Honestly, I think the title best describes it: 'Jemele Hill is Unbothered.'
Well I wanted to be very selective about you know how I use my voice going
forward and the one thing I love about a podcast is that that's a very intimate
experience with the audience. And they're gonna get an opportunity to know me both
personally and professionally-- also my cohost and the newsmakers that
we have on. And I think given the Spotify platform, the breadth of it, having the
reach to a very diverse audience was also important to me. I know a lot of
people thought I would return to sports in some way and I did in a little bit of
a capacity with what I do for the Atlantic, but when it came to sort of the
broadcasting arm of what I wanted to do I wanted that to have a much different
and wider reach. We'll cover topics in news, sports, politics, entertainment pop
culture--you know what people are talking about now as well as things we feel like
they should be talking about or things that we personally observe. So I'm gonna
connect with the audience in probably a different way then people are used to me
connecting with them--Twitter Jamel but 45 minutes--45 to 60 minutes of it, right?
I'm all for high takes, but I think what we've gotten away from is hot,
informed takes. Amd more than anything, think why it feels like we're in a period of
regression, is because there seems to be such a distance from information like
we're it's a very weird dichotomy. At the same time where we have more access to
information than ever we're also willing to be more ignorant than ever and it's
something that it just baffles me as a journalist that in the face of facts
that we still want to bend it to how we feel about something. And just in general
I mean I just think there's just a huge sort of movement in this country to
where we are beginning to look at education as practicing elitism which I
find to be crazy. So we want to be dumber, which I don't really understand.
Though I do I guess in some respects given some of our leadership, but that's
neither here nor there.
It was--I kind of laughed because it was surprising to me
that somebody in his position would be remotely bothered by anything that I
said or would care about what a SportsCenter anchor had to say, but you
know there's the old phrase goals or old adage hit dogs holler. And so for me you
know I just took it as a as a badge of honor and I'm hoping that you know they
say his tweets will be entered into the Congressional Record and may one day
appear in the presidential library, so if that tweet goes into the presidential
library I'm gonna have a deep belly laugh about that because that's just
insanity.
Well I'm hoping people will learn new things about their favorite people. I'm
hoping that people will learn how to broaden their perspective. And I'm hoping
that that we all can learn, because this kind of ties into what the vibe in this
country is right now, I'm hoping people can learn to respectfully disagree.
Already just in preparation and in rehearsals me and my co-hosts have have
gotten into some interesting you know debates mostly pop culture stuff that I
think will be really funny elements to bring to the podcast. I'm more strategic
with how I speak out like I do think there's something to be said for you
know speaking out when it matters most as opposed to when you do it all the
time people can kind of see you as white noise. Unbothered doesn't mean that you
don't care about things there's a lot of things I care. Unbothered means
that you've reached the point where you know you are comfortable in your own
skin and it doesn't bother you if you know people don't accept your opinion or
your viewpoint it doesn't stop you from still telling whatever your truth is.
I don't speak out about everything there's a lot of fish I let swim by. And that's kind of
how it was growing up is that I was not the most talkative person necessarily in
class but when I chose to be then it was going to be something really meaningful.
you