# Interview Only w/ Todd Ricketts - The Chicago Cubs Owner Trying To Fix How America Gets Its News Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-chuck-toddcast-1551191/interview-only-w-todd-ricketts-the-chicago-cubs-owner-trying-to-fix-how-america-gets-its-news Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-chuck-toddcast-1551191/interview-only-w-todd-ricketts-the-chicago-cubs-owner-trying-to-fix-how-america-gets-its-news.md Podcast: [The Chuck ToddCast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-chuck-toddcast-1551191) Published: 2026-06-04T09:00:00+00:00 Episode link: https://omny.fm/shows/the-chuck-toddcast/interview-only-w-todd-ricketts-the-chicago-cubs-owner-trying-to-fix-how-america-gets-its-news Audio file: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/claritaspod.com/measure/pscrb.fm/rss/p/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/p57137/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c749d540-b5b7-42b1-a855-b33100f844fa/b09cdb36-bb38-4f87-ba30-b45e0145892b/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=8e017e60-9c2d-418d-97bb-b33100f84504 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-chuck-toddcast-1551191/episodes/interview-only-w-todd-ricketts-the-chicago-cubs-owner-trying-to-fix-how-america-gets-its-news Duration seconds: 3249 ## Resource Todd Ricketts — Chicago Cubs co-owner and founder of Freespoke, the search engine that labels news sources with media bias ratings — joins the Chuck Toddcast for a wide-ranging conversation that bridges the increasingly intertwined worlds of media, technology, and professional sports. Ricketts makes the case that when people are given genuinely good information from across the ideological spectrum, they tend to arrive at good answers — and that Freespoke's mission is to present all sides and then get out of the way, rather than letting ad sales determine what news you see. He pushes back on the idea that the market alone can solve the data privacy crisis, arguing data may eventually need to be regulated like a utility but that nothing changes until there's a major "event" that creates real public groundswell. Ricketts is candid about Freespoke's challenges — paywalls remain a real obstacle, the left/right labeling is imperfect and done by outside groups, and the political landscape itself is shifting in ways that scramble the traditional categories . He observes that podcasts have become a primary news source because people clearly hunger for long-form content with nuance, that politicians are now visibly afraid of giving long answers because they might get clipped, and that legacy media still doesn't seem to understand why its audience has migrated elsewhere. The second half pivots into the business of running a baseball team, and Ricketts brings the same straight-talking pragmatism to MLB's looming economic crisis. He argues you cannot sell a salary cap to MLB owners without genuine revenue sharing, because if the league itself isn't competitive then everyone eventually loses — including the owners writing the biggest checks. Players cur… ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-chuck-toddcast-1551191/episodes/interview-only-w-todd-ricketts-the-chicago-cubs-owner-trying-to-fix-how-america-gets-its-news/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-chuck-toddcast-1551191/interview-only-w-todd-ricketts-the-chicago-cubs-owner-trying-to-fix-how-america-gets-its-news.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.