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.
Latest episodes
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53 min
Netflix in Turmoil + Derek Thompson on AI & The Antisocial Century
It feels like 2022 all over again: Netflix has hit a wall, and is scrambling to respond. That means layoffs, a purge of its top content people and… what else? Then Derek Thompson —…
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49 min
How to Run a Political Campaign in the TikTok Era (And How Not To)
Most of us stopped watching traditional TV a long time ago. Political campaigns, meanwhile, still spend most of their ad money there.Rob Flaherty has been trying to change that fro…
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1 h 01
Larry Ellison’s Media Ambitions & Kevin Roose on AI’s Biggest Gamble
Larry Ellison bought his son a media empire. What does he want from it? Vanity Fair’s Tom Dotan joins me to talk about the billionaire behind Paramount and Warner Bros., his connec…
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44 min
David Ellison's Paramount-Warner Empire & The Fight That Comes Next
David Ellison has won Warner Bros. Discovery. Now he has to figure out what, exactly, to do with it. LightShed analyst Rich Greenfield joins me to talk through the next version of…
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40 min
Meta's New $1300 Glasses and the Fight to Control AI
I went to Meta’s Silicon Valley headquarters to try Mark Zuckerberg’s newest face computer: a $1,300 pair of virtual-reality glasses that are much lighter and cheaper than Apple’s…
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41 min
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…
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54 min
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…
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53 min
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…
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49 min
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 clif…
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43 min
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…
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49 min
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…
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52 min
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 repor…
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44 min
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…
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42 min
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, Subs…
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45 min
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, K…
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1 h 04
"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 t…
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58 min
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 Jul…
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29 min
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…
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53 min
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 ev…
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1 h 06
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 m…