Because of their podcast, Jason Kelce says he and brother Travis Kelce are “more connected than we’ve ever been.”
Named for their hometown of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and serving as an almost prophetic descriptor of their level of sports and pop culture fame, the podcast forces the brothers to talk for hours every week. Jason Kelce tells TODAY.com that before “New Heights,” he and Travis Kelce caught up about once a month — “if that.”
“For the first 11 years of our career, I talked to my brother, in season especially, you know, once a month ... It really was probably once every two or three months,” he says.
The podcast aims to provide a glimpse into the lives of two (now one) professional football players. In it, they discuss everything from buzzy topics in sports to everyday occurrences with family and fans and even conversations about their significant others. Jason Kelce married Kylie Kelce in 2018 and Travis Kelce has been dating pop star Taylor Swift since the summer of 2023.
Jason Kelce attributes the podcast as providing a way for the brothers to have a more consistent opportunity to stay updated on each other's lives.
Even before Swift, the Kelces found themselves in the spotlight as they became the first brothers to play against each other in the Super Bowl when the Kansas City Chiefs played the Philadelphia Eagles in 2023.
Travis Kelce’s Chiefs ended up winning, but even in the playoffs, Jason Kelce sported Chiefs colors to root for his brother, as seen in his Amazon Prime documentary “Kelce.” (His wife, Kylie Kelce, however, has proven that she will never wear anything other than Eagles gear.)
The podcast hasn't "changed" their relationship, the former Philadelphia Eagles center says, but "it's enabled us to stay closer."
Each episode of the podcast, which typically comes out on Wednesdays, is more than an hour on average. The June 26 episode recapping their experience in London attending Swift's "Eras Tour" and meeting the royal family clocked in at one hour, 22 minutes.
"Now we take one day a week, every week, to sit down and talk, and we talk for about two hours," he says.
They aim to "be as open and authentic as possible" — something Jason Kelce credits for the show's popularity.
"It’s obviously a perk that the show is so successful, and it makes sense to keep doing it from a business standpoint," he says.
"But more important than that, it's something that we really love doing," he adds. "Because it’s forced us to reconnect with each other’s lives more so than we have been since college."
