The Young Turks - Bonus Clip with Ana: Advice to Younger Self

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Ana Kasparian answers your questions and no topic is off-limits!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive?

by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca. What's up, everyone? Welcome to our bonus episode. We're doing a special bonus episode today to celebrate my 17 year anniversary here.

And I'm going to be asking or answering the questions you're asking of me, which I'm looking forward to. We're going to get to that in a moment. But first, I wanted to thank Art Guy for not only providing me with incredible art of my beautiful dog, Charlie, but also for contributing to TYT. And thank you to see Kaviris 89, who made a generous contribution to TYT. I appreciate you guys. Thank you so much. Moonshine Dragon edited an image of John to show him with purple hair. And it's hilarious, especially because of the smile that John has on his face.

So thank you for making me laugh. I really appreciate that as well. Okay, so let's get to some of these questions. I'm going to try to answer as many of them as I can. And I know we started a little late, so I might go over a little bit, guys, don't get mad at me if I do. So let's start off with one of the questions I'm going to answer is for some time now, you've said you don't know where you are politically. Can you expand on that? But I'm going to tease you guys by saying I'm going to answer it in a moment.

I'm going to answer easier questions first, okay? How do you separate work life from home life is one of the questions. And so the way that I do it is actually very easy. It's funny, I don't stop listening to, let's say, a podcast that's political. Or if I'm reading a book, I'll continue reading like that political book. Even when I put in a full day of work here at TYT on political news, like you would think I'd want to go home and kind of shut it off. But I actually love politics.

I love to listen to podcasts. I love to read books. I love to listen to audiobooks. And so since I enjoy that, I keep doing that, but I do, in fact, unplug from TYT specifically, because TYT is work. That is where I work. And so I just don't look at my email. I don't get notifications on my phone for email.

I don't get no, I don't have Twitter on my phone either. I think that's probably even more important in maintaining my mental health because Twitter just isn't good for your mental health at all, right? So sometimes during the day, I'll log on, but not through an app. I think an app makes it a lot more easy for you to like go on and get sucked into that social media platform. But I, I love the spring. I have to say I've been a lot happier lately because I get off work. By the time I get home, it's still light out.

And so I go on my, I call my stoner walks. I'll take a hit of my vape. And then I'll go for like a 30 minute to an hour long walk and I just like really take in my surroundings, nature, flowers, birds, it makes me really, really happy. That helps to decompress and then I go home and I cook dinner for me and my husband and spend time with him and my lovely dog Charlie. We've been watching snowfall lately and I love that show. I highly recommend it. I'm very fortunate. I think I have an incredible life. You know, this job is hard. I do feel a lot of gratitude for the life that I've been privileged to live, and I'm really, really happy and thankful for the people I have in my life. So that's how I unplug. I think about

those things, and I try to shift the focus to that instead of focusing on some of the terrible news stories that we cover here. All right, let's go to the next one. How does it feel to celebrate 17 years at TYT? What's changed since you joined? I know I'm supposed to engage in like, I don't I don't engage in faux positivity, right? So I have mixed feelings about celebrating 17 years at TYT. Life is flying by. I'm kind of going through what I think most people my age go through, which is like that angst, that existential dread.

I don't know. I just, did I make the right decisions in life? Is the work that I'm doing important? Does it matter? Does it genuinely fulfill me? me or am I just telling myself that it fulfills me? And the last two years have been super challenging because I've grown in certain ways that sometimes I'm worried, you know, the audience might not take well to. And to be sure, some audience members haven't taken well

to it. So it's been mixed. I think it's an accomplishment to stay and work at a company for 17 years straight, but the time also flew by. And so, yeah, I ask myself if I've made good decisions. So it is mixed. But when you ask what's changed since I joined a lot. I mean, when I joined TYT, there were like five people working here. Like, it was such a tiny startup company. And we didn't know if it was going to succeed, right? But I loved it so much that I was willing to risk TYT falling apart if I could just continue working. it here for as long as I could, right? And so it's grown into a bigger company with multiple shows, a lot of new people. And so, you know, there's good and bad that comes along with that,

obviously. Sometimes you hire people. I don't hire people, but sometimes the company has hired people who ended up, you know, betraying us and turning their backs on us. And that's been really hard and painful, especially when you started off in an environment that had more of a like family feel. But, you know, this is, this place is not my dream. This place is Jank's dream. And so Jank gets to build it the way that he sees fit. And obviously I believe in his vision enough to stay here. So, you know, I hope that answered your question. Out of all the stories and moments you've had on TYT, which story and or moment was your favorite so far? I don't know if I have a favorite moment.

I think that I have a favorite era of TYT and that was the early years because it was just, look, when you're at a smaller like startup company, it's definitely less structured and I really enjoyed it. Like I remember coming into work and feeling like I wasn't coming into work. I felt like I was hanging out with friends and talking about the news and it was a lot more laid back, things have become a lot more professional here, a lot more structure, way better production values. And so I think overall, the product has been better for our audience, no doubt. But in terms of what I enjoyed more on a personal level, it was definitely

the early years of TYT. I mean, there were downsides to that as well. Like, Jank would come in late all the time. Like the show was supposed to start, I'm just going to throw a a number out there, like it was supposed to start at five o'clock, right? He'd show up at 505 and it would be like, Jake, you're the host. Like you can't just show up five minutes after the show is supposed to start. So there were definitely issues back then. If we could have found a bit like, I wish we found like maybe a better middle ground. And part of it is my fault too.

I'm like a little bit of a perfectionist and I think I overproduce stories sometimes because I want to get you guys as much detail and much information as possible. Sometimes I need to remind myself to relax and find a good middle. ground between the early days of TYT and where we are today. But the one thing that I'll say, going back to how does it feel to celebrate 17 years at TYT, I have to give this place a lot of credit and I have to give Jank a lot of credit. Jank allows me to be who I am, no matter what. And so fairly recently after I got some backlash from, you know, a small but very vocal portion of the audience, I just told Jank, I was like, you know what, maybe I'm not a good fit.

I don't want the audience to hate me, and I don't want to hurt the company by hosting a show and sharing opinions that they don't want to hear. And Jen told me, like, I don't know, I don't want to hear any of this. I want you to say what you genuinely feel, and I want you to do it confidently without fear of like retaliation. And I give Jank a lot of credit for that. I am loyal to TYT because of Jank, okay, make no mistake about it. I have never worked in any other place that's given me the kind of.

editorial freedom that Jenkins given me. So that is my favorite thing about TYT. Absolutely. I just have a lot of respect for him and I have a lot of respect for any place of work that gives their workers freedom to voice their pleasure or displeasure at how things are going, right? And as you guys know, I voice my displeasure all the time. So let's go to the next one. All right, I think that's a good lead in to the provocative question. For some time now, You've said you don't know where you are politically. Can you expand on that? Yes, okay.

So I think in order to understand what I mean, I have to give you the context and some of the things that happened to me personally that has made me question things about my political ideology. So there's a lot I haven't shared with the audience. Some of it is like hard to share. And so I'm going to try to keep myself together as I do it. So 2022 was a pretty pivotal year for me. A lot of bad things happened in my life a lot.

So two very close family members of mine, my mother included, were diagnosed with blood cancer and my mom's okay, she's hanging in there. But it was a really hard year because, you know, my dad, as I've shared with you guys before, I think, my dad came to America as a refugee. He wanted to escape Soviet era Armenia. At the same time, my dad has never, for better or worse, has never been a believer in investing in the stock market. And so he needed to have a plan for retirement if he's not going to invest in the stock market. If he's not going to have an IRA or a 401k or a pension,

which isn't even really a thing these days, then he needs to figure out what he's going to do about retirement, right? So he decided to save up, save up, save up, and buy a small apartment building, okay? At that year, 2022, there was a moratorium on evictions and his tenants, unfortunately, decided to take full advantage of it, even though they were still working, even though they were buying new cars, and they just refused to pay rent. That was my dad's only income. That was the only household income for my mom and dad, okay? My mom's diagnosed with blood cancer. My dad can't make any money off of his one retirement investment. And at the same time, all I'm hearing from my political side, from leftists, from progressives is landlords

are garbage, they're terrible people, fuck them, they can eat shit. It was a hard year financially, not just for my parents, but for me, because who do you think is stepping in to help? At the same time, my dad still has to pay the utilities. He's not going to stop paying utilities and maintaining the building for his tenants, right? So he kept doing that too. It was an awful year. So I just feel like the treatment and the rhetoric that I was seeing and hearing and feeling really bothered me. And it felt like, you know, for all the attention I was spending on the right, basically seeing issues as black and white and being kind of needlessly cruel to people, I was starting to see similar behavior on the left. And I didn't like it. Then all the crime-related

stuff happened. First, someone broke into my car, stole my wallet. Who cares? Not that big of a You just call your credit card companies, tell them it was stolen, they'll send you new credit cards, it's not the end of the world. That happened, and then after that, I was sexually assaulted, right? And I shared that story on the show, and the reaction I got from people on the left was insanely cruel and hateful. And so that was an eye-opener. After that, someone tried to break into my car by jamming a screwdriver into the driver's side lock that destroyed the electrical system of the car. There was also a shortage of parts at the time. So my car was in the shop for three months straight.

That was brutal. And then catalytic converter theft. I mean, it was just one thing after another, after another, after another. And it's like, man, I'm lucky that I have a job that pays me enough to, you know, deal with these financial issues and it doesn't totally crush me. But what about everyone else who's like living in my state and dealing with this stuff as well? not a lot of people are able to afford emergencies like this with no issue, right? And so as I brought up those issues, I noticed that there was really no political will in California to deal with it.

And make no mistake in Los Angeles in particular, it's pretty much run by progressive lawmakers. And they just, on one hand, pretend to care about the livelihoods of Angelinos. But then they want to do absolutely nothing about things like catalytic converter theft. which by the way cost thousands of dollars to replace. And so I kept seeing these like weird contradictions and all this stuff started to bother me. So what do I mean when I say that I'm having, well, how did you word it? Where I don't know, I don't know where I stand politically. Well, because the Overton window to some extent, culturally speaking, has shifted pretty far to the left in an area that I'm not comfortable with.

And so I don't, I don't think that we should treat criminals as if they're all victims and then treat victims as if they're the bad guys that need to be silenced. I think that's wrong. And we get a lot of that in California. I think it's gross. Right now the LA City Council is working on banning police officers from doing traffic stops. At a time when we're dealing with street takeovers, pedestrians getting victimized by hit and run incidents. How does any of this make sense? It doesn't. So I think that maybe I've hit my limit with some of the progressive policies. I think they go too far and that's where I'm starting to question some of the issues.

And I also don't like the demonization and the conflation of mom and pop landlords to corporate landlords. I think that that's black and white thinking and it's totally gross. So there's a lot going on. Doesn't mean I'm conservative. but I just wish that people were more willing to consider the nuances of the issues that they advocate for. And they don't. And when you do call those issues into question, they try to silence you, they try to censor you, they try to intimidate you so you don't keep talking about it. I'm going to keep talking about it because this is who I am and I don't like to be

bullied into anything, right? But I just think if the left is going to continue pursuing purity standards when they decide who and who is and is not considered left or progressive, well, then they're going to keep pushing people out. And if they want to push me out, go ahead and push me out. But I don't know if that's really a sound political strategy in building what you would need to build to actually get the robust economic policies that we want. We need a broad coalition. And if wanting to provide some protections for property owners, makes you a bad progressive and you want to dispense of them. Again, I don't know if that's a good strategy.

But I'm trying to figure out what I am. I'm trying to figure out where I stand. And I don't feel comfortable with any of the labels right now. I don't want to be labeled anything because I just feel like once you're labeled something, you have to be like a foot soldier for everything that group advocates for. And there are some things that progressives advocate for that I disagree with. And so criminal justice reform, you know, that's been implemented in places like New York, don't agree with it. I don't think restorative justice is working.

I think restorative justice for the most part has proven to be bullshit. It's just been, hey, let's let's let people out. Let's not rehabilitate them. Let's not do anything to keep people safe and then make excuses when the same people keep getting arrested again and again and again for pretty freaking violent crimes. I don't agree with that. I thought restorative justice was actually about rehabilitating people, reforming our prisons, making some reforms when it comes to policing. None of that's happened.

Instead, we keep hearing excuses about how like bail reform is awesome and we should be totally happy that repeat violent offenders keep getting released. Don't agree with that at all. That was long, that was spicy, that was provocative, but it is what it is. We know your ancestry is Armenian. Do you make any traditional Armenian foods? I do. If so, what's your favorite? So traditional Armenian food is a weird way of putting it. Armenian cuisine has been influenced by many Arab countries, Muslim countries. I would say my favorite food that Armenians kind of

took from Turks and in my opinion made it better is called Manta. I make a killer Manta. It's like basically these little meat dumplings that you eat with a garlic. yogurt sauce. I love something called Sipas, which I don't think is traditionally Armenian. It might actually originate from Lebanon, if I'm not mistaken. But I make a giant pot of that soup literally every week. And I love it. So yeah, I cook a lot of different cuisines, including things that are Armenian but are also, you know, originate from other countries, but have been kind of, you know, altered as Armenian cuisine. Let's go to, does Charlie know any tricks?

Charlie knows all the tricks. Okay, he gives me the patica, he does the rollover, he does spins, he gives me a high five, he'll give me a kiss on command. Charlie, Charlie knows the tricks, okay? He's a smart dog. He just, he really wants the treats. He'll do anything for a treat, a little baby boy. Okay, what are some of your biggest sacrifices that you've had to make?

What are some of the sacrifices you've had to make in your career? I mean, mental sanity sometimes, I guess. Everyone makes sacrifices for their careers. But when you love what you do, it doesn't feel like a sacrifice. So it's kind of hard to say. I think overall, I'm grateful that this job challenges me and it forces me to like constantly reevaluate things. I'm a curious. person and luckily because of that, I think I excel in this kind of career path, right? I want to learn about the world around me. I want to get to the bottom of things. I want to understand what the truth is. I think I've realized that I'm less of an ideologue and more of someone who's interested in figuring out what the reality is of any given situation.

But I would say that the biggest sacrifice that I experienced for the longest period of time was probably happiness and mental sanity because it's just this the subject matter we cover is so depressing. And so I've had to learn how to compartmentalize my life, right? How to leave the negative emotions that I sometimes experience and talking about these stories here at the workplace and not take them home with me. And when I do take them home with me, I've learned like what to do so I'm not honestly making my my home unbearable for my husband. Like I want my husband to be happy. I don't want to bring negativity home from work. So I'll go for the long walks and I'll just kind of get it out of my system and I'll be fine. But, you know, it took a long time

to learn those techniques and learn how to not let certain things get to me. And more importantly, learn how to control what I can control and not feel as though I alone need to fix the world. I think like when you're younger, you think you have the capacity to do that, number one, when you don't. But you also feel a responsibility to do something. Do what you can. Take things one step at a time. And you again can only make positive change in the world through broad coalitions, not unilaterally. That's just the reality of the situation. What are some of the biggest, oh yeah, I read that already. Let's see. What experiences have you had in this career that may have changed your perception of how the world functions? Or what specific viewpoints

may have changed since taking this career opportunity. Well, man, I would say the experiences I had after the pandemic. Like when the pandemic started to wind down, I realized that there were a lot of stories I got wrong. And that was a pivotal moment in my career because I feel that my top responsibility is to you guys, is to the audience. And if I ever unwittingly mislead the audience, I feel awful about it. So what's been difficult for me lately has been like the corrections that I've made. So, you know, we've made corrections about so many different stories. Obviously the Kyle Rittenhouse story, I issued a correction on.

Jank disagrees with my take on that, as do some people in the audience. but you look at the video of what happened that night and it's impossible to deny that in those moments where he fired his weapon, that he didn't do so in self-defense. I think he did. I had to make that correction. But it's awful because I think when you're more wedded to ideology as opposed to the truth, which I feel that I was for a while and I'm waking up and getting out of that kind of mindset, you preach something to your audience. And I was doing it in a way that was, I was unwittingly doing it. Let's put it that way. I didn't intentionally mislead anyone. But that creates or builds a type of audience that expects you to cover everything in a certain

way. And once I made those corrections, and once I started being a lot more careful in researching stories to make sure that I understand all the perspectives in good faith, and I have all the facts in front of me, and that I'm being fair, right? Now that I'm a lot more careful and nuanced in the way that I talk about some of these stories, I feel like the audience that I built is mad at me, right? And that's been like the hardest thing to deal with. I feel like I'm in therapy right now. But I don't know if you guys get what I'm saying, but that's where I'm coming from.

And I just hope you guys are patient with me. And I hope that even if you disagree with where I'm coming from, you understand that I don't mean any harm and I'm trying to do my best in getting you guys accurate information. The facts of the story are the facts. I can't change that. My perception that you can totally disagree with and you can get mad at me about, but I hope you understand that it never comes from a bad place. So let's go over a little bit since we started late.

What's something you tell a younger you to prepare for what journalism in this country has become? I would tell a younger me to not pursue journalism. That's what I would tell a younger me if I'm being quite honest with you. This is a, this is a super challenging field of work to begin with. The efforts to stay afloat drive me crazy. I got to be honest with you guys. I hate fundraisers and I hate membership drives and I hate asking people to donate money to us. I hate it.

I despise it. I can't stand it. But if we don't do it, we go under. And if I had known that that would be the case, I don't know if I would have pursued this career path. That's where I'm coming from. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to us. We really appreciate it because we wouldn't be able to do this without you.

But yeah, it's every media company that we thought was doing such a great job and was doing better than us has gone under at digital media outlets. And it's scary, it's scary, like this job is stressful enough, having to produce a show, having to deal with deadly, deadly, daily deadlines is stressful and difficult enough. But to have that added pressure of having to fundraise and having to do membership drives because otherwise you won't have a job, imagine how stressful that is. So again, I know that sounds really negative that I would tell a younger me to not pursue this. But I would, let's just put it this way, I would at least inform the younger me of that reality.

Because I don't think that's talked about enough in journalism school, right? The way the business models have changed, that doesn't get discussed at all. You learn about how to report the news. You learn about how to write for print journalism or magazine articles and all. But you don't really learn about how quickly the business model changes. changes, how the media landscape has changed. We learned about conglomerates basically buying up all the media and basically controlling things.

But that was the extent of the business model discussion. And I think there should have been more focus on, you know, how the internet was disrupting things and all of that. All right, let's see. Do you see the Republicans change of stance regarding abortion? regarding abortion, increasing Trump's lead, and is the Democrats' reliance on abortion a mistake? I don't know if Republicans are going to be able to successfully skirt the damage they've

done by advocating for and succeeding in passing abortion bans. I think that they have made a name for themselves in that area and trying to back away from it in this, you know, late date is laughable to say the least. We're talking about 50 straight years of GOP branding themselves with the anti-reproductive rights branding. They're not going to be able to escape it easily. That said, do I think that it would be a political mistake for Democrats to run on the abortion issue?

I don't. I actually think it is a smart political strategy. I also tend to think that Democrats simply like both sides using it as a political tool when the issue impacts so many people in this country is incredibly gross. So I have a moral take on it, but I also have, I can put that aside and look at it only through a political lens. And through a political lens, yeah, I think it's a smart strategy for Democrats to focus on that. I think it would also be a very smart strategy for Democrats on a national level to try to do more to codify reproductive rights. But they totally dropped the ball

back in 2009 when Obama had the opportunity with a super majority in the Senate to pass bills that would codify abortion in the country. I think that's it. Let's see. Yeah, I think I answered most of these. Oh, what are some of your favorite shop TYT merchandise items? I really like the, okay, so there's two. And I know this sounds narcissistic. I apologize, but how can I not mention these two? The holiday sweater with my face on it, super fun. Okay, the art for that sweater is amazing. My second favorite, or first favorite, they're really interchangeable. I like these two a lot. The Anna Commandment, right, the one with the rant on how religion shouldn't dictate the lives of every American. And obviously I went on that rant when I was talking about Republicans

trying to do away with abortion rights. So I like that one too. Mostly because they used a picture of me that a former colleague, an employee of TYT, Cassandra Hanks, took of me. And it's such a good picture. She did such a good job. So that's the main reason why I love it so much. So I hope that answers your question. Anyway, guys, I poured my heart out during this and I'm sure I'm gonna regret it later, but I hope you guys got your money's worth. Thank you for being members. Thank you for taking part in this Ask Me Anything.

And thank you for sticking by me if you have decided to stick by me throughout many, many years here, through all the different changes, I've undergone. The people who have been around and have supported me throughout all of that, I have so much love for you guys and I wish you could feel the kind of appreciation that I feel for you on a daily basis. Because really, when I think about what keeps me here, it's a few things, it's jank because of the deep admiration and respect I have for him and his genuine belief in editorial freedom. It's my team who I have the privilege of working with every single day, people I learn from every day, people who do incredible work every day and are there not only in a professional, sense, but on a personal sense as well, I just, I mean, Edwin Umanya has been here at TYT for a very long time as well.

Freaking love Edwin. Like I just feel lucky that I get to work with these people. And then the third thing, and this isn't in any particular order, I want to be clear, is the audience members who have picked me up in my darkest moments and just showed me that they've got my back and they believe in what I'm trying to do here. So thank you to everyone who's done that and thank you to everyone who's Thank you to everyone who's helped to support TYT and what we do here. All right, hopefully the executive team is not mad at me.

You guys wanted to do and ask me anything. You got it. Have a great night, everyone. We'll see you tomorrow.