Podcast Episodes

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 sta…

8 months, 1 week ago

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 m…

8 months, 2 weeks ago

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 j…

8 months, 3 weeks ago

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 b…

8 months, 4 weeks ago

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 be…

9 months ago

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 influen…

9 months, 1 week ago

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 s…

9 months, 2 weeks ago

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…

9 months, 3 weeks ago

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…

10 months ago

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 mor…

10 months, 1 week ago