Who are the GOATs — the greatest of all time — deserving the honor of being chiseled into Mount Rushmore? Hollywood power agent and dealmaker Ari Emanuel has launched a new podcast, “Rushmore,” with friend and music manager Ben Persky in which they argue about the all-time GOATs in various categories.
“Rushmore” premieres Sept. 30 exclusively on X, the social platform controlled by Elon Musk, who’s friends with Emanuel. According to Emanuel, the idea for the podcast originated when he was on vacation recently with Musk: “We had a conversation about the ‘Rushmore of meals’ — what would your last meal be?” Musk himself will be a guest on an upcoming episodes. (Watch the trailer below.)
Emanuel teamed up with Persky for the podcast because “every time we go on vacation together, we get into these verbal fights” over the greatest this or that in different areas. “It always ends with, ‘You’re an idiot’ — ‘No, you’re an idiot.’”
“To be candid, I just wanted to prove to Ben that I’m always right,” Emanuel jokes. He says the “Rushmore” podcast is “where the GOAT game we all love gets real, played each week by some of the biggest names in culture,” adding dramatically: “This is where legends — and egos — collide.”
Why is it exclusively on X? Besides Emanuel’s friendship with the tech mogul, Persky says that “X is kind of naturally an ecosystem that facilitates conversation, especially for ‘best of’ kinds of debates. We hope this will continue to be a conversation for a long time.”
Note that on the actual Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, there’s literally no physical room for another face. Nevertheless, MAGA supporters have pushed seemingly serious efforts to have President Trump carved into the façade.
The “Rushmore” podcast series will be available on the @RushmoreOnX and @AriEmanuel accounts X, with new episodes to be released weekly each Tuesday. Emanuel and Persky have recorded 10 episodes and “we’ll do another 10 at the beginning of next year,” says Emanuel. “Then we’ll look at each other and see if it continues.”
In each episode, Emanuel and Persky are joined in the debate by two experts in the given field (with the only rule being they can’t be eligible to be GOATs in the category). After the duo inked the deal with X, under which they will receive a share of ad revenue, they started “calling people in our Rolodexes — and it just started happening,” Emanuel says.
Guests in the first 10-episode batch of “Rushmore” include Elon Musk, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Bobby Kotick, Shaquille O’Neal, Reggie Miller, Rick Rubin, Jimmy Iovine, Bob Costas, Al Michaels, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jon Meacham, Jeff Koons, Jeffrey Deitch, Inez Van Lamsweerde and Edward Enninful.
Topics on the podcast span sports, entertainment, media, fashion, music, gaming and more. Some of the categories “Rushmore” to be debated include: movie villains, bands, pro-football wide receivers, video games, models, music artists, painters, rivalries and “sports chokes” (the last of which features Costas and Michaels).
While Emanuel, currently chairman of WME Group and CEO of TKO Group, is a powerful figure in the entertainment biz, he’s not exactly a social-media star. His account on X (formerly Twitter) has about 10,000 followers currently — and it appears he has posted only a handful of times on the platform, most recently in a post Monday touting TKO’s deal with Paramount Skydance for Zuffa Boxing rights.
Meanwhile, recall that in 2022 Emanuel texted Musk with an offer for Endeavor to take over managing Twitter for a $100 million fee, according to Walter Isaacson biography of the techno-titan. According to Isaacson’s book, Jared Birchall, the managing director of the entity housing Musk’s financial assets, called Emanuel’s text “the most insulting, demeaning, insane message.”
“Rushmore” is produced by “The Pat McAfee Show” with support from Pantheon Media Group. Persky said he and Emaneul wanted to work with McAfee “because he does social so well…. he has very natural and clear thoughts about the cadence [of a podcast] and when to put stuff out.”
Mitchell Smith, X’s head of original content, said in a statement, “As the world’s group chat, X is the platform for declaring and debating what truly defines greatness, which makes ‘Rushmore’ a perfect fit for X Originals. As someone who began their career in the WME mailroom, I have a full appreciation for the prowess of Ari Emanuel, and we couldn’t be more excited to collaborate with him and Ben Persky on their first project in front of the camera.”
Emanuel co-founded talent agency Endeavor in 1995 and was CEO of the company until earlier this year after it went private in a transaction with Silver Lake. He now serves as executive chairman of WME Group, the public-facing name of Endeavor Group Holdings. He also is CEO and executive chair of TKO Group, the parent of WWE and UFC whose formation was facilitated by Endeavor. In addition, Emanuel remains an active agent for such big-name WME clients as Martin Scorsese, Larry David, Pete Berg and Mark Wahlberg. (WME also reps Jimmy Kimmel; Emanuel declined to discuss the controversy that the late-night host.)
Other podcasts on X include “Stockton Street,” hosted by tennis champions and siblings Venus and Serena Williams, which premiered Sept. 17. It debuted exclusively on X before becoming available a day later on other audio platforms.
X’s lineup of more than two dozen podcasts also includes Khloe Kardashian’s “Khloé in Wonder Land,” “Inside the NFL” from NFL Films, and “From the Desk of Anthony Pompliano.”
Watch the trailer for “Rushmore”: