Hillary Clinton has been profoundly influenced in her life by her mother, her grandkids, and ... Howard Stern? That's the revelation Ryan Lizza makes in his report for Politico that Clinton will in late spring be debuting a podcast in which she'll interview anyone from politicians and world leaders to A-list celebrities. The podcast, which was confirmed by a Clinton spokesman to CNN, will be recorded in a New York City studio and "share good news about problems that are actually being solved rather than [be] another regular conversation strictly about how the world is going to hell," Lizza notes. CNN reports the still-unnamed podcast will give Clinton a "public platform" during the final months of the 2020 election.
Clinton was said to have been inspired on how to put her podcast together by Conan O'Brien—she was on the late-night host's podcast last fall and liked being able to have a "wider-ranging conversation" that's more "evergreen," a source tells Lizza—and shock jock Stern. Lizza notes that Clinton had steered clear of Stern throughout her career, but when she finally sat down with him for his show in late 2019, she "quickly succumbed to Stern's well-known skills at getting his guests to open up," and they ended up recording for almost 2.5 hours—the longest Stern interview ever of a nonmusician. "Perhaps it was only a matter of time before Clinton, whose time in office was marked by a deep distrust of the media, hopped onto the other side of the microphone and became the media herself," Lizza writes. (More Hillary Clinton stories.)