Steve Inskeep on NPR cuts, Iran, and radio’s place in the podcast era

Summary

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Mixed Signals from Semafor Media

Episode: Steve Inskeep on NPR cuts, Iran, and radio’s place in the podcast era

Hosts: Max Tani & Ben Smith
Guest: Steve Inskeep (Host, NPR Morning Edition & Up First)
Date: June 27, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features a wide-ranging conversation with Steve Inskeep, the longtime host of NPR’s Morning Edition and contributor to the Up First podcast. The hosts, Max Tani and Ben Smith, explore Inskeep’s perspectives on the evolving landscape of radio and podcasting, NPR’s role and challenges amid political funding debates, and Inskeep’s deep experience reporting internationally—especially from Iran. The discussion touches on the value of “old-school” journalism in a fragmented, opinion-heavy media world, and the challenge of serving a broad American audience in increasingly polarized times.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Steve Inskeep’s Routine and Approach to Journalism

• Early Mornings & Preparation:
  • Inskeep describes his schedule:

    “I get up at 3 o'clock in the morning, Eastern time. The workday starts about 4 eastern time and the show has to start at 5am. Cannot be one second late…Everything I've ever done becomes preparation for everything I'm going to do.” — Steve Inskeep [05:02]

  • He emphasizes continuous curiosity and always being prepared by staying informed on domestic and international affairs.

2. The Value and Purpose of Radio in the Podcast Era

• Radio’s Reach vs. Podcasting’s Influence:
  • Inskeep distinguishes radio as a mass medium—still with millions of listeners (“If I told you that I had a podcast with 10 million listeners, I might impress you... and that's what the radio show is” [06:33])—versus podcasts like Up First and The Daily, which attract more elite and younger audiences.
  • He notes Up First’s intentional format (“three stories in about 10 or 12 minutes”) optimized for efficiency and breadth, calling it “the front page in audio form” [07:26].
• Format Adaptation:
  • Inskeep admits NPR was “way too late” in differentiating formats between radio, podcast, and long-form web/video interviews but is now actively repurposing interviews for multiple platforms [09:30].

3. NPR’s Role and the Public Funding Debate

• Local vs. National Journalism:
  • Inskeep clarifies that most federal funds go to local stations, supporting local journalism and a distributed reporting network:

    “Because of that system … I get to be part of an organization … with several thousand reporters across the United States … not too much media, I think. I hope you would agree … There's not enough local coverage. There's a lot less than there was.” — Steve Inskeep [13:15]

  • He highlights collaborative newsrooms (like The Texas Newsroom) as crucial in an era where local newspaper staff have been gutted [14:28].
• Government Funding:
  • While Inskeep avoids direct political commentary on NPR’s funding, he underscores NPR’s journalistic value and necessity, particularly in providing local news.

4. Reporting from Abroad & The Value of the Outsider Perspective

• Inskeep’s International Approach:

  • Inskeep, an “American voice with an international eye,” defends the need for Americans (even non-experts) to report from abroad and serve as translators for the U.S. audience:

    “If you're humble about the fact that you don't know the country that well … you can become a kind of translator yourself.” [16:51]

  • He notes unique challenges for correspondents, especially in Iran, where being non-Iranian can sometimes facilitate access—though he’s keenly aware of the risks and ethical obligations [18:35].

• Notable Anecdote:

  • Inskeep recounts interviewing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009 and referencing Elie Wiesel’s Night during a challenging exchange about Holocaust denial [20:09].
  • He details how bringing up an imprisoned Iranian contact’s case led to their release—a rare example of journalism making a direct impact [23:01].

5. Critiquing American Understanding of the World and the Media’s Role

• Surface-level Understanding:
  • Inskeep laments the inadequate, often simplistic analysis of Iran and international issues in U.S. media:

    “If you want to understand who are the people there, how do they live? … it might be better to have a more nuanced understanding … I would argue is another reason for me to be going overseas.” [27:25]

• Focus on the Basics:
  • Despite information overload, Inskeep argues for always centering the basics and context for listeners, given the constant flood of breaking news:

    “…it's good for me to remind them or to remind myself of the basics and just constantly focus on the basics. The basics, the basics, the basics.” [29:20]

6. Political Polarization, Bias, and Media Fragmentation

• NPR’s Audience & Partisanship:
  • While NPR’s audience has shifted more Democratic in recent years, Inskeep insists on serving listeners across the spectrum, welcomes all voices on air (even those who oppose NPR’s funding), and avoids direct accusations of hypocrisy [31:39].
  • He tells a story illustrating congressional Republicans privately consuming and appreciating NPR content, regardless of their public stances [31:39].
• Media Fragmentation & Trust:
  • Inskeep sees a return to “pre-broadcast era” fragmentation:

    “…thousands of other media organizations whose business model is to tell their audience not to trust the media and only to trust them.” [35:11]

  • He argues for radical transparency as the antidote to distrust:

    “It's okay not to trust the media, but my job…is to be trustworthy or maybe even make it so you don’t have to trust me—to be so transparent about what I learned and how I learned it and so fair that you understand what I'm trying to tell you and why.” [37:21]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Journalism as Ongoing Preparation:

  “Everything I've ever done becomes preparation for everything I'm going to do.” — Steve Inskeep [05:02]

• On Format Diversification:

  “We have lately started what I’m calling…an all-platform interview. You mentioned Dave Portnoy. We’ve done a variety of people. AOC…Steve Bannon…It becomes a podcast episode…an Up First…on the radio…And the radio, I think…is a little more like a magazine profile…” — Steve Inskeep [09:30]

• On Talking to Populist Leaders:

  “There are people who would ask, why would you dare talk to this terrible man? You talk to him because you can get information and occasionally something more.” — Steve Inskeep [22:45]

• On Value of Foreign Reporting:

  “If you’re humble about the fact that you don’t know the country that well…you can become a kind of translator yourself.” — Steve Inskeep [16:51]

• On Navigating Skepticism:

  “It’s okay that people don’t trust the media…my job as a member of a media organization is to be trustworthy or maybe even make it so that you don’t have to trust me…” — Steve Inskeep [37:21]

• Hosts on Inskeep’s Style:

  “He is like old school to me in like the most charming way…genuinely open minded, interested…” — Max Tani [39:24] “Do you think he’s one of the last of that kind of breed, like…the totally straight down the middle, unflappable, straight out of Capital J journalism reporters?” — Ben Smith [41:51]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [05:02] — Inskeep’s morning routine and preparation
• [06:33] — Comparative value of radio and podcasts
• [07:26] — The design and audience for Up First
• [09:30] — Adapting content for multiple platforms
• [13:15] — Explaining NPR’s public funding, local stations, and network model
• [16:51] — Value and ethics of American correspondents reporting abroad
• [20:09] — Ahmadinejad interview and the role of engagement
• [27:25] — Gaps in U.S. understanding of Iran/foreign affairs
• [29:20] — The challenge of maintaining basic understanding amid information overload
• [31:39] — Political polarization, NPR’s audience, and funding debates
• [35:11] — The fragmented media landscape and media trust

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Final Reflections & Tone

The episode closes with Tani and Smith reflecting admiringly on Inskeep’s blend of curiosity, humility, and professionalism. They note his dedication to understanding both the newsmakers and ordinary people he interviews, and see him as emblematic of an “old school” journalism ethos that remains valuable—even as new forms and audiences continue to emerge.

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Summary by Mixed Signals from Semafor Media
For more insights about the intersection of media, journalism, and tech, tune in every Friday.

Transcript

[A]

So one of the things that I've enjoyed in making this show about media has been trying to figure out how you create an advertising product that's about advertising. We've been interviewing Josh Spanier, Google's VP of marketing and a pretty major player in his own right in the ad business. We've gotten, I would say, shockingly good feedback from you all. People don't seem to be skipping them, which is, I am told, something that often happens with advertising and podcasts. We've gotten a little feedback that I'm not asking Josh hard enough questions. So if anybody has any ideas for sort of, you know, big picture questions, particularly about the marketing industry, please send them our way. You can email them to me at ben.smithmafor.com.

[B]

Welcome to mixed Signals from Semaphore Media. I'm Max Tawny, media editor here at Semaphore and with me, as always, all the way across the world is our editor in chief, Ben Smith, live from London. Hi, Ben.

[A]

Hi, Max. Thanks for having me on.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. It's late for you here, but it's a normal time for us.

[A]

What show is this? I'm losing track.

[B]

It's Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media, one of my favorites. Yeah, mine as well. But this week on the show, in addition to me and Ben, we are joined by Steve Inskeep. He is the host of NPR's Morning Edition and also a contributor to the Up First Podcast. And he's been explaining the world to Americans every morning since 2005.

[A]

Yeah, and to that point, he's actually also been to Iran six times along the way. A very kind of curious guy.

[B]

Well, we'll talk to him about what he makes of Iran and the media's coverage of it. In this moment, having firsthand knowledge himself, we'll also ask him about being a prominent radio host in increasingly podcast heavy World. And of course, the unavoidable topic, NPR's public funding battle with the Trump administration and congressional Republicans. All that and a lot more with Steve right after the break.

[C]

Foreign.

[A]

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[B]

So, Ben, Steve Inskeep, he is the host of Morning Edition. We were emailing with him a few months ago and we decided be a perfect guest for the show to talk a little bit about this interesting moment in podcasting and radio's role in this kind of new podcasty environment.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, Steve Inskeep is kind of the ultimate NPR voice. He's been with NPR since the 90s, you know, emerged I think in mid-2000s as a really central and we say voice, literally voice of the program, you know, conducted huge interviews with George W. Bush, with Barack Obama, with Donald Trump, you know, but also with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And one of the things sort of interesting and unusual about Steve is he's like, he's very American and he will at some point remind us that he is from Indiana and his sort of approach to the world is very deeply American. But also he has a level of curiosity about international affairs that I think is not actually all that common in the domestic media. Wrote a book about Karachi, his first book in 2011, among others, won an award for reporting on the oil conflict in Nigeria, and has always balanced this kind of like basically domestic focus of NPR News with a kind of unusual interest in international affairs that at a moment like now when this are like kind of very intensely inward looking country, suddenly like whips around and is trying to figure out what's happen in Iran, I find very valuable and I think is a real kind of like credit to NPR totally.

[B]

And I imagine he has a really interesting perspective on the conflict. And he also probably has a pretty interesting view that I'm curious to ask him about in terms of the funding battle that NPR is in the middle of with congressional Republicans. I mean, he is at the center. And the organization that he's worked for for 30 years is at the center of another really interesting story, arguably and sadly in our world of media reporting, a bigger story.

[A]

Yeah. Though of course, the real question that this episode will answer, like our extremely popular episode with Matt Bellany, is what does Steve Inskeep look like? Let's bring him on to find out. Absolutely. Steve, thank you so much for joining us.

[C]

Oh, I'm glad to be here.

[A]

You have been a part of so many Americans of my morning routine for many years. And I guess I wondered just to begin with, if you could tell people like, what is yours? How do you become Steve Inskeep in like the hours before 5am oh my.

[C]

Gosh, this is the most common question that I get when I'm out in public. What time do you get up in the morning? It's a little embarrassing. Like if I was a Pulitzer Prize winning like war correspondent, they would ask me different questions, but they ask what time you get up in the morning. I get up when I'm doing the show, which is no longer every single day there's a bit of a rotation. I get up at 3 o' clock in the morning, Eastern time. The workday starts about 4 eastern time and the show has to start at 5am Cannot be one second late. So that's the routine. It's kind of slam bang. You get in, there's a lot to catch up on, there is a lot of production. But if you were to ask when do I read, end when do I prepare? I'm just kind of obsessed all the time and paying attention all the time and everything I've ever done becomes preparation for everything I'm going to do. You know, I do travel overseas. I'm not living overseas, but I will go to Iran, go to Israel, go to the west bank, go to Gaza, go to China, go wherever I can get away with going. And then hopefully when it is a breaking story, I've got a little bit of it in my head and have some idea of where to go with that story. So everything in my life is preparation for what might happen.

[B]

Obviously, you've been hosting on NPR on Morning Edition for a very long time. I'm really curious how you see the value of radio these days at a time when clearly, you know, a lot of people are increasingly listening to podcasts. Obviously you're also involved in up first. But what do you think the value is of radio at a time when podcasting is clearly pretty ascendant?

[C]

Well, it's live and it's listened to by hundreds of millions of people. They're not necessarily the most elite or influential people that you want to get to anymore. I assume that my more elite or go getter influential or opinion leader audience is more likely to hear me on up first. But there's a slice that will still be listening to the radio in the morning, listening to the radio in the afternoon. Anybody with a long commute is still using a radio and the listenership is huge. Like if I told you that I had a podcast with 10 million listeners, I might impress you. I would hope that I would impress you. And that's what the radio show is. And then there is also a podcast that has several million listeners and I'll brag for a moment and say I think it's typically one of the top five Podcasts in the country.

[B]

It is. That's true.

[C]

Thank you. Thank you for fact checking me on that.

[A]

Do you feel competitive with the daily?

[C]

Do I feel competitive with the daily? We started at about the same time, and so I was irritated that they started first. We, or npr has chosen a different business model in that they do one gigantic story at such length that it can become its own like half hour radio program, I believe. And we do three stories in about 10 or 12 minutes. And I think that difference has served us well. Maybe it served them well. A lot of people, including the Times, have had kind of imitations of that format. But I discover a lot of people that really like that, that feel very quickly informed. It was originally started to get a younger audience, which it has gained. The demographics are said to be like the median age is about 36, which is pretty close to the median age of America and the race and ethnicity and everything is very close to America as a whole. Not perfect, but close. So that younger audience is there. But the other thing that that podcast does is it gets an elite audience. It gets an important audience. The way described it to people inside NPR is, I think of that as our front page. Up first is the front page. It's the front page of the newspaper, the front page of your news app, whatever it is, that's what it is in audio form. I think that's the way a lot of people use it. They'll listen to up first and the Daily might be their second listen when they're spending a little more time. And the radio also still has, I think, tremendous benefit and we can get a little deeper into a lot of stories there. Our longer or more highly produced stories will typically be on Morning Edition and, and typically they'll, they'll be a version. If it's a big story, there'll be a version of it for both.

[B]

Clearly you've really thought a lot about this, the distinctions between radio as a format, podcasting as a format. You know, I was watching your Dave Portnoy interview yesterday, which is, you have a version of that that is for Morning Edition, but then you have one that's stretched out for the web that, you know, looks like a, like a YouTube kind of lengthy interview. When did you start thinking about the distinctions between those different formats? Did you always kind of see them differently or has this been something that's developed?

[C]

When did you start thinking about them? Way too late, I think. Or our organization has. I'm just being honest with you. I think we've sometimes struggled to get over our own success. NPR does a very distinctive thing that very few people do and has done it really well and has a really loyal audience. And the audience has sometimes gone way up and sometimes gone way down. But it's a big audience. But there are a lot of people who are not in that space, have never been in that space or never going to be in that space. And how do you reach them and how do you reach them? With different kinds of material. And I think almost obsessively about that. I want to reach all of America. I want to reach all kinds of people. I want to explain things, I want to get stuff across. And for some people, a live radio segment is going to be the way to do that. And it is heard by officialdom, it's heard by university professors, it's heard by farmers out in Iowa or whatever. It's heard by a lot. It's heard by my mom. A lot of different kind of people. But for other people, the podcast is that. And we have lately started what I'm calling we don't have a good brand name for it yet, a kind of all platform interview. You mentioned Dave Portnoy. We've done a variety of people. AOC did one of these. Steve Bannon did one of these. It's 30 or 40 minutes. It's face to face. It's really well produced video. It becomes a podcast episode. That is, it's very much like the video. It'll be 30 or 40 minutes or maybe a little bit shorter. But it'll also be an up first in very short form. And it'll be on the radio and kind of medium length. And the radio, I think will be, I would like to think if I do it well, you'll decide is a little more like a magazine profile in that we're taking chunks of that interview and other information and archival tape and weaving it together so that I'm a little bit more of a storyteller. But if you want to hear the whole thing, as Dave Portnoy said it, you can go watch the YouTube video.

[B]

Last year I was talking to a Republican congressperson who actually said, you know, NPR is good, I understand and like the content. But now we live at a time an increasing number of people have access to a lot of different options. What do you think is the value of a national radio broadcaster in 2025, I guess to maybe address this congressman's question, like, do we need one?

[C]

Well, let's talk through that. I mean, I'm not going to comment specifically on the funding because NPR wants to do that, and the local stations have made their case, and I'm covering it as a journalist. But I'll talk about the value of NPR as I see it and where it fits in that ever more crowded media landscape. There are more media outlets than ever. That is true. There are more opinions available than ever. That is true. There are not enough journalists and reporters covering stories and calling sources as opposed to getting their take on what the journalists have reported or what they've seen on the Internet. And I don't mean to dismiss the takes and opinions and social media because I'm on social media and I have takes and I read a lot of takes and I enjoy a lot of opinions. So I'm not disparaging that at all.

[A]

You don't share your takes, Steve.

[C]

I carefully calibrate my takes. I had a colleague years ago who said, there's a difference between your opinion and your judgment. You shouldn't be giving your opinion, but you can give your judgment, and the judgment has to be earned. You know, the more that I have covered China, the more that I could give you some judgments about China, but I'm also conscious I don't know anywhere near everything or most things about China. So you try to be humble about what you say. Anyway, what the heck was I saying? Oh, I was talking about the need for NPR in that crowded media landscape. NPR is part of an ecosystem, a system of local public radio stations. By and large, NPR is not getting federal money. Once in a while there's a grant. What gets the federal money in large amounts or reasonable amounts is local public radio stations. And they use that to run operations that include local reporting. So because of that system, sometimes they contribute to the network. I get to be part of an organization not with a few hundred reporters, which is what NPR has at the very most, but an organization with several thousand reporters across the United States and to an extent around the world who are out covering governors and covering floods and covering climate change and covering disputes over immigration and covering immigration raids and covering the border and covering every you could imagine. And that is a space in which there's not too much media, I think. I hope you would agree. I don't know, maybe you disagree. There's not enough. There's not enough local coverage. There's a lot less than there was. And in fact, a lot of newspapers, as you probably know, it's a local newspaper. It's in the place, but the editor who actually runs that paper is in Nashville or some other city or Atlanta editing several papers.

[A]

The Editor of the New York Daily News for a time was in Allentown.

[B]

Oh, geez.

[C]

Oh, wow. Allentown. Okay. I think you think of that as suburban New York. Wow. Okay, that's bad. I mean, respect to anybody in that position who's listening. I'm sure they do their best to do their job, but it's better to be there and it's better for the community to have somebody there to hold accountable for what they're covering while the local station is there. And in a number of cases, there are these regional newsrooms set up. There's a thing called the Texas newsroom, and they pool resources from 10 public radio stations and some resources from NPR. They have an investigative reporter on staff. They have people covering the state capitol, where the press corps has been gutted in recent years. And goodness knows, there's a lot of news. They're doing a lot of interesting stuff, and that is public media. It's in Appalachia, it's in eastern Kentucky where I used to go to school and where I first worked in public radio. It is all across the country. It is serving all kinds of people and it's doing a necessary job. I'll just add quickly NPR. The network also has international bureaus, 14 of them by the last count that I got around the world. And we're covering international stories. And again, it's true there's a lot of international news out there, but there are not nearly as many American news organizations sending people outside the United States to cover stuff as used to be the case.

[A]

One of the, I think, unusual things about you is you're an American voice who speaks to Americans, but have always had a very international eye. You wrote your first book about Karachi, Pakistan. And I'm curious, you know, you mentioned the foreign bureaus and I thought of you and called you up because we're obviously in a rare outward looking moment for the United States in this conflict with Iran. You know, I'm curious, you know, how you see the value of, as you say, like you are a smart, well informed, but ultimately non expert, you know, wandering into these complicated places. And I think one thing people sometimes say is like, you know what, that's sort of the old colonial model. Like you send some American out who doesn't know that much to tell them about what's happening in Iran or in Gaza. But in fact, there's more information out of any of these places now than there was when we were at the beginning of our careers. Like, you can just Google Translate the locals. You know, why do you do it like, why do you fly out of Washington and take the red eye to wherever you're going?

[C]

Well, first, I think there's value in the outsider perspective of being not quite an expert. We're in an age of disparaging experts. And if you're humble about the fact that you don't know the country that well and you're trying to relate it to an American audience, you can become a kind of translator yourself. You are trying to figure out the culture that's in front of you or the news story that's in front of you and explain to Americans what they need to know. And you talked about people being. Being on the ground. You absolutely should rely on people on the ground. Your news organization, if it is possible, if the host country allows it, should have a bureau there and should have local people who are hired there. At the same time, there are stories that are better told by someone who's got a more American point of view. American troops are on the ground, which was true when I was covering the war in Iraq, or the United States is involved in some way, which is absolutely true when I go to Israel or years ago when I was in Gaza. This is an American story as well as an Israeli story or a Palestinian story or anything else interestingly enough to me. Anyway, there are countries that I have been able to get into that we've had trouble getting a correspondent into. And you can decide what the country's motivation is for letting me in. Oh, he doesn't really know what he's doing, so we'll let him in.

[A]

Yeah. Do you worry about that?

[C]

Of course I worry about that. And I give a lot of thought to what I report and run it by a lot of people and try to check my sources and try to be humble about what I know you've.

[A]

Been to Iran six times. That is a place that it's actually pretty tough to get correspondence into. Do you think they were like, ah, this guy doesn't speak Persian. We're gonna, like, we're gonna pull the wool over his eyes?

[C]

I don't know that is precisely true. But something else is true with Iran, which I think you might find interesting. If you are Iranian American, it is more hazardous for you to go to Iran than it is for me, a guy from Indiana with no Iranian descent. Iran will view Iranian Americans as their own citizens. And it doesn' mean that anything is going to happen to them, but the odds are considered greater. It's thought, at least in the past, it has been thought that if I go to Iran and get in trouble. The worst thing that would happen to me is I'd be thrown out of the country. Somebody who's Iranian American could end up in a veen prison. And so that's a situation where it helps for me to step up and to have a discussion. That's also a situation where, because I'm the anchor of a program, I'm occasionally interviewing an Iranian president or an Iranian foreign minister. And I can say to them, I've been to your country, I've looked around, I've talked with ordinary people in the Tehran bazaar. I've been to Mashhad, and I can bring that experience to that conversation. It makes for better interviews, I believe, when I get back in the studio.

[A]

One very famous one, in fact, I think it was in 2009, you interviewed President Ahmadinejad at another, you know, one of the many moments of kind of complicated u. S. Iran relations. And he really questioned whether, repeatedly, I think in the interview, whether the holocaust had happened. I guess, I wonder. Like that's a really. I mean, that is a very unusual experience for any journalist, for an American journalist. Can you just kind of talk us through that moment a little? What's going on in your head?

[C]

Yeah, I actually ended up talking with Ahmadinejad twice. After the first very difficult conversation, he talked to me again. An interview with someone like that is difficult to prepare with. I mean, he. He said what he wanted to say. He was a populist in his own way. He dismayed a lot of the cultural elite of his own country. He was a guy who said, I mean, in a way that you could almost see the red blue divide in America. I'm for the countryside. I'm from the average guy. I want to beat down on the elites of Tehran. And the elites of Tehran couldn't stand him. And then there were all the problems of his anti Semitism and the government that he represented, where he was not the top guy, but was an important guy. And I did want to ask him about the holocaust because he. He did a lot of just asking questions, things about the holocaust and even considerably worse than that. And he's like, why can't we just study this thing? What's the matter with studying it? To find out everything that, I mean, you guys and I know, as already known, and I recall that I. And we'd have to go back to the transcript to check, but I believe I recommended a book to him, and it was Elie Wiesel's night, which was very, very short. And I thought that was actually A sincere thing to recommend because, like, it's one guy's story, and you really can't read that, whatever it is, 100 pages, and say, oh, he made this up. It's like. It's almost like its own proof of the Holocaust. And I don't know that he ever did. But we continued talking, and I think something dramatic came out of that engagement. There are people who would ask, why would you dare talk to this terrible man? You talk to him because you can get information and occasionally something more. The first time I talked with him was after Iran's disputed election in 2009. And I suppose this also speaks to the question of why I go to the country. I'd been to Iran before this disputed election. I'd met a bunch of interesting people. I'd done a number of stories. A lot of it was just ordinary people on the street, like, what is it like to be there? What are people living like? And then they have this disputed election. They jail thousands of people. And then the president comes to New York for the United nations meeting, and he agreed to an interview with me. And in the course of the interview, I asked him about a man I had met when I'd been in Iran. There was this guy, and I said, his name is Bijan Khojepur. He's an analyst. He's one of these seemingly friendly to the west kind of people. But I said to Ahmadinejad, this man struck me as a patriot. He believed in your country and wanted to develop your country. And UJJ failed him. He's in jail right now. Why? And Ahmadinejad said, I don't know anything about this case. I'll look into it. And he did look into it. And three days later, Bijan Khajapur was released from prison.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

On bail. And ultimately was able to get out of Iran and is living free in Europe today. It doesn't always happen like that, obviously, but that engagement is worthwhile.

[A]

That's. Yeah, that's sort of the power of this outside eye. But I want to go back to what you said, actually, about populism, because it strikes me that one of the things that populists do is they say things that will scandalize the media and get them scolded in order to sort of prove. And this is true of Trump, it's true of European populace to sort of prove that they're outsiders. That, like, see, the elites hate me, too. And do you think when Ahmadinejadaj told you the Holocaust was the opinion of a few, was that what he did he know what he was doing? He was. He knew that it would sort of stir outrage and that he'd get yelled at in the west and that his, his base would love that.

[C]

Oh, wow. I bet he knew that his base would love that. Or some of his base. I don't want to pretend that everybody's anti Semitic in Iran when there are Jews in Iran. But that a lot of his base would love that. Sure. And that he liked stirring up the media. But I kind of feel like he was also saying what he thought. Yeah. Yeah. In this case. Yeah.

[A]

We need to take a quick break, but we will be right back with Steve Inskeep this week on our branded segment from Think with Google. I spoke with Google's VP of marketing, Josh Spanier about his takeaways from this year's Cannes Lion. Josh, we last saw each other last week at Google beach in Cannes. Now that you've had a week to think about it, what did we learn this year? Year.

[D]

So can was a really exciting week. I've got some good, bad and inspiring to tell you about, Ben. All right, first, the good. For a lot of brands and marketers, their companies are investing in AI to make their products and services better. They don't have extra resource to fund marketers specific needs and issues. So what are marketers doing? They're turning to their largest agency partners to help them actually tackle AI together. That it's actually making agencies, large agencies, more relevant. A new lease of life.

[A]

Okay, what was the bad part?

[D]

So something that wasn't so great. I had a lot of off the record conversations with marketers and one of the things that seems to be bubbling at the moment is the urgency around this AI moment is creating some weird incentives where marketing teams are more focused on showing they're using AI than actually what AI is doing for them. They need to tell their partners, their chief financial officers perhaps. Hey, we're using AI. We're leaning to AI. We're really focused on AI. Look how much AI we're using. As if AI is the key performance indicator. And of course it's not. AI is just a tool to drive business outcomes. A new tool, but just a tool. I think this is probably pretty short lived and over the next couple of years we'll revert back to driving actual business outcomes. But it was a slightly weird dynamic going on right now in the industry. At least I picked up on the beach this year.

[A]

Yeah, I got to share that too. And the inspiring part, one thing that.

[D]

Really inspired me personally was listening to a famous Hollywood director talk about his creative process and how AI is helping him. He used this line when the cost of production drops to zero, appetite for creative exploration can exponentially increase. When there's no risk in exploring with AI because it doesn't cost you anything other than use of the tool, you actually can really let your imagination run riot and make new and different things before you actually go and shoot the real world content. I think it's a really inspiring message for us to think about as marketers. The appetite for risk is so much greater, which means we can do more fun, engaging and experimental things.

[A]

Where can our list find out more about this?

[D]

You can head over to thinkwithgoogle.com for the latest can keynotes, the latest insights and the latest learnings from the beach and from the wider marketing industry at large.

[A]

Thanks, Josh.

[D]

Thanks, Ben.

[B]

You know, you're obviously paying a lot of attention to what's going on right now, and you have the unique perspective of having spent a lot of time in Iran. What's the sense that you get of the quality of the coverage here? And do you think that there's anything that the Western media and media in the United States doesn't fully understand or maybe Mrs.

[C]

I just want to say an awful lot is not very well understood by our policymakers or by people across the country. And that's understandable because it's a big, incredibly complex world and Iran is one of the more isolated corners of it and is very complicated and hard to understand. But, but you will hear people giving analysis of Iran and they'll talk about how it's ruled by the mullahs. I don't even know that that's exactly the correct term for the theocratic government of Iran. And they maybe don't know the name of a single person who is doing anything in Iran. We just know that they're bad. And on a certain level of analysis, maybe that's all you really need to know. I mean, Iran has pursued nuclear weapons. They've supported Hamas, they've supported Hezbollah, they did support the old SY terrorist attacks even within the borders of the United States, an attempted assassination on Trump. On and on and on. You can just say, well, they're bad. But if you want to understand who are the people there, how do they live? What is their government? What are the various levers of power? What are the possibilities of change? What, if anything, can we do that would change things for the better as opposed to the worse? It might be better to have a a more nuanced Understanding of who's there and what they're doing. And I think that kind of basic information is continuously lacking for all of us, which I would argue is another reason for me to be going overseas. I'm an average guy from Indiana who's always learning new stuff and I want to find that stuff out and share it with my brothers or my mom or with anybody else who is in the same situation I am.

[A]

You've been doing this a while. Do you think that America is less informed about the world than they were at the beginning of your career? Less interested, more inward looking?

[C]

Wow. I'm not sure that that is true. I think people are really curious. I think we're all overwhelmed and confused, but I think people are really curious and engaged. But there is so much that's thrown at us all the time that it's really, really hard. And I try to respect my audience in a particular way. I think the audience is extremely smart and extremely well informed. They're just not informed about every single thing at 5:25 in the morning. And so it's good for me to remind them or to remind myself of the basics and just constantly focus on the basics. The basics, the basics, the basics. And then fold in the latest news. Often the latest news is incomprehensible without the basics. And often I wonder if you would agree, maybe most urgent breaking news isn't anything you need to know at all. And so it's good to have a lot of context along with the breaking news.

[B]

Now, I felt this way as we've been paying attention to the ceasefire with Iran, in the sense that every update has actually made me more confused because it seems like very few people know what's going on, except for Donald Trump himself, which is something that Ben smartly said today during one of our meetings.

[C]

And he himself said he didn't know what he was going to do at one point.

[B]

Yes, exactly.

[A]

Yeah, no, it's. Right. It's this kind of illegible world where like I remember somebody asked me, like I saw that like Carolyn Levitt put the guy from the Free Press, Eli Lake, in the front row and like, what is that signal? And it's like it can't signal anything. Cuz she doesn't know what Trump's gonna do. Cuz Trump doesn't know what Trump's gonna do. So the whole situation is kind of fundamentally illegible. Right. And I think it's a challenge for providing analysis. Right?

[C]

Yeah, yeah. And it's a challenge if you wanna be an informed citizen because that bit of information about Eli Lake is competing against some feature about business in China that might affect what you think about tariffs or whatever else. It's all just everything is competing against everything else all the time.

[B]

I'm really curious. You know, you interview a lot of Republicans, a lot of conservatives on your show. You mentioned that you interviewed Steve Bannon recently. I'm really curious if any of the folks that you have interviewed, particularly on the right, and who have been maybe satisfied and thought that your coverage has been fair, if any of those people are the people who are out there today calling for the defunding of, of npr.

[C]

Oh, I don't know that I want to accuse anyone specifically of hypocrisy on this issue. I have always been aware that there are Republicans who listen as well as Democrats. In recent years, I think the Democrats have been more numerous. There's a lot of reasons for that we could get into. But there are Republicans who listen, including Republican lawmakers, influential people, and I appreciate that. I do recall this was years ago. Now. There was an earlier controversy involving NPR and its dismissal of Juan Williams, who was also a Fox News contributor. We could do an entire other podcast episode about that, but we'd have to burn it afterward. But in any case, it was a big controversy. And I went in to see a member of Congress for a face to face interview. And we sat down and the first thing he wanted to tell me is he says, Juan Williams is a personal friend of mine and I'm outraged. It is just awful what you've done. And then we began the conversation and we're doing the interview. And in the middle of the interview, he digressed from the actual topic of the interview because he was reminded of a story he'd heard on Morning Edition that morning and wanted to talk all about it. And this is not entirely uncommon. There are people in the House of Representatives who voted against federal funding for their local public radio stations. Remember, this is local funding who were on NPR last week. And that's fine, by the way. You're not required to vote some way to be on npr. We want to hear from everybody. We want to hear from you, even if you hate public broadcasting. And I would encourage everybody to engage in that way. I don't want to accuse anybody now of particular hypocrisy, but just be aware that lots of different kinds of people pay attention to npr.

[A]

Yeah, well, that was another era. Now Juan Williams is attacked on Fox for being too left wing.

[B]

Well, he's gone from Fox now for that reason.

[A]

Right Driven out of Fox for being too left wing.

[C]

Oh, he's driven out of Fox. Okay.

[B]

Yeah. Okay.

[C]

Well, for a while he was kind of the House liberal. He was open about that, but I guess too liberal.

[A]

I wonder if your Republican friends also protested to Fox over that, stood up for him.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[C]

Well, that's an interesting point. And I will just mention another thing. One of the popular criticisms of NPR in recent years is you didn't cover the Hunter Biden laptop story. My understanding is that Fox didn't initially cover the Hunter Biden laptop story. I think a lot of media didn't because it didn't know you could criticize whether NPR should have covered it more later. We can have a whole discussion about individual stories, but I don't know, we can focus on the coverage or a particular story rather than the label you want to put on somebody.

[A]

I agree with you. You can argue forever about is NPR. You know, what exactly are NPR's politics? What are the New York Times politics? Did they swing too far to pander to their listeners in this way or that? But I think there's also sort of a broader splintering of the media and a return to like a pre broadcast era of a very fragmented, very partisan media. And I guess I wonder in an environment that just seems really to be pulling in that direction. Not everybody is like semaphore. I think we found a land that is sort of intended to counter that. But the broad trend is toward this partisan splintering. Do you see any path back towards some kind of consensus around media, around something like npr? Can you kind of close your eyes and imagine a future in which Republicans, Democrats, you know, feel warmly toward NPR the way maybe they did 30 years ago?

[C]

I can at least imagine. What I try to do about it. First is to acknowledge that there are some problems with bias and perspective. And I think it's less often partisan than it is cultural or generational. You sometimes do have. I mean, the New York Times is a New York newspaper and kind of has a New York perspective. And it's my favorite newspaper in the world, by the way. It's amazing, but it's just kind of a reality that's where they're coming from. You might think of NPR as a Washington organization, although I like to think of us as nationwide because we're drawing on stations all across the country. There are news organizations that go for different demographics, different kinds of people. And then there's the conflict that you have seen played out at the times where you used to work in other places and you could probably say within npr, between somewhat older and somewhat younger journalists and their idea of what journalism was supposed to be and of fairness and telling the truth and so forth, what does it mean to tell the truth? Obviously, we all stand for telling the truth, but what does it mean to get the story across? So there are these conflicts. And a thing that I try to do first is recognize the reality and try to be transparent about it. Like, what is my source? I should do really well at citing my source. When I hear an analyst on television who begins, we know, blah, blah, blah, because they're setting up the facts. We know the mullahs are whatever. And now we're going to give their. Now he's going to give his take. I don't trust that person because he didn't tell me the source of what he claims to know. So being transparent is important. And I think also it's important to recognize the very thing that you said. The environment that I am broadcasting into. I'm broadcasting or podcasting into an environment where there are thousands of other media organizations whose business model is to tell their audience not to trust the media and only to trust them. That is their financial interest.

[A]

You can't trust those people. All right, we gotta tell our audience right now, do not trust those people.

[C]

Exactly. Exactly. Only trust me. Exactly. But to just recognize that. To recognize that people are primed for skepticism and they're trained for skepticism and they're told to be skeptic, skeptical at all times, I think it's okay to respect that. Honestly, it's okay that people don't trust the media. A lot of media have reported some really terrible or misleading things. You should think for yourself. It's okay not to trust the media, but my job as a member of a media organization is to be trustworthy or maybe even make it so that you don't have to trust me to be so transparent about what I learned and how I learned it and so fair that you understand what I'm trying to tell you and why.

[A]

All right. Well, I am persuaded that the future of media is Gen X voices from Indiana.

[B]

I gotta say, though, the thing that Steve still has is he's got that radio voice. Neither of us have that voice.

[A]

That's amazing. I know.

[B]

It's incredible. We gotta figure out how we can start replicating Steve's voice now.

[C]

You guys sound great. You ask great questions. Ben knows because I sent him a note the other day. You have a great way of asking, putting serious things on the table in a kind of light way that is really great.

[A]

Well, thank you so much for joining us, Steve. Obviously, we're huge fans and it's nice to be on air with a real professional.

[B]

That's true. That's true.

[C]

Wow. Thank you.

[B]

Thank you. Steve.

[A]

There's new content waiting for you on Think with Google that you won't want to miss. Think is the destination for marketers to access things like, first of its kind research on AI adoption with the Boston Consulting Group, insights on four key consumer behaviors, streaming, scrolling, searching and shopping and deep dives on emerging technology and strategies that drive real growth. Get all of that and more by heading to thinkwithgoogle.com.

[B]

Ben, what did you think of what Steve had to say about podcasting, radio, the whole thing?

[A]

I mean, you know, he is like old school to me in like the most charming way. Like just, yeah, genuinely open minded, Interested, I think open to different points of view. I think does. You can tell he's got, he has some level of like just sort of an old school journalist resentment of overconfident punditry that fills like so much of the airwaves. But also there's just something interesting to me about his career because, like, guy did not need to go to Iran six times for that job. Certainly didn't need to go to Karachi and write a book about Karachi. I mean, he has this very specific kind of like real interest in the world, which then I think I find at moments, you know, at moments when many, many people, myself included, who have never been Iran, find themselves on the airwaves talking about Iran. And also, you know, at a moment, I think you probably saw that amazing Tucker Carlson interview with Ted Cruz where it seemed like Cruz both, you know, didn't know where the Bible passage he was citing appeared in the Bible. And also unbelievable. Didn't know that much about Iran. And again, like, I think you can argue how important that is for every, every senator, whatever. I mean, I don't mean to overstate it, but there is something about making the effort that like just indicates a kind of open mindedness. Right. And a kind of curiosity. And like, Steve just embodies that totally.

[B]

And there's no need for him to be like talking to shop owners and local people on the ground there. Right too. Like that's a step beyond what the normal, you know, I mean, a lot of journalists I'm sure, would fly in to interview head of, you know, in Iran and then just fly right back out. Right. Like he took the time to try to get the sense of, you know, what normal folks were feeling. And that does feel like a step beyond what. What everybody else would do. Certainly what I would do. I think I would parachute in and get the great interview and parachute right back out.

[A]

You wouldn't find like the best restaurant in Tehran.

[B]

That's true. I would do that. I would, I would do that.

[A]

But I don't know how, I don't.

[B]

Know how good of a sense of getting of the average person if I'm at like the nicest restaurant in Tehran. I don't know, I might get a sense of what's going on, but it might not be the right.

[A]

Well, you know, there's sort of two maxims that I feel like he contradicts. Right. Like first, the whole face for radio thing, like very handsome man, great on broadcast.

[B]

I know.

[A]

And then, and sometimes that is a challenge with meeting radio people that they don't look anything like their voice.

[B]

And he actually, he looks like his voice.

[A]

Looks exactly like his voice.

[B]

Totally.

[A]

And then of course, you know, they say never to meet your heroes, but Steve Inskeep is like exactly what you want Stevenskeep to be in person, which is very nice.

[B]

Do you think he's one of the last of that kind of kind of breed, like you know, the totally straight down the middle, unflappable, straight out of Capital J journalism reporters. Like, I mean, he strikes me, he has a lot in common with my old boss, one of my first bosses in journalism, John Dickerson, who's the host of CBS Evening News, now the host of CBS this Morning. Very similar old school kind of demeanor. Do you think that he kind of represents that as well?

[A]

Yeah, I mean an NPR does. And I, and I don't know, like if the future continues to favor that. Although I do think it's funny. I think a lot of amateur media and podcasts and YouTubes, part of the. It doesn't have Steve's kind of professionalism and discipline, but that just sort of sense of just absolute curiosity driving it. Sometimes goofy, ill informed curiosity about the shape of the planet Earth. It can go horribly awry. But I do think in this moment of just unbelievable unearned confidence all over the place, actually. I think there's a lot of appeal to kind of open mindedness and curiosity and he embodies it in a certain style. But actually I don't think it's going away. I just think it finds different kind of generational form. But he is. Yeah. I mean that was a very fun conversation.

[B]

Yeah, thanks for inviting him. It was great. Well, that is it for us. This week. Thank you for listening to Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media. Our show is produced by Sheena Ozaki, with special special thanks to Josh Billinson, Chad Lewis, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pizzino, Garrett Wiley, Jules Zern, and Tori Kaur. Our engineer is Rick Kwan, and our theme music is, of course, by Billy Libby. Our public editor this week is Marjorie Taylor Greene. Sadly, not as big of a fan of Steve Inskeep as we are.

[A]

I feel like she'd like him if she got to know him.

[B]

That's true. How could you not?

[A]

If you are Marjorie Taylor Greene or anyone else and you like mixing signals, please follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Please feel free to review us, and only if you liked us. And if you're watching us on YouTube, please subscribe.

[B]

And if you still want more, you can always subscribe to Semaphore's Media newsletter out every Sunday night.