And, This Is How The Media Is Failing Us In 2026 With Alex Wagner
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 43 minutes
Words per Minute
206.02899
Summary
This week, we take a look at Venezuela s uncertain future in a conversation with two people who have directly advised U.S. presidents: Juan Gonzalez during the Obama and Biden administrations, and Carlos D. Rosillo during Trump s two terms.
Transcript
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of the American public in a way that has awoken
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To be purging the country of all the brown ones
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is not going to leave us with much of a country.
00:00:22.480
We as human beings need to go out for cocktails
00:00:24.840
and have more sex and do things with other human bodies.
00:00:42.720
This week on The Moment, we take a look at Venezuela's
00:00:44.720
uncertain future in a conversation with two people
00:00:50.720
Juan Gonzalez during the Obama and Biden administrations.
00:01:00.720
I can guarantee you that nobody in the Trump administration
00:01:04.720
Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos
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we're resetting the way we talk about our health.
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what we don't know, and how messy it can all be.
00:01:26.720
Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed?
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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline Podcast.
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And this January, we're going to go on the road
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Better Offline CES coverage won't be the usual rundown
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but an unvarnished look at what the tech industry plans to sell
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With guest appearances from Behind the Bastards' Robert Evans,
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Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,
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host of Checking In on the Black Effect Podcast Network.
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It starts with giving your mind and your spirit
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And on my podcast, we talk mental health, healing, growth,
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and everything you need to step into your next season,
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I occasionally dip in with the boys at Pod Save America.
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I got an invite to come to the mansion to sit and be, you know,
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help inaugurate this beautiful studio with perfect lighting.
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I, you know, I have ticket will go is what I'm saying.
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And what you're just done with cable, cable so yesterday.
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I am still, I'm still a senior political analyst for MSNOW,
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which you may remember from its earlier heyday as MSNBC.
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I'm going to get to the whole MSNBC versus MSNOW
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And then I have a substat called How the Hell with Alex Wagner.
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And then I also have a book coming out this year that I can't talk about
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This is my second ill-fated attempt at writing a book.
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Future Face, which is a story about identity and how we sort of decide
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and tell ourselves who is American and who isn't.
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And it's largely autobiographical, so it's insanely boring.
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I appreciate you saying that for different reasons
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because I'm coming out with my own book and I'm concerned about similar fate.
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Yes, but you know you're maybe of slightly more interest in the American public.
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I don't know about that, but I'm only going to talk about you
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This makes me very uncomfortable to talk mostly about myself.
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I notice your physiology has changed a little bit here.
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I literally on New Year's Day up there in Olympic Valley, we call it now.
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Squaw Valley used to be called, but now it's Olympic Valley.
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I did a hike and just jumped right in the river.
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It was, and I did a lot of breathing, heavy breathing in the water because it was slightly
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But jumping in cold water on New Year's Day, Gov, I got to say, is not the most original
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There's like an entire polar plunge that happens.
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Well, it goes back almost a few thousand years prior to that, too.
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Do you do cold plunges other than on New Year's Day?
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I was doing them three times a week when I was really good.
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Because I've been reading more signs that women actually need it at a slightly higher
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Need it at the higher temperature, you were forced to raise it.
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I thought we agreed we weren't going to be misogynists on this podcast.
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But the panic response that sets in for women is at a higher, we have a higher, a lesser
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degree of tolerance for the pain in part because the pain, I should say, of cold, not pain
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We're going to go into a much more protective mode quicker because we're responsible for
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Oh, well then that's why you're jumping in and jumping out.
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This is going to be the source of your great humiliation on the internet.
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The fact that you only plunge for two to three minutes.
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I mean, a little waterfall was right, you know, the central casting stuff.
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I mean, speaking of extras, you have so many extra gigs now.
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And then that was at noon, and then it was at 4, and then it was not on the air at MSNBC.
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And then I was at CBS and The Atlantic and Showtime for a while.
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And then I was called back to duty at MSNBC in 2022.
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And that's when I was hosting the 9pm hour from Tuesday through Friday, until I was not hosting the 9pm hour.
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And I'm curious, because I do want to get back, because I am more interested in your early days in DC.
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But this idea of four days, I mean, it's almost an impossible gig, right?
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After Rachel on Monday, and then somehow you take the baton on a Tuesday to Friday.
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Initially, I thought, this is going to be insane.
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Here's what I will say about that period of my life.
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Rachel is an extraordinary person to work with.
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In terms of her generosity, and her spirit, and her tenacity, and her brilliance.
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And really tried to help make that transition as easily as possible.
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And the realities of cable are such that people are very hardcore about the folks they watch.
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There's a deep intimacy and trust that goes along with it.
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So, you know, it's hard for anybody to take that baton slash fill those shoes.
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And I think especially now, if people don't see the people they've always seen, the person that they've invited into their living room for, you know, however many years, they're really kind of not interested in the next flavor.
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And so once you lose those faces and those eyeballs and those hearts, it's hard to replace it with a different generation.
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And that's kind of the conundrum of linear cable right now.
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And I think it goes then to the, you know, then what you're, I mean, it goes to precisely then what you're doing and the audiences now you're reaching, which are wildly different.
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Oh, on Crooked Media, I don't actually know, I shouldn't answer this question, but it's considerably younger.
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I mean, we have lots of people in the demographic.
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I will say I have like, I get a little bit nostalgic and sad about the fact that more people don't crave institutional media the way that they used to.
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Because I think there is a value of having like a news outlet with, I don't know, news gathering team, people that are breaking the stories and doing reporting.
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And like analysis generally is good, but your resources are way more limited in like a podcasting network than they would have been in a place like MSNBC.
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On Tuesday, you'd prepare over the weekend or on a Monday, you had how many staff for your show?
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But then actually physically making the show, the floor director and the people in the control room, it's like probably close to 100.
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I mean, bonkers, which like maybe we could have streamlined that a little bit.
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But there's so many balls that you're juggling and it's whether it's the graphics department or cutting tape or making sure the facts are actually correct, it's a massive operation.
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It's great to be in the vanguard of where information and news is going.
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But I do think something's lost by sort of just giving up on the infrastructure of like institutional media.
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I'm not to say that's not to say that legacy media hasn't failed the public in a lot of ways, but there should be rigor.
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There should be a real sort of machine behind what we're doing because to report the facts and to do them honestly and accurately requires manpower, womanpower, whatever power.
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And like that's just not quite the same thing as a podcast, though I love just talking and cursing.
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I mean you can say the word so many times on a podcast.
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What, so this whole thing about legacy media, it's interesting.
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You just, because I know it's, you know, it seems a 90-10 issue to say legacy media has failed us and there's sort of an acceptance of that.
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In what way, though, do you believe legacy media has failed us?
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And Tony, just for folks that are listening in, is now the new head of CBS.
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Yeah, and had a very pointed statement when he started.
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Said we've been listening too much to academics and elites, among other things.
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I think the issue is not listening, not listening too much to academics.
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And the reason you reverence Katie Turr is that Tony's.
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When you say the words, Hunter Biden's laptop and Hillary Clinton's emails, and we've listened too much to academics and elites.
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Like there may be a lot of other words around there, but those are dog whistles of a very specific sort.
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And a moment when CBS needs to prove to the American public that it still has integrity.
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That the newly installed head of the Evening News, the man who sits in Cronkite's chair, is out there sending dog whistles to a public that, first of all, I don't think they're ever going to, I mean, just from a business standpoint, I'm not sure MAGA is going to flock to CBS Evening News.
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But like the idea that we've been listening to academics and elites is not what's poisoning our culture.
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The thing that's poisoning our culture is that people aren't listening to people with scientific information and deep understanding and nuanced understanding of the issues.
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And like, this is a time to ruminate and to think more deeply and to be more empathetic and not to just be like, what do you think, Joe Schmue?
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Like, I'm someone who loves doing field reporting.
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I think it's essential to the work of journalism and democracy.
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But to say that the people who know issues well should be somehow marginalized or silenced or not listened to is not what's wrong with society right now, you know?
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But generally speaking, like, my God, on climate, I wish we listened to more academics and elites, you know?
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I don't know. I thought it was very problematic.
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I used to work at CBS News and I remember doing pieces for the evening news and the rigor that that required.
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And like, it was terrifying to do pieces for the evening news because it was like, you better have your fucking T's crossed and your I's dotted.
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And to say nothing of 60 Minutes where we weren't even letting the building.
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Like, you guys stay over there on the news side.
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What happened in 60 Minutes with that report that was delayed was not delayed in other markets.
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I mean, places like Canada and elsewhere it was shown.
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I mean, was that a gut punch from your perspective?
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So for people who have not followed this story, Barry Weiss, the newly installed editor in chief, a non-existent role like two years ago, spiked.
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She delayed a story that Sharon Alfonsi, a notoriously rigorous reporter over at CBS, had put together about CICOT and the prisons that we are deporting migrants to and the brutality of those conditions.
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And at the last minute, Barry Weiss said, we're not going to run it.
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And as the reporting came out, it became clear that part of the reason the piece wasn't ready is because the White House hadn't weighed in enough.
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As anyone who has ever tried to get comment from the White House knows, the White House, like, never responds to anything.
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And if the White House not responding to something is a reason to kill a story, then there's going to be no more news.
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And if we are now trying to put the White House in charge of greenlighting national news stories on programs like CBS Evening News, that means the Fourth Estate is on life support.
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But if you want to go to Canada and watch it, you may.
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Which is just, that alone is sort of, that's deeply remarkable that it was still able to go forward, fully edited, without the additional edits that have been demanded.
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I guess Canada doesn't have the same requirements.
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So you say all this, but at the same time you remarked that legacy media, you had your own, not flippant remark, but you made the statement that the legacy media is, you know, deserves a fate of at least some critique.
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I mean, in not the way that, again, is expressed necessarily by how you're feeling Barry Weiss and this sort of culture now of CBS is reflecting it.
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But in what way did the legacy media let us down?
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Well, listen, I think, not to sound like some weird, like, Marxist who got her show canceled, but the structure of the news is a profit-making enterprise.
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And, you know, there are very real demands about ratings and advertisers, less and less advertisers, but, you know, cable subscriptions and money is at the essence of the structure of news.
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And that's problematic, because once you're chasing the money, then the stories that you cover are going to be the ones that get the most eyeballs, right?
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And the stories that get the most eyeballs are not the most important stories.
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And there's an enormous amount of pressure to cover stories relentlessly that you know the public is going to just be interested in because they're salacious or controversial or whatever.
00:17:43.720
It is at the cost of other stories that really matter.
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And it is at the cost of, I think, even having voices out there that would shed light on things.
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You know, I think what we've become is like kind of like these little mini like analysis factories and that we're not really reporting anymore.
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We're not covering stories just because they matter.
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I mean, they sent me out on the road for 100 days in the first 100 days.
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To Trumpland, which was a podcast I did for MSNBC.
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And it was like this novel idea of sending me out on the road.
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And it's like I get that it's expensive to go on the road, right?
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But there's enough money to send people out and have them actually report to be in the world.
00:18:23.720
Part of the reason Trump hit like a freight train in 2016 is because nobody was fucking out there.
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And I know there's a lot of hue and cry about like we overly pay attention to red state America and the plight of like white working class.
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And the plight of certain groups of people dictates in large part the course of political events.
00:18:41.720
And to put blinders onto that and to say forsake entire subgroups of people or be incurious about what makes them tick is at our own peril.
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You know, and I think there's just I don't want to say laziness, but we're cutting a lot of corners in institutional media.
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And I think in part that's why you see this huge gulf between what's happening in the country and what's being covered on the news.
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And that feels like a fail to the people all over the country.
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You said that less focus on advertising more on subscriptions.
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Is that a recent transition in sort of a consciousness?
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I mean, it seems to me that sort of the business model in the past was just the traditional ad package.
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Is that a decade, two decades ago or is it a year or two or is it the nature of the consolidation of the media generally?
00:19:38.720
Well, I'm no Jim Rutenberg or Ben Smith, not a media expert or Brian Stelter.
00:19:44.720
But but essentially once you have an audience that's ages out of the advertising demographic, advertisers are less interested in advertising.
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And so you're making, I mean, if you watch the ads on cable news, it's like anti-slip bath mats and, you know, shower stalls with guardrails.
00:20:04.720
I'm very interested in that, that, that those consumable, those, those, those products.
00:20:08.720
I still have difficulty getting in my cold plunge.
00:20:17.720
That's because you're basically looking, you're looking at a cold body of water and being like, whoo, cold.
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Anyway, so, so once you don't have those advertising dollars, you become ever more reliant on carriage fees and cable subscriptions and people are cutting the cord, you know, which is why your average audience age is like somewhere in their seventies, potentially.
00:20:38.720
Um, but then you're real reliant on like what gets eyeballs and like what people are interested in.
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And something like Jeffrey Epstein is a great example of a story that absolutely matters.
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Um, should and deserves coverage, but at the expense of literally everything else, I don't know.
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And the way in which it's covered, is it all about Trump and what could be in the files rather than what happened to these fucking women and what they suffered.
00:21:04.720
I mean, it actually informs the structure of the news coverage itself.
00:21:09.720
Like people like, I mean, I don't really want to hear about what happened to them because that's bleak as fuck.
00:21:12.720
But like, is this going to be a problem for Trump?
00:21:20.720
I, we, we don't, nobody wants to give tough love to the audience anymore because people are so dependent on the audience for basic survival.
00:21:26.720
What influence did you have in terms of the stories?
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Was that a staff you walk in and they said, here are the five top stories.
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Was there, I mean, there's a lot, Sershan and I think a lot of proof points at Fox, it seems to be they'll carry and everybody's sort of driving the same talking point.
00:21:45.720
Well, you know, every day I was like, are we leading with French laundry?
00:21:57.720
But no, but seriously, that's a perfect example.
00:21:59.720
I mean, is that something that you, so you guys pick up and say, not enough people are focused on this.
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Fox is kicking our, cleaning our clock on this French laundry thing.
00:22:18.720
No, but is that, no, but with the point though, is that, I mean, is that a conversation where you're watching or your spouses, what your friends are watching and say, boy, Alex, we're really, you're missing this.
00:22:31.720
And do you have the influence then to carry that?
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The, the, first of all, let me just disabuse you of the parallel you're trying to draw between Fox News and MSNOW.
00:22:42.720
Like if we thought something, and by the way, you can.
00:22:45.720
Anyway, I, I certainly believe that it's a propaganda network.
00:22:50.720
But, but do you, is that universally a belief system?
00:22:53.720
I mean, is it just without any controversy within sort of the mainstream?
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There's nothing about it that approximates quote unquote news.
00:23:05.720
I mean, people, people, I mean, there are occasionally moments that make their way through the bubble across Sixth Avenue where it's like, oh my God, they said something true.
00:23:13.720
But, but the structure of MSNBC, at least when I was there running my show, you know, Rashida Jones was like the head of the network.
00:23:23.720
And really they were, I'm trying to think of a less derogatory way of saying that, but like fiefdoms, you know, people ran their shows.
00:23:29.720
And I think you see that in the expression of each of these shows.
00:23:32.720
Rachel's show is unlike Chris Hayes' show. Chris Hayes' show is unlike Lawrence O'Donnell's show.
00:23:38.720
And so there were a lot of decisions that we made.
00:23:40.720
But, you know, you are under an enormous amount of pressure to keep your numbers up and to make sure if a story is failing, you don't cover that story again.
00:23:47.720
And sometimes the stories that fail with an audience are actually really important stories to fucking tell.
00:23:54.720
Other than that, we do get, we got a lot of leeway to cover what we wanted to cover in the way that we thought was most responsible.
00:24:02.720
And what kind of relationship to the prior anchors, I mean, because you'll do four hours prior, they'll have covered extensively a story you want to cover.
00:24:10.720
You start making adjustments on that basis because they got this guest and now all of a sudden we'll seem redundant all of a sudden.
00:24:16.720
Or is it just, you just see the world in these sort of bite sizes where it's just my hour, no context necessarily to the audience of the prior hour or the hour coming after me.
00:24:27.720
I wanted to tell you, Governor, I know you're term limited, so you are maybe looking for something.
00:24:31.720
There are internships where we can take you behind the curtain.
00:24:34.720
You mean I could get answers to my own questions by observing and watching?
00:24:42.720
Are these the state secrets of evidence you don't want to tell?
00:24:45.720
No, I'm happy to say, like, I think every show thinks of itself as its own show, right?
00:24:49.720
Like you don't want to be too duplicative, certainly with guests.
00:24:51.720
And if, you know, there were many times, Chris Hayes and I have been friends for 25 years, where the angle he was taking in his A Block was the same angle I was taking in mine.
00:25:06.720
But also, they would love, the cable news industry would love nothing more than, you know, the former governor of California and just like be helping out, escorting guests to it from the green room.
00:25:17.720
This is a very, this is a humbling year for me, 2026.
00:25:21.720
I should have cleats somewhere around me, not just mitts, sort of hanging up my cleats.
00:25:31.720
This week on The Moment, we take a look at Venezuela's uncertain future in a conversation with two people who have directly advised US presidents.
00:25:40.720
Juan Gonzalez, you're in the Obama and Biden administrations.
00:25:47.720
And Carlos D. Rosillo, you're in Trump's two terms.
00:25:50.720
I can guarantee you that nobody in the Trump administration likes Delcy Rodriguez.
00:25:54.720
Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:26:04.720
And on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.
00:26:08.720
Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be.
00:26:16.720
Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed?
00:26:21.720
We talked to experts who share real experiences and insight.
00:26:25.720
You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that.
00:26:31.720
We break down the topics you want to know more about.
00:26:34.720
Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health.
00:26:39.720
We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind, inside and out, healthy.
00:26:49.720
Health Stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone.
00:26:53.720
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:26:59.720
Are you desperately hoping for change in 2026, but feeling stuck?
00:27:04.720
Just spinning your wheels in old routines and bad habits?
00:27:07.720
I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, and in a new year series of my show, The Happiness Lab, I'm going to look at the science of getting, well, unstuck.
00:27:15.720
Unstuck at work, unstuck in your relationships, and even unstuck inside your mind.
00:27:20.720
I am the absolute worst culprit when it comes to getting into these ruminative loops and just driving myself crazy.
00:27:26.720
We'll look at ways to reignite your sense of purpose, rediscover your values, and get more creative.
00:27:31.720
We'll also explore how to design a life that feels more fulfilling.
00:27:34.720
It's sort of like the game of life. I don't know if you ever played that game.
00:27:38.720
You take the car log, and you try and get money, and you try and get degrees, and you try and get to the end where either you have a mansion or a ranch or a shack.
00:27:54.720
Listen to The Happiness Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your shows.
00:27:59.720
I'm Ed Zitron of the Better Offline Podcast, and I want you to join me at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, starting January 6th through January 10th, 2026.
00:28:08.720
We're doing 10 radio-style podcast episodes about the world's biggest tech conference, and we're going to dig into the latest and weirdest gadgets, gizmos, and horrible AI gear that the tech industry is desperate to sell you, all while covering the biggest stories in Silicon Valley as the AI bubble threatens to burst.
00:28:23.720
I'll be joined by David Roth, Chloe Radcliffe, Adam Conover, Cory Doctorow, Ed Angueso Jr., Robert Evans, and an incredible cast of the greatest talent in the tech media, with over 18 hours of interviews, commentary, and bizarre stories, all told from the Better Offline pop-up studio connected to its own open bar.
00:28:40.720
Today, I did five hours of back-to-back panels on artificial intelligence.
00:28:45.680
It included a number of great moments, including an entire room full of people laughing about people losing their jobs due to artificial intelligence.
00:28:52.820
Will we make it out alive? There's only one way to find out.
00:28:55.860
Tune in starting January 6th through January 10th, 2026, and listen to the literal best tech podcast ever recorded.
00:29:02.000
Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you happen to get your podcasts.
00:29:06.580
You hang up your cleats a little bit in terms of having a day-to-day, a nightly cable show, but now you have all of this freedom.
00:29:15.680
You're able to answer your own questions. You're able to respond to your own-
00:29:20.780
You can do four-letter words. You don't have to apologize for that.
00:29:23.580
You can answer your own critique about the limitations, the box you're in, and the constraints of that position in this new format.
00:29:32.840
You're able to get out, and that's what you're doing. You talk about the marrow of manga and the fringes of the resistance and how you are able to now navigate that.
00:29:43.520
And so you've been doing this. How many episodes of the new podcast now?
00:29:46.640
It feels like 56. We started in mid-October, and there's been one every week, so I'm going to say like eight or ten. I should know this.
00:29:53.000
So once a week, you dive deep, and you meet with real human beings, real stories. You get out of the noise. You break through the-
00:29:59.540
Well, are we breaking- has anybody breaking through the noise? We try. I mean, I think it's like, how many fucking-
00:30:12.360
A politician with a book coming out February 24th.
00:30:15.180
A podcast with a book coming out September 16th.
00:30:17.000
Yes, your second book. We'll talk about your first book. I haven't forgotten. Yes, we are walking.
00:30:23.700
Thank you. Difference is, is it out of print? You can still get it in paperback.
00:30:29.980
Well, again, we're going to talk about that because you do have an interesting past. We're not going to
00:30:34.400
talk about your presence in the future, but let me talk about the current. So you're doing this.
00:30:40.220
Yeah. Runaway Country is the name of the podcast.
00:30:42.340
Yes. Runaway Country with Crooked Media, and you are out meeting human beings, people that are
00:30:48.820
the subject of a lot of the policy in this conversation.
00:30:51.280
So I don't know if you've had these conversations, but I have had many of them since January 20th
00:30:56.360
of this year with people saying, and this is admittedly a position of privilege to be able
00:31:01.660
to not pay attention to what's going on. People feeling like, fuck, there's just, I can't.
00:31:06.780
It's just too much. It's all so bad. And I thought deeply, or as deep as I'm capable,
00:31:12.340
of thinking about what breaks through anymore, right? It's a human story. It's emotion. It's
00:31:17.440
feeling like you give a shit about what's happening, whether it's because it's unfolding
00:31:21.660
on your doorstep, or it's your neighbor that got seized in a dragnet, or it's your sister who lost
00:31:26.060
her health insurance. Whatever it is, it has to feel resonant personally. And I've always thought
00:31:31.480
that we read these horrible headlines. Some of them are good, but generally in the Trump era,
00:31:35.880
most of them are shit. And you're like, oh, that seems really bad, but it's also abstracted.
00:31:40.960
And the only way of making things tangible and real and resonant for people is to give you some
00:31:45.840
kind of story of a person who is at the center of that headline. So each week we begin with,
00:31:51.360
you know, that person who is, whether it's an immigration court judge who's telling me about
00:31:55.900
how fucking terrified she is of ICE agents in her courtroom, or whether it's an Afghan national
00:32:01.940
who helped the US for 25 years and came here on a green card and is about to get kicked out because
00:32:07.900
Trump is effectively using a national tragedy to enact a racist repopulation policy,
00:32:13.740
or whether it's a Venezuelan national who's super excited that Maduro is gone and gives context to
00:32:20.560
the complicated political trajectory that we're on right now as Democrats try and figure out what
00:32:24.620
this moment is all about. I just think you got to start with the heart. Oh my God, that's so corny.
00:32:29.480
I just, can we cut that out? I love the heart. I mean, we're cutting out French laundry, not the
00:32:35.620
heart. Use that in your presidential bid. Anyway, we got to start with the essence of things, which
00:32:40.360
is just the things that connect and bind us together. Human humanity. It's just become like
00:32:45.940
a faceless mass. You're like on your TikTok, you're on your Instagram, but you, it's like the fucking
00:32:51.160
stranger on the street, the person that just came from a completely different place and has a
00:32:55.820
completely different life. The fuck anybody knows about that person? So that's the, that's the sort
00:33:00.900
of thesis of the beginning of the show. And then the second half is like jolly good analysis from
00:33:05.380
all your favorite people, except for governor, governor Gavin Newsom, who refuses to come on
00:33:09.020
the show, but perhaps I've serviced this great debt coming to an augurine.
00:33:12.900
That you will go and visit me on my podcast. Yes. But you know, like I think it's additive,
00:33:26.800
Meaning you're not as proud as the second half of the podcast as you were the first?
00:33:30.100
No, I think it's good. I think it's great. I think the second half of the podcast is important. And I
00:33:34.120
think people love, I will say, you know, one of the things of cable is like every block is like six
00:33:38.920
minutes long and you're like, shit, I had like 19 more questions I wanted to ask. And the thing I
00:33:43.920
absolutely love about podcasting, independent of being able to curse, like till I'm blue in the face
00:33:49.140
is the time you can just stretch out and like get into it. And you have time for non sequiturs,
00:33:55.420
but you have time for people to stop and think about their answer to the question,
00:33:59.380
as opposed to as many politicians do staying on talking points to run out the clock on their
00:34:05.220
first of all, I want to thank you for acknowledging that. And I want to thank you as well for this
00:34:08.760
opportunity to engage you today. It's a very safe space. Yes. I have a number of issues I'd like
00:34:13.400
to bring up that I think are important to our audience. Please tell me about Californians and
00:34:17.920
what they need. No. So I, so is this what you were, you felt like you were missing? Look,
00:34:23.160
you did this with Trump land. You did get out. And by the way, I was in front of DC jail on January 20th
00:34:28.100
in the freezing cold at midnight, waiting for inmates to come out. January 6th insurrectionists.
00:34:32.620
That's what I was doing on it. By the way, we're speaking at the fifth anniversary of January 6th.
00:34:36.440
Yes. Where 1,600 were pardoned. Yes. I was out there.
00:34:39.520
They either were convicted or faced charges. And talking to all of them about how they felt
00:34:43.820
about Trump and man, it was eyeopening. About a year later and how they feel about Trump,
00:34:48.660
they feel hasn't been sufficient, even those that have been pardoned. Well, that is true.
00:34:52.240
Because he hasn't exposed the conspiracy. Well. He hasn't held those people to account
00:34:56.440
that were part of this conspiracy. Well. Which is just how many layers deep we are.
00:35:00.400
Well, we live in deeply paranoid times. And so are you, in the cause of engagement,
00:35:08.500
the cause of heart, of finding the humanity and bringing these policies, these issues,
00:35:13.140
all the noise, the rhetoric, and how it actually affects real human beings,
00:35:16.200
because there's collateral damage. It's real. It's all this is consequential.
00:35:20.160
Do you feel you're servicing that truth in a deeper way? Do you feel like this mission is fulfilling?
00:35:31.460
Well, just because I feel like mission makes me sound like I'm about to enter the runnery.
00:35:34.460
No, but when you came up with this concept, you had a purpose.
00:35:37.340
I think so. I'm one person. And listen, some weeks are better than others, right?
00:35:42.280
It's like you can't be scoring a 10 every week. And every story isn't going to have the same
00:35:47.500
impact as the other, but you don't give up on the work. And I feel it bums me out how lonely it is
00:35:54.140
that there are not more people trying to do this because I'm not in elected office. I'm not
00:35:59.040
interested in elected office, but like the only way the project of America succeeds is if you
00:36:03.740
begin to knit the fabric of the country back together. And like, man, until you can even see,
00:36:10.200
begin to see the perspective of someone else, which is not me trying to be like,
00:36:14.620
lay your arms down and get in bed with a racist. That's not what I'm saying.
00:36:17.740
Right. But you, the, the empathy or the understanding, or at least understanding how
00:36:24.520
That's why I started the podcast. That's why we had the first guest was Charlie Kirk. I mean,
00:36:28.360
you know, I know. And I, we texted about this. It is fucking treacherous. It is fucking treacherous
00:36:34.320
to do it at the same time. Like what the fuck else are we supposed to do? Like this is these,
00:36:41.560
this movement has captured the imagination of the American public in a way that has awoken
00:36:47.380
our darkest, like evolutionary instincts, you know, to punish, to demean, to hurt people who
00:36:56.600
aren't like us. And like, I do, when I say evolutionary, I genuinely believe there's like
00:37:01.140
a darkness of the human spirit that Trump and magazine has awoken. And like, until you tackle
00:37:06.040
that and like bring, figure out a way to get everybody back into the light. Like, I, I don't
00:37:10.760
know. I mean, I don't think just getting a new can't, we talk about all this moment as if it's
00:37:14.680
just Trump's creation. It is not, it is symptomatic of a poison that is within our society. I'm getting
00:37:21.220
all biblical sounding. I love it. No, I mean, he was, I mean, look, it's been over 10 years since
00:37:26.660
he came down the escalator and now 11, I think it's, you, uh, are you surprised it's endured this
00:37:32.740
long? I actually, I mean, I don't know. I, I guess, I guess not because it was so, I went to,
00:37:43.780
okay, here's what I'll say. I was part of the show, the circus, which was a weekly documentary
00:37:47.520
show on Showtime. Yeah. You appeared on it. Great show. You appeared on it. It's a great show.
00:37:51.740
It was a great show. RIP. Yeah. Um, and you'd go to these Trump rallies. I went to a number of them.
00:37:58.200
Yeah. And I think. And it was, I mean, what made that show work is what you describe and what you're
00:38:03.300
describing about your new podcast is you guys were out and about. We were there. You were out there on the
00:38:08.200
stage. By the way, you did a lot of that on your show. I mean, we were out, we were together in the
00:38:12.000
South. Yeah, that's true. I tried to. So you were doing it just for the, for the record. I mean,
00:38:16.740
I think you've got to give yourself a little more grace because you were pushing that. And
00:38:20.040
obviously Trump land reflected that, but continue. I mean, uh, this notion of, of, of, of Trump and
00:38:25.960
during 11 years and the experience of the circus. So I would go to these Trump rallies and I think
00:38:30.400
people largely knew, especially on the left, the vitriol and the kind of nonsense that was spouted at
00:38:37.180
these things. But what they didn't understand and what you wouldn't have understood unless you
00:38:40.840
were there was that it also had this feeling of like an old time revival. Yes. There was so much
00:38:46.060
joy. There was so much community. There was so much camaraderie and like cheap joy in some ways,
00:38:51.300
because it was at the expense of entire groups of people. And it was like, oh, in the lips. Am I
00:38:55.220
allowed to throw the middle finger? You can do middle fingers. I think we've used a few four letter
00:38:59.300
words. One of them was a French. I was one of them. I've reached my limit. Nailed. Um, but like
00:39:06.060
there is, uh, people are looking for communion. People are looking for community and Trump gave
00:39:14.360
them that and gives them that. And that's really powerful. People see the negative side of it
00:39:19.000
because it was founded on, um, an essentially exclusionary impulse. But at the end of the day,
00:39:25.000
it was like, it's me. It's my, it's my time with my people and I'm okay. I'm an okay person. They're
00:39:31.120
okay. We're okay. What we think is okay. It was validating. It was spiritually, I think, enhancing
00:39:36.260
for people who've been at MAGA from the beginning. And that is something I think Democrats didn't
00:39:41.020
understand too, right? Like there is joy in the camaraderie of MAGA. And that's, I think,
00:39:47.340
proven insanely durable. And I saw that and I felt that with, not my joy, right? Like they're like
00:39:52.000
brown lady with a news camera. I was like, please get me security. But you know, I, I remember
00:39:57.720
thinking this is deeper. This runs deeper than just like, you know, mass deportations now. And so
00:40:04.200
his mismanagement of the COVID epidemic was so profound. His mismanagement of so many things
00:40:09.280
was profound. And the strength of Biden as a candidate in terms of being a unifier and a bridge
00:40:13.780
in 2020 was, I think, strong enough to overcome that. But, but the pull of this movement is like
00:40:20.000
deeply emotional and like, and not all, yes, it's, it's, it's sort of negative from a policy
00:40:25.700
point of view. And, and I guess you would say like an ethical point of view, but the sense of
00:40:31.500
belonging and the, and the, and the, the genuine warmth gives people who believe in it is highly
00:40:39.600
intoxicating. Okay. Everything you described, I couldn't agree more. And it's interesting. It was,
00:40:44.240
we've, we've had other guests on and Kepler on the daily show went to, I mean, how many of these
00:40:48.880
said the same thing? And he even, even, I mean, he had a very honest expression. He said, I kind of
00:40:53.800
miss going to some of these things because I got to know some of the big, they love him in a red
00:40:59.280
sequined cowboy hat. Yeah, no. And I mean, these are some of the legendary interviews. I mean, his
00:41:03.180
interviews, but, and it just, and people wouldn't even break, they could not be convinced. There was
00:41:07.600
no intellectual, because they were so connected to something bigger than themselves. It's a revival.
00:41:11.640
It's a revival. So what's the lesson in that? I mean, what's, I mean, there, I think it's,
00:41:15.520
there's something beautiful in that, this notion of sense of belonging to community. It's important.
00:41:19.460
I mean, we all need to be, I mean, forgive me, I'll pick up on your frame. We all need to be loved.
00:41:23.760
We all need to love. And this notion of, you know, being respected and connected to something bigger
00:41:28.740
ourselves is powerful, always has been. I mean, that's what community is about. That's what
00:41:33.160
volunteerism is about. That's what the Rotary Club's about. That's what church is about.
00:41:36.520
That's what church is about. I mean, that's, and so, and as those institutions begin to fray,
00:41:40.940
hey, we get more lonely, more isolated, more disconnected, and we need that, however we can
00:41:46.220
find it. So what's the lesson in that from a political lens, from your perspective, in terms
00:41:53.540
I think one thing Democrats need to do is bring joy back. And like, maybe that starts with humor.
00:41:57.600
I think that some of the memes that you've been posting are absolutely,
00:42:01.220
You did see my Trump signature series knee pads right there available on my Patriot site.
00:42:08.240
But do not fall for the imitations. Do not fall for the imitations.
00:42:11.060
Those are the ones that were originally made in China.
00:42:12.640
I'm waiting for the lawsuit by the Trump, uh, uh, family, family.
00:42:17.000
Oh, bro, you're going to have a lot of lawsuits coming at you, don't you worry?
00:42:20.080
I've engaged in 52 so far myself and to counter the, but yeah, that one's going to be an expensive
00:42:25.960
one, I think. So good. Yeah. But no, I, so this issue of humor, I love what you say.
00:42:33.980
Thank you for saying that. Fuck yeah, man. I mean, this is, I, yes, of course,
00:42:37.920
110% is so much. Why is that the case? What is it about?
00:42:40.800
Because people are fucking terrified of offending someone.
00:42:42.460
That's it. That is one lesson of Trump is that you gotta care less about,
00:42:47.900
you cannot be everything to everyone. And I think it's driven from a place of trying to be
00:42:53.480
inclusive, which is not inherently a bad thing. Right. And like all these lessons we're learning
00:42:57.620
short order in the 2020s, whether it was the death of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter,
00:43:02.000
Me Too, and then COVID. And it was like, okay, we got to do all these things differently.
00:43:05.760
The institutions have failed us. We need to rethink everything.
00:43:09.320
But it, with the rebuilding was done in such a way that, you know, and I'm not one to usually
00:43:13.540
quote Barack Obama, but he said, you know, we made it for the woke and not the waking.
00:43:17.140
And the sense of you are either with us or you are actively against us is not how you build a
00:43:22.720
national party. And I think part of the thing of humor is it's designed to offend. And sometimes
00:43:28.540
you have to accept that. And you're not going to be very fucking funny if you're not offending
00:43:32.360
someone. We've, uh, I think we've offended a few people. Some of my social media, forgive me.
00:43:44.780
But joy, that's not a word you hear. It's not a word that's attached to our politics.
00:43:48.980
But it is interesting. You'll find that joy. You found it when you're there at these rallies.
00:43:54.020
Totally. But I also think Democrats need to go into, Donald Trump is a joyful warrior. You know,
00:43:58.700
we focus on the toxic, like cancerous shit he says, but he's making jokes half the time. Like
00:44:02.880
he's joking about Doug Mills, making him look fat in the New York times. Right. Like he actually
00:44:07.220
does still have adult though. He is. You think new scum is funny? I mean, I think it's lame.
00:44:12.560
I think it's lame too. He's got it. I thought in 2026, he went after me this morning. Uh,
00:44:17.340
some investigative, some latest attack. Um, but, uh, yeah, I just don't think it's, uh,
00:44:24.440
When you run for president, he'll come up with something else.
00:44:26.760
Yeah. See, what's good is I just got you at a minute that you're running for president.
00:44:29.780
No, you see, you didn't know where I was going to zig back. Yeah.
00:44:32.120
Yeah, sure. But, but like joyful warrior, man, who's been a joyful,
00:44:36.840
the last joyful warrior was Barack Obama, you know, like, and that translates not just to the
00:44:42.440
Kamala had it in the beginning of the campaign.
00:44:43.940
In the very beginning. And I talked about this.
00:44:46.140
And I literally talked to her about it. I said, who is this guy? I said, I remember you back
00:44:50.160
20 years ago before we were both in politics. I'm loving this new Kamala, this
00:44:54.180
she had a smile on her face and it was like, let's go get him.
00:44:57.540
No, it really felt, there's something powerful to this.
00:45:00.500
If you have that joy within you, that translates to not just the way you talk to the American
00:45:05.360
public, your campaign will feel it and your supporters feel it. And like, it's palpable,
00:45:09.880
it's real. And people see joy. They see, you know, even if the stakes are extraordinarily
00:45:13.980
high and the work ahead is tough and bruising and backbending, is that a word? Um, people
00:45:20.680
will go with you. You know, they see the reward of camaraderie and, and they feel the high,
00:45:27.240
the elation of being in it together. You know, it's how people get through wars, right? You're
00:45:33.100
in the foxhole with your people and you don't, it's not about being maudlin, even though the
00:45:37.780
times are dark. It's just about, God, I sound like Tony Robbins. It just, I feel like the
00:45:44.160
We've established cold plunges and now we have life coaches.
00:45:55.100
Yeah. Sorry, Joe Rogan. I'll take Mel Robbins any day of the week.
00:45:59.340
But, but yeah, I mean, I think that's essential for any Democrat who's going to hold the,
00:46:05.480
So let me talk about your years. You mentioned a brown lady showing up with a camera.
00:46:10.140
There's only a few. Only 30 of them. I love it.
00:46:15.960
I mean, just the Atlantic years were amazing. The CBS years, by the way, on CBS, how worried
00:46:20.680
are you about Warner Brothers? How were you about?
00:46:28.800
First of all, like I say this is MS Now has been spun off from, from.
00:46:33.920
All these companies are up for sale at some point, right?
00:46:36.440
CNN's up for sale. And what the Ellisons are doing at Paramount is a case study for what they
00:46:42.380
could do at other media companies, right? They're trying to prove the case by, you know,
00:46:47.180
spiking stories at 60 minutes, by installing an anchor at the evening news who's willing to at
00:46:52.340
least give, you know, credence to paranoid right-wing conspiracies. That is a sign of deep
00:47:00.560
illness within the industry. And I don't understand, like some white knight needs to come to the
00:47:06.860
rescue and maybe buy these companies, but do white knights exist? Jeff Bezos owns the Washington
00:47:11.940
Post and we see what's happened there. I mean, it's a dire moment for the industry and I am very
00:47:22.480
You're like, and cut, thank you for joining us.
00:47:24.660
Yeah, no, I mean, it's, but does that extend even if Netflix is the, the succeeds in their bid?
00:47:33.860
Well, Netflix is just trying to buy, as far as I can tell, the library of content. And like all,
00:47:39.640
as I used to hold, I did host a reality TV show on Netflix, which probably didn't make it on,
00:47:44.240
in your like opera research packet on me. It's called The Mole. Yeah.
00:47:48.260
It was big. It's actually the, probably the largest audience I've ever had.
00:47:51.400
It was a reality TV show. It was a reboot of the Anderson Cooper reality TV show,
00:47:56.520
The Mole. And I hosted the first season of it. It was on Netflix and I have nothing but positive
00:48:00.720
things to say about Netflix and their shepherding of that show to great success for the first season.
00:48:06.260
But like they, all these multinational corporations have vested in like in China, right? Like the content
00:48:11.260
that Apple's going to make is not going to, we're not going to want to upset Chinese sensibilities.
00:48:15.640
We're in a moment right now where the president of the United States has made it very clear that he
00:48:19.480
will try and revoke licenses or like launch lawsuits or otherwise make life very difficult
00:48:23.740
for any, any media organization, news or otherwise, that pumps out content that's critical of him and
00:48:30.000
his supporters. So like, I am concerned no matter who buys it. We're in a moment of great fear.
00:48:36.560
I had a former spokesperson for the Trump administration, 1.0 Spicer came on and he said
00:48:45.720
he was not worried about all this, that we're our sort of obsession with corporate media, which
00:48:50.740
is, I mean, by definition, profit-making media, which you have established the framework and the
00:48:56.000
orientation around doing what actually sells and the importance imperative of that as a business
00:49:00.800
model. It is at the end of the day of business, um, that the creation, this ecosystem that you are
00:49:06.840
part of podcasts, et cetera. And this sort of disintermediation now, uh, is actually the antidote
00:49:14.360
to maybe some of the negativity and fear that you just expressed.
00:49:18.220
Yes. And I will say, I adore being at crooked media. It is so awesome to be surrounded. You know,
00:49:24.260
like you can be a house cat in the middle of a civil war. You can be a cat that's out there
00:49:27.560
looking for birds and mice to kill and survive on. And I feel like I'm like, I'm like, I just made
00:49:32.720
it up. I'm the house cat that was like maybe forcibly kicked out of the house, but like,
00:49:37.760
nonetheless, like I'm in there in the wild and this is what the landscape's like and you can survive and
00:49:42.240
you can have like a leaner, meaner existence and be alive. And like, I feel so much more alive,
00:49:47.820
right. In this new media landscape at the same time, it worries me that there are like 1000 podcasts,
00:49:54.060
right there. I do think we need some agreed upon pillars of truth and you can have a couple like
00:49:59.900
Mel Robbins, much respect. You can have some really big podcasts, but like, are they going to be as
00:50:05.820
like, what are the terms of engagement for these podcasts? What is the sort of rigor in terms of
00:50:11.180
fact checking and news and info? It's not the same thing. I think the distant, like the idea that
00:50:17.380
this part of the media landscape is like old and perhaps outmoded and is being replaced by a vibrant,
00:50:23.440
exciting new culture of information and analysis is a good thing for human society. But whether it
00:50:29.860
actually solves the problem of disinformation and misinformation that's plaguing our society
00:50:35.660
is like a real open question and I'm kind of skeptical. Interesting. I mean, you can make the
00:50:40.900
argument sort of the Wikipedia version of it that there's sort of enough sort of self-correction and
00:50:46.560
sort of the iteration in that space. But look, I mean, it's an interesting counter argument to what
00:50:52.480
Sean Spicer was sort of asserting. Well, we'll find ourselves often Governor Newsom on the opposite
00:50:56.100
side of Sean Spicer. Interesting. Unbelievable. She'd have Melissa McCarthy on. That's a breaking
00:51:02.460
news. Breaking news. Speaking of breaking news. Hola, I'm Jorge Ramos. This week on The Moment,
00:51:07.980
we take a look at Venezuela's uncertain future in a conversation with two people who have directly
00:51:13.120
advised U.S. presidents. Juan Gonzalez during the Obama and Biden administrations. We're really good
00:51:18.820
at invading countries. We're very bad at nation building. And Carlos D. Rosillo during Trump's two
00:51:24.340
terms. I can guarantee you that nobody in the Trump administration likes Delcy Rodriguez. Listen
00:51:29.440
to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
00:51:33.920
you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hurricane Dibolu. It's a new year and on the
00:51:39.540
podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what
00:51:44.440
we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early.
00:51:51.540
Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real
00:51:57.980
experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in
00:52:03.600
your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep,
00:52:09.500
stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health. We talk about all
00:52:15.280
the ways to keep your body and mind, inside and out, healthy. We human beings, all we want is
00:52:21.060
connection. We just want to connect with each other. Health Stuff is about learning, laughing,
00:52:25.860
and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
00:52:32.200
get your podcasts. Are you desperately hoping for change in 2026, but feeling stuck? Just spinning
00:52:39.120
your wheels in old routines and bad habits? I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, and in a new year series of my
00:52:45.140
show, The Happiness Lab, I'm going to look at the science of getting, well, unstuck. Unstuck at work,
00:52:51.060
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00:52:57.100
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00:53:01.900
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00:53:06.960
how to design a life that feels more fulfilling. It's sort of like the game of life. I don't know
00:53:11.120
if you ever played that game. Oh my gosh, yes. You take the car along, and you try and get money,
00:53:15.880
and you try and get degrees, and you try and get to the end where either you have a mansion or a ranch
00:53:19.940
or a shack. And once you get to retirement, you're done. What about the whole path along the way?
00:53:25.960
So join me to get unstuck in 2026. Listen to The Happiness Lab on the iHeartRadio app,
00:53:31.400
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your shows.
00:53:34.080
I'm Ed Zitron of the Better Offline Podcast, and I want you to join me at this year's Consumer
00:53:38.340
Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, starting January 6th through January 10th, 2026.
00:53:43.920
We're doing 10 radio-style podcast episodes about the world's biggest tech conference,
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and we're going to dig into the latest and weirdest gadgets, gizmos, and horrible AI gear
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that the tech industry is desperate to sell you, all while covering the biggest stories in Silicon
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Valley as the AI bubble threatens to burst. I'll be joined by David Roth,
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Chloe Radcliffe, Adam Conover, Cory Doctorow, Ed Ongueso Jr., Robert Evans, and an incredible
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00:54:15.060
Today I did five hours of back-to-back panels on artificial intelligence. It included a number
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Will we make it out alive? There's only one way to find out. Tune in starting January 6th through
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Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you happen to get your podcasts.
00:54:40.700
You were out there, as I was suggesting a moment ago, I keep going, trying to come back to this,
00:54:46.800
because I am honestly fascinated about your background. You said, you talked, you joked
00:54:51.600
again, I'll create it for the second time, there was brown girl out with a camera, but your history,
00:54:56.380
your background, you grew up in Washington, D.C. You wrote a book called Future Face,
00:54:59.560
which was about sort of this notion of identity. You traveled around the world, your mom coming from
00:55:05.760
overseas, in war-torn countries, authoritarian regimes, militarization of the streets, your dad
00:55:14.000
Yeah, I mean, just that contrast. So talk to me a little bit. You grew up, so remind us,
00:55:18.380
I grew up in Washington, D.C. proper, which is like the ultimate conversation killer.
00:55:23.240
People are like, oh, you're from D.C.? I have nothing to say to you.
00:55:27.520
You were actually physically born in a hospital in Washington, D.C.?
00:55:33.000
Was it safe back then or it's only safe now because of Trump's guard?
00:55:40.960
I was a product of the D.C. public school system, which was not what it is now, and I proudly so.
00:55:46.800
It was, my dad was, you know, he cut his teeth as a field organizer from McGovern in the
00:55:52.240
70s, that's where he met someone named Bill Clinton, and, you know, he was an organizer
00:55:57.580
He was the field organizer for Ted Kennedy's ill-fated 1980 campaign.
00:56:02.120
He was always an insurgent, but he was a good Iowa boy at heart, you know?
00:56:06.440
He just was, he came to Washington because he wanted to solve the problem of poverty and
00:56:18.820
But this is when we were solving the vernacular ignorance, poverty, and disease.
00:56:24.360
One of the reasons I have so much Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Starr-Schreiber memorabilia
00:56:29.300
around, you know, that spirit, totally get it, late 60s, early 70s.
00:56:34.200
The Kennedys and the sort of the ideological bent of the Kennedys was so much his North
00:56:41.300
And was so your product of interest in a political frame?
00:56:46.040
I mean, my mom was born in Burma, now known as Myanmar, which has been basically at war with
00:56:50.880
itself for the greater part of the 20th and 21st centuries.
00:56:53.860
And our family was being targeted while they were there.
00:57:04.340
And my parents and my grandparents had both been Fulbright scholars.
00:57:07.380
And so they were part of like the, you know, the learned elite in Burma and thus were targeted
00:57:13.060
by the, you know, the military as it was basically trying to purge the country of any Western
00:57:20.260
And, you know, my mom is like, I think you'll find no greater patriots than immigrants.
00:57:28.440
That entrepreneurial spirit, that patriotic zeal.
00:57:34.540
They think it's the greatest place in the world.
00:57:35.860
One of the great things, I did it a lot when I was mayor.
00:57:40.080
But swearing in, folks, you go into a swearing in ceremony, the diversity of those, that's
00:57:47.280
And the families and just the emotion, the tears.
00:57:53.700
And we've lost that understanding of how deeply and richly immigrants contribute to this country
00:58:00.060
and make it America, make it the place we love.
00:58:06.420
Because my grandmother got a job at the Library of Congress.
00:58:09.300
And the Library of Congress basically pulled them out of Burma and then said, you don't
00:58:15.480
My grandmother knew Bali, which is an ancient language that she had studied in her Fulbright
00:58:21.800
And they needed her expertise at the Library of Congress.
00:58:24.060
So they brought my family over and that debt, I don't think my family will ever forget because
00:58:30.940
My mom and dad met working at a labor union in the 70s.
00:58:36.080
My mom went to college and was like, dabbled in sort of like socialism as one did in the
00:58:42.120
And met my dad and they hated each other and then they got married.
00:58:49.700
And she was, he, I don't know what he said, but my mom definitely said, he's an asshole.
00:58:52.800
But they were both, you know, hot young things and they got married and they had one daughter
00:59:02.180
And you went to public school in D.C. and where'd you go to college?
00:59:09.340
I could give them a, and not as bad, maybe just one knee pad to Brown.
00:59:18.240
Well, let's just first say, Governor, there was a shooting on the campus.
00:59:20.440
I will, my heart actually broke for that as like a place of great freedom.
00:59:26.700
But other than that, what an extraordinary capitulation we've seen on the part of these
00:59:33.740
And I'm, we've got to hold the line here at the UCU.
00:59:39.120
Like in Burma, they just closed the universities.
00:59:41.480
Here, we're like allowing them to basically put the chains on the bars.
00:59:47.240
Uh, you're, you're much more, uh, you're much more honest, uh, about what Brown did.
00:59:52.340
And then, but I appreciate you as your, by the way, Brown's a special university.
01:00:01.500
Uh, it's by the way, explains kind of everything.
01:00:04.440
Oh, that you're one of those fancy Brown people.
01:00:10.240
That's back when the perfect score was a thousand, right?
01:00:29.580
Ask me, just see, we keep going back to my Rotary Club.
01:00:33.020
But let me ask you on the issue of your education at Brown.
01:00:45.080
In elementary school, I was wrote for the March Monitor.
01:00:56.920
I obviously didn't do that much editing in high school.
01:00:58.740
And then I was one of the editors for the weekly College Hill Independent newspaper,
01:01:03.120
which was the sort of cooler counterpoint to the Brown Daily Herald, which was the daily.
01:01:07.980
Um, but I always was always, I loved writing, you know, and I loved talking to people,
01:01:16.920
And my dad, to my dad's great chagrin, he'd say, kid, why cover the news when you can be
01:01:26.860
That's exactly, by the way, it sounds like he took your dad's advice.
01:01:36.900
It's a very uncomfortable position, as you can see.
01:01:39.880
It's weird to be, it's like not actually, I've like violated so much of what we thought
01:01:45.480
it meant to be a journalist by talking so candidly about my own.
01:01:50.460
I mean, you guys are brands, your household names, your celebrity, you have, you have
01:01:56.000
You have different, you're doing podcasts and this and this, everybody's books and the
01:02:00.800
If you got to survive, you're a house cat out there in the fucking civil war, just looking
01:02:08.140
Start with the heart, house cat, you can have it all.
01:02:11.660
You have to do it all because that's the only way people are going to listen to you anymore
01:02:17.840
And everything's atomized, nebulized, unless you are a big atom out there, you're, I mean,
01:02:24.360
You should have, I mean, you ultimately did take your dad's advice, which is nice.
01:02:30.200
He never saw, he never saw the madness that has become, but I think.
01:02:39.120
When he died, they felt, they were like, oh, there are a lot of your old MSNBC posters.
01:02:46.320
That's creepy, but he loved me, so proud of me.
01:02:51.640
Sometimes I'd be like, what'd you think of that dad?
01:02:59.060
Whereas my mom would be like, eh, it could have been better.
01:03:08.840
The number one advice, number one advice she'll tell me after she sees this.
01:03:19.680
Lipstick, and then occasionally you speak too quickly, Alex.
01:03:27.800
She doesn't tell you to be, at the same time, be yourself.
01:03:31.340
So she gives you this contradictory advice, right?
01:03:34.240
She likes the authentic part, but she just wants it done in a Revlon red.
01:03:39.440
Uh, I, I love, and I, may I ask how old she is now?
01:03:54.620
She's happy, you know, but I think it's hard for anybody, you know, we're talking about
01:03:58.460
being an immigrant, you know, she came here and she was so, and remains, like she puts
01:04:04.420
She's like, they're not going to take the flag.
01:04:05.800
She printed out bumper sticker flags that said, Democrats believe in America.
01:04:16.100
And she has this institutional memory of meeting John F. Kennedy when she came over with
01:04:19.980
the Burmese embassy in fourth grade, you know, and she has this deep and abiding belief
01:04:26.220
And she reads the newspaper and watches the news religiously and is bereft.
01:04:30.820
It's like, how could this man be doing these things to our country?
01:04:33.680
And I don't even want to talk to her about the fact that it's not just him.
01:04:39.140
And I think it's been, it's hard to be 81 right now, right?
01:04:42.200
You've lived through some really remarkable decades and progress, civil rights, women's
01:04:46.880
rights, and so much of it is being just ripped apart.
01:04:50.600
And you kind of find yourself at a loss, like, was it all just a fucking dream?
01:04:56.320
What do you, you talk a lot about what we're missing and that's been a big part of the podcast
01:05:01.960
and, you know, and what are the stories we're missing with all the noise, the sort of MAGA
01:05:11.720
What, I mean, right now, I mean, you know, all the noise, Venezuela, January 6th, again,
01:05:21.460
Congress is back in session as we tape this podcast today.
01:05:25.720
They're at the Kennedy Center Republicans meeting talking about how they can reconcile the
01:05:30.400
fact that they were complicit with 114% average increase for almost 22 million Americans in
01:05:37.200
their health care bills and whether or not they can get out of Dodge and figure out a
01:05:40.200
way to actually see if they can extend these Obamacare subsidies so that they can somehow
01:05:44.440
salvage their prospects, maybe hold on to power in 2026.
01:05:54.840
What are the stories you think will define 2026?
01:05:57.440
And what are the stories that we should be talking more about?
01:06:01.840
Well, I mean, I think the health care piece is huge, right?
01:06:04.180
And I mean, I think at our own, I think it's misguided to separate affordability from health
01:06:11.240
You can either afford your medicine or you can't.
01:06:14.000
It's all coming from the same pocketbook, right?
01:06:15.640
Um, I interviewed someone on my podcast who has a debilitating medical condition.
01:06:28.280
People are like, oh, it's only 22 million people.
01:06:30.160
I'm like 22 fucking million people is a lot of people.
01:06:39.200
And what it, and I think the connection that Democrats in particular need to make is it
01:06:45.180
is a statement of fucking, it is a moral statement what they are doing to, it's not about just
01:06:51.040
can you afford it, it's who can afford what and who deserves to be able to afford to live
01:06:55.580
in this country and to afford a life in this country.
01:06:58.460
The idea that Trump is doing this, is literally stealing money from the needed money from the
01:07:05.620
pockets of the poor so that he can line the pockets of the rich is the defining sort of
01:07:11.520
If he has any sort of raison d'etre, if there is any guiding principle to Trump, it is to
01:07:20.840
That's why the healthcare subsidies are going, they're trying to save money on one end to
01:07:31.360
And everything needs to be seen through that lens.
01:07:43.600
It's just oil companies getting more access to underground reserves.
01:07:48.380
You know, I think what needs to happen is for us as a country to better understand the
01:07:54.720
machinations of this president is to really come up with an operating thesis that covers
01:08:00.840
And the greed and the cruelty is really the point.
01:08:06.280
But that is what touches on every single story.
01:08:08.780
I mean, even the immigration stuff, it is about repopulating the country with white people.
01:08:15.100
It's about being mean to people who aren't like you.
01:08:21.280
And it's about a harshness that speaks to the, like I said, the darkest fucking demons of
01:08:28.180
And I think all of this Trumpism needs to be seen in the sort of through the lens of
01:08:33.980
brutality and cruelty because that's at its essence, you know.
01:08:38.300
And we need to bring people back from the sort of lull of economic affordability.
01:08:43.040
And we need them to understand that it's at its root, at its core, these policies are
01:08:49.900
So the stories I'm going to be following are certainly health care.
01:08:55.060
Immigration, I think, continues to be an extraordinary story.
01:08:58.320
I mean, it is going to change the face of this country, right?
01:09:04.640
We estimate about 150,000 less than the prior year of legal immigrants.
01:09:09.400
You want to talk about the secret sauce of California from Silicon Valley, not just the
01:09:13.280
central valley is getting first round draft choices from around the rest of the world.
01:09:17.620
That's what separates our game from the game played elsewhere.
01:09:20.320
That's what's built the fourth largest economy in the world.
01:09:23.160
That vibrancy, that energy and daring that you talk about from newcomers that are coming
01:09:31.940
No, I love it when you talk about the, like, Silicon.
01:09:34.520
We're talking about, like, America is immigrants.
01:09:40.420
And to be purging the country of all the brown ones is not going to leave us with much of a
01:09:47.420
And I think, you know, telling the stories of immigrants is really important because
01:09:53.020
And so that's something we'll continue to do on the podcast.
01:09:54.940
I think also what's happening to the, you know, to poor women in this country, just in
01:10:00.080
terms of both health care and access to, you know, their, you know, make decisions about
01:10:05.900
I mean, what you see happening in the Deep South, we sort of stopped talking about abortion
01:10:12.700
And that doesn't mean that that crisis has gone away and, in fact, maybe is even more
01:10:18.360
And, like, maybe, gov, maybe, the thing that threatens us all, which you have, like, extraordinary
01:10:24.420
experience with, especially in a month like this, as you think about where we were last
01:10:28.640
You know, like, we've got to figure out a way to talk about the fact that we stupid-ass,
01:10:34.460
moronic human beings are still chasing reservoirs of dead, decaying shrimp all over the world
01:10:39.220
that created petroleum reserves back in the, like, the Jurassic period.
01:10:48.200
Cleaning our clocks, 70% of the EVs of manufacturing, supply chains, building relationships, locking
01:10:56.980
Chasing dead shrimp, dead shrimp, dead Mesozoic shrimp.
01:11:01.620
Let me ask you just on that because it's such a, there were a few topics and you implied it
01:11:06.560
as it relates to the issue of reproductive freedom and it relates to women and girls.
01:11:10.080
And the fact that, you know, it's not as popular to talk about.
01:11:13.300
And certainly if you look at any poll, people say it's a loser and Kamala, you know, Democrats
01:11:17.520
are insufficiently focused on the things that people really, that matter to them.
01:11:21.980
And we talk too much about culture, woke and climate and reproductive freedom and the
01:11:27.260
How do you talk about, these things are, to your point, I mean, what more evidence do we
01:11:32.980
The hots are getting hotter, the dries are getting drier, the wets are getting wetter, these
01:11:35.840
atmospheric rivers, floods, droughts, wildfires.
01:11:41.580
Climate risk is impacting our ability to get insurance, which is a home and affordability
01:11:48.600
I mean, this is like code, it's blinking red everywhere, but Democrats aren't even supposed
01:11:56.800
We're just supposed to talk about kitchen table issues, talk about groceries.
01:12:00.540
We're supposed to talk about utility bills, which is important.
01:12:14.560
That's his theory goes again off on these wild eyed.
01:12:18.480
People don't like to believe that they're fallible, right?
01:12:21.040
Americans don't like to think that they, they want, we want to believe as a country.
01:12:25.540
It's part of the actually awesomeness of America.
01:12:32.880
This notion of the pioneer, this individual, I love it.
01:12:36.940
It's at odds with the DNA of this country to say there is, you know, existential threat
01:12:41.980
that you individually cannot do anything about, but collectively can.
01:12:47.300
It's reweaving the sense of a common good, right?
01:12:51.340
That's fucking hard to do when the country is so divided.
01:12:57.380
Sense of community, that sort of organizing principle.
01:13:02.320
You know, Democrats need to be very, blue states need to be very careful about not giving
01:13:07.320
a shit about climate because red states are the first ones impacted, excepting your incredible
01:13:13.340
In this blue state, the most impacted districts are dominantly Trump voting districts.
01:13:19.880
Talk about Paradise, California, not Pleasure, Paradise, California.
01:13:23.520
You talk about some of the most, Grizzlies Flack, Greenville.
01:13:26.980
All of these are in conservative parts of the state.
01:13:29.180
The folks that he's not helping, and they're consistently punishing all across this country,
01:13:41.700
People don't like, people don't like believing that the end could be near, right?
01:13:56.020
I think people need to believe that some kind of solutions can be had.
01:14:00.520
Like, it's just going to get fucking warmer, and we got to make choices and changes.
01:14:04.100
And the rich, you know, like, the idea that Miami is just going to become the coastal province
01:14:09.760
of people who couldn't afford to have, you know, rebuild their homes, or that parts of
01:14:13.480
California are just going to become the province of people who can afford to lose their homes
01:14:19.540
Everybody's going to have to pay a price, a steep one.
01:14:21.860
And, like, people need to show that they're bearing the burden of the cost.
01:14:27.680
I think it's also a fail of the news media to not be covering this through a climate lens.
01:14:35.440
It is the greatest shame of my career as a journalist.
01:14:38.540
Honestly, why in the cable network, we're talking about the insurance crisis in this country
01:14:41.500
in the context of it being, climate is uninsurable.
01:14:58.680
But look at what's been happening with the wildfire risks and the impacts that have had
01:15:04.900
I mean, it's, it is, the first thing you have to do is reintroduce it into the conversation
01:15:18.200
I mean, part of it is my, like, this is kind of where we begin again at the-
01:15:21.880
Epstein and the things that sell and the sort of contemporary, yeah.
01:15:25.960
People would rather hear about the bad guy going down or salacious, like they want to
01:15:30.900
And again, it's not that Epstein isn't worth covering.
01:15:37.640
Why didn't you guys cover it four years ago, three years ago at this level?
01:15:45.800
I would, I don't know the answer to that question.
01:15:49.300
I mean, I think every day you have to keep in mind there, and you know, my heart goes
01:15:53.800
out to people who still have to program cable news shows every night.
01:15:55.880
Like my friend Chris Hayes is like, you know, he's in the fucking foxhole, right?
01:16:11.820
Here we're going to compare and contrast a Brown graduate.
01:16:24.320
It's like Lawrence O'Donnell talking about going.
01:16:25.560
Now I don't have one, so I didn't even know that.
01:16:42.880
Well, I mean, I wasn't born as mayor, but that's going to.
01:16:49.120
I can't wait for my signed copy to arrive in the mail.
01:16:51.480
I'm the invitation to moderate the conversation with the 92nd Street Y.
01:16:58.340
Maybe I'm going to ask you to do it in conversation.
01:17:31.340
It is about the radicalization of the Supreme Court and the sort of plan that was hatched
01:17:36.080
in the 1980s by a group of unlikely, really super weird, arch conservative right wing activists
01:17:55.540
Remember, Nancy Reagan said this was a fire trap.
01:18:12.660
Do you think they're going to get rid of the Voting Rights Act?
01:18:15.680
John Roberts has literally been working on that brief since he was a Department of Justice
01:18:30.760
I mean, you know, to be supportive of something that now I need to be against in the context
01:18:39.900
You're just a house cat getting ready to go out into the wild and find some owls and
01:18:51.340
Just, you know, and we'll go, you know, Earl Warren was here speaking of the Supreme Court
01:18:58.560
No, actually, we should probably put that in there.
01:19:02.600
I mean, of course, I reminded he also interned the Japanese.
01:19:05.420
I mean, as Rachel has reminded us, too, with the outstanding podcast series.
01:19:10.200
But let me go back to just the theory of the case with your podcast.
01:19:14.900
So you it's fundamentally about, again, breaking through and trying to find the essence of
01:19:22.880
The things that should connect and bind us all together.
01:19:25.200
And fundamentally, that's the challenge today in our politics.
01:19:31.980
Alienated from, you know, and we're so unhappy.
01:19:44.160
How much do you think media, in this case, social media, algorithms, what's happening with
01:19:55.240
And how concerned are you about that moving into 2026, 27, 28?
01:20:00.900
I mean, the social media thing has made us so covetous, right?
01:20:11.920
I mean, well, I did read the Bible a few times, so my neighbor.
01:20:18.320
By the way, Trump clearly hasn't, but that's another conversation.
01:20:26.140
By the way, my Newsom Bible also sold out on the Patriot site.
01:20:30.220
So if people are looking to purchase that on the Patriot site, it unfortunately currently
01:20:38.140
They were sold out just like the universities, just like our law firms, just like so many
01:20:47.660
No, I mean, I just, this was not, this was brought to you by.
01:20:51.760
It felt like a very natural, like very seamless ad roll.
01:20:59.700
I'm like, well, listen, Sonny, you too could buy a being an American writer.
01:21:04.660
This week on The Moment, we take a look at Venezuela's uncertain future in a conversation with
01:21:09.560
two people who have directly advised U.S. presidents.
01:21:12.340
Juan González during the Obama and Biden administrations.
01:21:20.100
And Carlos D. Rosillo during Trump's two terms.
01:21:22.780
I can guarantee you that nobody in the Trump administration likes Delcy Rodriguez.
01:21:27.120
Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
01:21:37.040
And on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.
01:21:40.580
Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all
01:21:49.260
Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed?
01:21:53.360
We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight.
01:21:58.120
You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and
01:22:03.740
We break down the topics you want to know more about.
01:22:06.700
Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health.
01:22:12.080
We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind, inside and out, healthy.
01:22:21.920
Health Stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone.
01:22:25.660
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:22:30.980
Are you desperately hoping for change in 2026, but feeling stuck?
01:22:36.520
Just spinning your wheels in old routines and bad habits?
01:22:40.080
I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, and in a New Year series of my show, The Happiness Lab, I'm going to
01:22:47.660
Unstuck at work, unstuck in your relationships, and even unstuck inside your mind.
01:22:52.480
I am the absolute worst culprit when it comes to getting into these ruminative loops and just
01:22:58.500
We'll look at ways to reignite your sense of purpose, rediscover your values, and get
01:23:04.080
We'll also explore how to design a life that feels more fulfilling.
01:23:11.360
You take the car along, and you try and get money, and you try and get degrees, and you
01:23:15.000
try and get to the end where either you have a mansion or a ranch or a shack.
01:23:26.720
Listen to The Happiness Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
01:23:31.500
I'm Ed Zitron of the Better Offline Podcast, and I want you to join me at this year's
01:23:35.820
Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, starting January 6th through January 10th,
01:23:41.500
We're doing 10 radio-style podcast episodes about the world's biggest tech conference, and
01:23:45.860
we're going to dig into the latest and weirdest gadgets, gizmos, and horrible AI gear that
01:23:49.960
the tech industry is desperate to sell you, all while covering the biggest stories in Silicon
01:23:56.140
I'll be joined by David Roth, Chloe Radcliffe, Adam Conover, Cory Doctorow, Ed Ungueso Jr.,
01:24:02.340
Robert Evans, and an incredible cast of the greatest talent in the tech media, with over
01:24:06.500
18 hours of interviews, commentary, and bizarre stories, all told from the Better Offline
01:24:12.960
Today I did five hours of back-to-back panels on artificial intelligence.
01:24:17.660
It included a number of great moments, including an entire room full of people laughing about
01:24:22.120
people losing their jobs due to artificial intelligence.
01:24:27.860
Tune in starting January 6th through January 10th, 2026, and listen to the literal best
01:24:34.000
Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you happen to
01:24:41.720
The headlines come fast, but what do they actually mean for people's lives?
01:24:46.100
I'm Alex Wagner, and on my new crooked media podcast, Runaway Country, I'm talking to people
01:24:51.240
across the nation to uncover how political chaos is shaping their everyday realities.
01:24:56.720
Join me and some of the smartest thinkers in politics to ask how we take back the reins
01:25:03.520
Listen to Runaway Country with Alex Wagner every Thursday, wherever you get our podcasts,
01:25:13.900
Social media has made us, first of all, envious, covetous, angry that we don't have as much
01:25:19.360
It's like, I think it goes to this baseline, keeping up with the Joneses thing and puts
01:25:23.840
It's like, well, all their kids have matching pajamas at Christmas.
01:25:27.860
On a basic, like, sort of jealousy level, that is bad.
01:25:30.720
And then when we don't have those things, and we don't have the life that people, you
01:25:34.100
know, show or the looks that people, like, you know, filter on social media, we become
01:25:40.780
lonely, we become unhappy, when we, when we are feeling like conversation could be too
01:25:46.320
awkward, or we don't want to go out and try out for the sports team, or we don't want
01:25:49.080
to fucking go all the way to our neighbor's house, we find our community online with people
01:25:52.520
that are disconnected from us and don't actually have our true selves at their heart.
01:25:57.380
You know, I think we've really lost each other.
01:26:00.560
We've really lost each other because of social media.
01:26:02.880
Someone asked me the other day, if you could get rid of the internet, would you?
01:26:08.360
If you had to choose, Sophie's Choice, internet, no internet.
01:26:20.260
I mean, I just feel like we live in dangerously isolating times.
01:26:23.620
And we haven't, and I gotta say, man, I've buried my head in the sand with regards to
01:26:32.640
I was like, oh, this is the fucked up thing that's going to happen to me in my, this is my
01:26:37.000
Like, it's the whole fucking cascade of shit that's happened in the first quarter of the
01:26:44.780
You know, the search for authenticity and true connection and community gets infinitely
01:26:50.300
harder when you can marry an AI chatbot and like live in a fucking cone of silence buying
01:26:55.640
things online and educating yourself about the world through a screen.
01:27:01.100
I mean, you know, there are discreet ways we can combat it, but I think what we need
01:27:05.560
are real thought leaders and real, like, you know, social shifts to move us away from
01:27:11.260
With my kids, I'm terrified at them looking at the screen too much.
01:27:45.480
We've spent many hours on this podcast on this particular topic.
01:27:54.680
We're one of the first big states to ban cell phones in schools.
01:27:58.000
But again, these, you said the word discreet ways, which suggests and implies by definition
01:28:07.560
What about banning under the age of 16 like Australia did?
01:28:13.360
Like, I don't think that that's going to fundamentally solve the problem because people's entire social
01:28:19.540
And it is going to be very hard to pry that from a certain generation.
01:28:25.480
I mean, I think it's like begins almost in utero.
01:28:27.900
It's like you have to start making decisions real early with these kids.
01:28:30.440
And I think the thing we need to do, both as, you know, journalists or politicians or children
01:28:38.200
Like, people need to physically move their bodies outside of the door.
01:28:42.660
My kids are now enrolled in like every single sport.
01:28:45.260
I have no time in the evening because I just push them into sports.
01:28:49.280
And we as human beings need to go out for cocktails and have more sex and do things with
01:28:58.500
One of and every two boys has not asked a woman out in person.
01:29:03.340
One out of seven don't even have a close friend.
01:29:05.440
I mean, it's, I mean, literally a friend, one friend.
01:29:08.780
The human body needs to move outside and deal with other human bodies.
01:29:12.100
I mean, literally, it is the most evolutionary, basic homo, homo, sapien, sapien, homo, homo,
01:29:43.000
I feel like she went to a University of California school or Yale.
01:29:56.900
But anyway, like literally people are just, I think we may be sometimes overcomplicated.
01:30:01.920
I literally think it begins with take your flesh and bones and move them outside the door.
01:30:07.840
There's not a parent out there that's not just shaking their head, of course, going absolutely.
01:30:16.220
They're sitting there on their phone saying, hey, honey, take the phone away.
01:30:31.040
But human beings, guys need to go out and fucking have a beer with their friends.
01:30:43.040
And then, like, if that's the cost-benefit analysis, I'll take this fucking downside.
01:30:49.440
So are you worried about sort of this nihilism that's sort of creeping in?
01:30:53.480
You've got the first generation in the history of this country.
01:30:56.840
30-year-olds not doing better than their parents.
01:31:02.040
Trump picked up this populist frame from one side of the other side of the coin.
01:31:05.180
You've got the Bernie frame, which is saying this economy is not nourishing.
01:31:11.940
The imbalance of the rich and poor is at historic levels.
01:31:21.880
It's really S&P 7, of which really one or two stocks that are 15%, 16% of that total.
01:31:29.180
Then maybe Apple, half that at probably 7% of the S&P's improvement.
01:31:44.320
It's sort of, the question's not even a question.
01:31:47.060
It's more of a statement or it's more just an affirmation, perhaps, of a deeper understanding
01:31:51.480
of why these young kids feel like, what the hell's the point?
01:31:58.960
We've been very, very destructive years of our stewardship of this country.
01:32:02.400
Do you feel you're more negative the last few years than you've been the prior five,
01:32:09.600
I take this from one of my friends who said, we're so lucky to be alive when the stakes
01:32:17.120
... in positions where we can actually try and change the math.
01:32:23.220
Instead of screaming and yelling at you, listening to your podcast or watching Lawrence and just
01:32:27.940
wanting to, you know, having a feeling like I can do something about it.
01:32:45.780
Was it your friend who said this and then that you sincerely said, I've shifted my mindset
01:32:51.900
I mean, I think you can be on, like, especially in news, you know, you just like fucking getting
01:32:59.020
And the game is to put on the fucking Band-Aids and get the hell back out there.
01:33:06.480
This is our, I mean, not to sound overly, you know, sort of churchy about it, but this
01:33:14.980
And you can go through it numb, feeling like a lot less, or you can, like, open yourself
01:33:20.800
up to the elements and surrender to the times in which you were born and, like, fight like
01:33:24.520
And there is no question that everything today has consequences.
01:33:28.280
And if you can be part of a consequence that turns us towards good and delightness and fairness
01:33:32.960
and equity, then, like, in whatever way, you know, whether it's just pushing your kid
01:33:37.600
out the door and making that kid have a better day and a better moment in his sunlight, or
01:33:41.800
whether it's actually doing things like policy and changing the course of the country, all
01:33:46.940
And it is extraordinary to be in times when the expectations are so urgent and the work
01:33:56.940
I genuinely think about it sometimes when I'm like, are you fucking kidding?
01:34:02.100
But then you think, okay, what are we going to do to sort of make this story live in the
01:34:18.960
The kingdom of Denmark, one of the founding members of NATO.
01:34:22.780
We could talk about Putin and Xi and how they're feeling about all these things that their permission
01:34:27.380
slept sore, or was it a tactical and brilliant move that weakens people like Putin because
01:34:36.700
He couldn't deal with his proxies in Iran and Syria.
01:34:41.500
And maybe this destabilization has put all of them on notice.
01:34:46.520
But I want to stay in the positive because I want to focus-
01:34:52.120
Yeah, we'll have Ben to unpack all of these things.
01:34:55.400
So we'll bring in Jake Sullivan and some of our other friends.
01:35:09.720
And I want to just end because you're being so positive and we all need.
01:35:32.700
And don't go into it with your head hanging down low, right?
01:35:47.920
And so start coloring in what's right in your life.
01:35:50.140
Color in what's right in terms of your relationships, what's right in terms of our politics.
01:35:56.800
I mean, so I think that's one of the ways of quite literally, not figuratively manifesting
01:36:04.480
And this notion that you have agency, that you can shape the future.
01:36:16.980
You saw that in terms of the ascendancy of new voices, new leaders.
01:36:21.820
You know, one could quibble about your flavor of leadership.
01:36:24.820
But in places like New York, obviously, in New Jersey and Virginia, and then these smaller
01:36:44.540
When it was like, hey, guys, they have like 37 state houses.
01:36:47.800
Republicans have like a vast majority of state houses.
01:36:51.480
I was with you in the South talking precisely about this issue until the Democratic Party
01:36:56.520
focuses on that, which are state houses, and get off this guy and gal on the white horse
01:37:03.420
That our obsession with the next Obama, as opposed to obsessing about the hard work.
01:37:10.360
And we're seeing that progress now being promoted across the country because people are waking
01:37:16.520
So in that spirit of optimism, we take back the house.
01:37:43.060
I think Trump's mismanagement of literally everything is going to redound to his disadvantage.
01:37:49.400
And just the clear disinterest in the basic, basic reason he was sent back to office, which
01:37:58.180
And he's just doing everything in his power not to do that.
01:38:01.320
Uh, but and he's like falling asleep and like taking too many aspirin.
01:38:11.380
So, so I, I do think, and I think that that is going to change the dynamic.
01:38:14.440
I think it will be a huge shot in the arm for the country to have a party in power that
01:38:20.200
is acting as a bulwark against the worst impulses of this administration that is going to make,
01:38:24.480
you know, Republicans vote on some of the hateful shit that they put out there and just
01:38:32.360
Um, and I just think it will be a real moment for Democrats to circle the wagons and decide
01:38:40.500
Meaning what is shape shifting, not just our opposition and being defined by the opposition,
01:38:47.500
So I think it's going to be a huge year, you know, and I think there are going to be
01:38:49.780
a lot of twists and turns, but the, the democracy, the wound is still intact, you know?
01:38:54.580
And it's like, believe in it, be part of it, get out there, do the thing, you know?
01:38:59.720
Well, you're doing the thing, the Swiss army knife in many ways.
01:39:06.460
And it's the third time you've used it, which is unbelievable.
01:39:11.480
It is, it's officially, no one, no one will dare, dare take.
01:39:16.400
I actually have a house cat who got out the other day and I was like, Francisco, Francisco,
01:39:21.400
Are you, you, you, I wouldn't even bring up J.D. Vance.
01:39:31.940
It's a, it's basically a man's beauty, man's beauty.
01:39:35.400
And the internet thinks that you're a way better mogger than he is.
01:39:40.580
So that means they don't think you're obese and they would vote for you more.
01:39:45.140
I'm glad it's my 10 point affordability strategy.
01:40:25.480
This week on The Moment, we take a look at Venezuela's uncertain future in a conversation with two
01:40:30.860
people who have directly advised U.S. presidents.
01:40:33.920
Juan González, you're in the Obama and Biden administrations.
01:40:41.200
And Carlos D. Rosillo, you're in Trump's two terms.
01:40:43.700
I can guarantee you that nobody in the Trump administration likes Delcey Rodriguez.
01:40:48.240
Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
01:40:58.160
And on the podcast, Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.
01:41:01.760
Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all
01:41:10.320
Is there a chronotype for that, or am I just depressed?
01:41:14.660
Health Stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone.
01:41:18.380
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:41:24.260
Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast.
01:41:27.500
And this January, we're going to go on the road to beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada to cover
01:41:31.280
the Consumer Electronics Show, Tech's biggest conference.
01:41:33.740
Better Offline CES coverage won't be the usual rundown of the hottest gadgets or biggest trends,
01:41:39.380
but an unvarnished look at what the tech industry plans to sell or do to you in 2025.
01:41:45.040
I'll be joined by David Roth at Defecta and the writer Edward Ongueso Jr.
01:41:49.040
With guest appearances from Behind the Bastards' Robert Evans, It Could Happen Here's Gair
01:41:52.620
Davis, and a few surprise guests throughout the show.
01:41:55.220
Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get
01:42:04.200
It's Michelle Williams, host of Checking In on the Black Effect Podcast Network.
01:42:09.280
You know, we always say new year, new me, but real change starts on the inside.
01:42:13.580
It starts with giving your mind and your spirit the same attention you give your goals.
01:42:19.080
And on my podcast, we talk mental health, healing, growth, and everything you need to step
01:42:30.940
Listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the
01:42:35.060
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.