Sean Hannity is one of the busiest men in news media. He hosts the nationally syndicated Sean Hannity Show on news/talk radio for Premiere Networks, in addition to his primetime cable news program with Fox News.
So, you might think that would take up most of his time. But you’d be wrong.
Beginning next week, Hang Out with Sean Hannity will debut. The podcast will release new episodes twice per week, featuring long-form conversations between Hannity and guests filmed inside his Florida man cave.
In an interview earlier this week, Sean Hannity explained why it was important for him to branch out into this lane — which is similar to his Sean program for Fox Nation — and expand to YouTube, Spotify, and other major podcast platforms.
Garrett Searight: What was the inspiration for you to want to branch out and do something like this?
Sean Hannity: It’s a great question. I started one for Fox Nation, which obviously is subscription-based, and we had great shows, and we had Sly Stallone and his wife, and Gary Brecka in the health space with Jillian Michaels and Stephen A. Smith, and Montell Williams. We just had different people, long form. Some went a couple of hours, although I don’t think they ran the whole thing the way that we will on this podcast. And I actually just offered to do it. I said I wanted to do it, and they said, do it, and it did really, really well for Nation.
I do radio. And I do TV. I have my routine. And then I have these periods of time where I just looked at my schedule and I realized I would love to do long form, very different from what I do on radio, very different from what I do on TV. And I discovered things that I never thought would happen before.
When Stephen A. told the story about having dyslexia as a kid and being held back in 3rd and 4th grade, and how that motivated him to be who he was, that really inspired me. When Jillian Michaels, here we know her as one of the greatest health, wellness, fitness people in the country, was young and she’s tiny. She’s 5 foot two. She’s small. But she weighed over 170 pounds and the impact that had on her life. It really is fascinating to hear that backstory.
When I had Tony Robbins on, and he told the story that when he was growing up, his family didn’t have a lot of money, and a neighbor came by with Thanksgiving dinner, and his father yelled at the guy for thinking that he was poor, even though Tony, as a young kid, really wanted that food. It inspired him to later in life come up with programs. He’s going to feed like a trillion people, and he’s doing it, and how it impacted his life. Or Montell Williams literally cried on the podcast when I talked about the hardest moments after he was diagnosed with MS and living with MS.
But then we also do a little bit different version of what I do on radio and TV, which is I don’t have to interrupt somebody if they want to explain why they have a political point of view that is very different from mine. I can let them have four, five, six minutes, and then we pick up the discussion from there. Can I still press them for an answer? Absolutely. I’m going to be me. But it just gives you a level of freedom. Time is freedom in that space. And I’m just looking forward to doing it, doing it a little differently.
I’m kind of looking at it like I’m beginning my radio career in as much as when I started, I was on a college station that nobody listened to. And I’m looking at it like starting a podcast and a channel that doesn’t exist. If I build a good show, I’m pretty confident that the audience will come. And I’ve kind of surveyed the podcast world. There’s things that I like out there, and there are things that I don’t like out there. I just feel like there is a place for what I have, and in terms of the vision in my mind where I want to take it.
GS: So when you say you look at your schedule and see that you have time to do a podcast, are you somebody who is constantly “on” and constantly thinking about both the radio show and the primetime show?
SH: I would say that’s a pretty accurate statement. I don’t sleep a lot. I work a lot. And I enjoy my work. I feel blessed to do what I do every day. However, in radio, you have 15-minute segments. You got to take a break, then you come back, short segment, come back, then do another long segment, and sometimes I’m interacting with callers. I’m interacting with guests. Sometimes I’m doing a long monologue on an issue of the day.
So, it’s just a way to do things differently on a more personal basis and expand my horizons a little bit. Because, believe it or not, outside of the world of politics — which both shows are heavily involved in — I have a lot of other interests in my life. And that’s an opportunity for me to pursue conversations in those arenas as well. But there will be politics. I’m not saying that that’s not going to happen. We have some really good guests that are booked to start the podcast, to launch it, and I’m taking the long view on this. I’m in this for the long haul.
I’m just excited at the prospect that I can have long conversations with people I like, people I maybe don’t know, people I disagree with, and people I agree with. And then talk about a variety of things that I’m really into that I never really have time to talk about on air. I’m very much into health, wellness, fitness, nutrition, and martial arts. So that’s going to be a big part of the podcast.
We’re going to talk a lot about other people, their lives, how they became successful. I’ll talk to people that I disagree with, but it won’t be in a six-minute segment where I have to get an answer out of somebody on an important question, and they’re trying to duck and dodge and weave. I’ll stay there for an hour until I get an answer to the question now. And I don’t have to be as interruptive, and it doesn’t have to be as contentious. So I’m really excited about it. My foray into this with Fox Nation worked out really well, and I just kind of feel like this is the beginning for me.
GS: Literally, nobody in the history of cable news has done more shows than you. So what are the things that still motivate you to get up and do a great show every day?
SH: You know what’s great about my job? Every single day is different. Every day, because every single day the news is different, and while there are certainly principles that guide my political point of view. And those principles really have not changed for me throughout my entire career. I’ve evolved on some issues. I’ve changed my view on some issues. But I started out as a Reagan conservative on air, and kind of evolved into a Reagan, MAGA conservative because times changed.
And I’m very fond of the idea that, for example, on the issue of national security, national defense. We don’t ever have to ask our national treasure, our kids, to go door to door like they did in Iraq, and step over IEDs and not have armored Humvees, because I would argue that the next generation of weaponry, that future conflicts are going to be fought in air-conditioned offices someplace in the US, and not on the battlefield.
So we’re living through an age where everything is changing at the speed of light. When people say artificial intelligence is the future, my answer to that is no, it’s the present. It’s happening right now, right before our eyes. And it is accelerated at a pace that I don’t think even people that work in the field anticipated. And that’s become a big part of my life. I don’t know if you use AI at all, but I use it every day. And I’m addicted to it.
Another topic of real keen interest of mine is technology, the future, the evolving workplace employment, how it’s going to impact pretty much every industry that everybody works in, including yours, including mine. And we’re at a point where, which I don’t do, but I could do, and I’ve played around with it. I could ask Grok, “Hey, please tell me what Sean Hannity might say on today’s economic news,” and it will come back with a pretty convincing, comprehensive answer that is something close to what I would say. I’m not replaceable yet, though, Garrett.
GS: I was going to ask: Glenn Beck is doing full-on AI podcasts or video shows. Would that be something that you would look into embracing in the future?
SH: No, it’s not something I would embrace in the future. I saw that he did it, and I was curious about what he did, and I found it interesting. I think it’s a great way to educate the public about how impactful this is going to be. And I know that there are a lot of worries and concerns on Wall Street and the impact that it’s going to have on the economy, the impact that may have in terms of jobs.
Look, for example, at, how jobs in the auto industry have been taken over by robotics. The robotics that are coming are absolutely beyond, I think, what most people understand. If you, for example, if Tesla has a robot that they keep every year, they come out with a new series, the new iteration, the new advancements of it. And for example, the more difficult thing a couple of years ago was to get the robot to have dexterity in its hands to do simple tasks. And they’ve been able to overcome that obstacle dramatically. So that might impact manufacturing jobs of people. But on the other side of it, it’s going to create a whole other group of jobs for people that we didn’t anticipate either.
GS: When you sit down and see a story, how do you weigh what works best on radio and what works best on TV?
SH: Boy, that’s a great question. On radio, it’s all energy. And the only way that I have to communicate with the audience, which I love, is through my voice, inflection, cadence, pitch, and tone. On TV, I could just look at somebody, and I could roll my eyes up, and I can communicate a lot to my audience. So they’re both powerful mediums.
I think in radio, you really have to connect with somebody’s heart and mind. And I think on TV, you just have other tools available for communication. And I think with a podcast, I think people are going to see me dressed down the way I usually dress in life. I don’t like to wear a tie, which I don’t wear on TV anymore. I don’t like to wear a jacket, and I don’t like to wear a stiff collar shirt. So I might wear either a t-shirt or I’m going to wear a linen cotton shirt and jeans, and just be hanging out, and that’s kind of the atmosphere that I’m going to try and create on the podcast.
Actually, I have three Democrats booked for the first two weeks of the podcast that I think would surprise you. But they know me well enough to know that I will be fair to them and give them an opportunity to express their point of view, and give them time to talk. Maybe one of the criticisms you get is that when you have shorter segments, TV or radio, especially if you disagree with somebody, you have to be a little bit more interruptive than you want to be.
I would rather let them finish their answer than say, “but you still didn’t answer my question,” and then do it that way. Give them time to finish their entire thought, go off on a completely different tangent than what I was asking them about. But then I’m going to think it’ll be more impactful to say, “You just spent five minutes answering a question without answering my question.” And then at that point, they’re going to feel a little more pressure to answer the question. So I’m hoping for that.
I went to the set for the first time yesterday. I couldn’t have been more excited. And there’s going to be some social media videos coming out on that.
When I started out in my adult life, I came from a lower-middle-class family where my parents grew up very poor. And my mom, who grew up in the South Bronx, who was valedictorian of her high school class and could do the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink, didn’t have money to go to college. So she ended up being a prison guard, working 16-hour shifts her whole life. And my dad, who grew up in Bed-Stuy, again very poor. All four of my grandparents came from Ireland — legally, if you’re interested, because that’s such a big issue these days — and came to Ellis Island.
My dad had a very tough life. He grew up there in the Depression, fought four years in the Pacific in World War II, and it was a big deal when they moved out to a little 50 by 100 lot Levitt house, Cape Cod, on Long Island, in Franklin Square.
The one thing that they really instilled in me, that sticks with me to this day, because I don’t have to do this. I’ve made enough money. I’ve been fortunate enough in my career. But I didn’t get into it because I wanted to make money or ever thought I’d be successful. I do it because I love it. And the minute that that mic went on, the red light went on, at a radio station back in the 80s, it just changed my life. What I realized is that’s where I want to be. And I realized that there are still things I want to accomplish that I can’t accomplish in the current formats that I’m working in. And the idea that Fox is going to let me do it makes me happy. I want to do it. I’m embracing it.
My parents taught me one thing: a work ethic. At eight, I was delivering papers. At 12 years old, I was washing dishes in a restaurant every Friday, Saturday, Sunday night until two in the morning. And at 13, I was a cook. Then I was a bus boy, a bartender. I spent 10 years of my life in construction, got behind a radio mic, and my life changed. And that’s all I ever wanted to do, and that passion has not left.
The only thing I can compare it to — without daring to compare myself to Rush, because there never will be another Rush Limbaugh — is if you recall when Rush got sick and announced that he had stage four advanced lung cancer, it took my breath away. Because you’d think that people are going to be with you forever. And people that you admire and people that you love, and I knew Rush, and he couldn’t have been nicer to me throughout my career.
If you really look at it, here’s a guy that had a Gulfstream, a guy that had a huge mansion in Palm Beach, a guy that by every outside measure had achieved everything he wanted to achieve in life. And yet, he would go through the most brutal chemotherapy, radiation treatments you could ever imagine. And what was Rush’s bucket list? Was it to go to Europe? Was it to go to Australia? Or was it to take a big trip? No. His bucket list was just to get well enough that he could get back on the air and do his show.
And that was how he spent the last year of his life. So really, his bucket list was what he was doing every day. And as I reflect back on my life and the opportunities that I’ve had in the 30 years now that I’ve been at Fox, and all the years I’ve been on radio, to have this opportunity for me is just another level of excitement for me. And nothing has changed from that first day that I cracked a microphone. Nothing. I feel the same way today as I felt then. If anything, I’d like to think that I can do it better than I did then.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
