We’re all feeling it: the exhaustion. The malaise. The discontent. The nagging suspicion that US politics is futile. But if there is any year in which to resist the temptation of tuning out, say Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor, it’s 2024. The two cohosts of the popular “no-bullshit” podcast Pod Save America join Inside the Hive to discuss the enduring appeal of Donald Trump, the palliative power of seeing comedy in political tragedy, and why voters should view themselves as change agents come November. “Your vote is not about rewarding or punishing Joe Biden or Donald Trump or any candidate,” says Favreau. “Your vote is about yourself and your future and what kind of country you want…. The only way out is forward…to be involved and to try to make things better.”

Now more than ever, Favreau considers humor “a mental health requirement” that can help voters keep their heads up. “We can’t all go through life in this country panicked about the end of democracy all the time—I think because it’s not good for us, and I also think because it sort of wears people down and you lose people’s attention if all you do every day is turn up the outrage machine to 11. And so I think what we try to do on Pod Save America…is let people know that there are easy and potentially even fun ways of getting involved in politics and making a difference so that you are not just following politics as a sport that you can’t control.”

Building on that optimism, the two commentators also explain how America can put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to the GOP’s Trumpified transformation. “Trumpism has fully captured the Republican Party,” says Vietor, but “I do think, long term, this is a fixable challenge…. We could create fewer incentives to have, basically, radical people in our government, if we did something like get rid of gerrymandering so that congressional districts were actually contested and you didn’t have a Marjorie Taylor Greene in a plus-30 Trump district who really only had to worry about a primary. Those people would be gone if these were 50-50 districts. So if we could do some commonsense things like that—see about getting money out of politics, because it’s just gotten worse and worse since Citizens United—like, there are things we can do.”