00:03:27.840And I happen to know a little bit about Pratt. Actually, more than a little bit. I know quite a lot about Spencer Pratt.
00:03:35.600Years and years ago, I wrote a book called Celebrity Inc. How Famous People Make Money.
00:03:40.860Essentially, it's like Harvard Business School case studies for how celebrities make money off things like reality TV, personal branding, social media.
00:03:49.260Although at the time, I was writing less about Instagram and more about Charlie Sheen getting paid for the first branded tweet.
00:03:55.000This was the early days of celebrities themselves essentially becoming a billboard for other products and for products they were creating.
00:04:03.980I had several chapters on reality television, and one of those focused mostly on Spencer Pratt.
00:04:10.500To do that, I did several interviews with Spencer over the course of six months.
00:04:21.180He's also really freaking smart, okay?
00:04:23.540Anyway, we're going to have Jess on the show in a little bit, but first I want to read a couple of excerpts from Celebrity Inc. to you, just so you can get a little taste of Pratt's Machiavellian genius.
00:04:33.500This book came out in 2011 and was written in 2010, which feels like an entire lifetime ago. I mean, it was 15 years ago.
00:04:42.100That's insane to me. It's just totally insane to me.
00:07:12.600They told me it would be huge if you would walk away, and I would have done it if the producers hadn't treated us like we were worthless, ugly stepchildren, Pratt said.0.98
00:07:23.080America only wanted so much of the two of them behaving like jerks, and the demand for their pictures, appearances, and secret endorsements began to fade with time.0.96
00:07:32.000We didn't understand the shelf life of the reality star because we were in it before it was saturated, Pratt said.0.95
00:07:37.260We didn't know what to do then to make it last. We were like the cow that milked everything.
00:11:48.200that they think spencer pratt is the answer to their problems i needed to understand better
00:11:55.080and so after talking to some experts listening to the mayoral debate you know he successfully
00:12:01.880channels the anger because he is in southern california this is a electorate that is used to
00:12:09.260the business of celebrity so if you frame him more as a local businessman it does make a little
00:12:14.320bit more sense again i still think he has never once demonstrated a quality that would make me
00:12:23.880believe that he has the patience for coalition building to fix these sort of thorny complicated
00:12:32.180honestly boring day-to-day problems because managing a city is very bureaucratic it's boring
00:12:40.900It's bureaucratic. It's so boring. But there's so many men out there who believe they're like, oh, I could I could 100 percent do that job.
00:12:51.500And to be fair, I don't think Donald Trump had any of those skills or has any of those skills either.
00:12:58.560Right. And I just don't know how you are living in America in 2026, where Donald Trump is doing a pretty objectively terrible job leading this country and say, you know what?
00:13:10.900Time to take a chance on another completely unproven reality star.
00:13:14.480And by the way, Donald Trump at least led huge businesses.
00:13:56.320That would be relevant to running a city.
00:14:00.160It's like and it's not even like he's trying to be mayor of a small city.
00:14:04.080Right. No, Los Angeles is is a behemoth.
00:14:07.420Los Angeles is essentially a small country.
00:14:09.080Yes. But I mean, the sort of headline of the piece is there is a way of communicating that he has perfected that is very effective in the media landscape of 2026.
00:14:24.320And certainly you can win political races without having that particular charisma or that particular communication skill, which really is dumbing things down.
00:14:38.140I mean, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It is, you know, the skill that makes you good at a Real Housewives reunion. But this is the unserious time we live in. And so candidates who want to win need to find a way to communicate their ideas well to the people who are voting for them.
00:14:59.480And he really demonstrates that for a certain segment of people in Los Angeles, certainly
00:15:04.380not everyone, he is effectively communicating that he believes what he agrees with them
00:15:12.760about what the problems are and he can fix them.
00:15:16.940Again, an absurd proposition in basically every way.
00:15:21.620And I really want to I actually wrote back to a reader this morning who was telling me
00:15:26.080that I wasn't giving him a fair shake and I said oh wow did they did they say why did they say why
00:15:33.140they felt like he wasn't getting a fair shake because he I will read you this email I would
00:15:38.220love yeah I will bring it up because I hope this guy writes back yeah well that's the thing like
00:15:43.620I actually I want more dialogue about this I want to be talking about this I want to I want
00:15:48.400I really genuinely want to hear from people that think Spencer would be effective in the office
00:15:55.920OK, so he's saying this this reader says the current state of Los Angeles is appalling and sad.
00:16:03.680She witnessed his mother, who is very old, witnessed people doing drugs on the sidewalk.
00:16:09.140And he says, I think Spencer Pratt is capable of surrounding himself with those who want to do what he wants, clean up the city and lame duck politicians.0.71
00:16:18.060Karen failed throughout her term in so many ways, which is a bummer for the entire city.0.67
00:16:21.500No reason to go there for another four years. And Rahman is off the socialistic mark.
00:16:26.740So I wrote back to him and I asked, why do you think Pratt is capable of surrounding himself with experts that will clean up the city?
00:16:35.520When I hear him talk about his policies, they seem to have very little substance.
00:16:40.860So, you know, he has said, and, you know, absolutely fact check this to make sure that I'm characterizing this correctly. But my understanding is he's saying, I'm going to give homeless people three weeks to get off the streets. And if they don't, we're going to clear them out. And it's like, OK, what does that look like?
00:16:59.420What is that? Who's doing that? Who's doing that? Where are you putting them? Who's going to pay for it? Because at issue in this race is police overtime, you know, paying for firemen, pensions, all this. Like who's paying for it? Where are they going to go? He talked about, you know, forcing them, you know, addicts into treatment.
00:17:17.300Okay, who's paying for that? There's Medicaid and Medicare cuts from the federal government. I've done a lot of reporting where I talk to families of the term of art is difficult adult children, but that tends to mean they have severe drug addiction or mental illness.
00:17:33.960Um, they're mostly, I've mostly talked to the parents of difficult adult children. Um, they describe just absolutely tragic situations where there is absolutely no way to get their children the help they need and their children often experience periods of homelessness. Right.
00:17:50.840And so it's not like there's all these solutions to deal with this struggling population that, you know, Democrats or whoever was in charge are just too lazy or feckless to enact.
00:18:06.020This is an extremely challenging problem and the solutions are expensive and we don't have universal health care. We don't have a sort of system where addicts can get the support and treatment that they need. There's so much stigma against it.
00:18:24.900It's like, why do you think that Spencer Pratt, claiming he's going to fix the problem in three weeks, can just do that, can just snap his hands and do that?
00:18:36.440And I'm not saying that the current leadership—I'm not from Los Angeles.
00:18:39.800I have not sort of deeply run into the day-to-day of, you know, the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles.
00:19:16.180If the people who live there say that, I, I am in no position to disagree with them. But again, I'm just like, and this man is your solution. Yeah. I just I'm I reject that. I'm not a voter in Los Angeles. So, you know, they have free will. And if this is how they want to spend it, that is that is their right.
00:19:39.460I think a bigger question for society is why are we not getting better candidates if the people of Los Angeles feel that these are not great choices for them?
00:19:49.600And I actually would posit that one of the reasons we're not getting better candidates is because we've made being a political figure a nightmare in terms of how dangerous it is for you and your family.
00:20:03.600And so you need to be have really a thick skin, thicker than ever before, and also be willing to take a lot of abuse towards you and your family.
00:20:16.460And I've actually talked to people who are trying to get more women to run for office.
00:20:22.620And it is a really big barrier, especially for moms who, you know, really put their children's safety first.0.97
00:20:29.700That is one of the big reasons they say they don't want to run.
00:20:32.860So I would say that the sort of larger environment and the increase in political violence is part of the reason that we don't have a better sort of slate of candidates.
00:20:47.620And again, I'm from what I read. This is from what I've read. Yeah. Even though she did not do a good job in that debate, I think Roman is who I would vote for if I lived in Los Angeles. She does seem to have her heart in the right place and has policies that, you know, I personally would support. She was terrible in that debate. Like I there's no two ways about it. OK.
00:21:11.360I watched the debate. She was bad in the debate. That's the thing. And this goes back to what you just said about why don't more people want to run for office who are very qualified. It's because you have to be all of these things. I mean, this is kind of a loose analogy. But I talk to a lot of people who want to be authors these days, but they're like, I don't want to have to be a social media brand. I don't want to have to be a platform. And you have to do both those things now if you want to write books.1.00
00:21:40.860no thank you and there's so many qualified people who are like maybe i'd be shit in a debate or
00:21:47.100maybe i'm not good on tiktok and i don't i don't want to have to participate in that part of it0.96
00:21:51.740but you know what i could lead the fuck out of a city yep yep and you know they're they might be
00:21:58.440hopefully they're finding other ways to participate in their communities and in the0.67
00:22:02.620system but i guess i mean i look it's i am uh barred from running for office uh based on the
00:22:11.160ethical guidelines of my oh basically guidelines of the new york times yeah um i but you i would
00:22:20.980not want to run for office anyway you could not pay me enough money to run for dog catcher like
00:22:25.360no way and i i kudos to anyone who's willing to do it and take the abuse right totally totally1.00
00:22:32.520I mean, sometimes I take so much abuse as an author of feminist books that I'm like, oh, I could take it.0.98
00:22:37.600So like there are days when I wake up and I'm like, I'm going to run for office.
00:22:59.500And like, why are you still reading me?
00:23:01.600clearly hate me but he was trying to tell me yesterday that it was sort of a convoluted
00:23:07.660argument but basically employers should not hire women because they're more expensive
00:23:13.160because they might sue you for pregnancy discrimination okay i don't even understand
00:23:19.460i guess it's like you're saying because they have to pay for parental leave for women so
00:23:25.340they're more expensive but like not all women have children and right i actually think the
00:23:30.840government should be paying for this. So maybe we're aligned on. Maybe we're aligned on these0.96
00:23:36.300things. Maybe we are aligned. I think we're not. But it just I agree with you that I don't need
00:23:44.240more. No, I don't need more shit. I don't need more. I don't need more hate. I want to take a1.00
00:23:48.480quick break. And when we get back, I want to talk about the celebrity of it all. I mean, the fact
00:23:53.520that, you know, these days politicians do have to look a certain way and know how to act a certain
00:23:59.060way and how that is, I despise that. I just hate everything about that. I know, but I really want
00:24:05.940to hear about your interview with Spencer that you did. Oh, yeah. Many moons ago. Many, many moons,
00:24:13.380many moons ago. All right. All of that to come after the break.
00:24:15.860okay we are back it does not surprise me in the least that we are now living in a reality
00:24:31.840television celebrity centric political environment i say this all the time because i covered both
00:24:37.660celebrities and politics like back to back like i went from one to the other to the other and i
00:24:43.680remember like the diehard political reporters in the very beginning were skeptical that i switched
00:24:48.080to politics and i was like are you kidding they're the same they're yeah i like it was the writing
00:24:53.320about celebrities and doing red carpets and being out at bungalow eight till three in the morning
00:24:58.480was the best training ground to be on john edwards campaign bus that anyone could have had well
00:25:05.780because you're getting people are spinning you no matter what right exactly exactly image making
00:25:12.600trying to get their story across in the way that is most beneficial to themselves.0.99
00:25:18.760You know, the cliche is what Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.0.98
00:25:23.920Washington is it was that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.0.99
00:25:26.960But I'll tell you, I went to Substack's big D.C. party last year and it was looking more Hollywood than ever with the hair and the boobs and the Botox.0.97
00:25:40.320And I mean, it was it was also very conservative at that party. But like, no longer is D.C. Hollywood for ugly people because all the people that want to be reality television stars or are reality television stars are now going into politics.
00:25:54.520Yeah. I mean, it's so funny how so many of especially the right wing political media stars are like failed screenwriters and failed.
00:26:04.100yes yes well amazingly i there's a really great uh new yorker article about linda mcmahon
00:26:15.620right actually you know what it could be nine months old it was just in my bathroom so i just
00:26:20.440read it that's how that's that's how the new yorker comes to me okay and uh it is fascinating
00:26:29.140in relation to this, honestly, because it talks about how being Vince McMahon's wife
00:26:37.420and being behind the scenes of that entire circus, of the professional wrestling circus,
00:26:43.800and having to create these storylines and narratives and build a fandom,
00:26:49.260like an intense, rabid fandom, prepared her to work in the Trump administration.
00:26:53.100Yeah. I talked to a woman named Nalini Stamp who coordinates fandoms for the Working Families Party. And her argument when we spoke, which was very compelling, was that fandom is almost like religion for people now, right?0.99
00:27:14.240It has this very primary role in their lives.
00:27:19.540And so organizing people politically around things that they're already a fan of, whether it's Bravo, Harry Potter, whatever people are really obsessed with, it all kind of goes together.
00:27:33.960and um i think being mediagenic so i don't even know if you really need to be conventionally
00:27:43.360good looking because sometimes standing out from the algorithm can do something for you
00:27:49.640and yes but i was i would actually say as a man you don't have to be and as a woman you still do
00:27:55.440that's fair and you that's probably true um but i mean there's a i think there's
00:28:02.560i'm trying to think of counter examples right now i was i was just trying to think of some too and
00:28:07.620i'm like yeah i mean but someone like someone like aoc is not a maga barbie right like she
00:28:16.180but she's objectively beautiful objectively beautiful but she's like i guess it's like
00:28:21.760you don't have to fit into the mold created by the right wing.
00:28:41.600I'm curious, actually, why the left isn't putting forward more celebrities, because I just think Clooney could mop the floor with anyone right now.
00:30:21.800So I don't know that you necessarily need to already be a movie star, but you do need to have name recognition.
00:30:27.620And I think you have that celebrity quality. Although Martin Sheen, I'd vote for Martin Sheen in a heartbeat. I think that a lot of America would too. You would. I would. No, I don't. I would. I just I don't think I could help myself. That's the problem, Jess. Like, even as like deeply entrenched that I have been, you know, in politics and reporting on them for so long, I still think that like I would see Martin Sheen and be like, yes, I could not.
00:30:54.740Or Bradley Whitford. I don't think I'd be able to help myself.
00:30:57.840I'm trying to think of us. I mean, Al Franken is kind of the only one that I've ever been like, OK, I would have voted for him.
00:31:12.700But Cynthia Nixon didn't play the president on the greatest political show on television, did she?
00:31:18.620No, I don't know. I mean, it may be a feudal.0.88
00:31:21.920But I really want to have serious, competent people running for office.
00:31:30.260I mean, I would love I would love that. OK, like I would love, love, love that. I also just I don't know. I don't know what's going to have to happen to make that happen.
00:31:40.260And like you, I've been talking to so many of the groups that are pushing really hard for mothers of school age children to run for office because they know so many like they just they live the issues facing American families every single day.
00:31:56.600And yet it is an uphill battle and not just because of family safety, but because you can't use campaign funds for child care.
00:32:04.320yeah yeah and it's just also like there is only so many hours in the day right so many hours in
00:32:12.360a day and you i think it is challenging to be away from your young children for prolonged periods of
00:32:20.780time and there really is at some point a zero-sum calculation that you have to make and so you really
00:32:27.020have to want it um and again it's like i think that we have made the experience of being in
00:32:35.560politics so ugly i mean people who are on school boards oh god arrest and death threats and it's
00:32:43.240just like i really don't blame anyone who's like you know what you can keep it i don't want to
00:32:48.220spend my days on this planet um dealing with that and so i really think that you know it's a barrier
00:32:55.060to a lot of people who are reasonable in many in a variety of ways would be excellent leaders
00:33:03.540would be sensible have their finger on the pulse of their communities um it's a real deterrent
00:33:10.160it's a real real deterrent i'm gonna i'm gonna send you my my spencer pratt interview uh i read
00:33:17.020it at the top of this episode parts of it just to give people a little taste of it it really did
00:33:23.260remind me that your your article like started me back down that rabbit hole and this
00:33:29.540solidified it for me that he's not a dumb guy and i think he came across as one for for quite some
00:33:38.120time he was the mastermind truly behind the creation of the hills and of so many of the
00:33:46.000plot lines of the hills and in some ways of the rise of the kardashians as well because he was
00:33:51.940best friends with brody jenner and he was the one i mean he he was you know in college and he was
00:33:58.080just like it's time you know i'm just i've got to be a celebrity because that's the easiest freaking
00:34:02.160job out there and he's negotiating with the paparazzi and making all this t-shirt for some
00:34:06.780of the first like celebrity like branded product placements that were just in celebrity lives
00:34:11.620right like it wasn't in a movie it was just like i'm gonna carry a coke around and so you know
00:34:16.440what would you how would you describe his skills and how do you think he has deployed them and
00:34:24.200would he ever I mean my biggest thing having observed him for 20 years now it just really
00:34:30.620feels crazy 20 years 20 years yeah because we've lived we've watched him and as viewers and then
00:34:35.960we've also reported on him I've never seen him do anything that didn't benefit himself well that's
00:34:41.260the thing he has never done anything that doesn't benefit himself and so I'm not saying none of
00:34:45.400these skills actually translate to being a good politician. But so many of these skills translate
00:34:50.620to getting elected. Yeah. Well, you know, one of my favorite political commentators, John Dickerson,
00:34:57.900lately of CBS News, but now an independent journalist, he has always pointed out that
00:35:05.980the skills that you need to do well in a campaign are completely different from the skills that you
00:35:12.880need to do well in office and sometimes a person has both of those things and some times they are
00:35:19.620completely separate um i am sort of i i had been thinking about doing a piece
00:35:26.360in the fall about this but then i decided i needed sort of more examples of a positive
00:35:34.360way of doing social media in the campaign because mostly what we've seen be effective
00:35:40.740Is this like AI slop that Spencer is doing or really negative or just really sort of, you know, brawling?
00:35:51.900I mean, the things that tend to go viral are like so-and-so destroys somebody on the floor of Congress.
00:36:00.060And it just sort of leads to more of these manufactured viral moments from our elected instead of actually, you know, getting anything done.
00:36:12.040They're positioning themselves so that they can get clipped for MSNBC.
00:36:17.160Right. So what I did appreciate about Mom Donnie's campaign is that it was so positive.
00:36:24.800So media that he was putting out, whether you like him or not, doesn't matter.
00:36:30.720So many people I saw interviewed would say, like, I'm not voting for him, but I like I've seen his videos and I and I like the image that he's putting out and that it isn't negative.
00:37:18.060And again, Mom Donnie is an exception to this.
00:37:21.140But I just really would love some brilliance, someone more brilliant than I am, far more brilliant than I am,
00:37:27.920to figure out a way to get political messages across and i actually don't even care if they're
00:37:33.800things that i disagree with i just think we need to change the tenor of things or i would like to
00:37:38.000see that um because it's also like and i always feel like maude flanders when i say this but
00:37:44.040someone think of the children like it's like how do i tell my kids that their virtue matters that
00:37:50.400being respectful to people matters that which i do all the time but when they see that every example
00:37:55.940on um getting through your message in the media is negative ugly mean cruel like it's rough right
00:38:07.320it's hard so i really would like to see more people be successful having a message that is
00:38:16.320not ugly and again i does not agree would even be happy if there are people that i wouldn't vote for
00:38:21.700I disagree with. Totally. And so just like I would just like to see more of it. I would like to see
00:38:26.480more of it. And so I want to be clear in the piece that I wrote about Spencer. I was saying I don't
00:38:31.960like any of this. I am merely describing what I see on the ground and trying to explain why this
00:38:38.740is appealing to some people. And again, the polling is very bad in Los Angeles. And, you know, it's a
00:38:45.380local race. Often polling is very. And polling is harder than ever before now. Right. So, yeah.
00:38:51.700Well, he clearly does have a constituency. I don't think he has a real shot to win this race. I don't it doesn't. There are many, many undecided voters. People are very unhappy with Karen Bass, which I completely understand. So I don't necessarily think that he has a real shot at winning this race. But that he is even in the differential is something we need to pay attention to.
00:39:14.100Of course it is. Of course it is. We again, your piece was so smart because it did. It did just say this is something and someone that we we can't completely write off. And I'm going to leave us actually with a section of this chapter that I wrote for Celebrity Inc.
00:39:30.940God, like 13 years ago, after spending, you know, several interviews over six months interviewing Spencer about his rise through reality television and what he was going to do next.
00:39:40.640And so remember, this was a time, the early days of reality television, when it wasn't easy for reality television stars to get media placement in tabloids and gossip shows because they still didn't consider them real celebrities.
00:39:54.120So I'm just going to read this verbatim.
00:39:55.660And this and this is what this this right here actually encapsulates, you know, what makes me so nervous about Pratt, because I don't think his point of view from this time has necessarily changed.
00:40:07.580So during the first week, Pratt filmed with the Hills. He left such a bad taste in viewers' mouths that he landed on Star Magazine's Yuck-O-Meter.
00:40:17.420Pratt was thrilled. An advertisement in the magazine the size of the Yuck-O-Meter copy would have cost about $40,000.
00:40:24.240dollars. I thought, wow, being yucky just got me a $40,000 promotion. I'm cool with this,
00:40:32.380Pratt said. His mentality was, we're not raping people. We're not killing people. We're not
00:40:37.720racist. It's better than going to work and being a jerk and not getting paid to be a jerk.1.00
00:40:42.240oh my god i weep for us all i truly truly do i weep for us all and and also have never been0.99
00:40:56.560so happy that i wrote this book in the past 13 years i'm like this is delightful to revisit
00:41:01.380and you know what's so funny is i absolutely read your book when it came out and yet i'm so old and
00:41:08.200My memory is so bad that, like, I feel like you're reading it to me.