With less than a month to go until Election Day, there is suddenly plenty of politics in some of the biggest podcasts. While former President Trump has been sitting down with conservative podcasters for the past several months to get his message out, in the past few days Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have jumped into the mix. Harris sat down with Call Her Daddy podcast host Alex Cooper, while Walz joined the SmartLess podcast for an episode taping.
For Cooper’s Call Her Daddy, the conversation with Harris marked a shift for the podcast targeting young women, which typically focuses on topics like sex, dating and mental wellness. It generated some negative comments from some social media corners, but Cooper says she went to Washington to conduct the Harris interview because she felt it was important to the show’s overall focus.
“Every single week I talk about topics like mental health, relationships, sex, sexuality, trauma. Overall, my focus is women and the day-to-day issues that we face. So, I will be honest, I had been going back and forth with this decision for a while, to get involved or to not get involved.
But at the end of the day, I couldn’t see a world in which one of the main conversations in this election is women, and I’m not a part of it,” Cooper said. “I am so aware I have a very mixed audience when it comes to politics, so please hear me when I say my goal today is not to change your political affiliation. What I’m hoping is that you’re able to listen to a conversation that isn’t too different than the ones that we’re having here every week.”
Cooper mainly spoke with Harris about the battle over abortion rights, seeing it as the one that is most aligned with her podcast as the one she is most qualified to have.
“I want to be so clear, since this isn’t a one-sided conversation,” Cooper told listeners. “We reached out to former President Donald Trump to come on the show. If he also wants to have a meaningful, in-depth conversation about women’s rights in this country, then he is welcome on Call Her Daddy anytime.”
The move to interview Harris could be a risk. Several comments on Cooper’s Instagram account were critical of the decision, and the topics that were — and were not — discussed. “Oh noo why did we have to get this political. Listening to your podcasts was a nice escape from everything we hear about politics daily,” says one. But whether any of those came for actual listeners of the podcast is impossible to tell.
Cooper is not alone in venturing into the political sphere. Jonathan Van Ness, the celebrity hairstylist known for his “Queer Eye” television series role, took his Getting Curious podcast to the Michigan stage on Friday night. The focus of the conversation at the Michigan Theater was political at times, as Van Ness encouraged University of Michigan students to cast their votes early. The Michigan Daily says he also urged UM students to use their social media networks to encourage others to do the same.
“You guys do have power to sway an election,” Van Ness said. “Whether you have 50 followers or 500 or 5,000 or 50,000 or 5 million, you do have a platform that’s an important one to use.”
Political content will be harder to miss in the coming days. Walz’s interview with SmartLess hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett has not yet been released. Deadline says it will be released in the next week or so.
SiriusXM — which distributes and sells advertising for Cooper’s Call Her Daddy and her Unwell network — says it will have another Harris appearance on its network. It says Harris will sit down with satellite radio host Howard Stern on Tuesday. What is billed as a “special edition” of Stern’s show will air at 1pm ET with back-to-back replays throughout the day and week on SiriusXM’s “Howard 100” channel, with the full interview audio and video on demand on the SiriusXM app. The company points out that since the campaign season began last year, President Biden, Trump, and Sen. J.D. Vance have all joined SiriusXM and its hosts.
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