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Sam Schwartz started a podcast because he was tired of feeling helpless.
He was consuming the news the way most of us do… headlines that made him anxious, stories that seemed designed to make the world feel like it was falling apart, a constant drip of fear and outrage that left him feeling worse, not better. And at some point, instead of just complaining about it, he made something.
Sam built No Bad News: a podcast for kids and families that specifically spotlights what's working, who's solving problems, and where communities are getting things right. He was 10 years old. He pitched his own guests, scheduled his own interviews, edited his own audio, and published it himself.
He's now 11. He's gearing up for the NPR Student Podcast Challenge. And he's on this show not as a novelty, not because it's heartwarming to watch a young person do grown-up things… but because his philosophy is EXACTLY what Don't Be a Jerk is about.
In this episode, Sam and I dig into why negativity dominates media (and why the system is literally built to reward fear), what "good news" actually means versus fake positivity, how he runs his show like a real founder, and what adults might be missing about the relationship between what we consume and how we feel.
This is one of my favorite conversations in the history of this show.
What We Cover in This Episode:
- Why bad news wins: the economics of negativity bias and how the attention economy turned news into an anxiety machine
- What Sam was feeling that made him say "I'm not just going to complain, I'm going to make something"
- The difference between solutions journalism (agency-building) and denial (toxic positivity) and why Sam understands the difference intuitively
- How No Bad News is structured and what makes a story Sam will actually cover
- Sam's full production workflow: pitching, booking, recording, editing, publishing, repeat
- What repeated exposure to distressing news is doing to kids and what the research actually says
- The one media rule Sam would teach every adult if he could
- Why hope isn't something you wait for… it's something you engineer
- What Sam is building toward with the NPR Student Podcast Challenge
- What I learned about my own media habits from a conversation with an 11-year-old
If you've ever felt like the news is making you worse, this episode is for you. And if you've got kids who consume media, this conversation will change how you think about their information diet too.
