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Indeed, a lot of people have been flocking to5-4s perspective on the court.
He wont be alone in the pivot.
Anyway, at no point has anyone Ive worked with ever said, Hey, are you Peter from5-4?
or anything like that.
Its just not the demographic.
Then they said, Okay, well let you know what happens.
Which is standard procedure, by the way.
Employment terminated, nothing much more than that.
Or it could just be that someone had listened to5-4and the same thing happens.
So its not always clear if youre being terminated for the real reason or just the best reason.
The basic issue, they said, is that I didnt disclose it to them.
I hadnt because, well, at first we werent making any money for a long time.
But I was like, Come on, this isnt really what this policy is for.
(Even though Iwasdoing my work.
You wouldnt have looked at my stuff and thought,I think hes got another job.)
What if someone thinks were somehow affiliated with these opinions?
Which I think is a stupid concern, but its one that I could see them having for sure.
Im curious about anonymity.
I was having fun with it.
The anonymity was because, well, why put your full name on this?
Wed always liked the idea of not tying our personas too much to it.
When you start slapping your names on things …
I dont wanna say its grifty, because its not always, but theres justsomethingabout it.
For a while, we wanted to minimize the perception that it was a business.
Now, its very much the opposite because I very muchdoneed it to be a business.
Lets go back to the beginning.
We had all met on Twitter.
Wed criticize the case and use it as a springboard for criticizing the court more holistically.
Have you ever thought about doing a podcast?
Then one of my friends was like, Oh, that guy fromSlow Burn?
And I was like, What are you talking about?
So I looked him up and I was like, Oh, he does podcasts.
We ended up talking to him and launched the show in 2020.
We had something of a left-leaning perspective, but thats really all we went into it with.
When did you start feeling5-4had legs?There were a couple of things.
When welaunched the Patreonin early 2021, we were hoping to get enough money just to sustain the podcast.
Instead, all of a sudden, we had a pretty profitable little podcast.
It became very clear we had a lot of congressional staffers and fairly influential media types listening.
Ive seen5-4described in a bunch of places as a leftist podcast.
How do you feel about that description?I dont really care.
But almost all of my policy views align with people who describe themselves as leftist.
That said, Im not deep into Marxist theory or anything.
Not for a long time.
Its perhaps not the life I was hoping to live, but I could survive.
Were a big show with a lot of people.
Weve got a producer.
Weve got production managers and editorial oversight.
But then I got pulled aside and, well, got ambushed.
Right now, Im in an interesting place.
The big picture is that I want to pivot into this in some way.
Im excited to talk about topics like that now.
But the big difference is were now able to put all our mental energy into it.
Are you thinking about raising money?
Do you have a vision for what5-4might look like in a few years?
We went to Berkeley Law earlier this year and something like 75 kids showed up to hear us speak.
Thats a huge chunk of their class.
Weve held Zoom events at other schools, and maybe 15 percent of the entire class shows up.
Those are crazy numbers when you step back and think about it.
I mean, were a podcast about the Supreme Court.
But if we can influence the current generation of young lawyers and law students to think differently …
I think youll see that within a few years, if we keep doing what were doing.
I view this as an opportunity.
Im at a point in my career where I might have the ability to do what I love.
Also, the thought of getting back up in business casual makes me feel a little ill.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
