No matter what your interest — music, true crime, alien abductions — there's a podcast (or a hundred) out there for you. But the Pod Save America podcast was launched with a greater purpose than merely indulging a niche obsession.

Proudly branding itself "a no-bulls**t conversation about politics," its mission is to speak truth to power at a time when political discourse has become mired in disinformation and distortions. Its four hosts are no mere armchair news junkies: Jon Favreau (not to be confused with the actor/director of the same name), Tommy Vietor, Jon Lovett, and Dan Pfeiffer all worked for the Barack Obama administration in various spokesperson, advisory, and speechwriter capacities.

The quartet originally convened in 2016 for Keepin' it 1600, a weekly political podcast hosted by the pop-culture website The Ringer. But the election of Donald Trump that November inspired the team to make podcasting their full-time pursuit. Favreau, Vietor, and Lovett formed their own podcast network — Crooked Media — with a more intense focus on progressive politics and activism, and relaunched their show with Pfeiffer as a twice-weekly podcast named Pod Save America in January 2017.

Combining shrewd political analysis and impassioned calls to action with the informal, off-the-cuff (and unapologetically profane) vibe of a pub hang with your best pals, Pod Save America has proven to be a consoling, cathartic outlet for people who (in the hosts' words) are "not yet ready to give up or go insane."

In its first month, Pod Save America hosted Barack Obama's final interview as president, and the show has since welcomed the likes of Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris, attracting an audience of more than 1.5 million listeners per episode in the process.

The show's casual feel naturally lends itself to a stage setting — the Pod Save America crew first toured the nation in 2017 and, in the run-up to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, the podcast made its television debut with four HBO specials filmed before live audiences. Their road campaign continues into 2019, with the intent of directly engaging more Americans to become actively involved in the political process.