The Rest Is Politics

I'm talking directly to the people who make some of those great podcasts to find out how they do what they do and hear about what they're listening to. My guest on this episode is a producer of one of the biggest podcasts in politics on both sides of the Atlantic. The rest is politics, and the rest is politics US. Welcome to Pick of the Pods, Fiona

Douglas.

I think one of the great things about Katy and Anthony is it's also like their relationship's great, they have really great banter. We aim to kind of give the insider outsider expect like insider outsider take. Katy's British, but has been in the US doing US politics for about 30 years.

And Anthony is American and has worked in Trump's White House for 11 whole days. So he's got the in real inside scoop on what it's like in the Trump administration.

Um yeah, we'll hear him reveling in his both insider and outsider status. Shall we take a look at a first clip, Fiona, that you've sent me? This is a good one because it's both, and I'm assuming this is why you've picked this one, it's both the the UK version and the US version. Tell us something about this clip which was on

the US uh general election night.

Um we this was a kind of first experience for us. We took them from their offices at home behind a microphone and put them on a panel in a studio, full production, completely live.

Um the clip you're about to hear is later in the night once we'd realised that Donald Trump had won the election, after I think almost all of them had predicted that Kamala Harris was gonna win.

This is the point in the night where I think like we're multiple coffees in at this stage, and everyone's maybe thinking we need to switch to something stronger because it was getting a bit um depressing, maybe.

It is a fact that Donald Trump has been elected president of America for the second time, just the second person in history to come back for a second term in the way that he's done after losing. Um Rory.

A bit like 2016, we're in a situation in which basically the race was over by about half past two in the morning, our time, about half an hour ago. And it really finished at the point at which it became clear that Donald Trump had taken Pennsylvania.

There was nearly an hour and a half of hanging around as the votes got towards 95, 96, 97% of the votes with him leading. And the reason why on this graph it's showing 267, and he needs 270 to win, but we're saying he's won, is that it's almost inconceivable that they would not take Alaska. In fact, he's likely to take many more of the swing states.

He could end up in a position stronger than he was against Hillary Quinton in 2016. I'm presenting this all in a slightly cheery voice. I am profoundly shattered by the whole situation.

And what we've been talking about over the last few hours is that this will have incredible impacts on Russia-Ukraine, where we're likely to see support taken away from Zelensky and Putin increase his position in Europe. We're likely to see huge consequences for American democracy, for the Supreme Court.

Trump is a man who is threatening mass deportations, revenge against his enemies. It's been a profoundly unpleasant campaign. And the Democrats, who I felt had learnt a lot of lessons from 2016, had turned a lot of things around, sadly, on the night, did not do enough to win.

to speak.

So it was live streamed on YouTube, and then we took the podcast and put it out hopefully before anyone in the UK woke up that morning, which I think was really helpful as well. We're on American time and able to have that for people when they woke up and got the results.

reaction and gather our thoughts a bit and put out some of that first section of the show,

and then after the second four hours, we were able to put out some of that as well.

And I've always assumed, and you can probably confirm or or deny this, that it must have started with the rest is history, because that is a phrase, right? And the rest, you know, we did this, we did that, and the rest is history, which makes sense. The rest is all those other things, entertainment, politics.

It doesn't necessarily make any sense, but it's a it's a good kind of branding, right? Is that right? That's right, yeah.

And I don't know if they were thinking at that point that this is the beginning of an empire and we're gonna have to double down on this name, but it was Rest's History first, and then Rest as Politics came afterwards that I think worked well. And we have some that work really well. I think Rest is classified as a quite a clever way to do it. Yeah.

and uh who's the co-presenter? It's um Richard.

Rory Stewart, um, a former British Member of Parliament, I believe he was a minister in Conservative governments. They're both, so in theory, from opposite ends of the spectrum, but they're not. They're both kind of centrist-ish.

One Alistair Campbell from the left, the Labour Party, Rory Stewart from the right, the Conservative Party, but much closer probably than the the differences in either of those parties. Um but what they do have, and I know what people love about that, is is a chemistry, and you also have the great chemistries you've mentioned between Katy Kay and Anthony Scaramucci.

How how do you as a producer go about what you can do to encourage that?

Can we take what's becoming quite vitriolic online and horrible discussions or even news interviews where it's just people really going at each other and you feel like you don't get anywhere in a conversation, it's just kind of screaming into a void, and take that and flip it on its head and have two people that disagree entirely but are able to have a sensible,

relaxed conversation with each other where they can disagree but go like, hey, we're we're both coming at this with our own opinions, with our own research. We're both sensible people, we're not trying to catch each other out or kind of uh upset each other.

So I think that's where they then could bring in quite a good audience of people from all different kind of spectrums. We definitely have the centrist ad trope, but we have a lot of young listeners, a lot of women, a lot of different political views. And I think with Rory and Alistair, like they do get on really well.

Um it's quite funny, people are always fascinated by their relationship and like are they really friends? And I think that is the amazing thing, they do get on really well, and I think they both enjoy the the debate with each other.

It's nice they can have a good back and forth and get into the real depths of discussion and into the kind of meatiness of it without upsetting each other, and I think that's super important.

And as a producer, we really like we try and identify beforehand the kind of sticking points, the things they might argue on, and sometimes it's a bit of like, oh guys, like I know you both agree on this topic, but like let's get a bit of discussion going. Is there something that we want to have a more of a back and forth about?

Catty and Anthony, it's they had actually not met each other before they started the podcast, they met on the podcast and are such different types of people, I think, as well. You know, Anthony's this Italian American from Long Island, Katy's a kind of adopted American, and they get on incredibly well. They have a real friendship now, it's so nice.

Like I think you can tell from listening to it that they enjoy each other's company. And these are the kind of the feeling I think of the rest as podcasts is it's a kind of conversation you might have with your friends in the pub over politics brought to a podcast.

been in. First time I'd ever heard of Anthony Scaramucci was when he joined Trump 1.0, was in the cabinet, and then suddenly he was kicked out unceremoniously. Um, and they he's comparing it there to Liz Trust, the short-lived uh British Prime Minister. Yeah, interesting you say they'd never met before, Fiona. And quite different voices.

Yeah, Anthony Scaramucci has got a great voice for podcast because he sounds like, you know, he's got that kind of tough New York style. And then you've got Catty, who has quite what you might call quite a posh English voice, but it does have, you can tell she's been in the States for a while. There's a bit of a mid-Atlantic thing going on there as well.

So lucky they they get they seem to get each other and respect each other as well. I think that's probably an important thing about both those podcasts, right? Mutual respect.

It was a four, five-part series all about Elon Musk that we released last year when Trump was in his first hundred days, and Elon Musk was kind of tearing government structures apart with his Doge department. And this was a series that I wrote with our other producer, India, and the amazing thing was Kathy and Anthony, like their input into this series as well.

They both did tons of research for it, got involved in the scripts, in the kind of running orders, and both chatting to each other beforehand about like you know, Anthony going, Well, when I met the guy, like this is what we want to talk about, this is where we're gonna be able to put it in the episode.

And having the two of them were kind of constantly talking on WhatsApp about what we're gonna talk about that week in the podcast, and each of them saying, Well, I've spoken to this person, and then I've got this kind of insight that I want to bring in, and Anthony's saying that you know, I'm at this summit this week and I've met these people.

So I think having that kind of constant relationship with them and then with each other, where we can really like bounce ideas back and forth, is super important.

This episode was written by, you know, um, a lot of people think of a podcast, particularly one that is largely a conversation, like the one you and I are doing now, you just plonk a microphone down in front of someone and say, right, say something interesting. And actually, a lot of podcasts probably are done like that.

It's a big discussion beforehand, and we always have one or two pages of just here are the key points that you need to just remember to hit today because when it's Trump, as we had yesterday when we were recording, I think he changed his mind the hour before we were about to record.

So there's just the key facts you want to put down, and then we really leave Cathy and Anthony just to chat to themselves. And then with a series like Elon Musk, it's across five episodes. There's a lot more of we want to make sure that we get the narrative arc of the story.

There's bits that we want to tease at the beginning, but don't tell that story yet, we're gonna keep it for episode two, and that's where there's a lot more of I say script, it's not a script that they necessarily read out off a page, but something to follow and make sure we're hitting A, B, C in order.

Um and yeah, I think that's the nice thing about the kind of podcast. We have ones like the Elon Musk series that are really produced, really edited, really making sure that the story makes sense. And then on another day we'll do a live stream where we decide a couple hours before, and we have to just go for it.

We have no script, no research, and it's just Cathy and Anthony in their element, I think, talking to the news as they've just seen it.

You could probably between the start of an ending of a recording of an episode, I can imagine a truth social post coming out, which changes the direction.

Trump just announced yesterday that his 48-hour deadline for Iran is not a 48-hour deadline anymore, it's now a five-day deadline, and that was just yeah, an hour before we were recording. We have to change that.

And we also had, I think on election night, we did record not live, but a podcast that to go out the next morning, and we it was edging towards Trump winning, but it wasn't confirmed, and then during the recording we had confirmation that Trump was definitely gonna win.

And you can I texted them, just didn't want to break the flow, but just texted Kathy during the recording, and you just she just kind of openly goes, Oh my god, I've just seen my phone. This is this is it, and this is the news. And I think that kind of organic way of reacting to it works really well.

That's something that just is authentic to how the news is at the moment. It's so fast moving.

which was journalism, but I couldn't have thought I'll become a podcast producer because that's a job that's probably only existed for the last ten or fifteen years or so. What's what's your story? How did you come to that?

But I went to university and did studied linguistics and English language just because that was something I was really interested in, but wanted to keep my options open. And then studied broadcast journalism as a master's at City in London, which I'd really recommend if anyone's listening and interested in getting into the industry.

I thought it was such an amazing master's. I know I think Robin, have you lectured there?

Kathy and Anthony's podcast didn't exist yet. And I reached out to the senior producer and asked to get involved. And I think luckily a few months later they were hiring a new round of trainee assistant producers, and I applied for the job and thankfully got it, and then started working with Roy Alistair. So that was in 2022.

I'm trying to think what would have been happening now. It was the height of the kind of Tory drama machine that was going on at the time.

So they do a kind of economic take on the news and also interview a lot of business leaders and people like that. And then in April 2024, when the Restless Politics US was launched, I began to work on that and then gradually since then have kind of done that full-time and just do the odd thing with Rory and Alistair.

technical skills? Is it the enthusiasm? Oh, I love your show and I want to be on it. Is it a new sense? What are the skills that that that got you hired?

So it's helpful, but I think that's the thing that you can learn. I think the thing that they really look for is, like you say, enthusiasm. And we always say that maybe 80% of the job is talent management and being able to talk to people, to give guidance to hosts in the right way, to organize things.

And I think all of those skills you can learn, but they're also something that you want to come with the right attitude, show that you're willing to work, show that you're enthusiastic, obviously have an interest in whether it's a podcast or a TV show, whatever, show that you have an interest in that show and that you understand why people listen, that you understand

what makes it a good show, not just that you sit passively and enjoy it, but why do people come? And then that I think shows that you can help make it a better show and be a really good input to the team.

But you as a producer must have a sense of here's how we approach this issue, here's the story.

I think people really respond to when you frame stories around people, and it's not just around maybe, I don't know, an abstract way that Trump's made his money, it's about the relationships he has, and this kind of thing really resonates. And I think that's a really amazing thing as well about Roy Alistair in particular.

They don't necessarily follow what else, like the headlines that the BBC are following. They each come with a really interesting thing that they've heard of that they want to talk about that week, and they almost decide the news agenda for themselves.

And it's how do we get that story that people might not be following and make sure that it's told in a way, and this is where Rory is amazing of his explainers, of course, and making sure that everyone understands the significance of the story that's being told.

And with Cathy and Anthony, we're speaking to a really international audience, so it's a lot of making sure that you know who this character is, you know why a lot of the time, why is this guy whispering in Trump's ear? And why do you need to know his name?

And you know, this is the person you should keep a lookout for when you're reading the news later this week.

So it's a fine balance of doing a little explanation, but not, as you say, you don't want to patronise people, and people, if they're listening to this podcast, frankly, they're interested in the news. They know what's going on in the world.

clip, then. This one is a readout on Kamala Harris, so we're going back in time. Imagine a time when no one knew Trump would win that election. Um, Kamala Harris had stepped in fairly last minute to replace President Biden, whose health was just they couldn't hide it anymore. He didn't look like a physically fit to be running for a second term.

And this, I believe, is Katy's readout from a speech that Kamala Harris gave almost presenting herself now as the candidate. Is that what we're about to hear?

I would say. So it's such a different time to now, but I think it speaks to kind of how podcasts can be taken from looking at news from afar to being in the room and then feeding that back to everyone at home within an hour of the speech and live as well.

So the idea would be people could watch the speech and immediately flick over to get Cathy and Anthony's take on it.

big a setting with the stakes that high. I I can't remember one who's done it on this quick a turnaround. And and this was the most important speech of her political career, the most important moment of her political career, her chance to introduce herself to the American people. And she handled it like a pro.

in any way. There's no 15-minute segment you have to fill. If a topic deserves to be spoken about for half an hour, that's what we're gonna give it. If actually there's not much to say, we want to move on to something more interesting, we can do that. I think it's the flexibility.

We can be live when we want to be live, when there's a news story that we think everyone needs to hear straight away. And also being live lets us interactive listeners, they can comment and we can answer their questions in the moment. But when we want to spend a lot of time and make a long series, we can do that as well.

So I think flexibility is a huge part of it. Um, and of course, our hosts give their opinions. I think that's what makes it so important. We're not gonna sit here and say that you know Trump's tariff decision was a sensible decision on one hand, and on the other hand, it wasn't.

It's no holds barred, it's you know, they're able to really speak out, and I think people really value that. They people want to hear a sensible opinion.

anyone in the room was overjoyed that Donald Trump was about to get his second term. It's quite clear that, you know, if if I I would suggest the rest is politics would would be the presenters of that show would have been happier had the result gone the other way. I don't I don't think they're really hiding that.

The good side of that is they can honestly express their opinions, they don't have to tiptoe around, oh, this is a good idea, you know. Hasn't the president done a marvellous job here? That maybe the risk is, I'd be interested in hearing your opinion, that everyone's in their um bubble.

So you've got the centrist dads expression you use Fiona, not me, listening to the rest is politics. It's confirming their own biases, they're feeling good about their own opinions.

You're not limited to four channels on the TV where we're all getting the same thing. Um but I think the thing I'm always surprised at of our audience is you do a lot of the time get people that are very clearly Trump supporters or MAGA supporters messaging in, which I'm always so interested that

oh, you are listening to this podcast as well. You're able to we're able to speak to quite a wide audience. And obviously with Rory and Alistair, that's the amazing thing. You have Rory on the right and Alistair on the left talking about a kind of breadth of subjects and not agreeing all the time.

And then with Anthony as well, I guess the thing is he is a Republican. Um he doesn't agree with the current Republican administration, but I think in a different had Kamala Harris won, we'd be having a lot of different arguments right now where he, although he wanted her to win, he's very open about that, donated to her campaign. He's not a Democrat.

And he like I think that's a really interesting dynamic you have as well. And Katy's take on it, she's on the ground in Washington, she's not able to vote in the US, so she's got a completely kind of sideways take on things where she talks to all different kinds of people.

She's been around the country where she spoke to a lot of MAGA supporters, and is quite I think one of the things she does quite well is people voted for Trump. People did want him in. There's a huge swathe of people who think he's doing a really amazing job and he speaks to them, and that that the Democrats make them feel quite isolated.

And I think that's always quite an we quite often have this question when we do our Q ⁇ A's of like, can you tell us something Trump's doing really well? And it's always quite an interesting discussion because it's very easy to kind of be looking at him as a madman and as this figure that just makes crazy decisions.

Um I think that's always quite interesting to look at the other side and just look at everything from not just two angles of Cathy's take and Anthony's take, but from all angles of people they've spoken to as well.

But I think if you can bring an element of that, yeah, exactly. Why did people vote this way? What what is going wrong? To understand, we should all be trying to understand people who don't think like us, and I think I think you're succeeding on the moment, you know, when you get that right. I think that's very valuable.

Um let's talk about um parasocial relationships. This is a word I I hear thrown around a lot.

And I think a lot of the questions we get in, um, you know, Rory and Alex do a question time every week, Kathy and Anthony do it most weeks.

People feel like they really know them, and it's really nice, and they usually go like they it means that you get really insightful questions where you go, like, oh Anthony, like I I know what your take on this is going to be. I want to ask Cathy the same question. And it's quite nice, I think, the way they have such a casual relationship with one another.

You, as a listener, are brought into feeling like you're part of that relationship, and something that we really want to nurture as well by doing QA's where you talk to people. We have a newsletter now that Katy and Anthony input to and Alistair Rory

input to, where they can talk to our readers, I guess, rather than listeners. And then the other thing we do is now we do a lot of live shows, which is so nice, so you can have a complete direct interaction with the audience.

And it's nice because you feel like it's a community, and you get when I've gone around the crowd before they've all gone in and chatted to people who are coming in, they all go like, Oh, I bet Rory's gonna have something to say on this today, and they really feel like they know him, and it's really nice.

And you see people talking to each other as well that are all part of this kind of nerdy podcast fandom, um, and seeing everyone in a crowd is like it's really nice, and it's a good it's always interesting to see people in person and see who's listening and have that live interaction where people can ask a question and have it answered immediately and see the

crowd reaction to it as well is always funny when I don't know the oohs and ahs of a reaction a question might get.

writing a book, doesn't know what the reaction is unless they see someone on the tube reading it and chuckling to themselves. But an author can have a book reading or a signing event or something, and podcasters can do this, it must be a lovely thing.

And also, I was doing a um uh an event recently, a kind of a QA about podcasts, where someone said, Isn't there a danger if everyone's got parasocial? So, meaning not really social relations, you know. I don't really know Rory Stewart, but he talks to me through you know uh every week. Is it isn't it part of this atomization of society?

Someone else in that audience that where I was speaking said, Yeah, but you do these live events, and actually that's a genuine social relationship, and people can talk between each other, they actually meet each other at events like that. So tell me, I mean, what's it like? I've never done one, I've never been to one.

What what what kind of event, where was it, you know, and what did it feel like?

And I think all of our hosts are complete naturals on stage and they're great at talking to the audience. Alistair in particular loves to do an audience poll, so we that's Alistair kind of looking at the audience, going, hands up, who you know, who wants to have a second Brexit referendum or whatever it is.

And it's fun, and then you look around the crowd and you see what everyone else is thinking.

So that's gonna be all of the podcasts, I think, and lots of different so different size venues, some as small as like 200 seats, some in the thousands mixing matching the hosts as well. I think Anthony's doing one with the rest of classified guys. So that'll be really interesting to see what that looks like as a spectacle, I think.

Yeah, I I I've seen that promoted.

We put a big effort into producing them and making them something worthwhile for people who've spent their money on it. They've come, they've travelled, they've given up an evening of their time to see their podcast put on stage in a kind of interesting way. We always make sure we're doing fun features and polls and questions and playing videos and interacting.

It's like, yeah, it's a it's a really fun evening and it's something we're still experimenting every time as well. We always try and bring a kind of different element to see what works and what doesn't.

It's just astonishing to me that a man should have had three massive careers like that.

We have ways of making you talk, and that's when we went much more into the podcast direction. Um, and then yeah, interestingly, Gary didn't do his own restless football podcast until a couple years in um with Alan and Micah, which has obviously just been a huge success, and I think I hope the guys love doing.

Yeah, he's had an amazing career, and I think this is a great um point he's at now. It'll be fun to see them all on stage in September.

Rest of Politics US, which is why it's quite a good I think that is something that would be really fun to do more of.

I wonder, maybe something that could be fun to do would be like getting having a look towards the future of the left and getting someone like AOC or Bernie Sanders or getting them together to do a kind of what is the future of the Democrats and what's the left, or maybe we do another episode with like some kind of more right-wing figures like I don't know, get

Steve Bannon on or something for an alternate episode. I think that could be quite a fun, fun thing to do.

I bet he'd be up for it as well. I think he's someone who puts himself out there whether you like him or not. And what do you listen to then, Fiona? What podcast do you listen to?

usually like one topic that they discuss, and it's sometimes a really newsy thing, or it's sometimes an investigative thing, which is why I always like it's always something a bit different that I really love listening to, and it's quite kind of a story simply explained.

They spent like a good half an hour on one story, so it goes in depth, and it's my nice morning listening when I'm not listening to the rest as politics as well.

But if you've listened to the um and this is what I wrote in the Pick of the Pods uh newsletter on this episode, um on this uh series, the way they tell it is beautifully done. I think why it's really uh it's really worth going back and listening to is it's a bit like you said, Fiona, when you were scripting your series about Elon Musk.

Well, we don't want to give it all away in episode one, there's a bit of a cliffhanger, there's a reveal so well, isn't it? And and that's done so well in Sweet Bobby, and and people should listen to that without knowing anything about it. Just go in absolutely fresh if you can.

And I thought there's no way they could do this on uh on a movie because you you can't hold it in suspense like that because if it's just purely audio, you can hide a lot of stuff. And a lot of the catfishing thing is these are messages, it's audio, you're not seeing the other person. Uh are they who they are pretending to be?

Spoiler alert, probably not in this case. It's called my catfish nightmare. It's a bit it's a bit on the nose, right? We know what it's about in the Netflix version, but the way they do it for Netflix um actually is brilliant as well, but it totally shows you the difference in medium between a narrative um documentary podcast and a documentary film.

They're both really, really good, but you what you can't do usually I think is cut and paste a podcast onto a movie. It's a very, very different medium. So yeah, I'm I'm glad you mentioned that one. Are you looking forward to other particular things happening uh uh in the year ahead? There must be news events going like it's you've got the midterm elections.

we're hoping to do a few live shows around that. We're still talking about exactly how we're gonna cover it. Um obviously before the election last year we went daily pretty much before. I don't know if we'll do the same thing again, but I think that's definitely a big moment we're looking towards this year.

every week. The newsletter. If you want one recommendation for a great podcast to listen to this week, search for Pick of the Pods on Substack and Pick of the Pods the Podcast. You've just heard it. We'll be doing lots more of these.

It won't be weekly, it's gonna be monthly or so, listening to people like Fiona who are making those brilliant podcasts that we all enjoy. So find me at Pick of the Pods on Substack. Listen or watch Pick of the Pods the podcast, wherever you get podcasts. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.