B (11:34)

10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness. That will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract worth $250,000.

C (11:53)

This is where mindset comes in.

B (11:55)

Someone will be eliminated.

A (11:57)

Pressure is coming down.

B (12:00)

This is Trainer Games.

D (12:02)

Watch it on prime video. Starting January 8th, the world's best ski and snowboard athletes are chasing medals. Now you can follow their every move. Join Insider, the official US Ski and snowboard fan loyalty program, and get premium viewing at World cup ski events, exclusive athlete meetups, discounts from brands you love, and a custom welcome gift mailed direct to your doorstep. This winter, show your support as they race for the podium. Head to insider.usski and snowboard.org and join today.

E (12:34)

Bring incredible sound into every corner of your home this holiday with the new Wimsound smart speaker. Get high resolution audio with a 1.8-inch touchscreen, smart control and modern design in one powerful speaker for just $299. From Quiet Mornings to lively holiday gatherings, wind sound makes every moment sound better and fun. Feel better too. Get the gift of the season for the music enthusiast in your life or for yourself. Whim Sound Beautifully designed, effortlessly connected. Shop now at Amazon and search Whim Sound. That's W I I M S O.

A (13:04)

U n d this holiday season, give the gift of incredible sound with Vizio's full Soundbar lineup available at Walmart. Transform any living room into a home theater with rich, immersive audio that brings every movie, show and song to life. Whether you're gifting a loved one or or upgrading your own setup, Vizio soundbars deliver powerful, crystal clear sound that turns ordinary watching into extraordinary experiences. Stream your favorite holiday Playlist with the iHeartRadio app and discover how good your music can truly sound. Head to Walmart.com and find your perfect Vizio soundbar today.

C (13:40)

We are so back. One of the obvious driving factors behind what has become a right wing fascist takeover of the media has been the consolidation of capital into increasing monopolies. Now, it's been a very, very famous thing in the US to say that most of American media is controlled by five companies. But here's the thing. Even those five companies, those can always be consolidated into fewer and fewer companies, right? As the companies start to struggle and as any one of them sees weakness in the other ones, you get attempts to buy them out. And this is what happens with Paramount, which is again, the parent company that owns NBC. So the way that it's framed, if you read it in the press, is, oh, it was a merger between Skydance, which was Ellison's sort of outlet, and Paramount. But that's not really what happened. Really what happened was Paramount was bought by Ellison and Skydance, and they were merged together after that. And this is a problem with the concentration of capital, right? As capital becomes increasingly more and more concentrated and as there are individual people and also entities that control more and more capital, their ability to simply swallow the rest of their competition and consume it increases. And this is a significant advantage to the companies who get to swallow this capital. They get to absorb all of the intellectual property. So now they have control over the property regimes that allow them to control cultural production. And as a sort of incidental bonus, they can take control of the media. Now it's worth getting into the Ellisons themselves. Now, Larry Ellison, back in the halcyon days of 2020, was merely the 11th richest man in the world when he, quote, participated in a call shortly after the 2020 election that focused on strategies for contesting the legitimacy of the vote. According to court documents. And a participant, the November 14 call included Lindsey Graham, Fox News host Sean Hannity, Jay Sekolow, an attorney for President Donald Trump, and James Bopp Jr. An attorney for True the Vote, a Texas based nonprofit. True the Vote was a completely unhinged organization dedicated to overturning the 2020 election by doing all these weird voter fraud things. And they had a strategy call like their attorney had a strategy call with a bunch of Trump supporters, including one Larry Ellison. Now, again, that was back in 2020, here in 2025, and now fighting with Elon Musk for the title of the richest person in the fucking world. Ellison said, and I quote, we're going to have supervision. Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times. And, and if there's a problem, AI will report that problem and report it to the appropriate person. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on now in that intervening time. Larry Ellison is one of the people behind Oracle. And Oracle has benefited enormously as a company that got really in on the cloud storage boom. They've benefited enormously from selling a bunch of shit to AI companies. Larry Ellison is also a huge AI supporter, a huge backer of AI, a huge someone who wants to spread AI and someone who wants to spread AI, you know, very specifically, and this is very important into surveillance technology. He is also one of the people who, as 2020 went on and as the last half decade has come on and as the giant sort of backlash against, against the uprising and as his attempt to reassert racism as the dominant ideology of the United States and to make sure that capital's hold over this country and that white supremacy's hold over this country would be maintained, he has become one of the large drivers of this entire project. He's not the only one. Jeff Bezos, as we started this program with, already owned the Washington Post in 2025. He went in to very seriously change it. Jeff Bezos on the now fascist Twitter, and we will get to that in a second too, wrote. And this was a, this was a letter that he was sent to his staff. And this is, this is the editorial section. I'm writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages. We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. David Shipley, who had been his handpicked editor, resigned rather than lead the effort. It's not like Shipley had been like a leftist, right? But, you know, I'm going to read another part of this letter. Quote, I offered David Shipley, who I admire greatly because, you know, he was a Hampton guy, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn't hell yes, then it had to be no. After careful consideration, David decided to step away. So, okay, what was actually happening here, he came in was like, our board is not fascist enough, and if you're not going to make it more fascist, then get the fuck out of the way. And the guy he had picked to run the editorial board like three years ago went, this is unacceptable. I cannot be involved in this. And left. And now the Washington Post publishes pieces with titles like, quote, pam Bondi's Welcome Woke Rollback, the Justice Department Rescinds regulations encouraging racial preferences. You know, and you can in some ways see all of the things that are coming together. Obviously, Bezos was a major supporter of the Trump administration, is a major supporter of the Trump administration, put a bunch of money into the unhinged Trump ballroom. And when he says, justice Department rescinds regulations encouraging racial preferences, they're talking about anti discrimination ordinances. Right? That's what they're actually talking about. But these people have been so cooked and have stewed so much in the ideology of countering the ideology of 2020, that they're now doing all of this reverse racism stuff where they think that if you're not allowed to discriminate, that's anti white discrimination. And the Washington Post has been tanking effectively in the wake of a whole bunch of, a whole bunch of right wing editorial changes. Its audience has significantly declined since this. A whole bunch of people who subscribed to the Post called it in. Their subscriber count is just absolutely pitiful. Now the reach has been contracting. The paper is going to shit. But that doesn't matter because the Washington Post is not a money making outlet. The Washington Post is a chance to shape the way that the country thinks. And it is better that seven people in Washington D.C. who are all identically minded conservatives, read the Washington Post and agree with it than it is for there to be any sort of independence whatsoever from anything on the shop floor or from any of the people writing for it. We've also seen in recent months the elimination of Teen Folk. Conte Nast, Teen Folk's parent company, eliminated Teen Vogue as an independent outlet. Teen Vogue had been the furthest left of the even sort of mainstream outlets in the US it had carried a bunch of extremely good and radical work on race and gender. It was also one of the few outlets with consistent trans writing. And of course, the other aspect of all of these purges has been unbelievable unhinged transphobia. And this was them just destroying what had been a very, very important outlet on the left for telling the stories of non white people, telling the stories of workers and telling the stories of trans people. And they just destroyed it. Even though, and this is actually very interesting, ever since Teen Vogue had shifted to doing a bunch of leftist coverage and covering the protests against Donald Trump in his first administration and had gone towards actually talking about labor and talking about struggle and talking about unions and talking about, you know, like the experiences of people living under white supremacy, its readership had exploded. But again, that doesn't matter because it's bad for Donald Trump. And so we're seeing the ideological tightening, consolidation of the media as what had been an outlet that allowed people to talk about shit was just destroyed. Now, speaking about outlets destroying things ideologically. Hey, products and services, please don't destroy us. Woo.

B (22:28)

10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000.

C (22:46)

This is what where mindset comes in.

B (22:48)

Someone will be eliminated.

A (22:50)

Pressure is coming down.

B (22:53)

This is Trainer Games.

D (22:55)

Watch it on prime video. Starting January 8th, the world's best ski and snowboard athletes are chasing medals. Now you can follow their every move. Join Insider, the official US Ski and snowboard fan loyalty program, and get premium viewing at World cup ski event, exclusive athlete meetups, discounts from brands you love, and a custom welcome gift mailed direct to your doorstep. This winter, show your support as they race for the podium. Head to insider.usski and snowboard.org and join today.

E (23:27)

Bring incredible sound into every corner of your home this holiday with the new Whimsound smart speaker. Get high resolution Audio with a 1.8-inch touchscreen, smart control and modern design in one powerful smart speaker for just $2.99. From Quiet Mornings to lively holiday gatherings, Whim Sound makes every moment sound better and feel better too. Get the gift of the season for the music enthusiast in your life or for yourself. Whim Sound Beautifully designed, effortlessly connected. Shop now at Amazon and search Whim Sound. That's W I I m S o.

A (23:57)

U n d this holiday season. Give the gift. Everyone will gather around a Vizio Smart TV now available at Walmart. From a super sized 100 inch TV to QLED TVs of all sizes, Vizio delivers breathtaking color and crystal clear picture quality that takes entertainment to the next level. Plus with Watch Free plus built in, they can enjoy free live and on demand TV right out of the box. Have a music lover on your list. They can stream their favorite music on the iHeartRadio app ready to go on every Vizio TV. The perfect gift is waiting. Head to Walmart.com and discover Vizio TVs today.

C (24:33)

Now, as we covered on this show a few weeks ago, Conde Nast also fired several union workers illegally for, you know, staging a again, protected workplace action, demanding to know what the fuck was going on with these Teen Vogue firings. And that's another aspect of all of this takeover, which is that these outlets just viciously and radically hate. And this is, this is the ruling class, it's the people who run these outlets viciously hate unions. And this is something that's very important to understand in terms of media unions, because media unions were also a very powerful force for encouraging diversity because as it turns out, workers, and this is true, I could say this is someone who's part of a media union, less racist than the bosses, and in fact would like there to be more non white people and don't like it when non white people are discriminated against. And this is one of the things that these media unions and that unions in general do is try to help you not get fucking discriminated against on racial grounds. So of course a part and parcel of this has been the targeting of the union. And that's what we've been seeing at Conde Nast, where they also fired workers who had nothing to do with Teen Vogue and also one of whom was on the show and is trans. And you should go listen to that episode because it's very good. But that's another Aspect of this right wing consolidation is that media unions are able to push back against the untrammeled power of these fascist billionaires to turn news coverage into whatever the fuck they want. And that's what's happened at cbs, where they're now doing giant specials with like, Kirk's Widow and all of these just absolutely deranged, unbelievably bizarre right wing pieces that they're just sort of airing now. And in order to, you know, stop that shit, you need powerful media unions. And this is one of the things the ruling class is trying to crush. Now, it's also worth mentioning that these fight wing billionaires are trying to consolidate their hold on social media as well as the traditional media. And obviously the largest example of this is Elon Musk, who's purchased Twitter and has, you know, effectively turned Twitter into another arm of Stormfront. It is a just unhinged stew of racism and conspiracy that is now effectively unusable if you don't want like the most racist shit you've ever seen in your entire life, just in every single one of your replies. And it's also become a major vector of targeting for the Trump administration, where what Twitter is used for now, instead of being a platform that at one time actually was able to play a role as a thing that does resistance, as a tool of protesters and as a tool of people who opposed the untrammeled rule of billionaires, it's now been converted into just racist slopes and a way to track down anyone who's sort of vaguely center left and just put them in the eyes of the administration so they can be targeted by the state. And it's also worth noting that one of the people who helped bankroll the purchase of Twitter because Elon Musk couldn't just purchase it directly, was one Larry Ellison. Larry Ellison is also part of a massive attempt to buy TikTok. Listeners of the show are probably familiar with the whole extremely weird story about how TikTok was banned last year under the Biden administration, sort of bafflingly. And then Trump sort of just broke the law and made it still be usable, but has been trying to force TikTok to be sold to American buyers. And the conglomerate that's supposed to buy it is a Larry Ellison thing. So he's also attempting to buy TikTok. And finally, the story we're to close on is that Larry Ellison has been doing a hostile takeover bid of Warner Brothers. Now, Warner Brothers currently is set to be bought by Netflix. Larry Ellison kept on submitting Bids to them and his efforts to actually get the purchase to go through were consistently denied. But in the wake of that, they're attempting to do a hostile takeover bid where they just go to the shareholders directly and try to buy them out at what they claim is a higher share price. I'm not going to go into that whole thing. It's a fiasco. But what is interesting for our purposes is that David Ellison, who's the guy running Paramount, who's the guy who's been directly running the ideological purges, has met several times with Trump. And last time they met, Trump has promised that he would change the coverage of CNN in order to make it better for Trump. Now, it's also worth noting that buying CNN is not part of the deal for the Warner takeover bid. Buy Netflix, right? If Netflix takes over Warner Bros. They don't get cnn. Under Paramount and Larry Ellison's deal, they would get CNN now, even though CNN has done a whole bunch of unhinged shit like having Ben Shapiro on to do fucking election coverage. Jesus fucking Christ. Okay, Trump has still been mad at them for reporting even a tiny bit critically about his administration. And Trump has been kind of refusing to pick a side directly in terms of the takeover bid for Warner Brothers and the fight between Netflix and Paramount. But he's now said that he wants to make sure that CNN is sold and that it should get new leadership, presumably along the style of what happened with cbs. And so this is sort of the final phase of all of this, right? Which is Trump administration has the ability to use its quote unquote antitrust power in order to stop one of these two companies from doing this buyout. And the Trump administration is using the fact that, that the media is being bought out by his allies in order to try to get people to buy CNN and simply eliminate negative news coverage of him. And I don't really think I need to explain why it's extremely bad that the President of the United States could simply order a news outlet to be bought out and then suddenly it's bought out. I think it's kind of self explanatory why that's unbelievably bad. But that is the situation that we may rapidly find ourselves in because we don't live in anything that even sort of looks like a democracy. We live in the dictatorship of capital. And the thing about the press under a dictatorship, even one that's as decentralized as the dictatorship of capital, is that one particularly fascist faction of capital can simply roll in by the media and take control of it. And that's the project that we're seeing now. But these people are not undefeatable. We beat them before, we can beat them again. And in some ways their project is kind of self defeating in that they have spent a significant amount of time hollowing out people's trust in these institutions. And there is an extent to which, as bad as all of this is, they may simply be taking control of a husk that they had already caused or rot from the inside. And meanwhile, all of these, all of his control of the media that they've been taking has not stopped everyone from fucking hating them. And that's the note that I want to leave everyone here on. It doesn't matter how much of the media these people buy, everyone still hates them. We can fight them and we can win.

A (31:51)

It Could Happen.

C (31:52)

Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening.

B (32:10)

10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000.

C (32:29)

This is where mindset comes in.

B (32:31)

Someone will be eliminated.

A (32:33)

Pressure is coming down.

B (32:35)

This is Trainer Games.

D (32:37)

Watch it on Prime Video. Starting January 8th, the world's best ski and snowboard athletes are chasing medals. Now you can follow their every move. Join Insider, the official US Ski, Ski and snowboard fan loyalty program, and get premium viewing at World cup ski events, exclusive athlete meetups, discounts from brands you love, and a custom welcome gift mailed direct to your doorstep this winter. Show your support as they race for the podium. Head to insider.usski and snowboard.org and join today.

E (33:10)

Bring incredible sound into every corner of your home this holiday with the new Wimsound smart speaker. Get high resolution audio with a 1.8-inch touchscreen, smart control and modern design in one powerful speaker for just $299. From Quiet Mornings to lively holiday gatherings, Whim sound makes every moment sound better and feel better too. Get the gift of the season for the music enthusiast in your life or for yourself. Whim Sound Beautifully designed, effortlessly connected. Shop now at Amazon and search Whimsound. That's W I I M S O U n D How do I do.

A (33:41)

It all during the holidays. Four words Shipt. Same day delivery. With Shipt, I can order groc, groceries from Albertsons, decor from Michaels, even gifts for my furry friend from petsmart. Plus, my personal shopper brings everything I need that same day. That makes it a breeze to decorate, get my shopping done, and make time for all the holiday parties. Do it all this holiday season with Shipt. Download the app or visit shipt.com that's S H ipt.com this is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.