Max’s view
Even as their audiences boomed, many influencers, podcasters, and creators occupied an alternate media universe, treated as a novelty by their established rivals. For public figures, merely appearing on a podcast — Donald Trump on Joe Rogan, Kamala Harris on Call Her Daddy — was often more newsworthy than the interview itself.
But in 2025, those lines are finally, truly blurring — in sometimes hilarious ways, as in a recent dust-up between CNN’s Jake Tapper and the hosts of How Long Gone that’s too complicated and dumb to explain here but made the tabloids. Now the new voices, elevated and occasionally confronted by a confused legacy media, are starting to replace the old establishment.
Sports podcaster Pat McAfee, now an ESPN star who won a bitter fight with a network executive, may be the new model. The comedian Adam Friedland, who hosts a late night-style show on YouTube, has graduated from interviewing D-list celebrities to legitimate stars, including Sarah Jessica Parker, the Strokes’ Julian Casablancas, and, next week, an ambitious congressman from California.
It’s been a dizzying rise for this new generation, as Friedland discussed with us on Mixed Signals last week. The comedian doesn’t appreciate being cast as the “Joe Rogan of the left,” and is wary of the idea that comedians or comedy podcasters should be the country’s leading truth-tellers or political kingmakers in a new media landscape: “We’re not smart people. We should not be given this place in the world.”