Mixed Signals: Christiane Amanpour and Jamie Rubin on explaining the world — and podcasting with your ex

Max Tani:
I do think it’s interesting. Right now there are all these podcasts that are kind of two morons talking to each other who don’t know anything. Not this show. Not this show of course, but your generation of diplomats and politicians are doing more of it. It’s really threatening to the morons. It’s interesting.

Ben Smith:
You’re taking jobs that used to be ours.

Max Tani:
Exactly.

Ben Smith:
Yeah, exactly.

Max Tani:
Welcome to Mixed Signals from Semafor Media where we are tracking the wild changes in this media age. I’m Max Tani, media editor here at Semafor. With me as always, from an undisclosed location it appears, he’s got some insane background that could be AI, could be real, looks like maybe Windows 95 or something, I don’t know, is our editor in chief, Ben Smith. Ben, where are you? What is that?

Ben Smith:
Hi, Max. I’m at an editor’s conclave in Jackson, Wyoming. It’s very nice, but the backdrop does seem like a new media thing. We’ll have to soldier, through.

Max Tani:
Yeah. We certainly will, and we will not be talking about this secret media conclave that Ben is at. Instead, this week we will be talking to CNN Anchor Christiane Amanpour and former Senior State Department official, Jamie Rubin.
They are the hosts of a new podcast called The Ex Files. They also were formerly married, hence the name of the show. We’ll ask them about their experience of hosting a podcast with your ex, as well as the state Department’s information war with Russia and China, and whether the internet has actually made foreign correspondence irrelevant.

Ben Smith:
Yeah, I believe this is their first ever joint interview, though they were married for 20 years. Their marriage was, I’m not sure if you were following, kind of DC social news of the 1990s, Max. There’s I think a front page New York Times story that concluded that it was awkward but not a conflict of interest.

Max Tani:
I don’t think I was paying much attention in the 90s to anything that wasn’t cartoons for children, but I’m excited to ask them a little bit more about that and a lot more right after the break.
Ben, we usually have one guest. We don’t usually have two, and we don’t usually have divorced couples on here. That’ll be a first for us. Walk me through a little bit about what we’re getting into here, or is this going to be like an insanely tense episode? What is going on here? What are we doing?

Ben Smith:
I’m definitely interested in their chemistry, which on the show is I would say pretty unusual. People should check out their show, The Ex Files, but these are two really big figures in shaping how Americans have understood the world over the last 30, 40 years.
Amanpour started at CNN in the very beginning as a desk assistant in 1983. Worked her way up to being really I think the most famous, most accomplished foreign correspondent alive, you could say. She covered every notable story of my lifetime, including was very deeply involved in coverage of the Balkan Wars of the 1990s.
That’s the theater that I also associate with Jamie Rubin, a longtime Washington policy hand, worked for Joe Biden among others actually, but was most famous for being Secretary of States Madeleine Albright’s right-hand man.
He was the guy who briefed the press, shaped how Americans perceived those wars in the former Yugoslavia, and also was dating and then married to the most prominent CNN foreign correspondent of the moment, Christiane Amanpour, which was like a minor Washington scandal at the time, but an interesting complicated factor in both of their lives, I think, among other things.
Jamie was, until recently, an unusual job at state. He was running something called the Global Engagement Center, which was aimed at countering Russian and Chinese propaganda. Became a huge target for Republicans who believe it also wound up targeting American conservative speech.

Max Tani:
I was reading beforehand that Jamie was actually at various points potentially considered to be a candidate for Secretary of State. I think both if Hillary Clinton had won, and then also if he had stayed on with Joe Biden and had accepted a job that Joe Biden offered him, that he could have been one of the people who was on the path to being Secretary of State.
To me, it really says something that he was in line essentially to be Secretary of State. Having not gotten that job, the next career move that he decided to make was to become a podcaster. I think that that really says something about the media moment that we’re living in and the importance of the medium that you and I are participating in right now.

Ben Smith:
That’s a great segue, Max. Let’s bring them on.

Max Tani:
Yeah, let’s do it.

Ben Smith:
Christiane Amenpour. Jamie Rubin, thank you so much for joining us.

Christiane Amanpour:
Good to be with you.

Jamie Rubin:
Thank you for having us.

Ben Smith:
When Jamie told me about your new show, I had basically two thoughts. One is these are two people who have unbelievable depths of experience and knowledge, and this is obviously going to be incredibly interesting. Two, this is really going to be very insane chemistry. I feel like you actually basically delivered on both fronts, the show is [inaudible 00:05:16].

Christiane Amanpour:
Oh, that’s good. That’s good for you, Ben Smith.

Ben Smith:
I’ve really enjoyed the show so far, but before we get to the serious stuff about global media, which I want to talk about, I did want to know what prompted you to do a show with your ex-husband?

Christiane Amanpour:
I had been wanting in the whole new digitization space, that I’m obviously a bit late on, I’d been wanting to try a podcast for the last year. In conversation with CNN, I was able to do this outside the house, so to speak, with Global Media here in the UK, which is a big radio owner. It has billboards, and it’s one of the leading podcast companies.
The idea for me was to, A, diversify, and B, do something a little bit different than what I’ve been doing for the last many decades, which is very much in the correct four corners of what you do on mainstream legacy media.
I wanted to just try to pull the curtain back as much as I could and talk about global affairs in a way that I would try to make more accessible to people by telling them warts and all how the cookie is made or how the sausage is made, or however you want to say it.
Then I thought, “Gosh, well, maybe I should do it with somebody else. Maybe it should be a guy, maybe it should be an American.” All these bits of the puzzle to figure out how to fit into this current podcast space.
Then, the November elections happened and my ex-husband was out of a job, so I called him. I said, “Are you interested? This sounds crazy perhaps to you, but are you interested in talking about what we both know a lot about, but in a way that allows us to talk about things perhaps in a more personal way than we could?” Well, certainly that I could, anyway, on CNN in my current format, where I interview world leaders and when I go mano a mano, and where I’m really tough and hold people accountable.
This is not what I’m doing on this program. Not interviewing world leaders. I’m chatting with my ex about all the things that we’ve both quote unquote covered from his perspective as a government official, my perspective as a frontline journalist.
Listen, the funny thing is that Jamie and I are pretty ... Oh look, he’s gone.

Ben Smith:
No, don’t go. Jamie, come back.

Christiane Amanpour:
Can you get back from the kitchen and sit down? We’re talking. You see? This is what it’s like.

Jamie Rubin:
I’m listening. I heard all of that.

Christiane Amanpour:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben Smith:
Jamie, let’s ask you actually the same question here. You were a diplomat, basically a very high level diplomat just a few months ago. To go from that to a podcaster, a lot of people would think that’s an interesting career move. Talk a little bit about the back story here and what you thought about the prospect of doing a podcast with your ex-wife.

Jamie Rubin:
Sure. First of all, I have always worked on the dividing line between journalism and government affairs since I began. When I was spokesman of the State Department, they obviously thought I was good at it, and that’s when Christiane and I met.
I was responsible for doing my job the way I was supposed to, but also being married to a prominent journalist. I always figured out how to have these sort of dividing lines in my head and understand in my head what I could say and what I couldn’t say.
Then, this time around, I left the government. Frankly, with Trump’s second victory, it was pretty devastating. Let’s be honest. Frankly, I didn’t know what I was going to do. Christiane actually called me and suggested this Ex Files idea. I’ll only take credit for fighting to keep the title because the lawyers were battling whether you could use it because of somebody else. I said, “Titles cannot be copyrighted.” I know that’s true with books.

Ben Smith:
Are you a lawyer? Anyway ...

Jamie Rubin:
No, I’m not a lawyer.

Christiane Amanpour:
I know. Are you a lawyer?

Jamie Rubin:
I played lawyer on TV.

Christiane Amanpour:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You play lawyer in your spare time. Yeah, on Ben’s podcast. No, but actually, Ben, the title is Christiane Amanpour Presents The X-Files with Jamie Rubin because of the-

Jamie Rubin:
Thank you for pointing that out.

Christiane Amanpour:
But it’s also part of the protection over the title, and this, of course, is E-X as opposed to X.

Jamie Rubin:
Yeah.

Ben Smith:
I did notice the Christiane and the Jamie thing. Was not going to bring it up, but ...

Jamie Rubin:
She brought it up because it’s correct. She’s a prominent journalist. For me, it was a lucky first idea of what to do next. Look, we can do this easily despite the fact that we’re married, were married, because we always had good foreign affairs, international affairs, world affairs. That was not a reason we got divorced. Those were the best parts, or one of the best parts, of our marriage.

Christiane Amanpour:
I know. Easy does it, easy does it.

Jamie Rubin:
Our son was a second-best part. We stayed friendly, British friendly, after the divorce. We are divorced, but we stayed friendly. We didn’t have a big court battle or anything like that. I guess I would say that by compartmentalizing our relationship into our son, international affairs, and our relationship, we do the first two, our son and international affairs.

Christiane Amanpour:
Oh my God, I think he’s going too far down the therapy couch.

Ben Smith:
As I said earlier, the show, which I’ve been listening to, has sort of incredible insight and really chemistry like I have never seen on any other show.

Jamie Rubin:
By the way, you can say that again, especially to all those people. I know nothing about this. How do we get Americans to start listening to it? Because it’s a very well-known company in Britain, but ...

Christiane Amanpour:
They are. No, no, they are. They are are, Jamie. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

Jamie Rubin:
But we want more.

Christiane Amanpour:
Yeah, we want more.

Jamie Rubin:
We want more.

Christiane Amanpour:
Yeah.

Ben Smith:
I’m going to ... Just to shift the topic to the substance of this, Christiane, I was curious, in this question about your audience, about Americans, you’ve been at CNN since ’83. I wonder if you think that Americans are better or worse informed about what’s happening in the world now than they were then?

Christiane Amanpour:
That’s an interesting, now than they were then probably. Although, although, it’s counterintuitive, because right now there’s so much more information that is thrown at people, Americans and everybody on social media, and on all the other social platforms, but it doesn’t mean to say more knowledge.
I think it’s really important to understand that all this flood of information that comes at people right now is populated and interspersed with a heavy dose of disinformation, misinformation, outright lies, political agendas, and all the rest it.
I think while people are getting a lot more of that, they’re getting potentially less of the knowledge and understanding of what’s happening.
I’ll just quote for you the outgoing ... Well, the now resigned US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, who I’m going to be interviewing on my program. She resigned. In part of what she said, she went back to Michigan, which is where she’s from. She just thought that today neither leaders nor the media explain to the population in general in a concerted way why certain things are important.
For instance, defending Ukraine. It’s obvious. You don’t have to even take sides. It’s obvious that a democracy would defend the democratic country that’s being invaded by the authoritarian stronger country, right? But that story, while it was pretty prominent in the US for a few years, and Americans really did support the defense of Ukraine, it started to wither away.
I think partly it’s because we in the mainstream media, certainly in the TV, in the broadcast segment that I’m in, don’t keep it up as much. Yeah, it grieves me that I think people are potentially less informed or less engaged with the importance of these international and global stories than they were even back then.

Ben Smith:
Christiane, do you think that ... It does really feel like with the broadcast networks having smaller budgets, and in a lot of cases a lot fewer viewers, do you think that you are one of the last of these big globally famous and known foreign correspondents and journalists?
Because it just seems to me like a lot of the network news organizations that used to cover a lot of these things and have the budgets to send people to really, really expensive places don’t have the bandwidth as much. In a lot of case, the people who had that institutional knowledge, many of them are leaving. What do you think about this situation?

Christiane Amanpour:
Well, obviously I hope not because this is my DNA and it’s what I’ve always believed in, and what I always fought for. Even in the good old days when the budgets were much more unlimited, when the viewers were much higher, I was always saying, “There’s still not enough foreign coverage, and our reports are on the news.”
Obviously each country pays much more attention to their domestic priorities, but I genuinely believe that we must keep this up. I think that it ... It’s different. The way we’re doing it is different, but the content shouldn’t be different. CNN, all the others are really making a huge effort on the digitization of all of our legacy media.
The New York Times has done it incredibly well, the FT, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, all these legacy medias that are still doing a lot of international reporting are doing it very well, but you’re right, it’s very fractured.

Max Tani:
I guess am I wrong to have this assumption then, this idea that ... Because it feels that way to me. I feel like in talking to people, especially at networks like CBS, NBC, ABC, that used to have these really big foreign bureaus and a lot of people to cover these conflicts, it seems like there just are a lot fewer of them.

Christiane Amanpour:
There are. It’s a fact, and it’s been happening for many, many, many years. It’s getting very, very pointed and difficult right now because of the obvious financial issues and the changing habits of people who want to engage with information and knowledge.
I don’t even want to say viewers or readers or listeners, because there’s just so much more. People are engaging with platforms wherever they find them. We have to meet people, and this is not just a slogan, it’s a reality, where they are. That is our challenge, but it doesn’t mean to say that we should stop talking about these important things and making them accessible in a human and empathetic way to anybody, Americans or anybody else.

Ben Smith:
We need to take a short break, but we’ll be right back with Christiane and Jamie.
Sometimes people say the age of the foreign correspondent is over because we can now hear directly from the locals. There are lots of great Ukrainian journalists on the ground. There are journalists in Gaza, there are journalists writing in a local language, and you can hit the translate button.
There’s this ... I don’t know. I sometimes think about there’s this sort of colonial model of sending the swashbuckling correspondent with the helmet out to the field who doesn’t always speak the language, who just got there.
There are all these local journalists who used to be our fixers, but now can tell their own stories. I’m curious, what’s the point of the correspondent in a world where you can hear from the locals more directly?

Christiane Amanpour:
Is this me?

Ben Smith:
Yeah, yeah.

Christiane Amanpour:
Okay. Okay, but I also think the heart of the question is for people in government as well. If people aren’t seeing these stories then how is government meant to actually persuade their constituents that they need to actually work on peace and all the rest?
My answer to you, Ben, is if I could see you and meet you, I would try nicely and gently to punch you on the chin, because what you’re talking ... What you’re saying is for me to advocate for the extinction of the foreign correspondent. All you have to do is go to Broadway right now. I know it’s a crazy high price for Good Night and Good Luck, but George Clooney is telling you in chapter and verse why the foreign correspondent from time immemorial, and in this case from World War Two on, Edward R. Murrow, is a vital and important part of our storytelling, of our understanding, of our civilization, and of our futures frankly.
Look, you are a 100% right. I reject this idea of colonial model. I’m just do. Sorry. I don’t think it’s right because from time immemorial there have been foreign correspondents going from everywhere to everywhere, but what I do accept is that there are amazing ... Of course I accept that, I’ve worked with them throughout my career, amazing local journalists, and they are fantastic.
They are right now working under the most appalling circumstances, mostly in Gaza right now, where none of us are allowed in. That in itself is an abomination, that we internationals are not allowed into Gaza to report the truth of what’s going on there. For a democracy to hold that as a rule, it’s crazy that Israel won’t let us in.
What I’m saying is that I believe, and I think it’s true, that we ... If we’re trying to get these stories out to a bigger part of the world with a bigger throw weight and force, world leaders and all those people who could make a difference to take notice, they have to be told by not just local journalists, but also international journalists. I’m not saying either or I’m saying also. That increases the dominance of the storytelling about the subject matter.
I think that one of the reasons that you’re not seeing a huge amount of work on ending the terrible war between Israel and Hamas, the terrible war between Russia and Ukraine is because there are barely any internationals on the ground in any place anymore, even in Israel.

Ben Smith:
Yeah.

Christiane Amanpour:
We have our correspondents there, but certainly not in Gaza. Fewer and fewer in Ukraine as this drags on and nobody, almost nobody with few exceptions, in Russia.

Jamie Rubin:
If I could jump in on that.

Ben Smith:
Yes, please jump in.

Jamie Rubin:
I could jump in on that for something that I think Christiane will agree with, because we talked about it. When I was in the government, I was encouraging the Ukrainian government to allow international pools to the actual front line. Not near the front line, not interviewing soldiers after the battles had taken place, but to actually effectively have a camera on the front line of the biggest war that we’ve had in the modern era equivalent to World War I.
Imagine if the world we’re seeing live on television, the battles every day between tanks and drones and missiles and hundreds of thousands of soldiers, showing it visibly, vibrantly. I believe, one, the ability of Putin to pretend that this is a ... Not a war or some sort of justified invasion would be ruined because the whole world would be watching a real war on Ukraine’s territory. There’d be no debate about that.
Secondly, I think it would prevent leaders from pushing it aside, because it would be massively compelling. Just think about the fact that of all World War I movies have been going on and on and on and on and never end in their popularity because it’s something people actually like to watch in a sick way. I advocated for that.
The fact that Ukraine, for its own reasons, won’t let the journalists up front, the Russians obviously won’t unless it’s completely biased journalism. We’ve lost the reality that right now in the heart of Europe there’s a war going on with hundreds of thousands of people trying to slaughter each other on Ukraine’s territory.
That’s partly for all the reasons Christiane was talking about, and for the fact that Ukraine government I think mistakenly is more worried about reporting about its casualties than getting the world to see the reality of this war day-to-day.

Christiane Amanpour:
On the other hand, I have had good access, and some of us do have good access, but Jamie’s right, it’s not like daily access like I had in Bosnia. That really showed the world what was going on.
In the end, I think Jamie will agree, because he was in government at that time during the Balkan Wars, that the fact that we reported this, and the civilians as well, not just the soldiers on the front line, but the civilians, and what was happening to them on a daily basis, really did in the end make a difference.
Because what happened was democracies started to say, “We cannot turn away from what’s happening on our watch. We can’t pretend to be democracies who believe in the rights of ... In human rights and all the rest of it and watch this wholesale slaughter going on without trying to do something about it.”
I do believe that we play a very vital role. In the US, we’re called the fourth estate. That’s not just a decorative title. It’s because we play, I think, a vital role in civil society and in propping up democracy, and in putting the reality in front of the world and in front of world leaders. That I think is really important.

Ben Smith:
Do you think Americans have any idea what’s going on in Gaza?

Christiane Amanpour:
I think they have some idea. I think there’s a lot on social media. I think they may have more idea. I don’t really know about America, to be frank. I don’t know how much they choose to engage with or what.
I know it’s very difficult in Israel because my Israeli colleagues tell me. Every time I interview people inside Israel, they are much more shielded from what’s actually going on in Gaza than actually what the rest of the world is seeing.
I don’t know whether it’s happening the same in the United States. What I do know, for instance, is that films, for instance, couldn’t even get a platform. The collaborations between Israelis and Palestinians ... That we should be celebrating because that’s the only way forward to find collaboration between Israelis and Palestinians somehow.
No other land couldn’t get a theatrical release in the United States. It won the Oscar for best documentary. It had to raise funds to be allowed to be shown in at least one theater in order to qualify. Nothing is achieved by keeping ... By bringing down the curtain of darkness and ignorance. We have to break the silence. We have to tell these stories.
Just lastly, I think Jamie and I being able to talk about this kind of stuff in a more accessible way, and reminding people that decades ago when we started there were real life solutions being proposed, and peace treaties ... Northern Ireland, Oslo. You can name many, many other places. We need to remind people of what’s possible.

Ben Smith:
Jamie, what did you think of the media’s coverage of the war in Gaza? Was the stuff that you were working on do you feel accurately reflected in what was out there, or did you feel frustrated at all with how it was being portrayed?

Jamie Rubin:
I would say mostly I think it was accurate. Remember, I’m an old guy. I’m 65 years old. I read The New York Times, I read The Washington Post, I read The Wall Street Journal, newspapers. I don’t watch a lot of television, so I didn’t see CNN all day long or Fox all day long.
I do remember when I would flick on CNN and would approach the problem from one direction, Fox would approach it from another direction. That divide was very clear to me.
In the newspapers that I read, I felt I was getting a pretty accurate recounting of the horror for the Palestinians, but of the security risk of the Israelis. Whether that translated into the world of media that you guys know so well, the social media, the TikTok, the ...
I do know that there were times that things were manipulated by ... The Iranian government was promoting certain things through using disinformation techniques. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Israelis were trying their hardest to have an effect in the information space.
The information domain ... In my old job, one of my jobs was also running the so-called information war. I learned a lot about the information domain.

Ben Smith:
Yeah.

Jamie Rubin:
It’s now part and parcel of policy. When you’re running a war, you have to worry about the military effect, you have to worry about the diplomatic effect, and now you have to worry about the information domain.

Ben Smith:
Your portfolio at state included the Global Engagement Center, now defunct, and-

Jamie Rubin:
Formally Global Engagement Center.

Ben Smith:
Yeah.

Jamie Rubin:
That’s defunct.

Ben Smith:
No more global engagement happening. Very, very controversial among Republicans on the theory ... Really put it broadly that the way the internet works now, if you try to crack down on Russian propaganda you inevitably ... A lot of Russian propaganda involves amplifying American voices, among other things. They were paying some American bloggers.
You wind up censoring American voices. Whether or not you intend to, these spaces have merged. It’s kind of impossible to push social media companies, push foreign governments to stop foreign propaganda without winding up censoring Americans. Isn’t there something basically to that?

Jamie Rubin:
There is, but there is a way around it. When I approached the job, this was the hardest single subject I ever worked on in my life for the reason that, Ben, you just suggested, but there is a way around it.
What I discovered and figured out how to do was to distinguish between the US information space and the foreign information spaces consciously. What we came up with as a tool for how to fight this, without doing what those Republicans thought we were doing ...
Of course, you’re right. Russians say things, Americans repeat them, Russians repeat what the Americans say, and it’s all one big information space, but if your job is to combat Russian disinformation, you can approach the problem in the following way. You can say, “Okay, my battle space is outside the United States, because I cannot censor Americans.” That’s what I did, because I knew it was controversial, nor would I want to censor Americans.
I tried to use our intelligence community to help us to reveal when Russia or China was masking its role and imparting information warfare into countries in Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia.
I came up with the simple way of saying that our battle is the hidden hand. Anyone can say anything as long as it’s sourced, labeled, and the provenance of that information is known, so that if you see ... In Bulgaria, you’re a Russian speaker and you see in Russian US has bioweapons in Ukraine, you have a certain reaction, but if you see Russia says US have bioweapons in Ukraine, you have a different reaction.
I was trying to create a situation using the tools of government to make sure that Russia’s hand was known, not to censor, but to make it known. Then, you don’t run into the problem that you described.

Ben Smith:
I’m not sure if you saw this, but Trump’s nominee to run public affairs at state, a lawyer named Sarah Rogers, testified recently somewhat in favor of some of the interagency coordination with concerns that I think you share about foreign propaganda.
Her basic view, which I think is Trump’s view, is that the right answer is counter speech rather than suppressing speech. If the Russians say something false on social media, the Marco Rubio, Donald Trump should be jumping all over them on social media, attacking them loudly, making fun of them, addressing it in kind of a frontal way rather than behind the scenes.

Jamie Rubin:
Look, first of all, yes, of course, that’s good and important. We need to rebut false narratives. There’s two sides to this equation, and I spent a lot of time thinking about it. There’s offense, what do you say and how do you say it? How do you explain US policies? Then, there’s defense, which is protecting us from Russian and Chinese information warfare.
I think their mistake is to not understand how powerful and the magnitude of Russian and Chinese disinformation around the world. When they start reading their intelligence reports, the ones that I read very, very carefully, and they see what a high priority, and how many billions and billions of dollars are spent by Beijing and Moscow to destroy the reputation of the United States all over the world, they may decide that doing some of the defense we were doing is worthwhile, but of course you want to do the offense. It’s a necessary but not sufficient response.

Ben Smith:
Well, Christiane, Jamie, thank you guys so much for your time. It’s been a really fascinating conversation.

Christiane Amanpour:
It was a real pleasure. Thanks for taking the time.

Jamie Rubin:
Always a pleasure.

Max Tani:
Ben, that was a really interesting conversation. What did you think about what Christiane and Jamie had to say?

Ben Smith:
Honestly, that left me thinking. It’s about something kind of broader, but I think there’s this thing happening right now in the kind of quote unquote podcast world where these very skilled broadcasters and people with decades of experience are sort of descending into this digital space, and they’re pretty good at it.
I don’t know if you noticed my occasional attempts to get Christiane and just go in a way she didn’t want to go. It was totally hopeless. She is unbelievably lucid, knows exactly what she wants to say, is an incredible talker, has been doing this for a while. Jamie also cannot be thrown by a tough question.
One of the things I’ve noticed in media at the moment is that Piers Morgan is just having lots of podcasters on, asking them hard questions, chewing them up, spitting them out. It’s sort of interesting to see this generation of professionals who had stayed out of digital media starting to really descend on it with both feet.
It’s a world where suddenly Kara Swisher, Tina Brown are these dominant, dominant figures. These are people of my generation or the generation before who were huge, huge figures for a long time, but for whom honestly the economics of digital media meant that they were making too much money in old media to bother.
I think that’s actually the thing that has shifted. It’s really reordering the question of what’s digital and what’s not. I kind of love that Christiane Amanpour, this absolutely iconic foreign correspondent, is doing a podcast with their ex-husband. What a strange media world.

Max Tani:
I think the dynamic is obviously the thing that’s special. I do think that there is something still in question about whether or not all of the TV skills always translate to something that’s going to be a kind of compelling podcast.
Piers’ podcast, Megyn Kelly’s show, they’re great for these kind of clipped moments, but I don’t feel like that’s the kind of thing I’m putting on in my headphones to walk around with. Right?

Ben Smith:
Right? You’re listening to Chris Black, you’re not listening to Megyn Kelly?

Max Tani:
Yeah. Well, I do think that there is still ... I think that obviously a portion of the podcast world is becoming television, but I do think that there’s an open question about whether all of those skills 100% translate.
Look, we’ve seen some of the stuff that hasn’t worked. Don Lemon’s show I don’t think really particularly worked well.

Ben Smith:
Yeah.

Max Tani:
He picked the wrong partner in deciding to go partner with Elon Musk on X. I think that what Christiane is doing is more interesting because she’s pairing up with her example. That creates this bizarre, weird tension that kind of runs through their show.
You kind of feel like you’re watching two people, a couple at a dinner or something like that. It is interesting and bizarre. I think that part works.

Ben Smith:
Yeah. It’s like a Richard Linklater film.

Max Tani:
Yeah.

Ben Smith:
As a podcast about foreign policy.

Max Tani:
Yeah, exactly. What did you think about what Jamie had to say, though, about our information ecosystem?

Ben Smith:
I actually think one of the things that was really interesting, when the Trump people get in and they see the briefings about just how much money the Chinese and the Russians are putting into information warfare, it’s going to change their point of view a little.
[inaudible 00:34:13] this testimony by Sarah Rogers, who’s going to be the State Department public affairs official, pretty interesting because it does actually ... It doesn’t just sort of blast everything the Biden people were doing. It kind of acknowledges that these are huge issues.
I think what he was saying about pushing foreign governments to label propaganda, I think pretty interesting. I think he’s right, these incredibly hard questions.
Then, the second thing, though, that I think is interesting is the notion, can Donald Trump win the information war with Russia more or less the way he won the information war with the Democratic Party, by fighting it in an over-the-top frontal way on social media, rather than tiptoeing around the world trying to get people to label Russian propaganda as Russian propaganda?
I don’t think that’s crazy. I think that’s pretty interesting. The idea that the things that Republicans love and the Democrats hate about Karoline Leavitt are also things that can be effective in propaganda wars essentially, that the US has been losing in various ways, and that Biden was really ill-suited to play in.

Max Tani:
Well, Ben, thanks for inviting them on the show. I thought that was really, really, really fun and fascinating episode. Thanks for having them.

Ben Smith:
Interesting people. I’m glad we could get them.