Former talk-show host Anne Will says she feels more at home now as a podcaster than in her previous role on television. “I’m realizing that I prefer what I’m doing these days,” the lesbian journalist explained. “But I couldn’t honestly say I would have liked it from the very start if I hadn’t already spent years running a talk show.” Today she sits down with guests for the podcast “Politics with Anne Will.”
Will was a guest at the kickoff of the conversational series “Habeck Live” at the Berliner Ensemble, where host and former economics minister Robert Habeck (Greens) spoke with Will and his former cabinet colleague Volker Wissing.
“I loved it,” Will recalled about her long-running ARD program “Anne Will,” which concluded in 2023. With five guests and an hour of airtime, it generated a lot of time pressure. For the 59-year-old, pulling off a good conversation was everything. If she grilled one guest for several minutes in a row, she felt the subtle pushback from the rest of the panel, as participants worried about losing their chance to speak.
In the podcast format, by contrast, she can engage her guests “in a calm setting, in a small, distraction-free room,” she said. It feels like sitting down with someone you’ve just met on the street and having a meaningful talk. Deeper conversations arise because there is time. Podcasts could serve as a counter-movement to the frantic pace of endless smartphone scrolling.
Habeck noted that, as a politician, a talk-show guest is often speaking for the morning coverage. “So it’s less about solving the issue and more about the media narrative,” he said. Wissing spoke of the expectations: one has to be entertaining, come across as strong, and push messages that keep supporters satisfied.
