Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro’s podcast reaches new heights with 100 million Spotify streams and prestigious industry awards.
At a Glance
“The Ben Shapiro Show” received Spotify Creator Milestone Award for 100 million streams
The podcast is syndicated on over 200 radio stations nationwide
It won Best News Podcast at the iHeartRadio Podcast Awards
The show has been ranked as the second-most popular podcast in the U.S.
Milestone Achievement in Streaming
“The Ben Shapiro Show,” hosted by the outspoken conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, has hit a remarkable milestone in digital media. The podcast recently surpassed 100 million streams on Spotify, earning it the prestigious Spotify Creator Milestone Award. This achievement places Shapiro’s show among the ranks of other top-tier podcasts like “The Joe Rogan Experience” and “Crime Junkie,” which have also received this recognition.
The Spotify Creator Milestone Awards are given quarterly to celebrate top engagement milestones, making this a significant indicator of the show’s popularity and reach. Notably, this marks the first time Spotify has publicly revealed streaming numbers for podcasters, underscoring the importance of Shapiro’s achievement in the competitive world of digital audio content.
From Digital Success to Radio Domination
The success of “The Ben Shapiro Show” extends beyond the digital realm. Launched in 2015 under The Daily Wire, the podcast quickly became one of the fastest-growing in its category. By 2017, it had climbed to become the second-most listened-to podcast on iTunes, surpassed only by Oprah Winfrey’s podcast at one point.
The show’s popularity led to its expansion into traditional radio. In April 2018, Westwood One began syndicating the podcast to radio stations, and by January 2019, it had grown into a three-hour show. The rapid growth continued, and by March 2019, “The Ben Shapiro Show” was being broadcast on over 200 stations nationwide, including in nine of the top ten markets.
Industry Recognition and Rankings
The podcast’s influence and reach have not gone unnoticed by industry observers. In 2018, POLITICO described the show as “massively popular,” a characterization that has proven accurate given its subsequent growth. In March 2019, Podtrac, a leading podcast analytics company, ranked “The Ben Shapiro Show” as the second-most popular podcast in the United States, further cementing its status as a major player in the news and commentary space.
The crowning achievement came in January 2019 when the show won the Best News Podcast Award at the inaugural iHeartRadio Podcast Awards. This recognition from peers and industry experts highlighted the show’s impact and its ability to engage with a wide-ranging audience on current events and political issues.
Ben Shapiro’s success with his podcast reflects a broader trend in media consumption, where audiences are increasingly turning to digital platforms for news and commentary. The show’s ability to attract such a large listenership speaks to Shapiro’s skill in connecting with his audience and providing content that resonates with conservative listeners.
If the trainee pilot was piloting the helicopter and the other two were monitoring her actions, it sounds like someone was not doing their job. Three people missed seeing the other plane? The tower asked the pilot, “do you see the plane” – which was too late.
Question: Why did the tower ask the plane to change lanes at the last minute?
Why Wasn’t the Crashed Potomac Black Hawk’s “ADS-B” Tracker Turned On?
Nothing is confirmed yet, and the NTSB is still working to understand the specifics of the crash. Even the use of the ADS-B is still under investigation.
Investigators have revealed that the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that collided with American Airlines Flight 5342 over the Potomac River was flying with its automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) system turned off. The turned-off ADS-B is possibly another contributing factor to a crash that was the deadliest in U.S. aviation since 2001.
What Is an ADS-B?
The ADS-B is, essentially, a system that broadcasts an aircraft’s positions to others, allowing for easy and nuanced tracking of the aircraft. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the ADS-B “is an advanced surveillance technology that combines an aircraft’s positioning source, aircraft avionics, and a ground infrastructure to create an accurate surveillance interface between aircraft and ATC.” Pertinently, the ADS-B “is more precise than radar.”
ADS-B consists of two distinct functions. The first is ADS-B Out. The Second is ADS-B In. The Out function occasionally broadcasts information about the aircraft, including identification, position, altitude, and velocity, allowing ATC and other aircraft to see the transmitting aircraft in real-time. The In function, meanwhile, receives and processes the information that other aircraft transmit, giving the receiving pilots improved situational awareness.
Black Hawk in DC crash had safety system off, investigators find
What it all means, with respect to the Potomac collision, is that had the Black Hawk’s ADS-B been turned on, American Airlines Flight 5342 would have been more likely to have been aware of the Black Hawk’s location, reducing the likelihood of a collision.
Of course, the investigation is still ongoing, and it is unlikely to conclude that the turned-off ADS-B was solely responsible for the collision. But the disclosure raises questions and further suggests that the tragedy could have been avoided. Why Was the ADS-B Turned Off?
Senator Ted Cruz, emerging from a closed-door meeting between the Senate Commerce Committee (which oversees the airline industry) and the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), proposed that the ADS-B should have been on.
“Unless there was a compelling national security reason for turning it off, that does not seem justified and in this instance, this was a training mission so there was no national security reason for ADS-B to be turned off,” Cruz said.
Senator Tammy Duckworth, who lost both legs while flying a Black Hawk over Iraq in 2004, also had questions about the ADS-B. “What we don’t know…whether or not the helicopter actually had their ADS-B Out turned on,” she said. “It sounds like it might not have been turned on, but the Army was very clear that the equipment was actually installed in the aircraftAn Ongoing Investigation
Nothing is confirmed yet. The NTSB is still working to understand the specifics of the crash. Even the use of the ADS-B is still under investigation.
“The NTSB will seek to determine if the system was present and turned on – and if not, why not – and whether its use might have helped avoid the accident, though it appears there was enough data that the danger of the situation should have been clear, regardless,” CBS reported.
Tucker Carlson had already unearthed proof back in 2018 that the Obama administration had placed a new emphasis on diversity over traditional hiring practices at the Federal Aviation Administration.
President Donald Trump suggested during a news briefing Thursday that the crash of American Airlines Flight 5342 with an Army Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, D.C., may have had something to do with the lowering of standards for air traffic controllers that occurred first during the Obama administration and later during President Joe Biden’s time in office.
In June 2018, then-Fox News host Carlson covered the topic, saying, “The Obama administration pressured the FAA to meet abstract diversity goals. Now nobody bothered to explain why diversity is a relevant criterion for air traffic controllers. No one will explain it now.”
Carlson explained that the FAA added a biographical questionnaire to the air traffic controller application process, which he said gave more points to would-be controllers who lacked a scientific background or who had been unemployed for the previous three years than they did to licensed pilots.
“In other words, the FAA actively searched for unqualified air traffic controllers. That is insane, and they knew it was insane when they did it, but they did it anyway,” he said.
In an email Carlson said he obtained, the executive who created the biographical questionnaire “admits that the test he devised has nothing to do with finding the best air traffic controllers. If you want good air traffic controllers, find people with experience. That was his advice. The FAA ignored this, and used the biographical screen anyway. … Compared to diversity, your safety meant nothing to them.”
The Washington Times editorial board also wrote about the topic in a February 2024 opinion piece following near misses at Reagan National, where Wednesday’s crash took place, and Baltimore-Washington International Airport.
The Times cited a 2013 FAA document titled “Controller Hiring by the Numbers,” which asked, “How much of a change in job performance is acceptable to achieve what diversity goals?”
The news outlet noted in 2012 that the FAA temporarily halted hiring of new controllers and replaced its race-blind hiring rules with a “Biographical Assessment” stratagem intended to hire more minorities.
Playing four or more sports in high school was worth 5 points in the survey, while holding a pilot’s license only earned an applicant 2 points.
“More than 3,000 top-performing, motivated applicants lost out because they weren’t members of this ethnic club,” the Times said.
Applicants who had scored well in the AT-SAT, which tests aptitude to be an air traffic controller, but not under the new “Biographical Assessment” sued
“After Congress forced the FAA to drop the quiz in 2018, many former applicants reapplied and have since become controllers. Their careers were set back several years for no good reason,” the Times said.
In 2018, Carlson interviewed aviation attorney and former air traffic controller Michael Pearson, who represented plaintiffs in a suit against the FAA in 2015 on the new hiring criteria.
Pearson recounted, “In late 2011, early 2012, members of the National Black Controllers Association had a meeting with the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, Jesse Jackson, and some high-level [Department of Transportation] and FAA officials. Michael Huerta [then head of the FAA] was part of those meetings. And right after that meeting, the FAA put an immediate hold on hiring. They stopped hiring.”
He verified what both Carlson and the Times reported regarding the biographical questionnaire: That it did not test actual aptitude and background to be a good air traffic controller.
“The creator actually notified the FAA of that, and they used it anyway. In effect, that test punished people with any aviation knowledge, any air traffic control experience, any aviation experience, any science experience,” Pearson said.
The attorney told Fox News Thursday night regarding theAmerican Airlines crash, “This is a preventable disaster. The system has been under attack through the DEI and the FAA bowing to wokeness since 2010 — since the Obama administration.”
“The lack of staffing is directly attributable to the Obama administration,” he argued.
The cause of Wednesday’s crash is still under investigation, but one thing is certain: A return to common sense under Trump must — and no doubt, will — mean merit and ability will once again be the criteria for hiring air traffic controllers.
One of the biggest issues dividing the Left and Right in America is free speech.
The Right encourages all sides to speak, while the Left silences their opposition.
To that point, a conservative speaker simply showed up to speak at one university, but then all hell broke loose.
Leftists seek to silence opposition via any means necessary
Winston Churchill coined the phrase “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
And so far, politicians and elected officials in blue states have not learned from the political violence committed by the extreme Left.
In early 2023, Riley Gains was just getting her feet wet as a conservative activist on a mission to keep men out of girls’ sports.
Radical self-proclaimed “social justice warriors” invaded multiple Gaines speaking engagements and at times even turned violent.
None worse so than at San Francisco State University that spring.
Rabid pro-trans protestors assaulted Gaines and barricaded the young lady in a room, effectively holding her hostage.
Gaine’s tormentors even discussed the appropriate amount of money they should request in order to grant her freedom.
SFSU officials sided with the violent protesters and San Francisco police suspended the case.
And since the criminals got away with their attack scot-free, the entire ordeal is unfolding yet again.
Purported Antifa goons attack TPUSA event speaker
Gaines has gone on to found The Riley Gaines Center in conjunction with the Leadership Institute.
Gaines and the team at her center continue to team with TPUSA for college campus speaking engagements.
And one such event at the University of Washington once again turned ugly.
Olivia Krolczyk is a Riley Gaines Center Ambassador and Campus Reform Reporter.
In her role she was scheduled to speak to a chapter of TPUSA students at the University of Washington.
Similar to what happened to Gaines at SFSU, leftist protestors barricaded Krolczyk in a room, pulled the fire alarms, intimidated the young lady and refused to let her leave the building.
There are reports that this angry mob is affiliated with Antifa – and that the TPUSA chapter had to cancel the event due to the riot-like situation.
“This is false imprisonment which is a felony,” Gaines tweeted. “Outrageous. This is proof that the war against woke hasn’t been won quite yet.”
According to the Legal Information Institute, false imprisonment is: “the act of intentionally restricting someone’s movement without their permission or legal authority.”
It’s an offense that can result in criminal and civil penalties.
Judging by videos from the scene, the incident at the University of Washington appears to fit the definition of false imprisonment.
University of Washington blames the victim
For her part, Krolczyk remained calm in the face of danger.
She live streamed to her supporters while being held against her will.
As for officials at the University of Washington, they’re taking the same approach as the leadership at SFSU.
The school released a statement claiming the TPUSA chapter failed to file the proper paperwork.
Furthermore, they pointed the finger of blame at the victim.
“Informed discussion and debate are encouraged on our campus,” the statement reads. “However, it is clear that presenters and disruptors are, in some cases, seeking to antagonize one another in ways that provide dramatic content for their social media feeds . . . It is also important for organizers to follow advice provided by UWPD regarding security if the true intention is to hold an event without disruption.”
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The management at the colleges need to be held accountable.
This should never happen in the U.S.A. It is not too late to hold them accountable.
The left has been too busy trying to get Trump and haven’t done their jobs is/was the problem.
For the last decade, the radical left has used every tool in their belt to demonize Donald Trump. It is time for the Democrats who voted for President Trump to remind their reps that they need to work with the new administration to help clean the swamp since they voted for him to make these changes. The Democratic reps still haven’t realized that and are holding up the train to put the new leaders in place.
Prominent leftists have called Donald Trump and his supporters every name in the book, and on a plethora of platforms.
And now the L.A. Times’ owner is speaking out after outraging his staff with this common sense move.
This democratic move has leftists pulling their hair out
The vast majority of the mainstream media loathes Donald Trump and the millions of people who support him.
For years, prominent publications, network news channels, and cable news channels have spewed venom at Donald Trump, calling him and his supporters a myriad of vicious insults.
However, voters largely rejected and ignored this vitriol, handing Donald Trump a decisive victory in the Electoral College and the popular vote.
Political experts have attributed Trump’s victory to major shifts in how Americans consume media, with many Americans turning to their preferred podcasts and social media sources for the news.
This shift began years ago, and top media platforms and media moguls have started to change their game.
Stop trying to put the blame on specific areas. We haven’t had any leadership since before and after President Trump. All of us know that.
It’s no secret in Washington — in the halls of Congress and various agencies that call the city home — that D.C.’s airspace is “incredibly congested.”
That’s what former House Transportation and Infrastructure Chair Peter DeFazio said after a U.S. Army helicopter collided with a PSA Airlines passenger plane on Wednesday, killing all 67 passengers and crew members on board the two aircraft.
For years, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority warned Congress that the region’s airports were at capacity, DeFazio said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine. But their pleas for restraint fell short among lawmakers, who voted to add more flights to an airport already struggling with its heavy load and a shortage of air traffic controllers caused by previous government shutdowns and pandemic-era hits to its workforce.
“Every senator in particular wants a nonstop flight to and from wherever they live,” said DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat. He noted that a reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration passed last year added even more flights to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. “The airport said, ‘Don’t do it.’ And they did it. So they added to what DCA said is already an overly congested and over-capacity airport.”
DeFazio spent 36 years in the House, serving on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee the whole time, and he played a lead role in the congressional investigation of two Boeing 737 Max crashes that killed over 300 people. So, I asked him what he thought went wrong and where the investigation should start.
(If he was in that position for 36 years, why is he complaining about the past not being changed. Was he part of the problem?)
Where were you and what was your first thought when you heard about the crash Wednesday night?
I was online on my computer at home in Oregon. It came up as a news flash. It brought back memories of the last time we had a fatal crash at Reagan, which was when a plane clipped the 14th Street Bridge and went in through the ice and a number of people died. So it’s a horrible tragedy that happened again.
POLITICO
Trump administration reacts to deadly plane crash near DCA
There has been a lot of concern in the industry over a spike in near-collisions, but most of that focus has been on collisions on the ground. Has the danger of midair collisions been under-appreciated?
This is an incredibly congested airspace. First off, if the military wants to run training missions, they could run them between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., when Washington National has noise reductions in place and traffic is dramatically reduced. I don’t see any reason to be running training missions during peak hours. I believe that there is a lot of unnecessary military transport in that corridor. When I’m in D.C., I stay on my [house] boat, and I see all of the many, many, many helicopter flights following that same flight path. They come right down over the marina. And it’s one thing, when there’s an urgent need or a security issue, to move people by military helicopter to the White House or from one base to another in the D.C. area. It’s another to do it for convenience for generals and “very important people” who don’t want to sit in traffic. We should look at reducing the amount of traffic to flights that are necessary, not just convenient. And for training, they should be doing that in the hours when there are way fewer flights coming into National Airport.
Secondly, it’s unbelievable that the president of the United States and three of his minions — Secretary [Sean] Duffy, Secretary [Pete] Hegseth, and Vice President [JD] Vance — immediately blamed DEI. I mean, let’s be real here. All air traffic controllers go through the same training. They have to pass the same unbelievably rigorous test. It’s a very, very stressful job. They are overworked. We do not have enough fully trained air traffic controllers. That’s the fault of both Congress and the former president. We’ve had Congress chronically underfunding the number of air traffic controllers that we need, in addition to inspection personnel.
As far as we can read in the press, the air traffic controller gave proper instructions. He or another air traffic controller communicated with the helicopter. The helicopter did not respond. We don’t know why the helicopter didn’t respond, and that was just before the impact. So, this is really the beginning of an investigation of a very, very tragic accident. It was not due to DEI.
(You cannot dismiss DEI. It has to be in the mix when investigating. How often does the crew in the control tower have refresher courses to be sure they still know the rules of the road travelled by planes. People do sometimes get sloppy after years doing the same thing.)
Your investigation into the Boeing crashes a few years ago found serious flaws and lapses. If you were going to investigate this crash, where would you start?
There is no black box, to the best of my knowledge, on a Black Hawk helicopter, so we won’t know what was going on there. So we’ll look at the recordings and the times of the communications by air traffic control, with both the helicopter and the plane, looking at what other planes were in the air at the same time. There was a specific instruction to go behind the passenger as it was approaching the airport. Was there another plane approaching another runway that the helicopter could have seen, and, therefore, falsely thought they should go behind that? We have to go back and look at what was in the air at that moment, and get all the details and work back from there.
Secondly, certainly we’ll be looking at the air traffic controller, but the initial press accounts are that the air traffic controller acted properly.
(Actions was required at that point – not a passive answer which was given.)
But we do have long term, ongoing problems with overworked air traffic controllers, because the whole agency is understaffed. You have to be a very qualified controller to be working at DCA. You have to have long term experience. Did that person or those persons have the proper experience, etc? So, everything needs to be looked at.
Don’t planes have a collision warning system that will tell them if something’s coming into their flight path? Are there similar systems on military aircraft like the Black Hawk?
I believe they would both have ADS-B [Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast], but ADS-B is generally suppressed at a very low altitude because you’re in your final approach, and you can get false signals when you’re that close to the ground, or when you have planes coming in on adjoining runways which have proper separation. So, ADS-B works well at a higher altitude, but in a very low final approach, it probably was suppressed or didn’t trigger because of the situation.
The other thing I would reflect on is the FAA is an agency that has been lacking leadership and in need of substantial reform. Michael Whitakeris the best FAA administrator we’ve had in years, and he was in the process of implementing reforms to streamline the agency [before he resigned in December] We’re not talking about air traffic control now, but we’re talking about the agency generally and everything else that the agency does. And, of course, Whitaker upset Elon Musk because the FAA fined him for firing off a rocket improperly.
They need a very highly qualified person leading the FAA, to make the case to Congress for the funding they need to add air traffic controllers, add inspectors, and make our aviation system safe. And I fear that those things won’t happen under this administration.
People have criticized President Donald Trump, especially your Democratic colleagues in Congress, for freezing the hiring of air traffic controllers after he returned to office this month. How big of an issue is that?
Look, let’s go back to the first Trump administration. The unnecessary government shutdown [in 2019] shut down the Aviation Academy, and a number of people did not come back after the academy closed down. Then, of course, we had Covid, where the academy was closed for, I think, over a year.
So, we’ve had at least two major disruptions in the stream of acquiring new air traffic controllers. Plus, a number of air traffic controllers, after not being paid for a month under the Trump shutdown, left the agency. For them to freeze hiring at this point in time is idiotic. If these are people who are trained, coming out of the academy, or they’re people transferring with expertise from the military, there should not be a hiring freeze.
Congress has a special relationship to Reagan National. Our headline called it “Congress’ Airport.” Why is that?
It’s owned by the federal government. And every senator in particular wants a nonstop flight to and from wherever they live. As you saw, [Kansas Sen.] Jerry Moran said this was a flight which he had encouraged or otherwise supported. The last FAA bill, [Texas Sen.] Ted Cruz said he needed a direct flight to his hometown, so he engaged in a lengthy battle.
The airport authority said, “We are over capacity. We cannot accommodate more flights, and we think this is going to be disruptive.” Unfortunately, Cruz ultimately won, and Congress mandated adding more flights into National Airport, so that more senators can have direct flights. I was chairman of the committee, and I always had to connect somewhere. I didn’t ask for a direct flight. So, that’s a problem. That is a problem, the political influence over the airport, as most recently exhibited in the last FAA bill. So, I think we might need to revisit the amount of traffic.
You mentioned how a lot of members of Congress have advocated for direct flights.
The Lords of Congress. That would be the senators. Although there have been a few instances of House members in powerful positions in the past getting some direct flights.
So you think Congress bears part of the blame for increasing congestion around the airport?
Well, with the last FAA bill, they certainly do. The airport said, “Don’t do it.” And they did it. They added to what DCA said is already an overly congested and over-capacity airport.
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Everyone can’t have convenience for convenience’s sake. Maybe you need another airport.
TODAY
POLITICO
kommonsentsjane 