John Rich Talks Season 2 of ‘The Pursuit’: I Hope Viewers are ‘Inspired’ (Exclusive)

Season 2 of John Rich‘s Fox Nation show The Pursuit premiered on Monday, May 18, and the five new episodes find the singer continuing the premise of its first season and speaking with a number of successful people in different fields including business, sports and music. “The show is based on something I’ve said for a long time which is, ‘Our country doesn’t guarantee us happiness, it guarantees us the right to pursue happiness,’” Rich told PopCulture.com. “We’re the only country in the history of the world that guarantees its citizens the right to pursue happiness, the right to chase your dream. Not necessarily the right that you’re gonna catch it. But in there lies the joy of life, pursuing great things and knowing you can do that.”

Season 1 saw the musician speak with Wynonna Judd, Gretchen Wilson, Noah Galloway and more, and Season 2 continues that path with guests including businessman Robert Herjavec, professional wrestler Jeff Jarrett and rapper Cowboy Troy. “Most of the people on The Pursuit are either friends of mine or people that I have been around before or people I am a fan of personally,” Rich said. “I don’t care what your politics are, on this show, I care about you and I care about your story and I wanna hear what makes you tick and what have you been through, inspire me, tell me about how you did it. Really across the map of different backgrounds of Americans but all with this common thread of, they love our country and they have a very strong work ethic and they pursue happiness with everything they’ve got.”

Rich explained that after speaking with so many people about their personal journeys, he quickly realized that a similar theme links each success story. “One thing I’ve learned doing this show is that, there’s all the details are always different but there’s a real parallel between everybody that I’ve had on the show so far and that is they all run into some serious disappointments and some serious pushback against their dream,” he shared. “Making a dream a physical reality, that’s quite a process and you’re gonna run into a lot of things, everything from racism, sexism, people being told they didn’t have any talent, bad business deals, getting taken advantage of by industries. Pregnancies, all kinds of things that just come out of left field and you find out how they dealt with those, what decisions they made and where they ultimately wound up. It is extremely interesting to watch these stories unfold.”

Ultimately, Rich hopes that Season 2 of The Pursuit will inspire viewers to pursue their own dreams no matter what their current situation might be. “I hope they’re inspired number one. I hope that they think about their own life and what their American dream is, it could be anything,” he said. “Whatever it is to them and they look at other people and maybe they identify with something they just heard like, ‘Wow that’s happening to me right now,’ ‘what he just talked about.’ Or, ‘I just went through that.’ Or maybe that haven’t even really hit anything hard yet but when they do, they remember that story and go, ‘You know what, he got through it, she got through it, I can do it too.’ I hope they’re inspired and I hope it pushes them forward.”