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PODCAST

Channels with Peter Kafka

Vox Media Podcast Network

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.

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All Episodes

61:06

Larry Ellison’s Media Ambitions & Kevin Roose on AI’s...

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/10/07

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 connection to TikTok, and his politics. Tom’s reporting suggests there may be less of a master plan than you’d think. We also discuss why even Ellison’s enormous fortune has limits—and how his media bets are tied to Oracle’s AI gamble.Then, Kevin Roose joins me to discuss his new book, The AGI Chronicles, and a question I keep

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44:22

David Ellison's Paramount-Warner Empire & The Fight...

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/09/30

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 the Paramount-Warner empire: Why Ellison wants to be Netflix; why CBS and the NFL still matter so much; and why simply bolting Paramount+ onto HBO Max won’t magically create a winning streamer. Then we zoom out to the much bigger problem for Hollywood: AI is making it easier and cheaper to create video, which could mean

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40:16

Meta's New $1300 Glasses and the Fight to Control AI

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/09/23

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 Vision Pro, and still make you ask a very basic question: What am I supposed to do with this thing?So I asked my pal Mike Isaac, the New York Times tech reporter and longtime Meta watcher. We talked about why Meta keeps spending billions trying to put computers on our heads, why this version might have a better shot than

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40:52

AI Wants to Shop for You. What Could Go Wrong?

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/09/16

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 want them doing this stuff for us?My pal Jason Del Rey, a longtime journalist who now writes The Aisle

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54:00

The Atlantic’s CEO on AI, Billionaire Owners, and...

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/09/11

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 increasingly run by bots and agents, and what he thinks his actual human readers want.Also on the docket: What

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53:20

Data Centers, Elon Musk, and the New Politics of...

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/09/02

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 for on-the-ground reporting, around the US. So I wanted his point of view on why the anti-data center

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48:45

The Weird, Big Business of Microdramas

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/08/26

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 microdrama app, about turning web fiction into video, why he thinks CandyJar can be the HBO of

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42:41

The $12.5 Billion Lakers, the NFL’s TV Fight, and...

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/08/19

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 keep rising. Then: the NFL wanted its TV partners to reopen their current rights deals early and pay more

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48:30

Joanna Stern on the New Siri, OpenAI’s Weird Gadget,...

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/08/12

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 thinks the new Siri is a very big deal. We also try to figure out why OpenAI and Jony Ive think we need a new

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52:11

Oliver Darcy on Status, Bari Weiss, and Why Media...

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/08/05

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 advertising, a podcast and YouTube show, and an upcoming live conference. He says subscriptions alone

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44:16

Lucas Shaw on Warner Bros' Limbo, Netflix's Anxiety,...

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/07/29

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 would-be deal.Then: Netflix says it doesn’t have an engagement problem, even as it gives investors less data

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42:01

Substack Wants To Become A Social Network; Beehiiv...

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/07/22

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 clear pitch for creators thinking about using one versus the other: Substack wants readers to open its

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45:24

Inside Podcasting’s Fight Over Netflix, YouTube, and...

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/07/15

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 business itself. We talk about why Netflix is offering huge checks to podcasters, and why Chris thinks

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64:31

"We’re in a Race Against Time," Joe Kahn on Running...

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/07/08

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, why he’s wary of the creator economy, what star reporters are worth, and how the Times is using AI

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58:16

Encore: Inside Joe Weisenthal's brain

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/07/01

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 right, happy to be wrong, always has something to say about anything. That persona/personality did wonders

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29:21

The Ad Industry's Weirdest Tradition

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/06/24

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 feels increasingly disconnected from the ads themselves; why CMOs are the real celebrities of Cannes;

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53:04

A Hollywood Manager Explains the New Rules of Show Biz

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/06/17

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 lot of money for some people — like syndication payouts in TV or backend deals for movies — don’t really

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66:01

Brian Stelter on the 60 Minutes Mess; Nilay Patel on...

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/06/10

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 followed since she showed up? We talk about Scott Pelley’s public exit interview, what 60 Minutes might look

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37:31

How Dhar Mann Turned After-School Specials Into A...

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/06/03

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 Facebook into places like Samsung TVs and Fox-backed microdramas, and he thinks the assembly line he’s

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46:45

Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour Explains Why Boring Data...

Channels with Peter Kafka ·

2026/05/27

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 Jones is doing well while so many other media companies are struggling, howEmma Tucker, the Wall Street

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