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--:-- Georgia Howe: It's December 24th, Christmas Eve, and this is your Sunday edition of Morning Wire.
--:-- John Bickley: I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So, Jeremy Boring, Daily Wire co-founder, is here to talk about the company's new venture into children's entertainment.
--:-- John Bickley: That's right. Welcome, Jeremy.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So, Jeremy, I am in the midst of the heavy mom years. All my friends are moms. We're constantly talking about this problem of entertainment. And especially really that need to monitor our kids' shows for content we don't want them exposed to. It's truly become a constant source of aggravation.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: Yeah.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So I can tell you that the minute you announced the Bent Key app on Monday, my phone blew up. There has been nothing like this as far as for my demographic, this level of excitement and enthusiasm.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: Well, I think one of the reasons that Daily Wire has been successful is because we don't necessarily give people exactly what they think they want. We give them what we think they actually want.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And so I think the first question that I would want to ask you is, what was your inspiration for this particular venture? And when you were thinking about what you wanted this kids entertainment platform to offer, what kind of shows did you have in mind?
--:-- Jeremy Boring: Well, I think if you watch many of the movies that we've produced along the way, we try to make movies that are actually good, entertaining movies for adults and aren't movies that sort of pander to, you know, complete ideological purity, because I think that that actually results in being unentertaining.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But when we got the opportunity to make content for kids, I feel completely the opposite. Adults should be challenged. Adults should be exposed to things that they don't always agree with so that adults can make good decisions and informed decisions.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: Kids do not have the tools to make those kinds of decisions. You say you're a mom in your core mom years. You're on the front lines of the most important battle, not only of our time, but of all time. And that's implicating values into children. It's teaching children how to become the adults that we want to see them become.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And for that reason, when I started thinking about what kind of content we want to make in our kids entertainment operation, the answer was obvious to me. I want to make wonderful, beautiful, hilarious, highly entertaining content that is chock full of goodness. That parents can trust implicitly.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: That parents can trust implicitly. That they don't have to worry when they put their kids in front of one piece of our content.
--:-- Georgia Howe: What's that going to roll into as the next piece of content? Of course, parents should vet our content just like they do everything for their kids. You're the most responsible person for your kids.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: But what if you don't? If you didn't, I want it to still be okay because we're vetting that content.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So is there a particular scene in one of the shows that are available on the Bent Key app right now that stands out to you as sort of emblematic of that kind of goodness that you're talking about?
--:-- Jeremy Boring: I would honestly say that I think every single scene of A Wonderful Day with Mabel McClay perfectly encapsulates what we're trying to create.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Okay, well, on that note, let's pause for just a second and listen to a clip of Mabel McClay and her dog Jasper.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, I'm stuck. What is you, chew up a bottle of glue again? No, no, that was a sticky situation. But no, it's nothing like that. You see, what I mean is I'm having a hard time being creative, see? I'm all out of ideas.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: I am trying to make a time machine. A time machine. A time machine.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah that what I trying to do right here. Oh my oh my. Where you get an idea like that?
--:-- Jeremy Boring: Well, see, kind of how it came about was like this on account of I was missing you so much that I figured if I make a time machine, then I could speed up time and get you to come home soon.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Oh, I see. Jasper, that is so sweet and so creative.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: So even though my kids are long past preschool age, a friend of mine who does have a three-year-old watched several episodes. And she told me that she was really struck by the quality of the production that has gone into Mabel McLean.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But she did wonder how Daily Wire, given that it is something of a new player to this game, is going to be able to keep up the pace of that level of production.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: You know, we've launched 18 series, almost 150 episodes on the app today with new episodes coming every single Saturday. We're bringing back Saturday morning cartoons.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But only four of those shows are original productions. It'll take a long time before we've produced enough original content that everything on the app is ours.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: Now, that's not to say that everything on the app hasn't been vetted. It has been every single minute of every single show.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But obviously, the shows that we're making best represent what our vision long term for the company is.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: So you mentioned that only four of the series are original. So that means then you purchased quite a number of series there.
--:-- Georgia Howe: How do you decide when you're looking at potential content to purchase, what is it that you see in these shows that make you want to sign on the dotted line, say, we want to buy that show and sign you up?
--:-- Jeremy Boring: Well, first, it has to be good. My dream is that 18 years from now, I'll be on some college campus somewhere. I'll be at some TPUSA event or something. And some young conservative will come up to me and say something.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And there are two things that they could say. One of them is, Ben Key, yeah, man, my parents used to make me watch that.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: The other is, oh, yeah, Ben Key, I grew up with that. I want the latter.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So I'm looking for content that I believe children will absolutely love. And then the hard part starts, which is making sure that that's content that I can sleep at night knowing that I exposed children to in the first place.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: And that's why we have a dedicated team reviewing everything that we're licensing and everything that we're creating from script, from inception to script, to storyboards and all the way through to make sure that this is content that never betrays the values of our audience.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, you know, when I was looking through the current offerings, it was very clear to me that there's been an effort right out of the gate to serve all the different kids' ages, demographics all at once.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: I have a 14-year-old, a 9-year-old. I have nieces and nephews who range all the way from like 2 to 10 over at my house.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And so what I did appreciate was that we went from, as you just mentioned, Mabel McLean and some other shows for the very youngest set, and then to Runes and How Ridiculous, which appeals to older kids.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: And in fact, I have a quick clip of that show, How Ridiculous, here that finds the Australian trio, well-known if you're not familiar from YouTube.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And they're doing one of their signature competitions, this time involving some bulletproof glass.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: We have lots of sheets of two-inch-thick bulletproof glass. Can they stop this wrecking ball? I don't know, sir. It's very big. What about all this stuff? What about the rest of the lineup?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Tungsten cubes, brass cubes, javelin, melon, rubber band balls. Now, some are going to be thrown. Some are going to be dropped from the top of the tower.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: We're each going to pick each other's items. The competition today is who can do the most damage to their bulletproof glass sheets.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'll tell you, Jeremy, there was an audible cheer from the nine and 10-year-olds in our house when they saw that, how ridiculous was available.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: So one of the things I wondered was, was it a deliberate decision? And I'm assuming it wasn't. So why? To say, let's get something for all of these age ranges and release them all right out of the gate rather than sort of release them one at a time.
--:-- Georgia Howe: What was the thinking behind that?
--:-- Jeremy Boring: I suppose that it's because we believe this is the most important work we have ever undertaken. The politics of the day is urgent, but the culture is important.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And most of our Daily Wire efforts here to four have been focused on the urgent problem.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: This is a turn to the important problem, the generational problem. And you can't just say, well, let's start with four-year-olds and be on the hundred-year plan or the 20 plan to raise them to adulthood.
--:-- Georgia Howe: You got to go meet all the needs where the needs exist. Doesn't mean you can do all of that all at one time all the time but we certainly thought at launch we needed to be serving all kids.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: And then you'll learn over time which kids are reacting better to the kind of content that you're making, and you'll make more investments in those areas.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But right out of the gate, it was very important to us to serve all of the needs that a parent might have in this regard.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: You know, and you mentioned that what you're not trying to do here is create entirely ideologically driven entertainment here, that it's something that kids really enjoy.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But to do that, you need really talented artists, potentially across the ideological spectrum themselves.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: So how do you recruit the talented artists who aren't afraid of being associated with a conservative company?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, it's always challenging in our part of the ideological world to recruit great artists.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: For one thing, artists tend to be liberal. I mean, it's a very natural thing that occurs that conservatives tend to forsake the arts across all of history.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And liberals tend to engage in the arts across all of history.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: Then you run into the problem of if they come work for us, they are in some ways risking their career.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And it's a lot to ask someone to risk their career for a job.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: What I will say, though, is that it has been much, much easier to recruit with our kids' entertainment program than it has been with our general entertainment program.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I think the reason is this. If you risked it all, you left your home and your family, you went west, young man, you waited tables.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: Even after law school, you went to work in the mailroom at one of the big agencies, all of that to try to get your foot in the door in Hollywood.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And you had the opportunity to write on some HBO show that's one of the most high quality shows ever made, but a lot of what's in it you don't necessarily approve of.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: There's a high probability you'll take that opportunity because you'll rationalize and probably not altogether incorrectly.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yes, I don't agree with everything about this show, but the opportunity to work at this high level can be denied and adults can make their own decisions.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: But when you ask people to do that with content that is aimed at seven-year-olds, they simply can not live with themselves.
--:-- Georgia Howe: You're now not asking them to do something where people can make rational choices. You're asking them to treat children like they're specimens in a Petri dish and to experiment on them with all of these radical new ideas.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: And the kinds of people who are drawn to children's entertainment love children. And so they simply can't sleep at night.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And for that reason, we have had a bit of an embarrassment of riches in this department. People want this to work. They want to come work for this company. They want to see it succeed because they don't want to do evil.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: Yeah, it's been interesting to me to hear the buzz from people that I know in some of these studios, particularly Disney, I'll say, who quietly have reached out to me, to others I know, and said, hey, what's going on over there? Do you have room for someone like me, for someone, you know, with my talents?
--:-- Georgia Howe: But part of what I've noticed, and obviously you leaned into this a little bit in the announcement, was the dichotomy between what your vision is and where, say, a company like Disney is now.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: And one of the things you announced along with this app launch is that you're working on a live action adaptation of Snow White.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And here's a little clip from that first teaser. Once upon a time, in time a prince would come. Once upon a time, but now that time is gone.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: So how do you respond to those headlines like the one at The Hollywood Reporter that I happened to see this week that said that Daily Wire is trolling Disney with this new Snow White adaptation?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Do you think that's a fair characterization?
--:-- Jeremy Boring: Well, yes, it's an accurate characterization. We are political. The Daily Wire is political. Launching Bentee is a political act.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The content at Bentee is not political. It's pre-political. It's for children.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: I don't believe the children should be hogs in our sort of political war machine. I believe the children should be children.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But of course, launching the company is political. And of course, making Snow White is political.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: It's a reaction to the political move by Disney to remake their own animated classic, A Tale of Timeless Truth, a fairy tale that's probably centuries old, before it was written down by the Brothers Grimm that contains the kind of wisdom that generation after generation after generation after generation benefited from.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And to say as Rachel Ziegler did yeah it not 1937 anymore Rachel, the story wasn't written in 1937.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: Those truths existed in that story long before Disney was born or Disney's parents or his grandparents or his great-grandparents were born to throw that out as though you know best because you have imbibed the du jour woke politics, right?
--:-- Georgia Howe: The crazy radical ideas of this fleeting moment.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: That's the very reason that Ben T has to exist.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And so responding to that is, yes, a troll of Disney. It's a rebuke of Disney. It's saying to Disney, if you weren't doing what you're doing, we wouldn't have to do what we're doing.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: But we do have to do what we're doing because, as I said at the top, I think this is the most important fight that Ben Shapiro or Caleb Robinson or Jeremy Boring or The Daily Wire have ever engaged in.
--:-- Georgia Howe: This is what I most hope is our legacy.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: So if this is a political act, then let's talk about the decision to separate the branding to get a little bit of distance between The Daily Wire and Bank Key.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Why make that decision when The Daily Wire is such a recognized brand already?
--:-- Jeremy Boring: Because The Daily Wire is such a recognized brand. Because while the act of launching into kids entertainment is political, it's so important to me that the content not be political.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I don't want to do what the left is doing, which is rob children of their childhood to make them little foot soldiers in my ideological war.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: I believe that we win when children are able to have a childhood and form into well-rounded adults who will, I believe, most often choose our politics if we introduce them to the right values and the right ideas at the right times.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But I don't want to just replicate their disregard for childhood.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: I've heard in the last 48 hours since our announcement, I've heard from some of my more left-wing friends, not radical left-wing friends, some of my more left-wing friends thanking me for launching this because even they want their children to have childhoods.
--:-- Georgia Howe: They don't want to see their children used as pawns in this political fight.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: Are there shows from your childhood or, you know, as you were growing up over the years that you remember and you think that was a great show, that was a great film, that's what I aspire to, that stick out in your mind today?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Oh, absolutely. The first one is Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: I grew up with no cable. I grew up with network television, which was three channels back then, but we had PBS and I loved Mr. Rogers for this very reason.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Mr. Rogers was about goodness. I can't tell you what Fred Rogers' politics were, But I know that my politics were built on a foundation that Fred Rogers helped to create by loving and celebrating childhood, by inspiring me to use my imagination to think about what was right and what was wrong.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: That show has sort of been my North Star as I've thought about the kind of content that we want to create.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, it's interesting then because very much when I was watching Mabel McClay, I thought of that, that we don't really have this kind of thing anymore.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: And she brought me back to Fred Rogers in a way I didn't really remember for years.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Absolutely. You know, I've known Ryan and Katie Chase, who created that show for two decades. They ran a kids improv school in L.A.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: They love children. They understand children. They know the power of childhood.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I think they were in many ways put on earth to make this show.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: And in our earliest conversations, I kept saying, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Rogers.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I think what they created, though, is in no way derivative. If anything, it's sort of like one part Mr. Rogers, one part Mary Poppins.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: It has this whimsy and magic that Mr. Rogers didn't have, but it has all the goodness and all of the sort of relating to kids, meeting kids where they are aspect of what Fred Rogers was able to create with Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So that was very much on their mind and on my mind as that show was developed.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: Well, thanks so much, Jeremy. You know, as I said, as a mom, finding entertainment for our kids that not only doesn't undermine our values, but in fact actually can help establish them is a constant source of concern.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So more and better options in this area is really welcome. We very much appreciate it. Thank you.
--:-- Jeremy Boring: That was an interview with Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham and Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boring. And this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. I'll see you next time.
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