Can Satire Save Democracy? w/ The Onion CEO Ben Collins

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Can Satire Save Democracy?"

Podcast: Question Everything
Host: Brian Reed
Guest: Ben Collins (CEO, The Onion)
Original Air Date: November 27, 2025
Episode Description: Journalist Sam Sanders interviews Ben Collins about The Onion’s place in the media landscape, the return of its print edition, corporate and political censorship, audacious satirical stunts, and whether comedy can help preserve democracy.

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Overview of the Episode's Main Theme

This episode explores the intersection of satire, free speech, and democracy, using The Onion as a case study for how humor and sharp cultural critique can illuminate the failures and absurdities of our times. Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion, shares insights about steering a legendary satirical institution through a rapidly changing media environment, the moral choices involved in satire, the business of print news, and bold moves like the attempted acquisition of InfoWars. The conversation also touches on the current state (and future) of journalism and offers both sharp critiques and surprising optimism.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Role—and Relevance—of Satire in Journalism

• Satire's Impact: Collins argues that satire, when done well, gets to the “heart of what you're trying to think or what the sentence you're trying to get at in your soul” (15:05).
• Satire vs. Mainstream Journalism: Sam Sanders and Collins point out that The Onion provides directness and honesty often lacking from risk-averse, “appeasement”-oriented establishment outlets (16:17).

Quote:
"I think the biggest lesson is: don’t take yourself too fucking seriously."
— Sam Sanders, [04:05]

• Journalist Identity & Objectivity: Both Sanders and Collins discuss the baggage of the title "journalist" and skepticism about objectivity.
  • Collins rejects the idea that objectivity should be the centerpiece of journalism, calling it “inherently structurally sexist, racist, and homophobic” (05:17).

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2. The Onion’s Business—From Clickbait to Print Revival

• Abandoning Ad Revenue: Collins reveals he cut off 70% of Onion’s revenue overnight—primarily from “erectile dysfunction ads”—to pivot away from click-chasing and embrace subscriptions (13:07).
  • “It was not a great business model… so we decided… to just turn it off. We'll figure out a better business model.” (13:05)
• Print Comeback: The Onion revived its print edition, quickly becoming one of the country’s largest papers by circulation (now at 57,000 subscribers and counting) (14:44). This runs counter to media industry trends but has succeeded because “people associate us with the newspaper... It's in people’s mailboxes, like a nice surprise.” (13:27).

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3. Satire as Resistance and Risk: Censorship, Cancelled Distribution, and Bold Stunts

• Mockumentary Censorship: The Onion created a Jeffrey Epstein mockumentary lampooning media and political complicity. Their distributor pulled out after unrelated political violence, a move Collins denounces as cowardice—a sign that speech can still be chilled by risk-averse gatekeepers (22:25).
  • Indie theaters rallied to pick up the film, proving there's a hunger for courageous, unbowed satire (24:01).

Notable Quote:
“If we can't talk about the world’s biggest dead pedophile because he was friends with the President and the President was friends with somebody else, then we can't talk about anything.”
— Ben Collins, [22:38]

• Attempting to Buy InfoWars: The Onion bid to purchase Alex Jones’ conspiracy site from bankruptcy—after consulting Sandy Hook families to ensure it was welcome (33:19). Their intent: flip a disinformation engine into a channel for satire and truth. Collins details how legal wrangling and intimidation tactics stymied the process—yet insists it was the right thing to do (35:18).

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4. The Onion’s Editorial Process and “The Coca-Cola Formula”

• Quality Above All: The writers’ room prioritizes extreme selectivity—some days, 150 headlines are pitched and none are approved (27:55). Collins gives this as the secret to The Onion’s consistent high standard.
  • “It’s monks, it’s like a bunch of comedy monks.” (28:15)
• Satire Formula: Collins likens The Onion to Coca-Cola: never deviate from the formula of sharp, specific, original humor (29:09).

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5. Satire, Politics, and Free Speech—Why Collins Remains Hopeful

• On Free Speech: Collins expresses optimism, arguing the audience rewards boldness, authenticity, and a willingness to “stand up” (40:35).
  • “A little bit of bravery gets you an incredible amount of goodwill from people.”
• Against Appeasement: He’s critical of major media’s risk aversion and hopes the trend is peaking (16:53, 18:22).
• Satire as Democratic Practice: The Onion's approach is fundamentally anti-’the man’ and in the American tradition of speaking truth to power (46:00).

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6. AI, Media Illiteracy, and the Future of Humor

• Collins recognizes the challenges of media literacy, technology, and AI, echoing educators’ worries that “kids aren’t reading” and can’t distinguish fact from fiction (42:00).
• AI Will Not Replace Satire: He believes AI won’t supplant human satire: “AI finds the middle of something at all points. The point of being funny is to find the sentence that is not the middle” (46:28, 47:51).

Notable Quote:
"What we like as people is novelty. We like surprise. ... The more human you are in this moment, the more likely human beings are to give you actual money."
— Ben Collins, [49:17]

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7. Personal Favorites and Pop Culture Hot Takes

• Favorite Onion Headline: Collins loves “Somebody should do something about all the problems”—an “old lady” quote that aptly captures both the helplessness and urgency of the times (51:50).

• Pop Culture Hot Take:

  • Collins: “I don't think anybody young listens to Joe Rogan. ... I think it's 45 year old guys ... Painting their house who need something to drone.” (51:05)
  • Sanders: “99% of albums don't need interludes. ... All movies could be 90 minutes or less.” (51:05)

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• "The biggest lesson is don't take yourself too fucking seriously."
  — Sam Sanders, [04:05]

• "Objectivity is inherently structurally sexist, racist, and homophobic. ... It was never for me."
  — Sam Sanders, [05:17]

• "Our headlines ... drill down to the heart of what you're trying to think or ... your soul."
  — Ben Collins, [15:05]

• “If it's raining outside and you get one voice that says it's raining and one voice that says it's not ... you are not giving me an accurate weather report.”
  — Sam Sanders (to Ben Collins), [18:22]

• "If we can't talk about the world's biggest dead pedophile ... then we can't talk about anything."
  — Ben Collins, [22:38]

• "[AI] can't say anything new. ... AI is the synthesis of everything. What we like as people is novelty. We like surprise."
  — Ben Collins, [47:51]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Origins and Journalist Identity: [04:00] – [06:30]
• How The Onion Is Run; Business Strategy: [08:17] – [14:36]
• On Print Media’s Comeback: [13:27] – [15:57]
• Satire vs Mainstream Journalism; Quality Control: [16:04] – [28:34]
• Epstein Mockumentary Saga: [20:11] – [24:49]
• InfoWars Acquisition Story: [33:19] – [36:30]
• Free Speech and Optimism: [37:10] – [41:39]
• AI, Literacy, and Tech Anxiety: [42:00] – [47:41]
• Pop Culture Hot Takes & Favorite Headlines: [51:05] – [52:30]

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a rare blend of media critique, comedy philosophy, business insight, and cultural diagnosis. Ben Collins is candid, reflective, and sharp-edged, arguing that boldness, specificity, and humanity are antidotes to both institutional cynicism and technological dystopia. For believers in the power of satire—and for those worried about the future of speech and democracy—The Onion’s example offers both a cutting lens on the present and a hopeful, if irreverent, path forward.

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Further Listening

• Sam Sanders’ other interviews with Michael Lewis and Robin Gavan (as recommended by Brian Reed at close).
• For those interested in similar themes, check out The Onion’s print editions or the Epstein mockumentary if it screens locally.

Transcript

[A]

Happy Thanksgiving, Brian. Here, got a little treat for you today. A conversation with the guy who runs the country's favorite fake newspaper, America's finest news source, as they call themselves, the Onion. This interview ran not long ago on another podcast from our partners at KCRW in la, the Sam Sanders Show. Like me, Sam is a former NPR journalist. He covered politics for years, then culture, and now he has a great show from KCRW where he tries to make sense of the culture by talking each week to some of the most interesting comedians, journalists, celebrities, podcasters, influencers, and in this case, the CEO of the Onion, who took over the publication last year and has been doing a lot of really interesting stuff since then, including something that'll be meaningful to regular listeners of this show, the lies about Sandy Hook families being actors. He's trying to have The Onion buy InfoWars out of bankruptcy to run it as a satirical Onion channel. Fascinating. As is this whole conversation between Sam and the CEO. Stick around. So I've mentioned this before, but we're going to be trying some new ways of working with sponsors here at Question Everything. And you're going to hear more from this one in the future. It's our new sponsor, Plaude, and the Plaude Note Pro. Plaude, that's with a P as in pancake. It's a little credit card sized gadget.

[B]

I have it right here.

[A]

You snap it on your phone and it can record your meetings or interviews. Really useful for journalists as well as text images, things you highlighted and uses AI to make sense of it for you. They've sold over a million already and I'm told over 300,000 managers use plaud every day. Just search P, L, A, U, D on Google or Amazon. Sam Sanders, nice to see you.

[C]

So good to be here. Longtime listener, first time caller for listeners.

[A]

Who don't know, we kind of go way back.

[C]

Way, way back.

[A]

We were both CROC fellows.

[C]

Yeah. We had the same fellowship at npr and times have changed so much. It's no longer there.

[A]

The fellowship, they said it was just a pause. Right. But it's going to come back, I hope.

[B]

Sure.

[C]

Girl, you're a skeptical journalist. Be skeptical.

[A]

Oh, man. Yeah, it's a very cool program. It's like the reason I do audio journalism. Same, you know, was that program, it was a year long training program. Anyway, that's how we know each other. And now we're both KCRW hosts. So I'm excited to share this interview you did with Ben Collins, the CEO of the Onion. I'M curious, what made you want to have Ben on? Like, what's the background here? Like, what caught your interest?

[C]

Back when I was covering breaking news and still doing that thing, ultra enlisted five to 10 years ago where we were on Twitter all the time. He was one of my journalist Twitter friends and always a great follow and just someone whose reporting I loved.

[A]

What was he doing then? He wasn't at the Onion then, right?

[C]

No, he was covering disinformation for NBC and beginning to cover the alt right, et cetera. And I just loved his reporting. He was always a sharpshooter and he was very clear eyed and laser focused on telling the truth about these things in a time when a lot of newsrooms were looking for words to be euphemisms, to not say the real thing. And I became even more intrigued with him when he left journalism and ended up running the Onion. And then what really made me convinced that I had to talk to him was finding out that almost overnight the Onion's newspaper had become like the 14th biggest in the country. It was wild.

[A]

The physical print newspaper?

[C]

Yeah, dude, they do a physical paper.

[A]

Which they just brought back, right?

[C]

Yeah, it had been defunct for a while. Ben brought it back and now it's a hit. And I'm like, oh, I don't think this is just a good chat about entertainment and politics. I think it's a good chat about the roadmap forward for journalism and maybe the Onion can lead the way.

[A]

So you think there's something that fact based journalists can learn from a fake newspaper?

[C]

A lot. And I think the biggest lesson is don't take yourself too fucking seriously.

[A]

Amen. Seriously.

[C]

You can't, you know.

[A]

You know, you told me you no longer call yourself a journalist or not consistently. Like, where are you with that?

[C]

Not really. I think it gets in the way. I think as soon as I am in conversation with people or meeting people and I say the J word, there's a series of skeptical questions that come after, like, what? Do y' all have any money? Is the industry bad? Or what's gonna happen next? And it's like, I don't wanna be burdened with those existential questions about an industry that in general wasn't always supportive of someone like me anyway. I think it gets in the way. When I want to be a journalist, I just apply the skills of journalism in my work and I don't have to like capital J it. I really don't do it anymore.

[A]

I totally understand the impulse to not call yourself a journalist. And you're not the first journalist or former journalist that I've talked to, especially one of color, you know, who is doing that.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

My approach has been, can't we make journalism better or fix it so that someone like you feels comfortable and even proud to use the word no? That's been kind of my thought. But is that naive?

[C]

I think for me, right next to the word journalism is the word objectivity. And the pursuit of being a journalist means a pursuit of objectivity. And I think the very idea of objectivity is inherently structurally sexist, racist, and homophobic. And so I don't even care anymore to fix our understanding of objectivity. Because why? It was actually never for me. It was never for me.

[A]

Yeah, No. I think the idea would be to disentangle those two ideas, journalist and objectivity, somehow. Or that's what I would propose, you.

[C]

Know, and then, like, what word would I want to tether journalism to?

[A]

Justice, truth, fairness, originality, you know?

[C]

Exactly. But I no longer want to have conversations about journalism that take me back to an argument over objectivity. No, never again.

[B]

Never again.

[C]

I'm not objective. I'm not objective. I am angry. Angry about media capture and elite capture. And I'm angry about the way social media platforms and video scrolls and AI have like, rotted all of our brains. I'm angry. I'm not an objective journalist. I'm an angry citizen who tries to, from time to time, use the skills of quote, unquote, journalism to have good conversations about fixing some of the things that I'm angry about.

[A]

Oh, dude, this is what I need to come on your show about. I'm angry too. And now I don't know if you've heard, but I'm an advocate now. I've declared it on my show.

[C]

I know. Cause I've heard you mention section 230. I've been on section 230 for a few years now. It is the most interesting story in media right now.

[A]

You think so?

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[C]

If Meta could be sued, our problems would be solved.

[A]

That's our crossover. Let's do that.

[C]

I love it. Let's talk about it.

[A]

All right. Here's Sam's non journalistic interview with Ben Collins of the Onion.

[C]

How do you feel when you get called CEO of the Onion? Because CEO is such a serious title and the Onion is the Onion.

[B]

Yeah, no one really knows how to handle that. And yeah, it is. It is really stupid. I grew up in a town with a thing called a stage snuff. You know, a snuff factory. Do you Know what snuff is?

[C]

My first association is snuff films, and we're not talking about that on this radio show.

[B]

Yeah, well, yeah, apparently it's named after that. Snuff is nasal tobacco. So it's tobacco that's in like little, like fine parts like that you'd roll up and people would snort it like crazy. You're not gonna believe this, but people don't do that anymore.

[C]

Thank goodness.

[B]

It's really gross. Yeah, it kind of feels like I kind of feel like the CEO of the snuff factory every. Every day. I'm like, we'll see how long this goes. We'll see are into snorting tobacco, but that's what it feels like on a day to day basis. Yeah.

[C]

I love it. I love it. So I am guessing that you get to see a lot of the Onions sausage before it's pushed out to the world. What is the last headline from the Onion that stopped you in your tracks? Ben Collins, Onion CEO.

[B]

Can I tell you one that still has not made it out of the room yet? Because we're trying to get the person involved. Okay. I still laugh at this every time I say it. So here it is. And it's been kicking around for like nine months now. It's Steve O. Comes clean about getting CTE of the Balls.

[C]

Run that today.

[B]

It's a perfect joke in every way. I think the holdup is we're trying to get Steve O. To say he got CTE to the balls. It's a perfect joke, especially if you know what CTE stands for. It's like, it's a. It's a great thing. So that's. That's the one that most recently caught me in my tracks. I. We ran one yesterday, I believe a couple days ago. Maybe that was Donald Trump. Colon. Another thing Jeffrey Epstein and I didn't do was play nude charades.

[D]

Which is.

[B]

Just like something he would just, you know, you know, he just like randomly admits the guilt.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, that's one of those things.

[C]

Those are two good ones. And just like speaking of Trump and thinking about how the Onion has been all in on talking about Trump in the way the Onion does best. I'm wondering. I had this question for later, but I'll ask it now. Why hasn't he come after y'?

[B]

All?

[C]

He's going after everybody. He's gone after cbs. He's gone after Late Night. Y' all have said things worse about Donald Trump than any of those other media or news outlets. Why hasn't Donald Trump come After the Onion, I don't know.

[B]

I would hope that whatever funnel of information he gets from his assistants, we're just not part of that funnel. I think that's part of it. Cause apparently, as you know, I think there's a lady who prints stuff out from the Internet from him.

[C]

I remember hearing in the first administration that all presidents get the daily briefing. He likes his shorter and more image forward. That's me saying it.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Nicely.

[B]

Yeah. Like a baby. Like a baby is what you're saying. Yes. Words.

[C]

You can say.

[B]

Sorry. That's what I'm saying. I'm not putting words in your mouth. No, I know. No, I think that's part of it also. We tell a little bit more of an advanced joke. We're more than a meme.

[C]

It's more than a meme machine.

[B]

Yes. It kind of slides under his radar. I will also say, by the way, subscribe to the Onion, the newspaper. We have 57,000 subscribers. We're the, I think now, the 11th biggest newspaper in the United States. A good way back in Revolutionary War times of making it so you could say stuff people didn't want to see is you used to print it out on paper and distribute it. Well, we're back in that business, baby. We're back in those times. So, yeah, it does work out pretty good. And I doubt there are many Onion subscribers in the White House.

[C]

Okay, let's talk about that. You became CEO of the Onion, what, about a year ago?

[B]

Yeah. Almost two now in April of 2024.

[C]

Congrats on that. I have to ask you about what has been your biggest business decision for the Onion since you took the reins? You brought back the onions print.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Physical newspaper. We know what's going on with newspapers all across the country. Even the biggest ones are declining by some 13 to 14% a year in circulation. Why would you start up a physical newspaper operation in 2024, 2025? Reading the tea leaves that we're all seeing and reading.

[B]

Yeah. It's kind of a perfect storm for us. Like, the Onion tends to do the opposite of what everyone does, and it does work that way. It's helped us substantially. I also, you know, when we took over the company, it was sort of in the death throes of what a lot of the Internet is in right now. Hmm.

[C]

What did that look like for the Onion?

[B]

So our business was entirely based on getting people to click next on a slideshow so they would get erectile dysfunction pills underneath all of the content that we served. And while the joke Writing and the headline writing never wavered. We have the best staff in the world. Most of our staff has been here for at least five years. Most 10. Over 10 years. Editor in Chief has been here for 27 years. They just really believed in the thing. The joke writing was great, but it was surrounded by sloppy.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

How much of the Onion's revenue before you came in and changed things up? How much of the revenue was erectile dysfunction ads for the onions?

[B]

It was about 70% of the revenue. And I know.

[C]

Stop right there. 70% of the onions ad revenue was erectile dysfunction ads.

[B]

There were other.

[C]

That is an Onion headline.

[B]

Yeah, I know. There were. There were ads for, like, removing dirt from your feet. I'm sure it wasn't purely the best.

[C]

Oh, not Ed.

[B]

Yeah. Not. Yeah, exactly. But it was not a great business model. And that business model basically doesn't exist now because of how advertising works and how AI ate everything and all these things. So we decided to, when we took over to just turn it off. Just straight up, turn it off. We'll figure out a better business model.

[C]

So you turned off 70% of your revenue like that?

[B]

Like that. Within a month. Okay. That meant we had to hustle to get a better source of revenue. And we knew enough people loved this thing. I mean, you love the Onion. Everybody I know who knows what the Onion is loves the Onion. I love it. We decided, hey, look, people associate us with the newspaper. We were on the side of the road in every major American city all throughout the 90s and the 2000s, and I loved it. That's how I grew to love stupid satire. So why don't we bring that back and we'll get it delivered to people's mailboxes? People's mailboxes are filled with slop right now. It's filled with weird flyers for bad congressional candidates and bad credit card offers and predatory stuff. So to get something in the mail that's good, we're like, you know, it might be a nice surprise. So we. Within three months, we found a guy who still makes newspapers out by o' Hare Airport. We found a way to put them all in a. In a. We have a robot arm machine that shoves the newspapers into a package, then we ship them out to now 57,000 people in over 50 countries throughout the world.

[C]

I was looking at the data on US paper circulation. Y' all are definitely top 15 in the country right now. If not like top 12 or 10.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

What is the lesson for other makers of newspaper? What is the lesson for them from the Onion. Success.

[B]

Yeah, I. For us, everything that we do, we're lucky. We get to say literally whatever we want. We get to make fun of whoever we want. Our headlines are the most. They drill down to the deep, to the heart of what you're trying to think or what the sentence you're trying to get at in your soul. So that works for us. I would also recommend they try to do that, too, but adhere to facts. But, you know, it's difficult. It is a very difficult time for newspapers unless you are in this, like, extraordinarily stupid space. I think it's like, somebody asked us who our competition is, and I was like, the New York Post, because they don't, like, adhere to facts or reality either. And they just come up with the dumbest sentence they can think of. That's probably the closest thing. So it's difficult for them. But I would say lean into what you're good at. I grew up with the Boston Globe. They had the Spotlight section and the sports section, and nobody could beat them in either space. Lean into what you're good at with those places, and people will come to you.

[C]

What you're getting at here, and what I like about the Onion is that the Onion is all about extreme specificity.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Don't dance around the words. Don't dance around the headline. Don't dance around the thing, like, say exactly what you're talking about and mean it. And I think that the general tenor.

[B]

Of.

[C]

Quote, unquote, establishment journalism right now is not that it is making sure it appeases corporate shareholders or appeases politicians or appeases readers and listeners who they think might not want to hear certain things. Politically, it seems as if the Onion is moving in the entirely opposite direction of this general feel of appeasement that I see quietly sweeping through, loudly sweeping through establishment journalism.

[B]

Yeah, I hope we're at peak appeasement. I don't. Don't think we are, but I hope we are. And, you know, I. My job before this, I used to work at NBC News.

[C]

And. Yeah, you covered what? Dystopia and the. The.

[B]

Right. And yeah, I covered disinformation, which is like a sentence you can't even. A word you can't even say anymore.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Because they're like, oh, my God.

[C]

So I said dystopia, not disinformation. But at this point, same thing.

[B]

It's the same thing. Yeah, it's the same exact thing. So, yeah, I lived through that dancing around it, and I lived through us hemorrhaging people.

[C]

I remember when I was still in a newsroom, there were serious questions, debates, meetings, and conversations that went all the way up to the executive C suite about whether or not we could use the word lie when talking about things politicians said. Yeah, that was a level of newsroom hand wringing nine years ago.

[B]

Yes. And I think it's gotten worse. It has gotten considerably worse, in part because they are. They are trying not to get sued by the government or they're trying not to, you know, piss off, like you said, shareholders or people who are adjacent to them, they. They bend over backwards in the. Under the concept of fairness. And in that process, they become wildly unfair. They are splitting the difference between one billionaire's opinion and everybody else's thought on the subject. And when you do that, you wind up weighting one guy's opinion versus the actual truth of the matter. In the middle of that is not the truth. In the middle of that is some other third thing. I don't know.

[C]

If it's raining outside and you get one voice that says it's raining and one voice that says it's not.

[B]

Right.

[C]

You are not giving me an accurate weather report.

[B]

Yeah. If a guy has a vested interest in telling everyone that it never rains and it never will again, and he gets half the story because he wants.

[C]

To sell you bikinis, you know.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. And that's the beauty of the onion. We don't. We just say it's raining, but we also. We say it's raining in the funniest way that we can think of. Yes. I also, like. I also want to say the reason I am kind of optimistic that the appeasement is at its peak is because it's. It's horrific business. It's really bad business. Unless you are trying to buy TikTok illegally through the United States government or something. Just bad business. And people are starting to understand this, that there's a couple of things going on. One, everything's getting eaten by AI and AI is bad. Like, it's not. It's not making things better. I haven't seen the great AI Movie that you guys have all seen. So leaning into humanity and your own reporters and your own expertise and people who can pick up a phone and ask a guy a question that is real valuable right now. I've seen that in independent media throughout the world, and I've seen it in individual reporters at specific places who are able to build big audiences. Yeah, that's one side of it. And then. And then the other side is people. Just people don't like what's going on and they see everybody lining up to be with the bad guys. And if you lie to be on the opposite side of that, you know, Americans, Americans hate the man. So, yeah, you can, you can absolutely be, you can be your own little rage against the machine if you want.

[C]

How can we describe the onions? Jeffrey Epstein, mockumentary for a general and broad broadcast audience.

[B]

I will say, and I think you would agree with this, at every turn that you think it's going to go in one direction, it goes a completely different direction. That's true.

[C]

There's one point where he ends up playing for the Chicago Bulls or something.

[B]

Yeah. In this documentary, Donald Trump is on the 1995 Chicago Bulls and. Or no, wait, actually, really, he's on the Knicks, right. Epstein's on the Bulls, Dershowitz is on the Bulls. But yeah, so yeah, what is this.

[C]

Documentary for folks who are like, what's going on here?

[B]

Yeah. So I'll walk you through this whole story. About two months ago, we started to see Donald Trump get really skittish about talking about Jeffrey Epstein. Oh, yeah, we all see in public, he was very like, what's going on? And in a way that I don't think I've ever seen him sweat before, which is ripe for comedy, certainly.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

So, you know, the staff realized that we had just been bigger on this and I, you know, we usually run this thing called the Onion News Network, which is, we are a CNN style parody thing. I said, you know, just take a leave from O and N for a minute. Go whole hog on this. Probably not the greatest words to say whole hog about this, but what are you going to do?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So they spent the next week writing a script. I remember being outside of them, outside of the room of them writing the script, and it was just 15 consecutive minutes of laughter. Yeah, I remember walking in afterwards and on the whiteboard it said towards the end, this is not a spoiler, it says he went to heaven with a frowny face on the whiteboard about Jeffrey Epstein. So, yeah, we scripted this and did everything we could in about six or seven weeks and it was done. Huh. And we got a national distributor for to to release this movie all throughout the country, which is in theaters.

[C]

Incredible. Like, yeah, we got incredible.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, it's really good. When people see it, they get really excited about it. So we were about to release it on October 2nd, and then our Charlie Kirk got shot. Just what happened? Yeah, it was a horrible thing, terrible day, all that stuff. And within hours we get a phone call and they were like, we're not doing this anymore.

[C]

Wait, so after Charlie Kirk was killed, your film distributor pulled out of running the onions Epstein Doc. Mock doc.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

I mean, how did you feel when that happened? Because they're two different topics.

[B]

Look, this is how I felt initially. I was like, if it was releasing today, I would understand. It's in a month, so relax.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

But then I was like, if we can't talk about the world's biggest dead pedophile because he was friends with the President and the President was friends with somebody else, then we can't talk about anything. Like, at what stage is this ridiculous? And that's what it was. We had heard that their PR firm, who refused to actually watch the thing, just asked repeatedly if Donald Trump was in this. And they said. And we said, yeah, but he's on the Knicks. And it didn't matter.

[C]

Yeah. Can you name this distributor? Are you allowed to?

[B]

I don't want to. I don't want. Here's why I don't want to is because everybody who worked there who was not at that level. C suite, we want them to keep. Busted their ass with this thing. Yeah, yeah. And they, they, they, they did everything they could to help us in the next step of this, which was like, they were like, just call all these indie theaters. Here are a bunch of indie theaters. So we called all these indie theaters and then we, we were like, okay, we'll launch this thing. Five theaters in like, New York, Minneapolis, for some reason, Chicago and la. And then we said, when we told people about this thing, we're going to release it on October 2nd, just as we planned. We told them the whole story about us not being able to release this as planned. Every indie theater in the world reach out to us. They're like, can we run this thing? So now we're in, I don't know, 30, 40, more than that. I don't know. I don't know how many indie theaters in the country, but we have sold out of dozens of indie theaters throughout the country because they want to air this thing.

[C]

Congratulations.

[B]

In part because it's funny, but in part because that's, that's where everything is. And that's when we were talking about the previous stuff earlier about how the, the, the. These news places are dying because of all these. It's because of capitulation. And people will come to your defense. People will vote with their dollars. If you stand up for what's right, if you stand up for speech and the concept of Of. Of being able to make fun of stuff or being able to report accurately on people without wavering. And I. Yeah, we are, you know, we're a good use case for this. Again, this happened last week. Last Thursday we announced this, and within a couple of. Over the weekend, we had dozens and dozens of indie theaters. Say we will air your thing next week. And they sold out.

[C]

That's amazing.

[B]

It's a. It's a really remarkable story. Yeah.

[C]

When you are making something like this, a mockumentary about Jeffrey Epstein, is the goal of the Onion just to get people laughing and thinking about it, or is the goal of the Onion to maybe drive some political change? There are millions of folks around the country asking for the quote, unquote, Epstein files to be released. Is this mockumentary from the Onion part of that call, or do you just want some laughs?

[B]

Well, it's both. I think that's what good comedy does. It opens up your brain a little bit to what this could be. I think you've seen it has. In my opinion, it has a better laugh ratio than anything since, like, Airplane, like, laughs per second.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

When we. We. We showed it in front of people, and people laugh over jokes. People, like, will have to watch it again because people laugh over high joke.

[C]

Density, which I like high joke density.

[B]

Which is really good. That's the number one most important thing. But there is an element to this that you'll see at the end. I won't give away the ending of media complicity and how we've turned this, turned the Epstein story into every. It feels like now the way we talk about Jeffrey Epstein is the way we talk about, like, the Super Bowl. It's like, is it going to happen? Who's going to win? And that's crazy. Like, this guy was the world's biggest human trafficker. Like, this guy, and he's friends, the President of the United States. It's crazy that we talk about it this way. And that's the overarching theme of the film, as you'll see. That said, it has a lot of really gross bits in it that I'm very much, as you know, from the mannequin. I'm not going to say anything else other than that. You don't have to. It's really, really, really nasty and really gnarly.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So, like, the goal is to make you laugh very hard and then at the end, leave the theater feeling kind of unsettled about how we have handled this as a country. And hopefully it'll work.

[C]

And it's only 20 minutes.

[B]

Yeah, relax. Everybody relax. It's 20 minutes. Just chill out. What were you gonna do, watch four YouTube videos? No, no, no. Watch this instead. I interviewed.

[C]

I actually hung out for a day at the offices of the Onion in Chicago, maybe in, like, 2017, when I had just began solo hosting my first in solo podcast. And what I remember distinctly was how quiet the Onions newsroom was.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Because y', all, they were all just, like, thinking of headlines and writing. Is this still that quiet?

[B]

Oh, my God, yes. I think people think that, like, it's like TMZ or just like. Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Nope.

[B]

Every day. Every day they go into a room with about 150 headlines, and then they just, like, quietly needle them down to, like, one or two. Maybe at probably at most. Yesterday we had zero. The day before, we had two. What do you mean you had zero? Yesterday they went in with 150 headlines and they left. None of them met the threshold. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

[C]

That's good.

[B]

You said that's good. That means the Quality Bar is, like, insane. And if you were to read these, like, nine of them would be the funniest thing that you have ever written as a person. They just throw them away because, like, they don't hit the note in the way that they want to hit it. And you're right. It is dead quiet. I think lots of people come to us, want to do a documentary about, like, the Onion writers room.

[C]

You can't do it. They're too quiet.

[B]

And I keep saying, like, guys, no, I don't. It's a mausoleum. Like, it's not. It's not what you want.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I even went to the meeting. This was years ago, where they debate the headlines and see what's gonna make it. And I was like, oh, it's gonna be fireworks. There's gonna be yelling, sniping.

[B]

No, no.

[C]

Diplomatic and pretty quiet.

[B]

Diplomatic and pretty quiet, exactly. Right. Yeah. Yeah. With videos, it's a little bit harder because you really have to, like, kind of have to riff off each other and get to a point where each sentence works. But with this, it's very, like, so. It is. It is. It's. It's monks. It's like a bunch of comedy monks. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And there's a reason, like, other places. Other places have a much higher miss rates than us because of that. Like, we are. We're Coca Cola. Like, we're not going to mess with this formula. And the second that you mess with it, it. You know, it. It could ruin the whole thing.

[C]

Are y' all gonna make a soda now. The Onion Cola.

[B]

Do it. Yeah. Yeah. That's gonna taste great. It's definitely not gonna give you any heartburn on your drink. That sounds great for everybody. Yeah. Yeah.

[C]

I also remember when I was in the Onions offices some seven, eight years ago, it was during the first months of the first Trump administration. And my biggest question for those Onion writers was, does Donald Trump as a president and all of his celebrity and all of who he is, does it make it easier to write the headlines or harder? Same question for you today. Now for the Onion. Is a president like Donald Trump making it easier to make the satire you're doing or harder?

[B]

It's complicated. I. I will say, like, I think the good part about being about the Coca Cola thing, where you just have a formula and you stick to it, is that you can kind of go at anything.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Like, we go at like 1.25 speed. I would say we don't. Like, a lot of other places are turning up the. The podcast thing to 2X. Yeah. And it's unlistenable. It's too much. It's like too heavy.

[C]

There's some podcasts now that I kind of like that are publishing like three times a day.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

To give you all the headlines. And I'm like, anywho.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. I will say I find him completely unfunny as a person. So, like, finding the character. Yeah, sorry.

[C]

I gotta say, he's funny. He's funny. Like, just watching him move through the world, his physicality I find hilarious. I find it hilarious. The way he says things I find hilarious. And that is not me endorsing or not endorsing him. I'm just saying the dude's funny.

[B]

He's funny in the way, like, Beethoven from the Beethoven dog movies is funny. You know, he's like, oh, that's.

[C]

And that was a hit film.

[B]

Well, yeah, but. But I just find it correct. Good point. You know what? There you go. But no, go ahead. I find the cruelty to be, like, overbearing. You know, he's. Jesus. He's a theater hag. Right. Wow. At the end of the day, if he had a show on Bravo and he complained about the most recent Les Mis thing that's going on, which he would. I mean, he makes complete sense as a person within that thing. He's just like a male Joan Rivers, like, that makes sense to me. But like, when you have him doing, like unbelievable cruelty on a day to day basis, I'm still. If Joan Rivers was. Was putting people in camps and shoving concrete. Shoving a pregnant woman on concrete floors and then deporting them on untracked flights to Africa, where they're not from. I would. I would be like, I'm not sure this John Rivers lady is funny anymore. That's. That's how I feel about it. But their job is to find a way to make this.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Both funny and poignant. And they're much more professional at this than I am. And that's why I say out of the way. Like, I. Yeah. I have nothing to do with what they do. Like, all I say is, like, if you would like to make a movie about Jeffrey Epstein, we're here. We'll find the money for it. Yeah.

[C]

We've talked about the newspaper. We've talked about the Jeff Epstein mockumentary that's hitting theaters, actual theaters. That's major. There's also another big business venture that the Onion has kind of jumped into under your leadership, or before you came in, but you're still involved in it. It's been kind of stalled. The Onion is still trying to purchase conspiracy theorist Alex Jones's website, InfoWars. Alex Jones is the guy who said so many bad things about the Sandy Hook shooting that the Sandy Hook families sued him and won. In the fallout from that, the Onion wanted to buy Alex's website because he couldn't have it anymore. It's still in limbo. What's going on there? Number one and two, why in the world does anyone want Alex Jones's infowars website?

[B]

I understand why no one would want it now after trying to purchase it for so long. So here's the deal. Basically, we saw this for sale. We put in a bid. We thought it was gonna be like a Storage wars style auction where we'd just be like, ah, yeah, we'll give you 50 bucks. It was more complicated than that. But we're like, we'll figure it out. We'll go into it. And we also, before we didn't anything else, we called the families of Sandy Oak shooting. Huh. To make sure that this was kosher. We want to make sure that they were. They're like, yes, absolutely. Like, we really, you know, we want to see this. We want to see this shut down. We also, you know, we want to. We. We want to. This guy owes us $1.5 billion. We would like to receive something.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So basically what happened is we were going to put in a bid, and we had lined up our money, and then the election happened. This was November 5th, and then eight days later, the auction was scheduled. And we came to realize that if we didn't bid on this thing, Alex would have nobody else bidding against him. It would just be Alex Jones paying peanuts. I don't know how much. Probably, like, it would probably be like a couple hundred thousand dollars, a million dollars. And then to just wipe away all the. All the stuff. And then he would just receive it on his own because he was being backed by some secret third party. We don't know about it, but he.

[C]

Would just be sold to himself.

[A]

Basically.

[B]

Basically, yes.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

And so we were like, okay, this is heavy. And I don't know if you remember how scared everyone was and kind of still is, but really scared in the days after the election. And we had to make a choice. Either we join, we do a true cowardice, and we just back away from this thing and we let these families down, or we put in a bid. And we put in a bid and it won. And he's like, he scared the bejesus out of everybody. And the judge and everybody involved. Judge put a halt on it.

[C]

Did you expect the halt?

[B]

No, obviously not. Like, we. He basically wiped away, like, many months of orders that he had previously given about this thing to put it into an auction and do all these other things. And then it was just sort of in limbo for a while. And we're still trying to figure out exactly the way to get it from him, but he still owes these people one and a half billion dollars. Infowars itself is still in the hands of a receiver, and we think we can get it through state court. We're just not. We don't really know fully the story yet, but we're trying as hard as we can because it's the right thing to.

[C]

Listeners. If you're having fun with us right now, please tell a friend about us. I know you have a friend who is probably obsessed with the Onion or a friend who likes getting a newspaper sent to their house, something the Onion does. So let's keep this party going. Share this episode with that friend of yours who needs to hear it. All right, time now for a break. When we come back, Ben Collins breaks down our current fight for free speech and reveals his hottest pop culture hot take. Stay with us.

[D]

Hi, it's Reece Gorman, congressional reporter and host of the brand new podcast on Notice. This is the new podcast from Notice, the nonpartisan newsroom covering politics and policy in Washington, D.C. each week, I'll bring you real conversations with members of Congress and those who make the Hill run. And it's packed into just 30 minutes. So you can learn a lot without taking too much time out of your busy day. Join me for On Notice. That's notice spelled N O T U s available every Monday wherever you get your podcast or on YouTube.

[C]

All right, so I'm having this conversation with you, and you're making me feel optimistic about media and about speech because you and the Onion seem to be going full steam ahead on those ideals of free speech and speaking truth to power that the Onion has believed in since its start. But when I read my media newsletters and listen to my media podcast and listen to, like, journalists talk about the state of the industry, everyone is scared and worried and ringing the alarm and speaking about the state of speech in America as if we are entering the end of free speech. Why are you so optimistic about it? Why are like, yeah, why are you this optimistic about it? You came from a newsroom. You know the media landscape. You see everyone else worrying so much about the state of free speech, and you seem less worried than they are. Why?

[B]

Oh, it's super scary if you're, especially if you're at a big place because, you know there's a government appointed ombudsman at cbs, which was previously and will never be again, but which was previously the paragon of, of journalistic integrity. I grew up obsessed with Edward R. Murrow, and now. Yeah, can you imagine Edward R. Murrow?

[C]

They give out awards every year in his name honoring the pinnacle of American journalism.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And I, if you're at those places, I don't know, tell you, like, it's not gonna be a great ride for you, but if you're not, you're in a pretty good spot. And also you have more leverage than you think. And I think that's where Jimmy Kimmel kind of opened up some floodgates for people. I knew he would fight back because he's a good person and he also understands his role in history. And I think a lot of people don't understand that they are living in history right now and they are the characters in history that either fold or don't. And I don't know how it's all going to shake out. But I will say I'm not going to be the guy in the book who's the footnote, who's One of the 50 people who said, yeah, whatever government, come in and just do what you need to do to me so I can maintain my mortgage and send my kid to a private school, I'm not going to be that. There are plenty. And by the Way I will say this, it might help you maintain your position of power for a year or two, and that's cool. But people are going to remember what you did and they're not going to hire you after this. And I'm going to remember it. People are going to remember bravery and courage. And you know, in my world, late night shows are dying left and right. But I'm now positive, Jimmy, whatever Jimmy Kimmel does for the rest of his life is that is what Late Night is going to be in the image of Jimmy Kimmel now because of what happened this month. And I am. That's what you see. There are so many opportunities to set yourself apart now. To be a little bit of bravery gets you an incredible amount of goodwill from people. You know, people pay for the Onion for a lot of different reasons. They love the physical newspaper. Their kids steal it and bring it to recess. Like that is a real thing. That's my favorite thing about it. They like, they are like our primary audience is 12 year olds who love, who love a really stupid joke that they can try to convince their friends that Taylor Swift got arrested through our newspaper by using this newspaper.

[C]

That was a really good one.

[B]

That was. Thank you. But another reason people help us out is because we try to do big good things. You know, we have. When we tried to buy infowars, people came to our defense and trying to do that. When we bought that ad in the New York Times, when we like supported all these independent theaters out there by giving them this documentary for free, they, you know, we're not gonna make money on this thing. We're just doing it for their sake at this point. Yeah, people want fight. People want people who stand up in this moment. And that is the reason I'm optimistic is because the incentive structure here is that nobody likes what's going on. And the second you say it, people will run to your defense. It's. It is a version of the Mr. Rogers look for the helpers thing, right? The, the helpers are all around and they are living quietly because they don't personally want to stand in the way, but if somebody stands in the way for them, they will help you in any way they can.

[C]

Wow. You gonna run for office?

[B]

Absolutely. Fuck. Oh, sorry. No. The answer is no.

[C]

You know, I think about, I think about how to have this conversation. The state of speech, preserving ideas of free speech. I have been working in and around journalism since 2009, 15, 16 years. Increasingly, I've begun to refer to myself as a journalist less because people don't like us as much anymore. And I find that when I bring up the J word, it introduces more questions that get in my way than access to just tell good stories. And I'm worried you're inspiring me right now talking about free speech. But I'm worried because even if journalism media satirists like the Onion speak truth to power in this moment and push back against the White House that they might find antagonistic, there are other challenges that seem even more unstoppable. Yes, I have many friends who are educators who teach young children and all they tell me after the first or second beer is the kids aren't reading, they watch a bunch of videos. If they got to write a paper, they go to ChatGPT and their media literacy is just greatly diminished and they're worried about it. And on top of just like the video forward nature of our smartphones taking us away from reading and moving us towards watching video, it is increasingly harder and harder to tell what is real or not, what was made by a human or not, what is human or not on our screens because of AI. And there's some days where I say, okay, sure, media journalism win that fight for free speech against whatever politician you want. But the bigger threat is from this tech that has already taken over more of our lives than we realize. How much does that worry you and how do you fight that?

[B]

Yeah, really deeply. I think it's. My mom's a children's librarian and really.

[C]

What does she say about this same.

[B]

Same deal and that people, like people drag their kids in in August and say, my kids in third grade and can't really figure it out and, and they try to fix it the old fashioned way like phonics and stuff like that. And there are ways to do it. You know, it's, it's scary. But I think an important thing, the through line throughout all this stuff is that being scared is natural. Everything exists right now to make you scared, make you feel out of control. And you have to process that emotion and go through, you have to get through it. I am wholly aware, I am scared every day that all that stuff, all this, the posturing that I do about how like, oh yeah, we're going to be fine, I have no idea. I hope so. But I will say that if you don't fight, they're going to come after you anyway. And if you don't get your kids a book and turn their iPad into just a Ms. Rachel machine, which does work, by the way. All of my friends with healthy and good kids have an iPad with only Ms. Rachel on it, nothing else.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

I'll just tell you because she's, she's amazing, and she teaches kids how to read and know what shapes are and things like that. There is a path forward, but they want you to be scared and they want you to feel helpless. And the second we come together and say we're not actually helpless, we're, we're people and we work together as people. I, I, I told the staff this is around the inauguration day. It was, I don't remember this, but there was like, this very, like, ornate ceremony. Everything was gold. It was Donald Trump, and then it was the five richest guys behind him.

[C]

I remember it was, it was, it was, it was Elon Bezos, Sundar Pichai of Google.

[B]

Yep, yep. Zuckerberg. Sam Altman.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The AI.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And I said, like, this is the, We've never had a more clear distillation of the man in my entire life. And we are. If the Onion is nothing, it is, it's, it's, it's, it's a thing that is against the man. Okay. And so is America. Like, the very basis of America is, like, there was a guy who was going too far. Right. If you reread the document, the basis.

[C]

Of America is they don't want to pay no taxes.

[B]

They don't want to pay no taxes. They don't want to pay no taxes. They don't want to pay no taxes. Yeah. Also, like, we, you know, we don't want to live in, effectively serfdom to these, to these weirdos. And, yeah, that is the one thing that brings us all together. And, like, all of it is designed to drag you down and to feel helpless and to feel like the robots are taking over and like, this machine is smarter than you. He's going to come and take your job. But it isn't. I'll tell you right now, like, AI is not funny. And it has not. It probably won't be funny, because the point of being funny is to find the sentence that is not the middle of something. And AI finds the middle of something at all points. So, like, find your humanity. I think, I think if you lean into what you are as a human, if you lean into your communities in real life right now, you will feel less afraid. And I think that more and more people will find a way to do that. And I am, that's why I'm optimistic, is because the people who are against this thing way outnumber the people who like what's going on. Regardless of political affiliation. And if we. We can. If you, you know, market yourself as that, as a journalist, if you live your life like that, you'll have a lot easier time.

[C]

Do you ever worry that AI will get good enough one day to write Onion headlines? Onion caliber headlines?

[B]

Not really. You sure? I'll tell you why it's getting good, man.

[C]

I've listened to the AI podcast. They're coming for my job. I know.

[B]

Yeah, they can mimic a lot of stuff, right? But they can't say anything new. That's the thing is like, again, AI is the synthesis of everything. And what we like as people is novelty. We like surprise. We like things that come out of nowhere. I'm not saying that they. It won't occasionally come up with something funny, but like the shallot. Sure. What if AI makes that? Yeah, I'm sure it will, but like, so. And there are people who will just gladly eat up slop. And that's the way it is. But also today, like for example, a lot of people have. All these AI companies have attempted to make the AI only version of TikTok recently. And today OpenAI came up with a thing called Sora too. And the reason people think it's doing well is because they're like, it's a. It creates TikTok style videos that are all AI. And the reason they think, even like, especially the AI guys, the big guy, they're like, this is a game changer. And they don't seem to understand why that is. It's because they're using a human image in that thing. And what is actually the game changer of that thing is like, there is a face that we know from real life that has feelings and emotion, is unpredictable. And inserting that into the technology is what made the thing take over.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

What I'm seeing in this business right now, in our business is be it journalism or publishing or satire or comedy, the more human you are in this moment, the more likely human beings are to give you actual money. We're like in a two tiered economic system right now. One is this extremely expensive, totally insolvent AI thing that is a clear bubble and is going to collapse. And everybody really wants you to believe in this stuff. And all of the money is going towards that. And they will get real human comics, I'm sure eventually to like put their stuff on that thing. But on the other side, there is this old economy that I thought was the. Was what the economy was, which is like trading goods and services for cash. And the Onion is exclusively in that business. And we're doing well. And we're doing well because people want human to human interactions. Right now it sounds like we're zagging when everybody else is digging, but really what we're doing is we're just banking on the fact that people want to be around people and like people and don't want to be around a faceless machine.

[C]

Sounds good to me. Ben Collins, 2020. Whatever. I'm telling you, don't, don't. The thing I like to do on this show is ask all of my guests if they have any hot takes, pop culture hot takes that they want to get off their chest. My hottest hot take is that 99% of albums don't need interludes, spoken word interludes. A handful of them deserve them. Usually we don't need it. Another hot take. All movies could be 90 minutes or a little bit less. Do you have any?

[B]

This has just been top of mind. I don't think anybody young listens to Joe Rogan. I think when people are like, we need a Joe Rogan of the left. I think they. I think it's 45 year old guys who are like, oh yeah, we need somebody. I just don't think anybody under the age of 25 like actually this. I think it's like people who are like painting their house who need something to like drone and do this. But I don't know, if you find me a 14 year old that's like obsessed with Joe Rogan and I'll. I'll find you. I don't know the cure to cancer. I think that's my hope. I like that take.

[C]

All right, and now my last question for you because I have an answer to this question too. Ben Collins, CEO of the Onion. What is your favorite Onion headline of all time?

[B]

Oh, my God, it changes day to day. My favorite one, oh, man. Probably my absolute total favorite one is something, somebody should do something about all the problems, which is an offset that we have from an old lady. And I just think about it all the time. Like every day I wake up and I see the new barrage of stuff and I think somebody should do something about all the problems. My most recent favorite one is just the words prostate, prostate honked like prostate honk. That's on the front page of our most recent paper, which you should get, by the way. Theonian.com or membership.theanian.com go get. You'll get 12 papers in the mail and we'll send them to you for a hundred bucks. There you go.

[C]

Ben Collins, whatever the heck y' all are doing over there at the Onion. Keep it up. I don't find myself leaving many interviews optimistic these days, but I did echo this one.

[A]

That was Sam Sanders with Onion CEO Ben Collins. This episode originally aired on October 3rd. The Sam Sanders show is available wherever you get your podcasts or also on YouTube. It's actually really fun to watch. It's a great tiki bar type set. Sam has great sweaters. Check them out. Some recent episodes I recommend are Sam's live conversation with author Michael Lewis or Sam's conversation with fashion writer Robin Gavan about designer Virgil Abloh. Thanks to Sam and everybody who puts his show together for letting us share this with you, including showrunner Tyler Green, senior producer Bennett Purser, technical director Phil Richards and Andrea Batista, who produced this episode. Arnie Seiple and Sam Sanders executive produced the show. Our associate producer at Question Everything is Kevin Shepard. We also had support from Emma Grillo and our sound designer and mixer Brendan Baker. Our managing editor is Kevin Sullivan. We'll see you next week with more Question Everything.