How Do You Survive With Integrity? with Jesse Thorn

Past Due with Ana Marie Cox and Open Mike Eagle

Ana Marie Cox and Open Mike Eagle

News, Arts, Performing Arts, Business, Society & Culture, Politics

4.6 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2025

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Broadcaster and podcast pioneer Jesse Thorn joins us to talk about building something sustainable without selling out. From his early days of mailing CD-Rs to NPR stations to running Maximum Fun as a listener-supported network, Jesse shares the emotional and economic math behind 20 years of independent success. We get into what it means to build trust with an audience, how community gets harder in a platform-driven world, and why “working for the people” still feels like the best job he’s ever had. Support the show at patreon.com/pastdue Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, book nerds.
0:02.7	Ever wonder what today's most celebrated writers are actually reading?
0:06.1	What books inspired them or their most controversial book opinions?
0:10.1	Well, join me Elena Pasellello on Open Book,
0:13.0	a new literary podcast from Live Wire Radio, PRX, and Powell's books.
0:17.3	Each week I'll talk to best-selling authors like Karen Russell and Melissa Fibos on bookish topics and so much more.
0:23.4	So cozy up and crack a spine.
0:25.5	Open book drops June 11th, wherever you get your podcast.
0:34.8	What does it take to build something sustainable in a world is constantly shifting beneath your feet?
0:40.4	I started podcasting at the dawn of podcasting. The end of 2004 was when I made my first RSS feed.
0:47.8	Maybe podcasting had existed for eight months. Jesse Thorne has been doing that for two decades.
0:52.8	He built maximum fun from scratch, starting with a college radio show, growing it into a beloved podcast network, and pioneering a listener-supported model long before Patreon or Substack or household names.
1:06.4	And the Patrions and Kickstarters made that into a much more transactional operation where they're
1:12.6	like, do I get exclusive what stuff?
1:15.3	How much of the show do you put behind the paywall and not let me listen to unless I give
1:19.3	you money?
1:20.0	And our premise was always we want to put as much as possible out for free.
1:25.3	And the stuff that's behind the paywall is almost nothing and it's just
1:28.8	like a way of saying like, hey, thanks. The creative economy is broken, but some people are still
1:36.8	making it work. We're here to find out how. I'm Autumn Marie Cox. And I'm open Mike Eagle and this
1:43.2	is past due.
1:54.6	Jesse?
	...

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