Eric argues that Steve Ballmer's bets on Microsoft's cloud business paved the way for Satya Nadella's success. Investors did not see the value of the cloud at the time, as Amazon and other companies hadn't shown huge financial success yet. Ballmer also made other smart bets, like investing in Facebook.

Although there have been a number of articles which have come out since November saying Apple will buy Netflix, Eric throws cold water on this idea. Netflix is too big and Apple is too late if they'd want to do this. Netflix has reached escape velocity and they're too big, even for the biggest company in the world to buy.

Eric goes through his 9 predictions for what will happen in the tech and media worlds in 2018. Will AT&T and Time Warner close? What about Disney and Fox? Will there be more mega-deals? What will happen to Apple? What about the price of cryptocurrencies? Thanks for a great 2017 and all your comments and listens.

John Skipper's shocking resignation as ESPN's President on Monday leaves a number of questions about who the company will pick as his successor and how that will affect ESPN, Disney, and Disney's stock. Eric goes through John's strengths and weaknesses, the short-list of candidates to replace him and gives his prediction of who it will be.

Now that the deal has been finally announced between Fox and Disney, there's been a raft of commentary about it including a lot of off-base information. Eric goes over his top 5 misconceptions about the deal.

Eric spoke with ESPN's Don Van Natta on how he became an investigative reporter, why he switched to ESPN from the New York Times, and his recent detailed pieces on the NFL, Roger Goodell, and Jerry Jones.

Thanks to Josh Dickson of Onecast.fm for his help producing.

Also, be sure to check out Don's Sunday Long Read newsletter and new podcast as well.

CNBC's David Faber reported on Dec. 5th that Disney is set to announce next week that it's acquiring a set of assets from 21st Century Fox for $60 billion. The assets will help make Disney's planned entertainment and sports OTT apps much more compelling. Faber announced that the deal is set to also include Fox's network of Regional Sports Networks in the deal. Eric discusses the implications of this move.

Eric goes in-depth on why he's excited about Disney's business and how he sees a path for the company to trade to over $200/share by 2020. He goes through the potential value of the old cable assets, new video assets, the growth of the existing assets, and potential M&A to fill out the conglomerate.

Eric spoke to Balaji S. Srinivasan about his company, 21.co, and his recent writings about the blockchain space and tokens.

Topics covered include:

- what are tokens and why are they important,

- what types of assets lend themselves to tokenization,

- how is regulation likely to keep up with the growth in the underlying technology,

- how should we think about valuing tokens,

- is the current interest level in the blockchain warranted given its long-term potential, and

- what new cryptocurrencies intrigue him the most.

Thanks to Onecast.fm for the pod software used to record this.

Eric caught up with Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse. On January 1st, 2017, XRP’s market cap was $236 million. Today, it’s close to $9 billion. We go over how Brad came to join Ripple, the opportunity of cross-border banking, the criticisms he sometimes hears about Ripple/XRP, and a bit of science fiction future visions for how cryptocurrencies might work in the future. Thanks to Onecast.fm for the pod software. (Due to a software error, there's a lag between Eric's and Brad's voices which makes Eric talk over Brad in several spots. Apologies!)