What The Hell America!

When Ben Meiselas, a mild-mannered lawyer who sees himself as Mr. Rogers, entered the podcast-and-video octagon with the MeidasTouch Network (pronounced Midas, like the king), he seemed plenty reasonable. But no one saw a Rogan-slayer in him. Meiselas didn’t get drunk. He didn’t drone on about kettlebells or yuk it up with Alex Jones. Instead, he sat alone in his living room and, in short intervals, registered measured anger at Trump’s malignancy.

Working mostly behind the scenes were Ben’s younger brothers and partners at MTN, Brett and Jordy. The three of them had grown up as Long Island jocks. With swagger and accents in the vicinity of ex–Trump lawyer Michael Cohen (Cohen is an MTN contributor), the bro status of the actual bros was never in question. But MTN also had a whiteboard vision: to make a case, by any media necessary, for “empathy, compassion, equality, lifting people up, growing communities, truth, data, and democracy,” as Ben told me.

Something clicked. Ben says MTN’s YouTube channel now gets 300–350 million daily views. This is more than Fox News. The MeidasTouch Podcast regularly hits number one, with twice or even three times the monthly downloads of Rogan’s show. For three straight months, it’s been the biggest show in the country, with more monthly downloads than any other podcast. According to Ben, MTN also has the fastest-growing newsletter on Substack.