The Grill Room

Ben Collins, C.E.O. of The Onion, joins Dylan to make sense of their acquisition of Infowars and the purpose driving it. Collins walks through the legal and financial complexity of redirecting money to Sandy Hook families owed damages by a bankrupt Alex Jones, including the unique $500,000 six-month licensing deal at the center of it. They also discuss The Onion’s successful pivot to user-supported media—and why, in an era of rampant misinformation, satire has never felt more necessary.

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Julia Alexander and Dylan Byers weigh in on Jim Bankoff’s looming sale of Vox Media’s assets—including its podcast network and New York magazine—and the field of potential buyers circling the deal. They also discuss how A.I. is reshaping the business and audience dynamics of journalism, the return of Brian Williams on Netflix, the latest wave of industry layoffs, and much more.

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Former NBC News chief Noah Oppenheim joins Dylan to assess the slow fade of linear TV news—and what legacy players like NBC, CBS, and CNN can do to stay relevant. Noah’s playbook: lean into tentpoles like NBC’s ‘Today’ and CBS’s ‘60 Minutes,’ invest in premium video content, adapt to the way people actually consume media now, and, perhaps most importantly, develop a point of view audiences can’t get anywhere else—à la Fox News.

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The legendary Chris Lehane, now OpenAI’s chief policy guy, makes the case for the company’s surprising, nine-figure acquisition of TBPN, the daily tech and business talk show. Then TBPN president Dylan Abruscato swings by to untangle the logic—and ambiguity—of their new partnership, how OpenAI could help supercharge growth, and what it all means for future tech-media entanglements.

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Dylan and Julia reunite to scrutinize OpenAI’s baffling acquisition of TBPN—and the enduring notion that tech companies can fix media simply by owning it. They also weigh in on LinkedIn’s reported interest in Beehiiv, Versant’s grab for Vox Media’s podcast network, and the increasingly muddled media M&A landscape writ large.

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Gavin Purcell, co-founder of A.I. for Humans, joins Julia for a candid conversation about A.I.’s transformative—and destabilizing—impact on the creator economy, from lowering the barriers to entry for creators to questions about I.P., monetization, and control. They also weigh into the need for media companies to embrace the future of A.I. and invest in new technologies and talent.

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Former F.C.C. chairJessica Rosenworcel and former NPR chief Gary Knell join Dylan at the Common Sense Media Summit to discuss the precarious state of the agency under Brendan Carr. They scrutinize his aggressive posture toward broadcasters, the potential implications for the First Amendment, and the broader risks to democracy—while also exploring solutions to support local news, combat consolidation, and protect kids in an age of infinite slop.

On the Draymond Green Show, no topic is off limits. In this episode Draymond welcomes Skip Bayless to discuss Michael Jordan, Stephen A Smith, LeBron James, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, and they debate whether or not Draymond is really the dirtiest player of all time. 

Live from the Common Sense Media Summit in San Francisco, Attorneys General Rob Bonta and Raúl Torrez join Dylan to chart the jarring similarities between Big Tech and the tobacco industry. They discuss the ongoing lawsuits against companies like Meta and TikTok, the harmful effects of these platforms on children, the need for accountability and transparency, the challenge of regulating social media, the risk of the federal government preempting state laws, and more.

Julia and Dylan scrutinize CNN’s attempt to loosen the tie—turning Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper into something closer to podcast personalities in the mold of Pat McAfee and Joe Rogan. Naturally, the effort has invited ridicule—and raises a deeper question: does C.E.O. Mark Thompson’s vision align with what audiences actually want, and more importantly, what his audience needs?