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Crooked Media

Is the internet slowly breaking our brains, and if so, what can we do about it? 

Offline with Jon Favreau is a place where you can take a break from doom-scrolling and tune in to smarter, lighter conversations about the impact of technology and the internet on our collective culture. 

Intimate interviews between Pod Save America host Jon Favreau and notable guests like Stephen Colbert, Hasan Piker, Chimamanda Adichie, ContraPoints, Margaret Atwood, and Rachel Maddow spark curiosity and introspection around the various ways our extremely online existence shapes everything from the ways we live, work, and interact with one another. Together we’ll figure out how to live happier, healthier lives, both on and offline. 

New episodes drop every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts and on the Offline YouTube channel.

Subscribe to Friends of the Pod! Your subscription makes Crooked’s work possible and gives you access to ad-free episodes of Offline with Jon Favreau, Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, and Lovett or Leave It, plus exclusive content and a lively Discord community. Learn more and subscribe at crooked.com/friends or on Apple Podcasts.

Offline with Jon Favreau

Cass Sunstein, Harvard professor and author of the new book On Liberalism: in Defense of Freedom, joins Offline to examine whether small-l "liberal" values like freedom, human rights, and the rule of law will be able to survive an illiberal president. Cass compares and contrasts what Trump and Vance are doing with the actions of the Bush and Reagan administrations, debates whether liberalism is a strong enough antidote to fascism, and reveals his #1 pop obsession.

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

 

 

 

 
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Is America Still a Liberal Nation?

Should protests be about expression or persuasion? What makes for an effective protest? And is it still possible for protests to effect change in a fractured, algorithmic media environment? Jon talks to Dr. Omar Wasow, a professor at UC-Berkeley, about his famous study on the effectiveness of civil rights protests in the 1960s. They discuss why the protests of the early 60s led to more political change than those of the later 60s, why the media environment of that era is much closer to our current environment than we realize, and why Dr. King and John Lewis focused on storytelling and dramatizing the injustice of the moment. But first: Jon discusses the shutdown fight and why we need a big grassroots political movement to wake the rest of this country up. 

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

 
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Dramatize the Injustice

Skibidi rizz Labubu Dubai matcha. The internet—and its algorithms—have reshaped the words we use and the way we speak—but are those changes also affecting our politics? Adam Aleksic, known online as Etymology Nerd, joins Offline to talk to Jon about his new book “Algospeak” in which he makes sense of our new, internet-optimized linguistic landscape. Jon and Adam discuss how that landscape is changing our politics, how Donald Trump’s unusual syntax is designed to capture attention in it, and why brainrot has become the dominant aesthetic of the generations most native to the internet—Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

 
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How Trump, Memes, and Algorithms Transformed The Way We Speak

Charlie Kirk’s assassination has rattled people on both sides of the aisle and terrified those whose jobs, like Charlie’s, involve talking about politics on the public stage. Jon reflects on the aftermath of the killing, what he finds most alarming, and his disappointment with leaders on the right and followers on the left. Then, the Bulwark’s Will Sommer joins the show to break down how important Charlie Kirk was to the MAGA movement, how the right is reacting to new information about his killer, and how Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and Megyn Kelly are all scrambling for control of his legacy and Turning Point USA. Jon closes out the show by answering Offline producer Austin Fisher’s questions on the ripple effects of the assassination.

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

 

 
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Inside the MAGA Reaction to Charlie Kirk’s Assassination

Democrats need to defend democracy without undermining it—but how? John Ganz, author of When the Clock Broke and the "Unpopular Front” substack, joins Offline to interrogate why Democrats have ceded nostalgia about the past to Republicans, how they should be resisting the America's autocratic slide, and what it says about our political moment that his “Trump is dead” tweet went viral. John and Jon discuss the pros and cons of using historical frameworks like fascism to understand contemporary American politics, how the seed of Trumpism was planted in the early 1990s, and whether Democratic leaders are falling short on rhetoric.

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.
 

 
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Can The Left Reclaim America's Story?

As the U.S. slides into autocracy, Americans need to be reminded that liberalism can still solve the problems that Trump uses to fear monger. Jerusalem Demsas, founder and editor in chief of “The Argument,” joins Offline to explain what solutions for immigration and the economy would look like, her beef with the post-liberal left, and why she’s staying on Twitter...and maybe you should too. Plus, what she’s seeing on the ground at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, DC—aka the place JD Vance gets his crazy blood and soil ideas.

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

 
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JD Vance and the Post-Liberal Right's War on America

Ben Rhodes—bestselling author, Pod Save the World co-host, and fellow Obama administration alum—joins Offline to explain how America is being torn apart by short-term thinking and the technology that stokes it. Ben recently wrote a piece for the New York Times on the topic, and he and Jon connect the dots between big tech, the attention economy and domestic dogmas, drawing on fifty years of foreign policy to explain how we got to a place where no one can focus on the worst of what Trump’s doing—let alone agree on a national narrative.

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

 

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Have Our Screens Made Us Too Distracted For Democracy?

Kyla Scanlon, author and economic commentator, joins Offline to explain why our economy feels so weird. She and Jon talk about the ways AI — and Labubus — have taken over the markets, whether big tech has become overly reliant on the attention economy, and why Gen Z is feeling so down about their longterm economic prospects. But first! Jon sits down with The New Yorker's Kyle Chayka to talk about internet age verification laws, whether we all have posting ennui, and why people are mourning the end of ChatGPT-4 like the loss of a close friend.

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

 
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AI's Threat to Gen Z's Jobs, the FartCoin Economy, and Why the Internet Wants to Check Your ID

As the Trump administration manufactures conspiracies to distract from the president’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, some on the right are blaming the deep state while others are finally calling foul. The Bulwark’s Will Sommer has been covering the far right conspiracy beat for years, and he joins the show to break down the Epstein drama, run through the kooks in charge of federal law enforcement, and compare the unhinged agendas of MAGA's two misinformation queens, Laura Loomer and Candace Owens. One thing’s for sure: never before have so many online lunatics occupied positions of such power and influence.

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

 

 
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QAnon Reacts to Epstein, Laura Loomer Gets Loomered, and Jon Gets Caught Up in the Syndey Sweeney Discourse

Why are non-white voters moving towards Trump? Yale professor and author Daniel Martinez HoSang sits down with Jon to examine how Democrats’ multiracial coalition fell apart during and after Obama’s presidency, what minorities see in Trump (and why they have no remorse about voting for him) and what the left can do to win them back. But first! Max is back to hash out the news of the week: Trump has announced his AI Action Plan and signed executive orders attacking "woke AI”—no word yet on chatbots that call themselves MechaHitler and act like Nazis, which happened recently with Elon Musk’s Grok AI. Speaking of Nazis, both the Department of Homeland Security and…Sydney Sweeney? have been accused of playing into white nationalist tropes online, and the Tea app has been hacked, exposing thousands of women's personal information to the delight of 4chan incels.

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

 
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Trump Bans Woke AI, TikTok Cancels Sydney Sweeney, and How MAGA Became Multiracial

Jon got piled on last week for tweeting that activist groups have pushed the Democratic Party out of supermajority territory. Waleed Shahid, a progressive strategist who’s worked for Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Justice Democrats, joins the show for an offline version of his and Jon’s online debate. Waleed explains why he thinks the blame is misplaced, and Jon weighs in on who—or what—is behind Democratic leaders losing touch with their base. But first! Trump’s new head of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, is a Project 2025 author. What does this mean for social media, free speech, and Elon Musk’s ventures? Plus, new exit polling shows late-deciding, swing voters had wildly inaccurate beliefs about Kamala Harris’s policy positions. Is hyper-targeted misinformation a permanent part of our electoral process now?

 

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

 
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Do Libs Need a Social Media Safe Space? Did Misinfo Hurt Kamala? How Much Should the Left Influence Democrats?

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