The Movement to Protect Kids from Big Tech

Summary

Podcast Summary: Offline with Jon Favreau

Episode Title: The Movement to Protect Kids from Big Tech
Date: December 13, 2025
Host: Jon Favreau (with Jacob Goldstein)
Guest: Julie Shelfo (Founder, Mothers Against Media Addiction)

Episode Overview

In this episode, Jon Favreau and guest co-host Jacob Goldstein interview Julie Shelfo, the founder of Mothers Against Media Addiction (MAMA) and a former New York Times reporter. The conversation centers on the rapidly growing movement to protect children from the harms of social media and artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on legislative activism, the scale of potential mental health impacts, and the battle against Big Tech’s influence. The discussion tackles the emotional realities of parenting in a digital world and explores what meaningful regulation could look like.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Julie Shelfo’s Journey: From Journalist to Activist

[05:24 - 07:54]

• Julie Shelfo described her transition from reporting on the youth mental health crisis to founding MAMA.

  • Reporting revealed rising suicide rates among teens and tweens (kids as young as 9-10).
  • The revelations from whistleblowers in Big Tech (e.g., Meta) about knowingly amplifying harm pushed her towards advocacy.

• Quote:

  "I have no problem with companies making profit. I have no problem with innovation. But to do it on the backs of kids is just gross."
  — Julie Shelfo [06:31]

• The move from journalism, with its focus on objectivity, to activism required her to share her personal story and connect more emotionally, driven by an urgent need for change.

2. Parenting in the Age of Screens

[07:54 - 13:54]

• Shelfo reflected on raising her three sons while screens proliferated:

  • She described the normalization of constant sharing (“we trained them that it’s totally normal to share everything about your day”), and the inescapability of platforms like TikTok even when parents hold out.
  • Observations included children losing basic social skills when exposed to excessive screen time.
  • She cautioned that what might seem a "little awkward" at a young age can quickly become a bigger problem.

• Quote:

  “There’s no parenting mistake I haven’t made three times a thousand.”
  — Julie Shelfo [09:03]

  “What I began to see is that some of their friends who had devices earlier or more often...they were looking down, they didn’t learn how to make eye contact with people...What might seem a little awkward...becomes a big problem when they’re 8 or 9 or 10.”
  — Julie Shelfo [10:16]

3. MAMA: Mission and Strategy

[13:54 - 15:36]

• The group's three-pronged mission:

  1. Parent education about how tech products work and their risks
  2. Getting phones out of schools
  3. Demanding that all tech products conform to safety standards if kids use them

• Comparison made: parents aren’t expected to inspect their child’s food for toxins—there’s a regulatory system for that; the same should apply to tech.

• Quote:

  "If there’s a doll on the shelf...and it said, you know, there’s a 1 in 10 risk your kid will become depressed...nobody would buy that for their kid. Right? But we didn’t know that’s what social media was doing."
  — Julie Shelfo [12:31]

• The group is not anti-tech, emphasizing thoughtful, safe, and limited use.

4. Why "Media Addiction"?

[15:36 - 19:32]

• The term frames the societal scope—not just individual overuse, but a structural problem with society's growing “addiction” to screens and digital media.

• Algorithms are compared to slot machines, designed for continuous partial reinforcement.

• Concern raised: kids' exposure to rapid-fire, often inappropriate content (e.g., algorithmic spirals on YouTube from innocent videos to disturbing material in minutes).

• Quote (on child exposure):

  "I have a problem with Big Tech mainlining porn to our 12-year-olds. And that’s what’s been happening."
  — Julie Shelfo [18:12]

• The culture is suffering from a diminished focus on substantive information, replaced by soundbites and spectacle.

5. Parallels With Other Social Movements: MADD, Big Tobacco

[21:36 - 25:23]

• MAMA is modeled after Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and draws similarities to the anti-tobacco movement: both had to counteract powerful, entrenched industry interests for the sake of public health.
• The playbook: policy + cultural change, state-level action, public storytelling.
• Julie notes that the normalization of prior harmful behaviors (e.g., “smoking lounges in high schools”) is later recognized as obviously negligent.

6. The Unique Challenge of Big Tech

[25:23 - 30:29]

• The addictiveness of tech is harder to pin down compared to substances (“You can show biochemically that alcohol impairs you...with screen addiction...people have a harder time understanding the addictive quality” — Jacob Goldstein [25:24]).

• Shelfo: Parents feel powerless as the environment is unregulated; it’s not just about “good parenting,” but about product design and policy failure.

• Notable parent quote:

  "I feel like my son is addicted to cocaine that I gave him."
  — Text from a parent to Shelfo [26:39]

• Emphasized how algorithmic exposure is invisible and individualized, often isolating or traumatizing children.

7. Legislative Victories and the Policy Landscape

[32:33 - 34:27]

• MAMA’s wins:

  • Expansion to 35 chapters in 22 states
  • Helped pass New York’s Safe for Kids Act (restricts addictive algorithmic design, bans overnight notifications to minors)
  • Supported the California AI bill and Utah’s Digital Choice Act (user data rights, including deletion)
  • Successfully worked to prevent federal preemption of state AI regulation in recent legislative sessions

• On Trump's Executive Order pre-empting state AI regulation: the move faces bipartisan opposition and is widely seen as a tech industry request, not a popular one.

8. Resistance and Big Tech Tactics

[36:30 - 40:33]

• Most people, regardless of political affiliation, support action—resistance comes mainly from Big Tech’s lobbying machine.
• Tactics include leveraging small business fears, LGBTQ+ concerns, and invoking free speech arguments.
• "Money is an issue," with legislators swayed by tech investments/promises; free speech is invoked disingenuously to block safety reforms.
• Example: bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act died due to House leadership in a state receiving major tech investment.

9. Free Speech, Content Moderation & Surveillance Fears

[41:56 - 45:25]

• Shelfo argues for seeing social media as mass media/publishing, subject historically to regulation (e.g., radio, TV ownership limits).
• She differentiates between speech and mass-published, advertiser-supported content, invoking the responsibility journalism takes to avoid harm.
• Privacy + data collection concerns are real—but tech companies already collect vast amounts; the real issue is lack of regulation akin to Europe's GDPR.

10. Global Models: Australia’s Social Media Ban for Under-16s

[47:25 - 48:27]

• Shelfo supports Australia's move to ban social media for under-16s; wishes the US had similar political will.
• Anticipates that safety/best design regulations are more likely in the US in the short term.

11. What’s Politically Possible

[48:27 - 49:38]

• Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) has the rare distinction of broad bipartisan support (passed Senate 99-1).
• The biggest barrier is Big Tech’s ability to shape the narrative around “innovation” and national competitiveness.

12. The AI Wave: New Frontiers of Harm

[49:38 - 56:23]

• Shelfo warns of AI’s rapid adoption among kids and adults, with unclear educational guidance and rising mixed messages in schools.

• Her concerns:

  • AI undermining literacy/cognitive development: “It is the culture of literacy that gave us written laws, science, medicine...we’ve been eroding that.”
  • The temptation for children to replace frictionful, sometimes awkward, but essential real-life interactions with compliant, always-on AI is strong, but could stunt human growth.
  • Economic incentives for AI are misaligned with societal needs; the more time on product, the better for business, not necessarily for users.
  • Analogous to social media, in that attention is optimized over wellbeing.
  • Physical impacts: global increase in nearsightedness; points to Taiwan’s outdoor play law as a simple, successful intervention.

• Quote:

  "If we are not prioritizing a culture of literacy...that really scares me for the future."
  — Julie Shelfo [50:42]

13. The Way Forward: Hope and the Inflection Point

[56:23 - 56:56]

• Despite challenges, both Shelfo and the hosts express optimism: Bipartisan public support is broad and deep—a sign that large-scale reform is increasingly likely.
• Quote:

  “I do find hope...the support for these reforms is so broad and deep...and I do feel like we are at an inflection point...where the tide is turning against the big tech companies.”
  — Jacob Goldstein [56:23]

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• On what’s at stake for children:

  "We have allowed these big tech companies to operate their properties in a real lawless way...it’s really appalling that Congress has not kept our laws up to date."
  — Julie Shelfo [19:04]

• On the normalization of exposure to trauma:

  "My oldest son learned about the death by suicide of a friend’s sister over Instagram...and said, Mom, that’s just normal. And it kind of took my breath away."
  — Julie Shelfo [29:36]

• On the argument for regulation:

  "When you put something out in the world and you put something out at scale, you have responsibility and accountability...historically, journalism spends a lot of money making sure what they do is careful.”
  — Julie Shelfo [42:01]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Julie’s transition to activism: [05:24–07:54]
• Parenting anecdotes on kids and tech: [07:54–13:54]
• Mission/goals of Mothers Against Media Addiction: [13:54–15:36]
• Media addiction vs. “too much screen time”: [15:36–19:32]
• Lessons from MADD/Big Tobacco: [21:36–25:23]
• Unique psychological & regulatory challenges of Big Tech: [25:23–30:29]
• Major legislative wins and hurdles: [32:33–34:27]
• Big Tech’s lobbying/arguments against regulation: [36:30–40:33]
• Free speech and privacy in the content moderation debate: [41:56–45:25]
• Australia’s social media ban and US prospects: [47:25–48:27]
• Most likely reforms (federal/state level): [48:27–49:38]
• Artificial intelligence fears for youth: [49:38–56:23]
• Closing: optimism and next steps: [56:23–56:56]

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Tone & Language

The conversation is candid, urgent, and empathetic—a blend of personal reflection, data-driven argumentation, and policy-savvy commentary. Both hosts and guest are forthright in their criticism of Big Tech, deeply concerned about the wellbeing of children, and optimistic about the possibility for bipartisan solutions.

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Summary for the Uninitiated

This episode gives a comprehensive look at how parents and advocacy groups are mobilizing nationally to lobby for protection of children against the documented and potential harms of unregulated social media and AI. It connects grassroots organizing to larger historical efforts (like MADD and the anti-tobacco movement), dissects the difference between individual and societal responsibility, and lays out both the urgency and the practical roadblocks facing legislative reform. The conversation is especially valuable for those seeking to understand the emotional complexity parents face, why “media addiction” is seen as a structural rather than merely personal problem, and how the activism landscape is evolving in response to new tech frontiers.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

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[Julie Shelfo]

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[Julie Shelfo]

One mother texted me and said, I don't know what to do. I feel like my son is addicted to cocaine that I gave him. And that is the helplessness that parents feel. But it's not something that we can solve on an individual level. Right. So we as parents have to feed our kids healthy meals, but we don't expect every parent to keep the food supply safe. Like, it's not your job to go test the baby formula at the drugstore. Right. We have a system in place to make it safe. And that's why we know these products, because all tech is is products. They need to conform to certain standards that they're safe.

[Jon Favreau]

Jon I'm Jon Favreau and you just heard from this week's guest, Julie Shelfo, a former New York Times reporter who now runs an organization called Mothers Against Media Addiction, which is an organization that.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Seeks to protect children from harmful technologies.

[Jon Favreau]

We haven't covered this topic in a.

[Jacob Goldstein]

While here and came across Julie's organization. They started in 2024. They now have 35 chapters across 22 states. And they have been sort of leading the way and trying to pass some legislation to help protect kids from both social media harms and now they're also focused on artificial intelligence. This week we just found out that the Australia social media ban is the first of its kind of any country in the world. It banned social media for kids under 16 that has gone into effect. We are also recording this just a day after Donald Trump decided to issue an executive order banning states from trying to regulate artificial intelligence on their own. This story is very much in the news and Julie and Mama, her organization, are at the forefront of trying to help protect kids. They have worked on trying to pass some of the social media regulatory legislation in some states and they've also been working on educating parents. It's a really great group. And Julie is very, very smart on all of this stuff. So we had a great conversation about how she got into this, what kind of legislation and reforms she's pushing for, what it's like going up against big tech and the resistance that they've faced.

[Jon Favreau]

There, what she thinks of the Australia.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Social media ban, the Trump artificial intelligence EO and sort of what are her big concerns going forward and what her and her organization, Mama, are trying to do to help protect kids and pass some of these really important reforms.

[Jon Favreau]

So it's a great conversation.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

[Jon Favreau]

Here's Julie Shelfa. Julie, welcome to Offline.

[Julie Shelfo]

Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

[Jon Favreau]

So it's been a big year for.

[Jacob Goldstein]

The growing movement of which you're a leader to protect kids from too much screen time in social media. Last I checked, I think were 20 states that banned phones and tablets during school, plenty of others with bans and a lot of local districts. Australia just became the first country in the world to ban social media companies from giving accounts to kids under 16. Lots of similar legislation is being debated in other countries, including here. Obviously. Still enormous challenges on the horizon, especially. AI want to talk to you about all of that, but first I'd love.

[Jon Favreau]

It if you could just talk about.

[Jacob Goldstein]

How you got here.

[Jon Favreau]

You were a reporter for the New York Times. Among other stories, you covered the youth mental health crisis.

[Jacob Goldstein]

What was the moment you decided that you wanted to move into the world of activism?

[Julie Shelfo]

Well, I guess you could say it was gradually and then all at once. You know, first I was reporting on youth mental health and growing rates of suicide among teens. And then right after that, we saw in the data that suicide was going up not only in teens, but in tweens, which were kids as young as 9 and 10. And when I reported that story, you know, I'm also a mom, I've got sons. Learning that there were nine and ten year olds who wanted to die in this country at such large rates just kind of changed something in me. I mean, it's just pretty messed up that we have so many kids that are suffering like that. And then as more and more whistleblowers came forward from meta and shared how they knew the products and the algorithms that they were using was causing harm and the different changes they would make would increase the harm, and then when they told their bosses, we should probably fix this, their bosses were like, eh, that made me really mad. I have no problem with companies making profit. I have no company, no problem with innovation. We need innovation. But to do it on the backs of kids is just gross. And that's when I decided I needed to do something about this.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And what was that transition from journalists to activists like for you?

[Julie Shelfo]

I mean, they kind of go hand in hand in the sense that I'm driven by facts, like I'm driven by what's actually happening. As a journalist for most of my life, I always didn't share what I thought. I tried to really put my own feelings aside and just the facts, right. And so as an activist, I'm learning to talk about myself more. It's weird and not natural to talk about myself and share my story. So I've had to learn how to get comfortable doing that. But in this particular case, what we're working for is protecting our kids. And the evidence is so clear that it's not hard at all for me to just talk about the data and talk about what's happening. I've met so many parents whose kids have been harmed by social media, and you cannot forget their stories. And I just don't understand how people who work at these companies can hear about it and then look the other way.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah. Speaking of your own story, what's your experience been like with your three sons and their screen time?

[Julie Shelfo]

Well, when my oldest son was born, there were no iPhones, and Mark Zuckerberg worked at a small company called the Facebook. And by the time my middle son was ready for pre K, every single I took him to school. Every single parent had a phone and was on Facebook and was photographing their kid constantly. And they didn't realize it, but they were inadvertently training their children that this is normal. We trained them that it's totally normal to share everything about your day. Here's a picture of what you ate for breakfast. And that's not normal. Never before in human history did we do that. Since the invention of cameras, we kind of pulled them out for special occasions. We didn't photograph every moment. And then with my third son, I have never let any of my kids on TikTok. I just don't think that. First of all, when I reported on it and found that they listed law enforcement contacts on every content, I thought, what is happening on this platform? That law enforcement on every continent needs to get in touch with them. I never let him have TikToks, but I haven't been able to stop him from seeing TikToks because his friends share them. YouTube and Snap have gone to shorter and shorter reels. The while that I've raised them, I've been confronted by the exact same issues that every single parent in America has had to face. And I'm not a perfect parent. I'm not a parenting expert. There's no parenting mistake I haven't made three times a thousand. So I gave my kids smartphones. I waited until they were in eighth grade. I let them get social media. I let them join Instagram because I thought that was a great way for them to stay in touch with their cousins. But then I experienced the horrific things that can happen when your kids are exposed to terrible. That's not developmentally appropriate, and in a context, that's not appropriate.

[Jon Favreau]

How old are your boys?

[Julie Shelfo]

My boys are now 15, 17, and 20. They're young men.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I have two boys. One is two, about to be two, and the other's five. So we are just getting ready for intense screen kind of stuff that they're.

[Julie Shelfo]

Gonna have to talk about. You'll see all these gray hairs. I didn't have them. And there are things that when you have. I think we all want the same thing for our kids, right? You want them to get to have a childhood. You want them to have joy, you want them to have fun experiences. What I began to see is that some of their friends who had devices earlier or more often, they were looking down, they didn't learn how to make eye contact with people. They didn't learn how to have verbal conversations. What might seem a little awkward or a little unfortunate when they're 3 or 4 or 5 becomes a big problem when they're 8 or 9 or 10. And it becomes an even bigger problem when they're in middle school and in high school. So now I'm so proud of my children. I love them. I feel very lucky that they've had such wonderful teachers and that my husband is such an incredible dad. And people are always telling us how great our kids are because they're able to have conversations with adults. They're very capable. They know how to do things, they know how to cook, they know how to clean, build, you name it. But the crazy thing is, I don't always know whether to say this, but I'm like, my kids are just normal. That's what kids are like. If you make sure they're not on screens all the time, they're not exceptional. They're just doing the things that people.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Have always done, just developing relationships and skills in real life.

[Jon Favreau]

So you start Mothers Against Media Addiction.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I believe in 2024, what is the primary goal and what's the pitch to people who might be interested in joining?

[Julie Shelfo]

So Mothers Against Media Addiction is a grassroots movement of parents and allies fighting back against media addiction and creating a world where real life experiences and interactions remain at the heart of a healthy childhood. We have a three part mission. It's parent education. Getting phones out of schools and demanding safeguards so that all tech products are safe for kids if they're used by kids. It needs to be safe for kids. And the reason parent education is so important is because too few of us know how these products work and too many of us have given them to our kids, again, myself included, without realizing the potential risks and harms. So when you go to a toy store and you're shopping for a gift for your kid's birthday, if there is a doll on the shelf or any product on the shelf and it said, you know, there's a 1 in 10 risk of your kid becoming depressed, after using this, or a 1 in 8, you know, chance that your child will develop an eating disorder, or 1 in 10 chance they'll be suicidal. Like nobody would buy that for their kid. Right. But we didn't know that that's what social media was doing. And we didn't know that because these companies weren't disclosing what was happening on their platform. They weren't being transparent about the data that even they were collecting. Right. So we want to make sure that parents know about the research that exists about what kinds of experiences are best for healthy child development and know about the risks of the products. In terms of getting phones out of schools, we know that human to human interaction and experience is critical in the way the brain develops and is critical in childhood for the acquisition of lifelong tools and skills that are going to make you healthy emotionally for life and that are going to give you the tools that you need to become a good learner and a good student. So we're not actually anti tech at Mama. We think tech can be fun and it can be helpful. We just don't think it's always automatically the right solution and that it needs to be introduced in a thoughtful way. So we want phones out of school so kids can learn, they can spend time with their friends, they can develop relationships with teachers and that they have a chance to be kids. Right. You know, when you have FOMO all the time and you're spending every second wondering if you about your snapstreak and how many likes you have, you're not really concentrating on reading and math. And unfortunately we're seeing that in the nation's report card.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So what made you decide to use the words media addiction to define this problem as opposed to just saying kids spend too much time on their phones?

[Julie Shelfo]

You know, that's a great question. And I think that one of the things that's been lost in our acquisition of products is that we have become a society that's consumed with always getting the latest and the greatest and the new. And we love anything that's got bells and whistles on it. Right. And so, you know, we are so addicted to media and screening now that we have screens everywhere. We have them in our restaurants, we have them in our bathrooms, we have them in our elevators. And actually the human brain is not wired to receive a constant onslaught of information. 24, 7. And so it's not really surprising that adults who consume too much media and information feel emotionally unhealthy. And it's not surprising at all that children who are inundated with content and news and things that are scary and videos that are violent and information about all the threats of the world are not emotionally well and that they're suffering. So calling it media addiction was a way of drawing attention to both the individual addiction that we have from algorithms that are designed like slot machines, to give you continuous partial reinforcement and get the dopamine going so that you have to come back, but also as a way to begin to talk about our collective society and what kind of society do we want? Do we want a world where we let them machines and the apps and the screens dominate everything? Or do we want to preserve what I think is so special and unique about being human and that is our human relationships.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And it's so much different because a lot of people compare this to say, well, there was a panic around TV and that turned out okay. Which I guess you could say, did.

[Jon Favreau]

It really turn out okay that we were all addicted to tv?

[Jacob Goldstein]

Because those are other screens too.

[Jon Favreau]

But it is different.

[Jacob Goldstein]

My, my eldest loves to build, loves to build Legos, which is great. It's like an off screen activity. But you know, when he wants to watch a little YouTube, he likes to watch like Lego building videos. And so, like put those on for a couple minutes and if I'm not.

[Jon Favreau]

There with him, suddenly the algorithm on.

[Jacob Goldstein]

YouTube takes him from the Lego building and then he likes like the Lego building of the Titanic ship. And then all of a sudden it.

[Jon Favreau]

Takes him to videos of the Titanic sinking and then other ships sinking and then planes crashing.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And I'm like, holy shit. It was like five minutes and I.

[Jon Favreau]

Came back and suddenly he's asking me like scary questions about things that the algorithm just feeds him on YouTube.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And you realize that that is so different than just when, when we were kids sitting down in front of a TV program. And you know what the program, you know what the TV show is and you understand what it's going to show your kids.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, you have no idea now what.

[Jacob Goldstein]

The screen's going to show them.

[Julie Shelfo]

So I was a student of a guy named Neil Postman. I don't know if you've heard of.

[Jacob Goldstein]

His big Neil Postman.

[Jon Favreau]

I saw that you were, I was.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Gonna ask you about that. I'm a big Postman fan myself.

[Julie Shelfo]

Well, I don't think there's anyone who knew him or read him who wasn't a fan. But there's not a lot of people like Neil. But the things you're talking about are the things he wrote about and amusing ourselves to death. And in A way this is just amusing ourself to death. Taken to the furthest possible extreme, we've allowed our culture to really be diminished in terms not prioritizing complex long form journalism, in terms of letting sound bites rule. And now there's so much spectacle in politics that it really interferes with the substance of what needs to happen to run a healthy republic. But in terms of the YouTube that you were talking about, there's a TED talk that you should look up by James Bridle. It's at least a decade old now, but he talks about the nightmare of children's YouTube and shows you how few videos it takes to go from Dora the Explorer or Disney thing to the most twisted, disturbing, probably AI generated images that are exposing your kids to. Again, when I started Mama, I thought, wow, am I Tipper Gore? Am I coming out? Am I just so much more conservative than I thought? But I'm like, I accept that at some point my sons are going to be exposed to some pornography. During high school, my husband had a friend, and in high school they took him below the bleachers and they pulled out a Playboy. And it was younger than you should be. But I have a problem with big tech mainlining porn to our 12 year olds. And that's what's been happening. The average first age of exposure to porn now is 12, and many boys report seeing it at 10. And let me tell you something, when Your child is 12, you will know that they are not ready for that and it's not appropriate for them. And so we have allowed these big tech companies to operate their properties in a real lawless way. Even though in the history of this country we have been regulating mass media since the 1930s and the invention of radio. So it's really appalling that Congress has not kept our laws up to date with the evolution of these technologies. And that's another reason Mama was for just to say enough is enough. We have to make sure that safeguards are in place.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jacob Goldstein]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Jacob Goldstein]

You've said that Mama is modeled in many ways after Mad Mothers Against Drunk Driving. How is the fight against media addiction analogous to the fight against drunk driving or smoking against a Big Tobacco?

[Julie Shelfo]

Great questions. I think that like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, we are really standing up to a massive public health threat. And that's what this is. And we are making change in our homes, our communities, and across the nation. So we're not even two years old. We started in one Brooklyn living room. Now we have 35 chapters in 22 states. And we know that the change we need has to happen both at a policy level and at a cultural level. And so that's what Mothers Against Drunk Driving did. That was so impressive. They got us all to think differently about drunk driving. I was born in the 70s. I grew up in the 80s. And I think that the adult, you know, had a few drinks, took a ride, and if you tried to stop somebody, it was more of an ego thing or a manly thing. I'm fine. I'm fine. And Mothers Against Drunk Driving helped us all see that it was really a public health issue and that if you witnessed somebody getting into a car and doing something, you were putting everybody at risk. And they helped. They changed the policies. They raised the drinking age. They made it so that we understand bartenders are responsible. If you see someone that's inebriated, you have to stop. You can't see, keep serving them. And we want people to think about the entire media environment and the entire experience of childhood and what we're allowing for our kids and creating for our kids. So that's what's similar about it. And I think the analogy to big Tobacco is even more close, because with big Tobacco, smoking was so entrenched in our society. I mean, people have forgotten we used to have smoking lounges in high schools, right? I mean, you think about that now and you're like, that's crazy. But we had that because, first of all, the product was so addictive. Second of all, it was so commonly used. And third of all, the tobacco companies had taken so many different measures to make smoking acceptable. They had gone to Hollywood. They had convinced them to change the script so that all the sexy leading men and women were smokers. They had created Joe Camel. And so the undoing of that required just a lot of work on multiple different levels. We had those huge hearings where the tobacco executives were called up in front of Congress. We had public education campaigns. We had lawsuits. There were research reports that came out. And that's the same sort of way that you're seeing us mobilize and everyone in the tech reform space mobilize. There are hundreds of lawsuits brought by thousands of families whose children have been victims of harms on social media. You are seeing many, many films come out to educate people about the risks of these things. You are seeing mamas and other people rise up to demand a change in what their schools are doing, what their communities are doing. And then you're seeing policymakers take it into their own hands. And because Congress has been so slow to act, we have state lawmakers really stepping up and taking measures to protect kids.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I thought a lot about why this is different than Some of the other harms either to kids or to people in general. And with. With cigarettes, you can at some point say, all right, well, this is an addictive that you can draw the line between the actual nicotine and there's a chemical, and so there's an addiction there. With drunk driving, you can say, okay, well, we can show biochemically that alcohol impairs you. And that's.

[Jon Favreau]

And.

[Jacob Goldstein]

With screen addiction and media addiction, I wonder if sometimes people don't. People have a harder time understanding the addictive quality because you think, well, it's my own choice. I get to go read information. And there is a healthy way to consume information via screens and media via screens, right?

[Jon Favreau]

And it's also.

[Jacob Goldstein]

That's why it's a little different than the, you know, violent video games or violent movies like the Tipper Gore stuff from the 90s, right? Because you're like, okay, well, that's content. It's bad content. Is it going to have an effect? We don't know. But this is trickier because it's not necessarily that the access to the information, the vast amount of information on the Internet is the problem. It is the algorithms themselves, which I wonder if it's just harder for people to sort of perceive that this is addictive in a way, because we're all subject to it.

[Julie Shelfo]

I love how you said that. I think you said it really well. I think it is harder for people to perceive, and that's why it's been so long in coming to get everyone to understand what was happening. I think we ourselves as adults were addicted. I know I'm addicted, and that's part of the problem. So we're guilty of it. We're modeling that for our children. They're repeating it. But because we can't see it and because it seems like we should be able to control it, I think our first instinct was to blame ourselves and, oh, it's our fault as parents for not limiting our kids. And we would tell them, okay, these are your limits and you have to get off. But that really isn't fair because as one mother texted me, and again, this was another reason I came to be an activist. Because after I wrote my story, so many people started reaching out to me for help. But one mother texted me and said, I don't know what to do. I feel like my son is addicted to cocaine that I gave him. And that is the helplessness that parents feel. But it's not something that we can solve on an individual level. Right? So we as parents have to feed our kids healthy meals. But we don't expect every parent to keep the food supply safe. Like it's not your job to go test the baby formula at the drugstore. Right. We have a system in place to make it safe. And that's why we know these products, because all tech is is products. They need to conform to certain standards that they're safe. And one other thing, if I can just say a little more about what you said about not perceiving. I mean, that's another thing that's so frightening about what's happened is that that it's happened under our own roof. Children can be in their own room and you think they're safe at home, but you don't know what they're looking at. They could be sitting next to you and you don't know what they're looking at. We know what they're looking at first of all, because the tech companies have begun to tell us this. Last year, Meta put out a press release touting how great it is and all the work that they're doing to limit suicide and self harm content on their platforms. And buried at the end of the press release, they acknowledged taking action on 12 million separate pieces of suicide and self harm content that year in a three month period. So they were acknowledging 48 million separate pieces of suicide and self harm content. And we've known for centuries that suicide can be contagious. And that's not something you want to expose kids to. So kids are just being exposed to all kinds of things. They're being exposed to it in private. Whereas if you're with your child watching a movie and you witness a car accident or something traumatic or somebody gets killed, you know what they're seeing, they're going to see your reaction. You can talk about it. If they're viewing it privately or they're viewing it privately next to a birthday party photo or a cat video, they're also being told that it's not something bad, it's just sort of normal for them. With my own kids, my oldest son learned about the death by suicide of a friend's sister over Instagram. And then a year later, he learned about the suicide of a friend on his baseball team on Instagram. And when he told me, I said, honey, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry about your friend and I'm so sorry you learned this way on Instagram. And he said, mom, that's just normal. And it kind of took my breath away. And I had to explain, no, it's not normal to Learn about, about the death of your teenage friend through a social media app.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah, because when you experience and learn about trauma like that, you need a human around.

[Jon Favreau]

Especially if you're a child.

[Jacob Goldstein]

You need a parent or a guardian or someone around who can answer your questions, who can help you through, who can see if you're okay. And when you experience these things alone, then of course that's going to have a profound effect that is much more negative than if you hear about it with a parent around or someone, someone who can help you through it.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jacob Goldstein]

What is the most important win you guys have had so far?

[Julie Shelfo]

Oh, gosh. You know, I can't tell you how thrilling and humbling it has been to see all of these people come Forward to Lead Mama chapters in their community. 35 chapters, 22 states. We have helped pass bills all over the country. An early win was in New York. We passed the Safe for Kids act or the Stop Addictive Feed Exploitation Act. And that made it so that social media companies who have users in New York who are under 18 cannot make algorithmic design that's addictive. It also prohibits them from sending overnight notifications because we know from some of the social media platforms that they have 12 year olds, 13 year olds who are online at 1am, 2am, 3am on school night, and lack of sleep we know is connected to depression. That was a big win. We're very proud of the AI bill that Governor Newsom signed in California. Again, that type of legislation is really leading the way. We're proud of what happened in Utah. They passed the Digital Choice act, which gives users control of their own data. It provides the right to delete, which is an important privacy right, especially for children. I think I'm most proud this year when they tried to put this clause in the one big beautiful bill that would have prohibited states from regulating AI. We beat that back and the Senate voted it out 99 to 1. We and other members of our coalition did it again recently when they tried to slip this provision into the Defense Spending Act. We got it out. So that was great. But just yesterday, December 11, Trump issued an executive order. I don't know. You want to talk about that?

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah, no, we've been talking about this on the show for a little bit as well. And he basically just the provision that they've been trying to insert into law, he just decided to do an eo. I don't think it has a ton of force. I mean, basically what's going to have to happen is the Justice Department will then have to sue one of the states like California that have passed this AI regulation. And look, I mean, I'm no lawyer here, but it'd be one thing if the federal government said, okay, well, it's interstate commerce and a state can't reg. We can't have a patchwork of 50 different kinds of regulations. The federal regulation has to supersede that.

[Jon Favreau]

But they haven't done anything on a federal level, at least, at least legislatively. So it's hard to say we haven't done anything yet.

[Jacob Goldstein]

But also you can't do anything while we're waiting to do something.

[Julie Shelfo]

Yeah, I mean, you know, the, this. Before the EO was signed, President Trump talked about protecting kids. And if they wanted to protect kids, they would pass federal legislation. But they haven't. They won't. We'd like that to happen soon. And no one asked for this, right? No one wants this. Every single credible poll shows that Americans oppose limiting the state's ability to regulate AI by roughly 3 to 1. So the push for this is coming from big tech and from big tech alone, state attorney generals are pushing back. Nearly 300 state legislators have formally opposed it. And so far 17 Republican governors have gone on the record against it. So this is a major swing by Silicon Valley that's wildly out of step with the American public and even with the Republican base. So we've already won this issue in Congress. You cannot tell states what laws they can pass. And I think the White House knows this. And so I think the goal is just a chilling effect to try to slow down and not pass state laws. Cuz they're just afraid to get sued by David Sacks in the White House.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, I was gonna ask like, where.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Have you met the most resistance and for what reasons? Because it is an area where, maybe one of the only areas today where there's a lot of bipartisan support and sort of. And not just in the, like, not just among like moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans, but you get some pretty conservative Republicans, the Josh Hawley types, with some pretty progressive Democrats who are joining forces on this. And you see it in very blue states and very red states passing. But you know, there's obviously resistance and there's big tech and they have a lot of money and they have a lot of lobbyists. But what arguments are they making to some legislators that, you know, persuade them that regulations on tech and protecting kids isn't such a good idea?

[Julie Shelfo]

So we get almost no pushback, John. You know, I don't have to convince anybody to join Mama. I don't have to convince anybody that we need Mama. Everybody agrees that there's too much media addiction. These products are not safe for kids. And we have to fix it. With the exception of some tech companies that are making money hand over fist. And they're the ones that are spending tens of millions of dollars, their lobbying efforts to prevent legislation. And they do it sometimes in really tricky, dirty ways. They go into states. And every time a bill is proposed, they have the same playbook. Now, they've used small business owners. They say, if this law passes, it's going to affect your small business. They've used the LGBTQ community. They've made the argument that if you pass a bill, you're going to somehow put trans lives at risk. They've even said that, which is absurd. Yet people from marginalized communities often find support online. And that will continue even if you have these safety regulations. Because these regulations are not about the whole Internet. You're not getting rid of everything. They're just about the social media platforms in particular, Right? So if I had a trans child or a gay child, I would want them to find community, but I would much rather them be in a chat group run by the Trevor Project or the Audre Lorde Project and not administered by Mark Zuckerberg or one of these guys who really doesn't care about their well being. So we haven't seen any direct pushback. Nobody really disagrees with our argument. But money is an issue with the Kids Online Safety Act. Last year it passed 99 to 1 in the Senate. It went over to the house. It had 64 co sponsors, completely bipartisan. And Speaker Mike Johnson refused to bring it up for a vote. He said it wasn't good legislation. Steve Scalise said, oh, no, no, this could possibly stifle speech. His Republican colleagues didn't understand. They asked him to explain himself. Then it was announced that a $10 billion AI data processing plant was being built. Guess where? Louisiana. Louisiana?

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, my gosh.

[Julie Shelfo]

Did that have something to do with it? I don't know. And since that time, President Trump has discussed that the value of Meta's investment in Louisiana, I think, is closer to 50 billion than 10 billion. So the amounts of money here are just unfathomable. It's really incredible. They keep hiring lawyers, they keep filing lawsuits. I was in a room once with a Meta spokesperson who shared how deeply Meta cares about kids and wants safety measures in place. And I said, well, does that mean you're going to drop your lawsuit against Attorney General Rob Bonta? Because they sued California to stop the implementation of the age appropriate design code, which simply requires social media platforms to operate with a duty of care to children and make sure the platforms are safe. So everybody in America, except a handful of people who are profiting wildly from these companies, wants some safety measures in place. And the argument that they use are disingenuous, but the big one is free speech. They keep using the Free speech argument.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I was going to say what.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I've seen, not from tech companies, but I see from some, I would say libertarian minded folks. You see some of this from ACLU types and a few progressive journalists here and there. You know, you mentioned sort of marginalized communities. Basically they see social media as sort of a social lifeline and you know, they can't forge these connections at home for whatever reason. And so they're finding these communities online and it's really important to them. And then I also hear about this fear of censorship and surveillance and if there's age verification or if there's digital ID or stuff like that. We're basically kids are and you know, if it's for adults too, but people are giving more information over and what if the government has that and do we really want these social media companies and platforms in the business of content moderation? And is that a free speech issue or who gets to decide? I don't know, what you like, what are your best arguments about all of those concerns? And look, and I know that, I mean, I know that a lot of this isn't about necessarily some of this legislation is not about content moderation, but it's about design and amplification, which is much different. But I'll let you take this one.

[Julie Shelfo]

Okay, well, sure, I can do all that in 30 seconds.

[Jon Favreau]

Take your time, take your time.

[Julie Shelfo]

Okay, well, you know, there's a few different issues here. So first of all, I think the language we use is really important. So we call it social media, but it's actually mass media publishing. And in this country, we have been regulating mass media since the invention of radio. When radio came about, we'd just come through World War I. We understood that if you gave an individual, especially a very charismatic individual, this unprecedented power to speak to large audiences in an instant, that that could be really dangerous. And that was why we capped how large a radio size could be, how many people could own how many big radio stations and newspapers in the same town. Later, with television, we limited, you couldn't own a TV and a radio and a newspaper because the media environment, the information environment, shapes public perception and that affects our democracy. So to call social media something different than publishing, I think has opened up all of these problems where if we just recognize that when you put something out in the world and you put something out at scale, you have responsibility and accountability. And our historic institutions of journalism spend a lot of money making sure that what they do is careful. I'm sure on your podcast you spend a lot of time and money to make sure that nothing gets said that would inadvertently defame somebody or libel somebody. And there's space in there for errors. Right? Like as a journalist, I've made mistakes, I've misspelled people's name and we've run a correction. But that's different than putting out, knowingly putting out false information. So I think we need to go back to a model where we look at social media as published speech or advertiser supported speech, because that's not the same as free speech. And the first amendment gives us free speech, but it doesn't give you the right to publish, it doesn't give you the right to broadcast speech or mass mediated speech. And so we need to sort of think about it differently. And I think, you know, in journalism we have concerns about data privacy too. And it is less than ideal for these companies to have all this information about our children. But we know they already have the information. They've been collecting it. You know, Europe had GDPR and we were so far behind them and we don't have anything similar. I know that created a million headaches for companies, but it also protected basic human rights in law and we don't have that in this country. Right. There's nothing protecting us and your right to your privacy and your children's privacy. I think that's why so many parents are upset that schools have introduced so much ed tech into the classroom because that has collected your child's data and used it in ways that parents often don't know about. But since these companies are already collecting it, it really I think is disingenuous when they say, oh, it's not good for kids if we collect. I mean, give me a break. They're already collecting every time your daughter posts a selfie and then deletes it real quick because she doesn't like it. They know that's the perfect time to show her a beauty ad. There's so many points of data they already have. I think we have to accept that there's going to be some data collection and ensure that it's regulated property like automatic delete, non transfer to other companies. All those kinds of ways of protecting data that other countries have already figured out.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jacob Goldstein]

Tonight's Meal Tilapia Surprise with Boiled Cabbage.

[Julie Shelfo]

Begin cooking steps 1 through 50 now.

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[Jacob Goldstein]

I assume you're a fan of Australia's new social media ban for kids under 16. Do you think something like that would work here in the United States as well? And are you guys pushing for something similar?

[Julie Shelfo]

You know, I am a fan. I think it was a huge mistake that we introduced social media to our children, not only because of what they were exposed to and how it makes them feel, but because of all the time that we've lost where they could have been doing other more enriching things. So in a purely libertarian society, we would let anybody smoke. But we've decided as a society, no, like you have to be at least 18. And I think that is a smart thing and I would love to see us do that. Could it happen in the United States? I'm not sure. I haven't seen the political will for that. I think it's more likely that we will implement safety regulations first. So that's not our top priority right now to get it fully banned. But we certainly would like to see that.

[Jacob Goldstein]

What do you think is the reforms that are most politically viable in the US Right now?

[Julie Shelfo]

Well, again, the Kids Online Safety act, or the version of the Kids Online Safety act we had last year, we know it's politically viable. It passed 99 to 1 in the Senate. So, again, this is such a bipartisan issue. I mean, this is the last bipartisan issue in America. Basically, everybody agrees. So it's really about not allowing big tech to dominate the narrative with this idea that we need to win the race against China. Of course we need to innovate, and of course we need to lead. And I believe that. That the folks who work in tech in this country are so smart, they can figure out how to do that while also keeping children safe. So I think there is a lot of political will right now to get some things passed to protect kids. We're seeing it at the state level, we're seeing it at the federal level. It just needs to happen more quickly because we can't repeat what we did with social media. There have been no laws to limit or regulate social media since 1998, which is before social media existed. So it's crazy.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Well, I always think about sort of fighting the last war in terms of AI now. And I wonder, like, what are your biggest concerns around artificial intelligence and the potential harms to kids? You know, obviously the first thing that comes to mind is the, you know, chatbots. And I know there's been some. Some legislation around trying to protect kids from signing up for chatbots and having chatbot friends too young. So talk a little bit about that. And then are there other concerns around AI that you guys are thinking about?

[Julie Shelfo]

So, gosh, where do I even start about my concerns with AI? I have so many concerns. I mean, I'm concerned about. I don't even know where to start. So I'm concerned about how quickly kids are adopting it. I am concerned about how quickly adults are adopting it and not thinking about how that is affecting school. I mean, my kids all go to different schools, so I can talk about it without anybody knowing what I'm talking about. One of my children's schools has in their honor code that children are not allowed to use AI for their homework. But the teachers have been giving them assignments with a message on the bottom that says, this was generated in part with AI So talk about a mixed message. So. So my biggest fear About AI and the rapid adoption of AI is how quickly it is causing us to behave in stupid ways. The invention of literacy, in my opinion, is one of the greatest achievements of human civilization. And I think we often forget that the state of mass literacy hasn't been around that long. It's only been a little more than 100 years that we've had 80% of the population able to read at above a fifth grade level. And that's something I would like to continue into the future. And if we are not prioritizing a culture of literacy, and it was the culture of literacy that gave us written laws, it was the culture of literacy that allowed science and medicine and all of these wonderful things. And what's been happening is we've been eroding that. We've been eroding that with our visual culture. We've been eroding that with short form content. We've been eroding it with, with the diminishment of our attention spans. And we know how the adult attention span is now less than a goldfish, like it's eight and a half seconds. And what that means. People are reading less. They're not taking the time to think through complex ideas that require reflection and depth. And if we're not equipping our students to be able to do that, that really scares me for the future. So I guess if we had buckets of all my AI fe like the bucket of immediately harmed children who are developing intimate relationships, often with chatbots and are getting advice about how to harm themselves. There is the medium term fears of children developing relationships with AI and displacing important experiences in human to human relationship that they need and important experiences with learning that they need to become critical thinkers and get the building blocks to be able to think and read and do math at higher levels. And then there's the longer term fears about how if we allow machines to just take over so many parts of our lives, what that does to us as a society, what that does to workers, what that does to the environment with these data centers that they're building in the middle of deserts that don't even have water. So, yeah, there's plenty of fears to go around, John.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I mean, and for me too.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It'S just like, I think that much like social media, you can be lulled into this sense that AI can provide a supplement or replace human interaction in a lot of different ways. And I think the temptation there is that there's no friction with AI.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And that it tells you everything you need to know immediately tells you what you want to hear. It is obsequious, it is sycophantic. And so if children learn that anything they need, they can just ask AI and they'll get it right away and that there's no friction there, and they don't experience the difficulty of navigating relationships and the awkwardness and all that kind.

[Jon Favreau]

Of stuff, you do lose something essential.

[Jacob Goldstein]

About the human experience. And that I worry about about quite a bit. And I also think that all the economic incentives for the AI company, much like the social media companies, is to keep you using the product no matter what. And to keep you using the product. That means it has to tell you.

[Jon Favreau]

What you want to hear, give you everything you want, satisfy all of your.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Desires, and not really care about the consequences of doing so.

[Julie Shelfo]

And it's the same with using tech in the classroom, right? Like when these tools and when the calculator was introduced, people were afraid that it would diminish our math capabilities. And by the way, look at what our math capabilities are as compared to when we first started measuring them. Right. Since the arrival of technology in classrooms, there's been this concomitant decline in reading and math scores. And it's not rocket science. We know that embodied experiences contribute to learning in a deeper and in a different way. So, yeah, I mean, we have these really big questions in front of us about what kind of future we want. And, you know, as a mom, as a human being, you know, I want a human first future where we continue to cherish and enjoy the experiences of being one another that are not mediated by machines or by, you know, any form of technology. Do I want a world with no technology? No, that's not what I'm saying. I think. Think again. It can be really helpful. It can be fun, and there's a lot of places for it. But if our kids are spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day on screens, what about the physical problem? I mean, we've seen a global issue with myopia, with more people becoming nearsighted. In Taiwan, they decided they were going to try and fix this, and they passed a law that every child had to go out and play for two hours. And in a year, they solved the problem. Right, because the children's eyes need to focus at lots of different levels in order to build those muscles. So the solutions here are actually quite simple. We just have to implement them together.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Julie, thank you so much for joining and thank you for everything you're doing. I do talk about this all the time, but I do find hope in that. The support for these reforms is so broad and deep across so many different demographic groups and people across the political spectrum, and I do feel like we are at an inflection point in the last couple years where the tide is turning against the big tech companies. So appreciate all you're doing to lead that fight. And thanks again for joining. It was great talking to you.

[Julie Shelfo]

Yeah, you too. I mean, thanks for your interviews. I was catching up on your podcast this week and you've had some great interviews on on it.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Well, thank you so much.

[Jon Favreau]

Appreciate it.

[Julie Shelfo]

All right, take care. Thanks for having me.

[Jon Favreau]

Two quick housekeeping notes in case you missed it. Pod Save America is going down under for the hopefully just visiting Tour 2026. We're headed to Auckland, New Zealand on February 11, and then three cities in Australia after that, Melbourne on February 13, Brisbane on February 14, and Sydney on February 16. With everything going on in America these days, will we feel the pull of the Commonwealth countries and decide to stay for good?

[Jacob Goldstein]

You'll just have to join us to find out.

[Jon Favreau]

Tickets are on sale right now. For more details and to grab Tickets, head to crooked.com events. Also, the newest book from Crooked Media Reads is coming out on January 27, 2026. It's called hated by all the Right People, Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind. It's by one of our favorite political journalists, New York Times Magazine writer Jason Zenger. So why a book about Tucker Carlson and why now?

[Jacob Goldstein]

Why not?

[Jon Favreau]

Because Tucker Carlson is everywhere right now and the key to understanding our current political moment is the value increase of moral outrage over truth.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Of course, no one has done more to accelerate that than Tucker Carlson and.

[Jon Favreau]

Hated by all the Right People. Jason Zengerly gives a fascinating, informative look at Tucker's political evolution and how his rise traces the rise of the maga movement. The book comes out January 27, but if you pre order a copy of Hated by All the Right People now, you can get 15% off with the code [e-mail] books as always, if you have comments, questions or guest ideas, email [e-mail] and if you're as opinionated as we are, please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. For ad free episodes of Offline and Pod Save America, exclusive content and more. More go to crooked.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. If you like watching your podcast, subscribe to the Offline with Jon Favreau YouTube channel. Don't forget to follow Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok and the other ones for original content, community events and more. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau. It's produced by Emma Ilech Frank. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. Jarek Centeno is our sound editor and engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seglin, Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Delon Villanueva and our digital team who film and share our episodes as videos. Every week. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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