Jade Iovine has spent a lot of time over the years searching the internet for stories to make herself feel better. So she’s hoping her new podcast will be a time-saver for others out there doing the same.
“This show was born out of pure desperation,” Iovine said. “Every time I’d been through an embarrassing moment, a deep heartbreak, I’d scour the internet for another woman’s story that related to mine, and it was 10 times more powerful when it was a story from someone I admired.”
Dubbed “Tell Me About It,” Iovine’s podcast is being produced by and hosted on iHeartRadio, with early guests like Bozoma St. John, the notable chief marketing director of Netflix; actor Jamie Lynn Sigler, and Stephanie Shepherd, an influencer and former assistant to Kim Kardashian West. There will be 48 episodes in total, the first on Tuesday, with iHeart committed for a full season.
As the daughter of music executive Jimmy Iovine, who founded Interscope records and who cofounded Beats Electronics with rapper Dr. Dre, her early guests are friends. In her first episode with St. John, it’s clear the two have known each other for a while. But starting off with friends allowed Iovine to have “deep and open conversations” that she hopes will let future guests know what kind of a show she has.
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In her conversation with St. John, the executive talks for some time about the 2013 diagnoses and death of her husband, her grief and the effects it’s had on her and their daughter, as well as things St. John is better known for, like advice on confidence.
“I have to say, I thought I knew some of the people I’ve interviewed pretty well and I didn’t,” Iovine said.
The show is something Iovine has been hoping to do for a while. After trying a few years ago to go down the blogger/influencer path and a couple of stints doing red-carpet TV reporting, she realized neither were for her. She tried to blog for a while, interviewing people about their skin care because “that’s about as candid as people got.” When she met with an agency about furthering her influencing career, she was directed to make her life look “as aspirational as possible.” When she was talking to celebrities on TV and tried to go beyond what they were wearing, network executives told her, “That’s not what we want.”
“It always felt like trying to fit a round peg in a square hole,” she said.
But Iovine still wanted to talk to people, to have “candid” conversations, and outside of a talk show, a podcast seemed like the best way to go about it. She shopped it around to a few podcast networks, one of which told her she wouldn’t be allowed to curse, before landing on iHeart, drawn to its “relaxed” attitude about the show.
“I’m definitely learning as I go — how to open people up, what the icebreaker question should be,” Iovine said. “It was an idea for so long I didn’t really know it would work. [The show] is about making people feel less alone, not being aspirational. It’s not to make me a star. I’m just trying to solve a problem in my own life.”
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