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Pod Save America
American political podcast From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Pod Save America is an American progressive[1][2] political podcast developed and distributed by Crooked Media.[3][4][5] The podcast debuted in January 2017 and airs twice per week, hosted by a rotating cast of former Barack Obama staffers Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor, Jon Lovett, and Dan Pfeiffer.[6][7][8]
It is the flagship podcast of Crooked Media, a media company founded by Favreau, Vietor, and Lovett.[9] The show averages more than 1.5 million listeners an episode, and has been downloaded more than 120 million times as of November 2017.[10]
Four Pod Save America one-hour HBO TV specials aired in fall 2018 to cover the U.S. midterm elections.[11][12] Crooked Media also films the podcasts and releases them on their YouTube channel.[13]
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History
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The podcast debuted in January 2017 as a successor to Keepin' It 1600, a political podcast produced by Bill Simmons' The Ringer and hosted by Favreau, Vietor, Lovett, and Pfeiffer which ran from March to December 2016. Pod Save America maintained the basic format of its predecessor.[14]
In an interview with Recode's Kara Swisher, the hosts have stated that, rather than continue the previous podcast, the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States spurred them to create a progressive media company with a network of podcasts.[15] They also wanted to be able to have the freedom to do more activism.[16] A goal is to inform their millions of fans and viewers that trust them as a reliable source.[15]
In the early days of the podcast they leaned heavily on their Obama staffer credentials and they even had him as their first guest. Soon after in May they would interview Democratic politicians like Amy Klobuchar.[17]
In the fall of 2017, Crooked Media took the podcast on its first live tour, Pod Tours America. Live shows were recorded and released as podcasts.[18] An international tour, Pod Tours the World, was announced for 2018, with live shows in Stockholm, Oslo, Amsterdam, and London.[19] In November 2017, the group combined their election organizing for Ralph Northam in the 2017 Virginia gubernatorial election with a sold-out live taping of an episode at the The National theatre in Richmond, Virginia. Around this time the show would average 1.5 million listeners.[17]
In 2023, the podcast interviewed Dean Philips for his presidential primary of the President.[20]
In the months prior to the first 2024 presidential debate they would openly discuss the negative polling on Biden's age and like most mainstream high profile Democrats they did not call for Biden to step aside.[20]
Following the first 2024 presidential debate, Pod Save America was one of the first most influential Progressive talk shows, to openly discuss and call for President Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential election.[21] Following their podcast covering the immediate aftermath of the debate, they seriously critiqued Biden's debate performance and him being unfit to be the nominee. After the podcast Rob Flaherty, chief digital strategy director for Biden's re-election, called out the four hosts of Pod Save America as "Self Important Podcasters" in a fundraising email.[21][22][23] During their Democracy or Else Tour in Boston, Massachusetts, they held an event with political commentator Mehdi Hasan and Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, where they held a debate on whether Biden should drop out.[22][24][25]
In the leadup to the 2024 United States presidential election, the podcast would support canvassing and voting outreach efforts. They themselves appeared in an Arizona rally.
After the 2024 United States presidential election, Pod Save America had an exclusive interview with several Kamala Harris 2024 campaign leaders including Stephanie Cutter, Jen O'Malley Dillon, Quentin Fulks and former Obama official, and frequent podcast guest and coworker, David Plouffe.[26][27] The podcast generated extreme online backlash against the Kamala Harris presidential campaign as they demonstrated no amount of responsibility and kept claiming the "political headwinds" were too great to overcome with the campaign and not admitting to making any mistakes such as lacking to distinguish themselves from the unpopular policies of the Biden administration.[28][29][30]
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Content
The podcast typically covers recent news items relating to politics, including the Trump administration, the US government and the Democratic Party, as well as center-left grassroots activism.[31]
The show typically features interviews with politicians, activists and journalists, including Obama's last interview as president.[32]
Reception
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The show averages more than 1.5 million listeners an episode, and had been downloaded more than 120 million times by November 2017.[10] Edison Research ranked Pod Save America the tenth most listened-to podcast in the US in the fourth quarter of 2024. Making its first appearance in the top 10, Edison attributed the surge in popularity to the political news cycle.[33] The show was number 11 in the first quarter 2025 rankings.[34]
The New York Times described the podcast as "one of the big breakout hits of the nascent resistance movement",[7] and "the left's answer to conservative talk radio... with a shoestring budget and no organizational backing, its hosts seem to have created something that liberals have spent almost two decades, and hundreds of millions of dollars, futilely searching for".[10]
The San Francisco Chronicle called it "one of the nation's most popular podcasts".[35] GQ called it one of the "most popular strategies for coping with the looming death of the republic".[8]
Newsweek wrote that the show's hosts "do something far more rare [than political analysis], which is to make politics entertaining and even fun, without ever downplaying what they see as the threat posed to American democracy by the man elected to defend it."[36]
Pod Save America won the 2025 Webby Award for News & Politics Podcast.[37]
See also
References
External links
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