Finally, A News Podcast That’s Actually Fun

Within five minutes of hopping onto a Zoom call with Joanna Coles and Samantha Bee, it “erupts into chaos,” as the latter puts it. An exterminator has appeared unexpectedly at the door of Bee’s Manhattan apartment, eager to eradicate a “big, fat, juicy cockroach.” Then the comedian’s phone begins to ring.

“Sam, you're the chief content officer of your home,” says Coles, who holds that title at The Daily Beast, from her glass-walled Chelsea office. “Get your f*cking act together.”

“I blew it,” Bee, hanging her head in faux shame, replies. “This is so gross. OK, this interview is not about my extermination problem.”

It is, in fact, about their new joint venture, The Daily Beast Podcast, which was borne from Coles’ recent splashy takeover of the media brand she calls a “smart tabloid.” The podcast’s selling point is its “fun partnership that's really wild and frisky,” says Bee, whose late-night satirical news show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee won two Emmys. Once a week, she connects with the media veteran — the former Hearst CCO and Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief — to dissect the latest, juiciest stories, regale listeners with tales of their celebrity run-ins, and interview insider-y guests including tech journalist Kara Swisher and former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau.

Although Bee and Coles ran in the same social circles for years, they weren’t close before launching the podcast, but they immediately bonded after testing their crackling chemistry over lunch. They haven’t stopped communicating since.

Below, Bustle enters the chat.

Coles: [Eyeing the wallpaper behind Bee] Sam’s got, like, bosoms on her wall behind her. What are they?

Bee: Now that you mention it, they're just bra cups gently falling from the sky. They’re supposed to be peonies, Joanna, but thank you.

Coles: It’s hard to tell on Zoom. But it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Bee: Yes, I change my wallpaper every Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It costs about $500,000 a year, just continuously changing my wallpaper.

Coles: Totally worth it.

Bee: Oh! This Zoom is off to a good start.

Joanna, I love that, in the New York magazine story about your taking over The Daily Beast, you are quoted as saying, “I’m going to blow it up. We’re going to be pirates.” Are you bringing that same energy to the podcast?

Coles: Well, Sam and I have set sail on a little boat, bobbing on an ocean of enormous liners, and we're going to see if we can stay afloat. But she's a very good co-captain.

Bee: There's nothing I like more than things that are scrappy. And there are different kinds of pirates. There are scary ones and then cartoony ones, and I think we're somewhere in the middle.

What was your pitch for The Daily Beast, Joanna, that convinced Barry Diller you had the vision to re-energize the brand?

Coles: Well, it wasn't just me. It was Ben Sherwood, [too]. And we both just love news. We're interested very specifically in people, in power, in politicians — but less so politics — and pop culture. Those are our passions, and people want to read about them. We want to write about them in short, fast, sometimes funny ways. And I felt a lot of journalism had become incredibly self-regarding, self-serious, and almost everything included the line, “It's the end of democracy.” And I just thought, I can't keep reading this.

Bee: [Off-camera, the exterminator arrives.] In New York City, when you leave your apartment for over one month, you will come back to a cockroach, which we did. We’d gone away for large swaths of the summer, and [when we returned to find one,] I screamed an extended scream, like I was being murdered. The whole family came running, and I had trapped it under a glass. And since then, the exterminator has been coming on the reg just to make sure.

Coles: Why isn't Susan Collins, your cat, doing anything?

Bee: She wasn’t here. We all absconded for a month. So the roaches were like, “Let's explore. What's going on in this apartment?” I did not expect that would be the substance [of this interview]. I only want to talk about that for the next 14 minutes.

Coles: Sam Bee has a cat called Susan Collins, named after the Republican senator from Maine.

Bee: I do. And that is on purpose because my husband, who is for sure allergic, would only agree to get a second cat if we gave her a comedy name that would always make us laugh. So when we say her name when she's being naughty — which she only ever is — we say, “Susan Collins! No!” And it gives us tremendous pleasure.

“I have no interest in a tweet that was posted two hours ago. I’m like, ‘Who cares? That was ancient history.’”

What attracted you both to the idea of working together?

Bee: For me, it was pretty simple. I like that pirate energy, and Joanna is just fun to be around and knows everybody. She has, like, the spiciest, funnest life.

Coles: Well I don't think that's true, but I will say—

Bee: Oh, it is true.

Coles: Well, I like that you think it’s true. I find that I want to discuss everything with Sam Bee, because she's got such a good take on things and you need a sense of humor.

You’ve both been involved in media and politics for decades. What have been the most seismic shifts you've observed in your careers?

Bee: The loss of public trust. In government, in journalism, in facts and truth. And a reinterpretation of what a fact is. Imagining that a fact can be bent to your own belief system? You feel it everywhere you look now. We are so siloed within our own “truth” spheres now, and those silos feel somewhat impenetrable.

Coles: I thought you were going to start talking about the end of democracy, and I was just going to start yawning.

Bee: Are you going to kick me off the podcast?

Coles: That was really insightful. I agree with all of that. And it's almost impossible to compete with the sensation of being connected with everybody all at once on the phone. I think the real game changer was the iPhone, the ability to feel connected to your friends and to people you don't know, but who are trying to communicate with each other, is incredibly compelling. It's clearly addictive. And there’s this craving to be completely up to date. I have no interest in a tweet that was posted two hours ago. I'm like, “Who cares? That was ancient history.”

What does that do to our brains? How are we able to keep up? The dopamine addiction, the outrage addiction. I feel like I'm news addicted.

Bee: I am news addicted, totally. Although I do perceive in my children — my youngest is 14 — a slight turning away from that. I would not have said that a year ago.

For a long time, Sam, The Daily Show was the most trusted news source in America. I was watching the video of your tearful goodbye. Do any of us dare to hope to have a job we love so much that we cry when we leave it? And Joanna, what was that job for you?

Bee: Change is hard. Hosting my own show, that was a hard job to leave. But especially now, I really only want to do things I love so much that I would cry when it ended. Whether it’s an artistic endeavor I cannot walk away from, or this new partnership. I'm not out here trying to, like, sell lawn mowers. Nobody is asking me to, and that's totally fine with me. I only want to do things that are just tickling my fancy. So hopefully, when Joanna finally fires me, I will cry. ‘Cause I tried to talk to her about the death of democracy, and she was like, “Get the f*ck out of here.”

I watched that happen just now.

Bee: My [Zoom screen] box just went dark.

Coles: I don't cry, so I don't understand what you're talking about.

Bee: Oh my God, I'm going to make Joanna cry and she’s not going to know what hit her. She's gonna grow to love me, and then it's gonna get so personal.

Coles: Do you know what she did yesterday? She suggested she might get me an ostrich head to sleep in.

A what? I’m sorry.

Bee: Those sleep pods. They look like ostrich heads. It’s a fabric bulb. I don't require one myself. But it encapsulates your head in bunting, and you have a breathing hole, obviously. It silences ambient noise, like on an airplane. It's supposed to conk you out.

Coles: It's literally a huge thing that you put on your head. Sam said she’d seen Gwyneth wearing it. So we were like, “Well, if Gwyneth has it, we want one.” Oh!—

“I feel like we’re giving younger women a terrible message [about parenthood,] that it’s all too difficult and exhausting and expensive.”

[A Toblerone comes flying into the frame at Coles, tossed by an off-camera colleague. Coles catches it.]

Coles: That's what I'm talking about. Flying Toblerones.

Bee: You know what? I dropped a Halloween-size Twix bar today, and it cut my toe.

Coles: You cut your toe with a Twix?

Bee: Yes, the angle of the foil wrapper cut my toe. That is my life.

There's a lot happening here. Is that your snack?

Coles: I’m very interested in the ergonomics of chewing a Toblerone, because it's quite difficult. That triangle, it's not the usual shape. I feel like it should be one of those mental tests as you get older, to check that you’re not in cognitive decline: “Can you eat a Toblerone?”

Bee: It is a chocolate bar that you look at and go, “Is it worth it?”

Coles: It's like a Rubik’s Cube in your mouth.

I’ve personally been wondering, how did you both weave motherhood into these extraordinary careers you’ve built? And how did you side-step the crazy?

Bee: Ah, I went crazy. It was worth it, but I overworked and did absolutely everything. I had a job that made it possible. My job was very forgiving at The Daily Show, and then when I created my own workspace, it was too. Personally, I was able to create a life where I lived near where I worked, so that I could see my children as much as possible. And we just didn't have personal lives for a really long time.

Coles: I would say it's teamwork. I had a very supportive ex. The father of my kids was a very good, involved dad, and we also lived near their school. And to Sam's point about creating her own show, the more senior you become, actually the easier it becomes, because you have more control and money. Everybody thinks that women should stay in middle management, because if you go for the big jobs, it will somehow be more difficult. But the big jobs give you more money and control to build a world where you can support the things you want.

My kids are in their 20s now and almost independent, and it's the most fun in the world, having kids. I feel like we’re giving younger women a terrible message that it's all too difficult and exhausting and expensive. The truth is, babies can sleep in a drawer, you know? You don’t have to have the perfect handwoven-by-virgins-in-Brazil basket for your child to sleep in.

Bee: My children did sleep in a drawer. We lived in a one-bedroom condo. It was like 550 square feet. People online were like, “Look, she's bought a condo for her nanny.” And I was like, “No, we live in it. Thank you.” We co-slept with our firstborn. Then we had a second, and the firstborn went into a drawer under the bed that we put a little mattress in. And we were like, “This is stressful. We could use a little more space.” Then I got pregnant a third time, and I was like, “We're moving tomorrow.”

Coles: That's an amazing story that she slept in a drawer under your bed. Did you not worry the bed would collapse?

Bee: No, because we pulled it out from under the bed, like a trundle. It was like a large drawer that you could fit a toddler mattress in. We didn’t, like, put her to bed and close the drawer.

I would love to hear you talk about the Olivia Nuzzi, RFK Jr. story and the way it’s being covered. Not from a gossipy point of view. I’m just trying to understand how this could have happened. I guess there’s a lot that's unknowable.

Bee: I don’t know much about it on a personal level, and I don’t know the players. I assume that anytime RFK Jr. opens his mouth, he’s lying. So I don't know who's doing what to whom, but I do know that I have admired her work over the years and consider myself a fan. It's hard for me to talk about or level a judgment about. You look so thoughtful, Joanna.

Coles: I think Olivia is a very good writer. I would just say that we have a very good intern here called Lily Mae Lazarus, who did an excellent interview with RFK Jr. and no naked shots were involved. I think RFK Jr. is like Donald Trump [in that he’s] only excited when he's in the limelight. He wasn’t a serious candidate for president. I was fascinated that he was bankrolled by Nicole Shanahan with the money she [allegedly] got from her divorce from Sergey Brin after she [allegedly] had an affair with Elon Musk. So I think RFK Jr., the minute you get involved with him, you're circling the drain.

Bee: Yes. Him playing the victim card is quite rich.

Do you have more time, or do you have to go?

Bee: I actually have to depart. I’m going to go let my exterminator in now. I’ve been keeping him at bay.

Be careful of the candy bars.

Bee: Maybe I have a cockroach because I have Twix bar wrappers laying all around.

Coles: It’s possible I could choke on a Toblerone. That would not be a good way to die. “She died on her own, choking on a Toblerone.”

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.