Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone

4 Sep 2025 · 1 h 2 min · 29 chapters

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In short

John Malone (Liberty Media) discusses liberal media bias and CNN, the evolution of cable/streaming, and how to “tame” big tech—arguing for consumer-focused regulation like algorithm transparency and privacy protections, while relying on competition and innovation to counter dominance.

Guest backgrounds

John Malone is chairman of Liberty Media; a cable pioneer who led TCI (Telecommunications Inc.) from a struggling Denver operator into the largest U.S. cable company via aggressive M&A. Liberty Media holds major stakes in Discovery, Sirius XM, the Atlanta Braves, and Formula One. He authored Born to be Wired and has been portrayed as a monopolist/robber baron. Kara Swisher hosts; expert questioner is Jeff Bewkes (former Time Warner CEO).

Key claims

Cable’s early “cowboy” ethos built scale and isolated risk; streaming failed for cable due to linear contracts and content costs. Regulators look backward; they should target market power that stifles innovation. Big tech dominance may be offset by competition and rapid tech change; regulation should ensure choice, transparency, and consumer compensation for data use.

Notable examples

Retransmission consent (cable paying broadcasters); Netflix’s streaming pivot; network neutrality’s impact on cable; Google search dominance; TikTok national-security concerns; CNN compared to Fox News Lite; Dominion lawsuit and election coverage controversy.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

John Malone's Background and Influence

0:45 to 2:33

Kara discusses John Malone's career and influence in the media landscape.

“and then carved Liberty Media out of TCI and grew it into one of the most influential and diverse media companies in the world.”

John Malone's Background and Influence

2:36 to 3:16

Kara discusses John Malone's career and influence in the media landscape.

“feel like surviving a software group project.”

Malone on the Podcast Format

4:03 to 4:48

John shares his thoughts on the podcast medium and video trends.

“It's the only business software you'll ever need.”

Cable Cowboys and Early Experiences

4:48 to 5:46

Kara and John discuss the early days of cable TV and Malone's involvement.

“Are you interested in the trend of video?”

Transforming TCI

5:46 to 8:13

John explains how he stabilized and grew TCI, a struggling cable company.

“We were a coal company, and we had the trucks to lay the lines.”

Risk Management in Business

8:13 to 9:44

Malone discusses his approach to managing risks in the cable industry.

“No, I got a great education, I have to admit.”

Lessons from Financial Struggles

9:44 to 14:00

John reflects on the lessons learned from financial challenges in his career.

“Is that a good motivator for your failure?”

Regulatory Challenges in the Cable Industry

14:00 to 16:46

Explore the challenges and regulations faced by cable companies in scaling their business.

“And that was a lesson learned through struggling.”

Philosophy on Regulation and Innovation

16:46 to 19:10

Discuss the balance between regulation and innovation in the technology landscape.

“interest in, and they then essentially passed some legislation as well as regulations.”

Listener Questions on AI

19:10 to 20:36

Engage with listeners about their questions on AI and its implications.

“Isn't that sort of, you know, it's happening in AI?”
Show all 29 chapters

Listener Questions on AI

20:39 to 21:43

Engage with listeners about their questions on AI and its implications.

“You could wear the same one to a laid-back barbecue or upscale seaside restaurant and still feel classy.”

Listener Questions on AI

22:06 to 23:06

Engage with listeners about their questions on AI and its implications.

“That may be true for a specific aspect of your business.”

Listener Questions on AI

23:09 to 24:26

Engage with listeners about their questions on AI and its implications.

“For a lot of business owners, like myself, that task is payroll.”

The Rise of Streaming and Missed Opportunities

24:26 to 28:00

Analyze the shift to streaming and discuss why cable companies missed the boat.

“Netflix reported that it streamed more movies than it mailed.”

The Challenge of High-Speed Internet

28:00 to 28:54

Learn about the historical context and challenges in the development of high-speed internet and cable industry cooperation.

“They were blocked by a contractual deal they had with US West.”

Expert Question on Big Tech and Regulation

28:54 to 29:50

A significant question is posed regarding the challenges big tech presents to competition and regulation.

“And so if you take that and you look at the global scale at which these giants operate, which extends well beyond regulatory reaches of either U.S.”

Navigating Big Tech's Influence and Competition

29:50 to 36:34

Discussing how competition among tech giants shapes the landscape and the role of regulation in addressing these challenges.

“You know, I'd have to say that don't rule out competition.”

The Risks of Technology Manipulation

36:34 to 37:32

Exploring the potential dangers of technology in manipulating human behavior and the challenges for regulation.

“Because the ability to manipulate through these technologies is pretty severe.”

John Malone on Trump and Business

37:32 to 38:25

Malone reflects on his political contributions and perspectives on the current Republican Party and its impact on business.

“And so I think the government really, I don't know if the government has the ability to attract people who are smart enough.”

Evaluating Trump's Economic Policies

38:25 to 42:00

Discussing Malone's views on Trump's economic agenda, including tariffs and reindustrialization efforts.

“But by the time— Well, that was an inaugural contribution, not a political contribution.”

National Security and Economic Stakes

42:00 to 48:10

The discussion centers on national security, economic policies, and the implications of corporate investments.

“What about taking 10 % interest in Intel or charging NVIDIA, VIG, or chips?”

National Security and Economic Stakes

49:21 to 50:04

The discussion centers on national security, economic policies, and the implications of corporate investments.

“Running a small business means every dollar has to work hard.”

National Security and Economic Stakes

50:08 to 50:47

The discussion centers on national security, economic policies, and the implications of corporate investments.

“It's the only business software you'll ever need.”

Critique of CNN and Media Bias

50:57 to 56:01

Exploring the issues of bias in CNN's reporting and comparing it to other networks.

“And I want to just go over it a little bit.”

Exploring Media Bias and Its Impact

56:01 to 58:01

Discusses the invisibility of bias in journalism and its implications.

“Look, the trouble with bias is it's almost invisible.”

The Nature of News and Its Responsibilities

58:02 to 1:00:01

Examines the role of news services like CNN in uniting or dividing public opinion.

“And even though you admit it's got a lot of entertainment, not fact-based, most of the audience probably sees it as news and truthful.”

Concerns About Society and Future Generations

1:00:02 to 1:02:02

Discusses societal changes, psychological issues among youth, and the role of education.

“We started talking about how the media fragment and people want to listen to their own choir.”

Political System Challenges and Government Power

1:02:03 to 1:04:22

Analyzes the dysfunction within Congress and its implications for executive power.

“They said John has been out West for too long, which is funny.”

Political System Challenges and Government Power

1:07:05 to 1:07:35

Analyzes the dysfunction within Congress and its implications for executive power.

“so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other?”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00I outlined the whole damn thing. Streaming, random access. Yep.

0:05Kara Swisher:No, you're quite prescient. Yeah. I mean, so what the hell, you know? What the hell? I'm also so stupid. That's okay.

0:24Kara Swisher:Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher. and I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today is John Malone, the chairman of Liberty Media, a cable industry pioneer and literally one of the smartest people in media. As the CEO of Telecommunications Inc., or TCI, he turned a struggling Denver outfit into the largest cable company in the country and then carved Liberty Media out of TCI and grew it into one of the most influential and diverse media companies in the world. Liberty and its spinoff companies have owned major stakes in companies like Discovery, Sirius XM, the Atlanta Braves and Formula One.

1:01Kara Swisher:His memoir, Born to be Wired, just came out. And as he says in the book, he's often been cast as a ruthless villain by the media. He's been called Genghis Khan, Darth Vader, a monopolist and a robber baron. John describes himself as, quote, high functioning autistic, and he's mostly avoided the spotlight, but he's never shied from a fight. And the self-described libertarian has been taking potshots at CNN for years. So, of course, I had to ask him about that. And full disclosure, I'm a CNN contributor. At 84, he's still hugely influential. I'm excited to talk to him because he's a complex man.

1:38Kara Swisher:A lot of people think he's one thing and a lot of people think he's another. I think he's just really good at business. And one of his focuses, of course, is making money. He also thinks a lot more than the regular media executive about the impact all over the place. And though I don't agree with him about a number of issues, it's always interesting to talk to someone who is clearly incredibly gifted at what he does. Our expert question comes from Jeff Bukas, another one of my favorites and the former CEO of Time Warner. Please note, we recorded this interview in two separate sessions. We ran out of time during the first one and John was kind enough to come back and do a second taping.

2:14Kara Swisher:He's a fountain of knowledge and an idiosyncratic one at that. So stick around.

2:33Kara Swisher:Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow none of them ever talk to each other. That's where Odoo comes in. in an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together, from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system.

3:06Kara Swisher:Try it today for free at odoo.com slash cara. That's O-D-O-O dot com slash cara. Support for the show comes from Injun. Running a small business means every dollar has to work hard. But if your team is still booking travel the old way, it's costing you more than you think. Injun is the fastest growing travel and spend platform in the country, built specifically for businesses like yours. Book a trip in as little as two and a half minutes. Earn up to 10 % back on hotels. And in 2025, Engine customers saved more than$300 million on travel with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no BS. More than 1 ,000 businesses join Engine every month.

3:51Kara Swisher:Join them and get$500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at engine.com slash Vox. Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you?

4:32Kara Swisher:Try Odoo for free at Odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

4:44Kara Swisher:John, thanks for coming on On. You're welcome. Do you like the podcast game? You know, that's the game these days. I don't know if you... I know. I don't play it much. Why? Well, I'm sort of antisocial, so... Okay. You don't play much on it. Do you listen to podcasts? Are you interested in the trend of video? Following it as the collapse of traditional video news, I guess. Any thoughts on why that is? Why people are shifting towards them in rather large numbers, actually? I think people want to listen to their own choir. Meaning? It's part of the broad fragmentation, I think, of our culture. Yeah, I think you kind of started it.

5:26Kara Swisher:I have to say cable was sort of— I've been blamed, you know. Yes, I know. Well, we'll talk about that. Let me start. Born to be Wild is a memoir, but you also tell a bit of the story of the cable cowboys, the guys who created cable TV by stringing wires from antennas and hilltops to remote towns that otherwise wouldn't have gotten broadcast TV. My family is a cable family. I don't know if you know that. It's from Scranton, Pennsylvania. We were a coal company, and we had the trucks to lay the lines. So we got the cable franchise, my family. And I actually worked for the cable company, basically catching cable thieves who used to string their own wires to the cable wire and shutting them down.

6:08Kara Swisher:So I know a little bit about this. But explain what they were like and the ethos of how you approached the business in the early days. Well, I started my career as a technology guy at Bell Labs, AT &T for a while, and then McKinsey. And from McKinsey, I ended up as a consultant for technology companies, one of which was a company called General Instruments, which had just bought a company called Gerald Electronics. and the company was a mess and and i was asked to go straighten it out and that got me into the cable business because they were manufacturing uh designing building and financing cable systems and one of my customers was a company called telecommunications inc in denver tci tci bob Magnus.

7:06And I ended up falling in love with the concept and getting my family out of the New York metro. And we moved to Denver in 72. So here I was a PhD from Yale.

7:26Kara Swisher:Yeah, an IV educated prep school kid. Yeah. So when you took the job as CEO of TCI, and this was a pretty struggling Denver cable company, you were able to stabilize it and grow it actually through the M &A process to transform it into one of the biggest cable companies in the country. Even though you had sort of started with this sort of Silver Spoon kind of background, what was the thing that you wanted to do there? And then what attracted you to this cable business, this cowboy business? You weren't a cowboy. Well, first of all, I have to combat the Silver Spoon. I worked my whole life. I had a work scholarship all the way through.

8:11And, you know, even graduate school was$400 a month.

8:14Kara Swisher:I meant IV educated. Yeah. No, I got a great education, I have to admit. Yeah. But what was the attraction to taking something like this that had been very troubled and stabilize it and then grow? Because TCI was well known for the aggressive M &A activity. Yeah. No, TCI was in horrible shape and probably had set the Harvard Business School record for debt leverage. Right. So it had managed to get itself way over levered. What attracted me was the people. I joined the Motley crew out there. Most of the guys had not gotten a college education. They were more military-trained, self-taught. And this group of entrepreneurs didn't know that they were broke.

9:07They didn't know that they were virtually bankrupt. And it was struggling through in the trenches, that group of guys, many of whom, those are still living, are still involved in my various companies. So I'm partners with a number of them. So it was the relationships that drove me.

9:28Kara Swisher:That drove you. And also the nature of even if you're in kind of a trench or in a difficult situation, you keep pushing through, correct? There's another huge motivator. It's called fear of failure. Of course, I had a young family, and I really didn't have a choice. We had to make it work. Is that a good motivator for your failure? Because one of the call marks of, say, technologists in general is failure is great. Like, it just moves you to the next thing. Yeah. Well, technology failure and getting promoted up in big organizations is not unusual. Personal financial failure is what the driver was.

10:12It wasn't reputational. It was financial. And that's because my folks had graduated and married in the heat of the Depression. And they were afraid of banks. My mother kept all of her cash, some paychecks going back 30, 40 years. You know, in a coal stove. And they were just very nervous about financial distress. Which came to you. Which they imprinted on me big time. Yeah.

10:49Kara Swisher:Yeah. But you still had a very risk-taking position. You recognized earlier you needed to achieve economies of scale in order to compete. and you write that the wiring of the country, the largest private construction in America since World War II, was going to take a tremendous amount of debts. And in order to get Wall Street to go along, you had to have them focus on EBITDA cash flow instead of profit. You had a risk profile, though. How did that happen? No question it was a risky business. And I learned the hard way how to manage risk and, you know, how to isolate risk. You know, the banks loved it once you were predictable.

11:29And nothing drove economics like scale. So it was a very simple economic equation. Build scale. Isolate risk. If you're going to do an acquisition or a big build, finance it separately. You know, have watertight bulkheads as many and as much as you could. I had a mentor by the name of Moses Shapiro. He used to teach me elements of the Talmud, and he said, one of the biggest lessons is ask yourself the question, if not. You know, if something doesn't work, where are you at? Are you dead?

12:09Kara Swisher:Yeah. You know, can you recover? How do you lay off some of the risk? How do you turn failure into success? Think it through before you act. And so I became very driven by that kind of a concept of building a business that no single or multiple torpedoes could take down. And it was a hell of a fight with a syndicate of banks who thought they were totally upside down for the first six years. How did you change the way they understood debt and risk, that you were taking calculated risks is what you're talking about, where you isolated the risk into certain parts so it wouldn't kill the whole, like a boat, for example?

12:51Yeah, this is a hard lesson to teach. Even chief financial officers, to get that last fraction of a data point in terms of cheaper interest will tend to cross-guarantee, will tend to cross-collateralize. And you really do, as an entrepreneurial manager in a risky enterprise, you really do have to fight that and say, no, I'm willing to pay a little more for the protection I get. I also have a philosophy of always having dry powder. So pretty typical companies that I've been involved in building will have no debt at the parent and will be, in fact, will be quite liquid at the parent, but will have leverage at the operating subsidiaries.

13:45Kara Swisher:Which is where the debt goes. Which is where the debt is. And that's to isolate the parent if something occurs. That way the parent can come to the rescue if necessary. I used to joke about it. that way the bankers buy you lunch, you don't have to buy the banker's lunch when something gets in trouble. And that was a lesson learned through struggling. I probably spent half of my time traveling in those first years at TCI, just negotiating loan extensions with the bankers, because everything was tied together. The debt was all at the parent. Everything was cross-guarantee. And so then you get the banks fighting with each other.

14:31It's miserable. So it was a lesson that I learned the hard way. By the early 80s, there were technology opportunities and there were content opportunities because we did have synergy with those opportunities. I had also, to some degree, mastered the financials of taxes, how to advantage yourself with the utilization of efficient taxation, let's call it. And in order to protect Bob Magnus from losing control of his company, I had come up with the Alphabet Stock concept, which allowed Bob to take out his two co-founders without losing control of the company and allowed the co-founders to monetize.

15:24Kara Swisher:So you are well known for your tax expertise, essentially, but you're also a libertarian to have a generally dim view of government regulation. In 1991, you created Liberty Media, for example, by carving out of TCI in order to avoid further scrutiny by the DOJ as you were creating this scale. You seem to take advantage of regulation and at the same time decry it. So talk about the philosophy towards regulation, how you structured liberty so you're able to scale it without attracting too much attention. Well, it seems absurd these days that when I got TCI up to 22 % of the nation in terms of our footprint, the government decided to change the law and literally block us, specifically us, specifically me, from continuing to grow the core cable business in the U.S.

16:24so obviously they perceived us as as having developed a somewhat monopoly position not just me but but the cable industry generally but we were the leader so we were the biggest we were the target uh so they limited us in terms of the percent of the country we could service they then limited us also in the number of programming channels that we get out of financial interest in, and they then essentially passed some legislation as well as regulations. Retransmission consent represented the broadcast industry fighting back against the cable industry. It really delivered the content business back into the hands of the large broadcast network owning enterprises.

17:15Kara Swisher:Right. Just for people who don't know, retransmission consent means cable companies had to pay the broadcast networks for their content. Right. But your view of government regulation, then, obviously negative. But explain the philosophy of how you structured Liberty to scale it without. I would say not negative. I would say they have their job to do to protect the consumer, I think, ultimately. And if you're a manager of a company, you have your job of creating as much wealth as you can for your shareholders. And so clearly running into regulation was just part of the job. And then figuring out how far you could go around the regulations, what to do so you're not stonewalled completely, became part of the management job, part of the strategy.

18:10Kara Swisher:Right. But in the book, you make clear you feel the regulations are mostly BS. Well, most of the regulations, unfortunately, the regulators are always looking backwards. Now, admittedly, they're not clairvoyant, and it's very difficult to predict the rapidity of change in the technology industry. And if you combine technological change with regulation, it's quite a challenge. So I respect the fact that regulation is there to protect the consumer, not competition and not any particular competitor. And my take on it is really that the regulators should focus more on innovation and making sure that people who have too much market power, not necessarily monopolists, just people with overwhelming market power, are not using it to stifle innovation.

19:07Kara Swisher:Yep, that's my philosophy. I mean, this is what happens, though, inevitably, doesn't it? Isn't that sort of, you know, it's happening in AI? It's always awkward. And now that you have global companies, the technology world is now very much global, the economics of it. And I don't think our regulators are going to be that good at cooperating with the other guys' regulators. So I don't know how they're going to do it, how they're going to continue to protect innovation and the consumer from excessive market power. Right. But it's a legitimate tug of war. And, you know, far from being, you know, critical of these guys with their big tech companies, I really admire them.

19:50I mean, I don't know how I missed some of the opportunities I've missed. but it is incredible what's been built and the entrepreneurship that's driven it.

20:01Kara Swisher:Hey listeners, we're taping a How to AI for Business episode soon and we want your questions like how does vibe coding work? What are the best uses of it in my daily workflow? Should I trust AI to protect my private business information? What is the best LLM service for me? What about hallucinations? And of course, the perennial, will AI take my job? Email your questions to on at voxmedia.com and you might hear one of our experts answer your burning AI query. We'll be back in a minute.

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21:57Kara Swisher:Quince dot com slash Kara.

22:03Kara Swisher:Support for this show comes from Odoo. There's an endless supply of software out there that promises to streamline your workflow. That may be true for a specific aspect of your business. But if you need one app for accounting, one for inventory management, another for sales, How streamlined can your workflow actually be if you have to be the middleman between them? Odoo says they're the answer you're looking for. The only business software you'll ever need. Odoo can be your one-stop shop for CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. Plus, it's super customizable and easy to use out of the box.

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23:06Kara Swisher:Support for this show comes from Gusto. Be honest, there's probably one task on your list you constantly push to next week because it's just so tedious. For a lot of business owners, like myself, that task is payroll. Gusto is here to take that entirely off your plate so it becomes an easy part of your job instead of the dreaded one. Gusto is an online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use so you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. Actually, Podium Media uses Gusto to operate. Automatic payroll, tax filing, simple direct deposits, health benefits, commuter benefits, workers' comp, 401k, you name it, Gusto makes it simple and has options for nearly every budget.

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Read the full transcript

24:25Kara Swisher:I'm going to fast forward to 2009. Netflix reported that it streamed more movies than it mailed. That was the year that it shifted over. My former partner, Walt Mossberg, interviewed you for our conference that we did with the Wall Street Journal at the time, and you said this regarding streaming, quote, you have this terrible reality of commercial life, which is how do you monetize this thing, unquote. The thinking within the cable industry was streaming wouldn't produce enough ad revenue or is too expensive to produce original content for it, which Netflix just ran into, speaking of taking risks.

24:57Kara Swisher:Why didn't the cable companies become Netflix before they did it? I'm curious because that might have been a solution for you. Keep in mind, by then, the guy you're interviewing here was the chairman of DirecTV. Mm-hmm. So I was no longer in the U.S. cable business at that time. I was in it internationally, but not U.S. And I tried to buy Netflix at that point in time when Reed was having a little bit of financial difficulty. But, I mean, there's no question that they saw the future and they drove hard toward it. Reed's comment to me at Sun Valley when I tried to buy it was, if I ever sell the company, it's going to be to a big tech guy.

25:43It's not going to be to an old media guy.

25:46Kara Swisher:Oh, wow. No offense taken. No offense. But you didn't believe in spending money on the content for streaming, right? Is that correct? because the numbers were enormous. And Netflix at one point was spending four times what Disney was or some cockamamie number. I believe that, in fact, it was my own outfit, Starz. Remember Starz? Yes, I do. That licensed all the Disney original content to Netflix that gave Netflix their real boost. Absolutely. When it was happening, I talked to a number of those. I'm like, do you understand you're arming your enemy? It was insanity the way it was contracted. It should have been limited.

26:30But the reality was I saw it. I wanted to buy it, and they were unwilling to sell it.

26:39Kara Swisher:I mean, I think the original sin of media companies was to give Netflix that leg up, for example. But why didn't the content people spend money, including yourself? Why wasn't that the idea? Well, it depends where you, they say where you stand depends on where you sit, I guess. Right, yeah. Keep in mind the cable industry was heavily embedded in the linear contractual relationships. That was their meat and potatoes. That was really the only business until internet came along. And they had tied up the big media companies in exclusive agreements that precluded the media companies, for the most part, from exploring these new phenomenon.

27:29So I would say the industry was kind of tied in a knot. The industry came up with various versions. They had a thing called TV Everywhere. I remember. When we sold the business to AT &T, the principal asset that AT &T got from us was control of a startup business called At Home, which was the first high-speed internet delivery over cable. And I had been able to unite basically all the major operators in North America other than Time Warner. They were blocked by a contractual deal they had with US West. And the goal was to offer this high-speed internet connectivity and to allocate 20 % of the revenue to the creation of content to be played on this new...

28:22Exclusively, right. That was the goal. Anyway, that was the asset AT &T bought when they got TCI. And it was very much my thought that it would include the full content package. If you interview guys like the guy running Time Warner, Bukas, he'll tell you the struggle they had in getting the cable industry to cooperate with each other through that period.

28:49Kara Swisher:So speaking of Jeff Bukas, every episode we get an expert question. Let's hear yours. Hi, John. It's Jeff Bukas. My question's on tech. Big tech's network effects on revenue combined with near zero marginal cost for incremental users causes a natural monopoly, winner-take-all dynamic that makes competition much less effective than how things worked in the industrial year. And so if you take that and you look at the global scale at which these giants operate, which extends well beyond regulatory reaches of either U.S. or EU governments acting separately or even together without China and the global south, what do you think would address the challenge of dominance, rent-seeking, the threat to preserving innovation, and probably more important than all of it, the political plurality and the separation of government?

29:45from the private sector?

29:47Kara Swisher:That's a great question. That's a big, broad regulatory question. You know, I'd have to say that don't rule out competition. Look at how much money is being spent on data centers now by these big tech guys. They're competing with each other. There's a race on, driven by this technology, which may or may not live up to its promise. So technology is going to continue to drive this, and it will create global competition. We're already seeing a pitched battle between the Chinese and America, and Trump defines it as who can produce the most electric power because you can't have a supergiant set of data centers if you don't have enormous amounts of electrical power to drive it.

30:46I'm not sure technology won't fix that, though. I think they can probably figure out over time to lower power consumption. But that said, you have the big tech companies now desperately looking to compete with each other, and you have companies or countries, China, the U.S., looking at it the same way. It's the whole future is dependent on who can implement these new technologies the quickest and the most efficiently against each other. And I looked at it and I said, well, the Chinese have an easier challenge. In America, we're going to have four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten people trying to do this.

31:29In China, they'll just have one. So for the same amount of money, they end up with about ten times the firepower as we will. because we're going to divide it amongst competitors. On the other hand, our competitors will drive innovation much faster against the Chinese. So for Jeff's question, you have to say these things are moving so fast into areas that we have no experience at, that I don't see how regulators can possibly keep up with the rate of change. You almost, in America, you almost have to count on competition. To sort it out. To sort it out, yes. And if government has to intervene, it's probably going to be more on a national security basis than it will be on trying to pick winners and losers.

32:28Kara Swisher:Right. That said, you have the cable industry, of course, has transformed itself. Cable companies are internet service writers. They often bundle cable streaming, internet, in some cases voice. But it's in a decline in many ways. Silicon Valley is moving into this space. And you've called for strict regulations on big tech. You say tech companies should be forced to make their algorithms transparent and consumers should be paid by tech companies when their personal data is harvested. This is something I have said for 30 years. But it's kind of a departure from your libertarian ethos. Explain what—you're saying competition's going to sort this out, but it may be it'll sort it out not in anybody's favor but the tech companies.

33:08Well, first of all, I'm on the side of the consumer. The consumer should be given choice as much as possible, and regulations should set up to allow the consumer to have choice. and in older, more established businesses, they do. And the regulators have probably done a pretty good job of making sure there's multiplicity of choices and connectivity in various other areas. Right now, you have a concentration of firepower. Take, for instance, Google's dominance of search. How long will that dominance in search last the AI investments that the other guys are making? because I noticed even personally I'm using AI search rather than Google search because it's handier, it seems to work better.

34:00So I think innovation is really ultimately the answer that the regulators have to look to. Now, when government intervenes like they did with network neutrality, they created a disaster for the cable industry Because all of a sudden, the cable industry had rapidly growing demand for its capacity. By tech companies. And no way to collect. So you disconnected the capital requirements on the cable companies from the revenue source that would normally drive the volume relationship that would normally drive it. And so cable companies are running around rebuilding their networks to handle this rapidly growing demand.

34:50At great cost. At great capital cost without any connection to the revenue stream. And this is particularly onerous to me from a network configuration point of view when it comes to big tech using sports, streaming sports, because it takes one channel. to cover the country with high-quality sports, with a football game. You don't need 50 million simultaneous streams to do it. But network neutrality has made it possible for big tech to create an advertising vehicle by turning what could be done with one channel into 50 million streams. so that they can maximize the ad revenue that they can generate out of the information they had on the consumer.

35:49Right.

35:50Kara Swisher:In such a sense, they're getting all the juicy bits, right? And you said we need a new regime of government regulations designed to rein in and monitor gigantic tech companies and big tech. You've called for algorithmic transparency, privacy data. Is there any—and then you're saying, well, I guess we'll rely on innovation and competition. I think there is a national security element to this. I think you got to cut the Chinese off from control of TikTok. You really have to do it. You can't just look the other way because you're playing games with it. You really have to do it. But there has to be a national security element to all of this stuff if we're going to continue to have a world that doesn't get along with everybody.

36:39Because the ability to manipulate through these technologies is pretty severe. And I don't think our system of government can survive too much dominance of that capability, that ability to understand brain chemistry. I mean, look, these guys with their social networks are all brain chemists now. How do we stimulate certain brain chemicals and make them last? And, you know, how do we make these things addictive? And those skill levels are aided by AI now where they can sort of individualize everybody's brain and see how every individual reacts to a certain stimuli. I mean, this thing can be a real sci-fi nightmare, you know, pretty quickly.

37:38Kara Swisher:Gosh, John, you sound like me. Everyone got mad at me for saying this. No, it really can. And so I think the government really, I don't know if the government has the ability to attract people who are smart enough. In fact, I don't know if the people exist who are smart enough to keep an eye on this stuff and call a halt if it starts to get out of control. And I think, you know, I agree with some of the spokesmen in the industry who say the industry needs to do this. The industry needs to self-regulate. They won't. But I don't think they will, and I don't see how that crosses international boundaries.

38:18Kara Swisher:They've obviously moved into politics in order to continue to preserve their power in that way very significantly. Now, you supported President Trump the first time around, and you and Liberty Media donated a combined$1 million to his inauguration in 2016. But by the time— Well, that was an inaugural contribution, not a political contribution. I know that. I was saying, compared to his inauguration. Right. But by the time the 2020 elections came around, you soured on them and the Trump White House was chaos and you were hoping to vote for Michael Bloomberg. And it seemed like you stopped donating to Trump after January 6th, but you still donate significant sums to Republican causes.

38:53Kara Swisher:For example, you gave$500 ,000 to Speaker Mike Johnson's Grow the Majority PAC in March. As a libertarian, talk about how you feel about the MAGA version of the Republican Party right now and its impact on business, which has obviously been your focus. Well, I broadly agree with the Trump Republican agenda, okay? I have to say that. Controlling the borders, trying to improve the quality of life for people, for the working poor, let's call them, by limiting illegal labor competition. You know, I think we should shift the tax code a little bit away from rewarding capital relative to labor. I think it's had a skew to it for way too long.

39:43So there are some of those agenda items. Reindustrializing America, at least in areas of national security and technology, I think is important. I don't know that you need to make shoes in America again, but I do think in areas that are critical, long-term, rare earths, places where we have allowed our supply chain to become extremely vulnerable as a nation. Because I don't think it's a peaceful world out there yet. And so I agree with those kind of things. I believe that what Trump's even doing on tariffs is a rational response to the VAT tax. Congress is not going to pass a consumption tax. But the VAT tax gives foreign manufacturers a real edge over U.S.

40:39manufacturers. In Ireland, there's a 21%, 22 % tax on imports, which is waived for Irish manufacturers on their exports. So American stuff going into Ireland has a tax. Stuff going from America into the U.S. does not. That's not fair. And so to equalize from at least a competitive manufacturing perspective, I think a tariff roughly equivalent to that tax is appropriate. I think it's also appropriate for Trump to use it as a lever to get foreign companies that have particularly strong positions in technology or manufacturing, like semiconductors, to come to the U.S. and supply the U.S. from U.S.

41:34production. Okay. It's going to take a long while. It's not going to be easy.

41:38Kara Swisher:Well, it sounds like you like what he's doing now, most of it. I like a lot of what he's doing. I don't necessarily care for his style, but I do like what he's trying to achieve, which is a reindustrialization of America, strengthening national defense, and improving the economic life of the lower middle class, let's call it the working middle class. What about taking 10 % interest in Intel or charging NVIDIA, VIG, or chips? Well, I would not support him going out and buying a 10 % stake in Intel. But under the Biden administration, they had already given Intel the capital. Via the Chips Act. I much prefer us either loaning it to the companies, if we have to, to get them to do what we want them to do, or taking an equity stake if their balance sheets won't support them borrowing the money and being able to truly pay it back.

42:41So I'm not opposed to on national defense grounds. I just think as a general matter. But if he needs to get a big injection of capital into Lockheed Martin so they can build drones fast enough, if that's an important thing to national security, I don't mind him buying preferred and equity stake or loaning them the money to make that happen rather than just giving them the money.

43:12Kara Swisher:In the book, you say the country was drifting towards socialism because JFK called on U.S. steel to lower prices. But when Trump calls on American companies to keep prices low despite terrorists, is that drifting towards socialism? It's silly and it's politics. It's politics. It's silly and it's politics. They're going to have to do what they have to do, you know, to produce results or they lose their jobs. Right. So, you know, calling on people to be nice guys, you know, it's good public relations, but it's not necessarily effective. And I think if you do things, if you single people out or companies out for bad behavior, that's probably okay if it's not politically motivated.

44:02Kara Swisher:Well, everything with Trump is politically motivated, it seems. So you say repeatedly in the book that CEOs' responsibility is toward their shareholders, which seems to be your religion, essentially. You're right. That's how capitalism works. So when Tim Cook, for example, has to do things with Trump, like give him a golden statue in order to keep the tariffs off his back, that's what he has to do. Presumably you think that. Does the CEO have any responsibility towards fellow citizens if Trump—do you consider him an authoritarian? especially with these troops in the cities. Is there any point where business leaders, they have to put the Constitution before shareholders?

44:43Well, I think the jury's out on this National Guard in cities. You know, I'd rather see the federal government fund a surge of cops, you know, rather than the National Guard.

44:59Kara Swisher:But how are you assessing what Trump is doing here then? Because not just going into the cities, but the idea that you have to kowtow to, you know, sort of the central executive idea. Well, I don't like that solution. My solution would be much more subtle. It would be reforming Social Security. It would be reforming 401K. You know, I look at these government problems as requiring long-term strategy. The problem in our culture, the problem in our political system, is we have politicians that are elected for two or six years in Congress. Congress is the most important part of our governmental system.

45:44It's very difficult for them to take long-term strategic views. But to fix these kind of problems, you must, whether it's national security. You know, when George W. Bush, who I admired personally, but when he brought China into the World Trade Organization as a developing country, he said goodbye to American industrial production. and it's been consistent ever since, we've shifted more and more industrial production out of the country to the point where we have very little ability to build anything in America, anything fundamental in America.

46:25Kara Swisher:So you're not worried about Trump being an autocrat or trying to stay in office or et cetera, et cetera? I worry in a couple of ways. One is he tries to fix everything quick. and his tactics are pretty brutal. It would be nice if he could have more finesse in approaching these things and do a better job really of explaining. But when you try and use a tariff for 27 different political reasons, like to help Bolsonaro in Brazil or to batter India into not buying Russian oil, you kind of lose your perspective. So I worry about Trump taking on too much too fast. Do I think he really is going to attempt to stay in power and put Don Jr.

47:22into the White House after him? I don't think so. I don't think that's really where he's coming from. I do believe that his close call with the assassination attempt really did make him think through his life, what his legacy can be, and how much time he has to achieve it. And the little comment he made on the side a few days ago about, I want to go to heaven, and I'm not sure. I'm not sure I'm doing well. We'll see. It was a pretty strong kind of statement that snuck out there.

48:00Kara Swisher:Yeah, interesting. I think it's true. All right, we'll see. We'll be back in a minute.

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50:46Kara Swisher:John, thanks for coming back for a second taping. We had a great conversation the first time, but I didn't get to ask you about the news business, which I meant to. It's just the other things were more interesting to me at the time. But since then, you've had some controversy around stuff you said about CNN. And I want to just go over it a little bit. Let me go backwards for a second, because in November of 2021, in the middle of the Warner Brothers Discovery merger, you criticized CNN and said it should, quote, actually have journalists. You compared it unfavorably to Fox News. And now you're criticizing them again.

51:19Kara Swisher:First, an interview with the New York Times. You said that when it comes to making CNN less biased to the left, Warner Brothers CEO David Zaslav has been, quote, unable to have any meaningful impact. And in an interview on CNBC, you said you aren't seeing any actual journalism in mainstream media or CNN in particular, and you compared it unfairly to Fox News again, which I want to just let you go on and explain this to me. Talk about your theories of what's happening here. Well, let's narrow it way down to television news. Okay. I go back, my standard would be Walter Cronkite and Huntley Brinkley, where they had massive audiences, pretty much their coverage of the news was very similar.

52:11And probably, I haven't done the arithmetic, but probably less than 5 % to 10 % of the news of the night had anything to do with politics. When Ted Turner decided to start CNN, Ted's theory was that news should be journalism. It shouldn't come out of New York or Washington, D.C. It could come out of Atlanta. and over time we saw CNN starting to become a little to the left. And when Rupert Murdoch called me up and said, is there room in America for another television news service? I thought, yes, because Rush Limbaugh had demonstrated on his radio side that there was a very large and underserved audience on the right of center.

53:14And so Rupert launched Fox News. And the deal Rupert explained to me was he was going to have a true news organization inside Fox News that was going to be really neutral politically and focused on factual news that would be represented today by Brett Baer, previously by Brett Yume. And the rest of the day was going to be entertainment focused on whatever's going on, fairly heavily political. Whereas Ted's approach was zero celebrity, just journalism, just the news. What happened, of course, was then MSNBC got launched as NBC felt like they needed a flanker brand for the broadcast news to fill the 24-7.

54:14And in order to compete and gain share against each other, they started to become increasingly political news because that was something that could really differentiate one from the other. CNN, in my opinion, had terrific journalists, still does, very talented people. and spread all around the world. Now, I also believe that they've been drawn into way too much political focus in their broad coverage in order to compete with the other two guys who are almost entirely political.

54:52Kara Swisher:I mean, that's what one would do if you see success at what Fox was doing. And we'll get to Fox in a minute because they're not the stellar news organization you speak of all the time. Yeah, but they don't hold themselves to be all journalism. They hold themselves to be sometimes journalism, but a Sean Hannity openly admits he's very biased, which he is. And the various, let's call them quasi-celebrities that have their hour here and the hour there. I mean, let's face it, when you have a comedian, Greg Gutfeld, right, is getting a big audience and his personal political position is very right-wing, okay?

55:39You know, is it entertainment or is it news? Well, I think it's entertainment. They don't try to be overwhelmingly factual. They try to be controversial and funny and keep an audience.

55:55Kara Swisher:So let me ask you, what do you think the public wants here? I mean, which CNN anchors are biased? Is it the evening time, which is very similar? It tracks onto what Fox does. Look, the trouble with bias is it's almost invisible. And the person who, look, these are good people. These are people who believe they're not blacks. Okay? They really believe that. It's just like an awful lot of us white folks say we're not biased about blacks. Okay? But it's embedded. You grew up in a family that didn't see blacks as we would like to see blacks today. So you have to go through a little mental exercise to understand where they're coming from.

56:44So you get somebody, a journalist, an anchor, a promoter, a producer, who's really behind, you know, what you cover and what you don't cover. And that kind of point of view is difficult to suppress. I mean, if you look at the political affiliations of the journalism industry, who they contribute to, who they register to vote with, okay, you'll find damn few professional journalists on the right. Damn few.

57:18Kara Swisher:There's a lot in Newsmax. They have more stations than ever before. Yes, there is a rising group because there is a rising economic structure that's willing to support it. I want a new service that not only serves the public, but makes us money. In a way, you're pining for a time that's gone by, right? The idea that we all got along and there are only three networks. Well, you were part of the change in that. The cable business certainly was. But I'm curious, you don't really criticize Fox News. You just think they just are what they are. It's incredibly political. It's divisive. Let me finish.

58:03Kara Swisher:And even though you admit it's got a lot of entertainment, not fact-based, most of the audience probably sees it as news and truthful. And let me also, as you know, and I'm not giving you some information you don't know, they settled a lawsuit with Dominion for$787 million because, as journalists repeated, lies about the 2020 election. Brett Baer sent emails pressuring the network's decision desk to reverse their 2020 election Arizona call and flip it from Biden to Trump. So how do you square this circle, if you don't mind? I just, I just, are they all the same? I'm not here to defend Fox as a journalism organization.

58:43I think Bret Baier comes the closest on air. But, you know, he's going to be pushed to the right just by the fact that he's so surrounded by people who have been selected because they may not even believe it personally. I mean, I don't know what Greg Gutfeld really believes. But I know he's found an audience for his comedy by approaching it from the right. So when I criticize it, I'm just saying, look, if you want to have a successful global news service, the effort should be to make it very factual and less partisan political. and more in-depth coverage so people actually have, who are interested, actually have the facts in some level of depth.

59:45Kara Swisher:But no conservative viewers are going to abandon Fox or OAN or Newsmax for CNN's version of Fox News Lite, I would assume. In the book, you write that the news service like CNN is a public trust that, quote, the media have, if not an obligation, then a moral imperative to help unite the country rather than endlessly exposing or exacerbating our differences. We started talking about how the media fragment and people want to listen to their own choir. We can argue about whether or not Fox is living up to its obligation to unite the country. I don't think that's its job, nor do I think it is intending to do it.

1:00:18Kara Swisher:But it's clear that on social media, enragement equals engagement. And there's very little incentive to unite, especially financially, just what you're talking about. So where does that leave us as a society? Scared to death about our grandchildren. Scared to death. Going through dramatic changes, already having all kinds of psychological, psychiatric problems, suicide rates, people feeling isolated, young men, couch potatoes connected to the rest of the world only through a digital platform that's manipulating their brain chemistry. I think it's very scary. And I'm not sure I can predict in any meaningful way where it's going to go.

1:01:08I think, you know, I'm a huge believer in education, in the educated citizen being able to end up keeping a political system functional. And I just don't see it. And there are going to be plenty of people that are really well-educated and really understand a lot more than I do. But the average, the mass population is currently subject to great manipulation by entrepreneurs who really should be brain chemistry scientists and are. And people get addicted to things without realizing it.

1:02:01Kara Swisher:Let me read you something to someone who knows you very well. And they were joking. They said John has been out West for too long, which is funny. He said he doesn't recognize the rotten government, the unprecedented Putin-esque subservient oligarchic corruption, and isn't frothing at the mouth about the Marxist tariffs the way he would if a Democrat had done it. The lack of EQ among Republican male business types augmented by other issues is an abandonment of what they all previously declared were their conservative principles because MAGA extremists have slapped an R on the whole tyrannical project.

1:02:37Kara Swisher:And the last thing they said, one of the things that's hard to do is you don't have a solution, I guess. And he jokingly said one loses brain cells living in the plains or mountains, either because of the emptiness or altitudes. That was a joke. Well, you know, look, all I say about myself is I'm really an engineer. You show me a problem and I'll try to figure out an approach to solving it. So I'm very much problem, solution, problem, solution kind of a person, no matter what comes my way. And I'm pragmatic about it. I am not politically biased in one way or another. I would call myself a fiscal conservative and a social liberal.

1:03:24I think government needs to stay out of people's lives as much as possible. And I think the financing of government should be as painless to a market economy as it can be and as little disruptive to a market economy as it can be. you know but i believe we live in a rational world uh with a lot of bad actors and we need to be strong as a country and think about our survivability our sustainability um which we don't do nearly enough i mean our political system is built around a you know a three-part federal government in which the congress was supposed to be the most important and the most active.

1:04:12And unfortunately, they in recent years have been the least active. As a result, the executive and the bureaucracy has been filling in for the vacuum created by Congress not being explicit. Look, there hasn't been a budget coming out of Congress in years. They can't agree on anything. So they just kicked the ball down the road. And what that really means is they're transferring power to the executive branch. It scares me to death that Trump is right at the very edge of presidential power trying to define the extent of it. I hope he doesn't go against the courts, but I do hope that the courts constrain themselves and don't think they're now the ultimate power in the universe.

1:05:07Congress should be the ultimate power in the universe, but Congress is so divided, it's dysfunctional.

1:05:12Kara Swisher:This particular Congress has abrogated its power to him. You know this. Yeah, this is a real, real problem in our form of government. All right. Well, we're going to end there, John. I really appreciate this. I wanted to get the clarity, and you did that. And so I appreciate it. All right? Very good.

1:05:36Kara Swisher:On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor-Russell, Kateri Yocum, Michelle Eloy, Megan Burney, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Maura Fox. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you're a cable cowboy. If not, you're Darth Vader. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.

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1:07:11Kara Swisher:Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. that's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch so why not you try odoo for free at odoo.com that's o-d-o-o.com hi ryan reynolds here for mint mobile are you looking for a beach read this summer may i suggest your big wireless bill it's got suspense mystery a slightly flat emotional arc and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time fortunately though mint story is better.

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From the publisher

While media pioneer John Malone may not be a household name, he’s had a hand in shaping how all of us watch TV. Malone built Denver-based Tele-Communications Inc. into the largest cable company in the country, and then carved out Liberty Media from TCI. Liberty, along with various spinoff companies, have owned controlling stakes in companies like Discovery, SiriusXM, the Atlanta Braves, and Formula 1. Now, at 84, Malone has a new book out, “Born to Be Wired,” about his career and the fellow media titans he met along the way.  

Kara and Malone talk about how he transformed from the Ivy League-educated engineer to one of the “cable cowboys” who helped bring cable television into the homes of millions of Americans, how he squares his libertarian politics with President Donald Trump’s policies and the MAGA Republican Party, and why he thinks Big Tech needs major regulation. He also expands on some of his recent critiques of CNN and supposed left-wing bias in the media. 

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher.
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Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John MaloneOn with Kara Swisher · 1 h 2 min
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