Welcome to Wired's big interview. I'm Katie Drummond.

A good onion story needs no setup. Ben Collins is the CEO of the Onion, which has come a long

way from its early days as a campus weekly at the University of Wisconsin. Then came books, podcasts, a

news network, and even a direct-to-video film. The Onion has also traded hands more than once

and been stymied by layoffs, mediocre executives, and bad business models along the way.

But everything old is new again. When Ben Collins took the job last year, he said the words

no one thought we would ever hear. Let's print a newspaper.

Hi, Ben. Thank you for joining. Hey, thanks for having me.

And speaking of Onion Headblind's Ben, while I have you, do you have a recent favorite? What stands out?

What's been good lately? I mean, I have so many. The Galeen Maxwell Blood Splatter one,

can I look it up for you? Please do. Read it to us. All right, cool. Hold on. Galane Maxwell can't help but notice interview room covered in plastic sheet. I think it's perfect. Kind of like explains the whole situation that we're about to see ourselves in, which is potentially horrific. But yeah, no, they turn out like 15 a day that are great. Seriously, I sit there and I still don't know how they do it. When I say they throw away

eight or nine of the best sentences I would ever write every day. I mean that sincerely. Like,

they are just prolific and incredible comedy writers. Well, speaking of sentences, Ben, we are going to start with a little warm up. We're going to get our muscles warm, our brains warm. I'm going to ask you some very fast sentences, some quick questions, and you're going to answer them quickly. Are you ready? Sure. Let's go. Let's do it. Ben, what does the algorithm know about you? Oh, way too much.

A lot of wrong stuff.

I wish my net worth is what the algorithm said it was.

Okay, making a note to look up Ben's net worth after we finish this taping.

What is a piece of tech you wish existed but doesn't exist yet?

Oh, I've ever seen the movie It Follows?

Absolutely not, but tell us about it anyway.

Oh, it's a horror movie that's supposed to be set in no specific time frame. But there is a phone they have in there that's like a, it's literally like a clamshell and it's an e-reader. It's like the pace of tech that I want it to be. Everyone look it up. It's great. there is a disinformation reporter named Jane Lipvinenko who says that, you know, the sharks in the Atlantic Ocean should eat all

the cables underneath the Atlantic Ocean that connect the internet. That's the piece of

technology that I want. I want a shark that... That eats the internet. At this point, we may as well.

...