Channels with Peter Kafka

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 those of you haven't heard of Sundberg and her Feed Me newsletter  - she’s building a very interesting publishing company that revolves around her reporting, insights and taste, aimed at people who make good money and spend some of it on very nice restaurants, shops and hotels in places like London, LA and New York. My assumption is that a slice of her audience doesn’t do any of that at all — but wants to read about people who do.

In olden times, Sundberg might have a column in a glossy magazine - and in fact she spent some time working at places like New York magazine on her way up. Today what's left of the glossy magazine world would love to attach itself to her. It’s a very 2025 proposition.

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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 attention. Including, apparently, folks at the very top of the Apple org chart.

I talked to Gruber about the fallout from that post. Which is pretty interesting! But there’s a lot more going on in this conversation. It’s partly about the friction Apple has been generating lately — not just about its AI efforts, but the way it runs its App Store, and the way it interacts with developers — and why all of that does and doesn’t matter.

And it’s also about the delightfully retro practice of running an ad-supported blog in 2025. That works very well for Gruber, but it seems like the new Grubers of the world are doing their work on YouTube or Substack. He’s got some thoughts about that, too.

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Here’s one where we try to do two things at once:

1. 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.
2. 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 the this conversation by heading to Semafor’s Mixed Signals pod, and you can hear a different slice of the chat by heading to Brian’s Rebooting pod. It’s an experiment, based on the thesis that the people who listen to one of our shows would be very interested in listening to the other shows. Did we get it right? What can we do to make it better? Please let us know.

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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 like talking to Scott on this show — something we started doing way back in 2017 — because he’s happy to talk about the mechanics of his work, and the economics of Hollywood, and how they intersect. And that’s what we’re doing during this chat too. We discuss the backstory behind his newest show, his take on the history of the streaming bubble, why he’s pretty sanguine about AI in Hollywood but very nervous about its new tech overlords — and the industry he’d get into if he was starting his career in 2025. (Hint: it’s also something that gets consumed on screens.)

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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: Bluesky was a science project that aimed to let people build their own social networks. And that's still what it is at its core, says Bluesky CEO Jay Graber.

But in the meantime, Bluesky has also become an accidental Twitter rival, with some 36 million users. And most of them likely don't care about Bluesky's origins, or the fact that it's really supposed to be a technical framework for decentralized social media. Or what decentralized social media means, for that matter.

All of which means that talking to Graber about Bluesky means you're doing two things at once: Asking about how Bluesky, the app, works — and what Bluesky, the idea is. Which is what we did when we talked at Web Summit Vancouver in May.

Also discussed here: Why is Jack Dorsey mad about Bluesky? What’s up with ads and Bluesky? And who designs Jay Graber’s T-shirts?

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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 done interesting and important work — but when Katie got to it, she had a plan to inject it with new life. And it turns out that this plan had Wired perfectly situated to thrive during the Trump 2.0/Elon/Doge era.

Also discussed here: Tech’s actual view of Trump; how Canadians actually view America; and how to give yourself a Condé Nast glow-up.

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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 of things: I wanted to know how Mosseri felt about the company's recent pivot to Trump-friendly policies, and how he looked at TikTok, for instance.

And while it may not be the most important thing on Meta's roadmap, I was also really curious about a unique opportunity Mosseri created for himself: the chance to build a brand-new social network from the ground up. What did he want to accomplish with Threads, and what mistakes that earlier social networks made was he hoping to avoid?

There's a bunch in here. Take a listen and let me know what you think.

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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 for years. Now his new book “Apple in China” explains how Apple ventured into China, spent years and tens of billions of dollars investing in the country’s production infrastructure, and now seems trapped there — and in the middle of the U.S./China trade war.

McGee’s book is in large part a history book, and one that I’d recommend to anyone who wants to understand Apple, and China. It’s also, obviously, a very timely one. So this interview is part “how did we get here” and also “what happens next”. (Spoiler: Moving Apple’s production to India and Vietnam — something you read about periodically — isn’t going to happen, if ever, for years.)

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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 that. Then he helped bring digital music to millions of people in the MP3 era - first at AOL, then Yahoo — and then in the streaming era — first at Beats, and then Apple Music. Then he did digital stuff at LVMH, the luxury goods conglomerate. Now he’s chief experience officer at Ledger, a French company that has sold 7 million physical storage devices for crypto.

I remain confused and skeptical about crypto, but I’m always open to hearing from folks who are passionate about it — to see if they can convince me that I’m missing something. And the most persuasive argument I hear is usually from folks like Rogers — people who were around when the internet was novel and exciting in the 90s, and think they’re seeing the same kind of tectonic shift this time around. It’s a pitch that’s part FOMO — you wouldn’t want to be one of the people who thought the internet was a fad in 1995, right? — and part blue-sky optimism: What if it was 1995 and you could get in on the ground floor of the internet? Take a listen and let me know what you think.

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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 behind Fortnite.

Sweeney has spent 5 years fighting Apple in court - and by his estimation has sacrificed $1 billion in revenue - over the way Apple runs its App Store. For most of that time it seemed like a futile effort.

But last week a federal judge handed Epic what could be a huge victory, and could potentially cost Apple a meaningful amount of revenue. Apple is going to appeal that ruling, but for now, Sweeney sees this a win for his own company, and many other developers who've chafed at the fees they have to pay Apple every time a consumer wants to give them money.

And if you think none of that matters to you, a normal person, Sweeney is happy to explain why (he thinks) you're wrong.

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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 often see it in falling ad spend.

And as the industry gets increasingly digital, that means it’s that much more responsive to changes in the economy: When the pandemic hit 5 years ago, ad spend all but disappeared for a couple months — and then roared back once companies realized how much spending had shifted online.

So that’s the background for my chat with Smartly CEO Laura Desmond, who I often rely on for a state-of-the-state when it comes to the ad industry. Desmond is a longtime ad biz veteran, and at her current gig she works directly with digital clients, helping them figure out where to place their money and the best way to optimize their campaigns. So she’s got excellent insight into the most sensitive spenders in the market.

Desmond’s takeaway: Long-term changes like a possible TikTok ban just don’t show up on most advertisers’ radars. But potential tariff impacts, which could hit by late May, could be a big hit — if they materialize.

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Every day some 85 million people - most of them kids - show up to play, chat and spend money on Roblox. That’s a massive audience just about any tech or media company would like to have. But David Baszucki wants more: He thinks his platform can eventually command 10% of the worldwide gaming market.

I spent time talking to Baszucki about those ambitions and what has to happen to make it a reality. But I also wanted to spend time getting him to explain what exactly Roblox is, and why its low-fi, user generated games resonate with his audience. It’s an unlikely special sauce that has made the company, which spent years flying under the radar, worth some $40 billion today.

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Some people don’t want to pay for media. But lots of people are paying Jake Sherman and his team at Punchbowl News: The 4-year-old startup is thriving by providing super-insidery news and data about what’s happening in Congress. I chatted with Sherman because I wanted to get an update on his business (he says he’s not going to sell it anytime soon, despite lots of speculation to the contrary).

I also had a basic, outside the Beltway question: In a world where Congress spends a lot of time not passing bills, what exactly does Punchbowl cover? He was happy to spell it all out for me.

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The New York Times faces the same challenges every other news organization faces in 2025.

But it’s also in way better shape to take those challenges on: Thanks to a business model built on 11 million subscribers, it’s not nearly so worried about things like the fluctuations of the ad business, or changes in Google’s algorithm.

That comparative strength also gives NYT publisher AG Sulzberger the ability to do things his peers can’t or won’t do: Like suing OpenAI for copyright infringement, instead of taking a cash settlement. Or calling out the likelihood of a press crackdown if Donald Trump was re-elected - a call he made in September that looks very prescient today.

We talk through both of those issues in this conversation, and a bunch more - like the role of the NYT opinion section, how willing the Times is to experiment, and how the paper thinks about the economic turmoil we now find ourselves in.

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The Trump 2.0 era is less than three months old. But it’s already creating havoc for journalists and the companies they work for.

In Washington, Trump and his team are demoting traditional media - or kicking them out of the White House entirely. In corporate boardrooms, he is forcing media owners to settle lawsuits they would normally fight, and to submit to investigations from newly aggressive regulators.

Again: We’re just at the beginning of this new era. What’s coming down the pike? I asked Sara Fischer, the excellent and Washington-wired media correspondent, to walk me through it

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Call it symbiosis. Call it co-dependency. However you want to characterize it, there’s zero debate that Big TV and Big Sports are deeply intertwined. So if the TV business is shrinking, what happens to sports?

That’s the main question I had for John Ourand, the longtime sports business reporter who’s now at Puck. But I had lots of related ones, like: Now that (some) college students are getting paid to play sports, how does that affect the TV product itself? What’s happening to the local sports networks that bring you baseball, basketball and hockey? And is the sports betting media boom drying up?

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Anyone who makes things thinks they could do it better if they had more. More money, time, headcount, infrastructure.

Some of us find there can be upsides to doing it with less, too.

That's not exactly PJ Vogt's story but I think it's directionally accurate: Vogt cohosted a huge hit podcast - Reply All - and when he decided to try again - with Search Engine - he had a lot less to work with. That shaped his thinking about the company he wanted to run and the product it puts out each week. It seems like it's working, and Vogt walks us through the details and his decisions.

Also joining me: Zach Mack, who has helped other people (like me) make podcasts for years, made one that only he could make. Go listen to his "Alternate Realities" series on NPR's Embedded - but first listen to how he made it.

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Back when I first started covering the internet, the idea of broadcasting yourself for hours on end seemed like a pipe dream for weirdos. Now it's how some people make a living.

Twitch more or less created live-streaming in the U.S., which is why Amazon bought it for about $1 billion back in 2014. But now there are plenty of places to watch, and create, live streams. How does Twitch fend off competitors? How does it convince its most popular streamers to keep streaming? And how will Amazon eventually make real money from the operation, which is was still in the red a few years ago?

Those are all questions I asked Twitch CEO Dan Clancy, at a live taping at South by Southwest. Clancy also got to hear firsthand from Twitch's users and partners in a Q&A session at the end of our chat. Thanks to everyone who came out, and thanks to the folks at the Vox Media podcast network for putting it all together.

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We had to stop recording this one for a minute, because Matt Belloni got a text. More on that below.

Big picture: Matt is a longtime Hollywood reporter - and lawyer before that - who now has the industry's ear via his writing at Puck and his The Town podcast. I asked him to talk about what lies ahead for the Oscars, the out-of-step TV production that still has big audiences and prestige; and the current state of Hollywood, the business. Also discussed here: Awards party catering, and the most popular movie executive who isn't Bob Iger.

For the record: When we started recording this podcast, the audience for Sunday's Oscar awards had declined yet again. By the end of it, new numbers meant it was the most popular show in the last five years. Obviously we would have preferred to know that in advance.

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The most useful class I ever took in college was a media law class, where I learned two things: 1) Journalists in the U.S. (along every other American citizen) have enormous freedom to say and write what they want, without fear of a defamation suit and 2) this freedom exists largely because of New York Times v Sullivan, a seminal Supreme Court case.

Now NYT v Sullivan is under concerted attack, from a group that includes wealthy and powerful people and companies; lawyers who see an opportunity; and, of course, Donald Trump.

David Enrich, an editor who oversees business investigations at the Times, gets to do his work in large part because of the court precedent set decades ago. His upcoming book Murder the Truth takes us on a tour of incidents that show what losing NYT v Sullivan could mean for journalism in the U.S. — and how powerful people are already chipping away at press freedom.

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Everyone knows that video games are giant, fast-growing business that's going to swamp traditional media.

Except that's not true: The games business is now in a prolonged and confusing funk. Investor and analyst Matthew Ball has been diving deep into the industry, so I asked him to take a stab at explaining what's going on. Bonus question: When does the face computer's moment finally arrive?

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A decade ago BuzzFeed was the bleeding edge of digital media, and Serious People thought it was going to be a threat to the likes of the New York Times. Many rounds of layoffs and asset sales later, BuzzFeed is a much more modest operation.

But say this for Jonah Peretti: He continues to pitch Very Big Ideas for his company. Now the BuzzFeed CEO thinks he can create an internet that doesn’t run on content that makes you feel lousy, and that he can also create his own social network. I am… skeptical, but I wanted to hear him out, and now you can make up your own mind.

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It’s hard to remember now. But just a few years ago, sports betting was illegal in almost all of United States. And sports leagues and the media companies that worked with them wanted nothing to do with anything that even referenced gambling.

Things are very, very different now! And it happened so quickly that very few people have stopped to ask what any of this means for America, and what it will mean down the road.

Those questions — and the reasons why so few of us are posing them — turn out to be a great topic for Michael Lewis. You can hear him grappling with them in the excellent new season of his “Against the Rules” podcast series. And I was delighted to discuss all of it with him on my show. It also gave me an opportunity to discuss “The Fifth Risk” - his 2018 book about Donald Trump’s first attempt to take over federal government, which is extra-timely right now. And I couldn’t let him go without a brief chat about crypto and Sam Bankman-Fried.

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I haven’t checked in with Jessica Lessin in some time — and I have to say I picked a pretty good time to catch up with her. Because Silicon Valley is undergoing something meaningful right now, and she’s in a great position to tell us more about it: Lessin is a veteran technology reporter who founded The Information in 2013, and it has been a go-to for anyone who wants serious reporting about tech in the Bay Area and around the world, ever since.

Discussed in this episode: What’s really animating tech’s embrace of Donald Trump? What’s going to happen to TikTok? And what does the arrival of DeepSeek mean for the AI boom?

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TikTok banned itself for less than a day. Now it’s back in the U.S. - despite a law that says it shouldn’t be operating. We’re not going to weigh in on all of the… weirdness around the last few days on this episode, in part because we don’t know how it’s going to play out.

But in the meantime I wanted to talk to someone who knows how TikTok actually works — from a content creator’s perspective, at least. Adam Faze runs Gymnasium, a small production studio that specializes in TikTok videos, and so far it’s gone well: In 18 months, he’s launched two successful shows, signed up Amazon to sponsor one of them, and is ramping up to make more. He walked me through the way companies like his actually make money on TikTok, how the platform differs from TikTok clones like Instagram Reels, and how he thinks this could grow in the future. Assuming TikTok sticks around the U.S., that is.

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Why didn’t Meta’s stock move when Mark Zuckerberg announced his pro-MAGA pivot? Why do big media companies want to dump their cable TV networks — but hang on to their broadcast TV networks? What’s going to happen in Google’s antitrust case?These are all good questions, right? I think so, too. So I posed them, along with many more, to MoffettNathanson’s Michael Nathanson, one of the sharpest Wall Street analysts covering tech and media. We cover a lot of ground in a short time, and I think you’ll enjoy this one.

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I’m a lucky man. Whenever I’m baffled by the internet, and social media, I turn to my co-worker Katie Notopoulos, who is there to explain it to me. That’s because Katie’s job at Business Insider is to explain how the internet works — how the people who run big internet platforms want it to work, and what the people who actually use those platforms do on it, for better and for worse. So that’s what we’re talking about today, to help ease us into the new year.

Discussed here: Why Katie still loves the internet and technology, even with all of its many warts; how she came to be a professional chronicler of the internet; how her views on all of this are changing as her kids grow older; and poop. Lots of poop talk here. You’re gonna love it.

Note: We recorded this chat on January 6 — a day before Mark Zuckerberg announced he was going to reshape his entire company to accommodate the upcoming Trump administration. So that’s why it’s not in this conversation. Rest assured - we’ll be talking about this a lot in future episodes. Happy 2025!

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I don’t love a lot of year-end #content . But I do love talking to Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw every year, to help put the year in media in perspective, and to think about what might be coming in 2025. And that’s exactly what we did here. Enjoy it now, or over your break. We’ll see you again in January.

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Newsletters are not a new idea. Yet every few years the media business rediscovers them, anyway — either as a way to quickly launch a startup with bigger ambitions, or as a standalone business. Tim Huelskamp took the second route in 2017, when he co-founded 1440 — a newsletter that promises to quickly bring you the most important news of the day. Again — not a new idea. But Huelskamp seems to have figured out how to build something pretty big: He says 1440 has 4 million readers, and is turning a profit on something like $20 million in annual revenue. How’d he do it? What’s he going to do next? And how will he compete with AI companies that can do all of this faster, and cheaper? I’m glad you asked: I’ve got the same questions, so I asked him myself.

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You probably shouldn't know Renee DiResta's name: She's a researcher who studies online bad behavior, not a celebrity. But the work DiReata did studying the "stop the steal" movement after 2020 has made her famous in some corners of the internet, and not in a good way: She's been harassed, pelted with subpoenas and sued twice.

Now things could get really unpleasant for her.

Donald Trump's victory means that a lot of people who have target dDiResta in the past are newly ascendant. But she tells me she's more worried about a chilling effect that could hamper anyone who's trying to learn about, and fix social media's ills. Also discussed here: what not to do when you go on Joe Rogan.

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Lots of people start media companies using money from rich people. Jason Koebler and his colleagues did it themselves, using a grand total of $4,000. That was back in the summer of 2023. Now 404 Media, the tech news + investigations site they started after leaving Vice Media, is a success story. Koebler tells us how they started, how it’s going, and what he’d like to do next.

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Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Bari Weiss all used to work for big mainstream media companies. Now they’re on the internet, building their own companies, with the help of Chris Balfe.

Balfe’s Red Seat Ventures helps online creators set up shop, produce programming, and — crucially — helps them monetize through ad sales and/or subscriptions. Balfe got his start working with Glenn Beck when the former Fox News star left and started his own online business. I always assumed we’d see other high-profile talent follow Beck’s footsteps, but it took much longer than I thought. Now it’s a reality, and the talent Balfe works with may very well have helped re-elect Donald Trump.

You can’t escape politics when you talk to someone who works with Tucker Carlson, and we spend a little bit of time on that in our chat. But this is really a discussion about how online media — primarily podcasts and YouTube — works today, and where it’s going next.

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One take you may have heard after the election: Democrats need their own Joe Rogan.

Taylor Lorenz disagrees. And Lorenz is worth listening to. For years, she has been a really sharp observer of social media and online spaces, and she built a high-profile career explaining the internet for audiences at places like the Atlantic, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Now Lorenz is on her own, which is where she says she always wanted to end up. We talked about how and why she left the Post this year. And how she’s thinking about building her career without the advantages – and disadvantages — that come from working for a big organization.

But first we talk about the podcast election (which was also the YouTube election) and where she thinks the Harris campaign went wrong. And why she thinks liberals don’t need their own Rogan — and why they can’t get one, anyway.

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You want up-to-the minute election analysis? Sorry, not on this episode.

But: If you want smart thoughts about politics and media and tech all merged together? We got you here, courtesy of The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel, who came on to discuss how we should think about Elon Musk, Donald Trump supporter, being the same person as Elon Musk, guy who owns Twitter. Plus, because it’s Charlie: A useful way to think about what misinformation is, and isn’t.

And! If you don’t want politics in your podcast today, we can accommodate that too, via a chat with Griffin Gaffney, the CEO/publisher of the San Francisco Standard. The Standard, owned by billionaire Mike Moritz, is a three-year-old news startup that lots of people in the Bay Area seem to love. And I wanted to know how he’s making it work, and the pros and cons of having a billionaire owner, and how he thinks the paper might actually turn a profit some day.

Ideally, you’ll listen to both of these chats. But it’s a podcast! You do you.

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Jon Lovett and his cofounders at Crooked Media are a good story - former Obama aides who started their own media company after the 2016 election, and are now generating 25 million podcast downloads a month. But for a few weeks this summer, after they became prominent voices in the push to replace Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket, their story got even more interesting. I’ve wanted to talk to Lovett about that experience for months, so a week before the election seems like good timing, no? Also discussed here: How to navigate a media landscape dominated by Donald Trump; Elon Musk, and the upside of getting kicked off of Survivor.

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Emma Tucker became the Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief in 2023, and she’s been moving fast ever since.

For starters, there are punchier, more provocative stories and headlines. Just as important: She’s been making a series of cuts and staffing changes. That approach has its critics, but it also seems to be working: Subscriptions are up 7% in the last year.

In our chat, we discuss all of that, plus more: What her background as a British journalist means as stakes out the Journal’s niche of “American capitalism”; why she felt comfortable running a story suggesting that Joe Biden was “slipping” weeks before it became evident to the entire world; and a brief update on Evan Gershkovich, the Journal reporter who spent more than a year in a Russian jail.

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What if you could watch shows and movies on a screen, for free, in exchange for watching some ads?

In olden times, we called that “TV”. Now the industry term is “advertising-based video on demand,” and it seems to be growing quite quickly. This is good news for Tubi, the AVOD/streamer Fox bought back in the spring of 2020, and for Anjali Sud, who has been running Tubi for the last year. At the moment, Tubi’s programming is helping it beat services with much bigger profiles, and budgets, including Comcast’s Peacock and WBD’s Max.

Sud, who used to run IAC’s Vimeo video service, talked to me live at the NAB NY show. Discussed here: Tubi’s approaching to licensing and programming, why it makes sense for the streamer to make a smattering of its own shows, and what being part of Fox does and doesn’t do for her.

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What do Donald Trump and the video game industry have to do with each other?

Nothing! Yet we’re combining them into a single podcast, anyway.

First up: A chat with Gabriel Sherman, the longtime Vanity Fair reporter who wrote and produced “The Apprentice.” That’s the new Trump biopic that isn’t what you think it is, and is very much worth your time — and which almost never got released in the U.S.

As Sherman tells us, this is a movie that’s a sort of Trump creation myth, centering around his relationship with Roy Cohn, the notorious lawyer/fixer. It’s not an anti-Trump movie in the vein of “Vice”, but it’s also not a flattering story. That makes it hard to understand why Trump-backer Dan Snyder initially backed the production — but less hard to understand why Snyder reportedly wanted to block it once he’d seen it. Sherman walks us through the whole backstory, which is wild even by Hollywood’s standards.

And then we switch gears completely, to talk about the surprisingly troubled state of the video game business, with Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier. I’m used to seeing conventional media industries struggle in the face of digital disruption — but one of the reasons they are usually struggling is the rise of video games. Yet that industry is undergoing multiple years of brutal layoffs and consolidation. Schreier, whose new book “Play Nice” follows the twisted path of legendary games studio Blizzard Entertainment, tells us how the industry got itself into trouble, and whether it can play its way out of it.

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The last time I talked to Matt Yglesias, we were co-workers at Vox.com, and Joe Biden had just been elected president. Now Yglesias runs Slow Boring, a tremendously successful Substack, and I wanted to check back in. Discussed here: What a policy nerd does in an election that’s awfully light on policy; why hating the media is now a popular pastime across the political spectrum; what it’s like to run a three-person business that’s grossing something like $1.4 million a year.

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Mark Zuckerberg, along with most of the men running big tech companies, has spent many years and tons of money trying to put a computer on your face. Now it looks like he’s getting very close to making it a reality: He’s just debuted Orion, a pair of bulky — but not too bulky — glasses that are also a computer. You can’t buy these things yet - they cost Meta a ton to make — but Meta thinks you’ll buy something like it in the not-too-distance future.

The crucial caveat here is that we don’t know if this actually true. And it’s possible we never find out - there could be engineering challenges that mean Meta can never get this thing into mass production. But Zuckerberg certainly seems confident.

 I got to try Orion briefly, so I want to share some of my impressions at the top of this episde. Then I talk to the Verge’s Alex Heath, who is both a face computer expert and a Mark Zuckerberg expert, and got to use Orion and talk to Zuckerberg at the same time. We talk about why Zuckerberg is building these things, why he’s showing them off — and why Zuckerberg is spending a lot of time telling everyone that his is a new Zuckerberg, and that he’s done with politics and done apologizing.

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YouTube turns 20 next year, which makes it positively ancient by internet standards. Yet the world’s biggest video site is still incredibly relevant for huge swaths of the globe, even if it doesn’t get the media attention other sites generate. It’s also the only major social platform that routinely shares revenue with the users who create the stuff that powers the site. I think that if Google executives took a truth serum they’d tell me they’re jealous of places like TikTok and Instagram, which also have giant businesses but share much, much less of the wealth with their users - but CEO Neal Mohan insists that’s not the case.

In this conversation we spend quite a bit of time talking about that business model, and much more: Like how Mohan thinks about AI; why he’s also in the cable TV business; and how he’s thinking about his company’s role in the upcoming US election, given the possibility of more election denialism.

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When David Remnick got to the New Yorker in 1998, it was very much a capital M Magazine — it existed on ink and paper, and that was about it. Now it’s still a Magazine, but it’s also everything else you need to be to survive as a media company in 2024 — a robust online publisher, a podcast machine, a video operation, conference host and more. Along the way, it also pivoted from an ad-based business model to one that thrives on consumer subscriptions. And it remains one of my favorite publications, hands down. So I was delighted Remnick took time to talk to me about what has changed at the New Yorker under his tenure, and what hasn’t. Also discussed here: Whether the New Yorker still has special status among owner Conde Nast’s roster of titles; the acquisition Remnick should have made but didn’t; and why he invited, and then uninvited, Steve Bannon to speak at the 2018 New Yorker Festival.

By the way: Welcome to the first episode of Channels! Feel free to send guest suggestions and (just about) anything else my way: pkafka on most of the socials.

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What happens when you mash up media, tech and business? You get a million things to talk about, and that’s what we’ll be doing on this show: Talking to people who run big tech and media companies, the people who are doing some of the most interesting work in those worlds, and people who can help us understand all of it.

And by “we” I mean “me” - I’m Peter Kafka, and I’m a journalist who has been covering the collision of tech and media for a long time, at places like Forbes, Recode, Vox and now Business Insider. If you want, you can think of this show as a way to listen in on the interviews I do to get smarter about my work.

And if you think all of the above sounds like the show that used to be called Recode Media with Peter kafka? You are smart, and perceptive and good-looking. And yup! Same idea, same guy, new name. Coming soon, to your favorite podcast app.

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Peter Kafka, soon to be formerly of Vox, reviews the year in media with Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw. What did we learn from the strikes? Is the bundle back? Are movies back? What’s going on with whatever the NBA is doing right now? And what’s up with Bob Iger saying he didn’t say something he definitely said on live TV?

This is the last episode of “Recode Media” in its current form, but stay subscribed to this feed! Peter and this show will be back with a new name and a new corporate daddy in 2024.

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After a wild series of events, Sam Altman is back as CEO of OpenAI… with more power than ever before. The Verge’s Alex Heath worked sleepless nights covering every twist and turn of this saga. He updates Vox’s Peter Kafka about where we are now, what all of this means moving forward, and how tech journalism can drive someone to mistake alcohol for water.

Then, we continue with artificial intelligence talk as News/Media Alliance President and CEO Danielle Coffey pops in to discuss the journalism industry’s response to having its assets fuel generative models like OpenAI’s.

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The board of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, ousted CEO Sam Altman on Friday. Since then, the board has appointed not one, but two, interim CEOs. And Altman and his OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman got snatched up by Microsoft. The New York Times’ Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) joins Vox’s Peter Kafka to talk about what we know and what we don’t about this whole situation.

Host: Peter Kafka (@pkafka), Senior Editor at Recode

More to explore: Subscribe for free to Recode Media, Peter Kafka, one of the media industry's most acclaimed reporters, talks to business titans, journalists, comedians, and more to get their take on today's media landscape.

About Recode by Vox: Recode by Vox helps you understand how tech is changing the world — and changing us.

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SiriusXM makes money by beaming music and talk radio - especially Howard Stern - to your car using satellites and selling monthly subscriptions. That turns out to be a surprisingly resilient business: The company has 34 million subscribers and $9 billion in annual revenue. But CEO Jennifer Witz knows she has to adapt to the streaming world, so she’s refreshing the company’s brand and app, with the hopes that you’ll keep listening when you’re not driving. Vox’s Peter Kafka talks to Witz about how she plans to position her company in a crowded field.

Then, Peter catches up with one of his favorites, Rob Harvilla (@harvilla), about his new book. It’s an adaption of his excellent podcast, which goes by the same name: 60 Songs that Explain the ’90s.

Host: Peter Kafka (@pkafka), Senior Editor at Recode

More to explore: Subscribe for free to Recode Media, Peter Kafka, one of the media industry's most acclaimed reporters, talks to business titans, journalists, comedians, and more to get their take on today's media landscape.

About Recode by Vox: Recode by Vox helps you understand how tech is changing the world — and changing us.

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It’s a double shot of media business takes, with conversations about the Walt Disney Corporation and Fox News, with references to “Succession” in both.

First, CNBC’s Alex Sherman (@sherman4949) joins Vox’s Peter Kafka to talk about Disney’s strategy, or lack thereof. What does it want to do with ESPN? ABC? Marvel? Star Wars? And although it plans to buy the remaining third of Hulu… what the hell does it want to do with Hulu? Plus, he gives us some hot goss about the Bobs (Iger and Chapek), and which Bob is most to blame for Disney’s troubles.

Then, media reporter Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) joins us to talk about his SECOND book about Fox News, “Network of Lies.” What’s the real story behind Tucker Carlson’s departure? And what will Lachlan Murdoch do once his dad formally leaves the company?

Host: Peter Kafka (@pkafka), Senior Editor at Recode

More to explore: Subscribe for free to Recode Media, Peter Kafka, one of the media industry's most acclaimed reporters, talks to business titans, journalists, comedians, and more to get their take on today's media landscape.

About Recode by Vox: Recode by Vox helps you understand how tech is changing the world — and changing us.

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This week, an episode of the latest season of Land of the Giants: The Twitter Fantasy, hosted by our own Peter Kafka. If you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe!

Twitter began life as an accident. In the beginning, even its founders weren’t sure what it was: the internet’s town square, a real-time information source, or the next Facebook, maybe? Twitter's power has always been misunderstood -- by its leaders, by its users, and lately, by the world's richest person. 

Host: Peter Kafka (@pkafka), Senior Editor at Recode

More to explore: Subscribe for free to Recode Media, Peter Kafka, one of the media industry's most acclaimed reporters, talks to business titans, journalists, comedians, and more to get their take on today's media landscape.

About Recode by Vox: Recode by Vox helps you understand how tech is changing the world — and changing us.

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When Sam Reich bought CollegeHumor from Barry Diller’s IAC for pennies in January 2020, the comedy site was long past its heyday. A few months later, the pandemic hit. It wouldn’t have been a surprise if CollegeHumor had vanished entirely. Instead, Reich pushed the company to lean into Dropout, the subscription streaming part of the business, and create more improvised comedy content that lent itself well to viral clips on TikTok and YouTube. Today, Dropout has a dedicated fanbase of hundreds of thousands of subscribers and is even talking about establishing a revenue-sharing model with its employees. Vox’s Peter Kafka talks with Reich about how he turned it all around, and what it’s like to be on-camera talent and everyone’s boss.

Host: Peter Kafka (@pkafka), Senior Editor at Recode

More to explore: Subscribe for free to Recode Media, Peter Kafka, one of the media industry's most acclaimed reporters, talks to business titans, journalists, comedians, and more to get their take on today's media landscape.

About Recode by Vox: Recode by Vox helps you understand how tech is changing the world — and changing us.

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