Bloomberg’s Mark Bergen is the world’s top Google Kremlinologist, chronicling the rise and fall of technocrats and technologies inside Google parent company Alphabet.

This week, Bergen published a book on Google subsidiary YouTube called Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination.

That Bergen decided to set his sights on YouTube, Google’s massive user-generated video site, reflects YouTube’s significance inside of parent company Alphabet. The video platform is shaping culture worldwide without receiving Facebook-level scrutiny.

Dead Cat co-host Tom Dotan and I talked with Bergen on this week’s Dead Cat about his new book and YouTube’s ascendancy.

We asked:

* Why does YouTube's early legal battle with Viacom explain how YouTube evolved?

* What does it mean that YouTube star PewDiePiew has been displaced by a ubiquitous Mr. Beast?

* Why has YouTube been so weak willed about punishing the worst actors on its platform?

Give it a listen.

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