Ex-Disney CEO BREAKS SILENCE on Bob Iger & The Truth About Disney | PBD Podcast #864

Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek sits down with Patrick Bet-David for a rare, wide-ranging conversation about his nearly three decades at Disney and his rise from the home entertainment division to CEO of one of the world’s most influential companies. Chapek shares the strategy behind the Disney Vault, his high-stakes bet on Blu-ray, navigating COVID as a new CEO, his complicated relationship with Bob Iger, Disney’s culture wars, streaming, leadership, succession, and what really happened behind the scenes before his exit. 👞 Get the NEW Billionaire Suede Loafer: https://bit.ly/4ym5oRA 🏰 Get Bob Chapek’s book, Behind the Castle: https://bit.ly/46LbgrY 👕 Shop the Icon Collection: https://bit.ly/3TuUU3x 👞 Get the FLB1s: https://bit.ly/4mC4uf6 Ⓜ️ Connect on Minnect: https://bit.ly/4kSVkso Ⓜ️ PBD Podcast Circles: https://bit.ly/4mAWQAP 👔 Bet-David Consulting: https://bit.ly/4lzQph2 🥃 Boardroom Cigar Lounge: https://bit.ly/4pzLEXj 🇰 Kalshi: http://kalshi.com/pbd SUBSCRIBE TO: @VALUETAINMENT @BetDavidConsulting @vtgenz @ValuetainmentComedy ABOUT US: Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of two boys and two girls. He currently resides in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  You just signed my death warrant.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  What I should have done is seen the smoke on the horizon. In the beginning, I saw what happened to Jay. I saw what happened to Tom. But I'm different. That's not gonna happen to me. I think he got a taste of retirement, or frankly, AKA, less relevance. And I don't think he liked it. He didn't like being the color commentary guy. He wanted to be the play-by-play guy.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  He looked miserable sitting next to you.

• 0:32Speaker 00

  And I knew that I was gonna have a rough time, and then it just started piling on. When I knew I really had a problem is when he did the New York Times article. By the way, I had no idea it was coming. He didn't tell me. His publicist didn't tell me. And it's my understanding that the board didn't even know. I'm at home, and someone calls me and says, "You lost your job already?"

• 0:56Speaker 00

  "You signed my execution papers. How do I recover from this?"

• 1:01Speaker 00

  From then on, it was a death by a thousand cuts. It's not a miracle that I lost my job. It's a miracle that it took three years.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Was there ever a conversation that we effed up behind closed doors pushing too much LGBTQ to kids and families?

• 1:17Speaker 00

  There was plenty of conversation as to what was the right direction for the company. When I got the CEO job, I was concerned that this could create a backlash.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Are you long by on Disney?

• 1:31Speaker 00

  I'd have to see where Josh is gonna take it. I think it's gonna take some courage.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  He has to confront Iger.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  He has to confront legacy management decisions. He has to be bold. He has to have courage. Bob had a lot of support from loyalists on the board.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  The four board members that he replaced from Eisner?

• 1:49Speaker 00

  I think Bob was always very, very confident that he can have his job back whenever he wanted.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  He hasn't called you since.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  So I'm gonna ask an indirect way of helping our guys, our production team that works so hard, get a raise. Do you wanna help them get a raise? This is how you can help us out. Forty-nine percent of you watch our podcasts, that our editors work so hard, producers, cutters, all of them. Our production team, thirty-two of them that work here, they work very, very hard to deliver a good quality to you. If you enjoy our show, and you wanna help this thing get bigger, so we can take our talent that we have in-house to support this production all the time, and maybe even give them a raise, then please subscribe to the channel. That allows us to get more viewership, and indirectly, it makes bigger opportunities for our current team that we have. Thank you so much. So Disney, the story of Disney for the audience that doesn't know.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Did you pursue it? Was it accidental? Did it happen where there was a job opening, "Hey babe, maybe we should think about it"? How did that happen?

• 3:06Speaker 00

  Good question. So I was talking to a friend, and I said, "You know, I really feel like I need to get back to California, 'cause I'd spent a little bit of time with H.J. Heinz in Long Beach. Really would like to get back to California. Cincinnati's great, but eh." And he says, "Well, I have a friend who just applied for a director of marketing job at Disney. He didn't get the job, but I know there's one that's open." So I just wrote a letter to the hiring manager. And interestingly enough, I got a call back. And when I got the call back, it was only like, maybe five days later. They said, "Well, we have a job, but we're not really hiring right now. We're gonna be hiring in like, three or four months."

• 3:50Speaker 00

  And I didn't wanna let that opportunity go, so I stuck my foot in the door before she can shut. I said, "I have a commercial shoot on my current job in Los Angeles next week. Would you mind if I just stop by one day, as long as I'm gonna be in town, and just say hello?"

• 4:07Speaker 01

  This is the one with Will Chamberlain?

• 4:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, yes, it was. Exactly, it was.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  How was he? How was Will Chamberlain?

• 4:13Speaker 00

  He was great. He was great. You know, I knew I-

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Was he flirting with the girls?

• 4:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's got the reputation.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  No, he was a gentleman.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  He was a gentleman, that's good.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, playing basketball in dress shoes, which was interesting. But, uh, but, uh, you know, it was, it was one of those things where they said, "Okay, if you're gonna be in town, sure, come on in." And three days later, I had a opportunity. Well, they actually gave me an opportunity to come back the next day, but I was supposed to be on a flight back to Cincinnati with my boss. And I figured that would be kinda awkward to try to explain why I'm staying. So I said I'd come back Monday. They agreed, and I think by Wednesday had a job offer. So I went in like, five days from getting the phone calls saying, "We're not hiring anybody," to getting the job.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  How many interviews did you do? Was it an extensive interview process, even at that time?

• 5:03Speaker 00

  Six or seven.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  And who were you meeting with? What did this start out?

• 5:05Speaker 00

  I met with, I met with the president of the segment. I met with the vice president of marketing, and a whole host of the direct reports of the president.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  What did they ask you? Do you remember the questions? I know it's a while back.

• 5:17Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. No, they were trying to figure out how legitimate I was. Disney at that time really was all about the theatrical business, movies in theaters. And now they had this package goods item, which was videotapes. You know, 'cause it was kinda coming off the era of, I mean, depending on, you know, your age, this may make sense, Blockbuster or Photomat. People were renting videos, and this was the first chance to actually own a movie, to create a library. And that business was in its infancy. And so I think, you know, I give credit to Ann Daly, who was the president of the division at that time,

• 5:56Speaker 00

  to know that they needed to do more than just sort of photocopy the theatrical marketing plan. Renting a movie or watching a movie in the theater is a little bit different process than I wanna own that forever. And this business model that I was working on was really the ownership side primarily. And so they wanted a package goods marketer. And again, the Disney thing just happened to be a fantastic product category for me to, to do that in. And ended up getting the job, and that's how it started.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  So they wanna know if you were real or not. You're going through six interviews, then you get the job. So you come back, and is it fairly quickly that you moved to LA?

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Six weeks later.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Six weeks later, you moved to LA, okay. And when you get there, somebody five minutes before you got there got laid off? What was the story about the person that got laid off right before you?

• 6:52Speaker 00

  Well, I had mentioned that this was a very quick turn, between the time I got there and the time I got the job. One of the reasons why they said that it was a work in process, the job was, because they hadn't actually

• 7:04Speaker 00

  removed the person who was in the job yet. That was a-

• 7:08Speaker 01

  That's an awkward moment.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  It was a termination. And I get there, and I'm sitting in the lobby, waiting to start my first day. I'm early, I'm gung ho, I'm ready to roll. Just moved to Los Angeles, and I'm waiting and waiting and waiting, and it's really taking a long time. I'm like, "Wow, I've been out here for an hour and a half, two hours, waiting, and something doesn't feel right." Well, they were in the process of actually firing the person.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Did you actually see him getting fired coming out of the office?

• 7:34Speaker 00

  I did not. I did not.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  They did it in a different conference room?

• 7:37Speaker 00

  They did it in a different conference room, and it was like, two ships passing in the night, we didn't see. They showed me to my office, welcomed me. They showed me to my office. I said hello to my new administrative assistant, who was completely shocked because she just found out five minutes earlier.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  And she was his?

• 7:54Speaker 00

  She was his. That, so she learned immediately, "He's gone, and here's his replacement," within five minutes. I got there, and his papers were all over the desk.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Did you ever talk to him, or you and him never interacted?

• 8:06Speaker 00

  Uh, we had an interaction after that.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Just like, "Hey, what do you find this? How does this work? Where's the-"

• 8:12Speaker 00

  Well, no, I just wanted to, you know, introduce myself and, you know, wish him luck.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's, that's your day one?

• 8:19Speaker 00

  That's my day one.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Chaotic day one.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, well-

• 8:22Speaker 01

  That leads to a nice story.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, it does.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Okay, so what happens next? 'Cause you, you end up having quite a few victories. You know, you, you, you did some stuff, you would, uh, a lot of, the main word that I saw all over the place in the book was "as a disruptor." You would disrupt some segments of the business, that even some people would say, "Bob, you sure we wanna do this? You sure this is gonna work out?" And ended up working on multiple times.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  That's sort of my history, yeah.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, would you mind sharing some of those successes on how that happened?

• 8:48Speaker 00

  Sure. Well, I always like to think that I see, one of the things that I think is one of my strengths is I seek clarity through objectivity. And sometimes- There's a lot of learned behaviors or expectations or norms that get layered on objectivity that turn it into subjectivity or turn it into dogma. And one of my strengths always was to kind of cut through the dogma and find out what's been layered on over the years that may not even be necessary or critical or advantageous. And I like to kind of strip it down. And so throughout my career, whether it was in the studio in the home video side, or whether it was in Disney Consumer Products, or whether it was in theme parks, or even

• 9:33Speaker 00

  at the CEO level, I like to think that I was able to kind of cut through all of that, find the truth, and then act on the truth, even if it was something that defied convention. And it seemed to be a pretty good formula for me throughout the years.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  What were some of the victories? I know the DVDs, I know some of the...

• 9:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Was it VHS when it came there?

• 9:56Speaker 00

  It was VHS when it came there. So, you know, whether it was, you know, my contribution to the moratorium and the Disney Vault, you know, the idea is if you want to sell something, you make it available.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 10:09Speaker 00

  Well, this idea was completely different. This idea was by taking it away, you create scarcity and people will buy it more. And that was just a head scratcher for a lot of people. Wait, you're going to tell me, you're going to take Dumbo, or whatever the title might be, you take Dumbo off the market for seven years, re-release it for one year, and you're going to sell more in that one year at a higher price than you would in total for all seven years? Yes, and why? The reason is, is that like any product, if it's just ubiquitous and it's out there, it loses, tends to lose its value. And I noticed when I walked through a Walmart, or a Target, or a Best Buy, there's all these VHSs that were in dump-ins.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  In other words, just, they weren't the nice ones that were stacked that had just been new releases.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  They were, and they all had holes drilled in them, which means it was old inventory, $1.99. And I saw classic movies from other studios with holes drilled into them. You know, basically, $1.99. I'm like, how could that be 1999, a year ago, and now it's $1.99? Well, the reason is because sales slowed. So my thought was, rather than treating your product that way, what if we revere it? What if we pump it up and make it its release? Like they would, a big deal, but you make its removal a big deal too, the Disney Vault, and then you withhold it from the market for seven years, and then you bring it back

• 11:42Speaker 00

  into the marketplace, possibly in a new format, but at least a gold edition, platinum edition, silver edition, whatever edition, you add extras to it, you somehow make it better, restored, newly restored.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  How do you sell that to the board or the team if it's like, for seven years, I'm not going to get the revenue on this product, but trust me, in seven years, we're going to blow up?

• 12:04Speaker 00

  Well, we tried it. We tried it on individual titles.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  How did they push back? What did they say to you?

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Well, it just counterintuitive. And then, then the biggest thing was, once it was successful, anytime an executive who was actually managing the segment or division wanted to make a number, they wanted to open up the vault, because they saw how crazy it was when we re-released something, whether it was in the same format or maybe a successive format. In other words, VHS gets replaced by DVD, DVD gets replaced by...

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Blu-ray.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  Blu-ray. Blu-ray gets replaced by digital. Every time that happens, that, you know, we could sell. And so what you would, we were selling at that time, geez, you know, 10 million copies of a title, 10 million copies at $20 apiece. We would announce it coming out into the market, we would announce it was going away, we would, you know, have a mnemonic where the vault door would slam, you know, going into the vault for the next seven years, you know, and okay, boom.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  How would you promote that to the audience? Because I don't remember that. How would you promote it to the audience that's going into the vault?

• 13:06Speaker 00

  We would show, you know, going away, you know, into the Disney Vault.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  This is like the last chance to buy it? Is that how it was?

• 13:13Speaker 00

  It's the last chance, exactly what it was. It was, and we would like put a timer on it, seven days more, six days more, five days more.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  And where do I see that? On your site?

• 13:22Speaker 00

  On the television, on television.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  On television, I've seen that.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. And the reason that was important, again, there was an objective, strategic reason that was important.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  I mean, it's brilliant.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  Well, the number one reason why people never bought a title wasn't because they weren't interested in it, it's that they never got around to it.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Hmm, so you created urgency by doing that?

• 13:39Speaker 00

  Created urgency by doing it. And it was, I mean, until distribution went digital and there was now ubiquity of product, it really was the main driver for studio profitability for 20 years. But then, you know, product became digitally distributed, and there was no more value to, because you can get a title anytime you wanted, you know, once we started distributing it digitally. And so it, you know, lived out its normal life. But there you go, there's...

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Is that what it looked like?

• 14:14Speaker 00

  That is exactly...

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Is there a video?

• 14:16Speaker 00

  The difference is that that vault door would shut. Going back into the Disney Vault, you know, Aladdin, boom, and you'd show it, and...

• 14:25Speaker 01

  And so let me ask you, when that happened, was there eBay out back then or not yet?

• 14:28Speaker 00

  No, not back yet.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  So were people going at auctions and buying stuff online, like, hey, if I pay $90, now I'm selling it for $300?

• 14:36Speaker 00

  Yes, there you go. There you go. There you go. There's the vault door.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  So you would put this up to the world, and they would see that something's going into the vault?

• 14:45Speaker 00

  They would see something's going into the vault, and then I would get calls from friends, hey, my daughter's got a birthday, could you open the Disney Vault?

• 14:52Speaker 01

  There's no such thing as a vault, though.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  Well, there's a vault, but it doesn't look anything like that, and it was where the masters were held. But we didn't store 20 million units inside that vault there. But there was a bunch of people that were involved in this with me, some exceptional marketers by the name of Lauren McPherson, Gordon Ho, Andy Seditzky, who were all part of this, and they did a spectacular job. We all had different pieces of this. I had the Disney brand, I was working on marketing the Disney brand products, because, you know, we had other brands like, you know, Touchstone Hollywood Pictures and, and things like that. So there was a whole bunch of brands, and they didn't, those non-Disney brands didn't

• 15:37Speaker 00

  have the benefit of having the Disney Vault, but we all really, really did some exceptional things back then.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  When you opened it up, when the seven years came by, and you're opening it up?

• 15:49Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  What were some numbers you guys would put up on day one?

• 15:52Speaker 00

  It depends on the title, but, you know, Snow White. Okay, so Snow White was the classic, because it was the one that started them all, right? And that particular title, I think we did in excess, I believe, over 10 million units. And that would have been at, by the way, at $20...

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Units?

• 16:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, that would have been $1.99, and we would have sold 100,000 of them if we didn't have that strategy. But we wanted to protect, Disney's all about the content, it's all about the equity, it's all about the brand, so we needed to protect that, but at the same time, commercialize it. How do you do it? Make it scarce. And don't treat it like something that belongs in a dump-in with a hole drilled in it, and...

• 16:34Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest, or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an Ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 17:03Speaker 03

  College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition, even a marching band wake-up call at 5:55 in 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.

• 17:33Speaker 04

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 18:04Speaker 05

  How many discounts does USAA Auto Insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount, safe driver discount, uh, new vehicle discount, storage discount, legacy...

• 18:14Speaker 06

  How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com/autodiscount. Restrictions apply.

• 18:19Speaker 07

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses, set up required. Compatibility and availability varies, 18 plus.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Ten million units in a day at twenty bucks.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  Of a movie made in nineteen thirty-seven.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  That is unbelievable, Bob. So now when the board's seeing this and saying, hey, good job, Bob, what's the reaction from the board, from the leadership team?

• 18:59Speaker 00

  I get made president of home video.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  And this is when the guy was leaving Microsoft and your wife wasn't feeling well and he was going to be the EVP. You applied for the EVP, but they said instead of giving you EVP, they're gonna give you the president.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  President.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  So this is a very important lesson for the average person, if you don't mind unpacking, because at that time, you know, what you talk about in the book, your wife's going through a real health issue. We're not talking about something small. This is a challenging time for you.

• 19:24Speaker 00

  It's tough.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  So you have an opportunity to, and Cindy, right? If I'm, if I'm.

• 19:28Speaker 00

  Cindy, yeah.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  And you have an opportunity to take on a life-changing job. It's gonna pay well, but it's gonna come with responsibilities, time, all of that stuff. But at the same time, your wife has leukemia. How are you managing this season of your life?

• 19:43Speaker 00

  Through perseverance and just mental toughness. So I went in to see my, my boss to let him know that my wife had leukemia and was gonna need a bone marrow transplant, which, serious today, but it was really serious back then. And he said, well, before you tell me what you gotta tell me, I'm, I'm leaving. I wanna tell you I'm leaving and my job's gonna be open and you can apply if you want.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  And so I, you know, I was like, here, here's my chance to, you know, re, reach, reach for the, the, the, all I can be.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Is this guy Mitch?

• 20:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, Mitch Cook, yeah, yeah, good guy. But at the same time, I've got a bigger priority, so I went home and told my wife and she goes, you gotta do this. You gotta do this.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Good for her.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  So shortly thereafter, she went into City of Hope, fantastic place, they saved her life. City of Hope for a bone marrow transplant and her brother was the donor. But that basically meant that for about six weeks, she was in the bubble. Like, you know, there's no, no anything could've killed her if it was a virus or a bacteria. So she was in tough situation and we have three kids. And we were about an hour and a half away from Duarte, where City of Hope was. And so I would go to work, well, first of all, I would get up, I would work out at about three o'clock in the morning because I needed the stress relief.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  I would go and get the kids breakfast, I would pack up their homework, get them breakfast and take them off to school and then go to the Disney studio, which was about an hour away from where I lived. That was in Burbank. I would work until about noon and then I would head back to pick them up from school at about one thirty. And then I would take them, that's, so that's another hour. I would take them another hour and a half because that's even past Burbank, about another forty-five minutes. Probably know where that's at, you're past Pasadena.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  And.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Two-ten, one-thirty-four.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  Right, exactly. And so I would take them to Duarte every day to see their mom, get there about four o'clock, four-thirty. We would stay about two hours. I would drive them home, pick up some food, as bad as it is, in the car as they did their homework, get them home, give them baths, put them in the bed. We didn't have any family in the area. All our family was back in the Midwest, in Indiana. So, and about eleven o'clock, I would, you know, finish up laundry and collapse and get up and do it again. And I did that pretty much every day for six weeks. Being sort of dad, being, you know, housekeeper, doing everything that I could for her, both

• 22:26Speaker 00

  physically and psychologically, and cut my teeth as a first-time president at Disney. So, you know, it's, it's amazing what people can do when they have to. You know, when, when you're, when you're pushed to the limit, that's when you're the best you can be. And I, I felt that even though I was, you know, operating, you know, probably at fifty percent of, of time capacity because of my other obligations, I, I was, I was a hundred percent on it. I was performing at a hundred and ten percent of capacity at fifty percent of the time.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  What, what gave you strength at that time to go through it? You're by yourself. It's not like you got a sibling to go see a friend to go, you're, what gave you strength to go through it?

• 23:07Speaker 00

  My wife. I had to do it for her.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  And, and, and the story you tell, the fact that, what are the chances that the matching bone marrow was the brother Rob, I think, right?

• 23:19Speaker 00

  Rob, right, right. You know, her other siblings, she's got three other, or two other siblings and they weren't even close. There was not one allele match. They, they matched by alleles and Rob was six out of six alleles. And as a result, he was, he was the donor and he saved her life.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  You mentioned the doctor. The doctor sounded like you had a Persian name.

• 23:46Speaker 00

  Natamani.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a, that's a Persian lesson. It could be an Indian lesson, but it's also.

• 23:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. I, I'm not sure, but Dr. Nadi, as she's called, was amazing. She was really amazing. She used to get a kick out of me because I would study the blood journal before I'd go in for one of Cindy's appointments and I'd be asking her about different treatments. And she was like, hi, where'd you get that? I said, well, I read the blood journal.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  You majored in this, it's kind of.

• 24:13Speaker 00

  Well, I say, I kinda, kinda did. So, you know, I always wondered, why, it's because my career.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Makes no sense with the degree.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  Took me so far away from, you know, microbiology. Why did I do that? Well, it really came in handy because I was able, and then unfortunately, three years later, despite the bone marrow transplant, one or two cells survived and started replicating. And actually, the treatment that she ended up getting was something that I found in a blood journal. And because Dr. Nadi was thinking of a more traditional treatment, I said, well, what about a donor lymphocyte infusion? And she goes, how do you know about donor lymphocyte infusion? I said, well, I've been doing my research. And she goes, it's very risky, but it's very effective and you just have to understand the risks. And that's what she ended up doing is not very common treatment, at least then, I'm not sure now.

• 25:04Speaker 00

  But Rob came back in, they spun out his lymphocytes. Was very scary because it went wrong in the beginning, but I had a lot of guilt about that. But she survived it.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Well, thank God. It's, it's girl, boy, girl, right? I think the son's in the middle or the son's the?

• 25:21Speaker 00

  For, for me, for our kids. Yeah, girl, boy, girl.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Girl, boy, girl, right. And at that time, while you're going through it, by the way, what did Mitch end up doing when he went to Microsoft? Did he end up climbing as well?

• 25:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, I think he did well. I think he did well. I don't recall exactly, you know, what he did when, but he stayed there for quite a long time.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  So, so now you make it past this transition. How, how much is Disney also watching you and saying, this guy's legit? He's, he can, you know, he can have some mental toughness and he can handle, you know, tough times. Are they sizing you up that way as well or not necessarily?

• 25:55Speaker 00

  I don't know how aware they really were of my personal situation. Obviously, they were aware because, you know, I wasn't there in the afternoon for six weeks when I first got the job.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Who were you communicating with at that time? Was it the president level?

• 26:09Speaker 00

  At that, at that point, I believe I was communicating with Dick Cook.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Okay. And what, what position?

• 26:15Speaker 00

  Dick was the head of the studio.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Oh, so you're dealing directly with the head of the studio. So he knows what, he, he has an idea what.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  And he was aware, right? He, he was aware that I was going through challenges. But one of the things that I was really, really fortunate is that they always gave me a lot of leash in my jobs. They gave me a lot of room to do what I wanted to do. And as I challenged Dogma, they were always, and no one ever said, don't, don't do it. Michael Eisner was very supportive as well when it came to some bigger things that would require his approval. And it was all, it was all really very positive, very enabling.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  What wouldn't they compromise? You can't become a, at one point, a half a trillion dollar company with this kind of a brand that's one of the most famous brands. What did they not compromise?

• 27:04Speaker 00

  Anything that risked brand equity.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  What does that mean?

• 27:07Speaker 00

  They would not, you know, Steve Jobs used to talk about brand deposits and brand withdrawals. And, you know, because obviously Apple's very similar, you always have to be conscious of making a brand withdrawal. You have to put in a lot more than you can ever take out. And so creativity and the brand are the two things at Disney that are, you cannot, you cannot compromise whatsoever.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  What areas did they, did they invigorate creativity or was it more like they recruited creativity? They couldn't take a six and make it creative?

• 27:39Speaker 00

  Culture. It's a cultural thing. They, you know, I mean, obviously, they got great, great talent. I mean, look at Disney's, Disney's history. But it really, it's a cultural thing. It's a, those two elements, stewardship of the brand and, and, and, you know, really fostering creativity are two of the biggest hallmarks that I think have made Disney what, what Disney is. And that goes true, you know, all the way back to Walt.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting to, to, you know, build a, a brand like that and then you, you, what would the, the thing they Imagineers, is that what they call them?

• 28:18Speaker 00

  Imagineers, yeah. Imagineers are the group of artists, engineers, and architects.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Fascinating documentary on that.

• 28:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  I don't know how many, it's like forty, forty-eight, I don't know how many episodes it is, that's a long list.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  It is, it is a long one. But they, they're responsible essentially for a lot of things in the company, but most notably, the theme parks and putting in the, you know, developing the attractions, developing the restaurants, theming the whole places towards story, cruise ships, designing cruise ships, designing hotels, extraordinarily talented group of people.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Who created that, who came up with that idea?

• 28:53Speaker 00

  Uh, uh, well, I think it was the, I think it was, um, uh,

• 28:58Speaker 01

  It's in fifty-two.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  Roy, I think it was Roy, was it Roy that did it?

• 29:02Speaker 01

  So it was a real thing, it was like a real, like, and the people who were Imagineers, was that, who got that qualification, what would take for me to be that?

• 29:13Speaker 00

  Uh, generally, you had to, it's more of a physical thing than a film thing, although obviously there's elements of film and attractions and things, you basically, most, most of the Imagineers were from architecture schools, I mean.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Architecture?

• 29:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're, yeah, it's a real balance between, right, practical, because if you have an attraction that's gonna run a million times a day, and holds a certain number of people, that's a very scientific, you know, sort of, uh, basis of approaching things, but it had to be storytelling at the same time, and architects were very good at bringing those two together. Now, don't get me wrong, there's people that are into costuming there, there's people that are into music, there's people that are into film, there's, there's a whole, there's a whole variety of people, but the core of the people are people that design attractions. And, you know, there's physics involved, but there's creativity, they all have to tell a story, and so, you get some really incredibly talented people that have gone through the doors there at Imagineering.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Bob, you, you know, in many sales organizations, they'll say, sale is king, and many tech companies will say, you know, engineers are king, who was king at Disney? Who, who was protected?

• 30:23Speaker 00

  Uh, it would be the animators.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  The animators?

• 30:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Why the animators?

• 30:28Speaker 00

  Well, because Disney's creativity, Disney's content really started out in animation, and, uh, as a result, they were revered, they were revered and protected probably more than anybody, but the Imagineers were closely behind, the nine old men, that's the, that's the genesis of it all, right there, uh, and, uh, there, I mean, to this day, those gentlemen are, uh, you know, plastered all over, all over the building, and their work is, I mean, you still can experience their work when you go to Disneyland.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  At, at Apple, Apple created six levels of engineers, if you type in, uh, Apple, six levels of engineers, you'll see it, and then they made it very public, where it's like, if you're a level one engineer, uh, uh, you make, yeah, there, there you go, if you're a level one, can you, yeah, there you go, level one, can you go back real quick? They would call it ICT, uh, make it small, right there, there you go, if you were an ICT two, you would make one sixty-six to one eighty, ICT three, two fifty to two sixty, go a little bit lower, uh, ICT four, three forty-five to three eighty, and then you get to four eighty to five sixty, and then, seven fifty to a million, and then if you make ICT six, plus fifteen years, million plus, some of them are making five, ten million dollars.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Who were some of the highest paid people at Disney that the average person would never be able to guess?

• 31:50Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I don't know what their compensation is, because that isn't something that, you know, we would ever share, nor would be shared with us, uh, but, you know, there's a lot of legendary animators, you know, I had the, uh, the pleasure of working with, you know, people that ran those, a lot of those jobs, uh, Peter Schneider and Tom Schumacher, who were really responsible for the revival of Disney Animation after a period of time where things got a little soft and...

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Revival?

• 32:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, they saw the, you know, there was a bit of a blip, historical blip.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  What year was that?

• 32:27Speaker 00

  Before, uh, it was right before I came, it was, you know, probably the eighties.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  It, my, Eisner comes in eighty-four, eighty-five, right, like, around that era?

• 32:35Speaker 00

  Right, and then he was, I'm going to fix this, and, uh, basically, you know, Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, that is the, that is the cadence that, you know, the genius of, uh, Peter and Tom really shepherded within the company to bring Disney Animation back.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  Outside of being a CEO at Disney, which you're one of seven to, to do so, when, when you became the seven, what is the hardest position to get to? Like, you have to be cream of the crop, top tier, to become an XYZ at Disney, what was that?

• 33:14Speaker 00

  Uh, uh, anywhere in the company, or within the creative?

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Anywhere in the company.

• 33:19Speaker 00

  Well, obviously, CEO would be...

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Outside of CEO, outside of being a CEO?

• 33:22Speaker 00

  Okay, outside of CEO, uh, I would probably say head of animation.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Head of animation?

• 33:27Speaker 00

  Head of animation, because, because so much of the brand relies on what comes out of animation, animation is the heartbeat of the company, always has been, and, uh, you know, it's, uh, Pete Docter is a person that I had the privilege of working with for so many years, uh, when he was a, sort of a middle level animator, I was a middle level executive, and we got a chance to, uh, work with each other, and Pete, Pete was fantastic and has gone on to do great things there, and he has certainly shepherded a lot of great, uh, animation history, and it, uh, it was great working with him.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Very interesting, so, during this time, when you become the president, uh, of the division you're running, what's the story about somebody that came knocking on your door, four hundred million dollars, and you said no to them, and all your competitors took them, what happened there?

• 34:23Speaker 00

  Well, I don't know if the competitors took them, but the story is, uh, there was a impending format change, okay, and the options were, this is when DVD was already established, and there was gonna be a high-definition, uh, format, and there was proponents of HD-DVD, was essentially a DVD on steroids, which maintained a lot of the intellectual property licenses and, uh, benefits, financial, uh, strings, for people that had IP, uh, in the

• 35:03Speaker 00

  HD-DVD format, the DVD format, because it was the same, you know, the same IP. And then there was a sub-start where Sony came in and said, no, we can actually do something a little bit more revolutionary, and have a much greater chance of completely transforming the business, and remember, the transformation of the business was important, because then we can sell a whole catalog all over again, as opposed to some people making the transition to high-definition HD-DVD, and, or versus people wholesale, completely replacing all their library, you can understand how valuable that would be with the Disney library, so, uh, Blu-rays out there from Sony, Warner and Toshiba had HD-DVD, and crazy

• 35:45Speaker 00

  me, I'm like, boy, a complete transition to the library with something that was revolutionary like Blu-ray, sounds to me to be a lot more transformative than just going with two DVDs glued together, which was what HD-DVD was, uh, but, because there was a lot of powers that be in the industry, they wanted that, those revenue streams, you know, Warner's wanted the revenue stream, Toshiba wanted the revenue stream from DVD to continue, they went to Blu-ray, then Sony was getting it, but I looked at it through a consumer lens, and I said, what would be the most transformative thing for the consumer, from an experience standpoint, from an interactivity standpoint, because this is where it wasn't just sit back and watch the movie, this was a little more lean forward.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  What year is this?

• 36:30Speaker 00

  Oh, gosh, ugh.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Early twos?

• 36:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, early twos.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:37Speaker 00

  Early twos, and, uh, sure enough, um, uh, I lined up with Sony, and, uh, the rest of the industry lined up with HD-DVD, and we had essentially a good old format war, and, uh, somebody did come to my office, and essentially, in, in the form of what would be, uh, replication credits, in other words, um, consideration for discounted disc replication, because we make a lot of, hundreds of millions of discs, and, uh, um, I took the offer to Bob Iger at the time, and he goes, what would you do?

• 37:16Speaker 00

  I said, the value to us of a complete format transformation to a format that's going to, you know, obsolete DVD is worth so much more than a hundred million dollars, that I think it's short-sighted to take it, he goes... Okay, your call. So that's all talk about the amount of freedom, the degrees of freedom that I got. Were enormous. But I always made it work.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Is that the, what was your first interaction with Bob? Is that the first one or no? You, you guys met at first one at an event, right? When you?

• 37:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, oh yeah, we met at an event and, you know, it was kind of a simple introduction. He said hi, I said hi and, uh, because, you know, he was much higher than me. He, he came over from ABC, went in the Cap Cities ABC. Uh, acquisition. And, uh, so to me, he was just another one of these kind of super executives and I was, you know, uh, uh, division president.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  If there's levels to the average person to understand what that means, like, let's just say level thirty is CEO. What is Bob at the time? What are you?

• 38:24Speaker 00

  So Bob at the time was right underneath Michael Eisner.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Well, he's two.

• 38:28Speaker 00

  He was like, he was like company president, sort of the equivalent of a COO. And then there would be chairman of the big conglomerates like Parks, the movie studio, right? And I was then a division president underneath that. So it would be Michael, it'd be Bob, it would be chairman like Dick Cook, the gentleman I mentioned earlier. And then a whole bunch of division presidents. I was the video guy.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  When you did the Sony deal, did you deal directly with Tommy or, uh, Matola? Or who was, who was that?

• 38:57Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Uh, uh, that was, uh, I'm, the name's escaping me right now. I'll think of it in a second.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Was Tommy still there or he was already out?

• 39:06Speaker 00

  He was on music though.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  He was on music. It's the different Sony you're dealing with.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, different division of Sony.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  DVD you're dealing with is a DVD and, and, uh?

• 39:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was the, it was the, you know, wasn't the biggest part of Sony because they didn't have the IP. So this was kind of an upstart for them.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 39:25Speaker 00

  It was Warner Brothers and Toshiba. Their arch nemesis Toshiba was minting the DVD business. They were going to mint the Blu-ray business if it worked and it did work and against all odds Blu-ray won the format war. Uh, we were in a catbird seat because that's what we supported and, uh, the rest is history. Complete conversion, uh, in format.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  What was your experience, any experience working with Eisner? Michael Eisner?

• 39:51Speaker 00

  He was great.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  What was he like? I, I watched his interview. He is so easy to listen to.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, very supportive. Um, uh, he told me when I got my first president's job, I was in his office and he said, "I'll never fire you for failing. I will only fire you for not taking a chance on something new." That's all, that's, yeah, that's all I needed, you know? Being that disruptor, that was my language.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  You like that language.

• 40:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, I liked that language and, you know, so that, I think that's.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Was he a driver? Was he an expectation guy? Was he selling the dream and the vision? Was he a numbers operator?

• 40:28Speaker 00

  I would say he was more selling the dream and.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  He was, no.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  He was.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  And an expectation guy. He wasn't, he wasn't like a driver. He wasn't the kind of guy that was, at least me, and again, remember I had a layer.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, makes sense. So he may be driving the guys above you that you never experienced that.

• 40:45Speaker 00

  Maybe, but, you know, he, he was so successful even before he came to Disney that he sort of knew how it needed to be done. And, you know, he wasn't afraid to share his vision about how you make that happen. And of course I was a sponge.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Who, who, what was the book? Did he write a book called Working Together or Michael Eisner? A red book with a white, uh, I don't know who he, but it was like all these different story. He wrote a, one of the chapters, I think, was about, uh, Studio 54. That, that's the one right there. Go back to where you're at. Go back to where you're at? No, no, no, go back, the one above, the one above, the one above, right there. Right there. What is that? Working, yeah, Michael Eisner wrote this book. I read this book a long time ago and in it, but who was he talking about working together? Maybe he was telling stories of others working together. Yeah, in one of the chapters, he actually talks about how Studio 54, um, you know, him and the other guy worked together as a team. Very interesting stories he told in this book.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Um, interesting. So Michael Eisner, uh, he, he was, he was the CEO for almost twenty years? He, he, he was there for a minute, right? He was there for a long time. And, you know, at what point, like when you and Bob got together and Bob asked you, "Should we accept that hundred million dollars or not?" What, what did that relationship with you and Bob start? Like when, when was it when it eventually led to you becoming the CEO?

• 42:12Speaker 00

  Well, we, we had a situation where, um, Bob was really, um, an innovator. He wanted to test new things. He wanted to try new things. When he took over from Michael, when he became the CEO. And he wanted to do a window test. You know, for so long, movies had to be in a theatrical window, meaning it couldn't be released in anything else for six months. And being sort of the video guy, I'm sitting there for six months twiddling my thumbs, waiting for my chance to go sell it while this thing's melting like an ice cube. You know, the heat for most of these titles goes away. And he always thought that that was wasteful. I always thought that was wasteful.

• 42:57Speaker 00

  So, um, uh, Bob, uh, uh, made a change at the studio leadership. And at that, he put a gentleman named Rich Ross in as the new studio chief. And he kind of promoted me to manage distribution of all studio content across theatrical, across digital, across video, across DVD, blah, blah, blah. And one of the challenges he gave me is, "I want you to do a window test." Now, a window test, meaning that instead of waiting for six months, we might wait for six weeks. That had been tried several times and each time the powers that be in the industry made sure that died, which were the theater exhibitors.

• 43:39Speaker 00

  The theater exhibitors wanted no part of having their selling window go down from six months to six weeks. Even though ninety-eight percent of the business was done in the first month, they just didn't want anyone infringing on their window with the expectation that maybe if somebody knew it was coming, they would not go to a theater. Uh, so Bob came to me and said, "Uh, I want to test this. Uh, you're gonna get a lot of pushback, but I want to do it." And I'm like, "You got the right guy." "Yes, sir." Uh, and there were some hairy moments because, uh, we picked a title, Alice in Wonderland, uh, Johnny Depp, Tim Burton, uh, film. And not only did we put it in a window, uh, that was very non-traditional, which was March.

• 44:24Speaker 00

  Big movies only come out at big times, right? Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Well, I always believed that was somewhat self-fulfilling. Right, of course, because that's the only time you put out big movies. What if we take a big movie like an Alice in Wonderland, put it in March and use it as Bob's test so we don't have to wait another six months to get a big film to do the test of Bob's windows, you know, taking it from six months to six weeks? So we did it. The whole world knew it was a shortened window because the theaters, uh, boycotted us. They said, "You're gonna get zero distribution." So here we go. Six weeks before the title comes out, four weeks before the title comes out in theaters, three weeks, two weeks, zero distribution.

• 45:06Speaker 00

  I'm flying around the world trying to get the exhibitors to agree to this, trying to convince them that a six-week window was not gonna cannibalize. We had research, we had everything. They didn't care. They didn't want to do it. So it became a game of chicken. And I remember I was in, uh, London and, uh, and I was talking to Bob on the phone. I'm like, "I, I believe they're gonna cave. I believe the exhibitors will cave. They will show this film. There's no way they're not gonna show this film." And he goes, and it was bad. I mean, this is going on for a month. It was, it was a face-off. And Bob said, "You really believe this is gonna work?" I'm like, "It's gonna work." A couple of days later, they acquiesced, they agreed.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  The movie went out in theaters, did a billion dollars in box office, the first billion-dollar box office film outside those big windows.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  No shit.

• 45:58Speaker 00

  As.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  I don't remember that.

• 46:00Speaker 00

  We had forced awareness, one hundred percent forced awareness that this was gonna be a short window, which directly contradicted the hypothesis of the theatrical exhibitors. If you, if people know it's a short window, it will fail. It went on to do a billion dollars. We did a six-week window. We had ubiquitous, um, distribution and everybody won and we got a chance to see what would happen with the DVD sales when you didn't have to wait till it was ice cold to start selling it.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Did, did this disrupt, like, I'm assuming Disney's a calendar-based business, right? On the, on the movie side?

• 46:34Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  So, so what are the do's and don'ts on the calendar? Like, is there, don't touch October or don't mess with, is there any?

• 46:42Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, if there's two big, two big rules, it would be pick a, a high seasonality time period when, when people will come, right? And stay away from titles that are bigger than you.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Stay away from titles that are bigger than you? What does that mean?

• 46:55Speaker 00

  Well, if, if, um, you have a competitive title and it's expected to do five hundred million dollars in the box office and you think you're gonna do one fifty, you might not want to compete with them because you'll lose.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  That makes sense.

• 47:06Speaker 00

  Your one fifty will be a hundred.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  So, uh, how did you guys get access to know what the competitors are coming up with next in the next two, three, four, five years?

• 47:14Speaker 00

  Oh, they, they go to industry conventions.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Everybody knows.

• 47:16Speaker 00

  And they show their trailers and coming next July, uh, on July twenty-second. And so everyone kind of sits there and say, "Joe, they're July twenty-second. What happens if we go July fourth?" There's a whole group of people in, uh, theatrical distribution that that's.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  What, what is that? What, what are those guys called? What do you call them?

• 47:32Speaker 00

  Theatrical distribution.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  But is there a specific title for them? The guys that are calendaring the whole thing out?

• 47:37Speaker 00

  Uh, just basically theatrical distribution.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  I mean, those are, you gotta be strategic to be, to be.

• 47:42Speaker 00

  You gotta be strategic to think about what your competitors are doing and, you know, you take every bit of information you get and you're like, you know, you talk to exhibitors and exhibitors say, "Wow, that Sony film is really looking great right now." Or that Warner Brothers film is looking really strong.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Did you ever change days, dates to demolish a competitor's movie that they were really banking on? Like, was it that competitive?

• 48:03Speaker 00

  It wasn't to demolish somebody else's to advantage your own film. Right, your decision was about advantaging your own, not demolishing a competitor's just to demolish a competitor. Right? So, I mean, I know-

• 48:14Speaker 01

  You guys are the heavyweight, though. I'm sure people wanted to pick on you guys all the time. Or was it behind closed doors, a bunch of friends?

• 48:21Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, there was no, no cooperation at all. This was, it was a war, but you were really looking to advantage your title. And then sometimes, you know, they, they think they got the heavyweight, you think you got the heavyweight, and those titles go really close to each other, and then you find out who had the-

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Tell, tell me one of those, where you guys are sitting there saying, guys, this could go... Because it's funny, because I'm not in your space, I don't know how to think about it, but it's kind of like, you know, sometimes you got, um, Formula One, bro, I don't know if you go to Formula One races or not, I don't-

• 48:54Speaker 00

  I'm not a, a huge fan-

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Are you a Kentucky Derby guy?

• 48:56Speaker 00

  Uh, a little bit.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Okay, so they fight, they do it in the same weekend?

• 48:59Speaker 00

  Right.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  You know, Formula One and Kentucky Derby same we, same weekend, so sometimes you'll see fights, a boxing match at the same time as a UFC match, and it's just like, let me see who's gonna do better. What was one story that you guys have where two heavyweights went against each other and you guys won?

• 49:15Speaker 00

  Well, thi- this happened, it's, basically, I can't give you one story because it happened every 4th of July, every Christmas, and every Thanksgiving. That's what happens, right? Everybody, that's, right. So, the rest of the weeks, there's jockeying. But when it's the, the, uh, Wednesday before Thanksgiving, everybody puts their monsters out, and then you go toe to toe. If it's the, the week before Christmas, everybody puts their monsters out. You know, July 1st, everybody puts their monsters out. And so, you would get those times where the seasonality, remember I said one of the things you look at is seasonality? Where the seasonality is so big, that no one's gonna back down. And, you know, essentially, you go toe to toe.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  You guys see each other at events? Is it, is it kind of like when you see each other, like, hey, so, hey, congrats on the movie? Is it, is it like-

• 50:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, there, there's some of that, you know, they all, you know, see each other socially in town, you know, the places that people go to dine or go play golf, but, you know, they're competitors. You know, they're, they're competitors. There's a lot of respect for each other, but they're-

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Sure, I get that. I mean, you know, there, there's that in sports and business and everything, but, um, you, you, I, I didn't even think about asking you this question, just curious what you say. Out of everybody you worked with at Disney for 30 years, who was the biggest psycho competitor? Positive. Don't worry about the word psycho I put as an adjective, I'm just thinking competitor.

• 50:37Speaker 00

  Uh, huh, competitor. So, I would probably say it was, uh, Warner Brothers, just because they sort of saw themselves as a version of Disney, you know?

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Any general they had that was really driving on the back end, that they felt they were bigger, better than you guys?

• 50:53Speaker 00

  Well, there was a guy that was in the video space, I can speak to this because it was in the video space, a guy named Warren Lieberfarb, who was a legend, a legend, and he was an advocate for the HD DVD movement on the other side, and, you know, most people kind of steered away from Warren because he had a lot of influence, uh, throughout the industry, and it's another one of the kind of titans that-

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Was he, did he go with Toshiba? Is he who they went with?

• 51:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Okay. You see the smile?

• 51:21Speaker 00

  So, yep.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  So, but who was the most competitive at Disney? Like, who was like, you guys knew this guy was determined and super competitive? Was it Iger, or was it somebody else?

• 51:30Speaker 00

  Uh, I guess it depends in where, where, in, in which, which business, you know, Disney again, has, has cruise ships, it's got theme parks, it's got, you know, who's-

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Any about, any department, any, any department?

• 51:42Speaker 00

  Uh, Michael Johnson's a guy who was my boss for a while, he ran, uh, home video before, I ran home video before Mitch Koch ran video, and Michael's a real competitor. Michael was like an Olympic skier, I mean, this guy was like the real deal, and, uh, you know, he, he, you know, he, he, he carried himself very much-

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Can you pull, pull him up, Michael Johnson?

• 52:05Speaker 00

  Michael Johnson.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  And did he end up, uh, was he a guy that was ever considered as a CEO position, or no?

• 52:12Speaker 00

  I, I don't know, but Michael went on to Herbalife.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  Oh, go, that's the one, go back?

• 52:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Wait, Michael Johnson went to Herbalife?

• 52:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  What a weird transition.

• 52:21Speaker 00

  Herbalife, CEO, uh, 2003, 2020. And, you know, he's a-

• 52:26Speaker 01

  2003, 2020. So, this is the time where Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn are going up against each other, and he was a CEO there? And Bill Ackman was against Herbalife, and he was trying to destroy their stock?

• 52:36Speaker 00

  He had to live through this.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  He had to live through this?

• 52:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  You ever seen that exchange with Icahn and Bill Ackman?

• 52:42Speaker 00

  No.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Legendary, if you've never seen it.

• 52:44Speaker 00

  No, no, I've not.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  You've never seen it?

• 52:46Speaker 00

  Uh-uh.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  Oh, ju- just show 30 seconds of it for shits and giggles. Can you go to YouTube? And, uh, uh, we don't, we shouldn't show the whole interview because it's long, but just go to that one, go to that first one right there. Listen, just listen. Yeah, go ahead.

• 52:57Speaker 08

  He sort of had it with this guy Ackman. He was like the crybaby in the schoolyard. He was like one of these little Jewish boys crying that the world was taking advantage of him, much like in the old song, uh, "You're rude the day I ever met the guy." Favorite song, something called "Schmuck Insurance." "I gotta show my investors that I'm making money and all that crap." That, you know, on Wall Street, if you want a friend, get a dog. There's a book about this whole story called Confidence Game, which is worth a read. And that context, we're winding down the fun. What he called "schmuck insurance," because Carl Icahn unfortunately does not have a good reputation. Stick with me, because this is important, and got a few more points to make, stick with me for one more second.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  And it was around Herbalife. So, it's, it's interesting, Michael Johnson goes to, so he was a real driver, he was a, he was a competitive guy?

• 53:39Speaker 00

  He was a competitive guy, real competitive guy. I skied with him several times, I played golf with him several times, and he is a competitive guy.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  I like that. Who else, who, second person? Anyone else at Disney?

• 53:50Speaker 00

  There's a lot of competitive people in a different, in a different way Harvey Weinstein was, you know, a competitive guy, but he wasn't a competitive guy on the sports field, but he's certainly a competitive guy in, you know, the boardroom, meeting room.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Pushing the envelope, negotiating, pinning people against each other at all costs? What was, because you, you've done this-

• 54:12Speaker 00

  Uh, my way or the highway, kind of.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Him, pissed out?

• 54:15Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  And was he truly as feared as people say he was?

• 54:18Speaker 00

  Well, as what?

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Feared, was he as feared as people say he was?

• 54:22Speaker 00

  In, in his business, yeah. In his business, yeah. Yeah, I believed he thought he could make or break people.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  He could destroy someone's career.

• 54:32Speaker 00

  So it goes.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  Hmm. What, you said Michael Johnson was a former skier?

• 54:40Speaker 00

  He was a skier, I think he was like an Olympic alternate. Skiing with Michael was interesting, because he would ski with, you know, the Mayer brothers. You'd go skiing with Michael, and he'd bring the Mayer brothers, you know, the twins. And it was very quickly when, you know, I got down-

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Put you in?

• 54:57Speaker 00

  No. I, I skied once a year, Michael skied a lot, so, you know, pretty much after, you know, a couple times down the hill, they'd get tired of waiting for you, and they'd go ahead.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  What, what did Disney recruit?

• 55:08Speaker 09

  Handmade in Portugal, where craftsmanship is a way of life. For those who move through life differently, from sunlit decks to nights that never need an occasion, every detail is considered, every step effortless. Crafted from fine suede and built with builder technology, designed to move with you. Because true luxury isn't about being noticed, it's about how you feel when you arrive. The FLB Icon Loafer. Made for the life you've earned.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest, or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 56:15Speaker 03

  College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching band wake up call at 5:55 in 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.

• 56:45Speaker 04

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 57:15Speaker 05

  How many discounts does USAA Auto Insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount, safe driver discount, uh, new vehicle discount, storage discount, legacy-

• 57:24Speaker 06

  How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com/autodisc counts. Restrictions apply.

• 57:31Speaker 07

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies, 18 plus.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Did they recruit former athletes? Was there like a pattern of who they looked for? Or is there any?

• 58:06Speaker 00

  No, no. Generally, big schools. Big schools were kind of a thing. You know, Stanford, Chicago, MIT. They were pretty conscious of that, that kind of thing, which makes my background even more.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  Indiana to become that. That's what makes it a great story.

• 58:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, it's, I really didn't, didn't fit any of those bills, but my results book for themselves.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Respect. And, and, and in this part, there's a, there's a part of the book that was fascinating to me, where you talk about Steve Jobs. When Steve Jobs came in and, and the Pixar deal is getting done, and he's talking to you, and then they're gonna go into streaming, and you know if they go streaming, it's like an overnight shift for the people that are relying on DVD and Blu-ray, all that stuff. And then Walmart's calling you, Target's calling you, I think even Best Buy was calling you. When you're getting all these calls. How, how chaotic was that season?

• 59:00Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I didn't, I didn't know this was coming. Bob had been working with Steve very quietly.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  To keep it low-key even from?

• 59:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Because he knew that everyone was gonna say, remember, remember what I had to face with theatrical when I only wanted to shorten the window? Imagine that you're going to release a product that eventually is gonna obsolete physical media. Right? With, with iTunes. And he, he didn't want to have to debate anybody. He and Steve figured out that they had the best, you know, path forward, and they did. They did. But that doesn't mean it was gonna be easy for the people in the business units that, you know, were legacy business units, to go to their customers and say, well, you know, it's gonna be, because remember, we got all the advantages on DVD.

• 59:50Speaker 00

  DVD and Blu-ray and VHS really paid the bills for the studio for a long time, over a decade. And one of the reasons we got that is because all the retailers used those products as a loss leader. In other words, they would buy them for twenty bucks and they would price them at fifteen.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Stop it.

• 1:00:08Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. They lost money on every one of them.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  So you sold at retail to them? You're not even selling wholesale?

• 1:00:14Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  So let me get this straight.

• 1:00:16Speaker 00

  No, we would sell at wholesale, they would price below wholesale.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  But, but if I'm, if I'm Walmart, if I'm buying it from you, am I paying you nineteen bucks per DVD?

• 1:00:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  You're, you're expecting twenty bucks from me on DVD? You're Disney?

• 1:00:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  You wouldn't sell it to me at six or seven bucks, even though your cost is thirty-five cents, forty-five cents?

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  We set the wholesale price where they set retailer was up to them. And they used it as a loss leader for over a decade. Remember, you used to go to a Target or a Walmart or a Best Buy, and if the title was Pirates of the Caribbean, you would have pallets of that, and it would be picked clean by the end of the day. And then we'd bring in more pallets. And so it was bringing people in, you know, one would, you know.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  I got it.

• 1:00:56Speaker 00

  Price it fifty cents lower than the next one, became a price war, we're still getting our nineteen ninety-nine.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  That is crazy. That is crazy.

• 1:01:04Speaker 00

  So these people that are generating all this business for us, selling this product at a loss, wake up one day, I, I, by the way, I learned about it just like they did, said Disney's now gonna release their movies.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  How much did that cost them?

• 1:01:17Speaker 00

  Cost who?

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  Them. The, the, the fact that now everything's going into streaming.

• 1:01:22Speaker 00

  Well, I tried to convince them that it would be a long burnout rate, and that we would do things to protect the physical goods. And it took, by the way, it took the better part of a decade for it to go, you know, really peter out. You know, actually, it was slower than we even in our projections. So to some extent, we were right. It was gonna be a long burn. But, you know, the DVD sections then started doing this, they stopped promoting at the front of store. But it was a necessary move, and they were both geniuses for doing it, because we had to make that turn to the digital evolution. And so it was the right thing to do, just would've been nice to have a little heads-up, so I could've prepared for the onslaught of angry callers.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  So walk me through the steps of, you know, when, when he's doing the Fox deal, and this is Bob Iger, he's doing the Fox deal, and at that time, everybody's, I'm speculating, everybody's specu, everybody's thinking, who's gonna be replacing him? And he whispers something to you and says, hey, I think if I do this Fox deal, I'm gonna need to stay CEO a little bit longer. You can correct me on this, but that's kinda how I took it.

• 1:02:22Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  And there were a couple of guys that were waiting to see if that was gonna be their job. Rossulo was one, Stax was another one, and then Kevin Meyer eventually became another candidate as well. During this season, what's he telling you? Just be patient, Bob, you're one of the candidates, just be patient, Bob? Or did you kinda know you were one of the guys poised to be the next CEO?

• 1:02:40Speaker 00

  At the time that Jay and Tom were sort of the front runners, or that at least, you know, it's all what's rumored, what's innuendo, Bob doesn't go and say generally that, you know, they're the front runners. I, I was just, you know, I wasn't high on the awareness scale for that kind of job. And he did come to visit me once, when he was trying to make his decision, and he asked, he came to my office, which was rare. Normally, you go to see Bob. I was in a peripheral campus in Glendale. Our main offices are in Burbank. So he had to drive like fifteen, twenty minutes to get there. And he was coming to see me, which I thought was highly unusual.

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  And he said, can I come see you today? I'm like, oh.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  This is twenty-ninth in December.

• 1:03:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. Uh, no. No, no, this was back when I was Consumer Products, so twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  Okay, this is, this is way before you become CEO.

• 1:03:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, way before.

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  Six years before. Okay, got it, got it.

• 1:03:41Speaker 00

  Right, right. And he said, you know, Bob doesn't usually, you know, ask you who he should promote. That's not, you know, that's not something he collaborates on, especially me, being a whole notch below these guys. And he goes, debating Tom or Jay, who should I promote?

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  He asks you?

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  Yeah. What's your opinion? No, it's a big, big call. And I said, neither. He said, who? I said, me. He said, that's what I thought you'd say. And we shook hands, and that was it.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  Wow, that's, well, what month was this exactly in twenty fifteen?

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  Oh, I don't, I don't know.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  But it's twenty thirteen.

• 1:04:22Speaker 00

  Well, I'm gonna guess, because I got the Parks job in twenty fifteen, and this was a couple of years, I think, before I got Parks. So I'm gonna guess it's twenty thirteen, twenty fifteen.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Okay. So when this, this was the only outcome of why he came and met with you?

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:04:37Speaker 00

  This was not normal. This was highly unusual. And that was the first indication I had that maybe that, that long list was a little longer than I thought.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  Did you call Cindy and say, babe, you won't believe what just happened?

• 1:04:49Speaker 00

  I, I think I waited till that night, but yeah, I told her, obviously.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  What was her reaction to it?

• 1:04:54Speaker 00

  Uh, I think to some extent, she was surprised at the way it went down, but she always had a lot of confidence in me to achieve that goal that I said I was going to achieve when I was in college.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, that's right, for a second date or first date. So when, when this happens, Bob, when is the next time he brings it up to say, hey, that last conversation, are you getting ready? Like, does that happen again? Or it doesn't happen for?

• 1:05:21Speaker 00

  No, it's just that, you know, Bob promoted Tom to COO, Jay left, right? So there goes Jay, great guy, but there goes Jay. And then eventually, you know, Tom left the company as well. And then there's myself and Kevin Mayer. At least in terms of, you know, presumably, presumably, he.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  And Kevin's one of your generals, right?

• 1:05:51Speaker 00

  No, no, no. Kevin ran strategic planning for the company.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  Who was your, who was your general that you had? You had a, you had a, I thought you had a Kevin as well. Who was your guy that when they?

• 1:06:01Speaker 00

  Kareem?

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Kareem, yeah, Kareem is who it was, right?

• 1:06:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, Kareem wasn't in that conversation.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  He was the chief of staff, or he was a, he?

• 1:06:06Speaker 00

  Kareem was sort of my equivalent of a head of strat planning for, for my businesses. Incredibly talented guy.

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  And at this time, Bob, who was Josh DiMauro?

• 1:06:17Speaker 00

  Josh was sort of a, I, I'm gonna guess he was probably a VP maybe at Walt Disney World. And I, as soon as I met Josh, I thought he, he was, he was great. He certainly had the social skills, the, the personality, the charisma, but he also had all the hard skills too. And he had an ability, an elasticity to learn. And I remember telling Bob, you know, because you do succession planning every year, you know, who's on the rise, who's somebody to watch, there's all these categories. And I put him on the list. And, you know, Bob said, you should go give him some encouragement that, you know, you're

• 1:07:01Speaker 00

  gonna give him some opportunities. And I was about to promote him to president of Disneyland.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  So he's your guy?

• 1:07:07Speaker 00

  He's my guy, and he's telling me to wind up someone else. You know, so at that point, I'm starting to think, well, maybe there is, in other words, he never came to me and had another one of those meetings.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 1:07:18Speaker 00

  But, you know, I'm saying, this guy's, this guy's got, he's, I think he's the real deal. So I literally flew down to Orlando and met with Josh alone, and said, you know, you're, you're, you're gonna start moving, because I believe in you, but, you know, you need to do more than support somebody who runs a business. And made him president of Disneyland. I, you know, I remember, he tells the story where I called him and he was driving down the road, and he took my call and he pulled over. And I said, you're gonna be president of Disneyland. And he talks about the story all the time, about what that meant to him, because it was his chance. I mean, that's a pretty big job, president of Disneyland.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  One point one million subscribers? Or one point one million?

• 1:08:05Speaker 00

  Well, it's annual pass holders.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  Pass holders?

• 1:08:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's what it was then.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  I don't know, average price, thousand dollars, or I don't, top is what, eighteen ninety-nine right now? So it's a big business, yeah.

• 1:08:14Speaker 00

  Big business, and then, you know, eventually, then I made him head of Walt Disney World. And now, you know, he's the CEO. So I had a lot of confidence in him, saw potential in him, and obviously, it's confidence that everyone shared. He was on my succession list as long as I had the big job.

• 1:08:31Speaker 01

  So you know he was special. There was something special about him.

• 1:08:33Speaker 00

  I knew, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  So now, walk me through you becoming CEO. How does that happen?

• 1:08:37Speaker 00

  Well.

• 1:08:41Speaker 00

  It was December, you know, bonus time, usually whatever

• 1:08:47Speaker 00

  personal conversation about you and your career. A lot of times it happens around bonus time because you're just too busy. The rest of the time you're actually just running the business and you know, I'm sitting there, you know, getting ready to get the number revealed to me what my bonus was for that year. And Bob said, I think, I think I'm going to retire. I think this is it. And I had heard this a number of times before. And so I was a little skeptical, honestly. So didn't put a lot of, a lot of credence into it. And

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  so he goes, Susan, Susan Arnold, who was the chairman of the board, will be contacting you. Now I'm like,

• 1:09:31Speaker 00

  this sounds a little more serious than, you know, sort of the every two or three year, I'm retiring.

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  To the average person, they don't know who Susan is. But in that world,

• 1:09:39Speaker 00

  Susan was the chairman of the board.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  She, she is a super, super heavyweight. If she calls you, something's going on.

• 1:09:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, something, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, wow, well, this is, this is, this is interesting. Maybe a little more credibility to this one. But I, you know, I had been sort of expectations set. And

• 1:10:00Speaker 00

  you know, he said, I recommended you to Susan as my replacement. Susan's going to call you. Well, sure enough, Susan called me and said, let's go have lunch at the Rotunda, which was the executive dining room. And she told me that Bob had decided that he was ready to move on. And that Bob made the recommendation that I would be his replacement and that the board unanimously agreed. And that this was going to move very, very fast. And, you know, Bob had mentioned to me that there's going to be a period of time where you're going to, you know, want to go visit the board members and, you know, because the board had, A, had sort of turned over

• 1:10:41Speaker 00

  at this point, you know, we had a board, I think we had like four board members, I think, I don't exactly remember the number, who all turned out at the same time. They're old Michael Eisner board members. And, you know, Bob had replaced all them with his choices. And so I knew most of them, but I didn't know them intimately. I knew some of them intimately. And so I, I figured, you know, I would, you know, take the month of January and go fly around to their individual cities and sort of, you know, make sure that, you know, we all knew what the score was and that they had confidence in me and, and I thought I knew what the score was. And, and she says, no, this is going to happen right away. It's going to happen right away. And

• 1:11:27Speaker 00

  so

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  Was that kind of weird that they said they're going to do it right away? Did it create any red flags? Well, it's kind of weird.

• 1:11:35Speaker 00

  You know, this had gone on, remember, the first time Bob came in and asked me who he should promote was six years earlier. So in many ways it was quick, but in many ways it wasn't. So I,

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 1:11:45Speaker 00

  You know, when this kind of thing is thrown open to you, you don't ask a lot of questions. You're just like, yes, sir, may I have another? You know, and so I, you know, I said,

• 1:11:55Speaker 00

  great. And it was, and I think what she said was it's going to be weeks, not months. And now at this point, she's really got my attention. That time I did call my wife. And I said, you know, I don't know if this is real, but it certainly seems real. And gosh, it was like two weeks later, three weeks later, that, that the satellite trucks pulled up into the lot and the announcement was made.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  And the date, I have it here, is February 25, 2020, right? You take over. The two of you guys are doing that CNBC interview, which I watched last night multiple times. Okay, just to see his body language, because you talk about it in the opening of the book, where you say, and by the way, fascinating, but we're going to put the link below. If you haven't ordered it, ordered it, I highly, highly recommend. In the book you say, I'm trying to see where it was, where you said, I looked at his face, I went back and looked at it again. And I knew this is going to be trouble, right? Because he did not want to give up his job. You were saying that in the introduction.

• 1:12:57Speaker 00

  Well, it was brought to my attention by a reporter who said, have you watched the interview? Did you see his body language? And of course, I'm not going to respond to a reporter because I'm not going to feed that, feed that story. So I did go back and watch and I did see the body language, but it was obvious, not only to me, it was obvious to

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  To a lot of other people.

• 1:13:17Speaker 00

  A lot of other people.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  The market as well. The market saw it as well. It wasn't like it was just maybe insiders in Disney. Others looked at it and says, ah, it's a little bit, even Michael Eisner was asked about it. And he says, you know, he, he said things about the co-CEO. He says, I don't think that's going to work. That's going to be a problem if they do that. He said that in an interview with somebody. But I'm going through the timeline. So February 25, 2020, you take over. Then the CNBC interview happens. Weeks after that, it's COVID. Now, when I, it's already in COVID, but it gets pretty nasty, COVID, you guys shutting down the park. I'm in LA, actually, at the Beverly Hills Hilton. When Disney shut down, could have been March 12, 13, 14, some date like that.

• 1:13:54Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  Because we were going to take the family there. June 28, 2022, Disney unanimously extends Chapek's contract, right? Saying, hey, you're the guy. She talks to you. You're ours. We like you. You're, you know, we're picking you. And then board says, you know, you don't talk to Bob Iger enough. This is the whole session that they're going back and forth. You should call him more often. You said, I talked to him 30 minutes to 45 minutes. Every day. Then on November 20, 2022, the board announced Chapek was out. Iger was back. They blocked your email. You couldn't even send one last email to the people you were working with. One of your generals, Kareem Daniel, which I mentioned earlier, chief of staff, Arthur Bachner, and assistant Jackie Hart, they're out.

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  Iger was back and you were done. This timeline that the average person sees, how fast did this timeline go by for you?

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 1:15:16Speaker 03

  College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching band wake up call at 5:55 in 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.

• 1:15:46Speaker 04

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:16:15Speaker 05

  How many discounts does USAA Auto Insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount, safe driver discount, uh, new vehicle discount, storage discount.

• 1:16:24Speaker 06

  How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com/autodiscount. Restrictions apply.

• 1:16:32Speaker 07

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up require compatibility and availability varies. 18 plus.

• 1:16:59Speaker 00

  That timeline between the time that I got the extension, another three extension, seemed like an eternity. It didn't go by fast because not only was I dealing with trying to bring the company back from the pandemic, where we have almost all of our revenue streams shut down, but I'm also trying to launch a brand new growth business for the company, which is streaming, which is, you know, we're only a decade behind Netflix. And, but it's going very well. But I'm taking sniper fire, friendly sniper fire at the same time, which was not helpful.

• 1:17:37Speaker 00

  So, you know, you might think I would say, well, the time between the extension and the fateful November day was quick. It wasn't. It felt like it was an eternity.

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  It felt like an eternity.

• 1:17:50Speaker 00

  It felt like an eternity.

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  So you said something in the book, which was very interesting. You said, "Some people told you," and I'm curious who these people are, "that Bob knew COVID was coming and he was setting you up. He was almost setting you up for you to fall." What did you mean by that?

• 1:18:07Speaker 00

  Well, I didn't exactly say it that way. What I said was, people volunteered to me that he likely knew, in their opinion, that he likely knew more than the average Joe did about a pandemic being around the corner. Now, I don't know if that's true or not, because you'd have to ask him. He denied that COVID was ever an element in his resignation when he resigned. But I heard it one time, and I completely disregarded it. I heard it a second time, and I was like, "God, that's funny." I heard that again, and heard it about five times.

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  From credible heavyweights?

• 1:18:47Speaker 00

  Credible heavyweights. Credible heavyweights.

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  From Disney or even outsiders?

• 1:18:52Speaker 00

  Outside Disney. Outside Disney. I don't want to go any further with it. But suffice to say that, like, wow. And by the way, it may not be true. I don't know. May not be true. But this is what outsiders told me, is that there was some awareness there. And, you know, if Bob's one thing, he's a great executive, a lot of success, very, very excellent leader, very excellent executive. But he also really protects his image very carefully. And I'm sure if, if he had awareness, that, you know, what I eventually had to do was lay off 110,000 people out of 200,000 would not be high on his list.

• 1:19:37Speaker 00

  Now, again, that may be circumstantial. But I'm just saying, there was enough people. My dad used to say, "Where there's smoke, there's fire." And there's a lot of smoke. But again, I don't know if that's true, and he's denied it. But the timing is curious, because it was so fast. Bob's, you know, after all this toying around where I'm going to resign.

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  Very methodical.

• 1:20:02Speaker 00

  Right. And no, I'm not. Yes, I am. No, I'm not. Then all of a sudden, one day, it's real, and it's not a matter of, as Susan said, weeks, not months. And it just was weird that I get the job, and a couple of weeks later, I find out there's a global pandemic, which, of course, I had no idea of. And again, maybe, maybe he didn't. Maybe he didn't. Maybe it was just pure, random circumstance.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  Well, one part which was kind of interesting, Bob, is when you became CEO, he had a CEO office. If he's now going to be the executive chairman, and he has a CEO office with the shower and everything, he didn't let you go into that office as the new CEO. That's kind of weird. Or was it like, when Michael Eisner lost his, when Michael Eisner stepped away as a CEO, was his office given to the next CEO?

• 1:20:51Speaker 00

  I believe it was. But, you know, frankly, I've never been one caught up with the trappings. You know, I just kind of keep my head down.

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  That's weird, though, Bob.

• 1:20:59Speaker 00

  It was weird, but frankly, I knew that Bob sort of celebrated these kind of things. These are things that were important to him. And he said to me, he says, "Having a shower in your office is not important to you. You don't go out, you know, on the town and do power dinners like I do. You know, you won't miss it. It's important to me." I'm like, "Great, I'll..."

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  That was his reason?

• 1:21:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, this is the reason. And, you know, a lot's been made out of the media. Somehow, this story's gotten out. To me, it wasn't really a big deal. Maybe it should have been.

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  But you wrote about it in the book.

• 1:21:34Speaker 00

  Well, I wrote about it in the book, because now, in hindsight, it was meaningful. But I'm saying, at the time, I'm like, well, because remember, I knew, I knew there was going to be some trouble in paradise as soon as the CNBC interview, which you showed us, you know, a still from, she does a CNBC interview.

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  It's very awkward.

• 1:21:53Speaker 00

  Right, it was very awkward. So I knew there was going to be a problem, and then, you know, you wanted to keep the office. So these things are just kind of piling up.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  I think the main thing is that 34 seconds. So play it from 25 seconds. I watched this thing four or five times last night. Play it from right there. Press play.

• 1:22:05Speaker 00

  ...he's going to go in the short term. Over time, though, as we all both recognize, disruption and transformation are just inevitable in this business, and it hits each one of our businesses a little bit differently. But it's inevitable that those businesses will be disrupted, and it's recognizing at that time when we'll need to shift. And that's, I think, the art of the job.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  And it's important for the audience to know what question was asked. She asked the question, "In what way will you lead differently than him?" And you gave that answer, right? And so, if you watch the whole thing, did you watch the interview that he did with Josh DiAmaro?

• 1:22:38Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  You haven't seen that interview?

• 1:22:40Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  Okay, well, I saw it. And if you haven't seen it, the body language is very different. So I watched it multiple times last night, just to see the body language here. If you go, that's the one right there, okay? And if you fast-forward a little bit, you can go to the point where they're together. Keep going, keep going, keep... Okay, right there. Press play from right there. ...in life for years going forward.

• 1:23:06Speaker 10

  Well, I think you touch upon something that is critical in terms of what the next CEO appreciates and what the next CEO is capable of doing. And that is truly, truly appreciating Disney's position in the world and to people. Disney's not just another company. Disney really is a cultural institution that has touched...

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  Can you fast-forward, go to the timeline? Keep going.

• 1:23:31Speaker 10

  Hundreds of millions of people.

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  Right there.

• 1:23:32Speaker 10

  For now, over 100 years.

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  When he speaks...

• 1:23:34Speaker 11

  ...of working with Bob for all of those years. First from a distance, and now, much more up close and personal. And I've watched probably the best of the best balance those two things.

• 1:23:46Speaker 01

  Pause it. He smiled the entire time, and he wasn't smiling in the interview with you. So I thought about it two different ways, and I want you to break it down and maybe give your thoughts. So what I thought about, okay, you were set up to go up there, to take the heat, to say, "Oh, my God, we need Iger back." Sometimes CEOs don't want to give up the throne, and they want to be missed. And there is an internal battle between, not a founder, but a CEO. Founder wants the business to grow forever. CEO is kind of like, "Man, you know, I want the next guy to transition, to do better than me, but man, I also don't want them to forget about me, because I've been so important for 38 years. Ride of a Lifetime. I've read Ride of a Lifetime multiple times as well. It's a phenomenal book on what he did. It's a great story of all the deals that he did." But then, set him up, leave, and this time around that he wants to leave,

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  he truly wants to leave, and he learned from the mistake on the way he did it to set him up in a different way. How do you process it?

• 1:24:39Speaker 00

  I think it's a different time in his life. I think he got a taste of retirement, or frankly, AKA, less relevance. And I don't think he liked it. And I think he immediately knew during that interview that he didn't like being the color commentary guy. He wanted to be the play-by-play guy. I think after three more years of it, and frankly, a rough three years, because stock prices, when he left, is pretty much where it was when he got it. So three years and no growth, while the rest of the market's exploding, he realized, "Oh, you know, this post-COVID world is really kind of tough." And so I think he was a lot more willing to smile at Josh and give Josh the reins and support Josh.

• 1:25:24Speaker 00

  And by the way, after doing it to me, he couldn't do it twice, for sure. So I think he was a lot more ready, and I think you can look at it in his face. By the way, that happened on the first day of the job. So it wasn't like I did anything to earn that. It just was the situation that I walked into. And, you know, that was the first of many...

• 1:25:44Speaker 01

  He looked miserable.

• 1:25:45Speaker 00

  He looked miserable.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  He looked miserable, sitting next to you.

• 1:25:47Speaker 00

  When I knew I really had a problem is when he did the New York Times article with Ben Smith via email. And he reasserted himself back as CEO.

• 1:25:57Speaker 01

  That was the weirdest article.

• 1:25:59Speaker 00

  By the way, I had no idea it was coming. He didn't tell me. His publicist didn't tell me. And it's my understanding that the board didn't even know that he did that.

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  Susan didn't know?

• 1:26:09Speaker 00

  My understanding.

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  Wouldn't Susan need to prove that if you're the executive chairman?

• 1:26:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, but Bob did this thing that I called "management by pronouncement." Where, just like the Apple iTunes. You don't want to debate it. You just make the announcement. Everyone says, "Oh, gosh, it's already announced." It's a very classic tool that he used. And so I'm at home, and I, someone calls me and says, "You lost your job already?" Like, this is a month after I got it, and COVID's... And I'm just like, and I'm like, "What are you talking about?" Because Iger just reasserted himself as the CEO in an interview with New York Times. I'm like, "What are you talking about?"

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  Is this pre-Susan's meeting with you?

• 1:26:51Speaker 00

  No, no, no. This is after I got the job, but only like a month after I got the job.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 1:26:57Speaker 00

  And I'm like, "What are you talking about?" So now, I've got a real tangible idea that he wants his, that he wants his job back.

• 1:27:04Speaker 01

  Did you call him?

• 1:27:05Speaker 00

  The next day, we had a conversation.

• 1:27:07Speaker 01

  What was that call like?

• 1:27:09Speaker 00

  Not good. I have, you know, I'm very much a, almost like a military kind of guy, where, "Yes, sir, I'll take the hill." And I never push back. I just say, "Yes, and I'll figure out a way to get it done." This was a little uncharacteristic, and I think I caught him off guard, because I said, "You just signed my death warrant. You just literally signed my..."

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  You told him that?

• 1:27:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. I told him, "You signed my execution papers." Because how do I recover from this? You just go and reassert that you're coming back? And I said, "You signed my death warrant." And from then on, it was a death by a thousand cuts, because it continued. These types of things continued. And, you know, I don't know who else gets a job after, after a day, after a month, and, you know, his predecessor asserts to the New York Times in an email interview. So there was no misquoting that, because of the circumstances, I need to come back. I mean, it was my epitaph. That was it. And I say in the book that it's not a miracle that I lost my job.

• 1:28:15Speaker 00

  It's a miracle that it took three years, and I got an extension right before it happened.

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  Did you call Susan? Because one call is to him, but did you call Susan?

• 1:28:26Speaker 00

  No, no, of course I did.

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  And Susan's given you reassurance that, "Don't worry, Bob, we're sticking with you."

• 1:28:30Speaker 00

  "Oh, don't worry about it. He's only going to be here for a couple more years. Don't worry about it, Bob. It's, that's just Bob." You know, and I'm like...

• 1:28:38Speaker 01

  Are they best friends?

• 1:28:40Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  Oh, they're not?

• 1:28:43Speaker 00

  I would not characterize them as best friends.

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  So then the edge goes to you. So doesn't she have to vote to bring him back? Because the board voted to bring him back unanimously.

• 1:28:54Speaker 00

  Oh, eventually, two and a half years later.

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  But why would she do that if they're not good friends?

• 1:29:01Speaker 00

  It's more complicated in that there's more board members than Susan. There are other people that are highly influential on the board.

• 1:29:08Speaker 01

  So if it was Susan, he wouldn't be back?

• 1:29:10Speaker 00

  I can't say, I can't say yes or no.

• 1:29:13Speaker 01

  Your body language tells me, if I'm a poker player, I read it as there's no way she would be voting for him to be back.

• 1:29:18Speaker 00

  You can come to whatever conclusion you want. All I know is that Bob had a lot of support from loyalists on the board. And he always believed.

• 1:29:28Speaker 01

  The four from Michael Eisner?

• 1:29:30Speaker 00

  I'm sorry?

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  The four board members that he replaced from Eisner?

• 1:29:33Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, and all of them at that point. Well, but in some, yes, but yes, some in particular. I think Bob was always very, very confident that he can have his job back whenever he wanted. Very confident.

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  So if we speculate, it would be, one, he set you up. Two, he missed the limelight and just wanted to be back. Or, three, you know, just a very honest, you know, the business was not doing good and this wasn't a good choice for you to be the CEO. Which one of those three do you lean towards?

• 1:30:05Speaker 00

  He regretted his decision immediately upon making it. And you saw it for some time from the time period where he said, "I'm leaving," to the time period that that first press interview came. You can tell he already regretted it. And whatever attempts he made to go through, whatever process he might have, maybe none, to reassert himself as CEO, he just decided to do it by pronouncement with the New York Times. That's my belief. And again, it's my hypothesis, but look at the evidence in book and tell me you can possibly come to any other conclusion than that.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  No, that's very weird. And I called some people around to just kind of find, I've been following, just so you know, I think Disney needs to be a trillion dollar company right now, not a 200 and whatever billion dollar company. You guys had a good week this week because, you know, some of the announcements that we'll make, I think it's like 21 for, I don't know what the number is, but it was a decent week for Disney this week. You guys made a decision and numbers went up, I believe, slightly, but I believe this is a trillion dollar valuation. Have you ever read the book, Ride of a Lifetime?

• 1:31:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  Okay, do you remember in Ride of a Lifetime when he says, he's sitting with Rupert Murdoch while they're doing the Fox deal, I think it was Rupert or else, I think it's Rupert Murdoch, he's sitting there. And then questions are being asked about what he's going to be doing. "Hey, you know, Bob, have you ever thought about running for president?" "Oh, no, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life." Did you ever think maybe at that time, he was like thinking about running for office and then he's like, "No, I'm just going to go back to Disney"? Because he's got the personality to be able to run for president. And he had aspirations at one point.

• 1:31:40Speaker 00

  I think if he had any reason to believe he could be president, I'd still have that job. Remember, he wanted to bring an NFL team to Los Angeles? That didn't work out.

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:31:56Speaker 00

  He clearly had aspirations to be president.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:32:01Speaker 00

  For whatever reason, that didn't work out. And, you know, "Oh, I think I want that Disney job."

• 1:32:10Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 1:32:11Speaker 00

  That's my hypothesis.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  So it's a possibility that the moment he maybe realized that president job may not be a job for him at that time, let me go back and get my Disney job back. Possibility.

• 1:32:24Speaker 00

  Certainly looks like a possibility, doesn't it?

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  And did people at Disney know that he had aspirations of being a president? Was that a known thing or no?

• 1:32:32Speaker 00

  Everybody knew.

• 1:32:33Speaker 01

  Everybody knew?

• 1:32:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, everybody knew.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  For since now, like 20 years, 15 years, 10 years?

• 1:32:37Speaker 00

  10 years, 15 years.

• 1:32:39Speaker 01

  Meaning like, did they know in 2010?

• 1:32:41Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, no. This was a sort of a later revelation.

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  And it was kind of like Bob's going to make a run at it?

• 1:32:49Speaker 00

  Well, not that he's going to, but he had interest in it.

• 1:32:52Speaker 01

  Of being it. By the way, he would have been, I would have loved to have seen him, how he would have campaigned for it because it would have been, do you have any idea on why he didn't? Why he didn't pursue it?

• 1:33:02Speaker 00

  Uh, there are hypotheses out there. You know, you have to have support of the party, I guess, is one assumption.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  Well, he had relationships with Emmanuel and not Ari, the other one.

• 1:33:21Speaker 00

  Rahm.

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  Rahm, yeah, from Illinois, right? Because he was a player with, with, what do you call it, with Obama. And Bob was a pretty connected guy to a lot of the guys, so.

• 1:33:34Speaker 00

  Very connected.

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  I'm surprised you're saying he may have not had the support from the party.

• 1:33:38Speaker 00

  Well, I'm saying that is one reason why maybe he never chose to go forward.

• 1:33:44Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev. Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 1:34:14Speaker 03

  College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition, even a marching band wake-up call at 5:55 in 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.

• 1:34:44Speaker 04

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:35:15Speaker 07

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 1:35:41Speaker 12

  When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 1:36:15Speaker 01

  Man. Was he a perfectionist? Is he a guy that's a perfectionist? Like he won't take risks that the odds are not fully in his favor? Is he, he will take the risks?

• 1:36:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, he'll take the risks. He did Pixar.

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  I'm so curious.

• 1:36:27Speaker 00

  He did Marvel. He did Lucas. Those could have gone belly up.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  Who's in the, who in the history of this business has done more deals than him? The size of the deals?

• 1:36:34Speaker 00

  Nobody.

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  He's the GOAT of the deal making in the media space. I don't know if anybody's done these deals.

• 1:36:39Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  You know, some of the things, every time you would look at him, there's no way he can close this deal. And he would keep closing and closing and closing. So if the political thing would have gone a little bit more, Bob Chapek is still the CEO of Disney today?

• 1:36:57Speaker 00

  I think part of the dynamic was that some of the things he thought he would do after retirement never came to fruition.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  It's a football thing.

• 1:37:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:09Speaker 01

  Bring the team.

• 1:37:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:11Speaker 01

  Got it. Got it. And that's a pure speculation that you felt like he didn't have the momentum to go pursue it? So let me come back to this. Do you think this, this time with Josh DiAmaro? Do you think there's a possibility, like Josh is going to be watching this interview, for sure. Bob Iger is going to be watching this video. I think Michael Eisner is probably going to be watching this video because we sold some of his books today. So I think people need to go buy his book as well, on top of yours. But if Josh is watching a video, it's like, man, I hope the same thing doesn't happen to him. What are the likelihood that you think Iger will do the same thing to Josh that he did to you?

• 1:37:48Speaker 00

  I think zero.

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:37:50Speaker 00

  I think number one, because I have gone public with my story. So I think the hazards of that happening, you're welcome, Josh. And then I think the second thing is the fact that he's already got his next gig now with the Lakers. So his equivalent of bringing an NFL team to Los Angeles has been realized through the NBA. So.

• 1:38:17Speaker 01

  If somebody was looking at Kalshi odds. Okay, of Iger becoming a president one day. What do you think are the percentages that he pursues politics now?

• 1:38:28Speaker 00

  Oh, gosh, I don't know that I have a crystal ball to that, but I'd say near zero.

• 1:38:31Speaker 01

  Oh, near zero. So that that chapter has been closed.

• 1:38:35Speaker 00

  In my own personal.

• 1:38:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I totally get that. And I, that's why I'm asking. I totally get that on what you're saying. So this is brought to you by Kalshi. If you remember, if you go put it, it's gonna be a risk. So maybe the rate of return will be like the horse at Kentucky Derby. That's one in 99 chance of winning, but.

• 1:38:50Speaker 00

  No one bets on that.

• 1:38:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, no one bets on that. Okay, so.

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  Then let's, let's go through a couple of parts on this. What, what do you, what do you take responsibility yourself? Because the board did say, you said in the book somewhere, like, I should have gone and met with the board more often. I did not. You know, in the 18 month period during COVID where you never met with the board face to face. What, what things you think you could have done differently as a.

• 1:39:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, that wouldn't have been one of them. By the way, because I couldn't. We were all locked up.

• 1:39:16Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:39:16Speaker 00

  Home. Right. We were locked down in home. So we couldn't get on planes. The board. You know, the first board meeting we had was like 18 months after COVID hit. And there was plenty of debate about not even doing that. And that was at the 18 month period. That was my first opportunity. So that was just a function of COVID that I really couldn't do that. I was on the phone with them all the time, but you know, something about the, like you and me right now, right? We're, we're, we're talking interpersonally, one on one. It'd be different if we were doing this via Zoom. That would not have been it.

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:39:46Speaker 00

  What I should have done is seen the smoke on the horizon.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  In the beginning, like previously?

• 1:39:52Speaker 00

  In the beginning, because you know, here, here's the thing about human nature. You're different, right? I saw what happened to Jay. I saw what happened to Tom. But I'm different. It's not gonna happen to me. This is gonna be different. This is gonna be different. Then I saw the interview. I was like, nah. It'll be okay. It'll be okay. Then, you know, we had the incident on the plane where the CFO Christine McCarthy says, hey, let's have our first one on, one on one together. And so I said, oh, okay. And Bob's sitting next to us and he blew up. Like Bob doesn't blow up. That's not his style. He blew up. What, what, that's disrespectful. You're gonna, you're gonna have your first one on one in front of me? I already had the job. All we're gonna do is talk about what's on her tick list and what's on my tick list, right?

• 1:40:36Speaker 00

  Uh, you know, then, and then the New York Times, you know, and then just keep going. The, the tweet about you know, uh, uh, Black Lives Matter. And, or not Black Lives Matter, but, uh, uh, don't say gay.

• 1:40:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't say gay.

• 1:40:48Speaker 00

  Don't say gay. And, uh, you know, and the list just keeps growing. And each time. You know, when, when I really had awareness that like, wow, I should have seen the smoke signals earlier was the New York Times. But at that point. He'd already told the world he's coming back. And so what's surprising to me is anybody has any difficulty at all believing the hypothesis that he wanted to come back and he was going to be determined to come back because he said it. He said it in an interview, in an email interview. So there's no doubt that that's the situation. There is no other hypothesis. Read the New York Times interview.

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  One month later.

• 1:41:31Speaker 00

  One month later, case closed. So that's why I said the miracle isn't that I lost my job. It's that it took three years and an extension for that to happen.

• 1:41:41Speaker 01

  Do you still talk to Susan?

• 1:41:42Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:41:44Speaker 01

  When's the last time you spoke to Bob?

• 1:41:45Speaker 00

  Last time I saw him was at Sun Valley. Yeah, Sun Valley, uh, conference. Uh, I think, uh, I'm gonna guess it was 22. Sun Valley Conference.

• 1:41:56Speaker 01

  Friendly?

• 1:41:57Speaker 00

  Uh, he was in a group of people, was cordial. I stopped, uh, shook his hand. Said hi, he said hi and I moved on and that was pretty much it.

• 1:42:06Speaker 01

  He hasn't called you since?

• 1:42:07Speaker 00

  Oh, gosh, no.

• 1:42:10Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  You think this book is gonna prompt a phone call for you guys to have a conversation or no?

• 1:42:15Speaker 00

  I doubt it.

• 1:42:16Speaker 01

  You doubt it?

• 1:42:17Speaker 00

  I doubt it.

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  Okay. So let me, let me go to a different phase with this on the, the few things that I myself, as a customer of yours for 47 years, as a kid that grew up in Iran, watching Disney in Farsi. All of them. We collected all the VHSs. My sister has all the collection of the VHSs. That was like our inventory. Dream, memories, crying, watching it. It was incredible stuff. The part that was confusing to me is the following, on what Disney did. So Disney, you, you know, the whole woke, where Disney's going woke. Disney's going woke. Disney's going woke.

• 1:42:52Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:42:52Speaker 01

  I went and pulled up numbers and I said, you know what I wanna know? I wanna know why Disney chose to get all these LG, LGBTQ. Uh, can you go to the other chart? Not this one. Go to the other one where, this one right here. I said, prior to 2019, how many gay characters or LGBTQ characters did Disney have? So we used AI and it pulled up the numbers. You guys wouldn't have characters. And if you did, it wasn't even public. I think the first character that ever came out that says I'm gay, it was 2019. Cause it, so it was a newer thing. Even one time. Uh, what was that one movie where the fellow goes and dances with a boy with another guy?

• 1:43:35Speaker 01

  And that was like the first sound where it's like, wow, it's kinda weird. Why is a guy dancing with a guy? I don't know what the movie's name was, but that, that story is kinda out there on what happened with that. Uh, story. But then afterwards, pulled this up to go to it.

• 1:43:49Speaker 01

  If you go back to this, go back to the charts that we had. All of a sudden Disney decides to get every single time, I would go to movies with my kids. I'm like, guys, this is out of control. If you're deciding to go and have gay characters with kids, why are you doing it to kids? You're doing a lot of this gay characters, LGBTQ. And this is the part where I'm living in LA 20 some years. I leave LA, I go to Dallas, live in Dallas. And my wife and I are thinking about going back to Newport Beach to buy a house, cause that was a place we were looking at. And I saw this happen. I said, there's no way in the world I can live over there. We come to Florida. And we choose DeSantis over Newsom. And you know, during COVID, cause you were running the park, you're talking to both of us. You're in the middle of this thing. You're talking to Newsom and you're talking to him.

• 1:44:31Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:44:31Speaker 01

  Uh, DeSantis. Why, why choose a brand like this that the parents, I'm your customer. I don't mind going and watching, you know, an adult movie with gay character. That does nothing to me. But why did you guys choose to do this as a company?

• 1:44:46Speaker 00

  I, I'm not going to endorse a position or other, but I will say that there was a belief by the LGBTQ uh, community and the advocates within Disney that the they had made a lot of strides uh, in acceptance and that they were about to move backwards. If you look at this time period here. Understand that the way you've plotted this is when the movies come out.

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  Four years prior.

• 1:45:14Speaker 00

  Understand.

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  Forty eight months.

• 1:45:15Speaker 00

  Four to five years prior is the development. Also understand that I was not responsible for creative development. Go back and read the announcement of my CEO.

• 1:45:27Speaker 00

  Uh, Bob Iger will retain responsibility. He will be uh, executive chairman and retain responsibility for creative and talent.

• 1:45:35Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:45:35Speaker 00

  So the only time that I actually had as CEO or as any job, responsibility for developing talent was in my last year, 2022. But those films were all greenlit back in 2018, 2019. So I can't speak to what was going on in his mind when he made those decisions. But I will tell you what, I inherited that situation and, um, it was obviously something that I knew was gonna be very, very contentious. And, uh, yeah, it's another thing I inherited, just like COVID.

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, you said in 2022, when you were asked directly whether Disney had become too woke, you said Disney's content should reflect the diverse world around us. That was your answer in 2022. So respectfully, that's still your position. And, and at that time, as a parent, I'm your customer.

• 1:46:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  And, and you, I would literally move every one of the cartoons. I would go with my kids. I'm like, are you kidding me? We're leaving. I can't tell how many times I left. And by the way, if you can go to the stock, there's one that matches all four of them. Yeah, I remember this. I read this tweet as well yesterday. I'm with the president on this. If I pass, this bill will put vulnerable young LGBT people in jeopardy. I remember this, don't say gay, but we'll come back to this. Bring the chart that has all four of them together. So this right here, if you look at this, the blue represents Disney stock. The green represents worldwide box office, then orange is parks, and then yellow is the LGBTQ amount of, uh, you know, uh, uh, film rate. Look how you guys are spiking. And this shows pre you. So respectfully, it shows what happened. Now look at the stock. It kinda, the, went down, the red stock's like, look,

• 1:47:12Speaker 01

  I, I don't wanna mess with this. So there's a few names. I went to this cause I wanted to ask this question and B. Fair to you because a part of it is when I'm looking back, I bought a bunch of Disney shares last year because I this year, seven, eight months ago, I believe in this product long term. So this is not coming from somebody that is just using this opportunity to criticize and yo, no, no, no, history of it. I wanted to know the history of LGBTQ with Disney. 1984, Michael Eisner comes in, he reverses prohibition on same-sex dancing at Disneyland in 85 and in 1995. Okay, so that's his position. Bob Iger, 2019, Disney had earned a perfect human rights campaign corporate equality index score of 13 consecutive years. Disney also

• 1:47:53Speaker 01

  supported organizations like GLAD, you know, all these other HRC. Then I said, who else was responsible for this? Latandra Newton was a name that popped up. She was a corporate diversity infrastructure. Iger hired her as chief diversity officer in 2017, became prominent executive overseeing diversity and inclusion, including LGBTQ workplace initiatives. This is Iger's hire. Then you got Latoya Raveno, I don't know how to pronounce her name if I'm butchering, get my apologies. Children's Animation was an executive producer at Disney Television Animation. She's the person from the same leaked meeting who generated enormous controversy by joking about her not at all secret gay agenda. This leaked, we saw it,

• 1:48:34Speaker 01

  and discussing adding queerness and same-sex couples to children's programming. That's one reason her name became prominent in criticism of Disney's children content specifically. She said, I add queerness, this is the recording, I don't know if you have it, I add queerness wherever I can. Anytime you see queerness, it's probably me. This is it. Can you please play this?

• 1:48:55Speaker 13

  I love Disney's content. I grew up watching, you know, all of the classics. They have been a huge, like, informative part of my life. But at the same time, like, I worked at small studios most of my career and I'd heard, you know, you hear whispers, like, I'd heard things like, oh, you know, they won't let you show this at a Disney show. And I'm like, okay. So I was a little, like, sus when I started. But then my experience was bafflingly the opposite of what I had heard. On my little pocket of, like, you know, Proud Family, Disney TVA, the showrunners were super welcoming, Meredith Roberts and like, our leadership over there has been so

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  It's coming up.

• 1:49:34Speaker 13

  welcoming to like, my like, not at all secret gay agenda. And so like, I feel like, I felt like, it was, I mean, like, maybe it was that way in the past, but I guess, like, something must have happened in the last, like, they were turning it around, they're going hard. And then, all that, like, momentum that I felt like that sense of, I don't have to be afraid to, like, let's have these two characters kiss, let's, in the background, like, I was just, wherever I could, just basically adding queerness to, like, if you see anything queer in the show, but like, I just was like, no one would stop me and no one was trying to stop me.

• 1:50:13Speaker 01

  This is a little weird when we saw this. So that's her saying she, and then by the way, this is a heavyweight children's animation controversy. Then Karen Burke, she was the president of ABC Entertainment and later president of Disney General Entertainment Council. In the leaked 2022 regimen tomorrow meeting, Burke said Disney had many, many LGBTQIA characters, but too few LGBTQ leads, and said she intended to focus more on that going forward. Critics subsequently made her one of the most visible faces of Disney. And I was critical of Kathleen Kennedy. I thought Kathleen Kennedy was behind it. And but respectfully, Kathleen Kennedy was actually hired by George Lucas, had nothing to do with Iger nor you. So my criticism to Kathleen Kennedy was unfair. And I publicly, I'm saying this, but you're a family guy, you got three kids, right? Two girls and a son. Didn't

• 1:50:58Speaker 01

  you sit there and say, what are we doing, guys? Like, our customers are parents. And forget about that I'm a conservative, you watch some of my stuff, so you know where I'm leaning politically. I'm a conservative guy and I grew up, but I love this product. Was there ever a conversation that we effed up behind closed doors pushing too much LGBTQ to kids and families?

• 1:51:19Speaker 00

  I don't know that there was a conversation that quote unquote, we effed up, but there was plenty of conversation as to what was the right direction for the company.

• 1:51:28Speaker 01

  You don't think this was an F up?

• 1:51:30Speaker 00

  No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying we didn't have a conversation that did we F up. But there was a lot of debate. What I'm saying is it's the way you're phrasing it.

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  Sincere.

• 1:51:39Speaker 00

  There's a lot of sincere debate as to where the company should be on this. Because, look at, Disney's in a tough position. Because in some ways, it's, it's matched up very well with the values of most of its customers, right? You know, families, that's where a lot of it's, it's families.

• 1:52:00Speaker 01

  It's neutral. I don't even think of Disney as a political

• 1:52:02Speaker 00

  Well, that's where, exactly where I was gonna go.

• 1:52:04Speaker 01

  It doesn't need to be political. You guys made it political.

• 1:52:06Speaker 00

  By the way, where was I on the announcement of, you know, what our position was going to be on Don't Say Gay? My announcement was that we were going to stay neutral. Because nothing comes, nothing positive

• 1:52:18Speaker 01

  Until Bob pushed you, and Bob Iger pushed you with that tweet, and then you came back, and you sided with them, with DeSantis, because all this, DeSantis never even said Don't Say Gay. All he said is, stop putting all these gay content to kids under the third grade. It wasn't that big of a thing that DeSantis was doing.

• 1:52:35Speaker 00

  You do realize that there's a lot of voices in the room. And you also realize that my, whatever I believe personally about any of this stuff, is not what you as the CEO advocate for. You're advocating for what the company believes it should stand for, right? I have my own personal beliefs. Do I go around talking about them at work? Hell no. Right? So there's, I think you have to separate what a CEO does as he advocates for a position that a lot of people debate, and come to a conclusion, this is probably

• 1:53:14Speaker 00

  where we should rest. When I got to the CEO job, again, not controlling creative, and I saw the cadence of that spike, I was concerned that this could create a backlash. I was gonna

• 1:53:30Speaker 01

  So you were worried that something could happen?

• 1:53:31Speaker 00

  I was worried that this was gonna, because remember, I had just gone through the, again, I hate the term, but Don't Say Gay controversy, where I said, we respect everybody, but let's stay neutral. And then, you know,

• 1:53:48Speaker 01

  Which is very fair as a consumer. I want that position.

• 1:53:51Speaker 00

  Fair, but not necessarily the consensus after the impact of that statement, in terms of where the company should reside. And as the CEO of the company, I had to go make a statement that backtracked. And, you know,

• 1:54:07Speaker 01

  Did you get calls saying you should take a stronger position on that? Did people push you to make a stronger position on the LGBTQ? Because I know a lot of Disney employees on the inside. I know people that are working at Disney, and they're careful, because they're Disney employees that love Disney, but they're conservatives. So they don't publicize their political, but there's a lot of people in Disney employees that are on the left and woke, who are louder. Conservatives can't be loud at Disney. You know that. If conservatives are loud at Disney, you'll get fired. You're not gonna move up. So you're better off just staying quiet and just kind of going with the flow.

• 1:54:38Speaker 00

  Right. So the question?

• 1:54:41Speaker 01

  The question is, was a part of you knowing your employees, who are on the other side, could turn against you, wanted you to be more vocal on the LGBTQ, would cause you to cave and side with them?

• 1:54:57Speaker 00

  It wasn't necessarily that it was the synthesis of such an opinion by a larger group of people, who believe that there were risks both sides and where we land as a company, where we landed in that first particular example with, you know, we should stay neutral, was something everybody thought was the appropriate landing spot.

• 1:55:22Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 1:55:23Speaker 00

  Yep. And let's just say, it wasn't just throngs of employees who didn't agree with that. It was the synthesis of a lot of people's opinion that the company's statement needed to be amended.

• 1:55:41Speaker 01

  Company's statement needed to be amended. On the back end, where, you know, I look at your flywheel very closely, Disney's flywheel, and I remember the first one in 1957. This is Disney's flywheel in 57. I'm sure you've seen this, right?

• 1:55:56Speaker 00

  Oh, 100%.

• 1:55:57Speaker 01

  It's a great story, theatrical studios, merchandise licensing, all this stuff. Then if you go to 12 years later, this is the flywheel. Get bigger at another park, et cetera, et cetera. Then bring it to the flywheel today, and if you zoom in, you guys are a behemoth. You're a small country is what you are, right? And the companies that you own, if an average person knew, they wouldn't believe the companies that you own, right? Do you know a man named Al Weiss?

• 1:56:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56:24Speaker 01

  Okay. So Al Weiss was a heavyweight at Disney. Maybe if you can share with the audience who Al Weiss was, because you know him better than I do.

• 1:56:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. Al was a legend. He spent a lot of years in parks and experiences, well, we call it parks and experiences in parks. And he was a legend in Orlando, headed up operations for the parks and very well respected. And he, he left the company, I believe, maybe about 10 years ago, and is a prominent citizen in Orlando, advocating for hospitals and things like that. So I do know Al very well.

• 1:57:03Speaker 01

  Was there any rumors ever of him becoming a CEO? Because I talked to a few people that said there were some conversations that he may have become the eventual CEO.

• 1:57:10Speaker 00

  I don't, I don't know, because that's at a time before, when he, that might have been the case, I don't know, at a time before I had any

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  Makes sense, because it would have been like your 15th year and you were like,

• 1:57:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was too low. I wasn't

• 1:57:22Speaker 01

  So the reason why I'm asking this question is because Al Weiss, based on some of the folks I spoke to, insiders, was, he was offered to be the CEO of Disney, at least seeing if he had any interest, but he didn't want to do it because he didn't want to move to LA. Because he was in Orlando and his job, he didn't want to leave Orlando with his family.

• 1:57:38Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:57:39Speaker 01

  Well, one thing was with Al, that the average person doesn't know, I think the fans need to know this, this guy was a massive conservative, he was a Christian guy, he was a leader in the company, he created an organization called Vision 360, okay? And he made an argument at one point, Disney cruise ships can't be as profitable without gambling and casino. He ended up being right with the argument that he made, that we don't need to do that. And then he joined Disney 72, stayed there for, you know, 39 years. And now Vision 360 is a national multi-denominational Christian church planting organization based out of Florida, founding it was established in 04, and he does what he does. So a question for you.

• 1:58:19Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends. Like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra because it's not just a superior like beer. It's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com slash superior access to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 1:58:48Speaker 03

  College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching band wake up call at 5:55 and 55 seconds. Hit it. When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay.

• 1:59:18Speaker 04

  Now more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid and risked 350,000 Virginians healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.

• 1:59:48Speaker 07

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web. Like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 2:00:14Speaker 12

  When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work? Use Indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast. That's indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 2:00:46Speaker 01

  Could a conservative man, if a guy like Al Weiss would have become the CEO who is an operator, he gets the job done as well. Let's say he takes the job instead of Iger. Let's just say, even let's just say that speculation's out there.

• 2:01:01Speaker 01

  And Disney doesn't make the massive hiccup of going and doing the woke stuff. You think Disney would have the same valuation it has today?

• 2:01:09Speaker 00

  Oh gosh, there's a whole bunch of hypotheticals in there.

• 2:01:12Speaker 01

  I like hypotheticals.

• 2:01:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, I could say you layered about three. If, if, if, if it's, it's hard to say, look at Al's a good guy, you know? And let's be honest, West Coast Disney, East Coast Disney, different animals.

• 2:01:28Speaker 01

  You're right.

• 2:01:29Speaker 00

  West Coast governor, East Coast governor, different animals. You are trying to please, one is trying to please a lot of different masters when you're CEO of Disney. And I can attest to the fact that it's very, very difficult. I have my own opinions where the company should be on these matters. I'm sure Josh Demaro has his opinions. I'm sure Bob Iger had his opinions. I'm sure Michael Eisner, well, this is before all this kind of really blew up. But suffice it to say that oftentimes when someone gets up in front of a crowd and makes a statement for the company, he's making or she is making a statement for the company. They may have their own points of view that may match up with that or may not match up

• 2:02:14Speaker 00

  with that. But you know, that's part of the job.

• 2:02:17Speaker 01

  You think this is one of the five big screw ups the last six years? Could this be ranked as one of the big six screw ups?

• 2:02:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I know I think was number one, but.

• 2:02:27Speaker 01

  Well, the number one, we already addressed.

• 2:02:29Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:02:29Speaker 01

  We went through it. But do you think this is a top three matter?

• 2:02:32Speaker 00

  I think the company unnecessarily put itself into a fire that it didn't have to.

• 2:02:37Speaker 01

  Why do you don't need to touch that? Why even touch that? Like there's certain things I don't even, I don't even want to put the pressure on you. Nobody should even ask you, hey, Bob, are you a Republican or Democrat? It's none of my flipping business. Go make good cartoons, go make a good product. Can you tap in Disney's stock? Just go to Disney stock. And this is the last thing I'll stay on this end and I'm going to go, go max. If you can go to max, max, yeah. If you go to max, it goes not that far. It goes to 1985. Okay. So you know all I'm sharing with you? If you go from 85 to 2019, look how great you did without any LGBTQ characters in cartoons. You guys crushed it. And then what do you do?

• 2:03:20Speaker 01

  Your valuation today is the same as it was in 2014. How does that make any sense?

• 2:03:25Speaker 00

  I think there's a lot of independent variables that lead to that dependent variable. And the one you point out is one.

• 2:03:32Speaker 01

  What did you?

• 2:03:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Cable television, where the gods of cable television for a long period of time. It became, you know, cable cord cutting that, that became sort of irrelevant, you know, that, that happened. And that's.

• 2:03:49Speaker 01

  Bob, you guys made a very good move to remove from Netflix. Disney used to be on Netflix, right? And you put it on Disney. That was a massive valuation play. I thought it was a brilliant move and I don't know who made that decision. Whoever did brilliant flipping move for valuation. You're bigger than everybody. Yeah, we can have our own audience. So guess what I'm forced to do? I have Disney as well.

• 2:04:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:04:06Speaker 01

  Right? So I think there were, don't you guys own Hulu? Isn't Hulu also yours?

• 2:04:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, but it's, it's being de-emphasized.

• 2:04:14Speaker 01

  It's being de-emphasized. Oh, I think Hulu is a massive upside.

• 2:04:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:04:19Speaker 01

  It's being de-emphasized?

• 2:04:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:04:20Speaker 01

  What a weird, I cannot believe you guys are de-emphasizing Hulu.

• 2:04:25Speaker 01

  You look like.

• 2:04:26Speaker 00

  It's all, no, no, no, well, it's all past me. My point is, is that there's a lot of variables that track that. It wasn't just one. It wasn't the company's stance on LGBTQ. But it is one. And I think it would be a mistake to look at that as the dependent variable and say it's because of one thing. There's a lot of things, you know, I was asked a question earlier today in an interview. If I had one wish for the company, what would it be? My wish would be that it had a growth vehicle because I think that is a function of the company not having something that Wall Street sees as an obvious growth vehicle. Streaming looked like it was going to be it. And now they're selling Disney content off to, you know, other third parties that aren't streamers.

• 2:05:11Speaker 00

  It's not exclusive to Disney anymore. There's a lot of things that there's, so there's a lot that goes into this. But I think this, this speaks, if you would ask anybody from Wall Street, this speaks to as much of that, yeah, we don't see a real strong growth driver. We know that, you know, the cable business, broadcast business going away. We know ESPN is challenged because of, you know, cost of sports rights relative to what it can charge. And it's trying now to invest in streaming.

• 2:05:39Speaker 00

  You know, parks is doing well. You know, but where's, where's, where's the growth going to come from?

• 2:05:45Speaker 01

  Are you, are you a long buy on Disney?

• 2:05:53Speaker 00

  I, I'd have to see, I'd have to see where Josh is going to take it. I, I think it's going to take some courage to go long on Disney.

• 2:06:02Speaker 01

  He has to confront Iger.

• 2:06:05Speaker 00

  He has to confront legacy management decisions. He has to be bold. He has to have courage.

• 2:06:14Speaker 01

  Is he a strong character guy?

• 2:06:16Speaker 00

  Strong character guy. Yeah.

• 2:06:17Speaker 01

  That's good. Is there a strong foundation with him as an individual that?

• 2:06:21Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:06:22Speaker 01

  And that's.

• 2:06:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, no, no.

• 2:06:24Speaker 01

  And is he a family guy?

• 2:06:26Speaker 00

  He is, he is very much so.

• 2:06:30Speaker 01

  Good.

• 2:06:30Speaker 00

  Very much so.

• 2:06:31Speaker 01

  I, listen, to me, I'm the guy where when a local business shuts down and say, I've been going to that place for 10 years. I don't like that. It's like a funeral to me.

• 2:06:42Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:06:43Speaker 01

  And I'm a guy that loves America. And one of the things about America to me is Disney. I don't think you can say America and Disney is not a part of the story. Walt, what he did, him and his brother Roy, Roy was the CEO for the first 40 years and him, the creative, it's an incredible story.

• 2:07:00Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:07:00Speaker 01

  It's an incredible story on what happened there. By the way, selfish question, this has got nothing to do with the interview. Do you think Johnny Depp's going to come back to do Pirates of the Caribbean?

• 2:07:10Speaker 00

  I don't know. I've been too far removed after three and a half years out, so.

• 2:07:13Speaker 01

  Remember when he said even if they gave me 300 million, I won't come?

• 2:07:16Speaker 00

  I remember that, yeah. I, I can't say, I don't have any knowledge of, of.

• 2:07:21Speaker 01

  Would you want to see it?

• 2:07:24Speaker 00

  No comment.

• 2:07:25Speaker 01

  No comment?

• 2:07:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:07:27Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 2:07:28Speaker 00

  I'm staying away from that one.

• 2:07:29Speaker 01

  With Johnny Depp?

• 2:07:30Speaker 00

  Well, just the subject matter. Who I want to see.

• 2:07:34Speaker 01

  Oh, I got it.

• 2:07:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't, I don't want to be quoted there.

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  Interesting. Really? Out of everything, that's a no comment?

• 2:07:45Speaker 00

  I have a lot of no comments.

• 2:07:46Speaker 01

  You've been pretty good today. You've not been no comment. You've been, you know, when I've read the book.

• 2:07:52Speaker 00

  Look, Johnny Depp was fantastic. I mean, his character is maybe one of my favorite and most beloved characters of all time. There's, I mean, you know, you know, even Alice in Wonderland. I mean, he's the guy, the guy is absolutely amazing. It depends on the script, you know, creative studios always have a situation where they break somebody back 10, 15, 20 years later. And, you know, Harrison Ford, how do you, how do you integrate them? It's not as simple. That's why I didn't want to get into it. It's not as simple as, would you like to see him come back? In what role? What's the story? It's all part of the integration and that's why.

• 2:08:32Speaker 01

  There's only one.

• 2:08:32Speaker 00

  But he's spectacular.

• 2:08:34Speaker 01

  Jack Sparrow, there's only one Jack Sparrow.

• 2:08:36Speaker 00

  There's only one Jack Sparrow.

• 2:08:37Speaker 01

  And I hope he gets the money. Bob, let me just say this to the audience before I say to you, I read the book. My son had homework to do last night till midnight. Okay. So I got, you know, I got all these AI Claude and all this stuff. Hey, summary that you put in there and you kind of go through them. We kept asking you for the audio book and all this stuff because we wanted to go through it. And I read the book. Highly recommend you read the book. So many things I haven't even covered here right now. We're going to put the link below for you go read it on your own. But I'll give you the final thoughts here, Bob, on where you're at right now, the future. Any last thing you want to share with the audience before we wrap up?

• 2:09:13Speaker 00

  Disney's a great company. It's got a great brand. That doesn't mean that it doesn't face challenges. A lot of times there's uncontrollable challenges from the outside world, whether it be COVID or things happening in the business environment. But sometimes, you know, unforced errors happen for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with, you know, the environment, the business environment or COVID or whatever the world's going to throw at you, social things. And I think if Josh Demaro can stay clear of those issues and has a board that actually supports him in doing that, then he's going to be tremendously successful. But you got to have the support.

• 2:09:58Speaker 01

  From Iger?

• 2:09:59Speaker 00

  No, from the board.

• 2:10:01Speaker 01

  From the board. We'll finish on that, Bob. Thank you so much for your time. Appreciate you. This was great.

• 2:10:07Speaker 09

  Handmade in Portugal, where craftsmanship is a way of life. For those who move through life differently, from sunlit decks to nights that never need an occasion. Every detail is considered, every step effortless. Crafted from fine suede and built with builder technology, designed to move with you. Because true luxury isn't about being noticed, it's about how you feel when you arrive. The FLB Icon Loafer. Made for the life you've earned.

• 2:10:51Speaker 04

  Now more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid and risked 350,000 Virginians healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.

• 2:11:21Speaker 05

  How many discounts does USAA Auto Insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount, safe driver discount, new vehicle discount, storage discount.

• 2:11:30Speaker 06

  How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply.