The Man. The Myth. The Moustache.

John Stossel looks back on his career at 20/20 and Fox News, and talks about the future of video.

- Katherine Mangu-Ward

WHEN JOHN STOSSEL was diagnosed with lung cancer in April, he announced it in the most characteristic way possible: He dashed off a column from his hospital bed with a quickie economic analysis of why nurses don’t care when your out of-date heart monitor beeps all night long. (The explanation involved the word sclerotic and the phrase “hospitals are largely socialist bureaucracies.”)

Stossel, 69, is now cancer-free and ready to move on to the next thing. In recent years, the man with the moustache has developed an alarming habit of giving away the Emmys he won as a consumer reporter, saying he considers them ill-gotten gains; they all predate his conversation to libertarianism and the subsequent realignment of his career to preach the gospel of free markets and consumer choice.

First as a reporter at ABC’s 20/20, where he made his name with his signature “Give Me a Break” segments, and then as a commentator at Fox for the last seven years, the television newsman has served as the most recognizable face of libertarianism, appearing on America’s TV screens week in and week out and invading the minds of America’s youths with his Stossel in the Classroom educational videos. With a penchant for antics like piloting onto the set on a Medicare-subsidized mobility scooter or printing out the entire federal register, Stossel has always prioritized making arcane economics intelligible to the boob-tubing masses.

The final episode of his eponymous show on the Fox Business Network aired in December. Starting in 2017, he’ll be working with Reason TV to produce web videos and with the Charles G. Koch Institute to mentor young media professionals. He’ll continue on as a commentator in a role that he describes as “libertarian senior statesman” at Fox.