. Some people were fired. He had to mortgage his house. They ran out of money. And they needed a deputy speechwriter. And I originally asked if I could have the job. And they said, no, you're too inexperienced. We're only like 21.

And then when they were really out of money and no one else wanted to join the campaign because it was a sinking ship, they were like, all right, you can have a change. being deputy speechwriter because this thing's probably going to be over in a couple months anyway. And we don't have to pay you more. I was making $24,000 a year. And so I got the job. And then John Kerry wins the primary. And so I was speechwriter all through the general election. And then when we lost to Bush, my former boss in the Kerry campaign had gone to work for now Senator Barack Obama at the time. He had been running for the Senate. And so he wins the Senate. And Robert Gibbs, who had but my boss reached out and said, you know, he, um, he wrote that 2004 convention speech

himself. He doesn't think he needs a speech writer, but I think, I know he needs a speechwriter because he's in the Senate now and he's going to be given a lot of speeches and he's not going to have time to write. And so, uh, would you come down to D.C. and have breakfast with him and see if you guys mesh and had breakfast with Obama, his first week in the Senate in January of 2005. And we hit it off. And he was like, I still don't think I need a speechwriter, but you seem nice. enough so let's give this a whirl and we'll see how it goes. When you met him, did you know right away the talent that he had? Because I mean, I think he's probably one of the best speakers of the last few generations, right? Like, I mean, just like natural. I don't know how much of that

isn't. Maybe you tell me it's not natural, but so talented. Do you recognize that right away or is that something you guys work on together? The first time I met him was at the 2004 convention in Boston. He was the keynote speaker and I was on the Kerry campaign and I was on the Kerry campaign and I was backstage at the convention and my job was to go over a lot of the speeches from the different speakers at the convention. And I saw the Obama speech. And I remember reading it for the first time and thinking, oh, this is different. It's a pretty good speech. And then I got a call from my boss who was on the road traveling with John Kerry. And he said, there's a line in the speech being delivered by Barack Obama, the keynote speaker that John Kerry wants in his speech. And so we

need to take it out. And I was like, okay, why are you calling me? It's like, well, you need to go find Barack Obama and take the line out of his speech. And I'm like, okay. So I walked down the hall and he was practicing the speech for the first time. It was the first time he had ever used a teleprompter. So he was practicing. And I went up to Robert Gibbs, who had been my boss. I was like, okay, I don't have to talk to Obama. I can talk to Gibbs. And I told him the whole story. And Gibbs is like, I'm not telling him to take out that line. He loves that line. You go talk to him. So that's how I met Barack Obama and he came up to me within like an inch of my face and was like, are you trying to tell me I have to take out my favorite line? And I think I blacked out for a few seconds. And then when I came to

a man walked up to me, introduced himself at David Aksarad. And he said, son, let's walk outside and we'll rewrite the line together. So we did. And then I heard him deliver the speech that night. When I heard him deliver it, I was like, this guy is something special. And then when I sat down with him, a year later in the Senate office, I had read his book at that point in preparation for sitting down with them and I read dreams for my father. And when I read that book,

it's like the fact that someone who wrote, this honestly is now in national politics and was this vulnerable in the book? And if someone like this can make it in politics, like I need to be part of it. And that was a different time in politics because people weren't doing that. No.

Those books were real dry back then. Yeah. I mean, he talked about like drinking, smoking, weed, the cocaine menship. Like, it was all in there. All the taboo stuff that you just couldn't do. Yeah. And it was also just beautifully written. And it was like a, you know, he talked a lot about race and just the things that politicians didn't do at the time.

So from your perspective, for people that are interested in giving speeches or speech writing, what makes a compelling speech? Yeah. What makes a compelling speech is it should be as close to. a conversation that you're having with someone in real life as possible. Huh. And that's a good tip. Yeah, because I think a lot of people sit down and there's the formality of a speech, there's the professionalism.

And so you think you have to write it like your, people especially do this in politics, but in all aspects of life. People write like they're writing for history. They're writing to like read it in the book. And if you want to really connect with an audience, especially now where so many speeches or, you know, know, commentaries are delivered just on a screen alone and someone's just watching it. You have to speak like you're just chatting with someone.

And, you know, it's not a hard and fast rule because it needs to be elevated a little bit if it's a speech. But too many speeches like start up here at like 10,000 feet. And they need to, you need to write the speech as if you're trying to convince or, you know, persuade or talk to just a friend at a bar or at a restaurant. That's what I always try to think. And you were trying to tell a story, right? Like a good speech is telling a good story.

And so it should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And it should be, it should grab people at the beginning. It should have humor. It should have some emotion. And it also should not be that long. No one has ever left a speech and said to themselves, like, that was a great speech, but I wish it was just like five minutes longer, 10 minutes longer. And everyone writes too long and speeches are always too long.

So take note wedding toasters. That's my main advice on a wedding toast. My main advice, because everyone, all the wedding speeches are like very cliche. And there's a lot of, you know, talking about the process of writing the wedding toast. It's like when I was told I was going to do this, I had thought about all the stories between.

I would not want you in the audience when I was doing a wedding speech. I'd be like, fuck. Well, the annoying thing is when I'm, so many weddings I've been to, even when I don't know the people super well, like family members giving the speech will be like, and I know there's an Obama speech writer in the audience, and so it's always a, you get the call out.

You know what's so interesting when you're saying what makes a good speech? This is like very weird, but that makes a good piece of social media content too. It does. Like when I am, like when I hop on my Instagram story, I try to hit what you're talking about, which is like feeling like you are talking directly to the person.

And you've seen people like Alex Earle, who's obviously blown up. And her whole thing is she talks to the audience like she's FaceTiming them. Yeah. So in a weird way, it's a little bit like creating a piece of content for social media, obviously on a bigger stage. But it's similar. It's similar points.

Very similar. Yeah. Very similar. And look, I think there's a slight difference if you're delivering a speech to a crowd of, you know, 5,000 people, 20,000 people. Like, you're going to want some lines in the speech and moments in the speech where you get applause or you get people on their feet or you get people feeling emotion so you know depending on the venue in the audience it can change a bit but i still think it is it's a hard and fast rule

to make the speech as conversational as possible so on the personality side and i'm sure you've analyzed this and thought about it before if you were to look at baroque obama joe biden and trump what do you think that they because obviously like they all became president and one is still president. What do you think each of their strengths are and weaknesses are as it relates to to giving speeches? Because obviously, like, they're able to, these people have been able to resonate with audiences. Yeah. I mean, I'll start with just their, uh, I think that people who rise to that level in politics have a confidence and a self-assuredness. And it is this belief that like, this is who I am and this is what I believe. Yeah. And, and,

And you like it or you don't like it. And, you know, I know that watching Obama firsthand and getting to know him really well. You can clearly tell that from Donald Trump. And I do think, I think Biden has an element of that too because I think he has been in politics, obviously, for a very, very long time. But, you know, the Joe Biden, I mean, and I got to know him in the White House as well, but like the Joe Biden that was in public is the Joe Biden behind the scenes as well too. You know, he's just, he is who he is and he hasn't, he's okay not changing that.

I think that for speaking, you know, with Donald Trump, like Donald Trump is at his worst speaking. We're just talking about the style of speaking. He's at his worst when he has to read off a prompter. And you can tell that he is reading something that his staff wrote for him and he doesn't like it because he has this feel for the crowd. It's also it's the same as He's better in front of a crowd than he is when it's just the camera Because he has a sense of like

What's working and what's not working Obama was like this too When he was in front of a big crowd He could just he knew When a line was working when it wasn't When a riff was working when it wasn't Then we'd go back and retool it And he would use the ones that were working well and not

And so I think that that ability to Feel and sense where the crowd was going and how it was reacting is like a strength for both Obama. They can like feel the energy of what's going on in the room, no matter how big. Yes, for sure. They know how to react to maybe moments that weren't planned. Yes.

I think for Obama, one of the weaknesses, one of the challenges that we always had to overcome is he wants to over-explain everything. And if something's not working or he thinks something's unpopular, like his instinct is, okay, if I just, explain more, more facts, more statistics than like it's going to land. And I think in this attentional environment, even back then, when you only have people's attention for short amount of time, you can't just be like going deep into the weeds on everything. And so we would constantly have to like cut, shape, polish so that he was giving more of an emotional argument

than like getting into the weeds on every single policy issue. He needed to land the plane. He needed to land the plane. I mean, with Trump, it's like that been in a different. way Trump's not really trying to over explain, but he's just going on and on and on. And I mean, like the two hour, two and a half hour rally speeches are, it's amazing to watch that he can just talk that long. I don't think it serves him that well. I think that, you know, he's probably at his best when the cameras cut to him for like 10 minutes at a rally.

And I don't think it necessarily works with the television audience, but it works with the people go to the rally. You know what though? And I again, like, I'm not so close to this, but when I just think about watching both of them give speeches, now that I'm like analyzing it in this way, which I've never done, there's something about the way they speak

where you just feel like they're speaking to you in such a common sense way. They're speaking to you in such terms that you can understand. It's like it's so digestible. It's relatable is what it is. No matter like what's going on. Like they're able to,

to deliver it in a way where you, like, to your point, you feel like you're talking to your buddy and that they like, they understand that. Is that them or the speechwriter though? Well, that part's them. Because I don't, because I think sometimes where, at least for me, like it goes over the head is when you feel like you're being delivered some very coordinated and like polished and designed thing. Or someone uses way too big words.

I'm like, I can't do it. I can't get at the thoris out. There's something like a spider sense that I think kicks in in and all of us. We're like, I don't know if I trust that. You know what they both do is they break the third wall a lot. And Obama's humor was, Obama's humor was always at its best when he was making fun of the game that is politics and letting people know, like, I know that a lot of this is bullshit. And believe me, like, I'm still normal. I get that this is crazy.

I'm just going to tell you about it. And Trump does the same thing pretty well. Yeah, it's very human. Yes. And I think like what I think both of them have done and Biden a little bit, but both them have done is they kind of took us out of the Bush, Clinton, Reaganary like polished political realm. And you talked about a little bit with the book and they made it feel like, okay, I'm participating

in this as opposed to just viewing it and kind of trying to keep up. Right. And because I think that, you know, it's no accident that that sort of coincided with just trust in political institutions, media, all institutions. institutions going way, way down. And so people are more primed to think that what they're hearing from a politician or a business leader or anyone is bullshit. And so if it sounds like you are reading something that is tightly scripted or that you're like reading the stage directions, then people aren't going to trust you fundamentally. And if you sound like you're just talking to them,

then they're more likely to trust you. And I think a lot of politicians have a problem with that. Can you explain to the audience how you conceptualize a speech? Like say Obama came to you and he wants to talk about blank. You could give us a topic. How do you guys start to do it? Is it collaborative the whole time? Tell us the behind the scenes. Sure.

So let's say, let's say, so last time I worked with him on something was the last Democratic convention when he spoke for Kamala. and you know I would talk to him and say okay what what do you want to communicate like what is the what is the one thing that you really want the audience to take away what's been on your mind that's really like bothering you about politics or bothering you about the campaign or you think you want to say so you sort of I just get his thoughts and then he and I will usually just have a conversation about politics what's going on the news and I will sit there and just type everything he says and just get it all down on a piece of paper. And he will sometimes have like an outline in his

mind of where he wants to go in the speech. Like he's, it is the real lawyerly part in him where, like I remember when during the 08 campaign, he gave this big speech on race about his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and it was this big controversy. And so he delivered this big speech on, on race and he called me the Saturday night before the speech at like 11 o'clock at night after he had been on the campaign trail. We were given the speech two days later. I was freaked out that I had to write it so quickly. And he was like, I'm just going to be stream of consciousness and tell you like what's on my mind and then hopefully you can like put something together. And then he starts going like, all right, I want to talk about one, one A, two, two A, two A, B,

then go through. Like he had off the top of his head the outline of what he wanted to say. Now that didn't happen all the time, but he's very good at figuring out the outlines of the speech. Partly, I think it's the lawyer and partly it's the storyteller because he knows that like the speech, a lot of political speeches are just like applause line after applause line. And or like this is going to be quoted by the press so I got to put this line in, but they're not all like connected together. So he's very good at connecting different parts of the speech into a story. So once we get the story of the speech, the layout, the logic, the flow of the speech, correct. and I get his thoughts, then I go off and I'll do a draft. And I'll write the speech if there's research needed. I'll have, I have a team that would help do research for the speech, whether it's

like finding an interesting anecdote or a quote from history or just policy research if we're doing a policy topic. And so I'd get all that input, finish the draft. I would send it around to all the relevant people in the campaign or the White House, depending on what it was. Then I would send it to Obama, it would either come back with a bunch of edits and markups and he would take a pen and just sort of like rewrite and stuff like that, or it would come back with very few marks on it and like a note pad, a yellow note pad just full of writing, which meant like he wanted to really rework the speech. And which I ended up, I liked that because whenever he put a lot of effort into the speech and a lot of himself into the speech, it ended.

ended up being a speech that only he could give and one of the better speeches he would give. I mean, we were, when he got the Nobel Prize, we didn't have much time at all to write that speech. And I remember it was the morning that we left for Oslo that he handed us, I worked on the speech with Ben Rhodes, my fellow speech writer, he handed us 11 pages of written material for the speech, plus the speech we had already written. And he was like, I like some of what you guys have. Here's what I'm thinking. Can you combine it all? together and have it ready before we get on the plane tonight. And then when we landed in Oslo, he had to deliver the speech right after like an hour after landing.

And this pre-chch out GPT, you can't just blend it all together? No chat GPT. Is there a teleprompter there? Yeah. Yes. So he's reading a teleprompter as well. Yes. And on that speech, I added the last page of the speech into the teleprompter as he was walking up to the stage.

It was the closest we had ever gotten to not having a speech. What's the worst speech you've ever seen in your entire life? Wow. That's a good one. Be honest. I mean, you know, there's a lot of Trump ones that are pretty bad. I don't know that I could, like... Biden had some bad ones too.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. He had some rough ones too. Biden had some rough ones too. Not as rough as the debate performance is the worst. But you're also coming off the back of like one of the, again, greatest speech givers of all time. So it's like, it's a hard bar.

You know, you already got to work with like... the top. I mean, there's speeches that are bad just because they're written poorly or the person delivering them is delivering them poorly. Or they plagiarized. Or they plagiarized. Yeah. But then there's also, we were talking about this recently, there's speeches, like sometimes we got in the habit of this in the White House sometimes because Barack Obama was such a great speaker is people thinking that if there's a big problem, a speech will solve the problem. Right. And like no matter what, if we just give a speech. And I remember back in 2010, there was the, Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf. And remember, it just kept spilling oil over and over

and no one could plug the hole. And Barack Obama was getting like so much criticism for it. And everyone was like, we have to give an Oval Office address on the oil spill. I was like, great, do we have a solution to stop the oil spill? And we didn't. And I was like, this speech is going to be terrible because no matter how well it's written and no matter how well it's delivered, people want the oil spill to stop. And if it doesn't do that, it was going to be judged. failure. So like people who give speeches, and I do think that, and we talked about it recently, because Trump's speech about around last week, the prime time address was very similar. Like, the speech didn't have any news in it. So there was just don't want to be at war. Yeah. Like he didn't,

he wasn't announcing the end of the war. He wasn't announcing more war. He was just just like summarizing his free social posts. So like it wasn't judged well because it didn't do anything, didn't solve any problems. What about a speech that blew your mind, not political, Maybe it was at the Oscars, maybe it was a TED talk. What's something where you were like, damn, that person really nailed it. I'm trying to think of who. Those are hard questions. Yeah, they're really hard questions.

I just think that you, I feel like you would point us to a speech where we could go watch it and be like, that's how you get the speech. That's an amazing speech. Someone just gave one I feel like at the Oscars, but maybe not this time. Maybe it was the last time that was so good that had everyone standing and clapping, but I can't remember. Wasn't Shel and Penn. Was not Sean Penn, no. I didn't see Sean Penn speech. He didn't do anyone else.

Okay. I didn't shop. I'm trying to think. There was Matthew McConaughey is pretty good at speeches. Yes. He's, he gets you going with that accent. He's got his mannerisms. There's something about him the way he speaks pretty good.

I like watching some of these guys go and speak at college graduations. Yes. Jim Carrey's done a good one. Remember that one? Oprah. Oprah's excellent. Okay. Charlie Munger did a good one.

Do you think that's natural or all contrived or both? I think it is, I think some people are just naturally talented at doing that. I think Oprah is just as good as people think she is. Like when she gives a speech like that, you're like, oh, that's something that only she could do. I want to switch gears with you a little bit here. When someone like yourself who has the experience you have in Washington being as close to politics and political leaders as you have been, what's your filter when you view the news or when you watch people cover politics knowing what you know filter in in what way like what am i like how do you like just like do you look at this you're like

oh this is BS I know exactly what's going on behind the scenes it's a talking point or you're like hey this is something I got to pay it like how do you like how do you consume now knowing what you know I mean when it's news about politics on the white house I or campaigns uh even though I've you know now been out of politics since 2013. I think about my experience in the White House, my experience in politics and try to judge what's happening based on that. So there's some sort of, you know, insight that that gives me that I judge it on. I've also now been podcasting and in media for the last almost decade. And you're a pioneer. I don't know about a pioneer, but it's been a long time now. You're one of the early ones. One of the early ones. And, um,

So I, you know, I judge a lot of the media content based on just, you know, what I've seen over the last decade. But look, I think one of the, we sort of fell into podcasting. And one of the reasons I like the medium so much is I do think television is a, as a medium, and a lot of the television news broadcasts, cable broadcasts, we talked about this with speeches. Like, they are at a point where because. how television news and cable news is structured and how anchors speak, it's not how people consume information anymore. So if people are used to consuming information with watching an influencer on TikTok or Instagram and then they tune into the news and at someone like sitting there with their

papers and reading like their Walter Cronkite, then it's not going to feel as compelling because they're not going to feel as authentic and there's going to be that distance between the person delivering the news or are talking about politics and the audience. And with podcasting, like, you're just sitting around a table. You forget that the camera's there. You're having a conversation with friends. It's not sound bites either. It's not sound bites.

And so you just sort of let go. And you have to clarify that, like, you say something and something. Oh, well, what do you mean? They're not used to doing that on these other platforms. It's like one question back, back, and then you're done. And I notice it now because I still do cable hits from time to time. And whenever I'm on cable TV, I'm like, oh, I have like two minutes. I'm terrible.

And there's going to be a commercial break. I'm terrible at it. I still, I still am not. Like, I've gotten better at it over the, the podcasting has made me better because I now don't worry about the appearance. I'm like, whatever, it's going to be on. I'm sitting in my, usually I'm sitting in the studio, the podcast studio, so I'll just talk. And sometimes it's good and sometimes it's not. But like, at some point you don't care as much.

You've, like, had enough reps that you're like, whatever. Speaking of that, and I wanted to talk to you about this. So, again, we started this show, if you could go back 10 years, we started it. health, wellness. We were curious about the medium. We were listening to a lot of shows to like Tim Ferriss and Rich Roll, like, you know, self-optimization, a lot of that. And we just fell into this. And it's evolved into a medium where the types of people that will now come on shows like this compared to the early days is drastically different, right? Yeah. Like it was back in the day, if any politician or any A-List person went on any show, it was like in the

podcast industry, it was like, oh my God, somebody, like, I remember Tim Ferriss had LeBron James and people were like, I can't believe this happened. I remember when Obama did Mark Marin. Yep, that was huge too. It was like, it was like people hadn't heard of a podcast before. Yeah. And so, you know, obviously it's a, we've evolved with the medium. Recently, we had R of K Jr. on here. And obviously, like, that hits a nerve on both sides. Some people are very excited. I'm sure everyone was thrilled. No, but what I, what I, um, what we appreciate about the medium is, you know, whether you agree with someone's policies or not. Like, if somebody's actively in office, they're going to affect you in some kind of way. So, like,

we had some clarifying questions. What I've seen you talk about this in the past where you say you think more people on both sides of the aisle should do more long-form content. And one of the criticisms we got, which I read in a lot of them I ignore. I say, okay, like, the people are just angry because somebody's on like ignore. You know, people are like, do better ignore. But some of the feedback was, hey, why do you guys have this person and not invite more people on the left? And what I don't think they see is like recently we invited Gavin Newsom on Gavin, Gavin, if you're listening.

and maybe if it got to him, not sure, but it for sure got to his people, it's a decline. And what I've seen doing this is there's maybe a willingness for more people on the right or the perceived right to come and do long form and maybe less so on the left. I don't know if you agree with that or not. I think that has definitely been true over the last couple of years. I think it's changing a lot.

I mean, Gavin, I'm surprised he said no, because he's been doing a lot. He's got a new book. I'll try to get to him. Gavin. And listen, maybe he didn't even know. But I sometimes, you know, like I think, think maybe one of his people saw it and they're like, oh, they have this on and they think it's the perception is one way or another.

Yeah. That for him is not a problem because he has been among a lot of different Democrats. Gavin's good about this. Rocahn is good about this. It's like going on right wing or not right wing, but even just like right leaning or not political at all podcasts and just like talking with people who may disagree with him and Gavin has a podcast. And he's had, you know, he had Charlie Kirk on.

He had Steve Bannon on, so he's been trying this, like, talking to people from... He's trying to get into the media. Yeah, I think... Well, that's why I thought he would say yes. Yeah, because I think... And look, some of these things is he's got the book and he's running around. It also could be also the people. Well, we can't just blame Gavin.

It could be the people around. But anyways, what I'm addressing is I think, like, you know, as hosts, all you can really do is extend the invites. Yes. Like, we have... And what I've noticed, and again, I won't get into particulars and put everybody down. I did that for Gavin because I want to pressure him to come on. But what I've noticed is we're typically able to get a few more yeses for people that are maybe considered in the right camp than we are in the left camp. And I don't think it's just this show.

I just think there's more people in that realm that are open to doing long form like this and having these debates. Maybe it's changing and I just wanted to talk to you about it. I mean, I think it's, I hope it's changing because I very much believe that democratic politicians are left-leaning political figures should absolutely be everywhere. all the time. And I think the Democratic Party and Democratic politicians have been slow to realize that not everyone, in fact, most people aren't getting their news from CNN or MSNBC anymore. We don't have the news in our house anymore. I mean, it's, we don't watch it in our house. It's not on. And I do it for a living. That's crazy. And that's interesting to hear you say that. Yeah, because it's just, it's not, well, I mean, also, part of the problem is we have two little kids.

And so I'm like, I can't put the news on. So I go to my 82-year-old dad's house and that thing is blasting. And it's just like, it takes me. I put it on mute when I go. It's PTSD right back to childhood. It's funny. No, my parents live up in Thousand Oaks. And my wife always notes that when we like, we walk into their house and like the TV's on MS now.

And it's like, they just always have that TV. That TV is on. Yeah. But I think that Democrats were slow to realize that people are consuming information in so many different ways and like you just have to be there. And I don't think it's a. like a partisan reason for like, oh, we don't want to go in more right-leaning spaces or places that aren't friendly to Democrats. I think it is a fear of like, am I going to do well? Am I going to be normal? Am I going to say, you know, like there's this this sort of innate caution that I think

for Democrats is born of now having lost two elections to Donald Trump. And a lot of most Democrats in the party don't trust their instincts anymore because they're like, well, we lost the first election, then we won, but then we last the second. That actually makes sense. Now we don't know what to say, so they'll be all stiff. And, you know, like, everyone's like, oh, Joe Rogan, everyone should go on Joe Rogan. Yes, but I could also, like, count on one hand the number of Democratic politicians if I was working for them that I would trust to go on Joe Rogan, because a lot of them, I think,

would be, have no idea what they were getting into. Because he's so smart. Just because he would, just because he would throw them questions on topics that they are totally not prepared for. Yeah, like, you could go down a lot. But funny enough, I think that's what people are looking for. It's like, I want to hear your perspective on policy and ideas. I also want to hear how you think about parenting.

And I also want to think about what you do for a hobby and what you like. And are you going to watch the new Star Wars movie, The Mandalorian? I think people want to know that stuff. They want to know them. I think they want to know the behind the scenes. And what I've always viewed it as, because we've been doing the show for a long time, is whenever you start to broach those conversations say, hey, I want to have this person on.

well, what are the topics? What are the questions? I'm like, no, we're going to like just have a, like, we can give you ideas of what we want to talk about, but there's no like, these are not, there's not like set talking points. There's no set questions. It's that we're going to have a conversation. And I think that throws some people. We have in the, in the, in the Democratic Party, we have a lot of front row kids who were in their, in class, they were like in the front row, raising their hand, asking for more homework. And I think the challenge is when they're in those settings and you're asking them like, what are your hobbies? What do you like to do? They know the answers, but the editors going in their head, and they're like, what is safe?

What if I say this? And this upsets this person. If I say this, then this person's going to be mad. And what if people don't like my hobby? And what if my hobby's like? Like, the self-editing starts and they're just too nervous to. Which is, again, that goes back to like what Obama has, which, like, you have to be comfortable in your own skin. And just like, this is who I am.

And these are my answers. And if people don't like them, whatever. Well, Obama can do it. And he does some shows. And he thinks he's great. And obviously Trump does. And to Secretary Kennedy's credit, like, and I'll just say we had, there was no preempted questions. There was no script.

We made him sign a release like everybody else ahead of time. There was no. It was like, it just had a conversation and he answered the question. And I thought that, you know, we tried to keep it very like down the line of like what's going on, particularly in health and health policy. But like we threw some questions at him and he at least had answers. And I think like people appreciate that because they want to see that the people in charge are at least thinking about trying to figure out a solution, whether you agree with the solution or not. like we want to know like hey what are you guys working on over there yeah how are you thinking about taking care of us right that that's and i think people appreciate when even if they um falter a little bit

or even if they kind of stumble and they are trying and you're seeing like they're they actually are thinking about it like i think we're we recognize the human element and appreciate people doing that yeah no it's just i think it's also the only way anyone makes progress on anything is like having real conversations sometimes difficult conversations having sometimes disagreement and debates, lives that aren't like perfectly mediated and planned and ahead of time. Like that's how like real change comes about and persuasion. Speaking of persuasion, you said politics is a persuasion game. What's, and this is from the team, this is not my question.

I will say this is a team question. They said, what's a specific political belief that you've held that you were successfully persuaded to change? political belief that I successfully persuaded to change. Well, I think this is sort of over the last couple years, but as a Democrat coming up in Democratic politics, anytime you would give a speech about Israel, or a Democratic politician would give a speech about Israel, you would talk about how amazing Israel is

and our closest ally and wonderful, and it's like you have to be pro-Israel no matter what, And that's like the whole, that's like a core thing to the Democratic Party. And I think even when, obviously, October 7th happened and I was just horrified, I think it's like what Hamas did was like the worst things you can do to other human beings. And I think when there at first was criticism of Israel's prosecution of the war in Gaza, I was much more likely to think, well, that's just people who, you know, are on the far left. don't, you know, and then as more came out and the war went on and the killing continued,

you know, I really did start changing my opinion of the Israeli government and Israel and what it was doing in the Middle East. And it's hard in the Democratic Party even now. I think it's a big split in the party because there's still people who's like, well, that's our, you know, our closest ally in the Middle East. I also think like, you know, here in the United States, I very much believe that we have a president who is, you know, has authoritarian tendencies and wants to turn the United States into something that I don't, you know, believe it should be turned into. And so I'm always like, why couldn't that happen in Israel as well, right? Like, that's just, I think that's what Bibi Netanyahu and a lot of the Israeli government has done there as well. So my opinion on

Israel and not to bring up an issue that is, I know this is an easy issue. I know this is an easy that everyone agrees on. But it's changed over time. It's changed over time. So when you're so this is you know I think like I highly consider myself independent large because I've never been in politics and I try to take issue by issue. But I imagine when you have the party affiliations that's like yourself has or that close and you start to change your opinion like is that a challenge to do? Do you lose friends over that? Do you start to have pushback? Do you have professionals reaching out? Do you saying don't do that like yeah. You do. I mean, on the, you know, I, people have gotten out of it. Well, it's funny because when I was

in politics, it didn't happen as much because you're really in the bubble when you're working in politics. You're in the White House. You're on a campaign. And so you're just surrounded by people who think like you. And there is a bunker mentality, especially when you get to the White House. I think that's true of every administration of both parties. Once I started podcasting and being a political commentator, you still have some of that. Like the first couple of years, I think I still had that. Now, I am much more willing to say something that I believe. And if people on my side get mad at me, whatever. You've like really broken out and built your own thing to make your own media company show. So it's a bit different. But I imagine that's a struggle because it might, it almost feels like you're like abandoning. I mean, this wasn't like a policy issue. But the, the most criticism we got was after that first debate with Biden and Trump. And we all. right after that debate said, you know, Biden should really consider dropping out.

Yeah, but I mean, like, do people, I mean, like, I think all of us at the time were like, well, there's something off a little bit here. I mean, that's why we, we're like, are you, and we would get like so much pushback from the Biden campaign, from friends of ours in democratic politics that we've had forever. It's like, what are you guys doing? You don't know what you're talking about. You were just, you were always jealous of, of Joe Biden and the Obama White House, and it's a vendetta that the pod guys have.

and you know hunter Biden was very mad at us um but of course like he's like i was like i was like do you guys realize what most of the country believes right now um but that was you know and it's not like it was tough i was very happy to do it and i think we were right well i mean like the the country we have we all have eyeballs that's what i said yeah exactly you know but it was like it was uh you know well i think i mean credit to you because i think the people that didn't do that and kept up like you know maybe we're like carrying on a facade that they knew was not true it's like they I think a lot of those people lost a lot of credibility, right? Because it's like the truth always kind of shines through.

We can all see what's going on. And so if you didn't do that, I don't think you'd have the platform you have now. We were just talking on an earlier episode about how one of the highest signs of intelligence is flexibility of the mind and being able to change your mind. And it feels like sometimes in this day and age, if you change your mind, it's the torches and the trolls coming after you. We have to be able to get to a point where people are allowed to change their mind. Yeah.

Like I'm sorry. just because I thought, you know, five years ago that I liked this or that doesn't mean I have to think it today. Well, and as it relates to politics, too, and again, I just will, I'll pick on the RFK issue one more time. Like, agree with this policies or not, whatever. I want to hear somebody come on and give a counter idea or a better idea if you disagree. What I don't like is these people just fighting and attacking each other constantly. It's like, okay, if we all can step back and say, well, maybe there's a health issue going on in the country. We're all kind of aware of it.

If that's not the right idea, I'm not highlighting a specific policy, then what's the better idea? But when people just scream and yell and say this person's this or that, like I think it does a disservice to everybody in the conversation. Well, RFK Jr. is a great example because I think that if Democrats just write off the Maha movement as a bunch of cooks, then that is not only wrong, but politically. dumb because you know I heard I heard some of the episode where you guys talked to RFK and like a lot of it is stuff that Michelle Obama could have said when she did let's move as an initiative in the White House and I get it like the I'm very into health and wellness I fiercely disagree with him on on vaccines and I also wish that a lot of what he believes about companies and food companies and like what they do to our food like that

there was actually more regulatory pushback in the administration. I think he has wanted some of that and the rest of the administration has said no. The glycivate issue we brought up. Yeah, like, I think that I think it says something about like the priorities of the rest of the administration. And I think actually some of the stuff that I probably agree with him most on, he hasn't made as much progress on as some of the stuff that I don't agree with him on. But I get that there is complexity there. Even, you know, even recently about Iran, right? Like I'm very against this war and I wanted to end and Tucker Carlson gave a 40 minute monologue on his show about the war that I listened to this morning and I like posted it and I'm like I know I'm supposed to say like I don't agree with Tucker but he

made a few good points I'm like I thought that 40 minutes of this there was a there were only a few things that I disagreed with here well this is where I think that we're seeing the breaking of the traditional parties in this country because there's people now that are like I mean there's things that, again, we've been around a little longer than some of the audience. If you go back 20 years, some of these policies that we're all talking about used to be on the left. Now someone were on the right and they're like flip-flop positions. But somebody's like, wait, I'm still on this side and like how that get over there and that's over there. And so it's confusing, right? And, you know, Bill Maher's been on the show and he talks about that all the time where he's

like, you know, I, he always says that he didn't change. Things have changed. And I think what we're, what we're viewing here is that people, are wanting to take common sense practical. Like, I'm talking about the majority of American people. They just, they want to be healthier. They want their kids to be okay. They want to thrive. They want to be safe.

They don't want to be an endless war. Like they, like, those are things that people want. And I think sometimes if it doesn't align, like, they feel scared to say that. But we're all kind of looking for the same thing, which is prosperity for ourselves and our families. Yeah. And look, sometimes people can very much agree on what the problem is and have very fierce and legitimate disagreements on the outcome. Like, healthcare coverage is a great example of that. You know,

like, you can have, most of the country thinks that we pay too much for health care and that everyone in the country should have access to affordable health care. How to get that done is obviously a point of fierce disagreement with both parties. And I, you know, I have my views and other people have their views, but at least, like, you can agree on a problem. I do think there's like a, there's two different things we're talking about here. One is sort of policy differences. And the other is like a larger sort of political, political strategy, how we talk to each other, whether we give each other grace for making mistakes, for not using the exact right words for everything, for changing our minds, for going back and forth on things, for making mistakes.

And I think that both parties have had issues with that, especially over the last decade, especially in the social media age. And this goes back to our conversation about sort of going on other podcasts with people you disagree with. I think there was a time where it was like, don't platform this person or don't say that or you can't be seen with this person or you can't be having, you can't be associated with this person. But they're not going away. They're not going away. And again, it's not like you if you go on someone's podcast or you're associated with someone, you have to agree with all of their views. I look up to Barbara Walters.

Barbara Walters, I think, interviewed Saddam Hussein. Yeah. No one on the internet said, you're giving Saddam Hussein a platform. Like, guess what he had a platform. I'm a media outlet. If I like to interview people of all different walks of life and I like to understand why people came to that conclusion, it doesn't mean that I'm co-signing them and a lot of people that come on here I don't agree with.

Yeah. But it's up to the audience to form their own opinion. I don't have an agenda to work through the person to get to the audience. Well, and when sometimes the audience gets upset, what I always try to tell folks is like, when you're listening to something or watching something, the point of it is not to make you feel that all of your pre-existing views are validated? Because maybe it is, but if that's the case, then, like, what did you get from that? It's like, it's comfort food, right?

It's like, I believe this. I listen to this. Oh, that's right. Absolutely. It's why you turn sign filled out and I had to go to sleep, right? It's not chat, TBT. No, like, I want to be challenged. I want to listen to a challenging conversation between people.

Like, the criticism that we get sometimes, and I take it seriously, is the four of us on POTS Save America, we agree a lot. We're really good friends. We've been around each with forever. So it's like it's hard to disagree. But sometimes we try to like have debates or sometimes we try to bring people. We often try to bring people on that we don't agree with because I do think, and we're trying to do that more because I do think that for the audience, you want to hear our perspective, but you also want to hear perspective challenging us because otherwise it's just a whole bunch of people agreeing with each other and you. And I don't know that anyone gets anything out of that. I also think, I think that you have to think what kind of dinner party do you want to host?

Yeah. We don't want a dinner party where everyone is. Flapping each other on the back and saying you're right the whole time. I'm bored with that. I'm bored to tears. Like I'm meditating with my eyes up and I got to be honest. No, I want some different. I need some different color.

I want some different opinions. I want a little fight. Maybe it's Thanksgiving. Aunt Bertha says something weird. I need like a lot of different energy. You're dramatic, Lauren. No, I love, like I want different opinions. I am at the Democratic Convention last time in Chicago.

We were in our little area and got a knock on the door. these two young kids and they were like, oh, we're from Jesse Waters' show. He would love to have you on the show. Would you, like, come upstairs to the Fox studio right now at the convention and go on Jesse Waters?

And some of my staff were like, you're crazy, you can't go. You're going into the Lionsden, you're not prepared. And I was like, why not? Who cares? What's going to happen? I agree with you.

And it was funny because I, like, I walk up there and it's like being in the mothership and it's like, there's Laura Ingraham and they're all walking around. And I went on Jesse's show and he gave me shit. And I gave him, shit back and it we like gave as good as we got and it was fun my prediction is that that kind of

content what you just said that's off the cuff and not so planned out and methodical and is going to go viral i think you're going to see all that's what people want to watch they want to watch different people having different opinions got he's done very well with it i mean again like he's done very well building his show independently with this kind of conversation and just having different people. I mean, I think he, you know, it's, it's an eclectic group that he has on. That's a hard one too, because I've seen, here's the show and it's like, when you have a bunch of people who are all remote and they're all in the boxes, and it's like, it's a lot. Because then you're, then you're yelling over, but that I'm like, maybe it's good TV, but I, maybe that's,

that's not for me. But like, sitting around to table with a bunch of people, you disagree. Like, that to me is, I could do that for sure. This episode is brought to you by Zizal. I am so allergic to cats, the worst. And I use zizol allergy 24-hour. Okay, if you're like me, if I, like, even smell a cat, I don't feel good the next day. So it's really important that I always have my zizol allergy 24-hour relief in my handbag. It starts working and I can tell you guys this quick. It's like in as little as 45 minutes. Zizol relieves allergy symptoms, including sneezing, runny nose, itchy, watery eyes. I get a lot of watery. and an itchy nose and throat for 24 hours.

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if I'm trying to do a deal with someone or if I'm trying to build someone and I start by just personally attacking them and screaming at them and telling them how shitty their ideas, are. It's going to be hard for me to do anything with anyone. And what I worry about in American politics, and I guess now world politics, general, is that if that's how every conversation is starting and every kind of negotiation is starting, like, how do you ever solve anything for anyone? Because if the idea is that you're a terrible person and all your ideas are shit and then

right back, same thing, you could never in the business world get a deal done that way. Well, in politics, The analogy is the people I think who understand how to persuade the best are people who've knocked on doors, like the organizers. Because if you've been on a campaign and you have to go knock on a bunch of random doors, first of all, you're not, sometimes you're knocking on doors and just reminding people who are already going to vote for your candidate, like get out and vote. But a lot of times you're going into neighborhoods where people either might not vote or they might vote for the other candidate. And you get all kinds of people on the doors. and it's not even like you get like hardcore right-wing people with all right-wing views. You get people with like everyone in the country such complicated views. And so they could be very liberal on one issue and very conservative on the other.

And sometimes they could give you a crazy conspiracy theory that's not true at all. And sometimes they could be nice and sometimes they could shut the door on your face. And so I always find that people who have been on campaigns, who have organized door-to-door, and have talked to actual voters, usually are better at persuasion, more practical, and more pragmatic, wherever you stand on the ideological perspective. You could be far left and pragmatic as you've knocked down doors and far right and pragmatic. They are more pragmatic and persuasive than people who only argue about politics on the internet.

What makes someone persuasive? I think empathy to me is probably the most important value there is, and I think about this all the time as a former speechwriter, and now in what I do is put myself in the shoes of someone listening to this who may not agree. Put myself in the shoes of the audience that I'm speaking to or that the person I'm writing, thank you, the person that I'm writing a speech for or speaking to. And what are they thinking? What are their hopes?

What are their fears? What are they based on their background, based on their demographics? Like, what might they be thinking about politics? And then also, once you've thought about that, what do we have in common? because the whole thing falls apart if we cannot find in this country like the the thread that connects us all because if we don't have that and look that doesn't mean that we're always going to agree on everything like we are we are divided and we're probably going to be divided for a long time I think the hope is can we live together even with these divisions and these disagreements that's the test now right

because otherwise the whole thing falls apart and I think you need to have politicians who, and this is why I always think of like, there's this thing now when, you know, a Trump voter has someone in their family who's deported, they're like, oh, well, good, you voted for that, you know. And it's like anyone who

experiences a harm like that or who's thinking twice about the political decision they made, I want to be open to that person and, like, welcome them over and say, like, come on over to our side. And I think we, I think the Democratic Party... Yeah, you don't kick them while they're down.

No, I think Trump did that. well in 2024. And now I think a lot of the people that came over to Trump in 2024 are probably now the first ones to leave because he didn't he hasn't quite delivered what they thought. But I think in the campaign they were very skilled and RFK Jr. is an example of that like people who hadn't been in the tent they were like welcome you can be part of our crew and I think Democrats need to do that as well. What do you think needs to happen for in the country and again if you can wave a magic wand for us

to get to a place where we're not so divided. I do think that we put too much emphasis on the actions of politicians and political leaders. I think that if we only see politics as a transactional enterprise, which is every couple years, politicians campaign, they ask for our votes. we say, okay, this one seems better than the other one, going to give you my vote, and then I'm going to go back to my life, and then you're going to go fix my problems. And if you don't, then I'm going to be pissed off,

and then I'm going to throw you out, and then I'm going to elect someone else. Like, we will continue to be disappointed and divided. I think more people need to be involved in the act of governing. And when something doesn't happen, between elections, reach out to your member of Congress, run for office yourself, get involved in your local community. I do think that because politics has become so nationalized, because of the media environment, like everything's about politics.

Everything's not about local politics or state politics. Everything's about national politics. And I think that real change happens on a local level. And so I would love to see, like, more, I think if more Americans got involved in their community, in their neighborhood, first of all, you would encounter more people who don't agree with you necessarily, even if you're living in a blue area or red area. There's still people with different views. And so you would learn more to work with other people.

and get things done with other people who you don't necessarily agree with. And that would filter up as opposed to us hoping that we are going to elect the perfect person to then filter the good feelings and the unity down, right? Like I think that we just see politics too much as transactional right now. Because look, like you get the politics that you fight for, that you deserve. And if we don't have good people running for office, then the way to change that is for other people to run for office. and it's for other people to get involved in politics. And so I do think that like political participation and more political participation,

not just political hobbyism, which I think is just watching politics unfold, getting nervous about politics, commenting on politics, yelling online, I think treating it as a sport. I think less of that and more of the actual work of getting stuff done and changing things on a local level. I think that's going to help a lot. Is this where I announce my run? There it is.

If I win an Oscar, will you help me write my speech? Wait, you've got to be an actress. Absolutely. You never know. I'm multifaceted. I might win an Oscar. I'm going to put it out there. Will you help me write my seat?

Or if you have to give any speech. The number of, especially since I moved out to L.A., the number of potential award winners who, like, through their agents for other people have been like, hey, will you write? And I'm like, I'm out of that business, but I will. I usually say, I'm happy to look at a draft and have a conversation with the person, but I can't do anything from scratch because I don't have the time. I already feel like I've done that a few times.

I feel like you've already been to like the speechwriter's version of the Super Bowl. That's a big ass. This episode is brought to by Neuro, the makers of the world's smartest gum. I love things that make me smart. I love things that make me focus. And I love things that give me energy. So what is NeuroGum? It's a neuro energy and focus smart gum.

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Eden Rock, St. Bartz, wherever you are. Okay, I want to switch just a little bit of gear one more time with you and talk about your business. Sure. We have tremendous respect for you and what you've built because we know ourselves firsthand how hard it is, one, to build a show. but then to build a media company beyond the show, create other shows, work with other people,

have that be successful. When did you decide you wanted to start crooked with your partners and what was the motivation behind it? The podcast that is now Podsave America started as a podcast called Keepin at 1600 and we did it during the 2016 campaign and we did it with the Ringer, which is Bill Simmons Media Company. And I had known Bill previously, we both went to the same college. We get to know each other when he came to the White House to interview Obama.

And he said, you know, we do sports and entertainment and culture, but like I'd love to do politics. It's an election year. Would you be, you moved out to L.A.? Would you be interested in like doing a, doing a podcast? So, me, Dan Pfeiffer, Tommy Vitor, John Lovett. We all started this podcast. And then we all had our other jobs. And we thought Hillary Clinton would win. And then we would be done and we would go back to our lives and be retired from politics. And then. then Donald Trump wins. You didn't know that one? Yeah. And we, and then Donald Trump wins. And we were like, oh, maybe we're not retired from politics. And maybe, you know, we had talked before about when we were in the White House, oh, the media is failing because of this or we don't like it because of that.

And wouldn't it be, we should have more progressive media companies and wouldn't it be cool to start one? And it was always sort of a, you know, a conversation you'd have intermittently. And then once Trump won, we were like, we should continue doing this podcast, but we should build the media company that we've talked about and just started from scratch and started Podze of America and we um so there was love it and Tommy and I sitting at my kitchen table in West Hollywood at the time and we hired a woman named Tanya Sominator as our chief content officer and she had worked at the Obama White House we got introduced to her through my now wife and we had

her. We hired Sarah Wick, who was our chief, our C-O, again, through a friend, and she had, like, worked on some startups. And then we hired an assistant. And it was literally the six of us sitting around my kitchen table. We went to the Bank of America in West Hollywood, and we're like, we'd like to open an account for our media company. And the woman's like, great, do you have money? And we're like, no, did we need money? She's like, yeah, we're like, do you have 10 bucks? Here, let's open it. It was just so, like, we had no idea we were doing. former company at the time? We formed a company. We like talked to some lawyers, but like, I would say it was raw. Hiring, I mean, you guys, know this, like hiring people to do that

to like build the business is the most important thing you can do. When I started this, I tried to find a CEO that would, I was like, okay, now I got to get a CEO to do it. And nobody, like, I had this woman and she at the last, I was like, I don't want the job. I said, well, who the hell is doing something else? I'm like, well, who's going to do, who's going to do that? And then I was like, well, I guess like I had it. Well, and you realize at the beginning, you do everything. You know, and you're in every meeting and your mind has pulled in your time is pulled in a million different directions. And now we mostly, the founders, we mostly do just hosting.

And, you know, we're on the board. And so we have board meetings and we do big strategic directions and have, you know, meetings. But we have a CEO who's like a very experienced CEO and an adult Lucinda Tried who's been at the company for a while. And thank God for her because now most things happen in the company. and we don't even know. But, you know, at the time when you guys did it similar to this, I think people, like, now everyone know, like,

I used to explain to people, like, we used to create social videos that we would put on her Instagram story, showing people where to find the podcast application, because at the time, people were like, what the hell is that? And now everybody, and now I just call them shows at this point, right? Because their audio video. I mean, there was that weird appears, like, is it going to be video and audio?

And, like, that was a big thing. Yeah, we've all just recreated television. Exactly. But people forget there was also, like, much fewer ways to monetize so it was hard there was very few people taking the medium seriously it was like the it was like the weird stepchild of media it's like oh you're doing a podcast it was other it was like I'm sorry sorry you do that like you know and so I the reason I have so much respect for you is because I think for the early people that were able to like slug through it those are and like

kind of form the market like now if you want to do something like this what yes it's more competitive but the market's very well established and there's some huge tailway And you can make real living doing this. But at the time, it was like, is this going to work or not? Yeah. Well, look, we had a, we had a theory. And it wasn't even, it wasn't a business theory. At least it wasn't, you know, thought of like that.

It was like, okay, what is missing in media, in political media right now? What is missing in political media is, you know, we all just worked in politics for the last 10 years. And the conversations we would have, even in the most heated, serious moments in politics, were still accessible to people. We had gallows humor when things were bad. We joked around when things were good. We approached the job with joy. We were like, you know, made friends

that are our friends for life in this. And like, what if we could bring that to the public? Because I think right now, most people think of politics as what they see on cable news or what they see when a politician gives a speech, which is stilted, boring, self-serious. It was basically, the people who were in political media were too self-serious and they weren't treating the topics

with the seriousness they deserve and we wanted to flip that and say like let's treat these issues like they are life and death serious issues but let's do it with humor about ourselves and not take ourselves too seriously and joke around and just be who we are you know well and clearly it resonated like so no I just thought I wanted to hear the story because obviously from afar we've viewed a lot of what you've done, but what I find interesting about early adopters in this medium, it, it kind of just, a lot of people that became successful, it just started as like a passion or as like a need to fill a gap that they weren't, like, for us, same thing. Like, we just weren't finding what we were looking for to service our own show. It was like, okay, well, we'll just like do this for fun and

maybe it works, it works. I'll never forget. Like, it was maybe a month into the company and we were invited to the Upfront Summit here. And Caras Swisher was going to interview us. on stage. And she sits and she's like, okay, so what is the, what is the business plan? Like, what is the revenue plan? And John Lovett just goes, he's like, honestly, we just turn the microphones on and then the money just starts coming. Like, that's just been how it's working so far. She's like, what? And we're like, but that is like, and it was a joke, but it was also like, we had not, we did not have this like detailed business plan the whole time. It's pretty cool. Yeah. It's really cool. Democracy or else, how to save America in 10.

easy steps go check out the book pod save america what else where can everyone say hi to you uh yeah you can find i'm unfortunately always on twitter all day long at john favs and instagram okay and um and i also host uh offline uh with john fabro you can catch that all the time and pod save america and our youtube channel uh now we're always in just churning out content on the youtube channel you're busy man very busy congratulations john thank you for doing this man thanks for having me this was fun