Podcast
Channels with Peter Kafka
Hosted by Vox Media Podcast Network · EN
Media and tech aren’t just intersecting — they’re fully intertwined. And to understand how those worlds work, and what they mean for you, veteran journalist Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers - and gets them to spell it out in plain, BS-free English.
Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
60episodes
Episodes
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Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala and His Secret Succession Plan
2d ago00:53:34Summary readyRoger 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 with OpenAI and other AI companies, and how the company thinks about the Met Gala, independent creators, and The Devil Wears Prada 2. And if you're looking for news about who succeeds legendary editors Anna Wintour and David Remnick: Lynch says he has a plan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SummaryThe Internet’s Let-It-Rip Era, With The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel
1w ago01:04:15Summary readyThe 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 the video in our feed? Or do we only care when the slop gets in the way? Then we get into the video-everything moment: Why every podcast is becoming a video podcast, why clips may matter more than the shows they come from, and what Charlie has learned from becoming a video person — as I mentioned, he has a podcast now — after years of writing about video people. That leads to a bigger media question: what can old-school media companies learn from creators, Substackers, and YouTubers — and what do they usually misunderstand when they try to hire or absorb them? Charlie has been one of my trusted guides to internet culture for years. I highly recommend starting your own podcast so you can invite him on to talk to you directly. And in the meantime, enjoy this one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SummaryAI Can Make Software Now. That Changes Everything, with Paul Ford
2w ago00:53:20Summary readyLearn 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 software for a living — or whether it’s a big deal for everyone who uses software. All of us, that is. Here to the rescue is Paul Ford, a guy who learned to code and who also learned to write and talk, like a human. Paul is the guy who wrote an entire issue of Businessweek dedicated to a single question — What is Code? — and blogs at Ftrain.com; but his day job is making software, which he does at Aboard. Paul is not the guy who can tell you what’s going to happen to Saas stocks, or if AI is going to wipe out all the jobs, some jobs or will create a gazillion new jobs. Anyone who tells you any of those answers with confidence, he says, is making it up. But he can tell you and me why the recent change in AI-produced software — something that really kicked in over the last few months — is changing his life, and why it’s going to change software for good. And he’ll help you think about what that means for you, a normal person. You’ll like this one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SummaryJason Blum Built a Hit-Making Movie Machine. Does It Still Work?
3w ago00:27:12Summary readyJason 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 AI is the latest thing Hollywood is supposed to fear — or embrace.So I sat down with Blum at a live Business Insider event in San Francisco to ask what still works. We talked about why his new Mummy movie is a very different bet than the movies that built Blumhouse, why he thinks consolidation is bad for Hollywood even if new buyers like Amazon and Apple help offset it, why he’d make AI disappear from moviemaking if he could — while still insisting his team learn how to use it — and what he learns from flops. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SummaryRonan Farrow and Andrew Marantz on Sam Altman’s Trust Problem
Apr 1300:46:31Summary readySam 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 New Yorker profile of the OpenAI CEO, the internal fights around OpenAI’s mission, and why so many people who’ve worked with Altman keep coming back to the same concerns about trust. We talk about Altman’s talent for telling different audiences different things; why Silicon Valley’s usual tolerance for founder myth-making looks different when the product is AI; and how OpenAI went from warning about dangerous race dynamics to helping kick one off with ChatGPT. Then we broaden out: if the real problem is structural, not just personal, what kind of oversight should exist for the people building a technology they say could reshape all of our lives? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SummaryWhat Happens When a “Succession” Writer Takes on Silicon Valley
Apr 800:41:45Summary readyJonathan 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 focus on the people living inside that world: the strivers, service providers, almost-rich neighbors, therapists, and families orbiting vast amounts of money and power. We talk about why privacy and data collection still worry him more than AI hype; why he thinks tech has failed to deliver on many of its biggest promises; and why he’s more interested in the human consequences of Silicon Valley than in explaining how the industry works. Plus: what it means to make a prestige-style TV drama in a post-Peak TV market, why AMC was willing to take a swing on this one, and how you fake Silicon Valley by shooting in Vancouver. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SummaryWhy We Need to Pay Attention to Elon Musk Again
Apr 100:50:05Summary readyElon 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 Musk for a couple of decades, joins me to walk through what Musk has actually been up to lately. We talk about what SpaceX is now that it includes multiple businesses under one roof; why Musk might want to take it public after years of insisting he didn’t; and how much of the pitch is grounded in real operating businesses — rockets! Satellite internet! — versus the familiar promise of something much vaguer and hard to assess.Then we broaden out: Tesla’s drift from car company to AI-and-robotics story, whether X is still a business or simply a political and cultural weapon, and what changed after Musk’s break with Trump. The bigger question underneath all of it: has Musk built a coherent empire — or just a very effective machine for turning hype, power, and celebrity into capital? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SummaryWhy Prediction Markets Are Turning Everything Into a Bet
Mar 2500:45:54Summary readyPrediction 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 Polymarket went mainstream, why Trump-world is so friendly to them, why some states are trying to stop them, and what happens when more and more of public life gets turned into a bet. We also talk about media companies cutting deals with prediction-market firms, the blurry rules around insider trading, and why this story is really about the casino-fication of everything. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SummaryHow to Survive without Google: People Inc's Playbook
Mar 1800:48:20Summary readyLots 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 be an existential problem for people like Vogel, who built a series of sites designed to harvest search traffic. Instead, he’s growing at a double-digit clip. One reason People Inc. is doing well is that Vogel, backed by Barry Diller’s IAC, bought People, along with all the other titles owned by magazine publisher Meredith back in 2021. Turns out many of those brands still mean something to lots of people. Meanwhile, Vogel has been happy to sign deals with AI companies like OpenAI. Isn’t there a chance those companies will end up being unreliable partners, just like platforms of the past? Sure, Vogel says. But he’s willing to take the chance — and the money those AI companies are providing — and figure it out as he goes. “There is a chance we are a hundred percent wrong on all of this,” he tells me. “There's a chance that we're a hundred percent right. The truth is probably somewhere in between.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SummaryMatt Belloni on the Oscars, the Ellisons, and Hollywood’s Next Chapter
Mar 1100:41:00Summary readyOscar 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 — change when it migrates to YouTube in a couple years; how the movie business thinks about the upcoming Paramount/WBD deal; and some 100% not guaranteed betting advice for Sunday night’s show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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