(SINGING) When you walk in the room, do you have sway?

I’m Kara Swisher, and you’re listening to “Sway“. With four kids, I’ve watched a lot of Disney films over the years. The latest, “Encanto“, is already a huge hit with my two-year-old, and that “Bruno” song is seared forever in my head. No, no, no.

(SINGING) No, no, no, no, we don’t talk about Bruno.

Who’s to blame for that? In part, it’s former Disney C.E..O., Bob Iger. Iger’s been in the entertainment business for nearly 50 years. He ran Disney for almost 15, during which time he oversaw an astonishing array of deals— among them, the purchase of Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, and various T.V. and film assets from Fox.

That means Buzz Lightyear, Captain Marvel, Luke Skywalker, and—

D’oh!

—“The Simpsons.” He also oversaw the launch of the streaming platform, Disney Plus, which now has over 100 million subscribers. Iger became almost synonymous with Disney, so it was big news when he announced in 2020 that he would step down as C.E.O. that year, and would give up his chairman’s seat at the end of 2021.

So now that he’s a few weeks into his retirement, I sat down with Iger to ask him how he led an almost 100-year-old studio through the streaming wars, and find out where he thinks Hollywood is going next. We taped this conversation in front of a live audience at the Richmond Forum.

Wow. Look, Bob, people. I see people, live people.

No, we’re actually in the metaverse.

Oh, we are. Cool. That’s great. There’s very few people, I was saying, that I would put on pants for, because I’ve been living in sweatpants for the past two years. So I’m very excited to be here in pants with you. So let’s just get started. Let’s first talk about your retirement. So it’s three weeks?

It was three weeks ago, yes. It’s very different.

Is it?

First of all, I have to wait on lines at theme park attractions.

OK. All right.

I don’t wear a Bob name tag anymore.

Yeah.

And I joked earlier, I don’t tell my wife to have a magical day every morning.

OK, all right.

So this is—

I’m amazed you’ve been married this long if you say that to her every morning. But three weeks, so three weeks. So—

I’m a rookie at retirement.

You finally retired from Disney. It took four times, I think, right? You were going to retire, and then not retire. I was always almost writing, Bob Iger’s leaving Disney, and then you didn’t. Why did you do that now? What was the thinking?

I think, by the way, flunking retirement four times is, I think, always just a little bit inflated.

OK.

But I always wanted to leave when I felt like I still had it in me to do more, but that things were good and I didn’t want to tempt fate. And I also didn’t want to get to a point where people at the company were saying, when is he finally going to go. And there are couple of other factors.

One, I think change at the top has value. Bringing someone in with a fresh perspective is like opening the windows and letting fresh air blow in. Secondly, I was starting to get a little bit arrogant and a little bit overconfident in my own instincts. And what I mean by that is, I was sensing I was becoming a little bit more impatient or a little bit more intolerable, I should say, of other people’s ideas. I think because subconsciously, I felt like I was always right, or I knew it all.

Mm-hmm.

And things had been quite good at the company in the period of time that I was C.E.O. And so I think that resulted in my believing in my own instincts so much, that I was becoming a little bit less open to other people’s. Anyway, I felt it was time.

Right. But one of the things— CNBC polled 10 media executives anonymously about their 2022 predictions, and one was that you’ll return to Disney.

As what?

I don’t know. A Mickey Mouse character.

I would love that. Yes. First of all, you know, I was a weatherman when I started my career in 1973. And somewhat impishly, I said to people, before I leave Disney, I’d like to do the weather one more time. We own T.V. stations in a variety of cities.

So the head of our station in L.A. said, well, you can come do the weather. So the last week I was at Disney or two weeks before, I did the weather. So coming back to Disney, I guess I could become a weekend weather—

In Los Angeles? What did you say? Sunny? With a chance of sunny? OK. Right. That’s really exciting for you.

I didn’t have—

So would you—

But I’m not, no—

There are rumors that you could become Disney’s C.E.O. again.

Well, that’s ridiculous.

Ridiculous.

I was C.E.O. for a long time. You can’t go home again. I’m gone.

Really? It’s happened before. Starbucks?

I gave my I.D. up, my name tag up.

OK.

My office, my email address— it’s all gone.

Right, and all the headaches that come with it. Would you want to be C.E.O. of any other company? Would you think about doing that?

No. I think if I wanted to run a company, I’d still be running Disney. No. No, I did that.

So one of the things is the crises that come with it, and this is— you’re working on a book on crisis management. It’s also crisis right now, I think. I don’t know if it’s a crisis, precisely.

But the talent— the shift around talent and the economics of Hollywood have changed, and Disney was smack in the middle of it, with a lawsuit with Scarlett Johansson around “Black Widow,” releasing it to theaters and on the streaming platform. She sued, saying streaming was eating away box office revenues she’d been promised. I doubt you’re going to talk specifically about this, unless you want to—

Not really.

Not really— I didn’t think so, but please do. Your take on fighting publicly with one of the biggest stars in Hollywood or this idea of what’s happening right now in Hollywood.

That’s a very good question. Rather than be specific about her, who I like a lot personally, and I think she’s really talented. Everything is changing really fast. It’s incredible what technology is doing to disrupt existing businesses, business models, business practices, including how people get paid.

All of a sudden, we get to a point where digital media really transforms the movie business. And many films, which at one point— and we can put Covid aside, but at one point would have just gone through that process. Go to the big theater first, and then they immediately go to streaming. They skip all those other steps.

Right, the window wing.

Or now, a lot of them don’t even go to the big screen, the movie theaters. They go right to Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney Plus, Hulu, Peacock, Paramount, you name it.

Yeah.

And there—

There’s approximately 27 of them at this point.

Is that how many?

I don’t know.

That’s a lot.

Yeah. Yeah.

So there, the digital streamer— Netflix or Disney— typically is paying a flat fee for the film, right? And then, it stays on that platform sometimes forever, meaning it doesn’t have any other life. So the revenue that is associated with it, one, is very different in terms of where it comes from. But two, it’s not like there’s direct revenue attributed to that film.

Right.

So the whole industry right now is struggling to contend with how people are paid in this new world order. And what was happening with Scarlett was that there was a— first of all, Covid was really disrupting what already was a business that was being disrupted. And so first, the decision was made to delay, delay, delay, then ultimately, the decision was made to skip the movie theaters, then go directly to service. And obviously, that created tension.

It was more than tension. Disney said she had callous disregard for the effects of Covid-19. She said, your annual bonus was tied to performance at Disney Plus. I know you and I talked a lot about the streaming business model causing problems long ago when you started doing it. Did you have a choice?

Well, a choice in what sense?

In terms of not going to streaming. You had Netflix, sort of, lapping all of you companies around the track.

Look, if you’re in the business of creating what we call filmed entertainment or television and movies, you’re not doing that for just pro bono—

Right, no.

—or charity. You’d be in the business of making money doing it, and you’re going to follow the money, which in this case is following the consumer. And so you don’t really have a choice if you want to stay in the business or grow the business, except to go in the streaming direction. And I made the decision for Disney to do that in 2015.

We ultimately launched Disney Plus in 2019. So I don’t think there was a choice. Was there a choice in selecting films? Yes, but Covid took a lot of that choice away.

It just accelerated trends that were already in place.

Yes. I think what Covid did actually— it accelerated a change in consumer behavior, which is that pre-Covid, there was growth in these streaming services. What Covid did is, it forced people in, and people still wanted to be entertained, so they figured out how to use— basically, I call it app-based television or app-based entertainment.

And they now like it.

And they got really comfortable with it. They not only like it. They discovered that there’s huge choice. There’s tremendous amount of quality for everybody. The good side of this for talent is that because of technology, which enables more distribution and more consumption, what the industry has discovered with the growth and consumption is a growth in production. So there’s a lot more being made. There are hundreds and hundreds of T.V. series being made now. So if you’re a writer, a director—

So there’s more work is what you’re saying.

Much more.

The streaming model— when you think about where streaming is going, is that the death of movie theaters? I think theaters are going to become a smaller and smaller business. Doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but that it becomes less and less. It becomes sort of tent poles, like the Spider-Man movie.

And every time one comes out, like “Spider-Man,” I get an email or text from Ari Emanuel, and he’s like, see? And I’m like, it’s one movie. What do you imagine is going to happen to the analog movie-going experience?

I don’t think it’s the death. I think it’s a severe injury—

OK.

—that maybe doesn’t heal.

OK.

And what I mean by that is—

Wow.

Not fatal.

OK.

It might be fatal to some. Let’s start with the movie-going experience, to say something good about that.

OK.

I think that people will still want to go to movies.

OK.

However, they will be much more, I think, discerning about what movies they want to see out of the home, where you’re likely, I think, to say or ask yourself, wait a minute, is this a movie I need to see on the big screen and do all that, or can I wait or not even wait, for that matter, and see it at home?

Right.

You know, “Spider-Man,” which Marvel and Walt Disney Company produced for Sony, when that came out there was a slew of people around the world wanting to see it first weekend. And there are films like that. But there are a lot of films that don’t fit into that category, or that don’t really need to be watched in a larger-than-life experience.

Right.

And so I think what you’re going to see is far fewer films released for the big screen.

So talk a little bit, because we used to call those plane movies, right? I’ll see it on the plane, but now of course, we’re not on planes. And then, the moviegoing experience is horrible. And it’s not just it’s expensive.

It’s improved in some places, certainly, but it’s not one that has improved in terms of experiential. Even seats— some of them have gotten better, but not a lot of them. And then, when you layer Covid in, it’s like, oh, boy, expensive popcorn and Covid. Great. So what has to change in the movie-going experience?

I’m going to be a little bit more kind to movie theater owners. There are some that have figured it out and have improved the experience— better chairs that recline, just generally better service, the ability to buy tickets online. But there’s no question that it has to be perfect. It’s very unforgiving for people to really want to do it, because they have alternatives.

And by the way, it’s not even about whether you watch a movie on the big screen or at home. It’s just, you have so many more choices in the home. Think about the number of TV series that we’re talking about— at a quality level that’s pretty good, much better, from a production-value perspective, than it used to be.

There are movies— when we make “Mandalorian” or— I say, “we.” I’m not allowed to say “we” anymore. I lost the ability to say “we” three weeks ago.

When I used to— when they— whenever—

Yeah. You can say, “my ex” if you want.

You know, I was joking— Could do that. If you were to look at some of the films, some of the T.V. shows that Disney has made— “Mandalorian” being one, the Marvel series, “Falcon and the Winter Solider,” “Loki”— each one of those is a movie.

Yeah. They were.

So just, movie theaters have much more competition than they ever had before.

So I just interviewed Joseph Gordon-Levitt on “Sway,” and he told me that Silicon Valley now owns Hollywood. Now, you have had a lot of experience with tech, but talk a little bit about that idea of tech owning Hollywood. Now, Amazon’s in, Apple’s in, Google’s kind of in?

I don’t think anybody owns Hollywood, and no one ever will. But there’s no question that deep-pocketed technology companies— Apple being a great example of that, Amazon being another— have figured out that if they make intellectual property or tell stories, that it will benefit their other businesses— in Amazon’s case, to sell more Prime customers, in Apple’s case, I imagine, to sell more devices.

And so they figured out that they can make TV and movies. Took them a little time, but not too long, to figure out how to make really good ones. “Ted Lasso” is a great example of a really fine show that they’ve made. Nothing to do with me. I—

No.

I’m like all of you on that one. I can’t wait for the next episode to come out or the next season to start. But the trouble is, competing with them is hard, because— I don’t want to suggest those are lost-leader businesses, but—

They are lost-leader busi—

But they’re in those businesses for other reasons.

Nonetheless, they have so much money. Like, the money they have is— this is a rounding error.

Yeah, look. I can only speak for Disney. We view them, all of them, as competitors, but we never worried that they were going to put us out of business or own Hollywood, particularly since— and maybe this was a conscious decision that we made— actually, I made, when I became C.E.O.— is that if we own a lot of high-quality branded content, then—

Like Marvel or—

Marvel, Pixar, “Star Wars,” “The Simpsons,” “Avatar,” you name it— National Geographic— that that would enable us to withstand not only disruption of a business, but the incursion of new entrants into the business, even very, very deep-pocketed, very competitive competitors.

Because you had all this—

Because they can’t make a “Star Wars” movie. They can’t make a “Thor” movie. They can maybe figure out how to make animation, but doing it at the Pixar level or the Disney level after decades of doing that, you don’t just snap your fingers and make a great film. But you think about all the intellectual property. Marvel has 7,000 characters.

And when that red Marvel comes on, which was purposeful in our part when we bought them, which has put a spotlight on the brand, it means something to the audience. And the stories are now interwoven, and so there’s a seamlessness between the television series and the movies. Basically, the storytelling over multiple genres and multiple media has real value, and they don’t have that.

Yet.

Well, maybe that’s one of the reasons why I retired. I don’t know.

Yeah, really. Right.

Because one of the things I was thinking— I remember talking to David Zaslav, who’s now going to be leading the combined Warner Discovery. One of the things I kept thinking is, you’re too small. Are these media companies too small, when you’re looking at what’s arrayed against you?

Yeah. Those— these media companies— I’m going to leave Disney out.

OK.

Because Disney is not too small. But when Rupert Murdoch called me in 2017 to talk about possibly buying some of the assets of his company, he asked me whether I thought they were too small, and could they basically survive all of this new competition. And he was thinking— I think, smartly— of exiting a good part of the business, because he worried that they didn’t have the scale.

I was thinking at the time, knowing that we were going to be launching Disney Plus and going into the streaming business, that if we had, on top of Marvel, Pixar, “Star Wars,” Disney, ESPN, ABC— if we had National Geographic, and “The Simpsons,” and “Avatar,” and the whole Fox library, and the great people talent that came with those assets, that we would have the scale, particularly to go into the streaming business.

Who does it? The other companies— I just read a story about Comcast not having enough, or— I do think Warner Discovery is too small.

I’m in an enviable position right now, just because I’m not working for Disney. I’m kind of liberated. I can say anything about anybody.

OK. Go ahead.

But I’m going to choose not to single anybody out.

Oh, come on.

I think scale is an issue for a lot of the traditional companies that were in the television and movie business.

OK. Well, that’s all of them then. OK. So do you need—

That’s your interpretation of what I said.

But it’s correct.

But do you need to own a platform when you think about owning platforms? Is that critically important?

Yes.

—around the whole idea? And I mean that in a broader sense.

Disney was licensing movies to Netflix.

Yes.

And they were building— helping to build their platform—

Yes, you did.

—on the back of our movies, and having the direct relationship with the consumer and building this global subscription business, which they did a brilliant job of, really. They deserve a lot of credit. While they were doing that, they were using some of the circulation that we helped them create and the subscription growth to fund their own television and movie production, directly competitive with us for talent and stories. And I woke up one day and thought, we’re basically selling nuclear weapons technology to a Third World country, and now they’re using it against us.

Yeah.

That’s literally what I said.

Mm-hmm.

So we decided at the time that we would stop licensing to Netflix and do it ourselves. And it resulted in a substantial decrease in our revenue, because we weaned ourselves off all that licensing—

Right, because it’s like, oh, look, money.

But it thrust us into a business that is the most compelling growth engine in the media today.

Right, for Disney and for the rest of them. So when you think about this many streaming platforms— I know I pay for all of them right now.

Why?

I don’t know. My children do it. I— they just keep clicking. And that’s the end of my— that’s why I’m here, talking to you. Anyway—

So can there be this many? Can there be this many platforms?

I think it’s still too early to tell.

Does it become bundled?

Well, Disney’s bundling Hulu and ESPN Plus.

But you own a big chunk of it.

Yeah. I don’t know. I think it’s too early to tell. Everybody is trying. I don’t think they’ll all succeed. So the answer is probably no.

Probably no. Is there anyone you’d like to call out from— at the bottom of the pile?

Change the subject.

OK. Paramount Plus. OK. Although they had “Yellowstone,” and they gave it over to Peacock. What’s going on with that?

I don’t know.

By the way, watch “Yellowstone.” One of the things I’m thinking of is, recently, Microsoft announced buying Activision for $70 billion. Activision has obviously had some cultural issues, but lots of these gaming companies do. But can you talk a little bit about why that wasn’t bought by an entertainment company? That was sort of striking, that it was a tech company that bought it.

Well, first of all—

Now, Microsoft’s in gaming, obviously.

It’s a big acquisition, in terms of money crossed.

Yes.

And going back to what you were suggesting about the entertainment companies not having the scale—

Yeah, they don’t have the money.

—they’re not necessarily on solid ground, from a financial perspective, and I don’t think that they could have easily done it. Now, Comcast’s big enough to do that. But I don’t think, in most cases, there were synergies to be gained from an entertainment company buying those.

In Microsoft’s case— and I’m an outsider looking at this— clearly, they’re already in the gaming space—

Mm-hmm.

—both on the platform side, and with games. So I think that it’s a natural fit. And then, gaming and playing games could be a very, very large component for the consumer of an internet 3.0, metaverse experience.

So do entertainment companies need to be here then?

It’s really hard. You can spill a lot of money very quickly—

Yeah.

—getting into that. Need to be? No. Entertainment companies— to survive in an internet 3.0 world, you need to have some really compelling intellectual property.

To turn into metaverse. We’re going to get that in a second, but I want to talk about two things— data, and then Steve Jobs, a little bit in terms of what you learned from him. But at your final Disney board retreat, you said, in a world of business that is awash in data, it seems tempting to use data as an answer to all our questions, including creative questions. I urge you all not to do that.

At the same time, the person who took over after you, Bob Chapek, said, Disney is now a data-driven company. What is entertainment now? Is it data, or is it creativity?

I won’t comment about what Bob said, but what you’re quoting me as having said, which is accurate— I was attending what was our last— the last Disney board retreat that I would be at. And I opened the meeting thinking that I would leave them with some advice—

Right.

—on how to go forward. And having spent almost 50 years on the creative side of our business, it became more and more clear to me that while data was already playing a very important role, that it should not be used to determine what stories are told. If we had tried to mine all the data that we had at the time to determine whether we should make a superhero movie that was essentially about an Afrofuturistic world with a Black cast, the data probably would have said, don’t do that.

Mm-hmm.

And “Black Panther” never would have been made. There are a number of examples of that, where someone’s instinct or a group of people’s instinct on whether a story is worthy of being told and is in the hands of people who will tell it really well— I don’t think a machine or data, no matter how much technology enables, essentially, input of massive amounts of information to be processed— I don’t think you get the right answers to that.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you. And again, I think it’s valuable. Once you make something, it’s really valuable to learn about what people liked about it, what they didn’t like, should it continue. Interestingly enough, very effective in how to market.

Yeah.

There’s that famous quote— which, I don’t know whether it’s apocryphal or not— about Henry Ford. And he said, if he had been asked what people wanted, they would have said, a faster horse—

Yeah.

—instead of a car.

To me, it is somewhat analogous, too. You need human beings to make those decisions.

So talk a little bit about Steve Jobs, because one of the people who did like stories is Steve Jobs, compared to a lot— I mean, I’m sure you’ve met a million tech people, and they’re always telling you how they can figure everything out via technology. But Steve was quite interested in narrative and storytelling. He did that with the products of Apple and stuff. So talk a little bit about what you— that was one of your most significant, important relationships as a C.E.O., which really did—

As a person, too. Actually, we became very close friends. First of all, Steve respected storytellers and respected the art of storytelling, knowing that a great story, really well told, was a miracle in many ways, that it wasn’t just an accident. And I think a lot of people in the tech world, because they’ve been so tech-centric, have not had the time in their lives or the experience to understand the intricacies of storytelling, the beauty of it, and really, the magic of it all.

And when Steve bought Pixar from George Lucas, he immediately became immersed in real storytelling. And he was already a storyteller at heart. Just look at the marketing that he used to tell stories about Apple product. But this opened his eyes in a big way to the power of great stories.

So when we bought Pixar from him and he became the largest shareholder of Disney— and then, ultimately, I ended up replacing Steve on the Apple board. But Steve knew that not only that there’s a miracle to great storytelling, but that the combination of using wonderful technology to both tell better stories— what Pixar did, just using technology, richer pictures and—

Or Lucas.

Or Lucas. But then, technology could be used to not only distribute it more effectively, but to consume it that way. So I think he was very, very unique, in terms of all the people I’ve met in the tech business. I’ve never met anyone that comes close to that understanding and the comprehension he has.

Possibly George Lucas, right, which you bought that company.

Yes, I think George Lucas was a storyteller first that understood the power of technology in the storytellers’ hands. Walt Disney was another, by the way. Walt Disney once said that no matter what happens, in terms of the advances in technology it will improve or expand the purview of the storyteller.

Mm-hmm.

So he was thinking that he could tell better stories using the tools of technology, which is what George did, and it’s what Steve did when he bought Pixar. And when I think about Steve, one of the things I miss the most is engaging with a person who is such a brilliant technologist that really got the other side— a left-right brain, and an extraordinary—

Do you imagine the technology— when I’m thinking about Lucas, years ago, we were doing an interview, and I said— he was talking about “Star Wars” and anything else he creates. And I said, someday, everything’s going to be distributed over this streaming, and I went on and on about this. This was about 10 years ago. And I said, do you need studios, I guess, or do you need—

Oh, I see. Well, studios can provide an important function. That’s money, of course, and— because they understand the process is somewhat messy. And sometimes if the studio executive is really good, they can add perspective and actually help a creator see things that the creator might not see because they’re so close to them.

And sometimes it’s also marketing and platform and brand. So you know, if you’re a storyteller and you want to tell a story about superheroes, you’re better off telling it with Marvel superheroes, distributed by Disney, than you are with— Apple doesn’t have any superheroes— creating one Kara Swisher superhero, and—

They should.

—good luck.

OK. It’s going to be fantastic. It’s going to be so good.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

We’ll be back in a minute. If you like this interview and want to hear others, follow us on your favorite podcast app. You’ll be able to catch up on “Sway” episodes you may have missed, like my conversation with Jeffrey Katzenberg, and you’ll get new ones delivered directly to you. More with Bob Iger after the break.

There is a call to break up tech companies, that they’re too powerful. Talk about what you think of the current situation right now, looking at— you just told me backstage, it can’t be regulated.

Well, you have this growth in these companies that’s just extraordinary. And I think it is likely that you will see an attempt to regulate them a lot more. The competition is that— I think the technology businesses that would be regulated are much more complex and much more difficult to understand and figure out how to even write the right legislation to regulate them with.

And so I happen to be a pessimist. I know the E.U. is going to try. Whether the U.S. government does or not, I don’t know, but I just don’t think it’s as easy as it sounds. And yet, they continue to get larger and larger.

And I’m not editorializing about that. I think, with size sometimes comes abuse. And you could argue that now, there are different ways that size creates abuse. Pricing leverage over the consumer might be one way you’d look— anti-competition or anti-competitive positions.

But I just think that as they get bigger, they will be in the crosshairs more and more. But you know, breaking them up is— I don’t think there’s anything that’s going to happen that’s imminent.

So I want to finish on— you talked about this idea of what government can do. This is a government that hasn’t done anything about tech, for example. When you look at the current political situation, it’s so partisan.

You know, part of Disney was to bring everybody together. It’s the most happiest place on Earth. Earth is not a happy place right now, in general, and this country is particularly unhappy, sort of in the middle of a mental breakdown.

You need to go to Disney World.

No, I don’t. [LAUGHTER]

No, I have— no.

I spent three days at Disney World my last week in the company.

Oh, boy good for you.

I felt great.

Did you? Did you? I can’t go to— I cannot go to a place that smells like cinnamon rolls all the time. I can’t.

Churros.

I know you pump that— is it churros? Is that what you pump in, churro smell? I know you did.

I miss the churros already.

I did like the soft serve on the cruise, though. It’s fantastic.

I think— well, I don’t know where you were going with this.

I wondered about the politics. You were going to think about running president. Is that correct?

I was thinking about running for president. Yes, at one point in my life.

And what happened?

Life happened. I talked about it with my wife. She knows me well enough to know— she puts it that when I see a mountain, I don’t talk about climbing it. I typically climb it. Just who I am.

So she felt, when I told her I was thinking about running for president, that I was going to do it. And after some tears, she told me that I could run for any office in the land, but not with this wife.

Oh.

That’s how she put it. But she softened on that.

Mm-hmm.

It was not something— and I was seriously considering it. It was not something— the family — was happy about, at all. But as I got into it more and I studied the political environment in the United States, this is in— well, I actually started talking about it before the 2016 race. But then, 2020— and I’m a registered Democrat, but I consider myself a centrist— it became more and more clear to me that getting the nomination in today’s world— which maybe says a lot about politics, too— would be really hard, if not impossible.

And then, when I was thinking about it, which was 2017— I had, again, conversations with Rupert Murdoch about buying those assets. Initially, it was a $70 billion purchase. I knew I was not going to be able to go to the Disney board and say, hey, I’d like to buy these assets for $70 billion, and by the way, I’m leaving.

Mm-hmm.

To run for president. Whatever— anything. To do anything. So I put the whole thing aside. One, I didn’t think I had great chances. Two, my family was against it. Three, my job got in the way.

What would have been your platform?

The trains would have run on time. The streets would have been clean.

I want to turn the country into— it would have been the happiest place on earth.

Really? So— we’re going to end— we’re not ending on that. We’re not ending on that, because—

Before we leave that—

Right.

—this was— I admit— in today’s world, naive.

Yeah.

But I grew up under modest circumstances, and I started at ABC, which became Disney, as a $150-a-week employee in 1974, and I became C.E.O. of the Walt Disney Company by moving up and up and up. And so when you ask me the question— and I know that this is very simplistic, naive, maybe idealistic.

But I had this notion that every kid in America should grow up believing that they could be me, meaning that they could follow their dreams and achieve them, that they could start off with nothing and become something— however you lead a fulfilling life, and that America would provide them with opportunity, whether they were Black or white, rich or poor, suburban, urban, rural, you name it. That’s what I would have wanted for America. Now, again, very simplistic, but that just was my thinking.

Are you optimistic about, you know— joking about the happiest place on earth. Get to moderately not pissed off all the time— would be great.

I’m an optimistic person. I’m concerned. I’m really concerned. There’s so much dysfunction right now, and I think— look, the internet and technology is the ability to be a great uniter and a great divider. I think what we’re seeing now is the divider’s effect of all of that much more.

And so everything is fragmented, in terms of political views— even now, a dispute about what the truth is, in fact. And that’s concerning to me. So I’m not— I’m not optimistic, but I refuse to be a pessimist, too. I don’t know where that puts me, but this— it’s disheartening right now.

All right. On that, we have a lot of great questions from the audience. What responsibility do American business leaders have to carry out American ideals as they enter markets with differing societal values like China?

Wow. In terms of responsibilities to the country and American ideals, Disney is a global company and does business in just about every market in the world, save for a couple, North Korea being one. And when you do business around the world— this is not a cop-out, but you have to conform to a variety of different things about the market you’re doing business in.

And you try in the process not to compromise what I’ll call values. But there are compromises that companies have to make to be global. And again, I’m not condoning— and then, there are times when you draw the line and say, just, we’re not going to do it. Now, not entering a market— if it’s a huge market and you want to be a global company and you’re looking for growth, it’s very hard.

How difficult is it for companies entering China now, given all the political—

I think the first difficulty about China is that if you’re doing business globally, you would like at least the country that you’re based in to have decent relations with the countries you’re trying to do business with. And the tension between the United States and China has not made it any easier to do business there. And I think my optimism about certain markets, which was extraordinary at one point, has been diminished a bit.

OK. Have you ever— this is a total shift. Alex— have you ever personally pitched a show or movie idea? If so, was it produced?

I always have ideas, or had ideas. Most of the time, I was politely laughed at. I had a title, so they couldn’t really just throw me out of the room. They had to listen, and then—

What was it? Give me one.

—figure out who would get back to me. Oh, I don’t know. I pitched an idea for a sitcom once about a teenage kid who had a mother that was ridiculously sexy. I don’t know—

What?

They thought that was absurd.

I don’t even want to know.

I just remember that. But then, you know, I remember at one point—

Do you remember the title? I can’t help but ask that.

There was a video. This is— we’re going into this kind of detail?

This is a question from the audience! Be respectful of the audience.

There was a video called “Stacy’s Mom.” I— I know that’s a— that’s a, uh—

Wait.

That’s a common—

Wayne. Fountains of Wayne.

Yeah, they thought I was crazy, and they were right.

Yeah! God.

It was a bad idea. You hope, by the way—

Man, you would have been so canceled.

You hope that— you hope you create an environment— it goes back to what we talked about earlier— where people feel that it’s a safe space to show disagreement or dissent. Now, around the same time, I exhorted ABC to do a series, a drama series around a heroic woman surgeon.

And just around that time, a woman named Shonda Rhimes had pitched two ideas to ABC. One was about heroic war correspondents. And the other one was about young surgeons, and that became “Grey’s Anatomy.” Not my pitch.

Right.

But we both sort of supported the same idea.

What— anonymous again. What has Disney done to weather the Great Resignation that other companies could learn from? I also call it the Great Reassessment.

Yeah. Well, tell me what is going on there. Why don’t people want to work?

Because some jobs suck, and they’re sick of it.

Right. Yeah. But there are also jobs that need to be filled as a company.

Well, yes.

And you’d better quickly address what your immigration policy is, or you’re going to run out of people to—

So what do you do if you’re managing?

Well, first of all, if you’re Disney or if you’re any company, you have to be an attractive place to work. What does that mean? Competitive wages. In inflationary time, that becomes even more tricky when you’re trying to grow your profits and things are going up in terms of cost. But you have to be competitive. You have to create opportunity. At Disney, we put in place a plan four or five years ago that any hourly employee, of which there are well over 80,000, at Disney could get free education— vocational, high school equivalency, junior college, undergraduate, graduate while you’re working. No strings attached, we pay— all designed to enable people to have opportunity—

[APPLAUSE]

—to earn more— thank you. That was an idea that was pitched to me. I think I said yes about a minute in.

Mm-hmm.

—to it. It made so much sense. Huge retention vehicle and attraction vehicle.

What about wages? What about bringing wages up?

I think wages have to be addressed. Aside from just what I’ll call income inequality, it is more expensive to live these days. And I think as a company, look, you can’t solve everybody’s problems all the time, but you have to be mindful of what it costs to live in places that they have to work, or they end up having a commute that is too long. And I think one of the things you’re finding now is, people during Covid got really happy or comfortable not having to commute.

Mm-hmm.

And who wants to go back to getting in a car for an hour and a half to go to work? So that’s a huge issue. How do you address that, other than wages? I don’t know. There’s— we looked at affordable housing.

It’s hard, when you have the scale that we do, to come up with enough of it. We even at one point talked about getting involved in creating public transportation at some point, but that’s impractical. So I think—

Well, that’s what the tech companies are doing.

The wage issue is very real. Living wage is very— you have to consider what it costs to live in Orange County, California. And then, add on to that food and transportation, and health care, and it’s tough. And if you want to fill all your positions, you’ve got to think about that.

Yeah. OK. What is— this is Matt King. What is your perspective on the metaverse, NFTs, and other emerging technologies and their potential impact on entertainment media? I was going to ask you.

I think— look, I think that internet 3.0, which will definitely be more compelling in experience, certainly more immersive, more dimensional— I think there’ll be a lot to that, in terms of a future. And call it a metaverse. I don’t think there’ll be one metaverse.

I think— I talk about democratization. It’ll be dispersed. You may have an avatar, but you’ll go all over the place. And I think that it’s likely to be developed into something real as an experience.

That said, there’s been enough said and criticized about toxic behavior in internet 2.0— Twitter, Facebook, you name it. Imagine what can happen when you have a much more compelling and immersive and— I’ll call it collective of people or avatars of people in that environment, and what kind of toxic behavior could happen.

I’m thinking about telling my kids that they should start creating technology tools to moderate behavior in internet 3.0, because I think it’s going to be a huge challenge. So I think something Disney is going to have to consider as it talks about creating a metaverse for themselves is moderating and monitoring behavior.

And that’s difficult for a company like Disney, ‘cause it’s got to keep it clean, right?

Well, the standard is so high, particularly since you have kids in. And I think it’s something that has to be considered.

Do you think Instagram should make Instagram for kids?

No. No, but it’s not my business.

Hmm.

I do think— NFTs, I think, are real. I was a big trading card fan as a kid— baseball cards. I think the ability to collect things, even if they’re digital— we forget, in our generation, that things don’t have to be physical.

They can be digital, and they have meaning to people. And as long as that meaning can be essentially substantiated in a blockchain, I think you’re going to see an explosion of things being created, traded, collected in NFTs.

Now, Disney has not gone into this area as heavily as—

Disney has. Disney has done some licensing. I’m not—

Of things.

I don’t have all the details, because it happened at the very end of my watch. But there is some— look, when you think about all the copyright and trademarks, characters Disney has—

Exactly.

—and the NFT possibilities, they’re extraordinary.

They can also be stolen. There’s been a lot of fraud around that.

And copy— the other thing I’ve noticed— I went on a platform called OpenSea, which is a platform to buy and trade NFTs.

Mm-hmm.

And I was amazed at all the Disney stuff that was there, and most of it was pirated.

Yes.

Most of it was not created by people who had the right to create them.

Well, it’s like early YouTube, if you recall all those lawsuits.

Yeah.

Very much so. All right. Jenny— what Disney character do you most relate with?

Oh, jeez. Everybody always says, what’s your favorite? I always say, Tinkerbell. I don’t know why that was so easy. And then, they say, well, who would you like to be? And I would say, Thor, but that was because Chris Hemsworth is just a god, right?

Mm-hmm.

Who wouldn’t want to look like that?

Right. Do you relate?

I don’t know if I’d relate. I think I’m probably more of a Woody than a Buzz. I don’t know.

What have you found to be the superpower that you possess that has led to your success? And I want you to actually tell me what superpower you would like.

I have— I don’t know whether this is my parents’ doing or I was born this way or both, but I have an incredible work ethic. I just work hard, and it’s served me incredibly well. And right next to that, which I know was drawn out by my parents, is an insatiable curiosity to just learn more and more.

OK. What about an actual superpower?

Like what? I don’t run fast, or— what?

Something. Hello, you make Marvel movies. There’s like— come on.

Those are fantasies.

Yeah, I know. What is your fantasy superpower?

Oh, what’s my fantasy.

Yeah, I’m not saying you’re going to get it. I’ll start— invisibility. Go ahead.

No, no, no.

Totally. Are you kidding? I’d totally sneak around.

I don’t have an ambition to be a superhero.

I know, but what superpower—

And so I don’t feel I need superpowers.

None? Didn’t you guys just make the “Eternals“? I mean, come on. Which one would you like?

To live forever.

Live forever? Which one do you want? None of them. You want no superpower. All right. I’m gonna be invisible.

I’d like to be— I’d like other things. I’d love to be able to paint.

Paint? Oh, there you go. That’s not a superpower. You can’t do that.

When I retired, George Bush sent me a note saying, what are you going to do now? Paint? ‘Cause he paints.

Do you own a George Bush? No.

He sent me the book.

Oh, no. OK. What criticism of Disney Company has hit you the hardest?

Well, I take any criticism about how we’ve treated our people very— I took it very personally. That would be it.

So you have a specific one?

Well, the main one is wages. But I’ve defended that before, because we were one of the first companies to go to $10 an hour. We went to $15 an hour, minimum wage. In both cases, they were higher than state and federal minimums at the time.

You know, when you manage these companies, you’re balancing multiple forces when it comes to finances. And this is not an excuse, but you need to grow your profits for your shareholders. And maybe I’m talking to some government officials right now about— this is for them. You need to do that.

You need to keep your pricing reasonable for consumers in mind, which in an inflationary environment, just gets even more critical. And you’d like to pay your people whatever it takes to make them happy and to keep them motivated, but they all kind of have to fit in with one another in some very careful balance.

Yeah.

Because if— I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t want to pay their people more, but then you got to figure out, well, if we do that, and you have to grow your bottom line, can you raise prices? And then, you alienate your consumers. And so it’s a delicate balance.

Just saying, maybe you could pay C.E.O.s less. OK. Who— [LAUGHTER]

I’m teasing.

That— I— yeah. I knew you were going there.

You walked right into it. You just literally walked right into it. OK. Last question. Can you sum up your legacy in five words or less?

I was going to say I can’t—

Ah! That’s not five words.

I came, I saw, I conquered, is six. Five words or less— oh, I’ll just say one thing. I was fortunate enough to be kind of handed the keys to the kingdom, to get the opportunity to run a company that had an incredible reputation and was important in the world. And I wanted to make sure when I left, that I burnished that legacy, that it was stronger, more admired, better than it was when I got it. I feel that I’ve accomplished that.

All right, but five words. That wasn’t five.

I can’t.

Yes, you can. Five words. No?

No, no. I was a force— I don’t know. May the force be with you.

Oh, there you go. Thank you, Bob Iger.

Thank you.

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“Sway” is a production of New York Times Opinion. It’s produced by Nayeema Raza, Blakeney Schick, Daphne Chen, Caitlin O’Keefe, and Wyatt Orme, edited by Nayeema Raza, with original music by Isaac Jones, mixing by Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud, and fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Special thanks to Shannon Busta, Kristin Lin, and Kristina Samulewski. And thanks also to Thomas Vecchione, Nicholas Seaver and the team at the Richmond Forum, where we taped this event.

Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio. If you’re in a podcast app already, you know how to get your podcasts, so follow this one. If you’re listening on the Times website and want to get each new episode of “Sway” delivered to you along with that magical churro smell— disgusting— download any podcast app, then search for “Sway,” and follow the show. We release every Monday and Thursday. Thanks for listening.