I’m Darren Samuelsohn and this is The love, journalism Show. We’re talking with Mike Allen, co-founder of Axios, a Politico original and co-author of Simplify: Do 50% More With 50% Less.
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I’ll never forget my first day at Politico. “Welcome to the NFL,” Mike Allen said upon spotting me.
We were soon co-bylining morning newsletters as oil spilled in the gulf, building policy credibility and my boss introducing me as the “Mike Allen of energy.”
We reported scoops together. Here’s a fun video of Mike nudging me to describe how U.N. climate conferences always made me come home sick and predicting how much the 2015 Paris talks would be remembered beyond Obama’s presidency.
Finally, I got to interview Mike for The love, journalism Show. We covered his journey from Politico to Axios and those thousand-word-morning-inbox-stuffers that helped make him famous before launching Smart Brevity and now his new book: Simplify: Do 50% More with 50% Less.
Co-authored by Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei and Roy Schwartz, this is their attempt to apply that same “do the work for the reader” instinct to life. Confront. Delete. Amplify.
We covered a lot on the show. How he says “no” and tries to structure his Sundays. In Mike’s words, AI is “the greatest complexity generating machine in the history of humanity.” He shared his guide on how to make it work for you, instead of against you. We explored the three tectonic shifts he sees reshaping politics, technology, and reality itself. And whether the pre-9/11 version of journalism was simpler by default, or if 9/11 exposed a failure of imagination we still haven’t fixed.
This one closes where we started. I asked Mike the question I ask everyone: has journalism loved him back? “Oh, the greatest life,” he said.
Sixteen years after “welcome to the NFL” — still true. Still in love with the game.
