Paramount's $110 billion Warner Bros. gamble

Hogging seats on a crowded train, not saying excuse me, watching videos on your phone with no headphones in. Sometimes it feels like we don't know how to act anymore. What we have been seeing, increasingly, is people breaking rules. Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me? This week on Explain It to Me, how to mind your manners.

New episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Dekoder. I'm Neely Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today, let's talk about the big Paramount Warner Brothers Discovery merger. This deal could reshape all of media and entertainment if and when it closes.

That's still an if, which we're gonna come back to. Right now, Paramount head David Ellison is very much acting like he's over the finish line after outbitting Netflix. which walked away after what seemed like a done deal. There's a lot going on here, including the biggest question I've had throughout this entire saga. Why would anyone want to buy Warner, which has basically killed every acquirer it's had for the last quarter century?

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