March 4, 2024 • 50 mins
Isaac Mizrahi has a fun, frank and, at times, flirty conversation with podcast host and former presidential speechwriter, Jon Lovett (“Pod Save America”, “Lovett or Leave It.”) They talk about Jon’s imposter syndrome, his feelings about identifying as a gay man, being on Mounjaro and more. Plus, when Isaac misspeaks about Jon Favreau, it nearly comes to blows in the most hilarious way possible.
Follow Hello Isaac on @helloisaacpodcast on Instagram and TikTok, Isaac @imisaacmizrahi on Instagram and TikTok and Jon Lovett @jonlovett and @crookedmedia.
(Recorded on February 14, 2024)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You know, darling, you don't look gay.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
You don't come across as like you don't have manicured
brows and like bleached hair, and you don't have like
a bubble butt, and you're not.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Excuse me, excuse me, what the fuck is that?
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Oh, I don't have a bubble butt. How dare you you? No? No,
you haven't earned it. You haven't earned it. This is
this is This is for fucking closers. This ass is
for closers.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
All right.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
This is Hello Isaac, my podcast about the idea of
success and how failure affects it.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I'm Isaac Msrahian.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
In this episode, I talked to podcast host, former presidential
speech writer and Crooked Media co founder John Lovett.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Hello, Isaac, it is John Lovett, not John Lovett's. I
know you can't tell, but it's the gay one. Even
though you don't seem to recognize that my voice is
gay enough for you. What am I supposed to do? Uh?
Call me back.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Today's guest is John love It, and he is this
kind of media giant, you know, as far as I'm concerned,
he really understands media. And the first time I ever
met him was when I did his podcast called Love
It or Leave It, and I was intrigued because it
was such a disconnect between the person and the media star, right,
(01:25):
And so today what I really want to do is
kind of close that gap even more. I want to
find out about the person John love It, who he
really is, and how that affects his success. So let's
get started, John love It.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Hi, Hi, good to see you.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I good to see you.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
You know, I have to tell you, I feel a
little insecure about this because I feel like this is
what you do all day long, and I want I
want to be fast. I want you to be fascinated.
I'm not kidding. I want this to be like outside
of the realm of the other million podcasts that you
work on. And I wonder, like, can you coach me
(02:13):
a little bit?
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Look, you're not like the other girls, all right, and
I think we all we all know that, and but
you wake up fascinating.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I'm prettier.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I'm a little prettier than most of the other girls,
which leads me to my first sort of question for you,
which is, you know, what are you like?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
How? How how do you identify darling?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Because no, seriously, like, you're a speech writer, you used
to write speeches.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Right, you're a writer, you're.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
A podcast or you have a media company. So tell
me a little bit about your identity.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
What are you is a very funny what a question? Hey,
what are you?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
So?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
That's a you know, it's interesting, Like I feel insecure
about calling myself a comedian, even though I do a
comedy show live every week. I feel insecure about calling
myself a writer because every couple of years I say
I'm a writer again, and then I don't finish what
I started. I love hosting podcasts. I am a podcast host.
That's probably what I would say first. Now I was
(03:08):
a presidential speechwriter. Though, to call yourself the thing you
did before the three other things you've done since feels
a little like living in the past, like an Olympic
silver medalist walking into the bar wearing the metal, going
this old.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Thing, you know, right, except it was a really important job,
I mean, and it kind of got you somewhere.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeh.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Let's start talking about your history a little bit. Okay,
First of all, where are you from?
Speaker 3 (03:32):
I was born in New York. I grew up on
Long Island. Actually, George Santos's district is where I grew.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Up, right, which is now? I'm so happy to report
Tom swass.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Tom, the Democrats took it back.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
So happy to say.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
From a world famous astronaut, George Santo Well noted for.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
At least for the next seven months, right right, he
has to run again. But all right, So you're from
Long Island. Were you into musical theater or something like?
Did you play common?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Did you do it?
Speaker 3 (04:01):
No, I didn't do anything like that. I really struggled
looking back on it, I think that so much of
what for me being a kid was about was like,
I don't know exactly how to be myself, but I
know how to get an A and a test. I
know how to do all the extracurriculars. I know how
to take a standardized test and get into the colleges.
(04:23):
And so if I'm not going to be happy, I'm
going to be successful. And so I think that is
really what drove me. And so I liked politics, but
I viewed politics as a way to win a speech
and debate tournament to put that on my resume. And
I liked music, but that was again just a way
to kind of prove that I was the best little
boy in the world. So It really wasn't until I
think I came out of my shell in college, and
(04:45):
after that I started to think, oh, like I love
doing this. I love writing about politics. I love the
intersection of politics and comedy and trying to figure out
what that would mean. I didn't know, but I knew
that there was something I enjoyed doing.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Let's talk about your parents for a second.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Were they worried because like I was a really kind
of motivated kid. You know, I like went to drama school,
I went to performing arts, then I went to design school.
Then I got a job that you know, so it
was like obvious that I had this kind of rollout
of a lot of different jobs. And when you were born,
like nobody even there wasn't the blush of podcasts. So so, like,
(05:22):
did your parents think you were slacking?
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Yeah? I mean I was always ambitious, and you know,
my my parents were always very proud. I always did
very well in school. I was always successful in that way.
And I think when like I left college and I
was kind of doing open mics in New York City
and maybe going to be a lawyer and volunteering on
political campaigns, I think that there was like a moment
(05:46):
where there was some concern that I was off the rails.
But soon after that, I get a job in politics.
I end up becoming a junior speech writer for Hillary Clinton,
and I was sort of on my way. And my
mother worked as a buyer for a department store. My
father ran the box factory. My grandfather started and wow,
(06:08):
the box factory. That is superior package.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
That's a great title to something, the box Factory.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
The box factory. Yeah, but I sort of found my
own way, and I feel like my parents always thought, oh,
you know what, whatever happens, I'm going to be okay,
that I'll make my way, I'll make my success. And
when I left politics to become a comedy writer, I
think again they had their kind of Jewish parent worry,
but it became a show. And when that started foundering,
(06:33):
I found the podcasting, and they don't worry about.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Me, right, But you know, I'm kind of like thinking
about the essence of this. I'm trying to go back
deep into the essen what do you major in in
college to become you?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
I majored and was it relevant? It wasn't relevant. I
loved math. I went to Williams College in Massachusetts, and
I loved math because it's not a lot of reading.
The books are very thin.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Oh my god, you're crazy.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
But you know, when I was a kid, as much
as I I did well in school, if there was
something I didn't like to do, I just wouldn't do it.
That's how I was. If I liked something, I would
go full bore. I would pay attention, I would focus,
I would learn everything about it had an intensity to it.
But if I didn't, I just couldn't find the attention
to make it happen. You know, I'm one of many
who has self diagnosed using TikTok with aga adhd. But whatever.
(07:21):
So I loved math because it wasn't how much you consumed.
It wasn't about how much you read. It wasn't how
many facts you had in your mind. It was the
hard work, the hard of understanding a problem that could
be on one page, and you can start at one
page for two hours and either you get it or
you don't. Math is not something you can kind of
understand if you've gotten to the end of a chapter
(07:42):
and you can't explain it back. You can't do the problems,
you can't do the proofs. You can't do the exercises.
You don't get it, you don't have it. And so
I really liked the logic of it, the rigor of it,
and the kind of forced focus of it. And I
do think math it does make you smarter, It makes
you thinking in a different way.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
And now you have this incredible media company, Crooked Media, right,
and that is the producer of several incredible podcasts, including
the one that I was on Cold, Love It or
Leave It?
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Was there a big break in that or something?
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah? Well, so I had been a speechwriter in the
Obama White House. Two of my friends, Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor,
and a fourth Dan Pfiffer. He had been communication director
for Obama. John had been chief speechwriter. Tommy had worked
for the National Security Advisor doing kind of farm policy
press as a spokesperson. And we all had gone our
(08:35):
different ways after leaving politics, But in the run up
to the twenty sixteen election, we end up doing this
podcast basically as a hobby as sort of disaffected and
frustrated news consumers just watching it from our point of view,
as people that had been in politics, helping people through
what they were watching of Clinton versus Trump, and after
Trump won, which we were completely surprised by. Tommy and
(08:59):
John and I and I were driving to a studio
to do a day after episode and my car ran
out of gas in front of the CNN building. I
just hadn't been paying attention. I was, so I think
overwhelmed by events. So we pushed my car to the
side of the road, call a tow truck. We start
walking to the studio in Los Angeles, and as we're
doing it, we're really starting to think about that we
(09:20):
didn't want to go back to our old jobs, that
we wanted to figure out some way to keep doing
a podcast and think about what progressives who were at
that point were in shock and sad and scared and
frustrated and furious. Where they could put that energy, Where
could they put that sense of outrage? And so we
started talking about launching a new podcast and a progressive
(09:42):
media company around it, based on the idea that there
were a lot of people out there that wanted to
know how they could help, and part because people were
texting us what do I do? What do I do?
What do I do?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And we didn't know, So it was like an intention.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
You actually while walking from the tow truck to the studio.
You were putting it together. You were like, oh, let's
form a media company. You actually made an effort to
form a media company and succeeded at that.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Yeah, I think we were blessed by ignorance in that
we had no idea how hard it was to start
a media company. We had no idea what we didn't know.
We had no business plan, we had no business experience really,
and so all we really had was this idea that
there were going to be a lot of people who
felt like we did, who were going to be looking
(10:27):
for an outlet that was about not just what had
gone wrong, but what everybody could do to come together
and put their anxiety into action, to find a way
to be activists. And so in January of twenty second seventeen,
we launched Crooket Media. At that point, what was it.
It was a checking account we started at the Bank
of America on San Vincente. It was a statement announcing
(10:49):
the company, and it was a new podcast. That's really
what we had going into it. And we thought, all right,
we give it. Let's give ourselves a couple months to
see if we can rebuild the audience. We had when
we were at the Ringer, and if we can do
it in a couple months, six months, maybe we'll really
have something. And the audience was back in a matter
of weeks, if not days, and it grew beyond what
we had had in the previous previous in the election,
(11:11):
it became even bigger, and we said, Okay, wow, we
have something here. Let's see what we can build. And
that we started looking for people almost immediately who could
actually help build a company because we knew what we
could do. We could talk about politics, we could host,
and we can post, but we needed people who actually
understood what it would look like to build a real
media company. M hmm.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
And you know I talk a lot about this with guests,
which is this idea of failure. You know, was there
some incredible failure either after you started Crooked Media or
before that kind of shaped the way you thought about
what you wanted to do or something.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Yeah, it's it's interesting. I think my the way I
would talk about this has changed even in the last
couple of years. I do think I have more perspective
on it out than I did then. And what I've
come to realize, you'll turn on the news, and you'll
see people that have spent their whole lives in politics,
and you say to yourself, why are they like that?
They seem so broken, They seem like they don't really
(12:12):
understand their own motivations. They seem like they're obsessed with
the wrong things. It seems like they're too inside. And
the reason it seems like that is because they are.
And I feel like I was somebody like that. I
graduate from college, I'm almost immediately in politics, and I'm
very fortunate to get this job as a speechwriter for
Hillary Clinton. I'm very fortunate to get this job as
a speechwriter for President Obama. I decide I want to
(12:32):
leave and pursue comedy. I move out to Los Angeles
again in the kind of just always working, not really
examining my motivations at all. I end up getting to
make a television show right when I got here. So lucky,
so lucky. Like if I say it to people, they're
fucking furious to me, because what do you mean you
just made a Televisionhow well we pitched an idea, NBC
wanted to make it. I got to make a TV
(12:53):
show right when I got out here. I got to
learn on the fly of actually making a TV show
called sixteen hundred pen and now I'm making a sitcom
barely a few months after leaving the White House. The
hope I'd had to be able to kind of reflect
or take a break or think about what I wanted
to do was gone. We make this show. Over year,
I learn an incredible amount I feel quay in over
(13:15):
my head. I react the way a twenty nine or
thirty year old does when they feel in over their head,
which is trying to fake it till I make it
rather than asking for help. And then all of a sudden,
the show airs. Now critics hated it, but audiences also
didn't watch it, and that's really that's so.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
That's nobody liked it.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Now, Now what I would say is it just became
a cult classic faster than we had planned. But it
was canceled after one season, and all of a sudden,
you know, I've moved to Los Angeles. The Hillary job,
into the Obama job, into the TV writing job has
gone quiet. And now I'm like sitting in this apartment
in West Hollywood, and I have no idea what I'm
(13:57):
doing there, I have no idea why I'm there, and
It was really the first time I'd ever even taken
a moment to think, not how can I be successful?
How can I achieve something that looks good, that gives
me the plaudits and credit and sense of acclaim. That's
so important to me because I don't have a lot
of esteem for myself. But what do I actually want
(14:18):
to do? And the answers I had no idea. I
really didn't. I really was kind of lost after that.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Can we stay there for a second, sure, because I
often think it's so important for people to like sit
in the feelings of like, for instance, you said you
didn't have a lot of self esteem.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Was there some.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Kind of emotional strength that you drew upon when it
was completely quiet that made you go, oh, you know what,
I'm okay in la. I like my house, I like
my dog, I can function, I like math, I can
go back to me. I mean, besides like freak out
and be scared at the age of thirty or thirty one,
What did you do well?
Speaker 3 (14:55):
I actually I wish that I could say it was
something as I think kind of productive, it was what
you're describing, But I actually think what I did was
just sort of ignore the problem for a while, right, like,
don't face these feelings, don't face these denial, denial, denial. Well,
there's a great book by Steve Martin called Born Standing Up,
(15:15):
And there's a line in it that I'm going to paraphrase,
if not Butcher, that I always think about, which is,
delusions of grandeur can get you between moments of genuine inspiration.
And I do think that. You know, you're sitting in
a duplex apartment with just the cheapest furniture you bought
when you moved and had no money. You know, you'd
never been in this city before. You didn't pick the
(15:36):
neighborhood you would have picked in if you'd lived there
even a few months. Right, And all I assumed at
that moment was, well, making a TV shows pretty easy.
Why don't I just make another? And so you know,
you start thinking, oh, what's the next pitch? What I
can put my feelings aside, maybe to a fault, and
then think, all, right, well, what's next? If I want
more success, if I want to come back, if I
want to figure out how to have the career I
(15:59):
believe I deserve, Well, what's next. We'll figure out the
next pitch. And even if I was depressed, and even
if I was sad, and even if I didn't know
what I was doing there, even if I didn't even
like what I was doing, even if I struggle to
write something, you tell me, I got to take this
pitch and sell it. I will bring in the intensity
and jokes and effort and like.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Of course, yes, obviously you are a determined individual, and
that is really smart what Steve Martin says about the
delusions of grandeur and faking it until you actually have
the inspiration. But I'm not even talking about like inspiration,
because you know, we are all very inspired artists, but
(16:37):
there are people that we have to collaborate with, even
we have bosses, right, we have to get them to
see stuff. And sometimes it has absolutely nothing to do
with us, you know. It has to do with like
the outside world that is offering them better business deals,
you know, to do with the same product as you know.
I'm laying it out there. I'm laying out like the scariest,
(17:00):
scariest scenario that you think about at three o'clock.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
In the morning in your head, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
And the reason I bring this up is because I
think of you as this incredibly successful and young person right,
Do you have imposta syndrome?
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yes, you get over that.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
I do. I do feel as though I have imposters it.
And also I refer to myself as a podcast as
maybe a writer, maybe a comedian. Look, I feel very
fortunate that Crooked Media exists, but I do believe it
exists because I think we had a good instinct as
to the kind of shows that people might respond to.
We were also in the right place in the right time,
(17:34):
and we were very lucky to have very smart people
who helped build this business and build a sustainable, progressive
media company that was strong enough and careful enough to
not fall prey to what a lot of other media
companies have fallen prey to. So I feel very fortunate
about that, but I do feel like an impostor if
I try to take credit for that. Now. I think
(17:54):
one part of it for me, if I'm going to
try to take your question of base value, is I
sometimes think of myself a little bit like Cortez burning
the ships that Like, when I moved to LA I
didn't think, oh, and if it doesn't work out, I'll
move back. I really didn't think about that. I didn't
think about that I didn't think about that contingency. I
just had to move here and I had to fight
(18:16):
and fight and fight until I figured out a way
to make it work. When we launched Cricket Media, yeah
we talked about, oh, we'll see how we're doing in
six months, and yeah, I think rightly, intellectually, I would
have thought and if it doesn't work out, I can
try to write a script. But day to day, week
to week, didn't think about it, didn't think about that timeline,
didn't think about what would happen if it all went wrong.
I just didn't put my mind too. I didn't think
(18:36):
about it. And you know, there's so much luck. There's
so much luck, especially Entertainment's so much uck in life.
There's so much luck in entertainment in a field in
which there's tons and tons and tons of talented people
competing to do the craft they love. And a lot
of those talented people don't get the opportunity that another
(18:58):
person does that makes a career, right, did they do?
That's life, That's how it works. So there's no way
to guarantee your success. But I do think that there
are certain ways to guarantee failure. And one thing I
noticed over the years is that you know, real medicine
treats one thing, fake medicine treats everything. You know. You
take advil for headaches, you take posies for anything you want,
(19:22):
you know, like homeopathic remedies. It is amazing. There's nothing
they can't do right. And I think that that sometimes
can be true in a career, which is making it
is difficult no matter what. It's especially difficult if you're
trying a bunch of different things because either you don't
want to choose or you don't want to admit that
you have to choose. And as hard as it can be,
(19:47):
I think sometimes the best way to give yourself the
best shot is to focus all your efforts and all
your attention in one direction to see if it works.
Because if your attention is divided, if you're trying to
be a musician and a writer and a comic and
a director, if you're trying to do all these different
things at once because you love them all, you care
about them all, and you want one of them to take,
(20:08):
you might not be putting yourself in a position to
learn and gain the skills you need and the growth
you need in the one direction that is maybe the
most likely place for you to succeed. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Wow, I have to say that is powerful. You know,
it's powerful because I do a lot of different things,
you know. I perform, I make clothes, and I write.
And I fought this my whole life. I had teachers
who told me that I needed to pick one, and
then I had one teacher who said, you know, fuck them,
do whatever the hell you want to do whatever feels right.
(20:41):
You know. But I do think you might be onto something,
at least in terms of like, as I get older,
I realize it's not that I can't do everything.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
I don't want to do everything. I want to focus more,
you know.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
I think if people have multiple paths and interest they
should pursue them. And by the way, the rules to
be broken. But here's what I would say, Like, you know,
I host Lover or Leave It. On Thursdays, we do
Pod Save America Mondays that record a bunch of other
things throughout the week. That's a choice I've made to
do a bunch of different things. My week is filled
with a bunch of interesting, different kinds of shows and
(21:20):
kinds of work. And I really like that. I like
that we do Vote Save America, which is our effort
to organize people around politics and the election. We wrote
a book doing all of these things. If it would
be a lie to say that some parts of this
doesn't suffer because of attention being divided. Like, you know,
you are able to do a lot of different things.
There's no way in which being a designer is getting
(21:43):
the best of you when you're also being a host wedding.
It's just not so. There is the way in which
pursuing different things might limit your ability to be successful.
There's a way in which pursuing different things is just
a division of your mental energy and creativity and intelligence.
You can't pretend otherwise. People can't multitask. It's ms.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Do you have a big ego? You think?
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Do you guys think I have a Everyone understands that.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Sucks.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
No, No, I want to talk about that because I
often think, like when you can take the whole subject
of ego out of things and just do what feels
good and not care so much about you know, about
results or something like that. You know, I often think
that's when you really do kind of find love and
(22:36):
find inspiration, you know, when you eliminate ego. But let's
talk about you for a minute now specifically and the
fact that I swear to God, I swear to God
John even knowing your podcast, even knowing stuff about you,
when I met you, I had no idea that you
were gay. I swear to God, I had no idea.
(22:58):
What do you mean I did not you know that
you were a gay man?
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Far?
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Are you a gay man? Yes? I am. I am.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
You identify you identify as a podcaster.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
And a game I would say, this is just being
honest about it, which is when I was growing up,
and this is true. When you were growing up, the
menu was shorter, There wasn't much of a menu. And
are I knew I wasn't straight. I knew I wasn't
straight from twelve thirteen years old, and so if I
wasn't straight, I was gay. That was what was available
(23:29):
to me. The difference between gender identity, gender expression, sexual
orientation simply didn't exist to me. It was not something
I was aware of. Yes, there were people writing about
it and thinking about it, and there were parts of
the culture where people were starting to talk about that more,
but it was not available to me. And so I
was gay. And that's where I'm at and that's what
I continue to be. But do I think that if
(23:51):
I was growing up now, I would call myself gay.
I don't know that I would. I think that I
have a wow. I think that I would probably just
redown to calling myself queer, a word that I even
struggle to ascribe to myself because as much as I
don't want to feel it, it still carries a feeling
(24:15):
that makes it not feel right for me because of
the baggage it carries, but not because I don't think
it better describes how I feel about sexual orientation and gender,
and so that's how I feel about.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
It, right.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
I mean, you know, when you talk about your coming
up and my coming up, it's completely different because I
think I'm like twenty years older.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Than you or something that I don't want to acknowledge.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
I don't want to think about that, but it's true,
and so your experience is different than mine. I'm not
going to say mine was harder or easier or something.
But you know, darling, you don't look gay. You don't
come across as like you don't have manicured brows and
like bleached hair, and you don't have like a bubble butt.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
You're not an Excuse me, excuse me? What the fuck
is that? Yeah, I don't know a baby, but how
dare you? No, you haven't earned it, You haven't earned it.
This is business for fucking closers. This ass is for closers, all.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Right, darling, all right, I will remember that.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
I will remember that. That's right.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
But there is this.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Kind of like majority of gay men, especially you're from
New York especially, you know that there is like one
area in Chelsea where it all kind of emanates from.
And I'm not saying this as like to reduce the
experience of something, but I'm telling you, like most of
the gays, the ones that I watched and that I
(25:44):
admired growing up, that I didn't fit in with, you know,
Like I would go to bars and I would feel
like really really out of place. And you know, now
I look at like gay cruises or something, and everybody's
in like angel in a jockstrap. That's the theme of
the night, Angel in a strap or something. Now, granted,
there was many nights where I was very transgressive and
(26:05):
I did go to my share of like foam parties
or something, you know, but it wasn't the same. It
was not this kind of majority of the majority. Right,
you're not either. I don't see you as this like
majorly major that's not the first thing you see about you.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Well, no, no, Well, I think it is hard to
know the difference between the way that I am gay
or queer is exactly the right way, because this is
how I am. I am those things. This is what
it means to be gay. The way that I am
gay is what it means to be gay, because I
am gay, and so this is how I am going
to do it now. I think that's a big part
of it. I think there's a lot of gay people
that don't feel comfortable in those settings. But what I
(26:45):
also do think it's hard to tell the difference between
is what I just said, that sort of this is
who I am and this is what I'm like, and
I don't fit in with this kind of a crowd
all the time. Once in a while or two, I'll
have a night or have I internalized a form of homophobia,
and not just homophobia, but a form of self self
loathing beyond sexual orientation. Yeah, it made me uncomfortable being
(27:07):
feeling free enough not just to be gay, but just
to be effervescent flamboyant, not in a sexual way or
even a homosexual way, but just to be in a big, loud,
take up space shirt off mindset just was so ananthemy
to me based on how I felt about myself for
so long. So I don't know, I don't know the.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
DAAs based on what like the genes something, or based
on I think it's what your parents told you, or
what I.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Think based on the kind of Long Island Jewish culture
that was much more about you know, what are you
going to be when you grow up? Than what do
you like to do?
Speaker 2 (27:47):
And when you talked earlier about how you would identify
now if you have a bigger menu, I think about
that all the time, you know. And you know when
I perform, I sometimes I wear like sparkles and ruffles
and things and pearls, and I feel like, am I
an impost in this? Or am I realer than I
ever was in my entire life? Just wearing black T shirts?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
You know? And it's really hard, you know. I thought
about this a lot during the pandemic, and the analogy
that made sense to me was, you know, they'll be
paths on a college campus between dorms, and they'll be
very perpendicular, and then the snow will fall, and then
people will walk where they want to walk, and they'll
make what are called desire paths, and those paths will
look very different because absent the society lines that were
(28:33):
drawn for them, people figure out a new way that
they want to walk. And even if you think I
want to take the diagonal, it's hard when you see
the lines. It is. It's hard when you see the lines.
And so for me, like the pandemic, was this moment
where I was stuck in my house. Society is much
further away, much smaller. And then when I came out
of that, I thought, you know, actually, there are parts
of my identity that I don't feel like I've exploring.
(28:55):
I want to wear more feminine clothing. I have an
image of myself that I have been totally honest about,
and I think that did give me permission to think
about this. You know, you talk about putting aside ego.
I mean this is I think part of it right. Really,
When you say put aside ego, what it often means
is put aside what other people think of you, which
(29:15):
is very hard to do because your identity is wrapped
up in how other people think of you and how
other people think of you matter because we don't live
in a on an island. We do live amongst people
and how people see us as important to us.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Well, for you, it was COVID and for me, I
wrote a memoir and as I was writing the memoir,
I thought, you know, if someone gave me the choice
of identifying as a gay male or some kind of
trans kind of because I think I do have that
somewhere in me. I have such intense shame about my body.
I cannot tell you, John, I know such intense love
it name is no matter how thin I am. John, Oh,
(29:51):
I can't call you John.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
You did, you, said John Favre.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Oh, Well, because I want to bring up John because
I know him and I love him.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
He is one of the sweetest, most darling people in
the world I think that I've ever met. But I'm
sorry I called you fabric because I wrote it down here.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Yeah Favro, No.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
I'm just saying to do it. So yeah, no, no, no, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
So we were talking about if I was forty years
younger and you were like twenty years.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Younger, would we be gay men? Would we be doing that?
You know?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
I think it is so hard. I've talked with this
on the show Affair Amount too, and it's something that like,
I like talking about because I think a lot of
other people have a similar difficulty kind of parsing, which
is the space between a general dysmorphia around your appearance
as some kind of some version of a gender dysmorphia,
(30:38):
and what I realized for a long time is there
so often the reason I decided, say, not to wear
a skirt on stage, it wasn't because I felt uncomfortab
wearing a skirt. It was because once the skirt was on,
I would have to be honest that in the skirt
I don't look the way I want to look, not
in a gendered way, but that like I don't want
to change my gender. I want app and if I can't,
(31:01):
you know what I mean. If I can't wear the
skirt with abs, I don't want to do it all.
I feel I'd rather hide in the jeans. I'd rather
hide in the clothing in which I feel safe and
comfortable and unobtrusive and not interesting. Then were something interesting,
you know.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
What It's about the way you look at yourself in
the mirror and what you kind of want to see
versus what you actually do see, you know. And that's
what I love about that generation is they can take
all of that bullshit that we've learned about what our
abs are supposed to look like, and what our tits
are supposed to look like, and what our closer butts
(31:35):
are supposed to look like. You know, they've taken all
of that and they've re established what it means to them.
And earlier you were saying, and I love this thing
you were saying about, like, look, this is who I
am as a gay man, and that's why it works
because this is who I am.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
I can't do it any other way.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Yeah, you know, and I feel like that's how everybody
is dealing with their sexuality. Now, Darling, tell me about
the power, tell me about the benefits. Is there something
great about being a gay person in media today.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
I don't know. I've not gotten to try the other
side of it. You know. It's funny because you said
to me, I didn't realize you were gay, And I
do think when I'm talking about politics, I wouldn't go
so far as to say I'm like, you know, doing
a straight voice, but I think for whatever reason, when
I'm talking about the news, my voice gets a little
less lyrical, it gets a little less musical, it gets
(32:29):
a little bit straighter. Like if we were in person,
I feel like the lilts would come in and almost
like it's almost at times it's like, oh, you have
to remind me, Oh wait, God, I should be I
should be I should go full gay on this thing.
But but it is interesting, right because I don't. I
only have my perspective. I get to do this. I'm
a gay person. This is what I do as a
gay person. But do I think some internally I know
(32:51):
that when I'm talking about the news, I do it
with a slightly less affected voice than when say, I'm
joking about the oscars when I'm on Lover or Leave It. Yeah,
I think so.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Yeah, I feel like everybody probably does that, not just
gay people. Yeah, you know, I mean yeah for sureight,
But you know, getting back to this idea that you
have partners, right, and Jon Favreau is one of them,
and who is the other one.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
It's Tommy. It's John Favreau and Tommy Vitour and Dan
Feifer co host Ponzze America. But John and Tommy and
I we started the company.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Together, okay, and are you gay and they're not? That's right, right,
And so how does that work? Does that put you
at an advantage just to put you at a disadvantage,
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Like, no, it's it's interesting. I think it's I think
it does give me a different perspective. But also I
think we make it work in part because I get
to be almost like the kind of like impish gay
brother at the table, you know, like they they have
their ways of relating to each other that aren't totally
accessible to me all the time. But then I have
(33:55):
this other point of view that I think shakes them
a little bit. And I also do think like comedy
does this, but also being gay does this. It gives
you a little bit of permission to be a bitch.
You know, you can go a little bit further, and
sometimes you'll get you into trouble, but like you know,
you can kind of like lean back in your chair
a little and be a little acerbic. And that's gay culture.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
That's funny.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
It's so funny that you're saying that, because I never,
of all of my exposure to you and your podcast,
I never find that you do that.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
I don't think you work that angle.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Well, I should I thought I did.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Wait, Darling, I especially don't get that as a kind
of result of your being, you know gay.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Well, by the way, I don't think I directed towards them.
I think I directed at guests or the news. You know,
there have been moments where, you know, like we interviewed
Pete Boudha Judge and I kind of made some like
joke about pride with some innuendo that did not totally work,
where I kind of feel like I only could do
that right because you.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Know rights, you're both gay.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
You're both gay.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
That's the love Pete Boota Judge, I love it.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
So let's talk for a minute about social media because
it's very, very intertwined in what you do. And yet
I just went to find you on Instagram and there's
no verified is there.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
I have not verified on Instagram. I've taken myself off
of Twitter or x nay Twitter. I have a TikTok account,
but I don't post there crooked media posts. I've sort
of pulled back. I have pulled back. That's probably to
my detriment in some ways. But I found it was
(35:40):
Elon Mousse that was one of his many last straws.
There was one last straw that was a last draw
for me, and I took myself off of Twitter. I
just slowed to a scrawler, basically not posting at all
on Instagram. I consume TikTok and honestly, that's plenty. I
don't need it. I don't need it.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
No, I don't. I know.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Oh, except what you do is so connected to that.
So I'll go rhythm for one thing.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
So first of all, we have an incredible team at
Quicker Media that does a ton of posting of our
shows and of our content and of our videos and
of our merch and of our touring schedule and all
the rest. And I can share that and like repost
that from time to time. But why are we on
social media? And you know, what does it do for us?
And what do we do for it? And on the
what it does for us question? I think Twitter was
(36:27):
very valuable to me early on, especially when I left
DC I moved to LA. I'm writing TV shows. I'm
a little bit outside of politics. I can talk about politics,
and I can have a voice in a way that
that I think sort of reminds people like, Hey, I'm
gonna come a funny person. I have funny things to say.
You can invite me on your show, you can think
of me for whatever this project. I think that that
was useful. Where it has been much less useful, especially
(36:49):
in recent years, is the idea that social media is
how you build an audience for a podcast or video shows.
It just doesn't seem to translate. And you know, I
think it was mpror that took themselves off of Twitter
and found it had barely any impact on their audience.
There was so little conversion.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
How do you promote the podcast if not on social media?
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Well, so, first of all, we do post videos. We
post it on YouTube, I think videos on Instagram. Like
I'm glad we're getting that stuff out there, and I
think it's really useful to have us out there. The
company can post that, we can share it, and people
can see it. I think there's value to having our
content what Kroogd Media makes, what our shows make. I
think it's useful to put that into the world, both
because that I think it brings in audience at times,
(37:31):
but also just to have that message and have our
content kind of be in the soup of the algorithm
that I think is really really important. I personally don't
want to participate in it as much anymore because the
cost benefit ratio is just not I think where I
needed to be to justify the damage it does to
your soul to participate in it.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Man, this is a heavy, heavy conversation that you're bringing
really really heavy, because it's not just you know, teenage
people that get destroyed by it's also so like, hello,
old queens like me, where's that GoFundMe, Paige?
Speaker 1 (38:04):
You know, to help for the help for me?
Speaker 3 (38:07):
I don't. Yeah, it's you know. Well, part of it
too is it's like I so I'm on, I'm on manjaro. Uh.
The weight loss drug no, because for me it was yes,
it was about losing some weight, and it was vain
and it was not medically necessary. However, it quieted the
noise in my mind whether well, well listen, well let
(38:29):
me let me and and so whether and and and
yeah fuck me? And so the value of it for
me was yeah, I lost some weight, but I also
like it helped me like kind of take control of
this issue where I always felt guilty, Like when I
first went on this drug and I had like one
sushi role and I felt full, I felt guilty, and
all of a sudden, I was like, wait a second.
(38:50):
Every time you've been full in your entire adult life,
every single day, you felt guilty, every day guilty, every
time you ate, you felt every fuck day you felt guilty.
And now you can learn that that guilt and that
feeling of being full don't need to be connected. They
never did, but now they certainly don't. And the reason
I say this is because there are so many societal
(39:13):
problems that are vast and hard, and then we ask
individuals to use discipline and sacrifice to overcome them. We
tell you we're gonna fill the food the restaurants with
junk and the stores with junk, and you need to
be disciplined to not eat it. It's gonna be cheap
and available everywhere, and you've got to be disciplined. We're
going to tell you that the climate is on fire
(39:34):
and you need to be disciplined, and you need to
fix it yourself. You need to do the right thing,
otherwise you should feel ashamed. And by the way, we're
gonna make your phone an endorphin machine that drips serotonin
directly into your brain, that puts sort of satisfaction right
to your dome whenever you want it, twenty four hours
a day. But if you're on it too much, you're
gonna get sad. You need to get lonely, you're going
to get to press, gonna ruin your life, so you
(39:55):
better show discipline. And the Manjaro, to me, it was
a reminder that, oh, you know what, we need to
stop putting on people's shoulders self discipline to address societal harms.
And when it comes to social media, it is so
unfair that we say to everyone this stuff is bad
for you. If you're doing it too much, you will
(40:16):
want to do it too much. It will take up
your free time and you don't have free time. But
good luck, we made it addicting. Get yourself off of it.
And that sucks. That sucks, And so it.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Sucks, Darling, It really sucks. It really sucks.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
But I have to say, like, you know, I'm not
placing a value on this or a judgment on this.
You know, I am resisting Manjaro and those things because
I feel like that's again it's about discipline, but it's
in another way I feel like I should be able
to kind of especially at my age and I am
able to say, like, you know what, maybe don't look
at your phone right now, Maybe don't look at this
(40:50):
right now. Maybe you know the book is really good
that you're reading. Go back to the book, you know.
I mean, I do that.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
I think that that is great. And if that's something
that can work for you, I think that that's great.
But I I feel like people need to be more
generous with themselves. Also, like there is this sort of
American kind of capitalist calvinist idea that if you have
a problem that's big for you, it has to be
hard for you to fix it, because if it's not hard,
(41:16):
it's your cheating in some way. There's this idea that
there's no such thing as a free lunch. And that's
true in an economy, that's true in in in a deal,
that's true if somebody is offering you something on the street.
But it's not true in medicine it's not true. It's
not true in science necessarily.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Not necessarily necessarily.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Right now, Look, is there possibility that a year from
now they're taking those things off the shelves because you know,
my pancreas falls out. Possible, possible, But but I'll die thin.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
But wow, whoa, Hey, listen, are you with anybody right now?
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Are you single? Are you?
Speaker 3 (41:55):
I am not with anybody right now personally?
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Okay, are you in the market? You want me to
pimp for you a little bit?
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Yeah? Yeah, sure, I mean listen, here's yeah, okay, I guess,
yeah for sure, fine, yeah, I guess. If you have
an idea, sir, I might.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
I just got an idea, but I'm going to give
it a minute, all right.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Yea, let's develop, and you know what, I got to
tell you something. The one thing that I that has
happened to me over the last couple of years is
someone will say, oh, you know, you should date my
friend Josh, my friend Derek, and then then I say okay,
and then I never hear about it, and it's like, hey,
don't tell me about somebody, then go to them, get
the no from them, and then never bring it up again.
(42:33):
You don't come to me. I don't want anybody, don't.
I don't want to fucking hear an idea unless you've
got I want it baked. You bring me done deals.
I don't want people that aren't interested. I have enough
self esteem issues as it is. I got enough. Oh yeah, no,
I check. Yeah, no, it's so busy, now, you know.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
What I mean, never do that. You're the second person
I'm coming.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah, for sure, that's right, sure, for sure, for sure,
speaking of who you are as a personally.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
I ask everybody this question because I'm obsessed with obituaries, like,
do you know what you want your obituary to be about?
Speaker 3 (43:14):
I think to our earlier conversation, I've never thought about
it for even a second until this moment, not even
a second.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
How are you Jewish from Long Island and you have
never thought about like I just in the media. And
by the way, you know.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Probably your obituator is already written and somebody's good, like
if you die tomorrow, they've got it ready and they'll
tweak it and they'll go, yeah, he's on majorro.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
But that was the one thing we didn't know.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Sure, for sure, for sure. Yeah, I just yeah, I
don't know. I don't have that gene. I don't think
about that. I don't think that way. I think that
I kind of koreem through existence a little bit, and
I find that if I spend a little too much
time thinking about the choices I made, the things I've said,
the mistakes I've made, the ways in which I put
my foot in my mouth. I think that I couldn't
(43:59):
go on, So I just keep going forward and I
try not to trying not to look. I'm like the
coyote halfway across the canyon, you know all I had
to look down so minute.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
So if somebody says, okay, then we're not going to
give you an obituary in the Times to get about it,
you're not going to get one, you would be like, fine,
I don't care.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
I didn't say I don't want the fucking obituary you're
asking me. I didn't thought about it. I didn't thought
about it. Do I want to be?
Speaker 2 (44:20):
It's all I like, not only do I want an obituary,
like I want a full page and I want to
tracer on the front page like I want I need it.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
To for sure? No. Yeah, are you saying, am I
an egomaniac? Yeah? Well yeah sure, I would like the
two page spread. I'd like this. I'd like the schools
to close.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Okay, So majorro egomaniac. I'm trying to cast I'm trying
to set you up with.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Something that's great. That's great, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Jarling tell me what you want to promote.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
So we wrote a book it's called Democracy or Else,
with John, Tommy and I and it is a funny, useful.
One thing I'm really proud of is it manages to
be actually funny but without being cynical, which is a
really hard thing for us to pull off. So that's
what we're really proud of. But we're really trying to
get on that get on that bestseller list, to get
(45:05):
in front of like there's like Ted Cruz books on
that thing. You know, there's a lot of there's a
lot of So anyway, check out the book to on
June twenty sixth, but you can you can order it now.
You can order it now, all right, pre order it,
pre order it, pre order it. It's called Democracy or Else.
And you know what, it's gay too, all right, much
(45:25):
like me, much like I am. It's gayer than you'd expect.
And if you're listening to this and you're panicked or
worried about the election, go to vote save America dot
com and sign up. Sign up. We will give you helpful,
useful things you can do if you're getting deluged by
a lot of requests and information and fundraising emails and
all the rest. We're kind of trying to give you
(45:46):
a way to get involved that's kind of less overwhelming.
So go to vote Save America dot com.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
I'm there, darling, because you you nailed it. I am
feeling so much anxiety and fear about twenty twenty four
y'all are Yeah, Darling, I have nothing else for you.
I think I've gotten it all.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
Oh yeah, I think I think we really got to
the bottom of it.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
Ah ah, Okay, that was really great. Thank you so much,
Thank you, love it, love it. Hyphen Favreau. Sure I
did that, and that was the Freudian.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
No, no, no, I just was I was literally just
flagging through that. You could pick it up.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
No, thank you so much. But you know, by the way,
I do love him. He is one of the most
interesting guys. Do you know that I had him on
my TV show and you know thousand.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
I didn't want to say this. I think you are
confusing to John Favras. There are two different people. There
are two different people.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Oh no, I am you are I am? Oh my god,
this is the best part. I can't wait.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
I'm talking about the fabulous actor John Favrea.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Yes, the director. You're talking about the director of Iron Man, director,
a person I've never met.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Oh my god, this is amazing. Whoever the other John
Favreau is. I love you too, you would like a
mother loves a child. I love you unconditionally. I apologize.
I am so sorry. I feel so stupid, and I
love that this happened.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
I was feeling, I ended up feeling the way you
were talking about. I was like, I'm gonna let it
go because I think he can get away with it.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
I really did, John, Wait a second, could I just
tell you something like a couple of days ago when
we booked this, or two weeks ago, I was like, oh,
that's exciting.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
You know, John, love it.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
I knew that's why I love it. You know you
didn't have to tell me that. I knew that too.
I knew that too. Get some new names, okay, get
a few. You know, it's our fault.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
It's our fault.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
What he has been five minutes reading something before you
come in here.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
I read everything there is to fucking read.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
This is good, This is good. Leave this in, leave this.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Oh my god, this is amazing. I love this podcast
so much. I love it. Well anyway, thank you, so much.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
Thank you, and hey, hey, keep your eyes feeled. You're
about to see my ass as I walk out of
the studio.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
That was a hell of a conversation with John Lovett.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
And I went into it wanting something from him, wanting
to somehow bring about an intimacy, and I think I
succeeded in a way. But I also I feel like
I need more from him, and I'm exactly sure what
I want from him. I think I might be slightly
in love with him, Okay, I swear to God.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Each time I meet him, there's an elusive quality about him.
He gives you just about enough as you need, and
then he kind of completely pulls away, completely pulls back.
It's very sexy. It can feel a little bit frustrating,
but I am left in this kind of like a
little delirium of attraction. I'm not kidding. I am a
(48:46):
little deliriously in love with John Lovett. And you're all
my witness. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
So Isaac, were you pimping for yourself?
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Maybe just a little bit?
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Yes, suh, don't tell Arnold.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Don't tell arn on Valentine's Day?
Speaker 2 (49:09):
Oh right, please, darling, please, Nothing could rent us asunder,
Nothing could rent Us asunder.
Speaker 1 (49:17):
Darlings.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor and
tell someone, Tell a friend, tell your mother, tell your cousin,
tell everyone you know.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
Okay, and be sure to rate the show. I love
rating stuff.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
Go on and rate and review the show on Apple
Podcasts so more people can hear about it. It makes
such a gigantic difference and like it takes a second,
so go on and do it.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
And if you want more fun content.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Videos and posts of all kinds, follow the show on
Instagram and TikTok at Hello Isaac podcast And by the way,
check me out on Instagram and TikTok at.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
I am Isaac Musrati. This is Isaac Misrahi. Thank you, I.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Love you, and I never thought I'd say this, but
goodbye Isaac. Hello Isaac is produced by Imagine Audio Awfully
Nice and I AM Entertainment for iHeartMedia. The series is
hosted by Me Isaac Mizrahi. Hello Isaac is produced by
Robin Gelfenbein. The senior producers are Jesse Burton and John Assanti.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
It is executive.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
Produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Caarra Welker, and Nathan
Klokey at Imagine, Audio production management from Katie Hodges, sound
design and mixing by Cedric Wilson. Original music composed by
Ben Waltzer. A special thanks to Neil Phelps and Sarah
Katanak at i AM Entertainment.
You know, darling, you don't look gay.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
You don't come across as like you don't have manicured
brows and like bleached hair, and you don't have like
a bubble butt, and you're not.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Excuse me, excuse me, what the fuck is that?
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Oh, I don't have a bubble butt. How dare you you? No? No,
you haven't earned it. You haven't earned it. This is
this is This is for fucking closers. This ass is
for closers.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
All right.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
This is Hello Isaac, my podcast about the idea of
success and how failure affects it.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I'm Isaac Msrahian.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
In this episode, I talked to podcast host, former presidential
speech writer and Crooked Media co founder John Lovett.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Hello, Isaac, it is John Lovett, not John Lovett's. I
know you can't tell, but it's the gay one. Even
though you don't seem to recognize that my voice is
gay enough for you. What am I supposed to do? Uh?
Call me back.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Today's guest is John love It, and he is this
kind of media giant, you know, as far as I'm concerned,
he really understands media. And the first time I ever
met him was when I did his podcast called Love
It or Leave It, and I was intrigued because it
was such a disconnect between the person and the media star, right,
(01:25):
And so today what I really want to do is
kind of close that gap even more. I want to
find out about the person John love It, who he
really is, and how that affects his success. So let's
get started, John love It.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Hi, Hi, good to see you.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I good to see you.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
You know, I have to tell you, I feel a
little insecure about this because I feel like this is
what you do all day long, and I want I
want to be fast. I want you to be fascinated.
I'm not kidding. I want this to be like outside
of the realm of the other million podcasts that you
work on. And I wonder, like, can you coach me
(02:13):
a little bit?
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Look, you're not like the other girls, all right, and
I think we all we all know that, and but
you wake up fascinating.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I'm prettier.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I'm a little prettier than most of the other girls,
which leads me to my first sort of question for you,
which is, you know, what are you like?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
How? How how do you identify darling?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Because no, seriously, like, you're a speech writer, you used
to write speeches.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Right, you're a writer, you're.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
A podcast or you have a media company. So tell
me a little bit about your identity.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
What are you is a very funny what a question? Hey,
what are you?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
So?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
That's a you know, it's interesting, Like I feel insecure
about calling myself a comedian, even though I do a
comedy show live every week. I feel insecure about calling
myself a writer because every couple of years I say
I'm a writer again, and then I don't finish what
I started. I love hosting podcasts. I am a podcast host.
That's probably what I would say first. Now I was
(03:08):
a presidential speechwriter. Though, to call yourself the thing you
did before the three other things you've done since feels
a little like living in the past, like an Olympic
silver medalist walking into the bar wearing the metal, going
this old.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Thing, you know, right, except it was a really important job,
I mean, and it kind of got you somewhere.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeh.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Let's start talking about your history a little bit. Okay,
First of all, where are you from?
Speaker 3 (03:32):
I was born in New York. I grew up on
Long Island. Actually, George Santos's district is where I grew.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Up, right, which is now? I'm so happy to report
Tom swass.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Tom, the Democrats took it back.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
So happy to say.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
From a world famous astronaut, George Santo Well noted for.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
At least for the next seven months, right right, he
has to run again. But all right, So you're from
Long Island. Were you into musical theater or something like?
Did you play common?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Did you do it?
Speaker 3 (04:01):
No, I didn't do anything like that. I really struggled
looking back on it, I think that so much of
what for me being a kid was about was like,
I don't know exactly how to be myself, but I
know how to get an A and a test. I
know how to do all the extracurriculars. I know how
to take a standardized test and get into the colleges.
(04:23):
And so if I'm not going to be happy, I'm
going to be successful. And so I think that is
really what drove me. And so I liked politics, but
I viewed politics as a way to win a speech
and debate tournament to put that on my resume. And
I liked music, but that was again just a way
to kind of prove that I was the best little
boy in the world. So It really wasn't until I
think I came out of my shell in college, and
(04:45):
after that I started to think, oh, like I love
doing this. I love writing about politics. I love the
intersection of politics and comedy and trying to figure out
what that would mean. I didn't know, but I knew
that there was something I enjoyed doing.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Let's talk about your parents for a second.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Were they worried because like I was a really kind
of motivated kid. You know, I like went to drama school,
I went to performing arts, then I went to design school.
Then I got a job that you know, so it
was like obvious that I had this kind of rollout
of a lot of different jobs. And when you were born,
like nobody even there wasn't the blush of podcasts. So so, like,
(05:22):
did your parents think you were slacking?
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Yeah? I mean I was always ambitious, and you know,
my my parents were always very proud. I always did
very well in school. I was always successful in that way.
And I think when like I left college and I
was kind of doing open mics in New York City
and maybe going to be a lawyer and volunteering on
political campaigns, I think that there was like a moment
(05:46):
where there was some concern that I was off the rails.
But soon after that, I get a job in politics.
I end up becoming a junior speech writer for Hillary Clinton,
and I was sort of on my way. And my
mother worked as a buyer for a department store. My
father ran the box factory. My grandfather started and wow,
(06:08):
the box factory. That is superior package.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
That's a great title to something, the box Factory.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
The box factory. Yeah, but I sort of found my
own way, and I feel like my parents always thought, oh,
you know what, whatever happens, I'm going to be okay,
that I'll make my way, I'll make my success. And
when I left politics to become a comedy writer, I
think again they had their kind of Jewish parent worry,
but it became a show. And when that started foundering,
(06:33):
I found the podcasting, and they don't worry about.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Me, right, But you know, I'm kind of like thinking
about the essence of this. I'm trying to go back
deep into the essen what do you major in in
college to become you?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
I majored and was it relevant? It wasn't relevant. I
loved math. I went to Williams College in Massachusetts, and
I loved math because it's not a lot of reading.
The books are very thin.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Oh my god, you're crazy.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
But you know, when I was a kid, as much
as I I did well in school, if there was
something I didn't like to do, I just wouldn't do it.
That's how I was. If I liked something, I would
go full bore. I would pay attention, I would focus,
I would learn everything about it had an intensity to it.
But if I didn't, I just couldn't find the attention
to make it happen. You know, I'm one of many
who has self diagnosed using TikTok with aga adhd. But whatever.
(07:21):
So I loved math because it wasn't how much you consumed.
It wasn't about how much you read. It wasn't how
many facts you had in your mind. It was the
hard work, the hard of understanding a problem that could
be on one page, and you can start at one
page for two hours and either you get it or
you don't. Math is not something you can kind of
understand if you've gotten to the end of a chapter
(07:42):
and you can't explain it back. You can't do the problems,
you can't do the proofs. You can't do the exercises.
You don't get it, you don't have it. And so
I really liked the logic of it, the rigor of it,
and the kind of forced focus of it. And I
do think math it does make you smarter, It makes
you thinking in a different way.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
And now you have this incredible media company, Crooked Media, right,
and that is the producer of several incredible podcasts, including
the one that I was on Cold, Love It or
Leave It?
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Was there a big break in that or something?
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah? Well, so I had been a speechwriter in the
Obama White House. Two of my friends, Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor,
and a fourth Dan Pfiffer. He had been communication director
for Obama. John had been chief speechwriter. Tommy had worked
for the National Security Advisor doing kind of farm policy
press as a spokesperson. And we all had gone our
(08:35):
different ways after leaving politics, But in the run up
to the twenty sixteen election, we end up doing this
podcast basically as a hobby as sort of disaffected and
frustrated news consumers just watching it from our point of view,
as people that had been in politics, helping people through
what they were watching of Clinton versus Trump, and after
Trump won, which we were completely surprised by. Tommy and
(08:59):
John and I and I were driving to a studio
to do a day after episode and my car ran
out of gas in front of the CNN building. I
just hadn't been paying attention. I was, so I think
overwhelmed by events. So we pushed my car to the
side of the road, call a tow truck. We start
walking to the studio in Los Angeles, and as we're
doing it, we're really starting to think about that we
(09:20):
didn't want to go back to our old jobs, that
we wanted to figure out some way to keep doing
a podcast and think about what progressives who were at
that point were in shock and sad and scared and
frustrated and furious. Where they could put that energy, Where
could they put that sense of outrage? And so we
started talking about launching a new podcast and a progressive
(09:42):
media company around it, based on the idea that there
were a lot of people out there that wanted to
know how they could help, and part because people were
texting us what do I do? What do I do?
What do I do?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And we didn't know, So it was like an intention.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
You actually while walking from the tow truck to the studio.
You were putting it together. You were like, oh, let's
form a media company. You actually made an effort to
form a media company and succeeded at that.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Yeah, I think we were blessed by ignorance in that
we had no idea how hard it was to start
a media company. We had no idea what we didn't know.
We had no business plan, we had no business experience really,
and so all we really had was this idea that
there were going to be a lot of people who
felt like we did, who were going to be looking
(10:27):
for an outlet that was about not just what had
gone wrong, but what everybody could do to come together
and put their anxiety into action, to find a way
to be activists. And so in January of twenty second seventeen,
we launched Crooket Media. At that point, what was it.
It was a checking account we started at the Bank
of America on San Vincente. It was a statement announcing
(10:49):
the company, and it was a new podcast. That's really
what we had going into it. And we thought, all right,
we give it. Let's give ourselves a couple months to
see if we can rebuild the audience. We had when
we were at the Ringer, and if we can do
it in a couple months, six months, maybe we'll really
have something. And the audience was back in a matter
of weeks, if not days, and it grew beyond what
we had had in the previous previous in the election,
(11:11):
it became even bigger, and we said, Okay, wow, we
have something here. Let's see what we can build. And
that we started looking for people almost immediately who could
actually help build a company because we knew what we
could do. We could talk about politics, we could host,
and we can post, but we needed people who actually
understood what it would look like to build a real
media company. M hmm.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
And you know I talk a lot about this with guests,
which is this idea of failure. You know, was there
some incredible failure either after you started Crooked Media or
before that kind of shaped the way you thought about
what you wanted to do or something.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Yeah, it's it's interesting. I think my the way I
would talk about this has changed even in the last
couple of years. I do think I have more perspective
on it out than I did then. And what I've
come to realize, you'll turn on the news, and you'll
see people that have spent their whole lives in politics,
and you say to yourself, why are they like that?
They seem so broken, They seem like they don't really
(12:12):
understand their own motivations. They seem like they're obsessed with
the wrong things. It seems like they're too inside. And
the reason it seems like that is because they are.
And I feel like I was somebody like that. I
graduate from college, I'm almost immediately in politics, and I'm
very fortunate to get this job as a speechwriter for
Hillary Clinton. I'm very fortunate to get this job as
a speechwriter for President Obama. I decide I want to
(12:32):
leave and pursue comedy. I move out to Los Angeles
again in the kind of just always working, not really
examining my motivations at all. I end up getting to
make a television show right when I got here. So lucky,
so lucky. Like if I say it to people, they're
fucking furious to me, because what do you mean you
just made a Televisionhow well we pitched an idea, NBC
wanted to make it. I got to make a TV
(12:53):
show right when I got out here. I got to
learn on the fly of actually making a TV show
called sixteen hundred pen and now I'm making a sitcom
barely a few months after leaving the White House. The
hope I'd had to be able to kind of reflect
or take a break or think about what I wanted
to do was gone. We make this show. Over year,
I learn an incredible amount I feel quay in over
(13:15):
my head. I react the way a twenty nine or
thirty year old does when they feel in over their head,
which is trying to fake it till I make it
rather than asking for help. And then all of a sudden,
the show airs. Now critics hated it, but audiences also
didn't watch it, and that's really that's so.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
That's nobody liked it.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Now, Now what I would say is it just became
a cult classic faster than we had planned. But it
was canceled after one season, and all of a sudden,
you know, I've moved to Los Angeles. The Hillary job,
into the Obama job, into the TV writing job has
gone quiet. And now I'm like sitting in this apartment
in West Hollywood, and I have no idea what I'm
(13:57):
doing there, I have no idea why I'm there, and
It was really the first time I'd ever even taken
a moment to think, not how can I be successful?
How can I achieve something that looks good, that gives
me the plaudits and credit and sense of acclaim. That's
so important to me because I don't have a lot
of esteem for myself. But what do I actually want
(14:18):
to do? And the answers I had no idea. I
really didn't. I really was kind of lost after that.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Can we stay there for a second, sure, because I
often think it's so important for people to like sit
in the feelings of like, for instance, you said you
didn't have a lot of self esteem.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Was there some.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Kind of emotional strength that you drew upon when it
was completely quiet that made you go, oh, you know what,
I'm okay in la. I like my house, I like
my dog, I can function, I like math, I can
go back to me. I mean, besides like freak out
and be scared at the age of thirty or thirty one,
What did you do well?
Speaker 3 (14:55):
I actually I wish that I could say it was
something as I think kind of productive, it was what
you're describing, But I actually think what I did was
just sort of ignore the problem for a while, right, like,
don't face these feelings, don't face these denial, denial, denial. Well,
there's a great book by Steve Martin called Born Standing Up,
(15:15):
And there's a line in it that I'm going to paraphrase,
if not Butcher, that I always think about, which is,
delusions of grandeur can get you between moments of genuine inspiration.
And I do think that. You know, you're sitting in
a duplex apartment with just the cheapest furniture you bought
when you moved and had no money. You know, you'd
never been in this city before. You didn't pick the
(15:36):
neighborhood you would have picked in if you'd lived there
even a few months. Right, And all I assumed at
that moment was, well, making a TV shows pretty easy.
Why don't I just make another? And so you know,
you start thinking, oh, what's the next pitch? What I
can put my feelings aside, maybe to a fault, and
then think, all, right, well, what's next? If I want
more success, if I want to come back, if I
want to figure out how to have the career I
(15:59):
believe I deserve, Well, what's next. We'll figure out the
next pitch. And even if I was depressed, and even
if I was sad, and even if I didn't know
what I was doing there, even if I didn't even
like what I was doing, even if I struggle to
write something, you tell me, I got to take this
pitch and sell it. I will bring in the intensity
and jokes and effort and like.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Of course, yes, obviously you are a determined individual, and
that is really smart what Steve Martin says about the
delusions of grandeur and faking it until you actually have
the inspiration. But I'm not even talking about like inspiration,
because you know, we are all very inspired artists, but
(16:37):
there are people that we have to collaborate with, even
we have bosses, right, we have to get them to
see stuff. And sometimes it has absolutely nothing to do
with us, you know. It has to do with like
the outside world that is offering them better business deals,
you know, to do with the same product as you know.
I'm laying it out there. I'm laying out like the scariest,
(17:00):
scariest scenario that you think about at three o'clock.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
In the morning in your head, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
And the reason I bring this up is because I
think of you as this incredibly successful and young person right,
Do you have imposta syndrome?
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yes, you get over that.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
I do. I do feel as though I have imposters it.
And also I refer to myself as a podcast as
maybe a writer, maybe a comedian. Look, I feel very
fortunate that Crooked Media exists, but I do believe it
exists because I think we had a good instinct as
to the kind of shows that people might respond to.
We were also in the right place in the right time,
(17:34):
and we were very lucky to have very smart people
who helped build this business and build a sustainable, progressive
media company that was strong enough and careful enough to
not fall prey to what a lot of other media
companies have fallen prey to. So I feel very fortunate
about that, but I do feel like an impostor if
I try to take credit for that. Now. I think
(17:54):
one part of it for me, if I'm going to
try to take your question of base value, is I
sometimes think of myself a little bit like Cortez burning
the ships that Like, when I moved to LA I
didn't think, oh, and if it doesn't work out, I'll
move back. I really didn't think about that. I didn't
think about that I didn't think about that contingency. I
just had to move here and I had to fight
(18:16):
and fight and fight until I figured out a way
to make it work. When we launched Cricket Media, yeah
we talked about, oh, we'll see how we're doing in
six months, and yeah, I think rightly, intellectually, I would
have thought and if it doesn't work out, I can
try to write a script. But day to day, week
to week, didn't think about it, didn't think about that timeline,
didn't think about what would happen if it all went wrong.
I just didn't put my mind too. I didn't think
(18:36):
about it. And you know, there's so much luck. There's
so much luck, especially Entertainment's so much uck in life.
There's so much luck in entertainment in a field in
which there's tons and tons and tons of talented people
competing to do the craft they love. And a lot
of those talented people don't get the opportunity that another
(18:58):
person does that makes a career, right, did they do?
That's life, That's how it works. So there's no way
to guarantee your success. But I do think that there
are certain ways to guarantee failure. And one thing I
noticed over the years is that you know, real medicine
treats one thing, fake medicine treats everything. You know. You
take advil for headaches, you take posies for anything you want,
(19:22):
you know, like homeopathic remedies. It is amazing. There's nothing
they can't do right. And I think that that sometimes
can be true in a career, which is making it
is difficult no matter what. It's especially difficult if you're
trying a bunch of different things because either you don't
want to choose or you don't want to admit that
you have to choose. And as hard as it can be,
(19:47):
I think sometimes the best way to give yourself the
best shot is to focus all your efforts and all
your attention in one direction to see if it works.
Because if your attention is divided, if you're trying to
be a musician and a writer and a comic and
a director, if you're trying to do all these different
things at once because you love them all, you care
about them all, and you want one of them to take,
(20:08):
you might not be putting yourself in a position to
learn and gain the skills you need and the growth
you need in the one direction that is maybe the
most likely place for you to succeed. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Wow, I have to say that is powerful. You know,
it's powerful because I do a lot of different things,
you know. I perform, I make clothes, and I write.
And I fought this my whole life. I had teachers
who told me that I needed to pick one, and
then I had one teacher who said, you know, fuck them,
do whatever the hell you want to do whatever feels right.
(20:41):
You know. But I do think you might be onto something,
at least in terms of like, as I get older,
I realize it's not that I can't do everything.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
I don't want to do everything. I want to focus more,
you know.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
I think if people have multiple paths and interest they
should pursue them. And by the way, the rules to
be broken. But here's what I would say, Like, you know,
I host Lover or Leave It. On Thursdays, we do
Pod Save America Mondays that record a bunch of other
things throughout the week. That's a choice I've made to
do a bunch of different things. My week is filled
with a bunch of interesting, different kinds of shows and
(21:20):
kinds of work. And I really like that. I like
that we do Vote Save America, which is our effort
to organize people around politics and the election. We wrote
a book doing all of these things. If it would
be a lie to say that some parts of this
doesn't suffer because of attention being divided. Like, you know,
you are able to do a lot of different things.
There's no way in which being a designer is getting
(21:43):
the best of you when you're also being a host wedding.
It's just not so. There is the way in which
pursuing different things might limit your ability to be successful.
There's a way in which pursuing different things is just
a division of your mental energy and creativity and intelligence.
You can't pretend otherwise. People can't multitask. It's ms.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Do you have a big ego? You think?
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Do you guys think I have a Everyone understands that.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Sucks.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
No, No, I want to talk about that because I
often think, like when you can take the whole subject
of ego out of things and just do what feels
good and not care so much about you know, about
results or something like that. You know, I often think
that's when you really do kind of find love and
(22:36):
find inspiration, you know, when you eliminate ego. But let's
talk about you for a minute now specifically and the
fact that I swear to God, I swear to God
John even knowing your podcast, even knowing stuff about you,
when I met you, I had no idea that you
were gay. I swear to God, I had no idea.
(22:58):
What do you mean I did not you know that
you were a gay man?
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Far?
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Are you a gay man? Yes? I am. I am.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
You identify you identify as a podcaster.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
And a game I would say, this is just being
honest about it, which is when I was growing up,
and this is true. When you were growing up, the
menu was shorter, There wasn't much of a menu. And
are I knew I wasn't straight. I knew I wasn't
straight from twelve thirteen years old, and so if I
wasn't straight, I was gay. That was what was available
(23:29):
to me. The difference between gender identity, gender expression, sexual
orientation simply didn't exist to me. It was not something
I was aware of. Yes, there were people writing about
it and thinking about it, and there were parts of
the culture where people were starting to talk about that more,
but it was not available to me. And so I
was gay. And that's where I'm at and that's what
I continue to be. But do I think that if
(23:51):
I was growing up now, I would call myself gay.
I don't know that I would. I think that I
have a wow. I think that I would probably just
redown to calling myself queer, a word that I even
struggle to ascribe to myself because as much as I
don't want to feel it, it still carries a feeling
(24:15):
that makes it not feel right for me because of
the baggage it carries, but not because I don't think
it better describes how I feel about sexual orientation and gender,
and so that's how I feel about.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
It, right.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
I mean, you know, when you talk about your coming
up and my coming up, it's completely different because I
think I'm like twenty years older.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Than you or something that I don't want to acknowledge.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
I don't want to think about that, but it's true,
and so your experience is different than mine. I'm not
going to say mine was harder or easier or something.
But you know, darling, you don't look gay. You don't
come across as like you don't have manicured brows and
like bleached hair, and you don't have like a bubble butt.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
You're not an Excuse me, excuse me? What the fuck
is that? Yeah, I don't know a baby, but how
dare you? No, you haven't earned it, You haven't earned it.
This is business for fucking closers. This ass is for closers, all.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Right, darling, all right, I will remember that.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
I will remember that. That's right.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
But there is this.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Kind of like majority of gay men, especially you're from
New York especially, you know that there is like one
area in Chelsea where it all kind of emanates from.
And I'm not saying this as like to reduce the
experience of something, but I'm telling you, like most of
the gays, the ones that I watched and that I
(25:44):
admired growing up, that I didn't fit in with, you know,
Like I would go to bars and I would feel
like really really out of place. And you know, now
I look at like gay cruises or something, and everybody's
in like angel in a jockstrap. That's the theme of
the night, Angel in a strap or something. Now, granted,
there was many nights where I was very transgressive and
(26:05):
I did go to my share of like foam parties
or something, you know, but it wasn't the same. It
was not this kind of majority of the majority. Right,
you're not either. I don't see you as this like
majorly major that's not the first thing you see about you.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Well, no, no, Well, I think it is hard to
know the difference between the way that I am gay
or queer is exactly the right way, because this is
how I am. I am those things. This is what
it means to be gay. The way that I am
gay is what it means to be gay, because I
am gay, and so this is how I am going
to do it now. I think that's a big part
of it. I think there's a lot of gay people
that don't feel comfortable in those settings. But what I
(26:45):
also do think it's hard to tell the difference between
is what I just said, that sort of this is
who I am and this is what I'm like, and
I don't fit in with this kind of a crowd
all the time. Once in a while or two, I'll
have a night or have I internalized a form of homophobia,
and not just homophobia, but a form of self self
loathing beyond sexual orientation. Yeah, it made me uncomfortable being
(27:07):
feeling free enough not just to be gay, but just
to be effervescent flamboyant, not in a sexual way or
even a homosexual way, but just to be in a big, loud,
take up space shirt off mindset just was so ananthemy
to me based on how I felt about myself for
so long. So I don't know, I don't know the.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
DAAs based on what like the genes something, or based
on I think it's what your parents told you, or
what I.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Think based on the kind of Long Island Jewish culture
that was much more about you know, what are you
going to be when you grow up? Than what do
you like to do?
Speaker 2 (27:47):
And when you talked earlier about how you would identify
now if you have a bigger menu, I think about
that all the time, you know. And you know when
I perform, I sometimes I wear like sparkles and ruffles
and things and pearls, and I feel like, am I
an impost in this? Or am I realer than I
ever was in my entire life? Just wearing black T shirts?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
You know? And it's really hard, you know. I thought
about this a lot during the pandemic, and the analogy
that made sense to me was, you know, they'll be
paths on a college campus between dorms, and they'll be
very perpendicular, and then the snow will fall, and then
people will walk where they want to walk, and they'll
make what are called desire paths, and those paths will
look very different because absent the society lines that were
(28:33):
drawn for them, people figure out a new way that
they want to walk. And even if you think I
want to take the diagonal, it's hard when you see
the lines. It is. It's hard when you see the lines.
And so for me, like the pandemic, was this moment
where I was stuck in my house. Society is much
further away, much smaller. And then when I came out
of that, I thought, you know, actually, there are parts
of my identity that I don't feel like I've exploring.
(28:55):
I want to wear more feminine clothing. I have an
image of myself that I have been totally honest about,
and I think that did give me permission to think
about this. You know, you talk about putting aside ego.
I mean this is I think part of it right. Really,
When you say put aside ego, what it often means
is put aside what other people think of you, which
(29:15):
is very hard to do because your identity is wrapped
up in how other people think of you and how
other people think of you matter because we don't live
in a on an island. We do live amongst people
and how people see us as important to us.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Well, for you, it was COVID and for me, I
wrote a memoir and as I was writing the memoir,
I thought, you know, if someone gave me the choice
of identifying as a gay male or some kind of
trans kind of because I think I do have that
somewhere in me. I have such intense shame about my body.
I cannot tell you, John, I know such intense love
it name is no matter how thin I am. John, Oh,
(29:51):
I can't call you John.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
You did, you, said John Favre.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Oh, Well, because I want to bring up John because
I know him and I love him.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
He is one of the sweetest, most darling people in
the world I think that I've ever met. But I'm
sorry I called you fabric because I wrote it down here.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Yeah Favro, No.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
I'm just saying to do it. So yeah, no, no, no, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
So we were talking about if I was forty years
younger and you were like twenty years.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Younger, would we be gay men? Would we be doing that?
You know?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
I think it is so hard. I've talked with this
on the show Affair Amount too, and it's something that like,
I like talking about because I think a lot of
other people have a similar difficulty kind of parsing, which
is the space between a general dysmorphia around your appearance
as some kind of some version of a gender dysmorphia,
(30:38):
and what I realized for a long time is there
so often the reason I decided, say, not to wear
a skirt on stage, it wasn't because I felt uncomfortab
wearing a skirt. It was because once the skirt was on,
I would have to be honest that in the skirt
I don't look the way I want to look, not
in a gendered way, but that like I don't want
to change my gender. I want app and if I can't,
(31:01):
you know what I mean. If I can't wear the
skirt with abs, I don't want to do it all.
I feel I'd rather hide in the jeans. I'd rather
hide in the clothing in which I feel safe and
comfortable and unobtrusive and not interesting. Then were something interesting,
you know.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
What It's about the way you look at yourself in
the mirror and what you kind of want to see
versus what you actually do see, you know. And that's
what I love about that generation is they can take
all of that bullshit that we've learned about what our
abs are supposed to look like, and what our tits
are supposed to look like, and what our closer butts
(31:35):
are supposed to look like. You know, they've taken all
of that and they've re established what it means to them.
And earlier you were saying, and I love this thing
you were saying about, like, look, this is who I
am as a gay man, and that's why it works
because this is who I am.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
I can't do it any other way.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Yeah, you know, and I feel like that's how everybody
is dealing with their sexuality. Now, Darling, tell me about
the power, tell me about the benefits. Is there something
great about being a gay person in media today.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
I don't know. I've not gotten to try the other
side of it. You know. It's funny because you said
to me, I didn't realize you were gay, And I
do think when I'm talking about politics, I wouldn't go
so far as to say I'm like, you know, doing
a straight voice, but I think for whatever reason, when
I'm talking about the news, my voice gets a little
less lyrical, it gets a little less musical, it gets
(32:29):
a little bit straighter. Like if we were in person,
I feel like the lilts would come in and almost
like it's almost at times it's like, oh, you have
to remind me, Oh wait, God, I should be I
should be I should go full gay on this thing.
But but it is interesting, right because I don't. I
only have my perspective. I get to do this. I'm
a gay person. This is what I do as a
gay person. But do I think some internally I know
(32:51):
that when I'm talking about the news, I do it
with a slightly less affected voice than when say, I'm
joking about the oscars when I'm on Lover or Leave It. Yeah,
I think so.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Yeah, I feel like everybody probably does that, not just
gay people. Yeah, you know, I mean yeah for sureight,
But you know, getting back to this idea that you
have partners, right, and Jon Favreau is one of them,
and who is the other one.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
It's Tommy. It's John Favreau and Tommy Vitour and Dan
Feifer co host Ponzze America. But John and Tommy and
I we started the company.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Together, okay, and are you gay and they're not? That's right, right,
And so how does that work? Does that put you
at an advantage just to put you at a disadvantage,
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Like, no, it's it's interesting. I think it's I think
it does give me a different perspective. But also I
think we make it work in part because I get
to be almost like the kind of like impish gay
brother at the table, you know, like they they have
their ways of relating to each other that aren't totally
accessible to me all the time. But then I have
(33:55):
this other point of view that I think shakes them
a little bit. And I also do think like comedy
does this, but also being gay does this. It gives
you a little bit of permission to be a bitch.
You know, you can go a little bit further, and
sometimes you'll get you into trouble, but like you know,
you can kind of like lean back in your chair
a little and be a little acerbic. And that's gay culture.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
That's funny.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
It's so funny that you're saying that, because I never,
of all of my exposure to you and your podcast,
I never find that you do that.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
I don't think you work that angle.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Well, I should I thought I did.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Wait, Darling, I especially don't get that as a kind
of result of your being, you know gay.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Well, by the way, I don't think I directed towards them.
I think I directed at guests or the news. You know,
there have been moments where, you know, like we interviewed
Pete Boudha Judge and I kind of made some like
joke about pride with some innuendo that did not totally work,
where I kind of feel like I only could do
that right because you.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Know rights, you're both gay.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
You're both gay.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
That's the love Pete Boota Judge, I love it.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
So let's talk for a minute about social media because
it's very, very intertwined in what you do. And yet
I just went to find you on Instagram and there's
no verified is there.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
I have not verified on Instagram. I've taken myself off
of Twitter or x nay Twitter. I have a TikTok account,
but I don't post there crooked media posts. I've sort
of pulled back. I have pulled back. That's probably to
my detriment in some ways. But I found it was
(35:40):
Elon Mousse that was one of his many last straws.
There was one last straw that was a last draw
for me, and I took myself off of Twitter. I
just slowed to a scrawler, basically not posting at all
on Instagram. I consume TikTok and honestly, that's plenty. I
don't need it. I don't need it.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
No, I don't. I know.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Oh, except what you do is so connected to that.
So I'll go rhythm for one thing.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
So first of all, we have an incredible team at
Quicker Media that does a ton of posting of our
shows and of our content and of our videos and
of our merch and of our touring schedule and all
the rest. And I can share that and like repost
that from time to time. But why are we on
social media? And you know, what does it do for us?
And what do we do for it? And on the
what it does for us question? I think Twitter was
(36:27):
very valuable to me early on, especially when I left
DC I moved to LA. I'm writing TV shows. I'm
a little bit outside of politics. I can talk about politics,
and I can have a voice in a way that
that I think sort of reminds people like, Hey, I'm
gonna come a funny person. I have funny things to say.
You can invite me on your show, you can think
of me for whatever this project. I think that that
was useful. Where it has been much less useful, especially
(36:49):
in recent years, is the idea that social media is
how you build an audience for a podcast or video shows.
It just doesn't seem to translate. And you know, I
think it was mpror that took themselves off of Twitter
and found it had barely any impact on their audience.
There was so little conversion.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
How do you promote the podcast if not on social media?
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Well, so, first of all, we do post videos. We
post it on YouTube, I think videos on Instagram. Like
I'm glad we're getting that stuff out there, and I
think it's really useful to have us out there. The
company can post that, we can share it, and people
can see it. I think there's value to having our
content what Kroogd Media makes, what our shows make. I
think it's useful to put that into the world, both
because that I think it brings in audience at times,
(37:31):
but also just to have that message and have our
content kind of be in the soup of the algorithm
that I think is really really important. I personally don't
want to participate in it as much anymore because the
cost benefit ratio is just not I think where I
needed to be to justify the damage it does to
your soul to participate in it.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Man, this is a heavy, heavy conversation that you're bringing
really really heavy, because it's not just you know, teenage
people that get destroyed by it's also so like, hello,
old queens like me, where's that GoFundMe, Paige?
Speaker 1 (38:04):
You know, to help for the help for me?
Speaker 3 (38:07):
I don't. Yeah, it's you know. Well, part of it
too is it's like I so I'm on, I'm on manjaro. Uh.
The weight loss drug no, because for me it was yes,
it was about losing some weight, and it was vain
and it was not medically necessary. However, it quieted the
noise in my mind whether well, well listen, well let
(38:29):
me let me and and so whether and and and
yeah fuck me? And so the value of it for
me was yeah, I lost some weight, but I also
like it helped me like kind of take control of
this issue where I always felt guilty, Like when I
first went on this drug and I had like one
sushi role and I felt full, I felt guilty, and
all of a sudden, I was like, wait a second.
(38:50):
Every time you've been full in your entire adult life,
every single day, you felt guilty, every day guilty, every
time you ate, you felt every fuck day you felt guilty.
And now you can learn that that guilt and that
feeling of being full don't need to be connected. They
never did, but now they certainly don't. And the reason
I say this is because there are so many societal
(39:13):
problems that are vast and hard, and then we ask
individuals to use discipline and sacrifice to overcome them. We
tell you we're gonna fill the food the restaurants with
junk and the stores with junk, and you need to
be disciplined to not eat it. It's gonna be cheap
and available everywhere, and you've got to be disciplined. We're
going to tell you that the climate is on fire
(39:34):
and you need to be disciplined, and you need to
fix it yourself. You need to do the right thing,
otherwise you should feel ashamed. And by the way, we're
gonna make your phone an endorphin machine that drips serotonin
directly into your brain, that puts sort of satisfaction right
to your dome whenever you want it, twenty four hours
a day. But if you're on it too much, you're
gonna get sad. You need to get lonely, you're going
to get to press, gonna ruin your life, so you
(39:55):
better show discipline. And the Manjaro, to me, it was
a reminder that, oh, you know what, we need to
stop putting on people's shoulders self discipline to address societal harms.
And when it comes to social media, it is so
unfair that we say to everyone this stuff is bad
for you. If you're doing it too much, you will
(40:16):
want to do it too much. It will take up
your free time and you don't have free time. But
good luck, we made it addicting. Get yourself off of it.
And that sucks. That sucks, And so it.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Sucks, Darling, It really sucks. It really sucks.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
But I have to say, like, you know, I'm not
placing a value on this or a judgment on this.
You know, I am resisting Manjaro and those things because
I feel like that's again it's about discipline, but it's
in another way I feel like I should be able
to kind of especially at my age and I am
able to say, like, you know what, maybe don't look
at your phone right now, Maybe don't look at this
(40:50):
right now. Maybe you know the book is really good
that you're reading. Go back to the book, you know.
I mean, I do that.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
I think that that is great. And if that's something
that can work for you, I think that that's great.
But I I feel like people need to be more
generous with themselves. Also, like there is this sort of
American kind of capitalist calvinist idea that if you have
a problem that's big for you, it has to be
hard for you to fix it, because if it's not hard,
(41:16):
it's your cheating in some way. There's this idea that
there's no such thing as a free lunch. And that's
true in an economy, that's true in in in a deal,
that's true if somebody is offering you something on the street.
But it's not true in medicine it's not true. It's
not true in science necessarily.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Not necessarily necessarily.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Right now, Look, is there possibility that a year from
now they're taking those things off the shelves because you know,
my pancreas falls out. Possible, possible, But but I'll die thin.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
But wow, whoa, Hey, listen, are you with anybody right now?
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Are you single? Are you?
Speaker 3 (41:55):
I am not with anybody right now personally?
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Okay, are you in the market? You want me to
pimp for you a little bit?
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Yeah? Yeah, sure, I mean listen, here's yeah, okay, I guess,
yeah for sure, fine, yeah, I guess. If you have
an idea, sir, I might.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
I just got an idea, but I'm going to give
it a minute, all right.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Yea, let's develop, and you know what, I got to
tell you something. The one thing that I that has
happened to me over the last couple of years is
someone will say, oh, you know, you should date my
friend Josh, my friend Derek, and then then I say okay,
and then I never hear about it, and it's like, hey,
don't tell me about somebody, then go to them, get
the no from them, and then never bring it up again.
(42:33):
You don't come to me. I don't want anybody, don't.
I don't want to fucking hear an idea unless you've
got I want it baked. You bring me done deals.
I don't want people that aren't interested. I have enough
self esteem issues as it is. I got enough. Oh yeah, no,
I check. Yeah, no, it's so busy, now, you know.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
What I mean, never do that. You're the second person
I'm coming.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah, for sure, that's right, sure, for sure, for sure,
speaking of who you are as a personally.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
I ask everybody this question because I'm obsessed with obituaries, like,
do you know what you want your obituary to be about?
Speaker 3 (43:14):
I think to our earlier conversation, I've never thought about
it for even a second until this moment, not even
a second.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
How are you Jewish from Long Island and you have
never thought about like I just in the media. And
by the way, you know.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Probably your obituator is already written and somebody's good, like
if you die tomorrow, they've got it ready and they'll
tweak it and they'll go, yeah, he's on majorro.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
But that was the one thing we didn't know.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Sure, for sure, for sure. Yeah, I just yeah, I
don't know. I don't have that gene. I don't think
about that. I don't think that way. I think that
I kind of koreem through existence a little bit, and
I find that if I spend a little too much
time thinking about the choices I made, the things I've said,
the mistakes I've made, the ways in which I put
my foot in my mouth. I think that I couldn't
(43:59):
go on, So I just keep going forward and I
try not to trying not to look. I'm like the
coyote halfway across the canyon, you know all I had
to look down so minute.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
So if somebody says, okay, then we're not going to
give you an obituary in the Times to get about it,
you're not going to get one, you would be like, fine,
I don't care.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
I didn't say I don't want the fucking obituary you're
asking me. I didn't thought about it. I didn't thought
about it. Do I want to be?
Speaker 2 (44:20):
It's all I like, not only do I want an obituary,
like I want a full page and I want to
tracer on the front page like I want I need it.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
To for sure? No. Yeah, are you saying, am I
an egomaniac? Yeah? Well yeah sure, I would like the
two page spread. I'd like this. I'd like the schools
to close.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Okay, So majorro egomaniac. I'm trying to cast I'm trying
to set you up with.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Something that's great. That's great, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Jarling tell me what you want to promote.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
So we wrote a book it's called Democracy or Else,
with John, Tommy and I and it is a funny, useful.
One thing I'm really proud of is it manages to
be actually funny but without being cynical, which is a
really hard thing for us to pull off. So that's
what we're really proud of. But we're really trying to
get on that get on that bestseller list, to get
(45:05):
in front of like there's like Ted Cruz books on
that thing. You know, there's a lot of there's a
lot of So anyway, check out the book to on
June twenty sixth, but you can you can order it now.
You can order it now, all right, pre order it,
pre order it, pre order it. It's called Democracy or Else.
And you know what, it's gay too, all right, much
(45:25):
like me, much like I am. It's gayer than you'd expect.
And if you're listening to this and you're panicked or
worried about the election, go to vote save America dot
com and sign up. Sign up. We will give you helpful,
useful things you can do if you're getting deluged by
a lot of requests and information and fundraising emails and
all the rest. We're kind of trying to give you
(45:46):
a way to get involved that's kind of less overwhelming.
So go to vote Save America dot com.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
I'm there, darling, because you you nailed it. I am
feeling so much anxiety and fear about twenty twenty four
y'all are Yeah, Darling, I have nothing else for you.
I think I've gotten it all.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
Oh yeah, I think I think we really got to
the bottom of it.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
Ah ah, Okay, that was really great. Thank you so much,
Thank you, love it, love it. Hyphen Favreau. Sure I
did that, and that was the Freudian.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
No, no, no, I just was I was literally just
flagging through that. You could pick it up.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
No, thank you so much. But you know, by the way,
I do love him. He is one of the most
interesting guys. Do you know that I had him on
my TV show and you know thousand.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
I didn't want to say this. I think you are
confusing to John Favras. There are two different people. There
are two different people.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Oh no, I am you are I am? Oh my god,
this is the best part. I can't wait.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
I'm talking about the fabulous actor John Favrea.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Yes, the director. You're talking about the director of Iron Man, director,
a person I've never met.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Oh my god, this is amazing. Whoever the other John
Favreau is. I love you too, you would like a
mother loves a child. I love you unconditionally. I apologize.
I am so sorry. I feel so stupid, and I
love that this happened.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
I was feeling, I ended up feeling the way you
were talking about. I was like, I'm gonna let it
go because I think he can get away with it.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
I really did, John, Wait a second, could I just
tell you something like a couple of days ago when
we booked this, or two weeks ago, I was like, oh,
that's exciting.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
You know, John, love it.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
I knew that's why I love it. You know you
didn't have to tell me that. I knew that too.
I knew that too. Get some new names, okay, get
a few. You know, it's our fault.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
It's our fault.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
What he has been five minutes reading something before you
come in here.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
I read everything there is to fucking read.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
This is good, This is good. Leave this in, leave this.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Oh my god, this is amazing. I love this podcast
so much. I love it. Well anyway, thank you, so much.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
Thank you, and hey, hey, keep your eyes feeled. You're
about to see my ass as I walk out of
the studio.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
That was a hell of a conversation with John Lovett.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
And I went into it wanting something from him, wanting
to somehow bring about an intimacy, and I think I
succeeded in a way. But I also I feel like
I need more from him, and I'm exactly sure what
I want from him. I think I might be slightly
in love with him, Okay, I swear to God.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Each time I meet him, there's an elusive quality about him.
He gives you just about enough as you need, and
then he kind of completely pulls away, completely pulls back.
It's very sexy. It can feel a little bit frustrating,
but I am left in this kind of like a
little delirium of attraction. I'm not kidding. I am a
(48:46):
little deliriously in love with John Lovett. And you're all
my witness. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
So Isaac, were you pimping for yourself?
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Maybe just a little bit?
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Yes, suh, don't tell Arnold.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Don't tell arn on Valentine's Day?
Speaker 2 (49:09):
Oh right, please, darling, please, Nothing could rent us asunder,
Nothing could rent Us asunder.
Speaker 1 (49:17):
Darlings.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor and
tell someone, Tell a friend, tell your mother, tell your cousin,
tell everyone you know.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
Okay, and be sure to rate the show. I love
rating stuff.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
Go on and rate and review the show on Apple
Podcasts so more people can hear about it. It makes
such a gigantic difference and like it takes a second,
so go on and do it.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
And if you want more fun content.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Videos and posts of all kinds, follow the show on
Instagram and TikTok at Hello Isaac podcast And by the way,
check me out on Instagram and TikTok at.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
I am Isaac Musrati. This is Isaac Misrahi. Thank you, I.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Love you, and I never thought I'd say this, but
goodbye Isaac. Hello Isaac is produced by Imagine Audio Awfully
Nice and I AM Entertainment for iHeartMedia. The series is
hosted by Me Isaac Mizrahi. Hello Isaac is produced by
Robin Gelfenbein. The senior producers are Jesse Burton and John Assanti.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
It is executive.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
Produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Caarra Welker, and Nathan
Klokey at Imagine, Audio production management from Katie Hodges, sound
design and mixing by Cedric Wilson. Original music composed by
Ben Waltzer. A special thanks to Neil Phelps and Sarah
Katanak at i AM Entertainment.
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