Channels with Peter Kafka
Media and tech are fully intertwined, and veteran journalist Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts, and observers to explain how these worlds work in plain, BS-free English. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Episodes
AI Wants to Shop for You. What Could Go Wrong?
AI companies have spent years telling us that we’ll be able to use them to go shopping for us, or book us airplane tickets, or get us awesome restaurant reservations. None of that ever materialized.But in the last few weeks, services like Instinct and Meta’s Muse have made that promise feel much less theoretical. Are they actually ready? What’s holding them back? And, crucially: Do we even w
The Atlantic’s CEO on AI, Billionaire Owners, and Moonlighting as a Creator
Nicholas Thompson runs one of the few media companies that can say things are going pretty well: The Atlantic is profitable, growing, and boasts 1.6 million subscribers.But that's today. What comes next is the bulk of our conversation: Thompson — a big AI guy — tells me what The Atlantic's deal with OpenAI has and hasn't delivered, why he thinks publishers may need to make money from a web i
Data Centers, Elon Musk, and the New Politics of Tech, with David Weigel
Not long ago, most Americans had never heard of data centers. Now most Americans are actively opposed to them.It’s a head-snapping change — one that is befuddling tech bosses, and forcing some politicians to quickly change their tune.It’s the second part that I wanted to talk to David Weigel about. Weigel has been covering politics for years — he’s at Semafor now — and has a well-earned reputation
The Weird, Big Business of Microdramas
Microdramas are the new phone-first soap operas: stories chopped into dozens of one-minute episodes: Low-budget productions filled with romance, werewolves, secret babies, and cliffhangers—and, eventually, a request that you pay to keep watching. Surprisingly, lots of people do.So how big is this business? And is it sustainable?I talk with Ali Albazaz, the CEO of Inkitt, which runs the CandyJar mi
The $12.5 Billion Lakers, the NFL’s TV Fight, and Sports Media’s Big Split
Sports teams keep selling for more money because, in theory, their media rights keep becoming more valuable. But the companies that actually pay for sports TV are starting to push back.
John Ourand of Puck joins me to break down Bob Iger and Josh Kushner’s $12.5 billion deal for the Los Angeles Lakers— and whether the number makes sense if local and national TV money is no longer guaranteed to ke
Joanna Stern on the New Siri, OpenAI’s Weird Gadget, and Life After the Wall Street Journal
Joanna Stern spent more than a decade explaining technology to Wall Street Journal readers. Now she’s doing it on her own — with a new media company, New Things, and a new book, I Am Not a Robot, about spending a year outsourcing as much of her life as possible to AI.
Joanna and I talk about what AI turned out to be surprisingly good at, why robots still can’t fold your laundry, and why she think
Oliver Darcy on Status, Bari Weiss, and Why Media Reporters Are Too Soft
Two years ago, Oliver Darcy left CNN and launched Status, a paid newsletter focused on the media business. The basic bet was that readers would pay for the scoops and insider reporting he had been producing at CNN.
That bet appears to be working. Status now has four full-time employees, more than 130,000 people on its email list, and “many thousands” of paying subscribers. Darcy has also added ad
Lucas Shaw on Warner Bros' Limbo, Netflix's Anxiety, and Hollywood’s Sort-of Comeback
When I last talked to Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw, Netflix was buying Warner Bros. Discovery. Six months later, Paramount has the deal — but, surprisingly, it’s on hold while a group of states tries to block it in court.Lucas and I talk about whether Larry and David Ellison can still muscle the acquisition through, how long the fight could drag on, and what this fall’s elections could mean for the woul
Substack Wants To Become A Social Network; Beehiiv Wants To Stay Invisible
You are a normal person, so if you think about “people writing their own newsletters” you probably think: “Substack”.
But just as Xerox isn’t the only way to make photocopies, Substack doesn’t own the professional newsletter industry.
So let’s meet a competitor: Beehiiv, run by 32-year-old CEO Tyler Denk. Denk helped build Morning Brew’s newsletter machine before launching Beehiiv, and he has a
Inside Podcasting’s Fight Over Netflix, YouTube, and Creator Control
Chris Balfe is the CEO of Red Seat Ventures, the company behind some of the biggest names in podcasting, including Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Bill O’Reilly, and, more recently, Kill Tony. Since we last spoke, Red Seat has been acquired by Fox, making it one of the company’s biggest bets on the creator economy.
So I asked him what that actually means—for Fox, for creators, and for the podcast bu
"We’re in a Race Against Time," Joe Kahn on Running the New York Times in the Age of AI Slop
Joe Kahn runs the New York Times newsroom, which means he runs the most powerful news operation in the world. He joins me to talk about what that power is for — and why he thinks the Times’ next big transformation is video, and why the paper is in “a race against time” to compete with "AI-generated slop.” We also discuss whether the Times is really a Games company now, how he handles angry readers
Encore: Inside Joe Weisenthal's brain
We originally published this interview with Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal on Feb. 11, 2026, and it's one of my favorite chats of the year. We'll be back with a new conversation on July 8.
If Joe Weisenthal didn’t exist, the internet would have to invent him. Because Joe Weisenthal is built for the internet — more specifically, an internet personality: Knows a lot, curious about even more, often righ
The Ad Industry's Weirdest Tradition
The Rebooting's Brian Morrissey joins me from Cannes, where OpenAI is pitching advertisers, creators are becoming media brands, and thousands of people are still flying across the Atlantic to meet with people they could see back home. We talk about what's changed in advertising, what's changed in media, and why Cannes keeps getting bigger.
We also get into why the ad industry's biggest gathering
A Hollywood Manager Explains the New Rules of Show Biz
Today’s show is about money, and how to make it in entertainment.
The streaming boom made Hollywood feel like it had solved its money problem: Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney and everyone else wanted endless stuff. Top talent got paid, and so did everyone else.
That boom is over, and now the industry is consolidating. And at the same time, lots of artifacts of old Hollywood that could generate a
Brian Stelter on the 60 Minutes Mess; Nilay Patel on Apple’s AI Problem
Brian Stelter and Nilay Patel are both covering big, powerful institutions that are undergoing real change, whether they like it or not.
Stelter, CNN’s chief media analyst, joins me to talk about the mess at CBS News and 60 Minutes: What is Bari Weiss’s rationale for trying to remake Paramount’s news operations? And does owner David Ellison care about the very inevitable stumbles that have follow
How Dhar Mann Turned After-School Specials Into A Billion-View Business
Dhar Mann’s videos look simple, because they are simple: Someone acts badly, someone learns a lesson, everyone gets a moral by the end. You don’t have to be a kid to enjoy these, but it helps.The business behind them is complex. Mann has built a scripted-video studio that turns out TV-length episodes in weeks, generating billions of views a month. Now he tells me he’s expanding beyond YouTube and
Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour Explains Why Boring Data Is a Great Media Business
I think of Dow Jones as The Wall Street Journal, because that’s the part I know — and the part I used to work near/around/inside. But Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour has built a much bigger business around the Journal: risk and compliance, energy data, Factiva, AI deals, and other stuff that sounds boring until you realize how much money companies will pay for it.
So I asked Latour to explain why Dow
Vox Media's Jim Bankoff Explains Why He's Selling to James Murdoch
Jim Bankoff has spent nearly 20 years building Vox Media. Now he’s selling a big chunk of it to James Murdoch, who is acquiring Vox Media's Podcast Network - the same one that produces this podcast - along with New York Magazine and Vox.com.
We do all the disclosures at the top of this interview, but let’s do it all here too: I’ve worked for Jim for a long time, and I work with the podcast networ
Versant CEO Mark Lazarus is Running a Post-Cable Cable Company
Versant is the new company Comcast created when it spun off CNBC, MS NOW, USA and other cable networks it no longer wanted inside the mothership. That makes Mark Lazarus’ job pretty simple to describe and very hard to do: take a business built around cable TV — an industry in obvious decline — and use the cash it still generates to build new businesses.I talked to Lazarus on the day Versant report
Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala and His Secret Succession Plan
Roger Lynch has spent the last seven years trying to turn Condé Nast from a magazine company into a profitable portfolio of global brands. Now he has a new set of problems: Google traffic is disappearing, AI companies want to use Condé’s work, and everyone in media is trying to figure out who still has leverage.
I talked to Lynch about the end of Google search traffic, why Condé is doing deals w
The Internet’s Let-It-Rip Era, With The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel
The internet is in its let-it-rip era: more AI slop, more video, more clips — and very little in the way of guardrails or rules.
Charlie Warzel, who writes and hosts Galaxy Brain for The Atlantic, joins me to talk about what happens when the platforms stop trying very hard to separate the good stuff from the garbage. Do we actually care if a human made the LinkedIn post, the marketing copy, or th
AI Can Make Software Now. That Changes Everything, with Paul Ford
Learn to code, they told us. Then the computers went and learned to code. Now anyone can do it, in theory, courtesy of Claude Code and other vibe coding apps.
Tech people I talk to are very, very excited about this. But they often have a hard time explaining to me, a non-coder, why AI-powered coding is such a big deal. And whether it’s a big deal to everyone who already codes or deals with softwa
Jason Blum Built a Hit-Making Movie Machine. Does It Still Work?
Jason Blum built one of Hollywood’s smartest businesses: make low-budget horror movies, give filmmakers room, pay talent on the back end, and let the hits carry the misses. It worked so well that it became a Harvard Business Review case study.But the movie business that made that model work has changed: Theatrical is weaker, lots of people are making horror movies, studios are consolidating, and A
Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz on Sam Altman’s Trust Problem
Sam Altman has spent years presenting himself as the face of AI: The guy warning that the technology could change everything, and the guy insisting that he should be the one to build it. Now we are facing some overdue questions: Can we trust Sam Altman with the massive power AI may generate? And should we trust anyone with that power?
Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz join me to talk about their N
What Happens When a “Succession” Writer Takes on Silicon Valley
Jonathan Glatzer has written for shows like Succession and Better Call Saul. Now he’s got his own: The Audacity, a new AMC drama set in Silicon Valley.So why make a Silicon Valley show right now — and what, exactly, is he trying to say about tech?
Glatzer tells me he wasn’t interested in making a wall-to-wall “tech show,” or in doing spot-the-billionaire satire. Instead, he says, he wanted to fo
Why We Need to Pay Attention to Elon Musk Again
Elon Musk has spent the last year being quieter than usual — by Elon Musk standards.That may be about to change in a very big way, as his SpaceX moves toward what could be one of the biggest IPOs in history. So what, exactly, is Musk selling? A rocket company? A satellite internet giant? An AI play? Or just the latest, biggest version of Elon himself?Bloomberg’s Max Chafkin, who has been tracking
Why Prediction Markets Are Turning Everything Into a Bet
Prediction markets are suddenly everywhere: in sports, in politics, in the media business — and, depending on who you ask, they’re either a useful forecasting tool or just gambling with better branding. So what changed? And why is the federal government sounding more like a booster than a regulator?
WIRED’s Kate Knibbs joins me to explain why she made prediction markets her beat, how Kalshi and P
How to Survive without Google: People Inc's Playbook
Lots of publishers are freaked out about “Google Zero” — the notion that one day, Google will stop sending them any traffic at all.
That’s more or less already happened at People Inc., says CEO Neil Vogel. Vogel says Google used to account for 70% of his properties’ traffic, but dropped off quickly in the last couple years. Now Google represents about 25% of his mix.
That decline is supposed to
Matt Belloni on the Oscars, the Ellisons, and Hollywood’s Next Chapter
Oscar season is supposed to be Hollywood’s lap. It is also, increasingly, a reminder of how shaky things are in Hollywood right now. And this one comes as one of the town’s most prominent players is about to be swallowed by a new mogul, backed by tech money.
Here to unpack all of it is Puck’s Matt Belloni, who explains why we may never see an Oscars like this again; how the show will — or won’t —
The World’s Cup Is Coming to Trump’s America, with Roger Bennett
The World Cup is coming to the U.S (and Canada, and Mexico) in less than 100 days.
Perhaps you’re an American who doesn’t care about soccer, and has given this news zero thought. That won’t be an option when the games arrive, says Roger Bennett. The CEO of the Men in Blazers podcast network — and author of “We Are the World (Cup)”, a personal history of the tournament — tells me this won’t be lik
Netflix Walks, Paramount Wins, and the Ellisons Take Hollywood
Netflix shocked the world last year by winning a deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. This week it shocked us by walking away.In this emergency bonus episode, CNBC’s Alex Sherman walks us through the whiplash: Why Netflix chose not to counter Paramount, what the market blowback signaled, and how much of this was about price versus the very real prospect of a long, ugly regulatory and political slog
Brian Stelter on the Trump Media Shakedown Era
Brian Stelter puts its clearly: "All M&A runs through the Oval Office right now.” So how much does Trump matter in the Netflix/Paramount battle for Warner Bros. Discovery — and what does he want out of it?
Stelter, CNN’s chief media analyst and author of the newsletter Reliable Sources, walks us through the information vacuum around the deal, Trump’s habit of inserting himself as a would-be kingm
Janice Min on Hollywood’s Crisis; Reed Duchscher on the Creator Boom
Janice Min and Reed Duchscher are both building new media companies in LA. But their perspectives are quite different: Min runs The Ankler, the trade pub that mostly focuses on the fate of Big Media companies like Paramount and Netflix; Duchscher runs Night, a talent agency focused on digital talent like Kai Cenat and Hassan Piker (he’s best known for his work with Mr. Beast).So it’s not totally s
How Odd Lots' Joe Weisenthal Turned Curiosity Into a Career, and a Hit Podcast
If Joe Weisenthal didn’t exist, the internet would have to invent him. Because Joe Weisenthal is built for the internet — more specifically, an internet personality: Knows a lot, curious about even more, often right, happy to be wrong, always has something to say about anything.That persona/personality did wonders for Joe in the early days of Business Insider — which, not coincidentally, were also
Jeff Bezos Used To Be In Love with The Washington Post. What Happened?
Jeff Bezos used to be the savior of The Washington Post. He bought it for $250 million in 2013, and then invested money and energy into turning it around — and it worked.Now the Amazon founder is decimating the Post’s staff, and his managers are telling the ones who are left that things have to change.So what happened, and what happens next? Erik Wemple is the right person to ask: He spent years c
Who is Josh D'Amaro and Why is He Disney's New CEO?
In February 2020, Disney CEO Bob Iger finally announced his successor: Bob Chapek, who ran the company’s parks business. That didn’t work out.Now Iger is running it back: This time around he’s announced that Josh D’Amaro, who runs the company’s park business, is going to succeed him.So: Who is Josh D’Amaro, and what has he done to prove himself CEO-worthy? Why does Iger (and the Disney board) thin
Running a Newsroom in Minneapolis + How to Make a Game of Thrones For Less
In an ideal world, I wouldn’t be bringing you an interview with the editor of the Minnesota Star Tribune about her paper’s coverage of the killing of Alex Pretti in the same episode where I interview the man behind HBO’s newest Game of Thrones show.
But we’re not in an ideal world right now.
So here’s a conversation with Star Tribune editor Kathleen Hennessey — who left the New York Times to tak
Chuck Klosterman on Why Football Owns TV (and Why It Won’t Forever)
Football isn’t just the biggest show on TV — at this point, it’s basically the only reason some TV networks exist. So it’s a very worthy subject for Chuck Klosterman, the provocative and prolific writer, to tackle in his new book, which is called… Football.
The big Channels idea here is to talk about football’s dominance in American media and culture, and What That Means — and how that might end,
How to Build a Profitable Media Company in 3 years, with Semafor’s Justin Smith
News is a tough business. So how did Semafor, the news startup founded by Ben Smith and Justin Smith, figure out how to turn a profit in their third year of business?
Excellent journalism certainly helps. But it’s really because the company made two key decisions: Focusing on events — and focusing on events in Washington, D.C., where companies will pay a lot of money to reach a relatively small c
Inside Bari Weiss’s Rise: LA, Sun Valley, and the Mogul Network
How, exactly, did Bari Weiss become the head of CBS News?
We know that David Ellison, who bought Paramount last year, hired her — and bought The Free Press, the publication she started a few years earlier. But how did she get on Ellison’s radar? And why are so many media moguls, like Ellison, huge fans?
New York magazine’s Charlotte Klein knows. She recently published an excellent profile of Wei
Craig Finn on Friendship, Fans and The Hold Steady’s Second Life
Craig Finn makes music — as the head of the Hold Steady, and on his solo records — about grown-up lives and bad decisions. Back in 2017, we talked about his life as a working rock musician — and how touring actually works, how the band found a second life, and why fans and friendship matter more than old ideas of rock stardom.
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Podcast Pioneer PJ Vogt’s Second Act: Less Budget, More Control
PJ Vogt helped invent modern narrative podcasting with “Reply All.” Now he’s running “Search Engine” with a much smaller team and a lot more control. We talk through what he gave up this time around, what he gained, and how he actually makes the show each week.
I loved this conversation when we recorded it earlier this year. And I think it’s just as relevant now, as media talent — and lots of peo
"Neither Side Is Used to Losing." Lucas Shaw on What’s Next for Netflix and Paramount in the Battle for Warner Bros.
The backstory here is that weeks ago, Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw agreed to join me for my 2025/2026 look back/look ahead episode. And then things got way more compelling, because Paramount and Netflix got into a truly unprecedented fight over the future of Warner Bros Discovery.
So that’s what we’re talking about here, including:
*Why this truly is a turning point for Hollywood, and streaming, and t
Lachlan Cartwright Started in Tabloids. Now He’s a Must-Read Media Gossip.
I chat with lots of media reporters. Lachlan Cartwright is a different beast: An Aussie who started out working for Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids in London and New York, and then on to the National Enquirer — yes, that National Enquirer — back when it was catching and killing stories on behalf on Donald Trump. Now Cartwright runs Breaker, a must-read New York media gossip newsletter and podcast, and s
"Hollywood is Truly Freaked Out." Inside the Netflix/WBD Deal with Lucas Shaw
In 2013, Netflix wanted to become HBO. Now Netflix is going to buy HBO along with the Warner Bros. Studio, in a blockbuster $83 billion deal.
Wowza. Here to talk me through this is Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw, who has been deep in the deal talks for weeks. Discussed in this one:
*How did Netflix maneuver its way into a deal everyone thought Paramount would win?
*Will this deal actually get past Dona
PBS Lost a Billion Dollars. Now what? With CEO Paula Kerger
The last time I interviewed PBS CEO Paula Kerger was 2019: Donald Trump was President, and Republicans were trying to defund public media — as they had been trying to do for decades.
That didn’t happen then, but this year it did, and now Kerger is trying to fill a $1 billion funding hole.
So far, she says, PBS and its member stations have held up ok — no one has had to shut down, yet.
But while
What Happens To Media When The Web Goes Away, with Tony Haile
We built the modern media business for the web — for people who visited websites, read articles, and saw ads. What happens when no one does that anymore?
That’s been one of the big themes of conversations we’ve been having on Channels with this year — with people who run big and small media properties, and with people who are trying to build media businesses. And that’s why I wanted to talk to To
Kevin Reilly got to the top of the TV heap. Now he's in AI.
If you watched something on TV that you liked in the past few decades, there’s a good chance Kevin Reilly was involved: at various times he’s held top jobs at FX, Fox, NBC, Turner and HBO Max.
But that run ended in 2020, and now Reilly is running Kartel, an AI company that… well, I’m still not entirely sure what it does. (To be fair, as Reilly notes in our chat, it’s a young company that’s still
What the Disney–YouTube Battle Tells Us About the End of Cable
It’s not unusual for a big TV network and a big TV distributor to fight about money. But the Disney-YouTube fight is unusual -- at the bare minimum, because it has stretched out for so long. CNBC’s Alex Sherman lives and breathes this stuff, so I asked him to walk me through it, and make some prognostications about when it might get settled (spoiler alert: he thinks some football fans who pay for
The Bulwark's Sarah Longwell on Why Republicans Won the Attention War
In some ways, the Bulwark feels like other small publishers in 2025: it’s found growth and profit by pushing itself out on any platform it can find.
But that wasn’t the plan when the company started in 2018. Back then, it was a non-profit cofounded by Republicans who couldn’t stand their party’s embrace of Donald Trump, and wanted a place to organize, debate and push back.
Over the years the sit
The Man Who Fixed The New York Times Wants to Fix CNN
Would you pay $7 a month to stream CNN?
Because CNN CEO Mark Thompson would like you to do that.
I know, I know, I’m skeptical, too. But Thompson has been here before: At his last job, as CEO of the New York Times, he helped shepherd that company’s subscription business, which had a gazillion naysayers at the start. And now the Times’ business model is the envy of everyone in journalism.
Can he
The End of Mass Media—and What Comes Next
We spend a lot of time on this show talking to people who run media companies. We also spend a lot of time talking to media reporters.
So here’s our one-man Venn diagram: Brian Morrissey runs The Rebooting, where he podcasts, writes and hosts events, all geared at making people in the media business smarter about the media business. If you want to hear from a guy who understands the big picture,
The PR Guy Who Says the AI Boom Is a Bust
The AI story is changing fast. A few months ago, it was all promise and inevitability. Now even AI boosters are asking if the numbers make sense.
Ed Zitron got there early. He runs a PR firm for a living, which means he’s supposed to help people sell their stories. But he’s become best known for tearing tech’s biggest stories apart. And he’s been pushing at the economics behind the AI boom, via h
Why the Guardian Doesn't Need a Billionaire to Thrive
In lots of ways Guardian Media Group is facing the same problems as every other news publisher: A tricky ad environment, platform problems, looming AI threats.
One big difference: The Guardian also has a $1.5 billion trust backing the non-profit, which seems way, way better than being owned by a run-of-the-mill billionaire who might want to meddle with the paper.
But CEO Anna Bateson says the Gu
Almost Everyone is Taking Money from OpenAI. Why is Ziff Davis suing them?
In the future, digital publishers could get run over by AI. In the present, they are deeply concerned about Google, and the prospect that the search giant is going to choke off their last reliable traffic stream.That may explain why lots of publishers are making deals with OpenAI now -- and doing a lot of grousing about Google.Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah is going the other way: he's one of only two
The Future of Late Night TV, Jimmy Kimmel, and The First Amendment
When’s the last time you stayed up to watch a late night TV monologue? Months? Years? Decades?
I’m not sure, either. But I stayed up Tuesday night to watch Jimmy Kimmel’s return. James Poniewozik, who covers TV for the New York Times, just caught up with it the next day on YouTube.
Which underscores one of the odder parts of the Trump v. Kimmel fight - it revolves around a time slot and a format
I tried Zuckerberg's $800 Ray-Bans. Are they the future? With Alex Heath
A year ago I got try a pair of $10,000 computer goggles from Meta. The tech was super-impressive, but you couldn’t buy them them. You still can’t.
Now Mark Zuckerberg is trying a similar idea. But this time around the the tech is scaled-down, lighter and way cheaper: the new version costs $800, and you’ll be able to buy them in a couple days.
Why would you want to wear a computer on your face -
How TBPN Made a Tech News Splash
John Coogan knows what you’re thinking: the world does not need another tech podcast. And the world does not need another podcast featuring two dudes talking.
Yet Coogan and Jordi Hays have started another tech podcast, featuring the two of them talking and… it’s a hit. In the span of a year, TBPN has become the place where tech execs go to chop up the news of the day - first in a daily livestrea
Patch’s AI Experiment: Thousands of Newsletters, Zero Humans
Everyone agrees that the decline/disapperance of local news is a big problem. No one agrees about the best way to solve it.
So let’s check in on a new AI push from Patch, the people who have been trying to do local news, online, at scale, for more than two decades.
Last spring, Patch CEO Warren St. John announced that he was running local newsletters for thousands of communities across the U.S.,
Oliver Darcy Thinks the Media Doesn’t Get It. So He Built Status
One thing about the internet is that it lets you build really, really fast. A little more than a year ago, Oliver Darcy was an unemployed former CNN media reporter. Today he’s the proprietor of Status, his must-read media newsletter.
In our conversation, we spend a little bit of time talking through the mechanics of his two-man operation, and how he thinks about the future. But I wanted to focus
Why Henry Blodget is Building Another Media Company
Henry Blodget can’t help himself. The Business Insider founder is starting another media business, knowing full well how difficult the industry can be. You can watch him build it in real time: Regenerator on Substack, and Solutions on TikTok, YouTube and everywhere you hear your favorite podcasts.
Henry — who hired me to work at Business Insider in 2007, back when it was called Silicon Alley Insi
ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro on streaming, the NFL and sports betting
The media industry has been waiting for ESPN to cut the cord for a decade. Now it’s finally happening: This week the sports TV giant will let you start streaming — without a cable TV subscription — for $30 a month.
Why now? ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro is quite frank about it: Along with his boss — Disney CEO Bob Iger — he wanted to make as much money from the cable TV business as he could before it d
A Busy - and Expensive - Summer for AI, with NYT's Mike Isaac
What makes a particular engineer worth $250 million to Mark Zuckerberg?
What does Trump 2.0 mean — and not mean — to people building large language models?
I didn’t know the answers to these questions either. So I got the New York Times’ Mike Isaac, who covers this stuff for a living, to walk me through some of the biggest questions in AI right now — which means we’re also getting at some of the
Why the Algorithm is Making Comedy Boom, Again
The last time I talked to Jesse David Fox about the comedy boom it was… March 5, 2020.
Since then, some things have changed. But in other ways it’s just the same: comedy - or at least, some kinds of comedy - seems almost custom-built for our current technological and cultural moment, and it’s easier than ever to get this stuff on your devices whenever you want. Or whenever the algorithm thinks yo
What is TV’s endgame?
A decade ago, Disney CEO Bob Iger freaked out the media industry by acknowledging something many of us saw coming — his previously unassailable TV business was starting to erode.
But even with a 10-year warning, today’s moguls seem unable to copewith 2025’s reality: The pay TV business is permanently eroding, and there’s nothing in its place that’s likely to generate the same kind of revenue and
Why Trump is defunding NPR and PBS - and suing Rupert Murdoch
Reporting on the place you work is not fun. But it is an occupational hazard for media reporters — particularly for NPR’s David Folkenflik.
That’s because National Public Radio — along with Public Broadcasting Service, its TV counterpart — is quite frequently the target of attacks from critics on the right, who would like the federal government to stop funding it. Now it looks like they’ve gotten
Inside the Rise and Fall of Condé Nast with Michael Grynbaum
Here's one way New York Times reporter Michael Grynbaum described Condé Nast to me in this week’s chat: “A real exporter of American cultural influence in the late 20th century.” And here’s another one: "A kind of enchanted land” but also a “lost world."
And here’s one way I’d describe it: it’s hard to imagine in 2025, but just a few decades ago, magazines were incredibly important — and Conde Na
Inside the NYT - and Everywhere Else - with Semafor's Max Tani
You’re probably a normal person, so you didn’t spend your holiday weekend talking to people at the New York Times about a local politics story that some people didn’t like.
But that’s Max Tani’s job: He’s Semafor’s media reporter, which means he’s supposed to burrow into the paper of record — as well as other important media institutions — and tell you what’s going inside and why it actually matt
Black Mirror's Charlie Brooker on the problem with tech - and people
"Black Mirror" creator Charlie Brooker knows that everyone thinks his show is about tech-fueled dystopias. But he says it's really about humans, not their tools.
I loved this chat back when we recorded it in 2023, when Brooker was promoting the sixth season of his Netflix show. Now there's a new season - and Brooker's vision of the world is as relevant as ever.
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How to become a Substack Star with Emily Sundberg
What's the best way to describe what Emily Sundberg does?
Substacker? Influencer? Journalist? Brand-builder?
Let's go with "yes". And she does a much better job of describing herself in our conversation, where we talk about how she went from being a laid-off marketer at Meta to a one-woman business with a devoted following and a revenue line that’s up and to the right.
A very quick primer for t
Why did Apple ice out the most famous Apple blogger?
If you want smart, nuanced insight into Apple’s products and would-be products, you turn to John Gruber, who’s been blogging about this stuff for more than two decades at his Daring Fireball site.
So in March, when Gruber announced that Something is Rotten in the State of Cupertino — focusing on Apple’s botched plans to imbue its ailing Siri service with state-of-the-art AI — lots of people paid
On the hunt for media optimism, with Semafor’s Ben Smith and The Rebooting’s Brian Morrissey
Here’s one where we try to do two things at once:
Have a convo about green shoots in media with two smart guys who know media really well — Semafor’s Ben Smith and The Rebooting’s Brian Morrissey.
Try to find new audiences for our respective podcasts, by cutting up that conversation into 3 parts, and distributing those parts to our respective feeds.
Which is to say: You can hear more of t
Scott Frank on Netflix, the future of Hollywood, and Dept. Q
Scott Frank used to write great movies, like “Out of Sight.” Now he’s a Netflix guy, and a super successful one: he made “Godless,” a horses-and-everything Western for the streamer, then had a pandemic-era phenomenon with “The Queen’s Gambit.” Now he’s back with “Dept. Q”, his take on the British mystery genre. You can find that one on Netflix’s top 10 lists in the U.S. and around the world.
I li
Bluesky Wasn’t Supposed to be a Twitter Rival. Now It Is.
I admit it: I most definitely rolled my eyes in 2019, when Twitter announced vague plans to build an "open and decentralized standard for social media".
At the time I didn't really understand what then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was trying to do — or why the head of a social media company with plenty of problems was messing around with plans to create more social media companies.
I get it now: Blue
How to Reinvent a Magazine, with Wired’s Katie Drummond
Today we’re talking about how you take a media property that’s been around for a long time, and find a way to bring in new eyeballs — and new revenue.
That property is Wired — the place that told you about the internet before the internet even existed — and the person who’s reviving it is Katie Drummond, who has been running the property for a couple of years.
As we discuss, Wired has always don
Meta's Adam Mosseri explains how Instagram really works - and how he wants to build Threads
Adam Mosseri's official title is head of Instagram, Meta's massive photo and video app. He also runs Threads, the Twitter clone the company launched two years ago.
Unofficially, he's become one of Meta's chief explainers, frequently jumping on social media to defend and proselytize on behalf of his employer.
So when I got a chance to interview Mosseri, I had a long list of questions about… lots
How Apple trapped itself in China
The iPhone you’re reading this on was made in China.
For a long time, that fact was a huge part of Apple’s success story: Working hand-in-hand, Apple and China built a sophisticated supply chain that let Apple manufacture very complicated technology at an enormous scale.
Now that relationship seems like Apple’s achilles heel, says Patrick McGee.
McGee covered Apple for the Financial Times
Ian Rogers tells me I need a crypto wallet
I wanted to talk to Ian Rogers about his fascinating career. He wanted to talk to me about Ledger, the crypto wallet company he’s working at now.
So we did both things.
Background: Rogers was an important figure in the digital music business, back when the music business was being fundamentally reshaped by digital. He helped the Beastie Boys get on the internet, long before every band did th
How to fight Apple and (maybe) win, with Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney
Today's podcast is an in-depth discussion of Apple's App Store rules and how they... wait! Don't leave!
I could try to tell you why Apple's App Store rules are important to both Apple and the digital economy (sadly, I just realized I've been covering them for nearly 15 years, so they better be important). But a better messenger for that task is Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games - the company b
Tariffs, Trump, TikTok: What’s going to happen to ads in 2025?
There are all kinds of ways to measure the health of an economy. The one I rely on is ad spending.
One reason for that is simple: I work in ad-supported businesses, so I want to know about things are going to affect me personally. A less self-interested reason: The health of the ad business is tied directly to the way companies feel about their overall health. So if things turn south, you’ll ofte
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