This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit zeteo.com On this week’s ‘We’re Not Kidding’, Mehdi is joined by award-winning actor, activist, and Zeteo contributor Cynthia Nixon for an impassioned conversation about rising fascism under Donald Trump and the lawlessness of ICE, which Cynthia calls a “terrorist agency.” Mehdi and Cynthia unpack Trump’s assault on US higher education, the ‘disappearings’ of international student activists, and the lack of opposition from the Democra...
Apr 09, 2025•42 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit zeteo.com It’s been almost two months since Mehdi and Bassem co-hosted ‘We’re Not Kidding’ together and A LOT has happened since then. As two naturalized US citizens, Mehdi and Bassem co-host again, starting off the conversation discussing the Trump administration’s arrests of international residents in the US who dare to criticize Israel. The two also discuss Israel breaking the ceasefire deal (Bassem compares Israel to ex you keep e...
Mar 28, 2025•41 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit zeteo.com They first bonded over their shared love of Nando’s — now Mehdi and UK comedian Nish Kumar reunite to talk about their shared contempt for the Trump administration. The two sat down in Washington DC to discuss UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s disastrous visits to the White House and the childish behavior of US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Mehdi and Nish also w...
Mar 17, 2025•45 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit zeteo.com Live from New York — it’s ‘We’re Not Kidding’! This past week, Mehdi traveled to the ‘On Air Fest’ in Brooklyn for a very special LIVE taping of ‘WNK’ with award-winning sports journalist and broadcaster Jemele Hill. You may remember Jemele from the first Trump administration, when political ‘nepo baby’ and then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called for ESPN to fire Jemele for calling Donald Trump a white...
Feb 27, 2025•48 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit zeteo.com Mehdi is once again joined by ‘We’re Not Kidding’ powerhouse Bassem Youssef for a raw and honest conversation about the state of the world. To steal a phrase from MAGA Republicans speaking about Donald Trump — “Daddy is home.” Mehdi and Bassem unpack the first few weeks of Trump’s second term, including the escalating violence in the West Bank occurring during the “fake” Gaza ceasefire. The two also debate whether the US emp...
Feb 07, 2025•35 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit zeteo.com ‘We’re Not Kidding’ is back! After a not-very-relaxing holiday break, Mehdi is joined by tech and online culture journalist ( and new Zeteo contributor !) Taylor Lorenz to discuss the new age of American oligarchy. Trump is back in office and his inauguration was a star-studded showcase of spineless tech billionaires. Mehdi and Taylor also unpack the dumbfounding blunder of Democrats’ TikTok ban, why private ownership of soc...
Jan 24, 2025•40 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit zeteo.com If you’ve followed Mehdi’s career, you know he’s interviewed heads of state, members of Congress, homicidal mercenaries, and even terrorists. But this may be Mehdi’s most intimidating guest yet — Huda Kattan — the superstar beauty influencer, activist, reality TV show host, and founder and CEO of international beauty brand 'Huda Beauty'. Funnily enough, Huda was also nervous to sit down with one of her personal role models. ...
Dec 20, 2024•40 min
Hasan Minhaj and Mehdi Hasan don’t just share a common brown name… actually, that may be all they have in common. One loves to debate, the other avoids it like the plague. One is obsessed ( sorry, Mehdi ) with Twitter, the other avoids it like the plague. And one knew months ago that Trump was going to win, and with record levels of Black and Brown support. They also talked about Joe Rogan and diagnosing what’s the matter with men these days, pseudo-intellectualism, Hasan’s latest Netflix specia...
Nov 25, 2024•50 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit zeteo.com Following the (depressing) results of the 2024 US presidential election, Mehdi is joined by comedians Amanda Seales and Francesca Fiorentini for a (funny) post-post-mortem on Democrats’ historic shellacking. They discuss the Harris campaign’s many mistakes, from cozying up to Republican neocons, to abandoning Bernie Sanders-style populism, to inexplicably hiding their only cool person, Tim Walz. “Let's stop taking these less...
Nov 14, 2024•39 min
It’s less than a week until the 2024 US presidential election and who better to discuss the government with than ‘Parks and Rec’ star and comedian Nick Offerman. The last time Mehdi spoke with Nick about current events was back in May 2021, right before Nick was to testify before Congress about the Covid-19 vaccine. More recently, Nick released a couple of comedic songs to encourage Americans to vote for Kamala Harris and defeat Donald Trump (hopefully) forever. Mehdi and Nick rant about the Don...
Nov 01, 2024•36 min
If you’ve been tuning into Zeteo’s flagship podcast, ‘We’re Not Kidding’ for the last six months, you’re going to find this one is a very special episode. Bassem Youssef returns to WNK for an intimate and heartfelt conversation – one unlike you’ve ever seen on this show. It’s also a version of Bassem none of us, including Mehdi, have ever seen before. “ I’m from a very, very, very deep point of desperation ,” he tells Mehdi backstage at the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre in downtown Toro...
Oct 24, 2024•36 min
In the latest episode of ‘We’re Not Kidding’, Mehdi is joined by comedians Matt Lieb and Sammy Obeid to discuss the one-year anniversary of the October 7 attack by Hamas and Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza that followed. Matt, a Jewish-American, and Sammy, a Palestinian-American, share their personal experiences over the past year, including how they’ve managed to maintain their sense of humor through a year of intense violence and tragedy. SUBSCRIBE TO ZETEO TO SUPPORT INDEPENDENT AND UNFILTE...
Oct 10, 2024•48 min
In the latest episode of ‘We’re Not Kidding’, Mehdi’s in London (again!) and this time chatting with the Nando’s-loving comedian and host of ‘Pod Save the UK’ Nish Kumar. We promise you will laugh – and maybe even cry of laughter. Nish and Mehdi lead with that - their shared love of Nando’s - and how, as Nish describes, it’s the only thing uniting a fragmented British society right now. The two also get deep into what that fragmented society looks like: the far-right, racist-fueled riots that to...
Sep 26, 2024•55 min
Mehdi is joined by Oscar-winning actor and producer Riz Ahmed for a high school reunion (yes, they went to school together back in London in the 1990s!) and catch up on life, work, and how the world has changed for brown folks since their childhood. They talk about Riz’s journey as an actor — from playing stereotypical roles to now creating his own work and championing the work of up-and-coming filmmakers. “Representation within a broken system doesn't necessarily get us anywhere.” Riz tells Meh...
Sep 12, 2024•46 min
‘We’re Not Kidding’ will be taking a break during the month of August, but will return in September with new episodes and a very special guest host - check out Mehdi’s announcement video for a sneak peak! ‘We’re Not Kidding’ launched just a few months ago, and has already had hundreds of thousands of people watch and listen, six amazing guest hosts, and a live show in DC in front of a studio audience with Zeteo’s paid subscribers. If you haven’t had the chance yet, consider becoming a paid subsc...
Aug 08, 2024•3 min
On this week’s special LIVE episode of ‘We’re Not Kidding,’ filmed in front of a studio audience in the Washington DC area, Mehdi is joined by activist, influencer and fashion designer Alana Hadid, who has been one of the most vocal advocates for the people of Gaza over the past nine months. Alana’s family is arguably the most famous Palestinian family on Earth, and the Hadids have received a ton of backlash - and a lot of threats - due to their outspoken criticisms of Israel’s genocidal campaig...
Jul 23, 2024•1 hr 4 min
On this week’s episode of ‘We’re Not Kidding,’ Mehdi travels to London to speak with U.S. comedian, writer, and actor Rob Delaney, who has lived in the UK for the last 10 years. In this powerful, wide-ranging, and at times emotional conversation, Rob speaks with Mehdi about how the tragic loss of his 2 year-old son in 2018 drove him to speak out against Israel’s brutal assault on Palestinian children. “What I do not have in common with the people in Gaza,” Rob tells Mehdi, “is once my baby died,...
Jul 11, 2024•44 min
On this week’s bonus episode of ‘We’re Not Kidding,’ Bassem Youssef joins Mehdi for an honest and critical conversation about Oct. 7, and the avalanche of Israeli propaganda and lies that followed Hamas’ deadly attack. Bassem and Mehdi discuss and debunk a number of lies and distortions about the events on the day, from Israel’s controversial “Hannibal directive,” which led to the Israeli military killing a number of its own citizens, to the the now infamous “40 beheaded babies” and “babies in o...
Jul 02, 2024•1 hr
On the new episode of ‘We’re Not Kidding,’ Mehdi is joined by stand-up comedian, actor, and social justice advocate Amanda Seales for an unfiltered conversation about Palestine, and the cultural backlash for speaking out against genocide and U.S. imperialism. Amanda, who has Palestinian family members, has been a vocal proponent for Palestinian liberation over the last eight months, at great professional cost. She and Mehdi discuss the culture of fear in Hollywood - and the pressure on her own c...
Jun 20, 2024•45 min
Stand-up comedian, best-selling author and acclaimed TV host W. Kamau Bell joins Mehdi as co-host of 'We're Not Kidding' this week. They discuss the student protestors, who join a long line of American anti-war demonstrators, as well as the police’s use of brute force against them. Mehdi and Kamau also examine the censorship of pro-Palestinian voices in the media and Hollywood, why Batman is politically problematic, and the cynical “defanging” of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. since his death. “Peop...
Jun 06, 2024•33 min
Bassem Youssef is back with Mehdi to co-host the third episode of ‘We’re Not Kidding.’ They talk about the religious extremists, from the illegal settlements in the West Bank to the hallways of the U.S. Congress, who are trying to bring about the end of times - as well as a bunch of red cows that wield a lot of spiritual power. And they disagree on a few things too. SUBSCRIBE TO ZETEO TO SUPPORT INDEPENDENT AND UNFILTERED JOURNALISM: https://zeteo.com/subscribe WATCH, LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE TO ‘WE...
May 23, 2024•46 min
Palestinian-Lebanese-American comedian, Sammy Obeid, who rose to fame because of his viral jokes on Palestine and his Netflix show 100 Humans , joins Mehdi to guest host the second episode of ‘We’re Not Kidding.’ They dive into the student protests, DNA tests, pushing back against misinformation with comedy, the power of slogans, and doing 1001 nights of stand-up. SUBSCRIBE TO ZETEO TO SUPPORT INDEPENDENT AND UNFILTERED JOURNALISM: https://zeteo.com/subscribe WATCH, LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE TO ‘WE’R...
May 09, 2024•36 min
In the very first episode of the new Zeteo podcast, ' We're Not Kidding ,' Mehdi and guest co-host Bassem Youssef sit down and talk about what their brown parents make of their career choices, becoming famous for the right reasons, pushing back against the media’s coverage of Gaza, and Mehdi’s new hoodie. SUBSCRIBE TO ZETEO TO SUPPORT INDEPENDENT AND UNFILTERED JOURNALISM: https://zeteo.com/subscribe WATCH, LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE TO ‘WE’RE NOT KIDDING’ ON SUBSTACK: https://zeteo.com/s/were-not-kid...
Apr 25, 2024•46 min
Introducing Zeteo's flagship podcast, 'We're Not Kidding,' a show where funny people talk about serious things, hosted by Zeteo founder and CEO Mehdi Hasan, and regularly featuring internationally acclaimed comedian Bassem Youssef. Each episode, Mehdi is joined by a renowned guest for a sometimes lighthearted, sometimes vulnerable conversation about topics they can't discuss anywhere else. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episo...
Apr 23, 2024•50 sec
