Hannah Cox joins the podcast this week to discuss launching BASEDPolitics, her video-focused media startup company. We discuss how media outlets are appealing to and resonating with Generation Z and Millennials. We also consider the issues that young Americans care about most ahead of the 2024 election.
Hannah Cox is a prominent libertarian writer, commentator, activist, and the co-founder of BASEDPolitics. She has an extensive resume that began with five years working in Nashville’s music industry. In 2018, Cox was tapped to serve as the National Manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. During her three years in this role, she overturned the death penalty in a state each year—always with Republican support for the bill. Cox launched her show BASED in 2020 during the pandemic with a passion for teaching people how to think, not what to think. She is a frequent guest on Fox News and Fox Business.
TRANSCRIPT
Beverly Hallberg:
Welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg. And on today’s episode, Hannah Cox joins us to discuss launching BASED Politics, her video focused media startup company. We’re going to look at how media outlets are appealing to and resonating with Generation Z, and even some millennials. And with the 2024 election cycle right around the corner, we’re going to discuss the issues that young Americans care about the most.
But before we bring her on, a little bit more about Hannah. Hannah Cox is a prominent libertarian writer, commentator, activist, and the co-founder of BASED Politics. She launched her show, Based, in 2020 during the pandemic, with a passion for teaching people how to think, not what to think. And she’s a frequent guest on Fox News and Fox Business, and her work is commonly cited by lawmakers and leaders across the political spectrum. Hannah, a pleasure to have you on She Thinks today.
Hannah Cox:
So good to be here, Beverly. I’m thrilled to see the show, ’cause I’ve always loved working with you and watching your work-
Beverly Hallberg:
Yes.
Hannah Cox:
… so this is excellent.
Beverly Hallberg:
And I love to see all that you’ve done. You’ve really been able to grow a pretty big following, and you, as I just said, started BASED Politics in 2020. I really want to get into the inception of that and how you decided to branch out on your own, and what the response has been since you’ve done so.
Hannah Cox:
Yeah, so BASED Politics has actually been a full-time job since October, so we’re still in our first full year of operation, but its origins do trace back to my initial vodcast that I launched back in 2020. I had had this idea for years, I was working in public policy, I was often working with libertarian groups, so I was working with people on both the right and left on issues they could come together on. I had friends on both the right and left, I didn’t really like people on both the right and left, and I just kept thinking, “Gosh, we’re not that far apart when you really sit down and talk to people. We mostly agree on the problems that the country is facing, we just have very, very different ideas of what we should do to address those problems.” And in my experience and in my conversations, that was usually due to a lack of people not really knowing where the problems started from, what their origins were.
And so, I just thought, if you could help people understand what initially went wrong with healthcare, what really went wrong with our foreign policy, and help them see that the government is usually the problem at the root of it all, then we could have better solutions, we could come together on things and we could really get a lot done. So that was for the origins of BASED, my show. I launched it with literally a little mic and my brother holding a piece of cardboard with paper stuck to it, so I had a makeshift teleprompter.
And I did that for about a year and it took off, it started doing very well. There was an excellent response to it. And during that time, I’d been working really closely with Brad Polumbo for about a year and a half, we had both gone to fee as writers. But we were really passionate about the emerging new media landscape. We both really like TikTok, we get our news from TikTok and from Reddit and from podcasts and from YouTube. We’re your typical millennial and Gen Z people. We don’t watch cable news, even though we’re on it. And so, we thought, if we really want to be able to have the kind of impact we are seeking in our political system, we’ve got to go where the people are actually getting their news. We’ve got to get our ideas in front of younger generations, and we have to really follow the trends of where I think the media in general is going, which is away from traditional news outlets and communications departments and cable news and radio.
So we started adding podcasts, we started adding different YouTube shows, we started doing a lot of Reels and short form videos. And again, we’re just getting a really great response. And from my time working in public policy and as an advocate, I knew firsthand just how important that kind of visibility was to public policy and actually getting things across the finish line. So while we were doing that, we started partnering with people who were doing what I call the real work on the ground, which were many of my former colleagues and friends at SPN think tanks, and Americans for Prosperity, and many other great advocacy groups that are out there, and working to elevate the issues they were trying to advance through our content, and trying to use the content as a carrot and stick to influence lawmakers, and that’s where the thing took off and became a lot bigger than a show. So we filed a full non-profit last year, started fundraising, and like I said, we went full-time in October.
Beverly Hallberg:
That’s great. And one of the things I think is interesting as we’re seeing new media evolve and we’re seeing so many different avenues, yes, there is still that short form, so maybe it’s a short reel, a short clip that you may see on TikTok, but also just the rise of the podcast. You take a look at someone like Joe Rogan, most popular podcast in the country, maybe in the world, I’m not sure, based on international level, but his interviews can go up to three hours long, they’re long form. Are you finding, as you’re doing BASED Politics, doing the videos, that people do want that nuance? You talk about getting to, how did we get where we are? Well, you can’t do that in sound bites, you have to actually dig a little deeper. Are people glad that we’re getting rid of or getting away from some of the soundbite culture to get into nuance?
Hannah Cox:
I think people are desperate for nuance. I think the format in which people listen differs. So certainly, my first BASED episodes, they were well into an hour long. They were really looking at the deep origins of public policy and litigation and Supreme Court decisions, to figure out how we got from the beginning to where we are now with various issues, and they did very well. So I think there is an audience for both. Some people do not have the attention span for that, and they’re going to gravitate toward short form video and Reels and TikToks and Instagram. So we believe in covering the gap, and oftentimes, as content creators, it’s really easy to do, because if you produce a piece of long form content, like a video podcast or something of that nature, or a YouTube video, you can then splice it up and take smaller clips from it and put those on other platforms, and maybe even use those as an advertisement to drive people to the longer form videos.
So I like both, but I will say the reachability of short form video is astounding. The average podcast, and we’ve been in the top 1% of podcasts since I launched my show, that’s actually not hard to do because you get like 5,000 plus listeners per episode and you’re in the top 1%. Most podcasts just simply don’t have that many listeners. The gap between somebody being in the top 1% to the 0.001% of Joe Rogan, having millions and millions of downloads, is really extreme. You’re probably not going to be the Joe Rogan, where you’ve got millions of people tuning into your long form video, but a TikTok can easily get a million views. We frequently get a million views on Instagram Reels and TikToks. And so, you do need to be on both, I think, and I do think younger people are more inclined to the shorter form video content, they just don’t have the attention span, unfortunately.
And so, I think that it’s important to be very concise, to be able to pack a punch, and again, to have a lot of content out there. People often comment, “I can’t keep up with everything you’re doing, you’re putting out so much content at once.” And yeah, you have to keep consistently getting in front of those people and keep getting short form stuff to them. But that’s not to say that longer form stuff can’t succeed. It has its own pocket, and I personally prefer that.
Beverly Hallberg:
Right.
Hannah Cox:
If you’re asking my opinion.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, you even, I mentioned this in your bio, but you talk about teaching people how to think, not what to think. So this goes around this idea of critical thinking skills as a whole, which I think academia is not preparing young people for critical thinking skills. You even think about how this idea of free speech, people having open dialogue with people who they disagree with, is just thought of as an offensive thing these days, that the worst thing you could do is offend someone. How do you help people think critically in today’s environment?
Hannah Cox:
Yeah, I love that question, Beverly. I don’t know if you and I have ever talked about our own academic backgrounds, but I was homeschooled predominantly throughout eighth grade, and then I started going to more traditional formats of school, but I was actually taught logic as a full class that I got throughout middle school, and I just don’t think that’s something most people are provided with. And I’m really passionate about that because I think if I were to just come in and say, “You should think this way about these issues,” my views are informed by a belief in capitalism, by a belief in limited government, by a belief in individual liberty, but I can tell people that and I can use buzzwords, and they’re not going to have the ability to distinguish between what policies match up with those ideas and what aren’t.
As long as somebody’s saying they’re a capitalist, they’re going to go along with it. And I think we’ve seen this in the Republican Party, especially in the past 10 years. You have a ton of people running around saying that they’re capitalists, who are nothing but the sort, but most people can’t distinguish between a Rand Paul and a Donald Trump, and I think that that’s a huge problem. So instead of just teaching people, “You should feel this way about this policy,” we have to go deeper than that, and actually teach them how to ascertain what policies match up with the views that they say they ascribe to, what actually is capitalism.
Brad and I just covered a poll on our show this week where they were asking college students their opinions on various things, and unsurprisingly, most of them were anti-capitalism, but when you asked them to describe capitalism, they said it was a system where people could bribe the government, and the government gave special favors, and basically described corporate welfare and cronyism and corporatism, which is actually an attack on capitalism. So we’re really passionate about trying to help people understand the base, that’s part of the reason the show’s named BASED, the base understanding of things give people a foundation that they can build upon, so that when they’re presented with new ideas or new public policies, they can think through that on their own and evaluate whether it matches up or not.
And I actually want to give huge credit to Justin Amash on this, because I feel like I’ve always been a huge fan of his, he was coming up as a young lawmaker as I was first getting into politics, and he had this habit of posting every single vote that he made, but explaining why. Why this bill was constitutional, why it wasn’t. And it did a lot for me to help me learn how to think through things in that way, so I’m trying to take that same energy and apply it to all these other formats.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, I’m glad you were talking about capitalism, because when I looked at your Twitter bio, one of, I think it’s the first thing you have on there, you call yourself a rabid capitalist. What type of responses do you get, especially from young people, when you just come out with that right away?
Hannah Cox:
Yeah, it’s a lightning rod. I think that most people are more curious, because I think this is a huge problem, people in our camp, they shy away from defending things like capitalism, and they’ll try to soften it and say, “Well, say free market, or say this.” I’m against that. I think people mostly use the word capitalism, I understand some of the critiques for its origins, but that’s the most common word in our vernacular, that’s what most people are using to discuss our economic system, that’s what most people on the left are familiar with.
And so, I think that when you can toss that lightning rod out there and be like, “Not only do I support capitalism, I am rabidly in favor of it,” it tends to pique people’s curiosity, because they’re so used to hearing it denounced and people being shameful about it, and maybe trying to even hide a little bit of what they think or what their true values are, that when you really take a stand, it’s like Billy Graham said, “When a strong man takes the stand, the spines of others are stiffened.” I think it helps other people come out and say, “Yeah, capitalism is actually a great thing. It has done more to advance humanity, it has done more to increase the quality of life than any other system known to man.” And then, for those who might be opposed, it makes them step back and think, “Maybe I’m missing something here, if this person is so openly in favor of this, maybe I need to dig deeper, ’cause there’s something I’m missing.”
Beverly Hallberg:
So let’s get into how we should talk to young voters about issues. So you talk about that lightning rod of just coming out and saying capitalism, but I think part of it is maybe getting a better understanding of what millennials, what Generation Z specifically, where they’re getting their news, what they think about issues. You talked about the different social media platforms. Is that where most young people, first of all, are going to get their news?
Hannah Cox:
It is. Actually, TikTok has become, I think, the second or third-largest search engine in this country. And so, for a lot of people, especially older demographics, when we talk about this, they have this perception that TikTok is this silly app where people are doing dances, and there is still some of that, but TikTok is a wealth of information, that’s why I said I personally love it. I get a ton of information and news from TikTok. There’s tons of professionals and all kinds of vocations on there providing free wisdom and information, so I think that that is a really important format to be on. It’s dwarfing the competition when it comes to daily users, especially in that demographic of younger people, people under 30, there’s nothing even that you could compare to it, frankly, and then YouTube would be pretty closely behind it.
I think oftentimes, especially in my previous work, there’s been a focus on Facebook or Twitter, and those can be good organizing platforms, Facebook, especially, if you’re doing coalition work or grassroots work. Twitter I think is a great networking app, but it’s niche. You’re really around other people who are in the journalism political class, and it’s not really reaching the grassroots and masses the way that something like TikTok or YouTube is. So I think that we’ve got to get better about learning how to succeed on those platforms, and also finding ways to make content that is both educational but also entertaining, because you’re not going to succeed on TikTok if you just come in and start droning on about economics. You have to find ways to actually talk about things that are happening in the world and relate it to them.
One example I would think of that recently is when the Titanic submarine blew up. There was a ton of anti-capitalist content going on on TikTok about that. People literally celebrating these billionaires dying, saying, “The ocean’s eating the rich. Ha, ha, ha. Isn’t that so funny?” And of course, we were aghast at that, but we used this to make our point about how communism is dehumanizing and it pushes class warfare, and relate it to something that was already trending algorithmically, so that the content could take off. So it was still entertaining to people who are not necessarily looking for political or economic content, but while you’re still educating people, sometimes without them even knowing it.
Beverly Hallberg:
So I think I know what your answer is going to be from a legislative perspective, but I’m curious what you think about this aspect of those who say, “You shouldn’t be on TikTok because of China and privacy concerns.” So there is the talk about whether or not it should be legislated. Some are pushing for TikTok to be banned, either on a statewide or maybe even nationally. What is your thought on a ban and why do you, what I would assume is, not have many privacy concerns, or at least you’re on it, so you’re not concerned enough to not be on it. What do you say?
Hannah Cox:
Yeah, so we were actually one of the first right-wing organizations to speak out against the TikTok bill, I think it’s called the RESTRICT Act. That is a Trojan horse of a bill. It is basically the PATRIOT Act 2.0. If you’re concerned about privacy, I have no godly reason why you would give the US government more ability to get your information. For me, I’m far more concerned with US government having my information and spying on me than I am China. China has no ability to hurt me right now, the US government absolutely does, so that’s more of my concern. I find it really hypocritical that people who have no issues with the tremendous amount of warrantless spying the US government has done since 2001 have such an issue with this.
I think it is a little bit one of those things where they like to rile people up over China, they like to stoke tensions, and it looks like they’re doing something effective. Again, it’s a Trojan horse of a bill. I don’t think that TikTok’s policies, we’ve looked into this, they’re no worse than Twitter’s policies or Facebook’s policies. Yes, they’re collecting your data, they are mostly collecting your data so that their algorithm feeds you content to where you never want to get off, and that’s a good thing for a business. And honestly, as a consumer, I like it. I’m constantly fed content that I relate to, that I want to see. I often joke, TikTok knows me better than my mom. They show me exactly the kinds of things I’m interested in, so I don’t really have concerns about that.
I have not seen anything actually produced, by the people who are pushing for these kinds of initiatives, that says that this is some terrifying thing. In fact, TikTok has been pretty apt to play ball with them and be pretty transparent with their practices, and as far as I can tell, are completely complying with all investigations. So I think it’s very overblown, and like I said, I’m far more concerned about the contents of that bill than I am with anything TikTok’s doing.
Beverly Hallberg:
And it’s not surprising that it’s typically young people who are better at using TikTok than somebody who is older. How are legislators, members of Congress, how are they doing with these platforms? Do you usually cringe when you see them try it, or there are some members of Congress that are actually using TikTok well?
Hannah Cox:
I think there’s some members of Congress whose staffs are using TikTok well. No, it’s quite cringe-worthy when you hear them talk about any social media platforms, because even just their vernacular around it quickly reveals they have no clue what they’re talking about. And I’m not trying to throw older people under the bus. When I first started using TikTok, I joked that I needed to make an eight-year-old friend real fast to figure it out, because the backend wasn’t that easy, it’s complicated to figure out how to make videos on TikTok. It’s actually got amazing functionality once you figure it out, but yeah, it’s something that took me a while to learn. So I’m not throwing them under the bus if they haven’t figured it out, unless they’re coming in and trying to regulate something that they don’t understand, and I certainly think that would be most of them.
Beverly Hallberg:
I always think the hearings on big tech are the most cringe worthy as the different members are trying to talk about social media and try to understand it, and search engines. It’s always just very obvious they don’t have any clue about it.
Hannah Cox:
Yeah.
Beverly Hallberg:
But I know with election 2024, it’s never too early to talk about, it’s around the corner. You do have a good sense of the pulse of young people and what they’re thinking about. I thought we would do a, let’s go down different issues do they care about, what is resonating? The issue I think about that is probably resonating quite well is this issue of climate change, or it’s an issue that young people care about. Am I correct about that? Do most young people care about climate change?
Hannah Cox:
Yeah, you are correct in polling that most people would say they care about it. I will say, and again, algorithm could have something to do with this, but it’s not something I see people talking about that much. I actually would say there’s a lot more people who are very, very concerned with their economic prospects. I would say the sentiment amongst younger people right now is that they’re screwed, they feel like they’re up a creek. They, of course, are, again, blaming all of the wrong things for why that is. I don’t disagree with them, I think there’s a lot financially going wrong. They’re concerned about never being able to buy a house, they’re concerned about not having a good quality of life, they’re concerned about debt. I think those are the issues that seem more animating to me from being somebody who’s very, very online. Those are the things that they’re talking about more.
Climate change, I do think they care about. I don’t know if it’s something that gets them out to vote, and that’s the real question when you come to an election season. There’s, to be honest, not many issues that really turn people, who are younger generations, out to vote, it takes a lot to get them there. But I think things like the student debt cancellation we saw Biden try to shove through, I think that’s because that is something younger people really do care about that actually is animating to them, it’s something they can tangibly see. I vote for this person, or I go vote for this thing, and I get $10,000, I get $20,000. I think that is a little bit easier to wrap your head around, whereas with climate change, they care about it, I’d say they’re concerned about it, but a lot of the policies, they’re not very tangible, and for good reason, because they’re really just communism cloaked under climate change concern.
Beverly Hallberg:
Right.
Hannah Cox:
They’re not going to do anything to address the climate, they’re just going to make everybody poor and worse off. But I think for that reason, they are not as activated by that topic when it comes to voting. Now, certainly as far as polls go, they’re going to rate it highly as something they care about.
Beverly Hallberg:
Let’s talk about the issue of free speech. So I know you and I care very deeply about free speech, IWF cares very much about free speech. There does seem to be this trend where you’re not allowed to use certain words, you have to use the right pronouns for a person, how they identify. This idea that words matter so much and that language should be regulated and that language should be changed, those types of issues revolving around free speech, how much do they resonate?
Hannah Cox:
I would love to give you good news, but-
Beverly Hallberg:
I know.
Hannah Cox:
… everything we’re seeing is very bleak and it’s not just bleak on the left. Brad and I also just covered a new poll that came out with college students over the past week where it found both left-wing and right-wing college students thought that they should be able to turn their professors in for saying a number of statements, and they ranged, on the left, from saying things like there are two genders or that everybody should get the COVID vaccine, to people on the right having issues when a professor said something that was anti-gun.
And so, I think that this is something that keeps me up at night. We are quickly losing the sense of defending anybody’s free speech on both sides. And I think that we often see it more pervasively on the left with their censorship campaigns and targeting social media to shut people down. But somewhat under the radar, I’ve covered this a lot because I care about these issues, we’ve actually seen a lot of Republican states passing really bad anti-free speech bills, specifically trying to target tech companies, with things like Section 230, both Florida and Texas Republicans have passed just absolutely atrocious, unconstitutional bills in the past year.
So I’m really worried because I don’t think that free speech is popular at all right now. It’s popular as long as you’re getting to say what you want, but the respect for other people to be able to say what they want when you disagree with it, that’s really dying quite quickly. And I think it comes down to something we’re trying to address at BASED, which is that people want to shut down speech when they cannot defend their own ideas, and I think that that’s because they lack a foundation for why they think what they think. There’s very much a tribal mentality, people are on one side or the other. They don’t actually know how to defend themselves, they don’t know how to encounter views that are different than theirs or debate them, and so they want to just make them go away. I think if we can give people a more solid understanding of their worldview and how they engage with the world, hopefully some of that would dissipate, but we’ve got a lot of work to do
Beverly Hallberg:
Teaching people how to think is what you’re doing there. And really, final question for you, I was curious about this, because we see so much of this on cable news, and that is a lot of stories, especially on the right, talking about Joe Biden’s age, and also the issues revolving around Hunter Biden. How much does Biden’s age and Hunter Biden, how much do they resonate with young people?
Hannah Cox:
I think the age question, I want to separate the two, the age question matters to young people a lot, and not just for Joe Biden, but period. I think there is a prevailing sense that all of our politicians are far too old, they’re completely disengaged from the real world, they are not going to have to suffer the consequences of the ideas that they’re pushing on the rest of us. So I think if you were to ask anybody under boomer age, if we wanted to have a ban on certain ages being a politician after a certain time, it would probably succeed overwhelmingly. So I think that is something people care about. Again, I don’t think it’s something that really particularly hurts Joe Biden, because Trump is also old, most people in Congress are also old, so I don’t think that he particularly stands out on this issue, but it is something people are quite tired of.
When it comes to Hunter, that is not only entirely a right-wing fascination, it is a right-wing boomer fascination, that’s why it’s all over cable news, their viewers are older people. Younger people do not care about this story at all. They’re not seeing it, it’s not out there. I’ve never seen anybody my age or younger talking about Hunter Biden on any platform other than maybe Twitter. So I don’t think that it resonates, I don’t even think they know. If you were to pull the average young person on the street right now and ask them what Hunter’s done, I don’t think they’d have any idea.
Beverly Hallberg:
And so, final question for you, for those who are young people listening to this and want to know where to find you, or if we have some parents or grandparents listening who want to point their children towards your content, where should they go?
Hannah Cox:
Yeah. Well, we’d love to connect with people. Our website is BASED-politics.com, you can also donate there. We are a 501(c)(3) if people want to support the work. And then, you can find us at our individual handles. We really believe that where media’s going is away from organizations. People trust individuals, they trust independent journalists, they trust influencers, so BASED Politics is the hub, the brand under which we are making content, but everything will always be under our own name. So you can find me at HannahDCox on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, all the above. You can find Brad Polumbo, my business partner, likewise under his handles of BradPolumbo. And then, as we add new personalities as we grow, we’re hoping to add a lot more young, charismatic people with effective voices who can also start making content, they will fall under the BASED Politics brand, but we’ll always try to elevate the individuals.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, thank you so much for your work, especially on teaching people how to think. I think the critical thinking skills and delving into nuance is such an important aspect of that, and that is something that you’re doing so well. So thank you for your work and also for joining us on She Thinks. Hannah Cox, thank you.
Hannah Cox:
Thank you so much, Beverly.
Beverly Hallberg:
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