Community and Future Outlook

We tend to try to make fun of how people get their information. And right now, people get their information in uh the most base and stupid ways possible. Like we're all competing with people who seem to like drink paid for a living. Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Box Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Today, my guest is Ben Collins, the CEO of The Onion. Ben started his career in journalism. He covered disinformation up until 2024. That's right, the former reporter who covered fake news is now leading a website. That's whole brand is fake news, but in the best kind of way. Since then, Ben has helped the Onion relaunch its print edition and grow its circulation to tens of thousands of people. He brought back the Onion News Network on YouTube . He kicked off a bid to take over Alex Jones' InfoWars. And late last year, The Onion also released a mockumentary about Jeffrey Epstein called Bad Pedophile. The Onion's success has been a bright spot in an otherwise bleak period for the media industry. And actually, it's very common. There's a lot of these really interesting entrepreneurial efforts that are doing really well. I think it's really important to have successes like the onion, especially satirical, when uh reality feels more absurd than sati re. And it's just really fun. Uh you know, you s most of you experience it online in social media, but I gotta tell you, I was a big reader of Mad magazine, of Crack Magazine, National Lampoon as a kid, and it's in that genre, and they really skewer powerful people in just the right way. And it makes me laugh out loud. All right, let's get to my conversation with Ben Collins. Our expert question comes from actor and screenwriter Justin Thoreau, who's a good friend of mine. This is a serious conversation, but it's also a fun one. We're talking about the onion after all, so stick around . If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater . We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City. And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. Download the eater app at eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users . Ben, thanks for coming on on. Kara, thank you so much for having me. I have wanted to have you on for a long time. Um it's been close to two years since you became CEO of the Onion. You said one of the big reasons you wanted to buy it was because you don't want Elon to own it and kill an iconicic comed publication for the left. But since Trump returned to office, comedic voices on the right have gotten a very powerful. As you know, it feels like there had been a broader shift. I think it's shifting back again. So t talk a little bit about that shift and and and what it means for the onions place in comedy, which has a very prominent role by the way. Yeah, I look, we just stuck to the process throughout that whole uh weird fever that was going on uh throughout the comedy world. It's very clear that that fever is now breaking and that people were like, maybe we got a little bit too hot in the collar about the racism. Maybe we maybe we went a little bit too hard on that one. Uh we just we stuck to our process. And that's a big reason why I want to take it over, is because I didn't want uh somebody with that fever to come in and try to lay everybody off and install people with the whatever weird disease those people had in their brain. So like I I we uh we stuck with it. Um, you know, when when I took over the onion, we kept the staff, we gave everybody raises and we said, What's the ultimate form of this process that you guys run where you throw away ninety-nine percent of jokes and keep the one good one? Um and we we stayed true to that and now it's it's really paying off. I think like we're with where other places, the Austin comedy scene dying, other places starting to realize they may have had something to do with the installation of a fascist regime, we never wavered. We've just always been exactly who we are. So it's really interesting because there's always a place to go where other people aren't. And everyone sort of rushed over to that manosphere comedy scene. And then there's lots of them you can't tell them apart. That's how I feel. I'm like, which one is the which one has the mustache? I don't know. They all sound the same. But what what would you compare yourself to? What sets it apart? It's in the great late night tradition of of I would say having fifteen people in a room and coming to the best sentence about what happened that day. Um it's it's closer to like Colbert or you know, Letterman, like a great Letterman monologue than uh anything else. Um and I don't think there's another thing specifically like it. You're doing the basics. Yeah, we're doing the basics. Right. Exactly. And I think there are satirical places on the internet, like the hard times, uh, that do really good stuff. Uh there's also like there's little onions throughout the world. There's the Beaverton in Canada. Um there's there's one in Australia. There's there's ones that are literally called the onion that we don't care to send ceases and desist to throughout throughout Asia. We don't care about that. We uh I think that but the difference is in quality is that we just we have the best comedy writers. So the last few weeks in America are been extremely bleak, but as a satirical newspaper, the onion's job is to find humor in them. Um let's talk about Minnesota. In the last few weeks ICE agents have killed. I say murdered two American citizens. Um, I want to read two onion headlines about Minnesota superficially similar. One is Democrats condemn ICE for murdering without proper warrants. And the second is Christy laugh. Christy Num calls on Minneapolis residents to stop obstructing murders. Um talk a little bit about this. How you're you're thinking about this. The one from this morning is Ice Agent stuff sock under mask to give himself chin, which is uh precisely how we're thinking about it. Um I love a penis reference, but go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah . Uh look, I'm from the news, so I went in here hot and under the collar, and I was like like, guys, we gotta hurry up, we gotta do things quick. And they're like, no, we take a breath. Like, we take a breath before things happen to really contextualize stuff and see how things feel in the moment. Um, and that's become a really big part of what this company is, is sort of providing like the one sentence that is able to distill American life right now. And they take it very seriously in the room. Like they are ruthless about word choice and and and and where people go with each uh word in the sentence. Um so uh I am proud of them for just telling me to shut the fuck up and just be like guys like we need to take a step back here. Um and by the time we have that like perfect uh take on the moment, it it it gives people a lot of catharsis, I think. People struggle for nine or ten hours to come up with the thing they're the come up with the the feeling that they're thinking put into words. And uh right when people are at their breaking point of where they are emotionally, we do tend to provide exactly the right sentence. And that's uh that's our role. The the Democrat one is as equally funny as the Christine Ohm one. They're powerless though at the same time. Is it hard to satirize the powerful or easier at this moment? Uh I mean, there's several parts of that. Um they think they're omnipotent um and they look incredibly weak. Weak. They look soft. Um in the chasm between that is there there lies a lot of comedy. Um so going in for power structures like that , um I think you have to do it in a way that isn't exclusively filled with rage. And you have to take a like again, just contextualize everything and take a step back and take them for who they are, um, psychoanalyz.ed And I think that's that's really what we do. I also think we do something that the news just simply can't or won't do, which is uh we say the unsaid sentence in American life, the people that, you know, when you're talking to people on the street about what's going on, uh they say it, but the news will never say it. Right, right. What they actually think are making jokes about it. But is the powerless Democrats funnier than the powerful Trump administration? Um people who are just kind of standing there and saying, uh, stop hitting me, but have a little bit of power. We had some headline that was like somebody has to do something to stop this says democratic fundraising email from a from sitting US Congress person. Yeah, yeah.. Right Like you are you have more like they may not have power, but they have more power than us. Right. Um that they can at least yell at the person down the hallway. And everybody else has to go to work and go to the gas station and do all those other things, bring you know, bring their kid to soccer practice. And they don't see anybody fighting this thing. Um I this is a little severe, but I I read a uh and I hate to bring up a meme because we try to stay away from memes, but like I read this thing about how like Republicans are the Uvaldi shooter and Democrats do the Vault are the Uvaldi cops. Like you can be mad at both things here. Like there's there is enough to be mad at both things. That's a really good point. The true the true evil are the people, you know, shooting people in the street. And you can be mad that um the people pass ed withstanding up to that are doing it. That's an an excellent analogy. Let's move on to a another serious story. Elon Musk's chatbot Groc generated millions of sexualized images of women minors in late December and early January. When you were a reporter covering disinformation in MBC News, you were actually suspended over your critical coverage of Musk. Uh as the CEO of the Onions Parent Company, you're not involved in the Onions editorial process. But nonetheless, what's it like to go from covering him as a reporter to critiquing him through satire, which I think Aaron Powell Oh yeah, definitely. It's it's a definitely more powerful weapon right now. Um as you know, the the the throughout all of history, fascists hate being made fun of more than anything. They can they can lie their way through factual stories in the press. They can easily go through that. But once they feel like they're being taunted to the point where they're unpopular uh widely, which is really all they care about is being loved and liked and thought to be funny. Um, that's where they get really upset. Um so there is there is a ton more power here in terms of taking down power structures and how people feel about what's going on. Because we were, you know, I was I was reporting on Elon in a very straightforward way for a while. And it was, I think part of it was he was so extraordinarily nuts that it made it you know this it made it seem like I was like like I had a grudge against him but he was doing you know he was doing drugs and in the and uh firing every person and he thought that there was some sort of like wokeness switch that once he uh bought Twitter he could just turn it off. But it turns out there's people who actually believe stuff. Right. Um right. So like I uh yeah it was it was difficult to go on the news and just um allude to the fact that he had lost his mind, it's much easier to just sit here and watch the world's best comedy writers go ham. So t talk a little bit about that. I mean in terms of of having the freedom to do that, the the difficulties of being a reporter day is hard because you're sort of looking at say a Christine Ohm say something really heinous or anybody else and you have to be like Christy Noam said this today, right? It's kind of exhausting on many levels. I find it exhausting. Obviously, that that train has left the station for me. But talk a little bit about that because you can just say explicitly in the form of a joke what you're talking about. Look, Carrie, you know this. A lot of the best reporters that we know at the big places are making a lot of concessions and are being quieter just to keep their job so they can pop up with their big story once every few months. Or they've quit. That's really what I they are not in a position to tell the truth accurately and correctly consistently because of the incentive structures of what these big places are. They want to e even if even if they're they have good intentions at the top of these places, which is like we gotta maintain uh somebody on Air Force One or whatever, so we can't piss them off too much, that's still a deal with the devil that you actually don't wanna make. Um and and also with the misinformation stuff, um people who covered that uh have been effectively criminalized. People who covered disinformation, people who stood up advocacy groups to try to you know, steal away Nazis from these platforms and put and say like, hey guys, they're actual Nazis and they're coming back. Those people are those people are being targeted by this administration. And um that those people are doing truthful things. So, like, under under the guise of uh of stopping censorship and under the guise of free speech, they are actually uh censoring people for speech that is true. Yes. So like we we are actually in a much worse position speech wise than we've ever been. And one of the safe havens of that in the world right now is satire. Right. Right. Which is where Elon started off. He was angry that um uh Babylon B wasn't able to make a trans joke. Kind of a stupid trans joke, but it was a joke nonetheless. Um and that's what got him there. And so he got to be this free speech warrior that he is simply not. Yeah, of course. He uh famously tried to buy the onion once, um, about I don't know, some 10 years ago now or something. He he tried to buy the onion. Um, the deal didn't go through, a lot of people didn't want to work for him. So then he started picking off onion staff writers, a one by one and he he put them in like a weird hangar in like the spacex facility in California and then just forgot about them and um those people wound up uh coming up with something called thud , uh, which is probably aptly named. And then you know, a lot of the stuff, a lot of the or origin stories of these people are they weren't accepted as funny, they never really understood jokes, they never understood punching up and uh they became hellbent on power instead. Yeah. So let's get to one more story: the near collapse of NATO over Trump's demands to get Greenland. At one point, he was linking his threats to the fact that Norway didn't give him the Nobel Peace Prize, uh, even though the Norwegian government doesn't give out that prize. Um we've been talking about the end of satire for years, but I have to ask, how's it possible to satirize stories like these when reality is so absurd on its own? Well I think it's uh we' were're lucky in a sense, uh that the press has capitulated so much because they're splitting hairs with people who are actively lying and we're just like, no, this is the thing that's taking place. And we get to be funny about it. So it's like we're we're in this like really interesting and prize position. Um so yeah, it look, it's gotten harder because it cause everything's so stupid. Well, because Trump threatens to invade Greeland because he didn't Exactly. Like everything is so stupid. So i in that sense it is hard to compete with reality. So the in the bigger picture, at one hand, it's not funny times we're living in. And at the same time, the one of the key news figures is a parody of himself on purpose. How difficult is is it to do satire in twenty twenty six? I actually think i I people keep saying this as if it's like this uh horrific burden. And it is like it's it's harder to be funny now, but it's I it's actually easier to push the lines. Yeah. Think about this. Like we made a twenty-two-minute documentary where Jeffrey Epstein rises from the dead like a horror movie figure at the end of it. It was called Bad Pedophile. Yeah, it's called Jeffrey Epstein, Bad Pedophile. We had a we still can't get this off the wall. We had this like gigantic um caul gkun that was filled with fake cum in it. Sorry to be weird. That's okay. Please go right ahead. The the uh like the boundaries through which that we can play in humor right now are they're they're the furthest they've ever been. Like uh w we are very lucky to be able to say literally whatever we want all the time and it's part of like acceptable American adult society. Yeah. It although the the theater chain pulled it out in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder, correct? Is that right? That's true. Yeah, we we had a we had a distribution deal for that and then they pulled out. But like we here's the thing that just keeps happening in American life that I'm just like genuinely proud of. And I I think that once people start to embrace it, that you start to realize, like, oh, this is actually what is good about this country. So we made this documentary called Jeffrey Epstein Bad Pedophile. We were gonna release it with a theater chain throughout the country. Charlie Kirk gets shot, and we get an email the next day saying we're not doing this anymore. And uh initially we were pissed off and we were like, this is just straight capitulation. Uh the fact that Charlie Kirk gets shot means we can't make fun of Jeffrey Epstein. Like what the fuck? How does this like what is the chain of command here? Right. But then we're like, okay, so what do we do? So then we told everyone that we're gonna put it in theaters everywhere in a few weeks, and we don't have any place to put it, but if you want to put it in your independent cinema throughout the country, we'll just give you the movie and you can keep the gate. And within literally six days, we had many, many more than that theater chain. We had um like that theater channel is be going to 20, 30 cities nationwide. We were in 50, 60 throughout United States and Canada. Um and people had to like add extra screenings. Uh people were making whole nights out of it. Um Um so a different experience than Melania, the document . Yeah . Great movie. That should be called Married to Uh. Anyway, go ahead. Oh, just a joke. Yeah. Same ending though. Jeffrey Epstein comes back to life in both movies. Um I I uh so yeah, look, the traditional mainstream power structures here are just gonna capitulate. They're just gonna fail repeatedly. You can't count on them. But then like the people you actually want to hang out with are gonna step up. You're seeing it in Minneapolis. Um you're kind of seeing it nationwide. Once you start to embrace this thing and we have, we've had a lot more fun. It's just been a lot easier to live like this . We'll be back in a minute. Hi everyone, it's Kara Swisher. I'm excited to put something new on your radar from the Vox Media Podcast Network. It's called Project Swagger with the one and only Robin Arzon, and it's all about helping you trust yourself, level up your mindset, and actually make the changes you've been thinking about Robin is Peloton's vice president of fitness programming and head instructor. She's also a 27-time marathon and ultra-marathon runner, founder of Swagger Society Media Company, and a two-time New York Times best-selling author. In under 30 minutes, Robin shares the rituals, routines, and mental shifts that fuel her hustle and show you how to apply them in your own life. In the very first episode, she opens up about You can find Project Swagger with Robin Arzon on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast s, new episodes drop every Tuesday . Support for On with Kara Swisher comes from Groons. If you're looking for a health goal that you can actually stick to, you might want to check out G groroonsoms. is a simple daily habit that delivers real benefits with minimal effort. They're convenient, comprehensive formula packed into a snack pack of gummies a day. This isn't a multivitamin, a greens gummy, or a prebiotic. It's all of those things and then some at a fraction of the price, and bonus, it tastes great. 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That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday So you know, it's hard to make Trump the butt of the joke when he is the joke. So we got an expert question from an outside person. It's on that in that vein. So here's yours. Hey Ben, it's Justin Thoreau. Uh I am an actor, writer, and New Yorker and a longtime onion subscriber. Um my question, perhaps not surprisingly, is about Donald Trump. Um Throughout history, uh political strongmen that have emerged like him, or authoritarians like him, usually take themselves very seriously. They're very austere figures. Um but Trump uh I've noticed has added something unique to this authoritarian playbook, which is he spreads his unique authoritarian message through what some people, perhaps not yourself, um would call humor or comedy . Um it's this new kind of uh authoritarianism that has learned how to shitpost. Um he uses memes, he uses bad AI , uh famously him flying a jet fighter over protesters and dumping feces on them. Um he uses irony. Um and when he's cornered on it, he usually just pulls that kind of, you know, I was just joking or, what are you stupid? Or he sort of goes through that escape hatch. As someone using satire to cover not just the news but also disinformation, how does this change the game for the onion or or when your targets are already operating in sort of a bad faith irony mode where everything is dangerous but nothing is serious, has the onion's brand of satire had to evolve? Um how do you satirize someone who's already performing in a post-sincere world where sadly cruelty is often the joke? Great question. Justin, it was. And he I heard he's your handsomest subscriber in India. Yeah, I was gonna say it's unfair that he gets to be handsome and smart. Like what what is that shit about it? We were laughing our asses off. So I asked him to do it. Um so talk about that. It's a great question, because Trump uses humor quite a bit. And when he was running, everyone was making fun of him. I said, No, he's funny, like he is in a weird way. Um, and he makes fun of himself and he's very self deprecating. And of course that's moved into using cruelty as humor, which sometimes is funny to people. So talk about what he's saying there. He has it's a very complex and interesting question of what you do then when the authoritarians take the playbook that hurts them. Yeah, no, he's he's funny in a way a bull But I always ask this to people, have you ever heard this man actually laugh? Like in a way that you can't control yourself? Every good person you know, you've been around them and they they have laughed so hard that they can't handle it. Right. He's never done that. He's and that's because he might be operating with the the functionality of like the baseline of what humor is, like A plus B equals joke. But he doesn't you know, there's there's no wider thing there. There's nothing that's keeps you around. Um he's uh he's not funny in a way that is illuminating or interesting. He's just bullying people. It's just schoolyard bullying. And like I think there is a shelf life on this. We went through sort of in the 80s with like Andrew Dice Clay style comedy and people just get tired of it. People get tired of people being mean. And you can deal with it for a few years and it might feel fresh that there that there were sacred cows and there aren't any more. Mm-hmm. But it gets tiresome. And look, I I I have no doubt that um that there is some base humor in him. Um, and I do think that he's much funnier. Well, he'll he'll say things that are it attempts at comedy that and most politicians simply will not do that, right? They are talking about farm bills and stupid shit like that. That's what set him apart. But he's not actually funny. Like if if a genuinely funny person ran for office and was work was able to keep that lightness, I think they would do probably even better than him. I'm good at being devil's advocate. I had Judge Apata on and he talked about he thinks the funnier presidential candidate always wins, the one who has more wit or humor. And Trump does draw people in. I I think it's getting tired. You're absolutely right, 'cause it's like, oh are you still gonna make another poop joke, you two-year-old. Or Elon does the same thing. He is definitely not funny. He is wildly unfunny and he thinks he's funny. Yes. Um, it's an interesting dynamic going on where they think they're much funnier than they are, and at the same time, that they're using humor is inter esting. I actually think it's like who is least in a box. Right? It's not like who's funniest. It's like who is most willing to call a spade a spade in the moment. Even if the calling the spade a spade is just fucking wrong, right? Like Donald Trump will Donald Donald Trump will call immigrants whatever he wants to call them, and it's incorrect, and it's based on shit that he read on uh his weird little racist Facebook knockoff. But he will say it as plainly as he can. Um again, I don't know if it's humor. I think it's just like I other people are tying themselves in knots to like make sure they don't offend a specific thing. It's shit talking. It's really shit talking. It's shit talking. Right, exactly. And I I think now that's what you see as well is that the shit talking, the Trump people are in the box now, right? They are they they find themselves in the last few weeks with the Alex Predi murder being like, you can't walk around with a gun and you can't stand in the street, but you this the second amendment is the most important thing that all they like they are just like they're in the box. Well, I think they use cruelty as a joke sometimes, and this isn't funny, right? There is a moment where it's not funny. Does that change the way you all think about it? I mean, I thought one of the ones you did recently, the totally different person, Tim Cook, um, your TED lines about Tim Cook were very funny. Uh it really depends. There are um we were really cruel to Donald Trump when everyone was really cruel to Donald Trump, right? Uh and I I uh I have no problem with it. I'm just gonna look up the exact long. Uh okay, this we wrote this on January 23rd of 2013. And it says, When you're feeling low, just remember I'll be dead in about 15 or 20 years by Donald Trump. And uh we um yeah Michael Cohen sent us a us like a season desist letter for that that we didn't ridiculous. That I guess we didn't until he started running for president. We were just sort of like in a envelope somewhere. Now it's framed, obviously. Yeah, the one for Tim Cook was police repeatedly shoot Tim Cook after mistaking iPhone for gun. Yeah. Which owl. Yeah. I laughed and I thought, oh Yeah, I yeah. By the way, I think that's an archive pool. I think that one's like ten years ago. But like we uh like we'll go for it when the situation demands it. Demands it demands it. Yeah, exactly. But let's let's pivot a little bit and talk about the bigger picture of the onions vision, the wider media world. Because what you're doinging is really interest because it seems to be working. You brought back a print version of the onion. You've got more than 50,000 subscribers, including my son. I didn't know this. Um, he knows everything about the onion. And you said you wanted uh to help more publications get into print. Um obviously social media is probably your strongest area in terms of bringing in subscribers, etc., even if it's not necessarily profitable to your bottom line, it it's a marketing tool, I guess. Um, and there's a lot of comedy out there. So talk about this with a print thing and and how you have to balance it with online to stay culturally relevant, because a lot of the stuff moves there. Yeah. So we brought back the print because we just thought it was I grew up with the onion print and getting it on the side of the road felt like stealing something. It felt it felt very cool to have that around. And um it's been a miracle. Like jokes are supposed to be read in in this way. I'm I'm not trying to be like one of those like weird vinyl guys who's like actually you're supposed to listen to music . I'm not trying to be like that. I hate that guy. Like if if you it I know. But if you like if you just keep scrolling through headlines all day and like you pop up and we're the obviously the funniest thing you see on Instagram, you're still gonna forget about it. If it's like a physical object, it works better. Um so we thought it was gonna be successful, we didn't be g beonna this successful. It's like it is most of our business. Um we have around sixty-five thousand subscribers now. Um and we are close to having more than the Washington Post in terms of print subscribers. That's our goal for this year. Well, they're actively trying to get it. They're trying to go down while you're they're actively trying to go down while you're trying to go down. We didn't think they were gonna not be a newspaper anymore. So like that was maybe a different goal. Um but like look, uh another thing we didn't expect is like your like your kid is a onion subscriber. We don't know. It's being used as like contraband in schools and we love it. Like we keep hearing people stealing it from their kids. He's older, he's 23. Oh, oh okay, I didn't. Wait, seriously? Yeah. Oh, oh my God. Kara. I had no idea. He watches most of everything online. Like he told me he was watching um Frontline. And I was like, oh, PBS. He goes, I don't watch PBS. Like he watched it on YouTube, obviously. So he's quite online in his media consumption. But in this, I was surprised. Interested. Yeah, that's great. And like we um I thought he was 14 because that's the thing that keeps happening. Yeah. Well, I had Mad Magazine. Mad Magaz ine was my version of that. But yeah, exactly. Cracked is great. Cracked Cracked turn turned out a bunch of incredible uh like truly remarkable writers. They did. Cracked was amazing because it was sort of meaner than Matt and Matt was pretty mean. Matt could be pretty mean . So most of your revenue comes from print right now, correct? Yeah. Um you know, people pay a hundred bucks a year. Um and uh we know we don't have the world's biggest staff. I mean, I think i in uh in our Laura, I think we have like 500,000 employees, but I think we actually have like 30. Um then like the other the other way we make we make money is brands come to us because no one can speak normal anymore. Uh everyone relies on AI too much. Uh so they come to us to get their brands to like, we have a copy agency, we get them to talk normal or be funny or whatever. So uh business is good, uh, but we really we need people to buy the paper and the paper's great. So um people are very happy. But online, what's how important is that to your business, even if it's not a revenue driver. Sure, it's top of funnel. Um, like we we try as as much as we can to get as many people to know what the onion is, and we have this weird gap where every teenager knows what it is and every 35 plus person does, but there's this gap in the middle, trying to bridge that gap. Um and also would like to me it's uh important that people look to us in these moments in these like big national crises for the right um like the for us to thread a needle. Um like after Charlie Kirk was shot and everyone kept getting fired, people were like, when are you gonna say something about this? We had a headline that was uh report you to be fi red for reading this headline about Charlie Kirk. Like and it was just exactly what need was needed in that moment. Yeah, you have to wait and have the right thing to do. So another thing, you're still in the middle of trying to buy Alex Jones' site InfoWars, but it's on been on hold for more than a year. As I said, you were a reporter who covered fake news and you're trying to buy one of the biggest spreaders of actual fake news, or at least used to be. Talk I mean, one could say it's trolling, which it is a little bit. Um talk about what is happening right now and what your actual goal might be. Sure. Um I don't recommend trying to buy the world's most famous psychopaths website. I think it's a bad idea . However, um it's been uh you know it's the fight of our life, I guess. We have um so the Sandio families will basically only sell this thing to us and this is the only way they're ever going to get money. Um the lawyers around this case have made lots of money, Alex Jones lawyers made a lot of money, a lot of money uh in the four plus years after uh it was decided that he owes these families $1.5 billion . But he they haven't seen the same they literally have not seen a penny. They have not, yeah. So we're trying to get them a penny. Um and maybe, you know, some recurring pennies over time. Um I will say we have grand designs if we end up with this thing. Like we we really um the comedy world sp in Hollywood has been really hollowed out. They had several repeated disasters over the last few years between uh the writer strike and the pandemic and then the fires. And then they came back and the situation wasn't the same. People who are, you know, the the world's best comedy writers are out of work. And the way that we satirize stuff also has kind of updated itself. So uh I don't want to I don't want to blow too many things, but if we end up with this thing, uh, which we're hopeful wely do, like we're we're kind of at the mercy of the court. Uh but we're hopeful we're we're hopeful we do. It's we're gonna make it as big a deal as we possibly can. We think this is like a very big opportunity. So what gr give me a grand design? The annual Alex Jones Award? What? Uh no we the Oscars, the Alex's. Yeah. There are plenty of people worth mocking that aren't um uh straight news things. Uh the onion was invented to sort of like be a take on the New York Times, the Onion News Network, which is incredible, uh, and we brought that back to you, was it was a take on CNN, more traditional news. Then we had Click Hole, which we eventually sold, but that was supposed to be like BuzzFeed news stuff. Um, we tend to try to make fun of how people get their information. And right now, people get their information in uh the most base and stupid ways possible. Like we're all competing with people who seem to like drink paid for a living. So uh nobody has done the widespread take on that. It's not just obviously Alex Jones is not the only guy who does that. So uh we're going to be playing in that space, and there are there are professionals who are kind of doing it, kind of seem around on on your Oh, interesting. Um, would you do it again? You're already deep in it, but is it draining to do this? It's deeply draining. Like I've had to learn about bankruptcy law. I don't know if anything about this shit. I don't care I don't care. Like uh So what's your chances of getting it comes down to a c like a bunch of court decisions, but like the Supreme Court has already ruled like, dude, you have no outs. Uh yeah . It's just that everyone's afraid to deal with him because he is the guy has abused the justice system at every step. And he has he anyone who walks in his path, he harasses and harangues. So we're basically purchasing a like a permanent harassment campaign. Right, right. Right. He does it from his car now. Yeah. Everybody who everybody gets involved in the process is like, Jesus Christ, why did I do this? Um look, Kara, like a couple weeks ago I turned it on, turned on InfoWars after uh because he's still going just as is. Mm-hmm. After Renee Good was shot. And he had Kyle Rittenhouse on saying that Renee Good had lost custody of her kids because he she was putting cigarettes out in her kids. Uh, and he had that he had read that on X . And I was like, This these motherfuckers are just gonna keep doing this forever, aren't they? Like and they're gonna make so much money. They make so much money doing it. Yes, they are. And I I just think that there there is there just has to be somebody who's just gonna say, okay, enough. Enough. Yeah, I agree. I got someone was talking about Minnesota. Oh, we won. I'm like, they're going to Ohio next. Just so you know. They don't stop. They these people do not stop. Yeah. Which do you have any sense when you get an answer? Um I sound like Donald Trump talking about healthcare. I'm like, oh, that's give me two weeks, but like I've been saying that to my staff for like six months, and they're like, dude, fucking, what are you' talreking about? Like they're they they think I'm insane. So I just like at this point I'm just like if it happens it happens and if it does we are ready to go. Like we have we have had a game plan for every week is InfoWars. Yeah exactly. So like yeah it at some point by the way like we we're just we're going to do this. Like we we can't leave this whole terrain uh unmade fun of. Yes. Oh uh we're gonna press go at some point. Yeah. Okay. So the Trump administration has not been shy about going after news outlets. Obviously, un is clearly satire, so it's it's a little different, but also true that doesn't matter with these people. So where's the line? Are you worried about litigiousness from anybody? I mean, uh basically the the defense is fuck them if they can't take a joke. Um, but is that that something worries you? Because it certainly has affected lots of big news organizations as you and I know. Yeah, look, I I um I'm not saying we're immune to this. In fact, I think we're like explicitly targeted. You know this my my girlfriend's been indicted for protesting ice. Yes. Federally indicted. She's like one of the only people who've been federally indicted for protesting ice. Just for people who don't know, your girlfriend is Kat Abu Ghazale, a progressive candidate who's running in the Democratic primary for Illinois' ninth congressional district, and she's indicted for allegedly conspiring to injure officers during an anti-ICE protest. Yeah, she is, and she's uh she's the coolest person I know. But just because you're scared doesn't mean you stop doing the thing you're good at. Yep. Um I I I I think it's especially important now where um the people who have caved since the start of this, universities, news organizations, everybody who who is like , okay, sir, what do you need? They just kept stepping on them afterwards. They just kept going. They did. I'm not going to tell this staff to change what they're doing at all. Like they are doing uh they're going as hard as they want. Um and if they come to me with a fifty-fifty ball, I say go for it. Like and if they come to me with a big idea, I'm like, let's find funding, let's find a sponsor, let's find a thing to that to make sure that this thing can happen. And I uh I I just wanna if if people like get one thing out of this, there are more of us than there are of them. There just are. And that doesn't mean necessarily politically or emotionally. I'm not saying that for you to get through the day. I'm saying that if you're marketing a product, if you're trying to start a business, there are more people who don't like this shit than the opposite. And there's fertile ground. There's a reason the Washington Post is gonna die before the onion, you know, becomes one of the biggest newspapers in the country. Yeah. It's because they they licked the boot and uh we kicked back. Right, right. That's a really good point . We'll be back in a minute . But and you've been critical, so have I, about legacy media bowing to the administration, me too soft and powerful people, this this centerization. And by the way, I think it was your uh thread, bucket of gravy, made me laugh for days. Iron this is about CBS News' contributors. Like Stephen Miller. No, not that one. Wait, we found a third. Very funny. Um but their work does drive a lot of when independent media covers too. And I know it's easy to crit they say it's easy to criticize them. I'm like, no, you actually have gone so far in a very bad direction. I'm not so sure it's uh you know it's undeserved. But if you were running a big news organization, what would you do? Like see you you are now the head of CB S. What would you do? You'd do a much better job. That would be one big thing. Um look, they they have dismantled so much. And I don't even hire those people back and be like, trust me, I'm not gonna do what just happened. I I don't think you can do that. I I also like I'm you know when I was in NBC News, I was a good reporter on my section of the world, but I knew nothing about immigration reporting. And they had incredible immigration reporters. I knew nothing about they they had a this woman in ADL who worked there, who was able to effectively make it so UPS, I don't know if you notice, but UPS uh drivers didn't used to have AC in their cars and they used to drive through the desert. She outlined how big people were getting heat stroke and then got them it made sure there was legislation that this that made sure these people that happen. Incredible work at these big places if you're given that if you're given some leeway and time to do those sorts of things. All that stuff is gonna go away if you hire uh the three Stephen Millers and a big bucket of gravy to talk about, you know, every like to talk about to both sides literally every single issue. Like it is not a sustainable model. I I uh d I I will say the first place to be brave and step up and be like, no, actually we're covering this as a fascist administration because we've talked to enough history professors to know that's what's going on. And like we we''rere going going to to view this through the lens of history. Guess what? You're gonna be rich as shit. Like I I know it sounds heavy and hard, and they might they might harass you and they might I I get why you wouldn't do it. You might have a kid i at at Little League, the FB at the Little League, and like your life is gonna be harder. But uh you're doing the right thing and uh I just business will be better. I'm telling you. Yeah, I agree. People don't like what's happening. People understand that both sides in this stuff when people are getting executed on the street is repugnant. If you just stand up and just and report information objectively as it's going on, you're gonna be in a good spot. I would agree. It's good. Um do you think a shift is happening after Minnesota? Because I've noticed suddenly all of them, like on CNN, they've got it like Wheaties or or where you know like wait a minute nicely done like or Anderson Cooper had a great interview with the lady in the pink coat um Dana Bash's well i'm just using CNN but I've noticed that not every organization, but uh but it several of them it's gotten a little bit better. You know, even the free press called it a lie, finally, um to describe the administration's defense of killing and didn't then have a separate editorial saying. What is a lie really? Is was he, you know, should he have been carrying a gun? Whatever. Um w w talk about is that do you think that has happened? Do you think there's been like a just a fucking second, um or not. I think there's been a sea change. And I think that um I think people are starting to realize that a whole entire city of people cannot be paid protesters. Like this can't have it it can't be the case and all of the uh abject disinformation that they see going through their feeds is just not aligning with their realities. Um I I also realize it's it's more difficult, by the way, because uh news people are human and they wake up and they go on Twitter or they go on TikTok and they see stuff that isn't or you know, whatever. I don't blame TikTok specifically. I do want to blame Twitter, but they you know, whatever feed they have. Uh and they see stuff that is deliberately designed to make them at least upset. Yes, conspira and it's less and they're less engaging than those conspiracy theories. An algorithm prioritize that, right? Yes. And you know, news people are not inert to this, and it's like just just because they're, you know, they're a little bit more aware of the dynamics, that's the case. But I I don't think they realize how how fundamentally uh from a structural standpoint it's designed uh to help the oppressor here. Right. Absolutely. And we're like the it's we're it all happens so fast that um maybebe may a situation like this where a man was executed on the street, the administration came out and said he was gonna do a mass shooting or something, and everyone knew it was like you could not justify the two realities. People might be waking up to the fact that like, oh maybe the entire maybe this the pipes are broken. Right, right, right. So what happened with these news organizations? Because um, you know, in an interview with Molly Jungfest, you said we're standing in a rubble of what our media ecosystem used to be. The only people who don't see that are that way are the people who own the rubble, which is I like that idea. I agree with you. The real influence comes with what's next. Now you' backreed by a good I've interviewed him. Your billionaire is good. Like or is he not bothering you? No, he's he's kinda he would he would also dispute that he's a billionaire . Yeah kid . All right, yeah, whatever. He's rich. He's rich. Yeah. He's a rich guy, yeah. He's a rich guy with money to to burn for this kind of stuff. But um, you know, and they do shift on a dime by the way, just FYI. Um y y y you also you you're in satire, so you don't have to do fact checking. You get the juicy bits, I think, right? But most of the new media ecosystem is dependent on the whims of social platforms owned by tech billionaires, many of whom are really have become really venal fucks. At the same time, we don't want news just fed to us by influencers also. And that that's what I was joking with your your list of of CBS contributors a bucket of gravy and made me exactly bucket of gravy is what you're getting here. Which is might be delicious, by the way. I love gravy. Who doesn't love gravy? So good. Um how do you how do you square that? Now you're you're in a in a fortunate position in many ways. There are two major things that I did, I think. Um and I didn't do it, my staff did. My my my team did, everybody here did this. That includes our chief product officer Daniel Stirlay and our chief marketing officer Leah Brilson and our whole editorial team. One, we really stealed up like this is the process, the and onion is its process. So if you come in and break the process, it's not the onion anymore. And the onion's process is you go in, you have 15 joke writers that come in through a long pipeline that start with fellowshi ps and all these other things and they learn over the course of time what an ideal onion headline is. And then every day they come in with 15 headlines and um they leave so that's like 150 to 200 headlines a day, and then they leave with like one or two. That process has to remain in place. And we c if we deviate from that, we're no longer the onion, just the way it is. So that's one very major thing, is making sure editorially it remains the same and you can't mess with that thing. Our editor in chief has been here for 30 years. People, there are people on our staff who, when it was going through the private equity phase, they were, we have a woman on staff who has an engineering degree from Brown, and she at any moment could have left. And she was making like probably like $50,000 a year. Uh, and she stayed because she believed in this thing. Those people are the onion, and we're going to make sure they're protected, and we're going to make sure that the process that feeds into this makes it so it remains that way forever. Um and can update into all those things. And then the second thing is get to own your own thing. That's why we have a newspaper. Like uh I don't think they'll go after the US Postal Service, isn't it like in the Constitution? But like they could try. They could try. And it's uh people it's it's a pamphlet. Like it feels like a civil war, baby. Like we're like we get to send these things out to people's mailbox es and it feels like a secret. Yeah. Um, and that has that that will help us endure. And we are we're very big into archiving our old archive. Um, we wanna make sure that what we do is enduring and uh like totally separate of these pipelines that are being eaten alive by rich people. I've had several really wealthy people. They're all interested in media now. I don't know if you've noticed or gotten calls, but they're like, hey, I'd love to talk about investing. I go, I don't want your fucking money. And they're like, what? And I'm like, I make plenty of money. Like, Kara, do you even want the Washington Post anymore? Do you even because like you would have to like call five rich guys and like, I don't even know if like why would you want to put it in? Well, ' Icause'd have a lot of them, so none of them would have power. I have I have a whole scheme to keep them in a position. Are you gonna do it? Uh I don't know, but I I don't know. No, no, he won't talk to me. What am I talking about? No, he's in busy's b if I go to I guess a fashion week and take some Botox, I suppose I could get to talking to him. He doesn't he doesn't even fucking want it. He doesn't care. Like he doesn't has it has no utility to him whatsoever. I I actually I would turn it into a satirical publication at this point. But um this one rich guy was like, oh you don't want to have a talk? I'm like, I don't like, thank you. Like and he's like, why? I go, I don't want to talk to you. Like I I know it sounds dumb, but I just am very happyy making mone and when I don't I'll stop doing it I guess but right now like I I keep talking about this. It's freeing. It's freeing. Well yes, there are the two economies. It's sort of like what we were talking about with the theater chain earlier. I keep talking about the two economies. Like it's the economy of the real, and then the economy of gambling and speculation and all this extra shit. And we are I want this company in the economy of the real. I want people to give us dollars for goods and services. I don't I don't want to tie up our fate in a uh like a shitcoin. I don't want to come up with the perfect onion AI generator. I don't want any of the shit. Like I just want people to I want to live in the the human world with us. And I trust me, Kara, that's clearly what's going on right now. But there's a split right now between like real money and a real economy and human connection. And then whatever the fuck this other thing is, which is much bigger, but much worse. So if five years from me, how do you think the media business will look? When I get asked that question, I always get asked, I was like, I'll do something else. Like I didn't know I was going to do podcasting 10 years ago and that worked out rather well. And I then we just did this tour. That worked out rather well. I don't know. And when when I get to the answer, I'm like, we're gonna keep making stuff people want to buy. Like I don't know what else to say. Like that's the answer. And so I don't know what it'll be. Like I just announced this documentary for CNN on longevity. I'm like, oh, this could have some legs, right? You know what I mean? This idea. Um, I'm bullish on the future of media, especially independent media Yeah, I think a big change for me personally is over the last couple of years, I went from like all of my childhood media dreams are gone and my, you know, my dreams are dead to all my childhood media dreams are gone and my dreams are dead. Like I get to live in this new cool functional thing that is like that allows me a lot more agency and the everything's a little bit better. And you're happier. I'm okay with this. And I'm I'm so much happier. Like we are allowed to say what we want to say. And I, you know, Kara, there's never like there's never going to be uh a world where people don't seek out like gossip and information and the funniest sentence and connection. That's just never that's never gonna exist. And I actually think that that's a fundamental problem that's going on. Right. Is that the world's richest people think that they don't need that. Like they're building humanoid robots and they're building all these compliment machines that tell them exactly what they want to feel and how they want to act. And everyone else is like I don't I have no desire for that. I want to hang out with my friends. I want them to yell at me and uh you know tell me I'm stupid and then like and then hug me and go to my funeral. Like that's what I want to happen. And they don't care about that. And that's the all of the money, all like the the big amounts of like seemingly fake money seems to be going towards this like disconnect stuff that people don't want. People really want this connection. And I think in the next five years, like you can see where it's all headed. People are starting to come back together to be like, ah, I want I want a funny person to say a funny sentence to me. Or I want to hang out with friends. You know, one of the positives from this Minnesota thing is Minneapolis is rediscovered community. Again, that we all you know, I think it's it's a terrible way to do it. Um, but I I think a lot of people are rediscovering community and how easy it is to pull away from some of this stuff, which is there's no mistaking why these tech billionaires wanna buy these things. It's because they don't like the insults they get from people like you or I, you know, and they wanna control it, but you can't control it. That's the whole thing. So on the last question, earlier you talked about how when it comes to disinformation, the people who spread it aren't gonna stop. I agree with you. There is too much money in it. Um you're trying to combat that. I'm trying to combat that, but even if most of us don't want that. Give people an idea of what you do to fight it from your perspective. Yeah, and I I hate to keep bringing back me bringing Minneapolis back into this, but it really is it's community and all that stuff and in living in the real. Uh uh you know, we've we've good we've worked ourselves into a froth in this country uh over the last 10 years, blaming immigrants for everything, taking uh taking videos that turns out it largely aren't real, like they're eating the cats and dogs kind of stuff. Um That's next week, by the way. They're going for that next week. There you go.. Yep They're going to spring field, right? Like turning them into moral panics and then trying to punish these fake things. They're trying to punish things that don't exist. Um and now we're on the other side of this, where the dog caught the car. Apparently the dogs that we're eating caught the car. And uh we're you know, we're we're doing gestapo shit to every immigrant in this country and everybody who stands in their way . And guess what? The economy's not fixed. Your life's not better. You don't feel any better. Uh all all these people who thought their world was going to get fixed once they got all the brown people out of their line of sight. Turns out everything's worse. Everything still costs way too much. Um culture got worse. Uh you are not respected. And you're and uh and you're a fucking asshole. So I am I am hopeful since the dog caught the car that people will just like I I don't think everybody comes to this conclusion immediately. Some people just stay in it forever, and that's the thing that I've realized is that some people like to be upset and they like to complain about shit. It's fine. But I I I hope when the people who like to be upset complain about shit can start complaining about the guy next door who sucks instead of like the fictitious thing that we all have to kill. Um I I I kind of already think this happening. Young people are a nerd to this. Young people have um have lived through this entirely of uh all they know is people blaming a fictitious thing and their life not getting better. Um my hope is and, I I know can see it everywhere. They're rediscovering community, they're rediscovering each other. I'm I'm not one of those people who is a touch grass person who thinks that like I'm not a crunchy granola guy. No, I get it. I and I think a lot of this can be accomplished and sh will be accomplished on the actual internet. I think like it's smaller communities in the internet doing stuff uh separate of scale. Um, but it's about talking of each other and um and making art for the sake of art, like not for the sake of uh anything else. Um like I I just want to make one thing clear by the way. The onion does not use AI. Our our AI is a guy named Carl who does awesome Photoshops. He's great, he's wearing beanies on the other side of the store right now. You can use it in your advertising placing. It's fine. Yeah. You're right. Sure. It it look, it I'm not saying AI has no purpose, but for us. I mean in the creative process. Yeah. It's like soylent or like hot dogs or something. It's just like this amalgamation. But like it's not every now and then it's funny. Every now and then it's something good, I have to say. But not much. Not much. Not compared to people. Yeah. And what's really ironic in this moment is all these people who were talking about how nobody could be funny anymore. They've never been funny a day in their lives. And fuck them if they can't take a joke. They've never been funny. I've seen some of the funniest shit in my life over the last couple of years. The people who are like who can't seem to find humor and who seem to be upset all the time about not being able to say like one specific word, they even found the new words that are much funnier. Yeah. Like there's uh like there we're we're living in a golden age, and you'll see it. You' onllce you look back on it, you'll figure that out comedy-wise. We're not living in a golden age of anything else. Yeah. Anyway, Ben, thank you so much. I love the onion. Everyone should subscribe. Um, it's really funny. It's just really funny. Makes me laugh all the time. And we could all use a good laugh. Thank you. Kara, big fan. Keep doing what you're doing . Today's show was produced by Christian Castro Bussel, Michelle Eloy, Megan Bur,ney and Kaylin Lynch. And Shot Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Bradley Sylvester. Our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Tracademics. If you're already following this show, you're building community and laughing with friends. If not, you're angry because you're the butt of the joke or Elon Musk. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Caro Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Caro Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Box Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more .