Bill and Chelsea Clinton Launch Podcast About Their Foundation

By Todd Spangler

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – President Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton are jumping on the podcasting bandwagon.

The former U.S. president and his daughter, who is vice chair of the Clinton Foundation, launched a new podcast, “Why Am I Telling You This?” The series will feature conversations with President Clinton, , Clinton Foundation staff, partners and special guests — and, according to the foundation, explain why we should be optimistic about the future.

The podcast will share stories about the “people, issues and events that have shaped our work and our world,” Chelsea Clinton says in the “Why Am I Telling You This?” teaser clip.

Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State under President Obama and 2016 U.S. presidential candidate, isn’t formally participating in the podcast but she may make an appearance in future episodes, according to the Clinton Foundation.

“Growing up in Arkansas just after World War II in a family that didn’t have a lot of money, most of our entertainment revolved around storytelling. Listening to my relatives and neighbors tell stories showed me that everyone has a story, and that everyone’s story has value,” says in the introduction to the series. “When I got into politics, I always thought that the main point of my work was to give people a chance to have better stories. And after I left office, that’s the same purpose that led me to start the Clinton Foundation.”

The podcast is a co-production of the Clinton Foundation and At Will Media. It will be published without any ads, available for free starting Thursday, May 2, on Apple Podcasts (at this link ) with distribution on other podcast platforms in the coming weeks.

The series will cover issues related to the Clinton Foundation’s work such as the ongoing hurricane recovery efforts in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the greater Caribbean region; how to combat climate change and the opioid crisis; and new ways to improve early childhood literacy. It also will feature discussions “on global leadership, reflections on the Clinton Administration, and President Clinton’s wide range of interests and well-known intellectual curiosity,” according to the foundation’s announcement.

President Clinton, a two-time Grammy Award winner for spoken word album, was the first presidential candidate to participate in televised town halls with MTV and interactive online forums. He also has teamed with the entertainment industry to advance the Clinton Foundation’s early-childhood literacy efforts and to produce a virtual reality movie taking audiences inside the foundation’s rural development work in Africa.