1995 Man of the Year President Bill Climpton with Ben Collins

The Distraction: A Defector Podcast

Defector Media

Sports, Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

CEO of The Onion Ben Collins joins Roth to talk about running The Onion. How does a private citizen actually buy a long-standing-and-at-the-time-languishing satirical newspaper? Do you just sit there and clap your hands as they make jokes? How do you stand back up beloved bits and programs in the media landscape of 2025? And Ben shares two important pieces of information: how he got flown out to Dallas and interviewed Eduardo Nájera as a pre-teen and how to eat a chop suey sandwich.

Do you want to hear your question answered on the pod? Well, give us a call at 909-726-3720. That is 909-PANERA-0!

Stuff We Talked About

Sponsors

- Blueland, where you can get 15% off your first order at https://blueland.com/distraction

Credits

- Hosts: Drew Magary & David Roth

- Producer: Eric Silver

- Editor: Brandon Grugle

- Production Services & Ads: Multitude Podcasts

- Subscribe to Defector!

About The Show

The Distraction is Defector's flagship podcast about sports (and movies, and art, and sandwiches, and certain coastal states) from longtime writers Drew Magary and David Roth. Every week, Drew and Roth tackle subjects, both serious and impossibly stupid, with a parade of guests from around the world of sports and media joining in the fun! Roth and Drew also field Funbag questions from Defector readers, answer listener voicemails, and get upset about the number of people who use speakerphone while in a public bathroom stall. This is a show where everything matters, because everyone could use a Distraction. Head to defector.com for more info.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:45.6	That's audible.com slash Wondery, UK.
0:51.6	We're back. It's the distraction. I'm not Drew. I'm David Roth. Drew's in Upper New England doing family stuff. Disgusting.
0:57.6	So it's just me on the podcast, just me for a whole hour. But also Ben Collins is here. I should have mentioned that earlier. Ben Collins, CEO of Global Tetrahedron, Liberator of the Onion.
1:17.4	Long-time distraction guest aspirant, like I wanted him to be on, but it was a lot harder when you were at NBC.
1:18.9	Ben, welcome finally to the podcast.
1:21.0	David, thanks so much for having.
1:21.7	A long-time listener, first-time caller in the famous words.
1:24.5	Yeah, it means a lot.
1:25.8	Could you turn your radio down in the background, please?
1:29.4	Ben's got an islander's question.
1:31.1	I think we should try to get Brady back.
1:32.9	I don't think there's another chance for us to win another Super Bowl.
1:37.1	You know, this guy waited two hours to ask me if Jason Giambi was going to beat a Pope, okay?
	...

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