Lately, lingerie behemoth Victoria’s Secret is trying to claw its way back to relevance after a spectacular crash. How did a brand that once defined the culture fail to keep up?

Our guests, Lauren Sherman and Chantal Fernandez, tell the story of a retail giant’s rise and fall in their new book Selling Sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon. 

They chart the company’s evolution from a fledgling sex toy business to a global fast-fashion pioneer. But when social media transformed the meaning of sexy, and the CEO’s association with Jeffrey Epstein made headlines, the fashion shows got canceled and the shares crashed. We’re asking where that leaves Victoria’s Secret today... and who is Victoria anyway?

Plus, Vass reveals her new advertising partnership with an underwear brand from her youth.

Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe’s online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.

Find the transcript of today’s episode here.

We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].

Lately, we aren’t all getting the same price for the same product. Is the rise of data-driven “personalized pricing” corporate innovation or just next-gen gouging? 

Our guest, Lindsay Owens, is an economic sociologist and former policy advisor to U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren. She’s the co-author of “The Age of Recoupment” in The American Prospect’s issue on How Pricing Really Works, and the executive director of Groundwork Collaborative.

Owens discusses how major retailers are using digital surveillance to set individual prices for individual customers. She talks about the evolution of pricing, from the bazaar to the department store to the Taco Bell app, and why AI software may be enabling price-fixing schemes in real estate that are driving up rents across North America.

Also Vass and Katrina compete for hotel deals.

Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe’s online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.

Find the transcript of today’s episode here.

We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].

Lately, we’ve been getting the news from The Decibel, the Globe and Mail’s daily news podcast. 

In this bonus episode, Lately’s sister pod reveals what it took for Rogers to outmaneuver the competition and buy up some of the biggest sports teams in Canada. 

A colossal business deal recently took place when a set of rivals came to an unexpected agreement. Rogers Communications Inc. bought BCE Inc.’s 37.5-per-cent stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment for $4.7-billion. The transaction makes Rogers the majority owner of all of Toronto’s major professional sports teams.

Andrew Willis, a columnist and reporter for The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business, explains to Decibel host Menaka Ramn-Wilms how Rogers has the money to do this, why Bell agreed to sell to a major competitor and how investors may be able to buy their own stake in their favourite sports team one day.

Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email [email protected]

Professor Timothy Caulfield researches health misinformation, especially when it intersects with celebrity culture. In the new CBC documentary Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, Caulfield takes a trip to the “manosphere” and meets the men who buy and sell the promise of masculinity in this growing segment of the $5-trillion wellness market. Caulfield talks to Lately about debunking the pseudoscience of drinking urine, how traditional masculine values can actually harm men’s health, and how the manosphere might have propelled Donald Trump to victory. 

Plus, Vass finds out what lightly grilled bull testicle tastes like.

Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe’s online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.

Find the transcript of today’s episode here.

We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].

Lately, LinkedIn has become  cringe... or cool, or more important than ever, depending on who you ask. So, is LinkedIn working well for us, or has it devolved into yet another shouty social media site?

Tim Kiladze is a Globe and Mail business reporter, Bay Street veteran and LinkedIn connoisseur. He wrote a compelling report on the evolution of LinkedIn: The tone has shifted to more performative “thought leadership,” the line between personal and professional has blurred – and now Bay Street executives are peacocking their post stats over lunch. But if you stay away from LinkedIn, are you sabotaging your career? 

Vass Bednar would like to connect. Accept/Reject?

Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe’s online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.

Find the transcript of today’s episode here.

We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].

A bonus episode from our Globe and Mail sister show Machines Like Us. How is Silicon Valley’s shift to the right affecting the US election? 

The tech lobby has quietly turned Silicon Valley into the most powerful political operation in America.

Pro-crypto donors are now responsible for almost half of all corporate donations this election. Elon Musk has gone from an occasional online troll to, as one of our guests calls him, “MAGA’s Minister of Propaganda.” And for the first time, the once reliably blue Silicon Valley seems to be shifting to the right. What does all this mean for the upcoming election? To help us better understand this moment, we spoke with three of the most prominent tech writers in the U.S. Charles Duhigg (author of the bestseller Supercommunicators) has a recent piece in the New Yorker called “Silicon Valley, the New Lobbying Monster.” Charlie Warzel is a staff writer at the Atlantic, and Nitasha Tiku is a tech culture reporter at the Washington Post.

Machines Like Us is a Globe and Mail tech show about AI and people. It's hosted by Taylor Owen and comes out every other Tuesday. 

Mentioned:

“Silicon Valley, the New Lobbying Monster” by Charles Duhigg

“Big Crypto, Big Spending: Crypto Corporations Spend an Unprecedented $119 Million Influencing Elections” by Rick Claypool via Public Citizen

“I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is” by Charlie Warzel

“Elon Musk Has Reached a New Low” by Charlie Warzel

“The movement to diversify Silicon Valley is crumbling amid attacks on DEI” by Naomi Nix, Cat Zakrzewski and Nitasha Tiku

“The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” by Marc Andreessen

“Trump Vs. Biden: Tech Policy,” The Ben & Marc Show

“The MAGA Aesthetic Is AI Slop” by Charlie Warzel

Lately, Big Tobacco says it wants to phase out cigarettes and promote, of all things, healthier options. But can the tobacco industry actually sell wellness? And is this pivot to vapes and pouches a smoking off-ramp or just a one-way ride to nicotine addiction?

Award-winning journalist Luc Rinaldi takes us behind the curtain of Big Tobacco’s machinations to report on how an industry built on addiction is looking to reinvent itself for the wellness age. His cover story "Blowing Smoke" appears in this month’s edition of the Globe and Mail's Report on Business Magazine. 

Also, Vass shares her secret to social success.

Find the transcript of today’s episode here.

And subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where we unpack more of the latest in business and technology.

We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].

Companies in Canada are being bought up by private equity at an incredible rate. The list includes Rexall, MEC, Value Village, WestJet and Sleep Country.

But it also includes local businesses: vets, dentists, retirement homes and more. Critics say it’s an unchecked shift in the economy that results in negative, often dangerous outcomes – where the profit motive can mean higher prices and lower quality of care.

We’re speaking to someone who has brokered such deals: Rachel Wasserman is a lawyer and former investment banker who left that world behind to become a researcher for the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project. Her forthcoming paper is called The Private Equity Playbook: Understanding the Secretive Industry Hollowing Out the Canadian Economy. 

She joins us to talk about the cutthroat world of leveraged buyouts, the risks of corner-cutting, and what a private-equity future means for Canada’s economy.
Plus: producer Jay’s cat, Leo, is doing his own investigating to find out why his vet stopped giving out so many treats.

This is Lately. Every week, we take a deep dive into the big, defining trends in business and tech that are reshaping our every day.

Lately is hosted by Vass Bednar. Our executive producer is Katrina Onstad. The show is produced by Jay Cockburn. Our sound designer is Cameron McIver. 

Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where we unpack more of the latest in business and technology.

Find the transcript of today’s episode here.

We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].

When Erika Ayers Badan beat out 74 men to become the first CEO of Barstool Sports, the company was small, dominated by brash bros, and indivisible from the controversial reputation of its founder, Dave Portnoy. But she corralled Barstool and turned it into a media empire with a $500-million exit.

So where do you go after helming a culture-quaking company? Ayers Badan became CEO of the cooking and lifestyle brand Food52 – new industry, new struggles. She was hired after layoffs, terrible Glassdoor reviews, and a predecessor who had lasted less than a year.

In a live conversation at Elevate, Canada’s tech and innovation festival, Ayers Badan speaks with Lately about how to manage the unmanageable, what she learned as a woman leading a fratty company that was sold twice in one year, and about her new book, Nobody Cares About Your Career: Why Failure Is Good, The Great Ones Play Hurt, and Other Hard Truths.

Also, Vass shares her secret for successful public speaking with Katrina: sour keys. But she doesn’t literally share them.

This is Lately. Every week, we take a deep dive into the big, defining trends in business and tech that are reshaping our every day.

Our executive producer is Katrina Onstad. The show is produced by Jay Cockburn. Our sound designer is Cameron McIver. Our host is Vass Bednar.

Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where we unpack more of the latest in business and technology.

Find the transcript of today’s episode here.

We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].

That creeping feeling that everything online is getting worse has a name: “enshittification,” a term for the slow degradation of our experience on digital platforms. The enshittification cycle is why you now have to wade through slop to find anything useful on Google, and why your charger is different from your BFF’s. 

According to Cory Doctorow, the man who coined the memorable moniker, this digital decay isn’t inevitable. It’s a symptom of corporate under-regulation and monopoly – practices being challenged in courts around the world, like the US Department of Justice’s antitrust suit against Google.

Cory Doctorow is a British-Canadian journalist, blogger and author of Chokepoint Capitalism, as well as speculative fiction works like The Lost Cause and the new novella Spill. 

This is Lately. Every week, we take a deep dive into the big, defining trends in business and tech that are reshaping our every day.

Our executive producer is Katrina Onstad. This episode is produced by Jay Cockburn and Andrea Varsany. Our sound designer is Cameron McIver.

Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where we unpack more of the latest in business and technology.

Find the transcript of today’s episode here.

We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].