#26 Brinda Adhikari, Showrunner/EP of The Problem with Jon Stewart
On producing The Problem with Jon Stewart
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Hot of the Pod 🎙️ Brinda Adhikari: Showrunner and Executive Producer of The Problem with Jon Stewart
In this episode, I sit down with Brinda Adhikari, Executive Producer and Showrunner of The Problem with Jon Stewart.
This new AppleTV show marks the famed Jon Stewart’s return to television as he tackles a new societal issue in every episode. And Brinda — she's at the helm.
Brinda joined The Problem with Jon Stewart from CBS News, where she was a senior broadcast producer for segments anchored by major TV personalities like Norah O’Donnell and Scott Pelley. She began her career in broadcast television at ABC news, where she started as a researcher and rose the ranks to become a producer on World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer and David Muir. She spent over a decade at the organization. Brinda is unlike any other guest we’ve had on Trailblazers to date.
Excerpts from the pod below:
You graduate college and then you go to work as a communications consultant for UNICEF. Then next thing I know, you're a researcher at ABC News. Did you always knew you wanted to go into TV? Tell us about that journey.
I have always had a passion for politics, history, and government. It's something I majored in while in college. My dad was a journalist, and we had some pretty fantastic debates constantly. The kinds of people I grew up around were just incredibly interested in the world. And so I always grew up with that sort of motivation. Of course, when you graduate, you explore what all is out there. I taught English for a little while; I did all kinds of stuff. But my heart was always in telling stories; I get really kind of passionate and outraged about certain topics. I was listening to that passion. At UNICEF, it was basically my job was to take journalists around to different projects that the UN was doing. And I just had this moment where I was like: ‘I want someone to take me around because I want to tell those stories.’
It seems there's a very clear hierarchy in this world. You start out as an assistant or a researcher, and then you work your way up the ranks, which is what you did at ABC News. As you moved through those roles, how did you realize you wanted to commit to TV long-term?
It's a hierarchy, but it's also a journey. There are these plot points that you can see very clearly. Truthfully, for a long time, I thought I wanted to be a print reporter. I was like, ‘I'm above TV. I'm like Woodward Bernstein. That's what I'm going to do.’
The fact is you find yourself in a thing, and you end up getting okay at it. Then you keep doing it, and then it feels good to be good at something. And that really was what happened to me.I don't think I truly got bitten by the bug until much later when I was a producer, and I got to really pitch stories and see them through. When I was more junior, I thought, ‘Alright, well, I'm in this… what else I'm gonna do?’ And it was fun.
I want to make stories. I want to tell people’s stories, and I want to be able to affect change in my own little way. But mainly I just love the act of producing — the act of picking up the phone and making calls and kind of bringing together teams of people and figuring out the stories and problems out there that make us mad. Eventually, it got to a point where I realized it was beyond just journalism. I began to get really excited about the concept of leading a team.
What’s your vision for The Problem with Jon Stewart?
We look into something that I think most people would agree is a problem. We look at: Why do people think of this as a problem? Who are the people that this problem is affecting? And then, what's standing in the way of achieving change? It's amplifying the voices of the people doing the work. So that rather than feel the hubris of like, ‘We've come up with a solution to climate change,’ it's really looking at it as what is the best way that we can tell an interesting story about something that we feel really emotional about as a society. But then, we also do it with all these tools: comedy, journalism, documentary skills, podcasting, and newsletters, tweets and Tik Toks, and all of these things.
Our North Star is really: what is something that gets a visceral reaction out of people? How do we zoom into it to figure out why it makes us mad? And who does it really hurt when it's a problem? This has been Jon’s superhero strength for years — calling out corruption and hypocrisy in the halls of power. So that's the goal.
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