Vice President Kamala Harris will discuss racial identity, police brutality and more Monday on the sports and pop culture podcast “All the Smoke,” which is hosted by two retired N.B.A. players.
The nearly hourlong interview with Ms. Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, will be released on Monday and aligns with her pattern of speaking with nontraditional media and their niche audiences. Appearing on “All the Smoke” could help her reach more Black men, a base that has been increasingly courted by former President Donald J. Trump.
“In previous times, someone would have gone to a Black barbershop or a soul food restaurant,” said Todd Boyd, a race and pop culture scholar and professor at the University of Southern California. “But these days, certain podcasts appeal to certain audience members.”
Kobe Bryant, Snoop Dogg and Will Smith have all been interviewed on “All the Smoke,” which began in 2019 and has more than one million YouTube subscribers. “All the Smoke,” which has become one of the more recognizable athlete-led podcasts in a saturated marketplace, typically brings on guests from sports and entertainment to discuss topics in those areas.
The show’s hosts, Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, spent portions of their long N.B.A. careers with the Golden State Warriors while Ms. Harris was the district attorney of San Francisco. The vice president, who was born in Oakland, where the Warriors played for 47 seasons, has been a vocal fan of the team, and Coach Steve Kerr endorsed her at the Democratic National Convention.
“To step into this political realm and understand the importance and how some people are either all the way in it or all the way out of it, I’m really interested to see what our fans have to say,” Mr. Barnes said in an interview with The New York Times.
Mr. Barnes said Chris Holliday, a political adviser and strategist he met at a pickup basketball game in 2017, approached him last week about interviewing Ms. Harris. He said “All the Smoke” sent the candidate’s team a list of discussion topics before the hosts spoke with Ms. Harris at her Washington home.
To prepare for the interview, Mr. Barnes did research online and watched Ms. Harris’s recent conversation with Oprah Winfrey. The hosts chose topics they felt would be most applicable to their listeners and viewers, he said, skipping the wars in Gaza and Ukraine to focus on areas like the economy and historically Black colleges and universities. Mr. Jackson was a vocal activist during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 after the Minneapolis police killed his longtime friend George Floyd.
They also tried to find areas of common interest with Ms. Harris, Mr. Barnes said, noting that he and the vice president are both biracial. To keep the show lighthearted and jovial, it was important to make her laugh and feel comfortable, Mr. Barnes said, so the first question was about the blind date where she met her husband, Douglas Emhoff.
“I think it’s the opportunity for our fans to get a chance to know her as a person. It wasn’t a huge policy-driven thing — it was more just getting a chance to know the woman.”
Mr. Barnes said that he had always wanted to interview former President Barack Obama and that he would be open to interviewing Mr. Trump, even though he disagrees with things he has said. “All the Smoke” would assess future political guests on a case-by-case basis, said Mr. Barnes, who is excited to get feedback on the conversation with Ms. Harris.
“There are a lot of people who don’t like to mix sports and politics,” he said. “I am someone who doesn’t mind mixing it, but I also have to understand what our audience wants.”
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