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The Powers That Be: Daily

Puck | Audacy

Join Emmy Award-winning journalist Peter Hamby, along with the team of expert journalists at Puck, as they let you in on the real conversations insiders are having across the four corners of power in America: Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Puck's contributors will bring you smart conversation around the inside stories happening in these worlds. Presented in partnership with Audacy, new episodes publish daily, Monday-Friday.

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Yesterday · 19 min
Anthropic’s Rogue Trip & Superintelligence Fever!
Ian Krietzberg joins Peter to break down how rogue Anthropic agents accessed a State Department website and filed a fake homicide tip with the Philadelphia P.D.—and how the incident has the Trump administration pressing the big A.I. companies for more transparency. Ian also weighs in on the sudden rise of the term “superintelligence.”
Tuesday · 19 min
Hakeem Jeffries’s D.S.A. Tsuris
Marianna Sotomayor joins Peter to answer an overlooked question about the midterms: if Democrats take back the House, the Senate, or both, what do they actually plan to do with that power? Marianna lays out the internal friction a House majority could expose between progressive socialists and centrist moderates. She also digs into how the G.O.P.’s heavy ad spending is failing to produce the results they’d hoped for.
Monday · 24 min
Media Monday: Zaz’s Parachute & Skydance Looming Questions
Jon Kelly and Peter reunite to make sense of the Paramount-WBD aftermath, beginning with David Zaslav’s $606 million payday and the looming Netflix layoffs rattling the industry. Then they weigh what’s next for David Ellison—from a reality-TV boom tightening scripted budgets to the sports rights likely on the chopping block—and the awkward pairing of CNN and CBS News.
Saturday · 37 min
Can MAHA Keep Iowa Red?
Iowa G.O.P. chairman Jeff Kaufmann joins Peter for a candid conversation about what it takes to win Iowa, where Trump still has a chokehold on Republican voters even as his approval ratings plummet. Kaufmann makes the case that any candidate who criticizes the president will find it nearly impossible to win the nomination, let alone the state. He also explains how MAHA voters are becoming a growing force in Iowa politics, and how Republican presidential hopefuls can win them over. Progress doesn’t just arrive. It’s built - one question, one discovery, and one solution at a time. Explore more at ScienceDelivers.com.
Friday · 21 min
Has Speaker Johnson Given Up On The House?
Leigh Ann Caldwell joins Peter with a fresh midterm update as Democratic optimism swells toward a possible Election Day tsunami—and even Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson sounds fatalistic about losing the House. Leigh Ann explains why some races remain a toss-up, and digs into several governors’ contests where Democrats are begging for more money to get across the finish line.
October 8 · 14 min
Gucci and Louis Vuitton’s Haute Mess
Lauren Sherman joins Peter fresh off four consecutive fashion weeks to deliver a runway postmortem on which brands and designers impressed on the runway. Lauren also gets into the sales slumps dogging Gucci and Louis Vuitton, and what those problems signal about parent companies Kering and LVMH as they try to right the ship.
October 7 · 18 min
What’s Next for Tony Romo and CBS?
John Ourand joins Peter to chew over Tony Romo’s departure from the CBS NFL booth in the wake of his D.U.I. earlier this summer, and what comes next for a broadcaster with his level of fame. John also looks back on Puck’s In the Arena sports media conference, where his guests included NCAA commissioner Charlie Baker and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey for a wide-ranging conversation on the myriad challenges confronting college sports.
October 6 · 15 min
Skydance’s Brain Trust & Condé After Roger
Jon Kelly rejoins Peter to size up Skydance’s new leadership team, including co-C.E.O. Ynon Kreiz, who arrives from Mattel with a mandate that likely includes cuts across the Hollywood giant. The duo also take stock of what outgoing Condé Nast C.E.O. Roger Lynch got right during his tenure, and what the media empire should prioritize as it hunts for his successor.
October 5 · 17 min
Media Monday: Skydance’s Sizzle Reel & Thompson’s Upper Hand
The besties Jon Kelly and Peter Hamby convene to size up the newly minted Skydance, and the splashy trailer that introduced it. They also dig into what the reported exits of Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca signal about the movies Ellison wants to make, and how his tech-bred, test-and-learn instincts could clash with Hollywood. Then the pair turn to CNN, where Mark Thompson appears to be staying put and Bari Weiss may be out of the running for an expanded role.
October 4 · 44 min
How to Win New Mexico in ’28, with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham
With New Mexico joining the early Democratic presidential primary calendar, Peter sits down with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham for a dissertation on everything candidates need to know about an often misunderstood state: how to talk about the border and gun rights, why Hispanic identity is different from in Nevada, the truth about tribal sovereignty and land acknowledgements, the trouble with “Woke 1.0,” and so much more. Progress doesn’t just arrive. It’s built - one question, one discovery, and one solution at a time. Explore more at ScienceDelivers.com.
October 3 · 30 min
Sen. Alsobrooks on Crypto and Clarity
In this special episode, Leigh Ann Caldwell sits down with Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks to discuss why the Clarity Act couldn’t get across the finish line, whether a deal can still happen in the lame duck, and why the crypto industry is making a huge mistake by going to war with Democrats again. She also sheds light on her party’s enduring identity crisis and how Democrats are faring with the midterms inching closer.
October 2 · 21 min
The New A.I. Helpers & Disney’s Big Bet
Julia Alexander joins Peter to dig into a new wave of A.I. agents, from Meta’s Muse to OpenAI’s Dots, and whether these tools can actually reach mass adoption or are simply products of an “optimization culture” bubble. They also get into Disney’s streaming ambitions, following the studio poaching filmmaker Shawn Levy to help lure young male viewers from Netflix to Disney+.
October 1 · 14 min
The Condé-WarnerMount C.E.O. Shuffle
Dylan Byers joins Peter to untangle the game of executive musical chairs at Condé Nast and Paramount–WBD as David Ellison taps outgoing Mattel chief Ynon Kreiz as his co-C.E.O., and Condé C.E.O. Roger Lynch in turn announces he’s leaving the media company to take Kreiz’s old job running Mattel.
September 30 · 24 min
Blue Wave Watch
Marianna Sotomayor joins Peter for a midterm vibe check as Democratic optimism runs high and some in the party are lobbying for eleventh-hour investments in Senate races like South Carolina, stretch Mississippi, and Florida. But Marianna sounds a note of caution, explaining why there’s reason to think Republicans could notch a few surprise wins too.
September 29 · 16 min
Can the Art World Win Over the Next Generation?
Marion Maneker joins Peter to debrief on Puck’s second annual Art of Influence conference, where he gathered the art world’s esteemed players for a wide-ranging set of conversations. They discuss museums’ evolution into civic spaces, Christie’s move into pop culture, the challenges facing younger buyers, and more.
September 28 · 22 min
Media Monday: Bonta’s Backtrack & The New Sports Doc Playbook
Jon Kelly and Peter break down why California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s antitrust effort against the WarnerMount deal collapsed into a series of meager concessions, and ponder whether the two studios will eventually merge. Then they pivot to Vertical Leap, film financier John Sloss’s new venture recruiting mid-tier athletes to invest in new sports documentaries.
September 26 · 44 min
Can We Actually Trust the Midterm Polls?
Lakshya Jain, elections analyst and co-founder of Split Ticket, joins Peter to dig into polling reliability, election models, and how voters are responding to economic conditions ahead of the midterms and 2028 primaries. While Lakshya says that Democrats have never been in a better position electorally, he explains why campaign insiders remain skeptical because of past polling misses. Progress doesn’t just arrive. It’s built - one question, one discovery, and one solution at a time. Explore more at ScienceDelivers.com.
September 25 · 19 min
Panic! At the G.O.P. Disco
Leigh Ann Caldwell joins Peter for a close look at the rising Republican panic over the midterms, as a spate of polls points to a possible blue wave election with voters completely turning on Trump. Then she digs into the scrutiny surrounding the Democratic super PAC End Citizens United, which raised nearly $23 million but has spent only about $1 million directly on candidates.
September 24 · 25 min
The Trump-Xi Summit Showdown
Ian Krietzberg joins Peter to preview the high-stakes meeting between Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping, breaking down the hopes, expectations, and realities in play as industry leaders press both sides to make A.I. safety a priority. Ian explains why a true breakthrough is unlikely—and why some are quietly wondering whether Trump will use the summit as a bid for the Nobel Peace Prize he desperately craves.
September 23 · 19 min
The G.O.P.’s Midterm NFL Blitz
John Ourand joins Peter to discuss the political ad money pouring into NFL and college football broadcasts this fall, and how it’s overwhelming local TV markets across the biggest battleground states. Then John assesses the Paramount–WBD merger and what it means for sports fans, as two companies loaded with major sports rights combine and some of those deals potentially face the axe under David Ellison.

Showing 1–20 of 81 episodes