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Nov 16, 2025
Join Tom Freston, cofounder of MTV and CEO of Viacom, for a conversation with The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart about a high-flying life of adventures from the Sahara to the C-suite — and his new memoir, Unplugged: Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu.
Before becoming a media mogul, Tom Freston was a risk-taking, rule-defying globe-trotter, hitchhiking around the world, running a clothing export company out of India and Afghanistan. And in his new memoir, Unplugged, he takes us behind the scenes and shares his decidedly non-traditional path to the C-suite — from bartending his way across the US and the Caribbean to a trek across the Sahara Desert to launching a fashion company in India before joining the small group that launched MTV — climbing the ladder at Viacom to oversee Nickelodeon, VH1, CMT, and Comedy Central, where he met a talented young comedian named Jon Stewart.
In a funny, candid conversation, hear him and Stewart as they discuss his remarkable and non-traditional career — following his gut to craft a life around music and travel, emerging as a major cultural influencer in the world of television, stories from the set, and more.
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