JON Lovett doesn't like birthday attention. Sitting in a SiriusXM studio, he concedes that birthdays are "a fun opportunity to get your friends together," but having all those eyes on him makes him uncomfortable. It's a bit odd to hear a man who hosts two podcasts-including one he just taped in this very studio discuss his uneasy relationship to attention. It's even odder given he has just returned from filming the upcoming season of Survivor.
Lovett properly entered the public eye in 2008, when, after trying standup in New York and then working as a speechwriter for Hillary Clinton when she was a New York senator, he was hired as a speechwriter for President Barack Obama. After spending a term in Washington, D.C., with the Obama administration, he went to Hollywood and co-created 1600 Penn—a short-lived network sitcom about a fictional First Family that prompted our critic to write, “What’s onscreen is so tepid and unimaginative that it practically compelled my mind to wander.”
Still, Lovett stayed in L.A., and he and fellow former Obama staffers Tommy Vietor, Jon Favreau, and Dan Pfeiffer started a limited-run podcast for The Ringer covering the 2016 election called Keepin’ It 1600. After Trump was elected, they went out on their own with Pod Save America. It was immediately successful—post-Obama, it turned out, liberals were eager to listen to a bunch of his former staffers talk about how to get the country back on track (and shout a bit about bad Republican behavior). In the years since, PSA has grown to be just one part of the larger Crooked Media, headed up by Vietor, Favreau, and Lovett.
Esta historia es de la edición July 1-14, 2024 de New York magazine.
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Esta historia es de la edición July 1-14, 2024 de New York magazine.
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THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR
IN NOVEMBER, Sotheby's made history when it sold for a million bucks a painting made by artificial intelligence. Ai-Da, \"the first humanoid robot artist to have an artwork auctioned by a major auction house,\" created a portrait of Alan Turing that resembles nothing more than a bad Francis Bacon rip-off. Still, the auction house described the sale as \"a new frontier in the global art market.\"
THE BIGGEST PODCAST MOMENTS OF THE YEAR
A STRANGE THING happened with podcasts in 2024: The industry was repeatedly thrust into the spotlight owing to a preponderance of head-turning events and a presidential-election cycle that radically foregrounded the medium's consequential nature. To reflect this, we've carved out a list of ten big moments from the year as refracted through podcasting.
THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - BEST BOOKS
THE BEST THEATER OF THE YEAR
IT'S BEEN a year of successful straight plays, even measured by a metric at which they usually do poorly: ticket sales. Partially that's owed to Hollywood stars: Jeremy Strong, Jim Parsons, Rachel Zegler, Rachel McAdams (to my mind, the most compelling).
THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
2024 WAS one big stress test that presented artists with a choice: Face uncomfortable realities or serve distractions to the audience. Pop music turned inward while hip-hop weathered court cases and incalculable losses. Country struggled to reconcile conservative interests with a much wider base of artists. But the year's best music offered a reprieve.
THE BEST TELEVISION OF THE YEAR
IT WAS SURPRISING how much 2024 felt like an uneventful wake for the Peak TV era. There was still great television, but there was much more mid or meh television and far fewer moments when a critical mass of viewers seemed equally excited about the same series.
THE BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - COMEDY SPECIALS
THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR
PEOPLE LOVED Megalopolis, hated it, puzzled over it, clipped it into memes, and tried to astroturf it into a camp classic, but, most important, they cared about it even though it featured none of the qualities you'd expect of a breakthrough work in these noisy times.
A Truly Great Time
This was the year our city's new restaurants loosened up.
The Art of the Well-Stuffed Stocking
THE CHRISTMAS ENTHUSIASTS on the Strategist team gathered to discuss the oversize socks they drape on their couches and what they put inside them.
