Vox Expands Its Mission of Explaining the World With Multi-Platform Podcast Franchise, Explain It to Me

Today, Vox editor-in-chief and publisher Swati Sharma announced a new cross-platform editorial franchise that will further the brand’s mission of explaining the world. Launching on Wednesday, September 18th as a podcast and newsletter, with a video series to kick off later in the month, Explain It to Me will answer questions from Vox’s audience with deep reporting and expert insight. With new episodes out weekly on Wednesdays, the podcast will be hosted by Jonquilyn Hill, who will serve as a trusted resource to listeners, answering complicated questions about everything from retirement and why there’s so much money in politics to Gen Z’s odds of avoiding an apocalypse and why jars are so hard to open. The newsletter will also publish on a weekly cadence, featuring a rotating cast of journalists from across Vox’s newsroom, answering questions from readers about politics and policy, the economy, culture, science, technology, and more. Explain It to Me launches with Klaviyo as its sponsor across its podcast, newsletter, and video editions.

“Since we first launched ten years ago, we’ve cultivated an audience at Vox that is hungry to learn more about the world around them,” says Vox editor-in-chief and publisher Swati Sharma. “Our audience has never been shy about reaching out to us directly with their questions, and now, with our new Explain It to Me franchise, we’re doubling down on our mission of serving our audience by creating a forum for weekly conversations with them across platforms. On the podcast each week, listeners will get to hang with the lively and thoughtful Jonquilyn Hill on a show that is sure to be appointment listening and in the newsletter, you’ll get to hear directly from a roster of expert voices from across our newsroom.”

Drawing on Vox’s strengths as a modern newsroom with text, audio, and video journalism, Explain It to Me is the first editorial product to launch as a multi-platform franchise, and is aimed at deepening Vox’s relationship with its loyal audience by being in direct conversation with them about the questions they care about the most.

“Explain It To Me is a show for the naturally curious,” says Hill. “Our world is full of so many questions and whether they’re big or small, they reveal so much about the world around us and the way it functions. I’m so excited to be a guide for our audience as we go down these fun and informative rabbit holes.”

“One of the things Vox prides itself on is our commitment to answering, in an approachable and rigorous way, the questions on people’s minds,” said Elbert Ventura, executive editor of Vox. “The Explain It to Me newsletter is a logical extension of our mission, one that puts our audience’s curiosity and our newsroom’s expertise in closer conversation.”

The trailer for the Explain It to Me podcast is out today and available here, with the first episode to follow on Wednesday, September 18th. It joins a slate of podcasts at Vox that includes the flagship daily news show, Today, Explained, the award-winning science show, Unexplainable, and interview show, The Gray Area. Vox’s podcasts are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, which is a top 10 podcast publisher and home to influential voices like journalist Kara Swisher, entrepreneur Scott Galloway, former Manhattan U.S. attorney Preet Bharara, research professor Brené Brown, Pittsburgh Steelers team captain Cam Heyward, and more. Listeners can submit their questions to the show via the Explain It to Me hotline at 1-800-618-8545. Follow Explain It to Me on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts.

Subscribe to the ‘Explain It to Me’ newsletter here, and look out for the first video from the “Explain It to Me” series on Vox’s YouTube channel later this month.

Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Its mission: to help everyone understand our complicated world, so that we can all help shape it.