← The Messy Parts
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- [00:00]
Mariam
And so during this, your kids are growing up because this doesn't seem like, you know, the job that's giving you balance at home, but it gives you
- [00:08]
Joanna Coles
balance in two ways, which women never talk about. One, you're paid more, so you get more money to be able to hire things in. But the real luxury in life when you are a working parent is to be able to control your schedule. And what you can do when you're the boss is control your schedule.
- [00:26]
Mariam
What did that mean?
- [00:26]
Joanna Coles
Well, just means that if your kids need you, you don't sweat, you know, buckets of anxiety that you're gonna have to take the day off. Cause you're the boss. And I always try and say to women, you want as much control over your schedule as you can get. Because that's the thing that is, that means it's less stressful.
- [00:55]
Mariam
Today on the Messy Parts, we're going to talk about how curiosity can drive ambition. We have on Joanna Coles. She is at the epicenter of the media landscape, starting in the UK, but really here in New York City. The thing about curiosity is that it can get you to the top and also have you wonder at that moment if you should pause and step off. You once jumped into a taxi to ambush a CEO for a job. One of my favorite stories today, a 24 year old doing the same thing might be called Unhinged. Is that the kind of hustle you think people need to land a job today? Or do you think that that was just a thing of our era?
- [01:33]
Joanna Coles
The hustle that people need to land a job is to do something that makes them stand out and it should be appropriate for the job and their level of experience. So I hustled my way. We literally drag raced up Park Avenue and until Kathy Black, who was the then CEO of Hearst Magazines, pulled over and I leapt into her car. But I was in my early 40s and I'd earned the experience to do that. But there are lots of ways to stand out. One of the most effective things someone did to me actually was send me a packet of my favorite biscuits, Hobnobs, McVitty's Hobnobs. With a note saying, I. I've read that you, like Hobnobs, would love to come and talk to you. It was an excellent letter. It was written in beautiful penmanship in the door.
- [02:22]
Mariam
And did they get the job?
- [02:24]
Joanna Coles
They didn't get the job cause I didn't have a job for them. But what they did get was me as a quasi mentor for a bit. And then I followed their career, and I've talked about them with other people.
- [02:35]
Mariam
I like that story. Okay, so one of the things you've been known to say more recently, for which I like to say you've gone viral, is that feminism got it wrong. Now, I don't know that everybody would agree, which is great. I actually love that for somebody who's 28 years old, you know, working 80 hours a week, freezing their eggs, like, are you telling them that, like, feminism got it wrong and they should be living their life differently? Like, what's the lesson from that for you?
- [03:00]
Joanna Coles
What I wish I had done when I was younger was think about the whole life that I wanted to lead, not just about the career opportunities that were opening up to me. And I graduated in 1984, which is the Jurassic period to. I'm sure lots of people watching and listening to this. But at the time, what was exciting, and I sense there is still a moment of this going on now, is there were opportunities opening up for women that we were excited to seize. What there wasn't was any conversation about how fun it is to be a parent. At the time, the conversation was about, it's exhausting to be a parent. You're gonna have to juggle. It's very exp. You're gonna be depressed. There were none of the fun parts of being a parent presented. And when you become a parent, which I'm very glad I did, and I have my first son at 36, my second son at 39. I felt as if I wish someone had said to me, it is gonna be so much more fun. And while it's fantastic to have a big career and a big job, and I've loved mine, and it's not yet over. The thing that is most important to me is having been a mother. And that's the bit that I think feminism doesn't celebrate enough. But the expectations we put on mothers are ridiculous. And I want to remind people that this is one of the most natural things to do, and we shouldn't make it seem like it's impossible.
- [04:31]
Mariam
That's a definitely different thing than I would many might have thought you meant. So I think that's good that we talked about that. You know, I think as women in particular.
- [04:39]
Joanna Coles
Well, what I will say is that I don't think feminism celebrated being a mother. I think they derided being a mother. I think they diminished it. And it's one of the most important roles a woman can have.
- [04:49]
Mariam
It's not so much about that. You can't have both. You can actually celebrate it, even though it can at times be difficult, but also joyful.
- [04:56]
Joanna Coles
Everything's difficult. Anything that is worth anything is difficult. And this idea that. That it's not drives people to madness.
- [05:05]
Mariam
We're gonna start the conversation. I, like, we sort of already started the conversation.
- [05:09]
Joanna Coles
Well, I feel like we got straight into it, which I would expect nothing else, Mariam, from your conversations, which I think is striking a really interesting new note.
- [05:17]
Mariam
Well, first of all, I wanna say thank you. I didn't get a chance to say that when you walked in the door. I really appreciate your coming on the podcast.
- [05:22]
Joanna Coles
Pleasure.
- [05:23]
Mariam
You and I got to know each other when you were at Mary Claire. And my favorite note of the day. Cause we've now done 40 podcasts, which is hard to believe, is that when I send a loose framework to say this is the general themes of the conversation. You are literally the only person who sent me notes back.
- [05:37]
Joanna Coles
Oh, really? Oh, God. That's the editor in me.
- [05:40]
Mariam
I was just gonna say an editor writing the narrative with me. So you grow up in Yorkshire, you go to London.
- [05:47]
Joanna Coles
Yorkshire is for people who don't know, like the Texas of Britain. Just saying it's a little wild up there, you know, it's Wuthering Heights. It's where the Brontes came from.
- [05:57]
Mariam
So from Yorkshire to London, you make your way. You get married and you come to New York first for the Telegraph or the Times and then for the Guardian.
- [06:05]
Joanna Coles
No, I come for the Guardian as the bureau chief for the Guardian. Then after a year, I move to the Times and we get married after 9, 11, when I'm just about to have my second son. Because at the time, for those who were here in New York, everything felt very uncertain. They were talking about deporting foreigners. I was anxious because my oldest son, who was then two and a half, had an American passport, but I had a British passport still. And my husband and I at that point weren't married, so we wanted all our papers in order.
- [06:36]
Mariam
And you ended up actually writing a book together.
- [06:39]
Joanna Coles
We wrote a book together about what it was like moving to New York and having a baby together.
- [06:44]
Mariam
Kind of a diary, you know, his
- [06:45]
Joanna Coles
version, your version, he says. She says it was a lot of fun. Yeah.
- [06:49]
Mariam
So oftentimes people take a job to become bureau chief of the Guardian. It's kind of like you're checking the box and then you go back. You didn't do that. Why not?
- [07:00]
Joanna Coles
I had had a wonderful career in London. I'd been there for 13 years. London is quite small compared to America. I've always loved the idea of America. I studied American literature and American history at university, and I was just excited at the idea of moving here. Cause it's so much bigger and the stakes are higher. You get paid more, the opportunities are bigger. And that was very exciting to me. And people characterize me as very ambitious because I've had a sort of. I've had a big career. I'm actually not that ambitious. What I am is. No, no. What I was going to say is what I'm not actually is ambitious. What I am is curious. I am really curious. And I like being in the next room. And I'm interested in the next thing.
- [07:44]
Mariam
I'm totally going to push back on you.
- [07:45]
Joanna Coles
That's what drives me.
- [07:46]
Mariam
I'm totally pushing back on you.
- [07:48]
Joanna Coles
That's what drives me. You know, I'm a journalist. I love asking questions. I. Knowing what the next thing is. We are living at an incredible moment in the culture in terms of what's happening. You know, what's happening with AI, what's happening with the impacts of tech on our lives. Who isn't interested in that? I don't understand it when people aren't interested in it and don't want to find out more about it.
- [08:12]
Mariam
But you start off as sort of a journalist writing about world affairs. You pivot to women's magazines, right? Like women. Women's empowerment. Right. You go from Marie Claire to Cosmo 17.
- [08:23]
Joanna Coles
Well, I pivot from news to magazines because I have two sons. And I can't just drop everything and rush off to big news events because I have two little children at home who I want to see. So actually, when they grow up and leave home, I have the opportunity to go back into news, which is what I'm doing at the Daily Beast and. Which requires more of you than magazines did back then.
- [08:49]
Mariam
But actually, you made me think of something. So when you decide to stay in the States, you can't stay with the British papers that you're with. First you go to New York magazine, and then you go to a woman's magazine that was for women over 40.
- [09:01]
Joanna Coles
Yeah. Called Moore. So I went to New York magazine actually, at the recommendation of Michael Wolf, and they get me a visa, a work visa. And then by the time. So I do three years there, then I go to Moore magazine for a year before I take the Marie Claire job, at which point I have a green card.
- [09:19]
Mariam
But that Moore magazine job was a job that was probably not big enough for you, but you took it. And I'm sort of Curious about that, right? Because I think everybody thinks that the ladder is like a regular climb up and sometimes you do sideways moves. Even what you're describing now of moving to women's magazines to be able to prioritize your kids versus being able to travel at the drop of a dime. Right. That move was not a move that many people would have made.
- [09:47]
Joanna Coles
Well, I wasn't anticipating making it actually. What happened is I was at New York magazine, which was very demanding work, time wise. And I was very fond of it because they gave me a visa. And it was my first experience in American media, which is different to British media. So there was a sort of cultural absorption for me of, oh, they do it differently in America. Then I moved to More cause I went as the number two, which was fun. But when I went for the interview, I met Peggy Northrup, the then editor and I just really liked her. And I thought, oh, it'd be fun to work with someone who is a woman in a senior position. She seems really interesting, really nice. She was doing something interesting. I was just over 40. It was very much talking about all the things that are now in fashion, perimenopause, menopause, all those kind of issues that really people were. This was 20 years ago and it felt like interesting subject matter to me. I was living the subject matter. I really liked Peggy and I did the job for a year and the job got me to Marie Claire.
- [10:52]
Mariam
Why did you only stay here because
- [10:55]
Joanna Coles
the Marie Claire job came up?
- [10:57]
Mariam
Did you think that was a sideways move that you should stay at New York Mag? I mean, did that ever even occur to you? Like, maybe this isn't because, you know, there's ego involved. Sometimes it gets in the way of people taking opportunities because they think like, I'm too big for this?
- [11:11]
Joanna Coles
No, I didn't think that. And that's never actually how I've approached a job. I'm just like, is this going to be interesting? I had done three years at New York magazine. It was intense. Adam Moss, the editor, wasn't going anywhere. So I was sort of blocked in terms of my desire to figure out what is it like to run a place. It was a more senior job at Moore, though arguably the footprint of Moore was smaller for New York. But I was really interested in the subject matter. And it's always interesting editing something that is about the life you are living.
- [11:43]
Mariam
And so the curiosity is really sort of what moves you.
- [11:46]
Joanna Coles
It sounds like curiosity is always what moves me. And also what was fun was the readership around Moore was deeply Passionate, because no one else was doing this. No one wanted to talk about women over 40. I mean, now you see the L' Oreal ad with Gillian Anderson saying, oh, I'm invisible. I'm invisible. This was stuff we were talking about 20 years ago. Moore.
- [12:06]
Mariam
So you go to Marie Claire and then Cosmo, right? And you have sort of this what looks from the outside like a, you know, meteoric rise.
- [12:15]
Joanna Coles
It was super fun.
- [12:16]
Mariam
Super fun, super fun. And you begin to. I mean, your curiosity really comes to play. Cause it's sort of the beginning of when media starts to get disintermediated. But you begin leaning to all kinds of things, like doing series on YouTube and partnerships with Snap. And it's this incredible journey where also you become way more known as an entity yourself. What was that like?
- [12:38]
Joanna Coles
Well, it was just part of the job, really. I mean, if you're going to do those jobs, you know, someone has to sort of lead from the front. And if you're the editor in chief, that's what you end up doing. But I work with incredibly talented people. I mean, one of my first hires at Marie Claire was Lucy Kalin, who was by far the best sort of profile writer out there. She'd spent nearly 20 years at GQ. And Nina Garcia, who'd been at Elle, she was on Project Runway. So she was much better known than I was. Fantastic fashion director, really fun to work with. And, you know, we would go to the fashion shows and fall about laughing. It was so much fun. And it was the heady. It was the heady end of times at magazines. You knew the end was coming. You could see the rise of digital. It wasn't going to last. And so I think we sort of enjoyed every moment of it.
- [13:29]
Mariam
And so during this, your kids are growing up, because this doesn't seem like, you know, the job that's giving you balance at home, but it gives you
- [13:37]
Joanna Coles
balance in two ways, which women never talk about. One, you're paid more, so you get more money to be able to hire things in. But the second most important thing, and I always remember Kristen Gillibrand saying this to me, the junior senator from Neil. The real luxury in life when you are a working parent is to be able to control your schedule. And what you can do when you are the boss is control your schedule.
- [14:02]
Mariam
What did that mean?
- [14:03]
Joanna Coles
Well, it just means that if your kids need you, you can say to someone, I'm sorry, I can't do this, or I'm going to be late in tomorrow because I've got to go to a sporting thing. Or I'm going to read the story Tomorrow in my 5 year old's class or I'm leaving early tonight because I'm going to the school play or, or one of your children is ill, you don't sweat, you know, buckets of anxiety that you're gonna have to take the day off cause you're the boss. And I always try and say to women, you want as much control over your schedule as you can get because that's the thing that is, that means it's less stressful having children.
- [14:39]
Mariam
I will say having a BlackBerry also became a game changer because you could be in touch from, you know, the ballet recital if you needed to be.
- [14:47]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, of course. Well, and now everybody understands the benefits of working from home and zoom and all those things. Post Covid, we're much more cognizant of that.
- [14:55]
Mariam
But were there messy parts to that journey like versus what it looks like from the outside, which is just a meteoric rise?
- [15:01]
Joanna Coles
Well, looking at it from the outside and saying, oh, it was just a meteoric rise isn't really understanding what the job is. You know, I did six years at Marie Claire to, for the Cosmo job, which was the biggest title that Hearst had and again was enormous fun to do.
- [15:17]
Mariam
Helena Girly Brown was like a storied.
- [15:19]
Joanna Coles
Well, she was an incredible. She was an incredible editor ahead of her time who really rebuilt the modern magazine. I mean, she really created it and came to it at a time when women were changing, when the pill had just arrived. I think she took over the editorship of Cosmo the same year the pill came out. So this understanding that you could have sex without being really worrying that you were going to get pregnant was a huge sort of moment. Helen was really, you know, the doyen of editors who for three generations of women, remade the magazine. There would be no modern Vanity Fair without Helen Gurley Brown. Tina Brown did an incredible job reimagining it. But actually Helen built the template and didn't quite get credit for it and
- [16:04]
Mariam
actually was not afraid of living a bit out loud, which was unusual for her generation.
- [16:09]
Joanna Coles
But to your point about was it messy? All jobs are messy. It doesn't matter if you're doing a big job or a little job. They're all messy, right? I mean, unless you're literally doing the same thing every single day. And even then it can get messy. What I loved about the job was that every day was different. And it was at a time when women's magazines mattered and they had a voice and they brought information that wasn't in the flow. I think that women miss them. And Instagram is not the same. And you don't get the same voyage of discovery on Instagram. You don't get the same voice. It's a mashup of lots of different voices, no matter how good your algorithmic feed is. And I miss the point of view of a good magazine.
- [16:50]
Mariam
I loved magazines, loved them. I remember going to an A and A conference where they had just all the magazines and you could just take them. And there wasn't enough room in my suitcase to bring.
- [17:00]
Joanna Coles
Right. No, no. And I remember, you know, you go on a flight and you go to Hudson and you stock up with magazines. Now you go to Hudson News and it's just nuts.
- [17:09]
Mariam
But I don't enjoy them the same way either. And maybe cause they're not what they used to be.
- [17:12]
Joanna Coles
Well, they're not as good. They don't have the money. And it's incredibly difficult, as everybody found out, to compete with the phone. It's incredibly difficult to compete with that sense of being connected right now to your friends and to things that your friends are doing. And the point of magazines when we were growing up was that they were this. And I've used this expression before, but I think it's a very apt one. They're like a finger beckoning you to the future. They're full of new things that you don't know about, new ideas, new events, new fashion and new ideas which are going to fuel you for the next month. And I think that's missing from the culture right now. That's not what you get from Instagram or TikTok.
- [17:57]
Mariam
So we both came up in an industry where we experienced, we saw, right. If you were curious and had any wherewithal, you saw the discerning mediation that was coming towards you. And we both love a good turnaround and we went in to try and fix things. But what was it like for you knowing that that business was gonna really pivot in a big way?
- [18:19]
Joanna Coles
Well, it was a combination of exhilarating because change is always sort of, you know, I'm someone that likes change and I'm sort of curious about it. And then it sort of nerve wracking because essentially what I was doing in that job as well as trying to sort of pivot to digital and figure out new digital partners with, you know, Facebook or Snapchat or Instagram or whatever was you're managing decline. You can see that there is a movement of people away from print to the Phone precisely because the phone is this incredibly engaging instrument. We're beginning to live there. We're beginning to watch things there. We're abandoning television in the same way. And that legacy media was being structurally challenged in an unexpected and much faster way than people had anticipated. But, you know, at Hearst, they were very good. We were very good at building all sorts of digital channels, but you weren't going to be able to beat Instagram or TikTok or Snapchat because they had a scale that we didn't have. And they were purely digital and were built for the job and were built for the phone. They were built around the phone.
- [19:32]
Mariam
They didn't have the tech debt. I mean, I remember when Tina Brown merged Newsweek with the Daily Beast, I thought to myself, oh, my God, they're taking on all the issues of Newsweek. Like, to a company that was on the move, it was like all of a sudden it was gonna get all the hindrances of legacy media. You knew that that was gonna bring its own complications. And I say that as somebody who was part of the turnaround team at Gannett at a time where, you know, it's still on the TV stations and the newspapers and, you know, to your point, you're trying to reimagine the business as it's declining. My favorite was when they convinced me to take on national sales. I was like, why am I taking on national sales? Like, I'm going to go to the board and report a declining number.
- [20:11]
Joanna Coles
That doesn't sound like a good game plan. No fun at all. No fun at all.
- [20:14]
Mariam
And the days where there was good news, the publisher of USA Today would share the good news first because, well, that was good news to share. And I was like, okay, wait, I'm only going to be giving the bad news. I was like, this is great.
- [20:25]
Joanna Coles
That's not fun. That's not fun. But. Well, what I was always looking for was context. How bad was it for everybody else, and were we maintaining market share or occasionally growing market share even when you were declining?
- [20:39]
Mariam
So you do this incredible rise, and David Carey's about to move on, and you get bypassed for the big job. My favorite thing was going back to watch that video view on your walking treadmill desk. Not just going out quietly, but going out very publicly. Kind of like a millennial. That was a total boss move.
- [21:01]
Joanna Coles
Well, that treadmill desk was really fun. I mean, to be fair, I didn't have the skills that David Carey or Troy Young, who took over. They were much more business than I was. My skill is as an editor, that's what I'm good at, and that's not what that role is.
- [21:16]
Mariam
But still, you could have just been like, okay, fine, I'm gonna stay here and be a good girl and just make it work.
- [21:22]
Joanna Coles
Well, I almost did, actually. And then I thought, I've been here 12 years. My younger son was about to go off to college. You know, there were other things I wanted to do, and I wanted to try different things, which I couldn't do in that role. It just felt like, you know, sometimes there are moments where you just think, oh, there's a break in the clouds here. I should. I should take that route.
- [21:44]
Mariam
You basically took a pause, and you announced your pause quite publicly. And I know lots of people were.
- [21:50]
Joanna Coles
I didn't take a pause, actually. That's not how I thought of it. What happened was I left the magazine industry.
- [21:55]
Mariam
But actually, if you go back and look at that video, you say, I'm pausing. More news to come.
- [21:59]
Joanna Coles
Well, that might have just been about me saying that I was gonna do something else.
- [22:05]
Mariam
Yeah, and I think you did a whole bunch of different things. Before you, like, locked into one thing. You sort of did a portfolio play, right? Which I know lots of people are going through today, honestly. And in that moment of interval where they're trying to do the portfolio thing until they figure out what the next thing is that they're going to do, it can be very difficult, and particularly difficult when you walk into a party and you've been the former or whatever, to now be like, I'm doing the portfolio thing. I'm doing a bunch of different things. I don't know what I'm doing. Was that difficult for you? Because what I loved about it, and I think there's a lesson in that, is that you took the bull by the horn and you were like, I'm announcing it. I'm not hiding from the fact that I'm on a journey.
- [22:43]
Joanna Coles
I was in the very fortunate position of having a lot of things offered to me. And what I knew I didn't want to do was tie myself down to the next corporate gig.
- [22:54]
Mariam
How did you know that?
- [22:56]
Joanna Coles
Because I'd come out of 12 years of doing a sort of corporate gig. I mean, as much fun as being a magazine editor is, it's the corporate. And I had a development deal with ABC Studios to develop more television. I just wanted to try different things. And also, the industry was changing. I joined the board of Snapchat. I then joined the board of Sonos, the software and hardware company. I did Some investing, which was fun and I hadn't really had time to do before. And I joined a series of small private boards that were more venture. And I had a sort of blast actually trying things. I became an advisor to Masterclass. I was an advisor to Bustle Digital Media. It was fun to have different influences and not to have to wake up and think about one particular thing in the morning.
- [23:49]
Mariam
Were there days in that that were difficult?
- [23:52]
Joanna Coles
There are always days that are difficult in everything that you do. So the difficult things were managing a lot of different people, so managing a lot of different founders, trying to remember to stay on top of the issues that each different company had. But I actually found it very stimulating.
- [24:15]
Mariam
I would say there's a lot of context switching when you're like in the portfolio phase, because it's not like you're digging in to make Cosmo work. To your point, you're managing a lot of different things.
- [24:24]
Joanna Coles
Right.
- [24:24]
Mariam
But there are also days where I say to myself, oh, it was easier being the former global CMO of Hyatt Hotels. There was one thing to focus on. Now I'm juggling lots of things and you're having to sort of make your own way versus just like plug into a system that exists. It's not just all like amazing and rosy. Right. It's still hard, but it requires way more self determination than showing up at a job where you know you're sort of working in the system.
- [24:50]
Joanna Coles
Well, a job has a momentum to it which just, you know, you sort of, as you say, you fit into the momentum. I quite liked having two hours in the middle of the day to go to the gym or to go shopping or to walk around Central Park. I liked the freedom. And I don't have any.
- [25:05]
Mariam
I've never had anxious moments of being like, oh my God, it's over, or oh my God, I made a mistake. You have no self doubt. It's amazing.
- [25:13]
Joanna Coles
No, no, I have plenty of self doubt, but it doesn't show up. And that's not how it shows up.
- [25:19]
Mariam
How did the anxiety show up or the self doubt?
- [25:23]
Joanna Coles
That's a very good question. How did the anxiety and the self doubt show up? Probably in just spending extra time on work for people that you didn't know very well. Cause you wanted to make sure that they really understood what you were trying
- [25:41]
Mariam
to do because you wanted to make sure you were doing a good job.
- [25:44]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, and I wanted them to know I was doing a good job and I wanted to be doing a good job. You know, when you don't know, you know, founders in particular, I've worked with a lot of them of big tech companies can be very demanding. They can be very capricious. And so you want to make sure that you've really prepared so that they can't throw something at you that you're not. That you haven't thought about.
- [26:06]
Mariam
Why? Because you have a feeling that they're trying to get you?
- [26:09]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, frequently. I think lots of people feel like that working with them.
- [26:14]
Mariam
Did you not feel that way when you were in the corporate world?
- [26:18]
Joanna Coles
No, I never felt like that in the corporate world, actually.
- [26:21]
Mariam
What's the difference?
- [26:22]
Joanna Coles
Well, I think it's very different if you founded your own company. I think people who found their own companies often think that other people are either taking advantage of them or don't fully understand what they're trying to do or that the only way they can do this is a certain way because that's the way it's worked for them. And I think people in bigger corporations that have had experience working in other companies are often more flexible.
- [26:49]
Mariam
One of the things that happened in that period when you left was that you were playing tennis and you told your husband you were done. That was a big moment because you'd been married for a long time. Two beautiful boys who are now launched.
- [27:02]
Joanna Coles
I'm giving you the love, but they're independent financially, it's fantastic. And they both got jobs. Yes. Thank you.
- [27:09]
Mariam
You know, so something clearly broke for you to walk away.
- [27:13]
Joanna Coles
Well, I wouldn't think of it as breaking. And I think that the way we talk about relationships in our culture is kind of hung up and we use the wrong language. I think that we had a very successful 28 year relationship. And then I wanted to sort of see the world beyond it.
- [27:32]
Mariam
I mean, I know a lot of people wait until their boys are out of college or their kids are out of college before they make a decision like that did. Were you waiting?
- [27:40]
Joanna Coles
No. I mean, I just think that I reached a point where my life was in a period of change and I sort of wanted more change.
- [27:52]
Mariam
It's interesting. I've noticed and Brooke Baldwin was here and one of the things when she left CNN she talked about was she made a lot of changes and one of them was on the personal side.
- [28:00]
Joanna Coles
Right.
- [28:00]
Mariam
Because sometimes when you're in the system making it work, you're just holding it all together.
- [28:05]
Joanna Coles
Right.
- [28:05]
Mariam
But when you step away, you actually have the wherewithal to ask yourself what you want.
- [28:12]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, I think that's true. And I think when you're Both parenting together, there's again, momentum is. There is, you know, there's momentum in the workplace when you have a job, and there's momentum in family life. And then the momentum changes. Because our oldest son had gone to college. Our youngest son was about to finish high school. He had one more year to go. And you're just like, I think I want to change here.
- [28:35]
Mariam
Was that difficult?
- [28:36]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, of course it was difficult.
- [28:38]
Mariam
Messy.
- [28:40]
Joanna Coles
I don't think of it as particularly messy, but it's.
- [28:42]
Mariam
You don't think of much as particularly messy. I just want to point out to
- [28:45]
Joanna Coles
you, I think of lots of things as messy and I think of lots of things as difficult. I think that's what life is. I don't come at this thinking that life is supposed to be a straight line and there should be no mess. I, I am conscious that life is chaotic, that you have no idea. If I leave here, I could get knocked over by a car on the way home. I'm very much someone that sort of tries to live both in the moment and have a larger sense of A, how lucky I am and B, to seize every opportunity and moment.
- [29:18]
Mariam
I always have a plan B and a C. Cause I'm waiting for the chaos.
- [29:22]
Joanna Coles
Right. Well. And you're waiting for something to go wrong always. And if you've been in news as long as I have, you sort of assume that something will go wrong.
- [29:30]
Mariam
Well, and I get that from my childhood of having experienced much, you know, revolution, this being thrown here, being thrown there. Yeah, right. People call me and ask me about what's going on in Iran. And I said, like, we've. I've been living with, you know, sort of a numbness about that for 47 years. So of course I check the news. I, of course I check in on people, but it's hard for me to feel like, really. I think there was only one moment a couple years ago during the woman life freedom thing where I actually felt something about it. You know, sometimes you seem. Not you. I can seem callous because I move through it. And my daughter will say, well, mom doesn't have normal reactions.
- [30:05]
Joanna Coles
Well, I'm sure you have normal reactions, but. But, you know, I, I. All of life is chaos and messy every single day.
- [30:13]
Mariam
I want to talk about AI for a second because this is a little bit reminiscent of the early days of the Internet, where AI, you know, wherever it goes, which I don't think we all can see totally clearly, is bringing a very big level of disintermediation to all kinds of things, including the media business, for example, you know, you were around when, you know, the Internet came about, and we sort of experienced that, and we've seen the ramifications of that because our business was very much impacted by that. What are you seeing? What excites you and what are you worried about?
- [30:44]
Joanna Coles
Oh, well, lots of it excites me. I mean, it's fantastic to be able to do things so much faster than you used to be able to do. How we use it, as at the Daily Beast, is to try and think about more efficient ways of bringing stories to people. We don't use it to do our journalism. And actually, happily, one of the things AI can't really do is predict what news is going to happen. I'm stretching because, as you know, in my last four months, I've had two hip replacements.
- [31:10]
Mariam
That's messy. That's right. That's your messy part.
- [31:12]
Joanna Coles
That was messy. Yeah. Although, I mean, I will say shout out to NYU Langone, it went as well as it possibly could, but I do need to stretch this leg right now. Stretch away.
- [31:22]
Mariam
Do you want to pause?
- [31:22]
Joanna Coles
Okay. No, no, I'm fine. But I'm just conscious that I'm sitting on my side to talk to you more efficiently. And actually, I do that myself, too,
- [31:30]
Mariam
because, as you know, I also. It's a.
- [31:32]
Joanna Coles
But you also have hip issues. I'm just gonna do this. We bonded over our hip issues, and I'm just gonna say that you will feel better when you've had them done, if you decide to have them done. It's great to be pain free.
- [31:43]
Mariam
I'm holding out.
- [31:44]
Joanna Coles
Okay, you don't need to hold out.
- [31:47]
Mariam
Um, okay, let's come back to A.I.
- [31:48]
Joanna Coles
yeah, well, if you need a good surgeon, I can recommend Matthew Heppenstaller. NYU Lango. Changed my life. Changed my life.
- [31:57]
Mariam
Okay. AI yes. I'm assuming Matthew didn't use AI on your hips, but let us use AI
- [32:02]
Joanna Coles
But I'm sure that when I go for my mammogram next week, I would rather have it checked against. You know, I want the AI running through it to check it against 500,000 other mammograms rather than just one doctor who's exhausted from, you know, the night before. I mean, listen, it's going to transform all sorts of things, and it's pretty exciting. I mean, we've been using it as Snapchat for a long time, so I've had some sort of insights there. But, you know, I have Claude and I have ChatGPT, and I sort of use them for everything. And actually, I had an interesting incident the other day where coming off the painkillers for my. I woke up one morning feeling kind of trembly and anxious and fragile, which is not how I normally wake up in the morning.
- [32:49]
Mariam
Definitely not.
- [32:50]
Joanna Coles
And then I suddenly realized that I'd finished my 10 days of tramadol. So I went on ChatGPT just to check it out, and literally had every single symptom. And because I'd been asking it about my surgery, it came up with a whole thing. The minute I read it, I understood I was in a kind of very mild, frankly, opiate withdrawal. And it was very helpful. It gave me really good perspective. So I think it's. I mean, it's fantastic.
- [33:17]
Mariam
Okay, so, you know, one of the moments of reinvention you had was you went into the world of spacs, by the way.
- [33:21]
Joanna Coles
Right.
- [33:22]
Mariam
Which, again, I love you for being like, yeah, I can do that. And people always say to me, like, you've moved industries now. I never thought to go into the world of finance. I think I tried investment banking and
- [33:32]
Joanna Coles
ran away, but you tried it. I had never gone into finance. I wasn't sure if I would like was very different to what I expected. And then came in. Well, the people were different to how I expected them to be. And I think if you're a journalist, you know, you always think, perhaps there are more interesting people working in other careers. And the way we fetishize rich people in our culture made me think, well, maybe the bankers are really the interesting people. And then I spent time with them. Well, I sort of. I'd never really had any exposure to them. And I thought, well, you know, I found it a very interesting diversion. It was during COVID So we did a lot of it on Zoom. And then when Covid was over, I stopped doing it.
- [34:16]
Mariam
While that may not have been the success that you might have wanted going in, definitely a learning for you, I think, in a lot of different ways. For people who are looking to pivot and might have fear of trying different things, what's the advice you have for them to actually lean into trying different things? Cause I generally find people are.
- [34:34]
Joanna Coles
Well, I think you have to decide if you want to try it. Do you want to commit six months or a year or two years of your life to this? Why not try things? I mean, I don't really understand when people don't try things.
- [34:46]
Mariam
You're not afraid of failure?
- [34:48]
Joanna Coles
No, of course not. I mean, you shouldn't be afraid of failure.
- [34:51]
Mariam
Why not?
- [34:52]
Joanna Coles
Well, because no life is without failure. Right. And you're never going to try anything if you're afraid of failure.
- [34:57]
Mariam
Yeah, I'm a big believer in that. But, you know, I also joined a flash mob on Sunday, so most people think like, oh, my God, okay, so then you make this pivot to the Daily Beast. Right. What makes you decide to go back into media?
- [35:10]
Joanna Coles
My partner, Ben Sherwood, a business partner,
- [35:13]
Mariam
and I from abc.
- [35:14]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, he left ABC at the same time as I left Hearst. And we had always wanted to work together. He was on the West Coast, I was on the East Coast. And we thought of trying to create some actually, what turned out to be substack, but a sort of journalistic agency where journalists were news creators. Barry Diller, who owns the Daily Beast or owns half of the Daily Beast, his banker, approached Ben and I to see if we would be interested in doing the Daily Beast.
- [35:41]
Mariam
Were you already partnering you and Ben?
- [35:43]
Joanna Coles
Well, we were sort of. We'd been working on a project that we called Scoop from the Evelyn War Novel. And we were approached and asked if we would think of doing the Daily Beast together. We'd both looked at it separately, and we hadn't even thought of doing it together. And it suddenly felt like, oh, why wouldn't we take on a brand like this? It's a fantastic brand. It was an election year, and we just love. We both love news. And we were like, why not? Let's give it a try. Let's leap in together. Which we did. And then we lucked into, as you know, the most almighty news cycle. And we couldn't have anticipated.
- [36:22]
Mariam
And you already knew Michael Wolff.
- [36:24]
Joanna Coles
Well, Michael Wolff came along as the sort of the second year, but the first year. We started the day of the Stormy Daniels trial. Then there was the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting. There was the unexpected return of Donald Trump in the November election. And it was just an incredible cycle. He's a tabloid president. The Daily Beast is a tabloid site, a smart tabloid site. And it felt like the two were made for each other. I had known Michael Wolff for a long time. He'd written four incredibly successful books on Donald Trump, had had enormous access to Donald Trump. And so it felt very natural to reach out to him and say, you should be contributing. We started a podcast. Michael became an incredibly popular guest, the head of Trump. We revamped the Daily Beast podcast. Michael came on, and then it was very clear that there was room for a spinoff podcast with Michael that we called Inside Trump's and has gone on to be one of. Well, YouTube told us it was Their fastest growing political.
- [37:28]
Mariam
Listen.
- [37:28]
Joanna Coles
Yes, it's really, it's really fun. And then Michael had spent a lot of time with Jeffrey Epstein. That whole story broke again. And Epstein had been a big source for Michael about Donald Trump and Donald Trump's world. Again, we had no idea this was coming, that Michael was a very useful navigator through the world of Jeffrey Epstein, which has bewildered people and confused people. And turns out he was sitting at the center of an astonishing network of people from, you know, British Prince Andrew to Bill Gates to, you know, God knows who.
- [38:05]
Mariam
What surprised you about this part of the journey?
- [38:08]
Joanna Coles
Well, just how much fun it was. And also that you have pattern recognition when you're rebuilding a brand, which I'd done at Marie Claire, I'd done at Cosmo. You have a sort of playbook of what this feels like. And Ben is a fantastic, you know, I mean, he's just, he's created so many playbooks for very successful news brands.
- [38:30]
Mariam
You clearly love news and you definitely are always curious and looking for the next thing, right? When Mamdame started running, did you see his trajectory?
- [38:40]
Joanna Coles
No. Cause I wasn't paying attention to New York news. I was very, very absorbed by the bigger story, by the Trump story.
- [38:49]
Mariam
But now when you see that having played out, what's your takeaway from that? Like, what's your news view of that?
- [38:54]
Joanna Coles
Well, I think he's a once in a generation politician. I think he's incredibly talented. I think, you know, what's interesting is that he appears to be without a party. I don't quite know what being a democratic socialist means beyond what he's doing with the job right now. But I think he was elected on a. On a mood, you know, and I think he's sunny, he's smiley, you know, he's clearly wildly inexperienced, but very good at retail politics. Fantastic at retail politics. And it turns out that's what people like, that's what people responded to. And he's funny. I mean, his sense of humor. Donald Trump is funny, you know, and the sense of humor gets you a long way. And it's a really undervalued quality of being a politician.
- [39:39]
Mariam
Okay, well, we're gonna do quick rapid fire. All right. What's an alternate career you would have picked?
- [39:43]
Joanna Coles
Fighter pilot.
- [39:45]
Mariam
When was the last time you cried?
- [39:47]
Joanna Coles
I never cry.
- [39:48]
Mariam
I knew you were gonna say that.
- [39:49]
Joanna Coles
Actually, that's not true. You know what, the last time I cried was actually yesterday when I went for my follow up appointment with my hip surgeon. The man who's changed my life.
- [39:59]
Mariam
The man who's gonna change my life.
- [40:00]
Joanna Coles
Yes. And when I started thanking him profusely towards the end of the our follow up appointment, I could feel myself building to tears of gratitude. So obviously I stuffed them down.
- [40:13]
Mariam
Because God forbid we cry. Yeah. What's one thing you'd never do again?
- [40:17]
Joanna Coles
Well, actually, there was an episode of Project Runway where I wore bright yellow pants. I would never wear them again. And they had too high of a waist and it looked like I was a child who'd had someone pulled their pants right up under their armpits. I would never wear those yellow pants again.
- [40:33]
Mariam
Burn them. I'm with you.
- [40:35]
Joanna Coles
They went a long time ago.
- [40:37]
Mariam
I'm glad. You know what? I'm glad to hear that. Joanna, thank you so much for coming on. This was as much fun as I expected. Maybe even more good.
- [40:44]
Joanna Coles
Well, I'm thrilled to be here. And I hope it's messy enough for you.
- [40:48]
Mariam
I hope you enjoyed this episode with Joanna Coles. I know that she has a lot of really interesting nuggets. Now remember, tell 10 friends, like it, review it. That's how we get to tell you more messy stories.