Former First Lady and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will be launching a new podcast this spring.
A Clinton spokesperson recently confirmed the upcoming podcast to CNN. While no title has been announced for the show, sources close to Clinton say she was inspired to begin the program by her previous recording experiences with comedian and talk show host Conan O'Brien.
Clinton reportedly plans to use her show to have in-depth talks with newsmakers that can be enjoyed no matter when they are listened to.
"She wants to try to have a wider-ranging conversation that will be lasting, so you can listen to it in a year or you can listen to it tomorrow and it will be interesting," a person close to Clinton told Politico, who first reported news of the upcoming podcast. "And then of course she'll do some ranting and raving about news of the day."
Newsweek reached out to Clinton for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Her decision to use an interview format appears to have come from an episode Clinton recorded with her daughter Chelsea for an episode of O'Brien's podcast, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.
"Conan just exudes enthusiasm about this platform and he does these interviews that are really evergreen," the source told Politico, "and the idea with her, in part inspired by that experience, is to do the same thing."
Clinton will be interviewing political leaders, celebrities and authors for her podcast. She has enlisted producers Kathleen Russo and Julie Subrin, both of whom have worked on magazine editor Tina Brown's TBD podcast. Streaming company IHeartMedia will reportedly co-produce Clinton's podcast through its IHeartRadio arm.
The company currently offers O'Brien's podcast along with audio programs such as true crime show My Favorite Murder andThe Ron Burgundy Podcast featuring Will Ferrell as his enduring character from the movie Anchorman.
O'Brien began his podcast in November 2018. Since then, the show has become known for its wide variety of guests and O'Brien's conversational style.
"Suddenly all these people who I know in the comedy world, and some in the political world who I've known, and we've chatted, and we've had these seven, eight, nine minute chats on television," O'Brien told NPR in October 2019, "I can sit down and we can just go down a deep, deep, deep well, and it's fascinating."
Clinton has become more visible in the media as of late, including a documentary series about her life set to debut on the video streaming service Hulu in March. In that series, Clinton speaks about Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in a negative light.
"He was in Congress for years," Clinton says of Sanders. "He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It's all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it."
Sanders responded to Clinton's comments in January saying, "This is not the kind of rhetoric we need right now when we are trying to bring the Democratic Party together to defeat the most dangerous president in American history."
