She Launched “The Daily Show.” Now She’s Fighting Red State Abortion Bans.
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8K Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead’s path to advocacy was a curvy one. She started out as a comedian, first as a stand-up and then working on The Daily Show. In the early 2000s, she co-founded Air America Radio, which was designed to be a counterweight to the popularity of radio personalities on the right.
Today, as producer of the Feminist Buzzkills podcast and founder of Abortion Access Front, she’s weaving together politics and comedy to educate people about abortion laws and give them the tools to fight.
Thank you to Abortion Access Front for the use of its video “I’m Just a Pill” at the beginning of our episode.
Credits | Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Production manager: Zulema Cobb | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Host: Al Letson
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Listen: The Post-Roe Health Care Crisis (Reveal)
Read: Planning for the Worst in Trump’s Next Term: Prepare, Don’t Panic, and Don’t Comply in Advance (Mother Jones)
Read: The Forgotten—and Incredibly Important—History of the Abortion Pill (Mother Jones)
Watch: I’m Just a Pill (Abortion Access Front via YouTube)
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| 0:00.0 | I'm just a pill, a kind of birth control pill, no matter what they say on Capitol Hill, |
| 0:07.0 | well it's a wrong, wrong story they keep telling about me. |
| 0:12.0 | A strong, strong lie, what I do is block pregnancy. |
| 0:16.0 | I wish they listen what scientists say, so at the end of the day you can chill. |
| 0:21.0 | Drop some facts, tell the world I'm a pill. |
| 0:24.9 | After helping to create one of the most beloved comedy shows of all time, |
| 0:29.7 | Liz Winstead devoted herself to the fight for women's rights. |
| 0:33.2 | I wanted to combine the effectiveness of using humor to expose hypocrisy and bad actors, |
| 0:41.3 | and then combine that with a call to action. |
| 0:43.5 | So at Abortion Access Front, that's kind of what we do. |
| 0:47.2 | On the front lines of the abortion battle with the co-creator of The Daily Show, |
| 0:51.0 | keep listening. There's more to the story. |
| 0:53.1 | Join me take a stand today. |
| 0:55.0 | I really hope and I pray that you will drop some facts. |
| 0:59.0 | Tell the world I'm a pill. |
| 1:05.0 | A lot of short daily news podcasts focus on just one story. |
| 1:11.4 | But right now, you probably need more. |
| 1:14.1 | On Up First from NPR, we bring you three of the world's top headlines every day in under 15 minutes. |
| 1:21.0 | Because no one's story can capture all that's happening in this big, crazy world of ours on any given morning. |
| 1:28.7 | Listen now to the Up First podcast from NPR. |
| 1:36.6 | This is more to the story. I'm Al Leutton. Liz Winstead is famously funny and a badass. I mean, |
| 1:46.5 | she's basically a funny badass. |
... |
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