The One With the History of TPM
The TPM Show with Josh and Kate
Talking Points Memo
4.8 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 17 November 2025
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Take a trip into the Wayback machine in this bonus episode, as part of TPM’s 25th Anniversary! Executive Editor John Light and Deputy Editor for News Nicole Lafond co-moderate a panel with current and former TPMers, including TPM editor-at-large David Kurtz, ProPublica reporter Paul Kiel, NOTUS reporter Evan McMorris-Santoro and The Cut feature editor Catherine Thompson. They provide a kind of oral history of the past 25 years of TPM.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, dear listeners, this is Kate Riga. I'm here to make a quick pitch that you consider |
| 0:04.2 | becoming a TPM Prime member. TPM has used the member model for over a decade now, and our loyal |
| 0:09.9 | members are the only reason we've been able to weather the turbulence of the media landscape and |
| 0:14.1 | avoid the fate that has befallen so many other independent outlets. For $70, you get no paywall, |
| 0:20.0 | fewer ads, access to the Hive member forum, a member's only newsletter, and more. For $70, you get no paywall, fewer ads, access to the Hive member forum, |
| 0:22.4 | a member's only newsletter, and more. For $140 a year, you get all of that, plus no ads at all. |
| 0:28.6 | Without our members, there is no podcast, not to mention that I'm out of a job. Thank you so much |
| 0:34.2 | for listening and supporting us. We couldn't do it without you. |
| 1:03.1 | Thank you so much for listening and supporting us. We have something a little different this week. Kate Riga is on vacation, so we're not recording an episode of the podcast. The last podcast you heard was the live |
| 1:10.3 | podcast for our 25th anniversary celebration, which you've heard a lot about. |
| 1:15.6 | Just before we did the podcast, we had a panel discussion, and I actually mentioned that panel discussion in a post that I did on the website because I enjoyed it so much. |
| 1:26.8 | As I mentioned, I watched it from the back |
| 1:29.6 | of the theater. I wanted to be, you know, kind of away from it, not part of it, watching it |
| 1:34.2 | from a distance, all that kind of stuff. And I really loved it. And we recorded it. So in this |
| 1:39.5 | episode of the Sort of Podcast, we are going to share with you the recording of that discussion. |
| 1:46.1 | And just again, to give you context, this was sort of an oral history of the history of TPM. |
| 1:52.4 | And it is a discussion led by our executive editor, John Light, and including two of our current |
| 2:00.5 | colleagues, Nicole LaFond and David Kurtz, |
| 2:04.0 | and they're joined by three alums of the site who each, I don't think any of them worked at |
| 2:11.0 | TPM at the same time, and because of that, they sort of cover a lot of the site's history. |
| 2:17.0 | One of them is Paul Keel, who was the first |
| 2:19.5 | reporter I ever hired at TPM. Another was Evan McMorris Santoro, who joined TPM in 2009, and I |
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