Meet The Hosts

Jon Herold grew up in North Dakota, spent years in the sales world before becoming a fundraiser for a Catholic school system, and never gave much thought to politics. He was raising his kids, doing his job, and largely trusting that the institutions around him were on the level.

That changed in 2020. Watching the presidential election unfold, Jon couldn't reconcile what he was seeing with any honest accounting of events — and he set out to understand it. He stumbled onto a theory called "devolution," found more questions than answers, and did what researchers do: he went to work. In July 2021, he published the first installment of "The Devolution Series" on Substack under the pseudonym Patel Patriot — a nod to Kash Patel.

The series took off. What started as a handful of posts became a body of work, a podcast, and eventually an entire media operation. In 2022, Jon founded Badlands Media — a collective of citizen journalists, independent researchers, and free thinkers unified around a simple premise: honest information from people with no corporate masters to answer to.

In August 2025, Jon launched Soft Disclosure (softdisclosure.com), a premium American-made personal care company offering lotion, deodorant, and beard oil — built to directly support the creators at Badlands Media. Between his daily show, The Daily Herold, and his various other shows on Badlands Media, he is on air up to 11 times per week.

Chris Paul grew up in a small northeastern town in the middle of nowhere, studied business and philosophy at an elite northeastern college, and then turned down a law school scholarship to move to Hollywood. For nearly 15 years, he was one of the leading figures in Hollywood nightlife and celebrity relations and was VP of business development for a social media management company.

All of that went away in 2020 when Chris chose to speak out about the government's corruption during the pandemic, the summer of civil unrest, and the 2020 election. Thousands of friends and acquaintances attempted to cancel and defame him. He was censored on legacy social media platforms at the request of the California Secretary of State's office and banned from Instagram and Twitter.

Chris continued speaking out on his podcast, "Be Reasonable: with Your Moderator, Chris Paul," and in writing on his Substack. He is a contributor to Badlands Media and has been since its inception. He maintains a deliberately limited social media presence — a choice made after watching those platforms used as instruments of suppression.