Taking Risks and Traveling the World, with Tom Freston!
Part-Time Genius
iHeartPodcasts and Kaleidoscope
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tom Freston’s resume is real, but reads like fiction: he served cocktails in the Caribbean, created a fashion brand in India, co-founded MTV, became CEO of Viacom… and after he was unceremoniously fired, he helped launch a TV network in Afghanistan and became an advocate for global health initiatives. As if that wasn’t enough, he’s written an extraordinary memoir, Unplugged: Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu. So today Tom sits down with Mango to talk about some of those adventures, including the time he ended up in a sauna with David Bowie and Paul McCartney, how The Real World came to be, and why he believes TV can change the world.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
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| 0:04.3 | Black Friday at Abercrombie is here with 25 to 50% off everything. |
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| 0:19.1 | 30% of everything valid in stores and online from 24th of November to 1st of December |
| 0:23.1 | 2025 in UK-EU. |
| 0:24.8 | Excludes clearance and gift cards, online price for flex discount. |
| 0:27.4 | Use code IHeart AF to get an additional 15% of everything in stores and online at checkout |
| 0:31.7 | from 24th of November to 1st of December 2025 in UKEU. |
| 0:35.2 | Excludes clearance and gift cards. |
| 0:36.5 | See your details online. You're listening to Part-Time Genius, the production of kaleidoscope and IHeartRadio. |
| 1:00.6 | Hey there, podcast listeners. I'm Munga Shatikother, aka Mango, and Will is off today. But I've |
| 1:09.0 | got an incredible treat for you. If you've listened to the show, you know how |
| 1:13.1 | much I loved Nickelodeon as a kid. My friends and I in third grade used to practice for |
| 1:18.4 | double dare every day in the summer, just waiting for the execs to call. Spoiler alert, |
| 1:25.5 | they never did. But I loved the way Nickelodeon felt like it was talking to me |
| 1:30.7 | and really providing this channel for me. And then years later, it was the same with MTV and then |
| 1:38.3 | Comedy Central. And weirdly enough, these channels were something that I thought a lot about when Will and I founded |
| 1:45.4 | Mental Floss years and years ago. |
| 1:48.3 | Anyway, the reason I am telling you any of this is that for today's show, I am interviewing |
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