The Daily Beast Podcast - How I Sleep Better by Switching off the Trump Show

Episode Date: May 11, 2025

Joanna Coles and Samantha Bee sit down with ex-CNN White House correspondent Jessica Yellin who reveals how she copes with the doomscrolling chaos of Trump—by rewiring the news for her 750,000 Instagram followers. Yellin founded "News Not Noise" to tune out the chaos and give people information—not a heart attack. She shares her tips on meditation and mindfulness in an age of chaos. And Sam and Joanna share an important conversation on mental health awareness and exactly how close to home it is. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Joanna Coles, Chief Content Officer of The Daily Beast, coming to you on a Sunday today with the Daily Beast podcast. And if you're a long-time listener, welcome to our new feed. If you're a new abnormal listener, stick around. We're bringing you more of the people politics and pop coverage. You need every Tuesday, Thursday and today, Sunday. So enjoy today's episode. It's a wild one. Spoiler alert.

They always are. Sam B, my co-host. Hello, Joanna. Today I join you as chief content officer of refurbishing old tourist traps and turning them into federal prisons. I can't wait. Are you referring to the prison just outside San Francisco? I certainly am. That I visited, I believe, as a child.

As a tourist attraction. And did you try and figure out if you could swim from it to the mainland? Because whenever I go past it, I always think, I bet I could. I bet I could figure out. I think everyone calculates it. Yeah. I think, and I don't believe there's that many sharks. I just don't believe there's that many sharks in that little body of water.

I could make it. Yeah, I think you could make it too. I think if you had to, you could make it. If I had to, I could do anything. Oh, my goodness. How is your world? Well, my world? I've had a strange week, I will tell you, because last week I went to a dinner,

organized by Kenneth Cole, the designer, for Mental Health Awareness Month. And it was really a group of people brought together to discuss the resources that are available for people if they're feeling low or miserable. And Rachel Platten was there who'd gone through. No, I know her. Right. Yeah, she's great. Fantastic. And she had that wonderful fight song.

And she had periods of postpartum depression. So she talked about that. But then on Saturday, coincidentally, I attended a memorial for a young man that used to work for me. He was the model booker at Mary Claire magazine when I was editing it. And he very sadly took his own life recently. And there was a memorial to celebrate him. And what was so clear was that this was a young man who had great friends. His mother was there, a terrific mother, who loved him deeply.

And yet it wasn't enough because the demons were so strong that having tried to kill himself once, he finally succeeded. And you just want to make everybody aware of the resources that are out there. And then, again, what felt like coincidentally, but a third time in the row that suicide came up, I was at the launch of Keith McNally's book. I regret almost everything. He, of course, is the founder of the New York restaurants, Odeon, and in particular Balthazar, where they had a big dinner to celebrate him. But Richard E. Grant, the actor, was the first.

there and read a section of the book in which Keith tries to kill himself and takes a big overdose. And I was just left with this feeling, gosh, life is really short. We have to carpe diem. And, you know, the Mental Health Coalition hadn't even been on my radar is now particularly on my radar. And I just won't say anybody listening who's not feeling 100 percent. They do have great resources available at Mental Health Coalition.org. And also So, you know, don't be embarrassed to ask for help. There's so much stigma around it. Yeah, I didn't mean to quite go down that route. But in the last week, I've suddenly become very conscious of it in a way that I hadn't for a bit. And Jeremy was the life and soul of the party. He was that guy. You know, he wore incredible outfits. He was a fantastic model booker. The models loved him. He wasn't remotely predatory or lascivious. He was funny. He was kind. And he was young. Right. He was young. So impossible to know what someone's inner life is.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's great. Yeah, I'm not quite sure where we go from here. No, I think that's, no, it's good. It's good to understand what the resources are because there are resources that are available. And we hope people available themselves of those. Yeah.

And your show, Menopause, How to Survive Menopause is also a resource for people going through menopause. Well, you know what? It's interesting. The show is going on the road. Next week will be, I'll be in Atlanta. be in Nashville. It's a really fun. It's a really fun and a very, very funny, very funny show, but actually like what I love about it. And the reason why I do it is really to be in community

with people who are experiencing the same thing. It's actually feels so good for me to be in a room with people who are looking at me with their bright, shiny eyes and we all just want to feel kind of seen altogether. It's actually a very communal experience. and not to be too illy-ooy-ooy about it, but I actually find it quite healing it. Every time I do it, it makes me feel stronger and it makes me more able to say things that are like that have been kind of vulnerable for me in the past

and now I can make jokes about it. I thought the show was very funny when I came to see it. Thank you. Has it evolved? I mean, have different audiences changed it? I'm changing it because I'm evolving as I do it. I'm having experiences. that inform the show.

I'm thinking of new jokes to add to the show because I'm just having a lived experience of pari metapause as we speak. And so it's growing as I grow. It grows as the audience grows. I'm learning a lot. And that is actually the fun, that's the fun part for me.

I love it. I really love it. I don't love the travel. I don't want to fly out of Newark. Well, Sean Duffy is coming to your rescue in theory, in theory, right? Well, sure. Rest assured who's in charge of airline security and air safety?

Sean Duffy, the former Fox News host. Yeah. That's all that one can really ask for. The most extraordinary thing is, A, he's got nine children and B, last week. He's got nine children. It was J.D. Vant said he'll be great for transport because he knows how to move large groups of people. Well, that's logical. You know, that's great.

And at the end of last week when Newark had had several days of chaos, many flights canceled, he posted on social media a picture of himself going home and saying, it's fantastic, I've got these steak tacos at home after a long week of work. Well, that's inspiring. I think he should turn up at Newark and just talk to passengers. That's what I would advise. Maybe just do your job. Yeah, what Sean?

break from taco night because, Sean, try the tacos at Newark Airport. Try the tacos at Newark Airport. You have a job to do. I think you should be physically present. My God, nine children. Okay. Nine children.

All right. Well, we're now going to take a quick break before we talk to award-winning veteran journalist and founder of News Not Noise, Jessica Yellen. I can't wait. On today's episode, we're honored to welcome Jessica Yellen. She's an Emmy, Greasy, and Peabody. award-winning journalist, best known for her tenure as CNN's chief White House correspondent,

where she covered the Obama administration, Capitol Hill and domestic politics. Her reporting career also includes roles at ABC News and MSNBC, with coverage spanning global hotspots from Russia to the Middle East. In 2018, Yellen left traditional media to launch news, not noise, an independent digital news brand that began on Instagram where she now has 750,000 followers and a substack newsletter where she has 250,000 followers. And women in their 20s in particular are obsessed with her, but I am too and I'm not in my 20s. But I do think I know why, because Jessica's mission has been to deliver fact-based, calm and accessible news,

especially for women and younger audiences without the sensationalism and anxiety-inducing tone of the legacy outlets. Yelin is also the author of a very funny novel, Savage News, a takedown of the media industry drawn from her own experiences. Jessica, thank you for joining us from L.A. Thank you for having me and for that glorious introduction. I'm honored. Thank you. We force everybody to sit and listen to an introduction about the themselves ingest this information. It's such a pleasure to talk to you. I wonder how you're doing right now. I feel like I like to do a little check-in with all the news people because the world is

so frenetic and crazy. And I just, since your mission is to keep anxiety out of the picture, how in the world are you doing that and are you successfully doing that? What does that look like? I will confess that I'm a little bit failing. Okay. Thank you. Thank God. But I'm working on it. I am that person who scrolls Instagram and find somebody doing Tai Chi, and then I'm like, I'm going to do Tai Chi. So I've started doing, I honestly collect whatever calming strategies I can find. It's one of these things I talk to my friends, how are you, isn't an adequate phrase anymore. So we're living in really stressful, strange times. I think we have to be honest about that.

Like you said, my motto when I launched was, we give you information, not a panic attack. But that doesn't work anymore because the information gives you a panic attack and that's actually like a healthy response to the information. So it's all about finding strategies to sort of get you to find your center again and disconnect. Can I ask, what is the cadence of how you ingest news? Like are you, are you a breaking news person? Are you a news alerts person? Are you actually scrolling or do you kind of time, like do you scroll at specific times? Do you, is there a way that you approach? taking it all in. I tell people that they should turn off their alerts, turn off their notifications, set times of day that they check the news and not check in between those times. Because if you're not in the news business, you don't need to know the minute it happens. And it does disrupt your sort of parasympathetic nervous system. It makes you feel bad. So that's what I tell other people. Me? I follow the other facts. I have like every alert. I have every everything. When I started meditating at the beginning. I don't know how this happened, but I would find myself checking Twitter.

It was back in those days when it was still okay. While you were meditating. Yes, I would start meditating and then the next thing I know I'm on my phone on Twitter. I don't know. I've broken that habit, but, you know, it is hard, it is hard to do what I do because I do my work on social media and it's about the news. And my job is to curate what matters, which means I have to know a lot more than what I'm sharing. So I am on more than is healthy. So Jessica, when you get those pop-ups that say you've had X amount of screen time last week, what is the average amount of time you spend on screen?

I feel like I shouldn't admit it. I think you can. Well, I just got one and I spent nine hours on average every day last week. Mine says 13. 13. 13. Well, it's where your work takes place, right? It's where the world takes place now. Yes.

Okay. Well, you know what? This is not a podcast about healthy balance. So it's okay. Hashtag working on it. The only habit that I've actually broken and I have actually broken this habit is that because I wake up so early in the morning, I no longer scroll the newspaper at 5 a.m. I give myself that grace. What do you do at 5 a.m? I sit and wildly stare into space. Do you know what I mean? I'm rocking back and forth. Anticipating. I think everybody's waking up earlier these days. Yes. I am for sure. I've started yoga nidra. If you tried that? No. Is that the breathing? Is that the breathing? No, it's this strategy for helping you get back to sleep. And it's a very like it's a formulaic thing where you focus on different body parts. So your mind is very present in your body and you can't think about other things and it's magic. I love that. Oh. Okay. Is that why do we think Giselle took up Jizzle? to is it to do with all the news? I'm now seeing her whole new exercise phase in a different life.

You're seeing it as a way for her to push out that I don't, I'm not getting that vibe from her. Okay, I was just thinking, I was just thinking, I think we should all take up, yeah, we need Jigitzy. How are you covering Trump in a second term? Did you, I mean, I guess everything is alarming. So how do you make it so that you're not alarming people in the midst of a five alarm fire? So my overall thesis is that information fundamentally is empowering and even bad information can make you feel at least you have a sense of what's going on, right? And that gives you some sense of these wild outs. What is outside the realm of likelihood and what is in increasingly? That's also scary. What's realistic. But my basic thesis is that giving you building block information helps you make decisions in your life. And so it's sometimes just about the tone. It's sometimes just about the completeness with which you give the information. Let me give you an example. It's more helpful to just one of the reasons I started news not noise is I would go out interviewing undecided voters when I was back as a political correspondent. And they were overwhelmingly women, right? Remember soccer moms. And these were women who were considered sort of like, why don't, why can't they make their voting decision? Right. There is a sneer to the coverage in general. And I talked to this. And I talked to this. And I talked to. them and they'd yell at me and they'd do the earmuffs thing and they'd say, I can't listen to the news. I can't take it. And I'd ask why and they'd say, all you do is scream at us about what's wrong, never give solutions, never tell me what I want to know and then go to commercial break. And then

they'd pull out a list and they'd say, what will this person do for child care? What will this person do for whatever issue they're dealing with in their family? It's not that they weren't engaged, didn't care. It's that they weren't getting what they need it. And so my theory was, was there's an audience that wants the new told differently. More information that connects to their real life. So tariffs, less about when is China calling, more about, hey, the port of L.A. says containers are going to stop, your shells are going to start getting empty in one month, right? So if you want to make plans start now, you have about a month.

It's about finding that middle ground of providing, yes, decision maker coverage, which is what a lot of the media. does and is important. I'm not discounting that. But there's also this space for how that connects to your life and providing it in ways that help you feel like you have agency to act. And that's where I find my space. When I'm able to do that, I feel like we're keeping you in a like stable spot even in these scary times. Sometimes even that's a challenge though. So you were, I think the first, one of the first legacy journalists, you left CNN deliberately to go out and be an independent journalist and find your own audience, which you absolutely have done. We said in the intro, 750,000 followers on Instagram, 250,000 followers on substack, which is huge. How, I mean, you've spawned

an entire revolution of journalists, many of whom have been let go because of the downsizing of traditional media. But how do you make a... make a living doing it. And are you enjoying being an independent media brand? Does it, does it make you feel your heads a bit above the radar? So we're now up to 777,000, which is good. And I want to give you a shout out, Joanna, because when I started this, it was very hard. And you were one of the people who was consistently kind and encouraging. And that made real difference for me. So thank you. Certainly welcome. I'm glad it worked.

I won't pretend it. It's been extremely hard. A lot of what I did, I did be. before, as you said, people were doing this. And I got a lot of, you know, what do you do? You know, what? And a lot of, oh, that's so sad kind of. It's like, oh, you had this big job and now you're like on your couch talking to your phone. And a lot of the work I do is, you know, it's from home. I'm on my own. I went from being in a newsroom where I was surrounded by people who were doing what I was doing. And that's what I missed the most where you could pop out and ask. like Dana Bash or Glory or whatever. What do you think of this story?

And I became isolated. But I just kept doing the work. And eventually, you know, I got an audience very early, which kept me going, right? So right away, I started this coverage during the Kavanaugh hearings and Jessica Seinfeld found the account. She shared it to her audience and it grew from like 1,000 people to 8,000. From Jessica, Amy Schumer found the account and she announced her pregnant. on my Instagram. It became a global news story. It was like on the BBC. And I got all these

followers who were celebrities who started also sharing the stuff. And because of that, it got a big audience. And that kept me going. You asked, how do I make a living? It was extremely hard in the beginning because I'm a journalist and I don't like to ask for money. It's not something I'm comfortable with. Right. And so I didn't ask the audience to support me. Finally, I ended up going on Patreon, and when that was not that fruitful, substack became a huge way to monetize. And that's been just phenomenal because you actually get paid for your work. Instagram is really hard. You know, they make tons and tons of money off the hundreds of thousands of hours.

People are on the platform from the work I do. And they sometimes, you know, they say you get paid for reels on Instagram and the check will be $324 at the end of the month for something that gets millions of You know, it's ridiculous. So it's really paid by the audience and then sponsors. And I do have some sponsors I work with who are sort of news aligned. I wondered because you're an independent journalist, whether or not you feel that you don't have the support of an organization around you, whether or not you feel your heads above the radar and you're more of a target. Yes and no. Less of a target because I'm not on cable news in Washington, D.C. in front of Trump every day, right? So if they turn on journalists, I'm not going to be the first. But more of a target because, you know, I had to report something the other day. I was breaking something and I don't have legal team. So then I have to scramble around to figure out, is there a lawyer I could talk to who will give me legal advice, right, on how to protect myself? I don't have that newsroom to go out and say, hey, how should I rephrase this so that we're protected, that sort of thing. It's the need for camaraderie.

and collaboration, that's been the biggest challenge. And I'm excited to say that I finally think we're at a place where there are enough people who are independent creators that there's increasingly opportunity for us to work together. And my hard pitch to everybody right now in the news space and in the sort of philanthropy space, investment space is there is a need to network fact-based creators, independent voices, so that people who care about facts, which there are, of whom there are many, know who those people are. And we need signals and curation to help the public discern who to trust when they're, quote, doing their own research. You must be very interactive with your audience. I feel like you must be in a feedback situation with your audience. How much are you

having to push back against disinformation in your work? Because I feel like that's just the through line of how we're living now and how much of your work is kind of based in that realm. So I spend a ton of time addressing that. The number one question I get is, is this true and somebody will forward me something? And what's really interesting is I'll say to them yes or no. And then I'll say, you know, here are the keywords you could use to search this on Google, just to sort of give you the rod, right? And people will say, oh, I know that. I just Google will return 12 million results and I don't know what's real. I trust you, which speaks to like people do want truth. Right. So there's this conversation going on. that truth is dead, nobody cares. No, there's an audience that does care, but they're not getting the signals to just help them discern what to believe. So I spent a lot of time on that. And then increasingly, I spend time talking to people who actually are more in another space, which is, what can I do? And that to me gives me like life force and energy because like going back to when Dobbs is overturned, I would get messages saying, what are they going to do? When are they

going to stop this? How can they let this happen? And the question now is, what can I do? And I did a meetup with some of my News Not Noise audience members. I was just in Denver. And it was such a nice experience. Everybody was talking about, I want to figure out what I can do in my community. I want to start bringing people together. I've just started hearing lately a lot of people saying, I want to talk to people who are on the other side, I just need to do something in my community to connect in person because I don't think we're as horribly divided as it seems. I think that's interesting. I always feel that things aren't quite as divided as everybody says there are the margins and then there's a huge moderate blob in the middle. Jessica,

you're the former White House correspondent for CNN. Caitlin Collins, now the White House correspondent, gets picked on all the time by Trump and sort of bullied. Is this a good thing for her career? What advice would you give her? Well, I think Caitlin does an A++ plus job. Like, I don't, she has, I guess because she went through it in Trump 1, she sort of takes it with equanimity. And she has this ability to come back with this sort of very calm,

steady tone, unflappable, that sort of takes. the emotional frisson out of it, right? Trump doesn't get the rise out of her. So it kind of flows off of her. It doesn't stick in the way it has with others. I have seen her do interviews. I saw her do this interview with Carrie Lake months ago where Carrie Lake just tried to constantly say you're a child. How could a child like it was so insane and irrelevant and rude and she was just steady as a rock and unflappable. So I think that she has learned. She has learned how to navigate this exact moment in a way that really works. I also feel like maybe she should do some Tai Chi or whatever it is. Like she's young, so she probably feels super resilient,

but it's good to start. You know, she's on TV. The thing that worries me for her, she's on TV all the time. And at some point, please, I hope they give her a break to just take a vacation or power down. Maybe she's deep into yoga, Nidra. Yeah, she looks like she could be into Yoga Nidra. She looks very fit. What do you think? I think she does a great job. What do you think? Yeah, I think she does a terrific job. Yeah. Very calm. And she looks, she does it while looking fantastic too. I know. That straight hair really helps. One of my biggest problems at the White House was they were always angry about my hair. What do you mean? At ABC, not at CNN. I was constantly criticized for my hair. It was too, it moved too much in the wind. You mean ABC said that or the White House said that?

No, ABC. ABC criticized your hair. her. What's your impression of Caroline leave it? Where do they find these people? I don't think. She's just the cruelest, meanest person. I don't understand. Where do they find these people? She's just performing a, I mean, I don't, I'm tongue tied. I don't have respect for her. Right. Well, she's also only 27. I can't understand how she can do that job at 27, but maybe you can do it because you don't know better. The only thing that we have in common with her is that Joanna and I hold hands and pray to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior before every podcast. But then do you call for human beings to put into torture camps and to violate the rule of law? That's the job.

Decimate the truth. You know what I'm clinging to is that with due process, Carolyn Levitt will also go through the menopause. It's coming. There's nothing she can do about it. Scriminate, it's coming for her. It also happens to your enemies. Happens to the worst woman you know. So, Jessica, what's next?

One of the things that really interests me is finding collaborative ways to grow networks with other fact-based creators. I just joined this collective run by Mediaite, Dan Abrams, Media Brand, where a bunch of us are making YouTube content and I guess we're going to promote each other's stuff. So that's cool. And I do think, I think there's need for connection now, I guess is the big picture. One is how do we bring fact-based independent voices to one another, to an audience that, and how do we also help people in the country who want community feel like they're getting permission to form it themselves? One of the things that I find in all these interviews I do with historians, you study fascism, authoritarianism, all that, they say the two most important things are that you form connections in your neighborhood on the grounds that you know who one another are. You have an in-person connection. And they also say, you know, find a source of truth so you know what's really happening and find joy. So I'm working on the joy. I think it has to do with doing less on the phone.

I think it's such a great idea to create, to build community. You know, because, well, I mean, I often reflect on just the degradation of truth and how the minds of all of our elders were so completely radicalized by Fox News over the many decades of its existence. And they've all really found community together and share a lot of. of truly lies, actually, disinformation. And I'll tell you one thing, which is, so in the News Not Noise community has Nikki Haley voters and Biden, Kamel voters, and AOC voters. Right. And I always say we're like valued, not like minded.

Right. And the more we can kind of do that in our own communities, I think we're going to all feel better. And truly, as tariffs, if they don't lift these tariffs, you're going to need to know your neighbors so you can get that proverbial cup of sugar soon, you know. Yes, shared values. That's really important shared values. If someone comes to me to borrow some sugar as my neighbor, I'm going to charge them a tariff. That's a great idea. 147%. All right. Well, Jessica, it's fantastic to have you join us. Thank you so much. And for those of you who haven't subscribed to

Jessica Yellen's News, Not Noise, go ahead and do it right now because it's terrific and I look at it all the time. Thank you for your. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you for your contributions. Thank you both so much for today and for what you do. Okay. Thank you. I love Jessica Yellen. I could talk to her all day, super smart. And yeah, and she's really done a good job. She's built that audience slowly and they are devoted. They are devoted and with good reason. She's wonderful. If you have been, thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please like, subscribe, comment and share it with everybody you meet at your parties this weekend. Parties. Share it with people you don't know at your parties. Leave them a little card in the bathroom when you're hiding in there switching over all the toilet paper rolls. Keep sending those emails to Beastpot at the DailyBeast.com. Drop Joanna specifically a comment on YouTube about how great I am. That'd be nice. I'll take it. I particularly like those comments. If you're not a subscriber to the Daily Beast, why not? It's easy to sign up. Just go to the Daily Beast.com. Do it. Do it. And as always, Don't forget this. And my muse, she's there for you. She's saying it all the time, get out there and just be best.

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