South Beach Sessions - Jon Lovett
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How did Jon Lovett transition from math and stand-up comedy to politics?
Kings Network. Hello and welcome to the West Coast edition of South Beach Sessions. John Lovett is a media mogul, I can call you that, yes? Sure. Uncomfortably, he doesn't want that. Crooked Media, Pod Save America, Love It or Leave It. Did you struggle with the name of Love It or Leave It? Like, did you wrestle it? As a former stand-up comic, is that a great name or?
I think it's, we went through a bunch, we had other options, but we kept coming back to it. I was a little nervous about having my name in the name of the show, but especially in early 2017, it just felt right.
It felt right. It still works. Yeah, it works for the time. Yeah. How did all of this happen? And when I ask this question, I say, you were gonna do standup comedy. You were gonna do math. You were a math nerd. So take me through how this happens because among the many things I'd like to do with you today is I'd like to learn a little bit about how to run a media company because I'm a bit of a novice.
Maybe we'll find out together. So I grew up in New York. I went to Williams College, a small liberal arts college. I studied math. I studied psychology and philosophy. I loved doing math. With math, you can't fake it and you can't almost get it. You either get it or you don't. And I found that it really, I am, you know, I will talk my way out of things. I will try to talk my way into uh like charm my way out of not knowing something and you can't do that in math you have to really understand it and if that logic and rigor really forces you to use your your mind and concentrate and i found it made me smarter and it made me a more critical and precise thinker and i really like that but i was never
I was always the math student who could give the funniest presentation, but I was never at the level of some of those other kids that went on to become professors.
I hate math and most of the people in my sphere tend to hate math because these are different disciplines. You've chosen something much less precise. I really hate math.
I hate that everyone says they hate math, and I don't blame the people who say it because I believe you, I understand why. I'm just not good at it. But see, none of that, there's something fundamentally wrong, this is a conversation for another day, but there's something fundamentally wrong with a society. As a society, we take kids, they spend more than a decade learning this subject, and most of them get to the end of it saying, I don't like this, I am not good at this. So is everybody wrong? It's the most common thing you ever hear. If you tell people you studied math, it's like, oh, I hate math. I'm not good at math. So every school is getting it wrong. Like every kid in every classroom in front of every teacher, they're all getting it wrong. So something is totally out of whack. I think it would be a better society if everyone got to the end of high school and maybe they learned less math, but they enjoyed it. They got something out of it. They came away with some basic skills.
I really didn't mean to upset you.
It speaks to something important about where we're at right now. And because it's one of those, I don't know anything about baseball. I'm jumping around. I don't know anything about baseball, but I know what baseball bats look like. We all know what baseball bats look like. And then some guy working for the Yankees stares at baseball bats for a year and he says, I think baseball bats are wrong. I think the little chunky bit should be a little bit further down. And they hit a bunch of home runs.
Basketball, you can do this with basketball. They were taking the most inefficient, least valuable shot near the rim and then they all figured out, wait a minute, three points is worth more than two.
Right. And we have this system where most people come out of math, they won't retain anything. Could you do an algebra equation right now if I put it in front of you?
I have some trouble.
And yet, and people are... kind of enumerate in the most important skills that they should have as an adult. The skills that you need to understand investing, taxes, loans, credit cards, come away with none of those skills. Yet kids spend years sitting in front of teachers, watching, looking at graphs and algebra and all the rest. Imagine a math curriculum It would be easy.
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Chapters
9 chapters
1
How did Jon Lovett transition from math and stand-up comedy to politics?
0:04–8:08
2
What inspired Jon to become a speechwriter for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama?
8:08–14:48
3
Why did Jon Lovett decide not to go to law school?
14:48–25:42
4
How did Jon Lovett move from politics into television writing?
25:42–32:51
5
What challenges did Jon face while working on TV shows like 1600 Penn?
32:51–39:15
6
What skills does Jon Lovett believe are essential for a speechwriter and comedy writer?
39:15–44:58
7
How did the Crooked Media network come to be after the 2016 election?
44:58–52:47
8
How does Jon Lovett view inspiration and anger in politics?
52:47–1:01:00
9
How does Jon manage his mind and the challenges of overthinking?
1:01:00–1:12:54
Speakers
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