Peter Kafka and Nilay Patel assess Skydance’s debt-heavy Warner Bros. takeover, with David Ellison betting on consolidation while offering little visible plan for growth. They trace the collision between Hollywood’s legacy franchises and the AI, social media, and streaming platforms eroding their value.

Chuck Klosterman discusses his alternative rock history, in which the Velvet Underground supplants the Beatles, and considers why hits happen through craft, mystery and chance. The conversation also follows the shrinking audience for nonfiction, the fractured monoculture and the growing authority of metrics in culture and sports.

Bryce Dallas Howard and Molly Graham confront the hidden advantages of famous families, from inherited confidence and insider knowledge to the shame of being seen as a “nepo baby.” Their conversation argues for acknowledging privilege without surrendering the responsibility to use it well.

Comedian Adam Conover traces how Hollywood’s retreat from cable programming handed YouTube control of television’s middle, leaving creators to chase algorithms and brand deals. He argues for rebuilding a unionized creative infrastructure before platform economics hollow out entertainment entirely.

NPR Music reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento examines the undisclosed payments turning online music tastemakers into stealth marketers for labels. The conversation traces how social-media payola erodes trust in personal taste while raising the stakes for artists without promotional cash.

Nilay Patel and Peter Kafka treat Comcast’s breakup as the latest collapse of the old “content plus pipes” fantasy, tracing how a generation of telecom-media mergers failed to turn internet access into cable TV all over again. Their conversation follows the money from NBCUniversal and Versant to Peacock, sports rights, and broadband monopolies, asking what media companies can still own that the internet has not already commodified.

A family’s daily long-distance intimacy is severed when Iran’s government plunges the country into an internet blackout during war, leaving one daughter in the U.S. desperate for any word from her parents. The hour gathers smuggled voice memos from inside Iran, where ordinary life, political terror, grief, love and rage all continue beneath bombardment and enforced silence.

Ira Glass makes a funny, unexpectedly candid case against commencement speeches as a doomed genre, then explains why family history, old loyalties and one memorable Goucher dorm room changed his mind. The conversation sets up a 2012 graduation address shaped by skepticism, sentiment and a story about his grandmother meeting Adolf Hitler.

A lively conversation about why even wedding skeptics end up throwing weddings, and how consumerism, social media, class signaling and community needs have reshaped the ritual. Amanda Montell and Anne Helen Peterson parse everything from Princess Diana and Pinterest to child-free receptions, bachelorette parties and the false promise of “timeless” taste.

Aftermath’s hosts talk with Rebecca Valentine about moving from IGN to Kotaku, the shrinking room for investigative games reporting and the stubborn hope created by a few outlets that are still hiring. Along the way, they veer into internet discourse, labor, health care, game criticism and the problem of bringing new writers into a business that remains precarious for almost everyone in it.