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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. WNYC's weekly program, On the Media, probably needs no introduction to Brian Lehrer Show listeners, but a brand new co-host maybe does. You OTM fans already know the name, but the station is officially announcing today that Micah Loewinger is now Brooke Gladstone's official partner in the host chair. They both join me now to talk about this new chapter. Hi, co-host, and managing editor, Brooke.

Brooke Gladstone: Hi.

Brian Lehrer: Hello, co-host Micah. Congratulations.

Micah Loewinger: Hi, Brian. Thanks so much.

Brooke Gladstone: This is a great day, Brian. This is almost as much as asking for money during the pledge drive.

Brian Lehrer: Ha, which we will not do today, we promise. Micah, on your OTM bio page, it says a great piece of advice you got when you were starting out was become an expert in something. The thing you decided to become an expert in was how Internet culture was transforming our politics, particularly in the far right corners of the web after the 2016 election. Want to remind people what you were seeing in 2016 because here we are, eight years later, and that's obviously a story that's still with us.

Micah Loewinger: Back in 2016, what I was seeing was the rise of the so-called alt-right. This was a convergence of writers, far-right policy people, trolls, outright white supremacists, and forum dwellers. The alt-right at the time felt like this shiny new thing for the press and for the public. They helped, arguably, meme Donald Trump into the White House. They were also just the white supremacists, trolls, misogynists, reactionaries that had been present in American politics prior, but were now marching under this new banner. Eight years later, the alt-right, many of the characters associated with it, some of the outlets associated with it, like Breitbart, for instance, they've faded away.

Arguably, some of the major players are still around, like Steve Bannon, for instance, who was high up at Breitbart. Now he hosts the War Room podcast, extremely popular conservative podcast. Actually, in the most recent episode of On the Media, we talked about this guy named Curtis Yarvin, who was a lesser-known character eight years ago, but is a stated influence on Republican vice president nominee J.D. Vance, who has said he reads this guy's stuff.

What does Curtis Yarvin write about? He's talked a lot about overthrowing American democracy and installing a right-wing dictatorship. The names, the characters, the terms we use to describe this alt-right world have changed, but arguably, it's still with us.

Brian Lehrer: Some of our listeners may remember a piece of reporting you did about the Oath Keepers getting ready to invade the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, which led to you being called as a witness in one of the post-January 6th criminal trials. There's a point for your resume, but that story didn't come from nowhere. Two years earlier, you had started reporting on a walkie-talkie app called Zello. Could you just remind us briefly of that and what it wound up having to do with January 6th?

Micah Loewinger: Zello, like you said, is a walkie-talkie app. It's used by millions of people across the world. When I started tinkering with it in 2019, I quickly found that paramilitary groups, gun groups, militias like the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters were using this app to organize, to recruit, to fantasize about violent showdowns with Black Lives Matter and Antifa out in the open, but in a corner of the web where they didn't think people were listening.

Brooke Gladstone: You don't because that stuff isn't recorded. It's just live and then it's gone.

Micah Loewinger: That's right. Thankfully-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: That's why a walkie-talkie app, right?

Brooke Gladstone: Yes.

Micah Loewinger: Yes. You can have really dynamic group conversations. It's great for organizing militia training in the woods, or a team of people who are watching a gun rally looking for counter-protesters. This is the kind of stuff I would hear, and Brooke and our executive producer, Katya Rogers, let me just become obsessed with this platform. I spent a year documenting militia groups ties to local police departments across the United States. Then on January 6th, I recorded a woman talking about her plan to invade the Capitol. She said she was with a group, 30 to 40 of us. She said, "We're sticking together, sticking to the plan."

It would turn out that she was a leader of the Oath Keepers. She was describing a premeditated crime in the making. I reported on this for On the Media, for The Guardian. It was picked up by 60-Minutes. Then the feds came knocking. They said, "We want to use this audio that you recorded as evidence in our criminal trial against Stewart Rhodes and the other Oath Keepers.

Brian Lehrer: Because you didn't let that not recorded walkie-talkie conversation go unrecorded. Brooke, what's your version of how Micah Loewinger came to On the Media eight years ago and made such a mark that he's now earned his way to co-host?

Brooke Gladstone: First off, I want to say that Katya and I revel in Micah's obsessions. They always yield something fantastic, and we've had a really long time to watch him. When he came, he was-- Am I allowed to talk about your age?

Micah Loewinger: That's okay. I'll allow it this once.

Brooke Gladstone: He was 23, and he was in short pants, metaphorically speaking.

Micah Loewinger: Literally.

Brooke Gladstone: He's had the chance to marinate in the On the Media ethos, as it were. He went from being a producer, to a reporter and a producer, and then ultimately, to just a reporter, and then to a fill-in host, and then to a host. It wasn't a huge rush. We're talking about eight years. He broke 30. Congratulations.

Micah Loewinger: Thank you.

Brooke Gladstone: He is enormously talented. He's incredibly versatile. He does some of our most touching human interest stories, but he also really digs into the investigation. Plus, he has the finger on the pulse, if I can use that cliché, about where the digital media in all its many forms is headed. He has kept us abreast on things as they came and went. I remember when he struggled to introduce me to Twitch.

Micah Loewinger: You did a great job. That's a classic OTM episode. I love that one.

Brooke Gladstone: Now, he doesn't have to necessarily drag me along to be his voice, he can do it himself.

Brian Lehrer: Brooke, he's already been sounding like a co-host for a while now. Does something change now that it's official as of today?

Brooke Gladstone: I don't know. I was trying to think about that. I was on and off with my not-yet-husband for five years before we got married. I think that the only difference was that the fights got shorter. I think that's about it. The relationship has evolved over time. It'll continue to evolve. We haven't hit a stasis point and presumably, we never will. He keeps growing and it is endlessly fascinating to watch him grow. Just his voice on the air is just so refreshing.

Brian Lehrer: Now I know what advice to give people who've been in a relationship for a long time, but not yet gotten married. The advice is if the fights are getting shorter, you can tie the knot. Micah, last question. Your bio page says you're officially entering the co-host chair, another frightening and uncertain moment. The news industry is in a nosedive and some of the anti-democratic zeal that you first encountered in fringe Internet forums has grown more mainstream. As it looks right now, what's your mission? What's On the Media's mission as this hypercharged election year continues to develop?

Micah Loewinger: We're going to cover the news every week, but-- [crosstalk]

Brooke Gladstone: News adjacency.

Micah Loewinger: Yes. Cover the media narratives. We're going to do the On the Media that listeners are well familiar with, slightly more broadly. I'm interested in stepping back into militia world a little bit. I think that whether Trump wins or loses, some of these paramilitary groups that went underground after January 6th might start coming back out of the woodwork. We lately have been doing some really fun, fun is a strong word, deep dives into people who are really influential in American politics and media, but may not be that well-known to some of our listeners according to their news diets.

For instance, we had The Divided Dial, our Peabody award-winning series, looking at the rise of conservative talk radio. We had our collaboration with ProPublica, looking into Leonard Leo, Chairman of the Federalist Society. We're going to continue looking at media personalities, big donors, big muckety-mucks, who put their finger on the scale and are shaping the conversations that we have and the information that we receive, but may not show up on your timeline necessarily.

Brooke Gladstone: The whole point is to look at the fault lines that are lying underneath the surface, whether or not it's a name you know or a name you don't, but that is actually really fun. It's great to know what's going on to fill in some of the blanks with information rather than conspiracy theories.

Brian Lehrer: Now, one of the names you probably know by now, Micah Loewinger is officially, as of today, the co-host of On the Media, along with co-host and managing editor, Brooke Gladstone. They have both been with us the last few minutes to announce it right here on the radio. On the Media airs Sunday mornings at 10:00 and other times during the weekend. They also have their podcast version. Congratulations, Micah, and both of you. Keep it up.

Micah Loewinger: Thank you.

Brooke Gladstone: Thank you.

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