This month, Gov & Beyond hosts Luca Pagni and Joyson Cherian interviewed Jon Simkins, editor in chief of Military Times and Defense News, in a wide-ranging discussion that touched on Jon’s varied career path as well as his work with the aforementioned publications. Jon also talked about the importance of good writing, how his previous experience in the military has informed his work and – as always in these interviews – movies he loves and songs he hates (I found myself nodding my head in agreement on this one).
Given the focus of Military Times and Defense News, it might not surprise listeners to learn that Jon started his career serving three deployments in the Marine Corps right out of high school. He then went to college on the GI Bill to study writing – which he’d always had a knack for. But it might surprise you to learn that he was not interested in journalism when he started out, more interested in creative writing but forced into journalism when it became apparent it might be the best way to continue writing while earning a decent living.
Military Readiness and Popeyes Chicken
Jon’s first reporting gig was with a journal published by the American Physical Therapy Association, despite having “zero experience” with subject matter. That position eventually led to a job as managing editor with Navy Times, which entailed an opportunity to do more creative writing when that publication launched a sub-brand called “Observation Post.”
“Observation Post” gave Jon a chance to dip into satire and opinion writing, such as a piece he wrote about the hype surrounding the Popeyes chicken sandwich from several years ago. The piece sardonically criticized the announcement that the new sandwich wasn’t going to be available at overseas military installations. “And I just wrote an article about how Popeyes was destroying military readiness and morale,” Jon told Luca and Joyson. “So that wound up being one of our highest viewed stories still, which is remarkably ridiculous on a number of levels.” (You’ll also hear about how Jon’s satirical writing led to a threatened lawsuit by a major airline.)
Jon said he took a break from writing about the military for a few years to focus on writing about outdoor adventure conservation in places like Montana, Wyoming and the Yukon, before he began missing “the more purposeful day-to-day” aspects of military coverage and taking on a senior editor role at Military Times. “[I] just kind of graduated along the way and eventually landed this editor in chief post. So that’s where I am now, and, you know, we’re thriving to the extent that we can, I think, in 2026 journalism,” Jon said.
A Writer, First and Foremost
Jon has maintained his creative writing inclination throughout his career, which has unsurprisingly carried over into his current position. When asked what he looks for in content submitted from external writers, his answer is clear: “The first thing that I look for is just good writing.” He noted that it usually isn’t extremely difficult for a writer to attain the requisite background knowledge to cover a beat, but writing skills may be more difficult to teach.
“And just being succinct, being clear, you know, those are huge elements of good writing, in my opinion,” Jon said. “And I think that was really the most remarkable and kind of shocking thing coming into a newsroom or coming into the writing world…just the liberal nature with which the term “writer” gets thrown around…You encounter writers who have been in this for 20-plus years. And you get their copy submitted, and you’re just like, ‘What the hell is this?’”
Finally, stick around to the end of the interview to hear about some of Jon’s favorite movies, including his sentimental attachment to the movie “Ben Hur” – and the reason he thinks the antiquated practice of intermissions during movies ought to be brought back. He also expounded on what may be the most annoying commercial jingle of all time.
Listen to the podcast below or read the transcript for all the details.
Timestamps
0:34 – Jon’s journey from Marine Corps to Military Times and Defense News
8:23 – The beauty of satirical writing
9:59 – Military Times and Defense News’ unique focus
14:23 – The topics grabbing Jon’s attention
20:06 – Serving in the USMC has guided his editorial direction
21:37 – How to be source to him and his editorial room
26:08 – Good writing is the key to compelling contributed content
30:29 – Jon’s Movie Nights – Yearly “Lord of the Rings” Marathon, “Interstellar” and “Ben Hur”
33:03 – Blue Cheese, the lingering aftertaste of BBQ ribs and Mayo
34:28 – The most annoying jingle known to man… The 1-877-Kars4Kids
Transcript
Intro: Welcome to Gov & Beyond. I’m your host. Luca Pagni, here with my cohost Joyson Cherian. This podcast features conversations with the newsmakers and influencers at the center of today’s public sector news cycles from our studio at W2 Communications, let’s go Gov & Beyond.
Luca Pagni (LP): Welcome everyone to “Gov & Beyond.” I’m your host Luca Pagni, here with my cohost Joyson Cherian. We’re excited to be joined today by Jon Simkins, editor in chief of Military Times and Defense News, John, welcome to the show.
Jon Simkins (JS): Thank you, guys, for having me.
LP: Of course, Jon. We’d love to start off by learning a bit more about your role and your background, especially at Military Times and Defense News. Could you tell us about your career so far?
JS: Yeah, it’s been a little bit of like a hopscotch pattern to get me here. So I enlisted in the Marine Corps, I mean first off out of high school. I was 17 years old and had to have my parents sign off. So I turned 18 at boot camp, but that was 2004. Did 2004 to 2008 in the Marine Corps, got out after three deployments, and then wound up going to school using the GI Bill. So that kind of the educational side started there.
I always had a little bit of a tendency when it came to writing, and a little more so on the creative side than journalism. I didn’t necessarily see myself as going into this route, but that was something that I started out in in education. Went to University of Pittsburgh for a little bit, finished up at George Mason down in Fairfax, Virginia. And so that was my journalism degree there. I wound up going into that, you know, at Pittsburgh. I was doing more creative writing, but there were a lot of wild courses, kind of just like Russian fairy tales and stuff like that, where I was kind of like, what is this? What is this going to get me in the end game? So wound up changing course a little bit. And, yeah, it was, it was kind of a grind. After getting my bachelor’s, my GI Bill had run out. My job prospects were not great. I was kind of hopping from one odd job to the next, I mean, everything from coaching Little League Baseball, driving Ford parts around to other dealerships, and I even delivered edible arrangements for a little bit there. So a lot of stuff that, you know, I absolutely hated in the process, but learning experiences nonetheless.
And my first editorial job, when that came, I just jumped at it because it was an opportunity to do anything writing related. And that wound up being with the American Physical Therapy Association of all places, which I have zero experience with anything scientific. So that was a big learning curve over there, learning a new style, learning subject matter, all of that. Did a lot of their quarterly journals and their monthly magazine and everything. So that was a very different, vastly different style of editorial work that I was not accustomed to. But I think it was an excellent learning experience. And my colleagues were great. And I’m, I mean, I’m forever grateful that they took a chance on me there, because that allowed me to kind of leapfrog into this.
And so 2017 is [when] I got a call from the Military Times umbrella company that also, you know, Navy Times, Army Times, all of the sub-branches. And they had a Navy Times managing editor role open. And I took that job. I didn’t even remember applying to it, to be honest, because I was just, you know, sending out applications en masse at the time. And, yeah, I took the job. Started there, got my, you know, a couple years in that role, which was another learning curve, just because, I mean, even though I was in the Marine Corps, the Navy’s vernacular, their terminology, their rank titles, everything is complete foreign language. And so getting used to that, and then during that process, we would have occasional stories that would come up that I would think, you know, “oh, this could have a little bit of like a borderline satirical tone applied to it,” if it was something a little more fun. And I did a few of those. They really resonated with the audience.
And that eventually dovetailed into another job, where it was the company president asked me, did I want to do that full time? Because everything I was doing was kind of hitting and so we launched this sub-brand at the time called Observation Post, which kind of gave us a little bit of flexibility when it came to creative writing and all that. So I was able to blend a little bit of those passions, which, you know, I mean, for an example, going back to, like, the hysteria surrounding, like, the Popeye’s chicken sandwich when that came out, you know. There was a very basic news bulletin that had come across where it said something like Popeyes, the new sandwich wasn’t going to be available for overseas installations like Popeyes on a base in Japan or something like that. And I just wrote an article about how Popeyes was destroying military readiness and morale. So that wound up being one of our most, our highest viewed stories still, which is remarkably ridiculous on a number of levels. But I did that for a while.
Eventually, I wanted a little bit of a break from the military stuff, so I did about two years actually covering more outdoor adventure conservation, things like that, more around the West and Mountain West especially. So did a bunch of stuff in Montana and Wyoming and up in the Yukon and all that in Canada. So, you know, a lot of different routes before I came back to Military Times. I was kind of missing the just the more purposeful day-to-day of it, and started back as a little bit of more of like a senior editor, and just kind of graduated along the way and eventually landed this, this editor in chief post. So that’s where I am now, and, you know, we’re thriving to the extent that we can, I think, in 2026 journalism. But you know, it’s been good so far.
LP: Well, first of all, thank you for your service. But also, definitely interesting background journey. I feel like you know, sometimes easier to know what you really want to do by doing the things you don’t want to do, because then, you know for a fact I don’t want to do that.
JS: Yeah, and to that point, I mean, I had, you know, I mentioned covering the outdoors and all that, I probably would still be doing that if that was all I was doing. But there were, you know, I would do an incredible trip or something like that once per month, and there’d be five or six days of writing a feature story that was just like this passion project every month. But then every other week, you know, you have to satisfy the beast a little bit on corporate’s end. So they were asking more for articles like, hey, tell us about the top like National Park candles that have come out. Like, you know, things like that, where I just want to pull my hair out at the end of every day, and felt dumber on a daily basis. So just the intellectual challenge of needing that ultimately brought me back here.
Joyson Cherian (JC): One of the things about good satire is there’s a small segment of the population that will read it and think it’s accurate and real. So regarding your Popeye story, I would not have wanted to be on Popeye’s PR team once that article went live and some people started believing it.
JS: Yeah, occasionally it did get me in a little bit of trouble because it wasn’t just pure satire. There were, you know, obviously there were some, sure, some newsiness to some of it. And, I mean, there was one story, for example, where just a general study had been put out on just people taking advantage of the emotional support animal policy on airlines, and like bringing a peacock on, you know, on a plane, or some of these ridiculous animals. So it was the update to the policy where it was saying that it was dogs only now, and in that release, they had announced all of these statistics where it was like, you know, Southwest Airlines and American Airlines and all of these other ones had documented this percentile of people who had been coming on board with emotional support animals. Not documented in that were Frontier and Spirit. So in the article itself that I wrote, I just wrote that Frontier and Spirit did not keep track of emotional support use due to their ongoing acknowledgement that passengers are emotionally dead upon arrival. So I actually got a note from a Spirit Airlines lawyer. And my editor got a note, and we actually had to change that. That’s still one of my prouder moments, though (laughs).
JC: Amazing. Uh, that is not the anecdote that I expected on today’s podcast, but I’m here for it. You know, jumping back into your current role a little bit. Could you tell our listeners a little bit more about Military Times and Defense News and what each publication aims to cover?
JS: Definitely, and that’s evolved, especially in the last couple years, just by the by necessity, really, in terms of, you know, newsrooms have, and it’s not unique to us, but our newsroom is smaller than it was three years ago, two years ago, you know. We’ve lost staff members and that’s been the unfortunate part of this business and this profession. And I mean, it’s not foreign to anybody, but that is Military Times. I mean, as recently as three, four years ago, was almost explicitly covering more like the personnel side of things. So, you know, anything from something that would impact military families or even the veteran community, or basic policies, barracks upkeep, something as a granular level as that to promotions and incentives and bonuses and all of these things, personnel stories that matter. I’ve always said kind of to the E-5 and below crowd that are kind of, you know, the sergeant and below who’s living in the barracks, like what matters most to them, I think, is always kind of a good gage of what we’re trying to target with the bulk of our coverage. Because that demographic makes up the bulk of the military. They make up the bulk of the veteran community too. Like most people are doing four years and getting out. They’re not doing 20. So, you know that that community, I try to always joke around like, when we have editors in the past who have made a call where it’s like, oh, we should cover something about this election happening in Iraq or something like that. And I’m just like, okay, is there a 20-year old Lance Corporal living in Camp Pendleton, California, who’s like, dying to know about Iraqi elections right now? Like, not really. They’re more concerned about what they’re drinking this weekend, or if they’re going to get paid on time, if they’re going to get promoted on time, things like that. So that’s traditionally what kind of anchors some of our coverage. That can obviously expand out to operations and training and weapon systems and different things like that.
With Defense News, I’ve almost always likened the two different sides of our house to being like Military Times as being almost like the enlisted side and Defense News like the officer side. Because there’s a lot more higher level items coming out of that, whether it’s industry like, you know, Lockheed Martin signing a contract with the Pentagon for X number of interceptor missiles over the next seven years. And it also pertains a lot more to international coverage too, like what’s going on in the Indo-Pacific and the Central Command area of operations right now. But as we’ve seen, I mean using Central Command as an example there: As our newsroom has gotten smaller and as some of these, you know, by necessity, what we’ve tried to do is, if you look at it as like a Venn diagram, we’re trying to make it as much as more of like a circle as possible, to where, if we’re going to do a Defense News story, is there an angle where I can also kind of have a hook for the U.S. military in there that would matter to that demographic. So we can cross-platform a little bit more to check all those boxes, because we just, quite frankly, you don’t have the same resources that you once had. You don’t have the same beat reporters and subject matter expertise that’s necessarily built into the newsrooms of five years ago. So how can you approach that in a way that’s going to efficiently meet all of those needs and still have some sustainable level of success.
JC: Yeah, it’s an interesting concept, the notion of building a bridge for your Defense News stories to reach that enlisted officer audience as well, so they have an understanding of the things that could affect them, not from a broader perspective.
JS: Definitely, yeah.
JC: You said a phrase in your response there that, as things evolve, I think in the last couple of years, we’ve definitely seen a lot of evolution in demands in the military and DOD and now DOW. What are some of the issues and trends and topics that have caught your attention, and what are the things that you’re going to keep an eye out on moving forward?
JS: I think the obvious one right now is just the technological developments. And not just that. I mean, there’s always tech being developed, but the speed with which it’s being developed right now. And you know, we can keep going back time and time again to Ukraine as the example. And that’s because they are the model right now for, you know, the way that they have had to adapt is not something where Ukraine just at the outset of this was thinking, “Oh, well, this is what we’re going to kind of envision for Ukrainian defenses” and things like that. This has been by necessity, because they can’t outspend Russia, so they will have had to out-innovate Russia. So, you know, that has been, kind of, the speed of the innovation has been remarkable. I mean, the front lines in Ukraine, even from two years ago, are no longer, I mean, that it’s like a complete foreign concept compared to today, where a lot of these stretches of front lines are now being manned by robotics. And you know, whether it’s anti-drone defenses or ground drones or, I mean, they have naval drones patrolling. So that is a huge element.
And you know, I think tying it into current events, that’s kind of where we’ve been a little bit flummoxed, to be honest, where, you know, the U.S. is now going back to Ukraine, saying, Can you help us out with these Iranian Shahed drones, which in my mind is an indictment against our own strategy. And I said it in a recent chat that I just called it strategic malpractice. Because…the U.S. did not only have knowledge of the Shahed, you know, the prominence of them in Iran’s arsenal before going in, they had encountered it themselves. I mean, with the Red Sea interactions with Houthi rebels in the last two, three years where Shahed drones were being shot out, shot down by SM-2 or SM-3 interceptors shot from ships, that each of those cost around like $2 million a pop. So I mean, the cost discrepancy or ratio was so dramatic, and that was a discussion that was going on back then. So to have this perspective conflict on your radar, and know that this is a system that Ukraine is encountering every day, that this is a system that we have encountered extensively and is mass produced, upwards of 10,000 systems per month by Iran. The fact that they did not have this kind of defense built into it already is astonishing to me. And that’s something that’s an ongoing conversation.
But I know the U.S. military has put in play, put in some initiatives where they have the Unleashing Drone Dominance program, where they’re trying to be faster and to get ahead of the curve a little bit. But the two heads of the drone program right now admitted in a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting as recently as, I think, last week that they haven’t even been to Ukraine yet. So that is kind of, you know, we can have these programs, and we can meme our way into, you know, believing or just a public belief that we are pursuing things in the right way. But if you don’t even have this primary defense installed ahead of time going into a conflict like the one in which we are right now, that’s a little bit of a damning indictment, in my opinion. So long answer, but to answer your question, I do think it’s the technological developments. It’s the unmanned systems, especially. The drone innovation, whether it’s counterdrones or offensive drones, is changing by the day, it seems like. And you know, the stuff that we’re developing now seems like it could be obsolete within a year. So that speed is something that’s new, for sure. And because, I mean, you go back to old systems, by the time they announce a new tank or something like that, I mean it might be three to five years by the time you go from concept to actual fielding in military units. And you compare that with the LUCAS drone that the U.S. just used in the Iran operations that went from concept in, you know, I think in early or sometime over the summer where they announced the drone program to actually being used in combat on February 28. So going from concept to combat use in like seven months is actually, I mean, that’s insane.
LP: Yeah, definitely. It’s always impressive to see how speed of innovation when there is a need or necessity for it can, you know, expedite that process.
JS: Definitely.
LP: Just kind of pulling on the thread a little bit further of, you know, because you are a former service member, how does that inform or kind of guide your coverage and just general editorial direction?
JS: It’s been massive. And I think that’s kind of why I’ve landed into places or into the role that I have, is because of some of the institutional knowledge, not necessarily coming at it from, okay, well, I was a Marine so I understand Navy because obviously, as I said, that was a big learning curve. But I think just the sentimentality of it has played a big part. And, you know, going through those kind of more satirical options and knowing the notes of humor that might resonate in a way that doesn’t come off as demeaning. Also, you know, you sometimes, especially today, there’s a lot of sensitivity. So you got to make sure you say this or that, that it’s not going to rile up an entire demographic of your audience that’s going to be, you know, headhunting you out of nowhere. So that has been a huge part of it. And it goes back to that same sentiment, like, is this going to matter to that guy in the barracks? And how can we make sure that this has a broader appeal to the people that make up the backbone of the military and the backbone of the veteran community? So that has been a huge part for sure.
LP: Gotcha. And you know, we’re sure that you and your team probably get millions of pitches, daily, weekly, whatever the case. What are the types of resources that you typically look for when you are building out these stories or just trying to further inform the story?
JS: I think ultimately, I mean, the easy answer is, you want to keep objective, obviously, and, you know, keep everything without any bias, which is obviously, it’s harder to do with the more things that come out that you can look at, you know, with a straight face and say, this is idiotic, or this is not, you know. It’s hard to, how do you toe that line sometimes is a little bit of an interesting game to play. But I think in terms of pitches and in terms of stories that we’re bringing in, I mean, we have a freelance pool too, that is made up of writers who have been industry pros for, you know, a decade plus, some of them. So their institutional knowledge too, of just having covered this. And I think the misunderstanding sometimes in covering this beat and our outlet especially, is, oh, there’s this assumption that there’s all these veterans on staff that, you know, all of the former military expertise and whatever. And that’s really not the case. These are just professional journalists who have been in this game for a long time and really know the material sometimes a lot better than I do. So that is a nice asset to have. They’ve been covering the military through, you know, we just got out of the quote, unquote, “forever war,” 20-plus years in Iraq and Afghanistan. So you had a lot of people covering these who had a ton of exposure. And, you know, whether it’s on a human interest level or operational level, there is a lot of familiarity among our staff and among our writers that they bring to the table. So that is something that we always want to maintain.
And looking at stories specifically, I think what we try to do is carve out our own niche. Because I think if you get into chase mode in journalism, especially where it’s like, well, New York Times had this, Washington Post had this, that is an absolutely never ending game, especially if you’re if you’re coming at it from, okay, we have this tiny skeleton crew here where we’re trying to out punch, you know, newsrooms sometimes that have 200 people in them. And that’s just not a winnable game. So if there’s, you know, a 30,000-foot view, for example, of, well, here are the combat operations going on in Iran, you know, I would rather look at, okay, could we talk to a couple sailors who maybe are, you know, have experience in the past of shooting down drones, and they can kind of walk us through chronologically what that process looks like from the moment they pick up a drone in the sky to the moment they’re firing up their munitions to the moment that it’s knocked out of the sky. Like what does that look like? And I think the more we can kind of dive into those more granular elements of these bigger topics, the more it resonates with our audience.
And yeah, I mean, we’re seeing it even today. We did an article, you know, a lot of news has been going around about the Navy decommissioning minesweepers ahead of Iran threatening to lay mines in the Strait of Hormuz. And so that is something that, you know, the decommissioning was announced in 2025 so it’s not necessarily timely news. It is considering the conflict. But we just went in and said, “Okay, instead of announcing the decommissioning like it happened yesterday, let’s just acknowledge it happened in 2025 but then let’s do a simple explainer of what a minesweeper is, what it does.” And that story is exploding on our websites right now, because I haven’t seen that elsewhere. So it’s how can you kind of find your own little piece of the puzzle, you know, in this ecosystem that is really ravenous and on constant chase mode. And I think we do a pretty good job of that.
JC: I want to tie a little bit to something you said earlier in the call to my next question. You mentioned that, you know, when you’re first starting your career, and I think you’re first starting getting out of the military, you are more interested in the creative writing scope of things. And then obviously you went into a different type of writing with the editorial style. I would argue that, at times, both require a level of storytelling, an ability to tell a narrative effectively for your audience. When you look at organizations or individuals that want to contribute content and articles to your publications, what do you look for from them? What makes compelling contributed content in your eyes?
JS: So this is going to sound, I mean, really rudimentary. But honestly, coming at it from the way that I came, you know, the areas that I’ve gone through prior to journalism, the first thing that I look for is just good writing. I am of the belief that you can really learn a beat. I mean, I’ve done it. I’ve seen other people do it. I think you can learn a beat. You can learn a system, or, you know, whatever the coverage area is, if you have the drive. That’s not something that’s going to take a ton of time. And we also have a very collaborative team, so there’s constant communications back and forth, where, if somebody doesn’t have that institutional knowledge, you know, we’re like, you know, don’t be afraid to ask questions. People are chiming in left and right and just providing feedback. And sometimes I’m asking questions because I don’t know. I mean, we had a writer earlier today or yesterday write a story about the Air Force, and I don’t have a ton of Air Force experience. So I had to, you know, ping him and ask him a couple questions, so that my edits of his story were even well informed. So that’s a prominent thing that I look for.
And just being succinct, being clear, you know, those are huge elements of good writing, in my opinion. And I think that was really the most remarkable and kind of shocking thing coming into a newsroom or coming into the writing world, is just the liberal nature with which the term writer gets thrown around. And not to knock people, but as an editor too, I consider myself a writer first, but as an editor throughout the course of my career, you know, you encounter writers who have been in this for 20-plus years. And you get their copy submitted, and you’re just like, “What the hell is this?” So there’s a lot that I think I look for. And some people just have it, and it’s noticeable when they do. And, you know, we had a fellow a couple years ago even, immensely gifted on the writer side. And I assigned him a story that was just a basic news release of some rescue that had happened with a sailor had rescued somebody from a vehicle collision. It was like an overturned vehicle. And normally that’s a very just bland story. And he wrote it in a way that was not editorializing it too much, but the narrative itself was gripping in the way that it was delivered. And it’s just you get those, and it really stands out when you’re like, “Okay, this is a writer, not just a reporter.” So that’s kind of, from a quality standpoint, that’s what I like to prioritize. And when we get the opportunity to have something like that, it makes my job easier to not have to do surgery on a story. But that’s always a nice element to have.
JC: I would love your opinion on 40% of LinkedIn posts, especially those that are clearly written by AI, but we’ll save that for off the record.
JS: Well, there’s just a lot of navel gazing, is what I’ll say. That’s one thing that is just so prominent on LinkedIn, especially.
LP: John, I know you’ve done a fantastic job of, you know, telling us a bit more about yourself. But just kind of digging into some more get-to-know-you type questions of what would be one of your most frequently watched movies that no matter what you’re doing, you’ll immediately stop just to start watching it?
JS: Oh, man. Okay, so there’s a few on that list. Any of the “Lord of the Rings” for sure is right there for me, I try to devote at least one weekend a year to a marathon going through it. But if it is on TV, you know, randomly, I’ll probably stop, or I’ll at least keep it on in background and, you know, shed an occasional nerd tear here and there at some some more emotional parts. The others, I would say, I mean, “Interstellar” is one of those that I just…it’s gripping no matter how many times I watch it, and it’s always up there. And then, just because it’s my grandfather, my father, 1959 is “Ben Hur” with Charlton Heston, I still think is one of the most, like, incredible cinematic accomplishments in cinema history. I mean, the scale of the film, the chariot scenes, the sets, everything, were astonishing. And that still has, speaking of “Lord of the Rings,” ”Ben Hur” still is tied with the most Oscar wins in cinema history with, I believe “The Two Towers,” or it might be “Return of the King.” But that is, it’s ”Ben Hur” and “Lord of the Rings,” right there. So that, yeah, that’s one of my all-timers. I got to see it in theaters when they did the “Turner Classic Movies at the Movies” thing. So that was kind of surreal, because my dad saw it in theaters when he was a kid. So getting to go see, you know, watch the first hour and a half, and they actually did the intermission where you got to go out, go to the bathroom, you know, get some popcorn, refill, whatever.
Which also, bring back intermissions! Because the more, you know, these Scorsese movies that go like, three and a half hours and you can’t afford to get out and go stretch your legs. Like it’s such a nice feature that was built in. But, yeah, that’s, that’s one of my all time favorites, for sure.
JC: Honestly, that’s a great idea for the younger generation who needs a phone break.
JS: I know it absolutely is, yeah.
LP: What are you implying there, Joyson?
JC: I’m implying that I’m part of the younger generation, maybe falsely. You know, when we ask these get-to-know-you questions, and we ask, you know, questions, like the one that Luca just asked about what you like, we get great answers from some of our guests. But when we ask them about things that they dislike or hate, we get passionate answers. So that said, what’s a food or dish that you absolutely dislike?
JS: Oh, man, food or a dish…
JC: An ingredient as well,
JS: An ingredient. I don’t love blue cheese. Anything…well, it’s weird, because I’ll do blue cheese when it comes to wings. But blue cheese, like the crumbles, or sometimes goat cheese too, you know? I don’t know. And as much as I love barbecue, anytime I do ribs, it leaves an aftertaste for like what feels like a month, that’s like, very difficult to get rid of. So that’s something that, you know, I avoid pretty regularly. But yeah, I would say blue cheese probably is up there for me. Also mayonnaise. I’m not a big mayonnaise guy. Something about the consistency is it weirds me out a little bit.
LP: Understood. And I guess, just I will say, personally, I’m a mayonnaise guy, but I can understand it. But kind of staying on the theme of things that you dislike. What is that one song that if you never had to hear it again, you would be thrilled?
JS: The 1-877-Kars4Kids commercial, the jingle that feels like, I think it’s on every radio program, I don’t know about nationwide, but in the DC area especially. And it has not changed since I was an intern in 2012 with 106.7 The Fan, the sports talk radio. And so, I mean, even, like behind the scenes, I had to hear it a million times a day. And so anytime, anytime I hear that, and I’m listening to the radio in the car, I don’t know. I don’t even just turn it down. I turn the radio off because I don’t want to contribute to the ratings at that time. I don’t know how that works even, but, you know, I feel like I’m contributing to something. And they have a TV commercial also where there’s little kids like dancing with the instruments, and not actually playing them. And it’s like “Kidz Bop,” but 900 times worse. So that’s an easy answer, for sure.
LP: I will say we have never gotten a jingle as an answer before, but I absolutely agree with you on this, that that is not a hot take, in my opinion.
JS: No, it’s criminal. I think there could be prosecution for whoever created that.
LP: So, Jon, thank you so much for your time today. If any of our listeners want to learn more about the work that you and the team are doing, what would be the best way to get in touch with you?
JS: You can go to MilitaryTimes.com, DefenseNews.com. You know, we have our editorial pages there that you can reach out anytime. You know, I’m on instagram. I’m @JD_Simkins. So you know, we’re on there. We’re happy to get tips, happy to chat about stories, or, you know, just, just talk about current world events. Because it seems like that’s never slowing down right now.
LP: Perfect. Well, thank you to everyone who tuned into this episode ,and Jon, thank you again for helping us go “Gov & Beyond.”
JS: Thank you.
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