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Past Due with Ana Marie Cox and Open Mike Eagle

Was the Serious Version of You Holding You Back? with Ben Collins

Past Due with Ana Marie Cox and Open Mike Eagle

Ana Marie Cox, Open Mike Eagle, and Andrew Steven

Business, Performing Arts, Arts, Society & Culture

4.66.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2026

⏱️ 65 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion, joins Ana and Mike to talk about what happens when you stop trying to fit into a box, and accidentally end up running one of the biggest newspapers in America. From burning out covering extremism at NBC News to buying The Onion for less than you'd expect, Ben gets into what it actually cost him to bottle up his personality on cable news, and why the humans-first approach is what's saving the thing he loves. Get more at patreon.com/pastdue Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

What I've dedicated my life to is revenge.

0:04.0

A brand new drama based on the best-selling novel.

0:07.0

They think they're better than us.

0:08.0

Who do you think you are?

0:10.0

I'm going to prove to them that they're wrong.

0:11.0

She's punishing me.

0:13.0

You destroyed my family.

0:14.0

I will not rest until I've destroyed yours.

0:17.0

A woman of substance on Channel 4 starts tonight at 9.

0:20.0

What if the secret to doing your best work is letting go A woman of substance on Channel 4 starts tonight at 9.

0:27.0

What if the secret to doing your best work is letting go of the version that was slowly killing you?

0:35.6

This week we're talking to Ben Collins, CEO of the Onion, about what it looks like to leave traditional journalism behind and find something that actually feels alive. We talk about what it means to build something in the middle of a media collapse

0:39.1

and why politics and the health of the creative economy might be the same story.

0:43.9

The creative economy is broken, but some people are still making it work.

0:48.0

We're here to find out how.

0:49.8

I'm Anna Marie Cox.

0:50.9

And I'm open Mike Eagle. And this is past due.

1:02.5

All right.

1:09.1

So we were talking about LinkedIn because I'm obsessed with how bad it is and what it does to people's. Like there's actually some studies about how LinkedIn is depressing for people.

1:14.0

And not just because, like, they're searching for a job, but just compare to that.

1:18.2

But what were you saying about LinkedIn?

1:20.4

Oh, I went on there, like, maybe this last year I accidentally became a LinkedIn influencer because I went on there and I just started posting stuff and they didn't actually look at what people were saying.

...

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