The Lou Perez Podcast - Kira Shishkin

Kira Shishkin is the CEO and founder of Informed.now — a news-by-SMS service that sends you one text per day covering what actually changed the world in the last 24 hours. No ads. No bias. No storytelling. Just primary sources, direct quotes, and a link so you can read the original sources yourself. Kira grew up in Ukraine, came of age in Israel, and built this company after watching both countries get torn apart by information warfare. He knows what happens when people can't trust what they're reading — and he built something to fix it. We got into: why American news is designed to exhaust and trigger you; how Informed.now sources directly from government agencies; why they link to the actual PDF instead of a story about the PDF; what today's top stories were (OPEC output increases, China blocking US sanctions on Iran oil traders, Vietnam getting flagged for IP theft); how real humans — not bots — answer your follow-up texts; and why the only way to keep news unbiased is to make the reader the client, not the advertiser. Try it → informed.now TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 — Intro — who is Kira Shishkin and what is Informed.now? 1:45 — Why reading the news in America has become exhausting 3:10 — How it works: one SMS per day, primary sources only 5:20 — Why they link directly to the source — and why no one else does 7:30 — The UN, the White House, and healthy skepticism of primary sources 10:15 — Facts vs. storytelling — why Informed.now doesn't tell you what to think 13:40 — How they decide what makes the cut: the significance filter 16:55 — Today's top stories live: OPEC output, China-Iran oil, Vietnam IP 20:10 — The two-way SMS — real humans, not chatbots 24:30 — Lou suggests FOIA requests — Kira puts it on the roadmap 27:15 — What to do when there are no primary sources (war reporting) 30:40 — Growing up in Ukraine and Israel — information warfare up close 34:20 — AI-generated war images, radicalization, and the social media echo chamber 37:50 — Kira's background: think tanks, TurboTax, private equity, crypto 41:10 — The business model: reader-funded, no ads, no investors, profitable 44:00 — Outro and where to find Informed.now Watch full episodes on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4Vb53s4I0A&list=PLb5trMQQvT077-L1roE0iZyAgT4dD4EtJ  Listen on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lou-perez-podcast/id1535032081  Listen on Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/2KAtC7eFS3NHWMZp2UgMVU  📖 Lou's book — That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: https://amzn.to/3VhFa1r  🌐 TheLouPerez.com | 📧 [email protected]  ✉️ Newsletter: https://substack.com/@louperez