Rachel Maddow’s brief turn as a Philadelphian began with her bicycle being stolen on the first day of a new job.
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“I got to work at 9 a.m. and I got out for lunch before noon, because I didn’t have anything to do,” Maddow said. “My bike was already gone.”
MS NOW’s top star was in Center City Thursday night to interview constitutional legal expert Sherrilyn Ifill live in front of nearly 2,000 fans at the Academy of Music.
But prior to the event, she reminisced a bit about her brief time in Philly in the early 1990s, shortlyafter she came out as gay during her freshman year of college at Stanford University.
“It didn’t go well at home, so it was a bit of a scramble in terms of like paying for college, figuring out what I was going to do, where I was going to live,” Maddow said. “And I got an internship at a think tank at Penn.”
Maddow lived in West Philadelphia and basically ate nothing but Ethiopian food for a few months, though she can’t remember the name of the street: “It was in the 40s and it was one of the tree-named street.”
In college she was an AIDS activist and focused on health care policy, so landing at Penn’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics seemed liked an ideal fit.
Maddow said her job was to answer the phone. Unfortunately, the internship didn’t last long.
“I was not an additive,” Maddow said. “I don’t think I was an asset to the organization.”
Maddow’s activism began when she was still in high school, when she began working at a hospice for people who were dying during the AIDS epidemic.
Still, those few months living in Philadelphia influenced Maddow’s developing political voice. She idolized ACT UP Philly, an activist organization fighting for people with HIV/AIDS, and thinks gay civil rights activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya is the city’s most overlooked hero for the work he did helping connect people with hard-to-find information about the virus and treatment.
“He saved millions of lives,” Maddow said. “The city needs to build a statue for Kyoshi Kuromiya.”
Maddow has returned to Philly a number of times over the years, and every time she does, it makes her feel like she’s 19 again. Things have changed — seeing Indego bicycles to rent on ever corner after having hers stolen is pretty jarring — but while her time living here was brief, she didn’t hesitate saying “Philly was really formative for me.”
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“The thing I loved about Philly at the time, and that I kind of fell in love with, even before I really knew what to do with it, was the really sparky, edgy, impolite activist spirit,” Maddow said. “I think I’m just a middle-class polite kid who doesn’t like to offend anybody, and Philly kind of shook me out of that a little bit, and made me aspire to edgier things.”
More live events and a new app coming from MS NOW
A strong Philly current ran through MS NOW’s event Thursday night, which highlighted the messy history of the American experiment leading up to the country’s 250th anniversary next week.
MS NOW president Rebecca Kutler, who oversaw the event, is a Philly native who grew up in Center City and later Montgomery County. Host Ali Velsi lives in Bryn Mawr and commutes back and forth to New York every day to host The 11th Hour, which he just took over last week as part of a lineup change.
Former White House press secretary turned MS NOW host Jen Psaki was also part of Thursday event, where she interviewed Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was raised in Upper Dublin Township in Montgomery County. While Psaki doesn’t have any connection to Philly other than friends who live here, she did work with former President Joe Biden for several years, who was often referred to as “Pennsylvania’s third senator.”
“My mother’s best friend of 70 years lives here,” Psaki said.
Thursday’s event was part of a larger strategy of engagement at the network after breaking away from NBC and becoming part of Versant, hence the name change from MSNBC to MS NOW. Ratings are up, but the cord-cutting trend is undeniable, so MS NOW is attempting to secure a digital future while it remains a popular TV destination.
The network has now hosted three large fan events since 2024 and another is planned for Sept. 26 ahead of the midterms, though no details have been announced. Attendees in Philly Thursday night also received a free, one-year subscription to MS NOW’s upcoming streaming service, which launches this summer and will act as a membership community for the network’s progressive fans and provide access to its biggest stars.
“We’re always looking for ways to connect with our MS NOW community, to meet more viewers where they are, and to engage them in new ways,” said Lauren Peikoff, the network’s executive producer of live events.
Cecil Parker, a Philadelphia musician, said the state of affairs in Washington, D.C. compelled him to attend Thursday’s event.
“Urgency. That’s the all-encompassing word,” Parker said, who often tunes into MS NOW to get their take on the news. “They have their opinions, but it’s based on the facts. So I dig that.”
While there was a large local audience of devoted fans in attendance, viewers traveled from as far as Arizona and California to have a chance to hear Maddow and her MS NOW colleagues in person.
Tony Clyburn and his wife, Lisa, drove more than 10 hours from West Columbia, S.C. to Philadelphia to take part. A radio host back home, Clyburn said it was inspiring being in a room with people from different walks of life who want what’s best for their neighbors and their country.
“These gatherings are good because they’re as close to a town hall as we can get,” Clyburn said.
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