The News
A deep-pocketed figure in the Make America Healthy Again movement is hoping to grow her podcast, and use a new platform as a means to further her political ideas.
Blaze Media, the conservative digital media company founded by Glenn Beck, is partnering with Nicole Shanahan — a billionaire and now-Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s presidential running mate — to license and represent her show Back to the People, the interview podcast she launched last year. As part of the partnership, Blaze Media will sell ads on the show and promote it across its network, including on BlazeTV+, its streaming service.
“I created this podcast because I’ve spent so much of my life as an entrepreneur and as a philanthropist, and I was having just these conversations with people that I felt other people needed to know about in the general public,” Shanahan told Semafor in an interview. “And so that’s really what Back to the People is all about — taking these conversations, which were limited to a very elite and small circle of people, and broadcasting them widely.”
Blaze Media president Gaston Mooney told Semafor that bringing Shanahan’s show in house reflects a strategic shift by the company to a more creator-focused model, in which The Blaze acts largely as an ad seller and promoter for podcasters and journalists, rather than owning and operating their shows outright.
“When it comes to promotional support, marketing support, sales support, and even production support, we have a great team that can help work this stuff and help get things done,” Mooney said. “It gives flexibility to these content creators they otherwise [wouldn’t] have if they were not partnered with an organization like Blaze.”
He added: “This is to enable us just to kind of broaden the company in a way, to work with true independents like Nicole. We saw the impact that she had on the last election with the Make America Healthy Again coalition. And so we wanted to have someone to be a part of that, help represent that and to tap into that audience.”
A Silicon Valley lawyer whose recent divorce from Google founder Sergey Brin helped make her a billionaire in her own right, Shanahan has become an increasingly visible player in politics, particularly in California. Before becoming his running mate, Shanahan, a self-described vaccine skeptic, helped finance Kennedy’s independent presidential bid. Over the last several months, she has backed the recall of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and threatened to put her money behind opposing Republicans senators who wavered on Kennedy’s HHS nomination.
Shanahn told Semafor that she hopes to continue to use her podcast as a vehicle to explore and occasionally pursue ideas she’s interested in.
“I would say most of my conversations ignite some next step,” she said. “Every conversation always leads to something, whether it be activism and policy, whether it be a bill that we’re trying to either pass or ban … [it’s] aligned in this greater-sovereignty, MAHA movement.”
Asked by Semafor whether she would endorse or financially support her friend Republican Steve Hilton in his recently-announced bid for California governor, she said she hasn’t decided.
But “Steve lives in my neighborhood,” she said. “I can run to his house in 20 minutes. And he has chickens in his backyard, so that is a good indicator of a potentially great candidate.”
Notable
- The Blaze’s partnership with Shanahan — and its strategic shift towards marketing outside talent, rather than producing its own shows — is part of a broader trend in podcasting that has seeped into conservative media. Red Seat Ventures, which produces shows from Kelly and Tucker Carlson and was recently acquired by Fox, has embraced a similar business model.