Ana Kasparian Falls Out of Alignment: A political awakening brings a personal reckoning
The Unspeakable Podcast
Meghan Daum
4.8 • 784 Ratings
🗓️ 16 December 2024
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Do journalists ever regret the way they cover events? This week, veteran YouTube journalist and political commentator Ana Kasparian discusses her journey from the progressive left to finding herself politically unaligned, the regrets she still harbors, and the complexities of navigating controversial issues with nuance. She also discusses her thoughts on the election and on Biden's mental decline, the appeal of Trump, and how cultural shifts within the Democratic party affected the election.
Meghan and Ana also discuss motherhood (or in their cases, non-motherhood) and new discourse surrounding the trad movement, pro-natalism and the dark side of the pressure campaign to get people to have more children.
GUEST BIO
Ana Kasparian is a political journalist and media personality with nearly two decades of experience in news and analysis. Beginning her career as an assistant producer at CBS Radio in Los Angeles, she later became Executive Producer and co-host of The Young Turks. She now writes a Substack newsletter chronicling her political realignment journey and exploring key political and cultural issues.
Follow her on Substack here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When I was in college for journalism, my absolute favorite journalism professor, her name's |
| 0:09.5 | Linda Bowen, first day of class, wrote $40,000 on the whiteboard and said, how many of you |
| 0:17.6 | hear are pursuing journalism for fame? A bunch of people raised their hands. How many of you are are pursuing journalism for fame? |
| 0:21.5 | A bunch of people raised their hands. |
| 0:23.0 | How many of you are pursuing it because you think you're going to be rich |
| 0:25.7 | or you think you're going to be like Ryan Seacrest? |
| 0:27.8 | A bunch of people raised their hands. |
| 0:29.9 | She pointed to the $40,000 and said, |
| 0:32.6 | if you're pursuing real journalism, |
| 0:35.1 | you're lucky if this is the amount of money you're going to make a few |
| 0:38.6 | years into your career. Real journalists are not going to be rich. They're going to care about |
| 0:43.4 | getting people accurate information more than anything else. Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm |
| 0:52.8 | your host, Megan Down. My guest is Anna Kasparian. |
| 0:57.3 | Anna is the longtime co-host and producer of the Young Turks with Jank Weigar, which is one of the oldest |
| 1:07.3 | news and political analysis programs on YouTube. It's been going for well over a decade. |
| 1:16.7 | Anna is a bit of a legend in the political YouTube space. I'm thrilled that she came on the show |
| 1:23.7 | to speak with me about her new substack, which she launched in September. |
| 1:36.1 | It's called Unaligned, and it is a manifestation of her move to the political center over the last couple of years. |
| 1:37.0 | She's one of these people in our space who has started to see the world through a bit of a wider |
| 1:43.0 | lens. |
| 1:43.6 | So we talk about that shift. |
| 1:45.5 | We talk about her thoughts about the election, about some Trump's cabinet picks. |
... |
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