comedians on pods, getting political: Bernie & Buttigieg on the Flagrant Podcast
I guess it makes sense that Bernie would join the bros on the podcast couch
This isn’t an apologia for toxic podcast culture. It’s a reflection on how comedy podcasts, even at their most chaotic, have become politically potent spaces.
Sometimes these comedy podcasts make politicians more relatable. I know how that sounds, but hear me out…
I’ve found myself listening to them more in recent months. As someone who’s spent years in academic spaces, this unexpected turn to the informal comedy podcast left me wondering: what does it mean to find value, even comfort, in voices so different from my own and make light of incredibly dark times?
Comedians have always offered something valuable in their political critiques. I’m thinking of Dave Chappelle hosting SNL after the 2016 election, Bo Burnham's Inside embodying the crashout so many people experienced after being stuck inside during the pandemic, and whyever the hell the Daily Show continues to bring Jon Stewart back to host when all this man wants to do is retire and help people, etc…
In a media landscape where traditional platforms have lost trust, comedy podcasts have become unlikely but powerful sites for political engagement, especially among disillusioned working-class voters. Democrats ignore these spaces not only to their electoral detriment, but at the cost of genuine connection.
I don’t love the politics of many of these spaces. I find them frustrating. But I’ve also laughed, listened, and thought harder than I expected as a result of them. That contradiction is what I’m wanting to unpack here.
austin & comedy culture
When Joe Rogan’s Comedy Mothership opened in Austin, comedians flooded the city. Tony Hinchecliffe’s Kill Tony, Shane Gillis, Tom Segura, and dozens of others sought to make Austin the new national comedy hub. It brought a surge in comedy show pilgrimages of comedians and comedy fans alike. You can’t live here now without knowing someone doing stand-up or watching it religiously.
I didn’t set out to join the scene, but comics kept showing up in my orbit. First one at the gym, then on social media, then at a bar, then through friends. It was the Emo Misunderstood Writer archetype that hooked me. These comics, especially the good ones, could captivate a room, bend language to startle or deceive, and land you somewhere unexpected, all in the name of humor.
In the final stretch of my dissertation writing, I was deep in PhD despair. Comedy became both medicine and mirror. I treated my madness with madness.
I’m still not sure why it worked. Maybe I’d exhausted every sitcom and medical drama I’d ever loved.
Maybe it was the writing.
Or maybe it was that stand-up picks at wounds that can only be healed with dark humor.
Whatever it was, immersion in this scene prompted me to think differently about the listener of the comedy podcast and empathy more broadly. They weren’t just escapist noise. They were a space where people wrestled with the world and asked real questions, even as they laughed.
And that made the Democratic Party’s absence from those spaces feel not just strategic, but somewhat personal.
DT on JRE
Many will remember the spectacle of Donald Trump joining Joe Rogan’s already extensive list of guests ahead of the 2024 election. Austinites recognize it as the day every highway in the city shut down for Trump’s motorcade.
(Joe Rogan makes it a point to have all his guests present in his Austin studio for the recording.)
Before you ask, yes, I watched it. Even though Trump and Rogan said very little of substance, the optics and platforming alone were politically potent.
It seemed similarly alarming that the Democratic candidate for President would refuse to sit down on the most popular podcast in the country.
Even when Kamala Harris joined The Breakfast Club hosted by Charlamagne tha God, viral clips focused on her pandering to Black people and repeating all-too-familiar talking points. This could be due to misogynoir or general feelings of anti-Blackness toward one of only a handful of Black women to run for president.
Still, it reflects how Black audiences are uniquely attuned to performative outreach.
To ignore the critiques of the Harris campaign’s (and Democrats’ more broadly) unreliability outright is to ignore Americans on both sides of the aisle.
At the time, it felt like a strategic blunder in Harris’s campaign to not sit down with Rogan, one that contributed to generalizations about his listeners (which - plot twist- includes people across the political spectrum). That generalization felt like it added to the already divisive partisanship in the country.
I saw something a while back that talked about Rogan, despite his political views, as someone who never claimed to know everything, but exudes curiosity.
While his curiosity can be refreshing, it’s often paired with a lack of accountability or critical rigor. But is that his responsibility?
idk. maybe.
You won’t catch me subscribing to JRE any time soon, but that kind of curiosity in public discourse? We need more of it.
It’s been especially fascinating, sometimes maddening, to watch all this unfold from Austin, a city that’s become both a breeding ground for stand-up comedians and a launchpad for the broader podcast ecosystem. There’s an energy here, a DIY ethos that draws people hungry to make culture outside the coasts.
But that freedom comes with a shadow: Austin, and Texas more broadly, sits at a tense crossroads where the irreverence of comedy can bleed into the ideology of the manosphere.
And let’s be clear, the manosphere isn’t just men being men.
It’s often a pipeline of harmful rhetoric, built on misogyny, racial essentialism, and self-righteous contrarianism disguised as critical thought.
In a place like Austin, where comedy is currency, that proximity makes the line between edgy and dangerous harder to navigate, especially for Black and Brown comedians seeking to make this a sustainable profession. The pressure to perform a certain kind of masculinity or palatability and to “be in on the joke” is real.
For comedians and audiences alike, it comes at a cost.
flagrant and political discourse
Nevertheless, I’d still go so far as to say that comedy is an avenue for the working class to both engage with complex social issues and escape from the mundane.
Problematic as it may be, what looks like bro talk on the surface is also a shifting, layered space for cultural and political discourse.
Now this is where I need you to read my words carefully: I do not condone the use of slurs for a punchline. Nor do I think it's clever to lean on racialized or sexist tropes just to get a laugh. But I also know this: comedy, at its best, builds community by creating a space where shared discomfort becomes fertile ground for honesty, challenge, and growth.
I’ve been thinking about this again more recently since seeing Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders on the Flagrant Podcast with Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh.
I was struck by a question Schulz posed to Senator Sanders:
“Despite having a diverse coalition behind you in 2016, you were labeled as having ‘Bernie Bros.’ In the last election, we were labeled as ‘Republican Bro podcasters’ (paraphrased).”
The implication seemed to be this: if you’re not part of the political or media machine, you’re a threat to it.
I remember the hope and momentum of Bernie’s 2016 presidential run so clearly. i remember the Bernie Bros accusation, even as millions of non-bro Americans voted for him in the primaries. While Sanders didn’t entirely take Schulz’s bait, I did. The question hit an old wound.
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been grappling with my relationship to comedy podcasts in this season: as a Black, liberal, multinational woman, what am I finding so uplifting about the laughter and joviality of podcasters who are mostly white and mostly male?
working through it
I’m moved by some hosts’ ability to guide a conversation and ask the questions on the viewer’s mind. They’re having the conversations I want to have with my friends.
As a fresh-out-of-grad-school person, I want to know where leaders stand on key issues, but I also want to know that they understand where I’m coming from.
Living in America is expensive. While many don’t need a politician who feels like they’ve waited in the same line at HEB (this is a Texas-coded essay), I think many like the idea of politicians with enough empathy to meet voters where they are at.
The election of Zohran Mamdani as the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor in 2025 and his ever-growing popularity seem to validate the general excitement over policies that benefit the poor and working class.
Bernie Sanders has been one of the few others to remain consistent on these topics. For that reason, it is not entirely shocking that he would discuss them with podcasters across the aisle.
The Flagrant podcast drew criticism long before the Sanders interview. In the lead up to the 2024 election, they hosted DT himself on the podcast couch.
Whether you think the only people to have public-facing interviews are journalists or not, you have to admit…some of these comedy podcasters are asking the right questions.
Comedy walks a fine line between honesty and shock value. As I see it, the art form is meant to be provocative. It requires audience awareness, storytelling, and a writer’s craftsmanship. It assumes a relationship between the comic and the audience, where both know the risks and the rewards.
Podcasting by comedians, especially those in the stand-up tradition, combines that craftsmanship with the unpredictability of punditry and improvisation. More recently, comedians like Theo Von, Rogan, and the men of Flagrant have leaned into political commentary.
Comedy has the potential to encourage empathy for listeners and candidates alike. Whether that empathy is earned in either direction? That’s still up for debate.
I’ve seen more and more think pieces on how leftist podcasts are taking the wrong thing from the “manosphere.” I think Andrew Schulz gets at it best in this conversation with the NYT Mag: the podcast space allows hosts and listeners to feel like they can speak candidly and be curious without pretense.
When liberal media outlets and comment section hot-takers critique all male-led comedy podcasts as manosphere-adjacent, it misses important distinctions and important opportunities for dialogue.
It flattens the space and misses key nuances, especially the contributions of comedians from diverse backgrounds, hosts, and co-hosts, the ways men are vulnerably speaking to each other, and the genuine curiosity that often drives these conversations.
I get the incel and “bro” critique, but I’m also deeply aware that people who don’t fall into that category also seek out these spaces.
To treat all of it as toxic is to ignore the possibility of growth, dialogue, or accountability within them.
podcast voices worth noting
There’s a way to use comedy that doesn’t fall into the manosphere's nihilism or cruelty. Many comedians and podcast hosts are already doing this, offering spaces for curiosity, contradiction, and connection that feel far more thoughtful than often given credit for.
Take Akaash Singh, cohost of Flagrant. Singh doesn’t just sit back while guests ramble. He interrupts, redirects, questions, and jokes in ways that reveal his cultural fluency and political clarity. His presence complicates the assumption that Flagrant is simply a “bro” show. It’s a multicultural, improvisational conversation space with a pulse on what a broad range of audiences are thinking about.
Ziwe’s biting satire functions differently but with a similar goal: to break through politeness and surface discomfort we’re often too afraid to name. Her show weaponized awkward silences and deadpan delivery to expose contradiction, not just for spectacle, but for clarity.
Rainn Wilson’s Soul Boom brings another kind of intimacy, more spiritual, less confrontational, but no less thoughtful. It doesn’t position itself as comedy-first, but it draws on Wilson’s long career in satire and performance to model how humor can coexist with grief, reverence, and reflection.
Rick Glassman’s Take Your Shoes Off is so odd it’s grounding. His insistence on creating a weird, rule-breaking, hilarious space feels like an invitation to rethink what comedy and performance even mean. His recent episode with Paul Rudd and Michael Cera was basically a never-ending mushroom trip, and yet, even that felt like a kind of care: making room for joy, experimentation, and unpredictability in a cultural landscape where everything is expected to make a point.
And then there are the thinkers and critics who’ve long used audio to build something beyond hot takes. Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham’s Still Processing wasn’t a comedy show, per se, but their analysis was often funny, always layered, and deeply rooted in the identities they brought with them: Black, queer, curious, critical. Their work showed that rigorous cultural critique doesn’t have to sound rigid, but can sound like a conversation between friends who love each other enough to tell the truth.
These spaces are emotional ecosystems. They're messy, flawed, but often generous, and they offer something Flagrant is more aligned with than liberals are often willing to admit: the possibility that people are smart, even when they’re joking.
They show that audiences (and voters) can hold contradictions, that laughter can coexist with grief, disillusionment, or anger, and that curiosity might be more politically useful than certainty.
To flatten all of this into “manosphere-adjacent” is to miss what’s actually happening in the most dynamic corners of podcasting: a search for meaning, for connection, for something real.
Since writing this reflection two key things have happened in the Flagrant world.
“Why Trump is Covering for Epstein & How Diddy Got Off”: The episode discussed the irony of the Trump administration avoiding releasing the Epstein files. They were met with pushback from liberals and conservatives alike, with the former blaming the pod for their role in getting Trump elected in the first place.
“Did Trump Betray His Voters? ft. Pod Save America & Ro Khanna”: Flagrant was joined by the original political podcast bros, long-time hosts of Pod Save America, and former Obama speech writers, Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor, to discuss Trump’s contradictions and the blowback from the previous episode. Both sets of bros agreed: condescension doesn’t build coalitions. Look no further than the comment section of the last few Flagrant social media posts.
a sort of conclusion?
I’ve been sitting with all this discomfort lately, and through self-reflection, I’ve landed on the idea that the podcast bros remind me of people I am in community with. They remind me of family members and people in my circle. They remind me of people I have chosen to invite into my life, and sometimes they remind me of myself.
This empathy for both host and listener often makes me wonder if this essay would have been written differently had I spent the last 8 years in New York or Boston, instead of Central Texas.
It can be politically exhausting to navigate a city where the loudest (and funniest) voices are often the most cynical about institutions, but also the most unwilling to build alternatives. There’s a kind of cultural libertarianism here (Austin) that passes for independence but often slides into bro-y contrarianism.
Nevertheless, living in a city like Austin requires being in community with people with different political beliefs. While it can sometimes feel like swimming upstream, diverse opinions are what make community community.
That contradiction, exhaustion, and investment are what this reflection is really about.
Around the time I planned to share this, I read Hanif Abdurraqib’s New Yorker piece:
“Zohran Mamdani and Mahmoud Khalil Are In on the Joke.”
He describes how the weight of the world’s issues eased briefly one night at a Ramy Youssef comedy show. Present were Zohran Mamdani (Democratic nominee for NYC mayor) and Mahmoud Khalil (the activist detained by ICE earlier this year for his pro-Palestinian views). They hadn’t met until that night. When they joined Youssef on stage, it drew tears from audience members who didn’t realize they were in attendance. The three joked about who would be arrested by ICE next and the importance of Mamdani’s policies in this political climate.
When politics, identity, and humor collide, comedy shows its real power.
It’s never just about the punchlines.
It is about connection.
And the refusal to disappear.
That’s the contradiction I’ll continue wrestling with: comedy is messy and imperfect, but it offers a rare space where complexity lives.
Comedy creates a space where laughter meets grief, hope meets cynicism, and political engagement meets genuine curiosity.
If comedy is where people are asking real questions, laughing through grief, and seeking connection, then it makes sense to pay attention, not to endorse every word spoken, but to understand what they reveal about the political and emotional lives of the people listening.
And if that sounds contradictory…well, I told you earlier: hear me out.
Related Links
As young male voters shift Right, can the Left compete in the 'battle for the bros'?
The Interview: Andrew Schulz, ‘Podcast Bro,’ Might Be America’s Foremost Political Journalist
Hanif Abdurraqib’s New Yorker piece: “Zohran Mamdani and Mahmoud Khalil Are In on the Joke.”
“Thought Starters” (w/ Michelle Obama + Craig Robinson) Las Culturistas w/ Matt Rogers & Bowen Yang