Jon Favreau served as Barack Obama’s head speechwriter from 2005-2013, a role that was far more senior and influential than Jon Lovett’s. In 2017, he co-founded Crooked Media, where he’s a co-host of Pod Save America, host of Offline with Jon Favreau, and host of The Wilderness. His first book, Democracy or Else, which he co-authored alongside his Crooked Media co-founders, will be released on June 25, 2024. Jon lives in Los Angeles with his wife Emily, their sons Charlie and Teddy, and their dog Leo.

Jon Lovett is a podcast host, former presidential speechwriter, and straight shooter widely respected on both sides. In 2017 he co-founded Crooked Media, where he co-hosts “Pod Save America” and hosts “Lovett or Leave It,” two popular podcasts that are very good. Before Crooked, he served as a speechwriter in the Obama White House, co-created a comedy on NBC called “1600 Penn” (cancelled after one perfect season), and wrote speeches for Hillary Clinton. He recently switched to oat milk.

Tommy Vietor is a cofounder of Crooked Media, cohost of Pod Save America, and the host of the foreign-policy focused Pod Save the World. In a past life, he worked for President Obama for nine years, including a stint as White House National Security Spokesman. Originally from outside Boston, Vietor now lives in Los Angeles with his wife Hanna and their dog Lucca. He tweets too much.

Despite several members of the Morning Joe panel calling for his firing, Dan Pfeiffer served President Obama for eight years as his Communications Director on both the 2008 Campaign and in the White House and finally as Senior Advisor to the President. He is a CNN Political Contributor and the author of Yes We (Still) Can: Politics in the Age of Obama, Twitter, and Trump. Dan was born in Delaware and has been banned from traveling to Russia by Donald Trump’s friend Vladimir Putin.

Alyssa Mastromonaco is the New York Times bestselling author of Who Thought This Was a Good Idea about her time working for President Obama and So Here’s The Thing where she does not discuss sex. She loves rescue cats and making jam. If asked she’ll tell you she and Janelle from Sister Wives would be friends.

Ben Rhodes is a writer, political commentator, and national security analyst. He is currently a contributor for NBC News and MSNBC; co-host of Pod Save the World; a senior advisor to former President Barack Obama; and chair of National Security Action, which he co-founded with Jake Sullivan in 2018. From 2009-2017, Ben served as a Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama. In that capacity, he participated in all of President Obama’s key decisions, and oversaw the President’s national security communications, speechwriting, and public diplomacy. He led the secret negotiations with the Cuban government that resulted in the effort to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba, and supported the negotiations to conclude the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, “After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made,” and “The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House.” His work has also been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Foreign Affairs. A native New Yorker, Ben has a B.A. from Rice University and an M.F.A from New York University.

Coco Khan is a culture/lifestyle journalist and author best known for her various humour-toned columns and features in The Guardian, and her contribution to the 2016 bestselling anthology, The Good Immigrant (her co-host Nish Kumar also contributed - it’s how they met). As a journalist her work is both not political, and yet very much is. It rarely concerns current politicians but instead explores how political ideas, and often unfit policies, shape our daily lives: whether it’s looking at rent prices and how women can no longer afford to live alone; on Brexit and its effect on the nuclear family; to how dating apps entrench social hierarchies or just simply asking exactly why the trains are so damn expensive. Perspectives relating to race and gender have long informed her work but she is particularly interested in Britain’s strange, uncomfortable relationship to class. This is something of a personal passion having grown up in poverty (a council house, raised by her single immigrant mother) and having felt let down by political world which seemed to “always be dominated by the same sorts of people, who went to the same sort of schools and would likely be fine whoever was in power.” These same perspectives shape her book work which, mostly comical, aims to showcase the multi-dimensional reality of being a working class, young woman of colour in both its pain and its glory.

De’Ara Balenger is an attorney, strategist and co-founder of Maestra, a social impact, communications and content strategy firm. She put in over a decade in public service including both domestic and international work to eradicate inequities in criminal justice systems, voting and politics. Her point of view is rooted in uplifting communities of color, holding institutions that claim to champion equity and anti-racism accountable, and building wealth and opportunity for people of color. De’Ara is also an advocate for getting organizations and individuals out of their silos – from the political world to the art world – she is a bridge – to arrive at a collective vision for the world we all want to see.

DeRay Mckesson is a civil rights activist focused primarily on issues of innovation, equity and justice. Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, he graduated from Bowdoin College and holds an honorary doctorate from The New School. DeRay has advocated for issues related to children, youth, and families since he was a teen. As a leading voice in the Black Lives Matter Movement and the co-founder of Campaign Zero and OurStates.org, DeRay has worked to connect individuals with knowledge and tools, and provide citizens and policy makers with commonsense policies to ensure equity. Spurred by the death of Mike Brown and the subsequent protests in Ferguson, Missouri, DeRay has become a key voice in the effort to confront the systems and structures that have led to the mass incarceration and police killings of black and other minority populations. DeRay was named as one of the World’s Greatest Leaders by Fortune Magazine in 2015 and as one of the 30 Most Influential People On The Internet by Time Magazine in 2016.

Erin Ryan is a host and executive producer of Hysteria. As a writer, her work has appeared online (Jezebel, The Daily Beast, Substack's Just Enjoy It While You Can et al). in print (The New York Times, Playboy, et al), on TV (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Mythic Quest, et al), and in a drafts folder of insomniac invective that would cause personal problems for her if she ever pressed "send all." In a previous life, she frequently appeared on cable news as a commentator, but there's only so many TV-friendly ways you can say "Yeah, (male host name), we've got too many tedious assholes in charge" before that sort of thing gets repetitive. Originally from rural Wisconsin, she attended the University of Notre Dame and spent her adult life in Chicago and New York City before moving to Los Angeles, where she currently lives with (in order of seniority) her cat, husband, dog, and daughter.

Ira Madison III is a cultural critic, TV writer, and host of the podcast Keep It. His work has been featured in GQ, Vulture, The Cut, and MTV News. As a television writer, he’s written for Uncoupled, Q-Force, Nikki Fre$h, and Daybreak. His debut essay collection Pure Innocent Fun will be published by Random House in 2024.

Jane Coaston is the host of What A Day for Crooked Media. Previously, she was the host of the Argument at the New York Times. She is a contributor to New York Times opinion and CNN, and she is a fellow at the University of Southern California’s Center for the Political Future. Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Jane attended the University of Michigan. She and her husband live in Los Angeles with their cattle dog, Red Rock.

Kate Shaw is a Professor of Law at Penn Carey Law. She teaches Constitutional Law, Legislation, Administrative Law, and a seminar on the Supreme Court, and writes about executive power, the law of democracy, and reproductive rights and justice. Before becoming a law professor she worked in the Obama White House Counsel’s Office, and before that was a clerk to Justice Stevens and Judge Posner. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, three kids, and pandemic puppy Shadow.

Kaya Henderson has brought her love of people and her commitment to solving problems to every job she has ever held. She is most known for serving as the Chancellor of DC Public Schools from 2010 through 2016 – the only time in the district’s history when student results, student enrollment, and student satisfaction saw unprecedented gains. More recently, she led Teach For All’s Community Impact Lab, a global effort to ensure communities have the opportunity to participate in their students’ educational success. Kaya started her career as a middle school Spanish teacher in the South Bronx. She went on to lead early recruitment efforts for Teach for America and to revolutionize human capital policy and practice through her work at The New Teacher Project. Kaya has served as a board member and advisor to an impressive range of influential organizations from The Aspen Institute to the Robin Hood Foundation. She graduated from Georgetown University with a B.S. in Foreign Service, a M.A. in Leadership, and was awarded an honorary doctorate.

Leah Litman is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. She clerked for Judge Sutton on the Sixth Circuit and Justice Kennedy on the Supreme Court. Leah researches and writes about constitutional law and federal courts. She also maintains an active pro bono practice. In addition to federal sentencing and all things SCOTUS, Leah’s other favorite conversation topics are her mini goldendoodle puppy, Stevie Nicks, and reality television, particularly RuPaul’s Drag Race. In her quiet moments, Leah reminds herself of Bianca Del Rio (or Sasha Velour, during her finale lip syncs).

Louis Virtel is an Emmy-nominated comedy writer and the co-host of Keep It. He currently writes for the Jimmy Kimmel Live show and Pop Culture Jeopardy, and his work has appeared in TIME, Vulture, and Paper Magazine.

Max Fisher co-hosts Offline and How We Got Here. He is a recovering lamestream media fake news reporter, most recently as a foreign correspondent and news columnist for the New York Times. Before that he launched and wrote the Washington Post's foreign news blog and The Atlantic's international news vertical and was also a founding editor of Vox.com. He has reported from 18 countries and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2018. In 2022, he published "The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World," which was named an NPR and New Yorker book of the year.

Melissa Murray is a Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, where she teaches constitutional law, family law, criminal law, and reproductive rights and justice and writes about the legal regulation of intimate life. Melissa clerked for Judge Stefan Underhill on the District of Connecticut and for Justice Sotomayor when she served on the Second Circuit. When she’s not reading the SCOTUS tea leaves, she’s practicing the violin, reading People magazine, and keeping up with Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex. Seriously.

Myles E. Johnson, also known as Rapture, is an artist, public intellectual, and spiritual advisor. Their work has been featured in New York Times, Buzzfeed, MTV, and more.

Critically acclaimed comic, internationally famed meme & wonderfully nice gentleman, Nish Kumar is a comedian, and a bloody good one at that (Time Out). Nish has achieved huge success on the stand-up circuit with five rave reviewed solo stand-up shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, two of which have been nominated for the prestigious Comedy Award for Best Show in both 2015 & 2016. Alongside stand-up Nish is a frequent voice and face across both television and radio, a familiar face on the UK panel shows. Nish starred alongside fellow comic Joel Dommett in a 6-part travelogue for Comedy Central, Joel and Nish vs The World, has hosted his own satirical, spoof, news series, The Mash Report, for BBC Two. During the Coronavirus pandemic Nish created and starred in a new series ‘Hello America’ for the short lived American streaming platform Quibi and hosted the ‘Late Night Mash’ on Dave. Nish is and is currently starring in Hold the Front Page on Sky with Josh Widdicombe.

Stacey Yvonne Abrams is an American politician, lawyer, voting rights activist, and author, born on December 9, 1973, in Madison, Wisconsin. She served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017 and was the House Minority Leader from 2011 to 2017. Abrams gained national attention as the first Black woman to be a major party’s gubernatorial nominee in the United States during the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election. Although she lost the election, she continued to be politically active, focusing on voting rights and founding the Fair Fight organization. Abrams is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a lifetime member of the National Council of Negro Women. In addition to her political career, she has authored several books, including 15 romance novels and a memoir.