Recode Media

By Recode

What's Recode Media about?

What happens when media, entertainment, and technology collide? Peter Kafka, one of the media industry's most acclaimed reporters, talks to business titans, journalists, comedians and podcasters to get their take. Produced by Recode and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Is this a Netflix problem o...

06.23.2022

Today, CNBC’s Alex Sherman joins Recode’s Peter Kafka to ponder several media mysteries: Why did Netflix lose 2 million subscribers? Why was Disney executive Peter Rice unexpectedly fired? What’s going on at Warner Bros. Discovery? Is someone gonna buy VICE? ...

Recode Media episodes:

06.23.2022 Is this a Netflix problem or a streaming problem? Today, CNBC’s Alex Sherman joins Recode’s Peter Kafka to ponder several media mysteries: Why did Netflix lose 2 million subscribers? Why was Disney executive Peter Rice unexpectedly fired? What’s going on at Warner Bros. Discovery? Is someone gonna buy VICE? ...
06.15.2022 Bill Simmons on podcasts, celebrity interviews and life at Spotify The Bill Simmons Podcast is, by its own description, "the most downloaded sports podcast of all time." This week, it hits its 1,000th episode. Bill Simmons began his career as a Boston sportswriter and went on to found ESPN's sports ...
06.09.2022 Why is this VC on your TikTok? TikTok isn’t just funny dances and glow-ups anymore… it’s also for venture capital!!! Logan Bartlett, managing director at the VC firm Redpoint, reaches out to startups via the socials. He also hosts a podcast called Cartoon Avatars. Bartlett talks to ...
06.02.2022 Engineer Molly White explains why Web3 isn’t going great Software engineer Molly White has emerged as one of Web3’s most high-profile skeptics. Her website “Web3 is going just great” chronicles scams, bugs, “rug pulls” and thefts plaguing the world of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), and other ...
05.26.2022 Is Big Tech getting better about misinformation? Lots of people will tell you that misinformation is a big problem online. But exactly what the problem is, and what tech companies can and should do about it, is up for debate. It’s also what Bloomberg reporter Davey Alba ...
05.19.2022 What can you learn from the guy who built the iPod? The markets are crashing - and that includes both Netflix and the media companies that wanted to be Netflix. What’s next? Wall Street analyst and investor Rich Greenfield weighs in. Then, Recode’s Peter Kafka has a conversation with Tony Fadell, ...
05.12.2022 Ronan Farrow: “We are living in a post-privacy age” Ronan Farrow’s latest investigative work for The New Yorker looks into the surveillance technology Pegasus — spyware that gives remote access to a smartphone’s camera, microphone, and contents. Be sure to power your phone completely off after you listen to ...
05.05.2022 Behind the scenes at Apple with journalist Tripp Mickle Design genius Jony Ive was Steve Jobs’ chief collaborator at Apple. But Ive didn’t run Apple after Jobs’ death: That role went to Tim Cook, the supply chain guy. Now Apple is a company that’s increasingly interested in making money ...
04.28.2022 NYT’s Wesley Morris on writing, podcasting and staying off TikTok Wesley Morris wrote his first review when he was 15 years old, about the movie “Cape Fear.” Since then, he’s become one of the most celebrated cultural critics of our time, and has two Pulitzers to prove it. Recode’s Peter ...
04.27.2022 Can Elon Fix Twitter? Can Reed Fix Netflix? It’s been a big week for media events involving tens of billions of dollars: Elon Musk is buying Twitter for $44 billion, meanwhile, Netflix lost more than $50 billion in value. First, Recode’s Peter Kafka talks to The Atlantic’s Charlie ...
04.19.2022 Elon and Twitter: A love/hate story Elon Musk loves Twitter and also thinks it’s broken. So he wants to buy it. Can he, really? And who would help him? And why? And wtf does it mean when the world’s richest man is also one of its ...
04.14.2022 Disney vs. Itself vs. The Right Within the past few months, Disney CEO Bob Chapek managed to piss off his shareholders, the LGBT community, and right-wing conservatives. Today we talk about how he did it, why it happened, and what’s next. First, Puck’s Matt Belloni joins ...
04.07.2022 The State of Streaming It’s time to check back in on the state of the streaming wars, with two binge-worthy conversations. First, Recode’s Peter Kafka talks to analyst Michael Nathanson about Big Media’s new problem: TV ratings are plummeting because all the good stuff ...
03.29.2022 Judd Apatow on The Bubble, TikTok and The Slap Legendary comedy director/writer/producer Judd Apatow was busy during lockdown: He wrote a book and made two movies. One of them is The Bubble, a movie about… making a movie during the pandemic. Apatow talks to Recode’s Peter Kafka about what ...
03.24.2022 The Oscars: Hollywood’s smallest biggest night? The Oscars used to be one of the biggest things on TV. Now they’re… not. Does that matter to the movie business and to movie-goers? We discuss with our annual Oscar experts: Vox’s Alissa Wilkinson and Slate’s Allegra Frank, who ...
03.17.2022 Dan Le Batard on life after ESPN; Russia sanctions upend big-time soccer March Madness has started, but this isn’t a podcast about that: Today, it’s a podcast about sports media, about leaving sports media to do your own thing, and about how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may radically reshape big-time soccer. First ...
03.10.2022 Big Tech takes a side, finally + Zappos' tragic founder Silicon Valley goes out of its way not to upset countries around the world - even when that means making embarrassing compromises. But it has taken a stand against Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, limiting services or cutting them ...
03.03.2022 Covering the war in Ukraine, online and on the ground Recode's Peter Kafka talks to three reporters about the realities of covering the war in Ukraine and sorting truth from disinformation -- from the ground, from afar, and online. In Ukraine: CNN’s Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward discusses the challenges ...
02.24.2022 Uber, but for TV When Recode’s Peter Kafka advises you not to write your book, WRITE THAT BOOK. That’s the lesson Mike Isaac learned: His book “Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber” is now a Showtime series starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Not only that, Showtime ...
02.17.2022 Chuck Klosterman relives the 1990s & Sarah Palin loses her NYT libel suit Make sure no one’s on your home phone while you use your dial-up modem to listen to this week’s show on your 1998 Bondi Blue iMac. Recode Media’s Peter Kafka talks to bestselling Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs author Chuck ...
02.10.2022 What's next for CNN? + The Afterparty's Ben Schwartz writes jokes for C-3PO This is (an update about what’s going on at) CNN. Dylan Byers of Puck News joins Recode’s Peter Kafka: They talk about the fallout from former CNN president Jeff Zucker’s resignation and the WarnerMedia-Discovery merger federal regulators approved yesterday. And ...
02.03.2022 Is Spotify’s Joe Rogan problem over? Plus how to launch a new media startup. First: Neil Young quit Spotify over Joe Rogan, but just a handful of musicians have followed him. Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw assesses whether Spotify’s podcast problems are over, or just beginning. Then, Recode’s Peter Kafka talks to two journalists who left ...
01.27.2022 Game on: Behind the sports betting boom Just in time for the NFL playoffs, sports betting is legal in New York. $600 million in bets were placed in the first week alone. Now that it’s legal in more than 30 states, Recode’s Peter Kafka dives into how ...
01.20.2022 Gaming out Microsoft’s $69 billion Activision Blizzard deal It’s the biggest acquisition in Microsoft’s history: $68.7 billion to buy the video game company, Activision Blizzard. First, Axios’ Chief Technology Correspondent, Ina Fried, tells us how Xbox fits into Microsoft’s overall business. She touches on how Activision Blizzard’s scandals ...
01.13.2022 So … what the hell is Web3? With the Chernin Group’s Jarrod Dicker What the hell is Web3, why did everyone start talking about it all at once, and are we going to still be talking about it in a few months? Jarrod Dicker, an investor at the Chernin Group, may know the ...
01.06.2022 How the right covers 1/6 + tales from the Theranos trial, with Oliver Darcy and Erin Griffith CNN’s Oliver Darcy joins Recode’s Peter Kafka to discuss the way conservative media covers - and, importantly, doesn’t cover - the 1/6 riot and its aftermath. Then, NYT’s Erin Griffith reports back from the frontlines of the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos trial, ...
12.27.2021 The Verge’s Ashley Carman on podcasting’s big year 2021 was the year everyone who wasn’t already in podcasting jumped in the pool - and everyone who was already there spent more time and money trying to move the industry from promising to profitable. The Verge’s Ashley Carman joins ...
12.20.2021 What the hell happened in 2021? With Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw. How do you describe what happened to the media world in 2021? What happened to the movie business, streaming, music, TikTok, and more? Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw joins Recode’s Peter Kafka to sort what changed, what didn’t, and what 2022 might ...
12.15.2021 WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar’s almost-exit interview Jason Kilar does not have opinions about the finale of HBO’s Succession, because he hasn’t seen it yet. The CEO of HBO’s parent company, WarnerMedia, does have opinions about lots of other stuff, though, including the future of movie theaters, ...
12.06.2021 BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti has gone public BuzzFeed used to be an internet experiment. Now it’s a publicly-traded company that expects more than $500 million in revenue this year. CEO Jonah Peretti talks to Recode’s Peter Kafka about the route his company took to the NASDAQ; why ...
12.02.2021 @Jack is leaving Twitter. What now? + Lina Khan’s battle with Big Tech Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is no longer the CEO of Twitter. Why did he leave? And what does the choice of his successor, Parag Agrawal, tell us about Twitter’s future? Bloomberg’s Kurt Wagner sits down with Recode’s Peter Kafka to ...
11.23.2021 Director Rhys Thomas on his unlikely journey from SNL to Disney’s Hawkeye Rhys Thomas used to make short films for Saturday Night Live. Now he’s making Hawkeye, the newest installment of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, which debuts on Disney+ this week. Thomas sits down with Recode’s Peter Kafka to give a behind-the-scenes ...
11.18.2021 The inside story of HBO, with Jim Miller HBO has brought us nearly 50 years of riveting movies and TV shows; the behind-the-scenes stories are equally compelling. Journalist James Andrew Miller, who has written definitive oral histories of media institutions like Saturday Night Live and ESPN, tells Recode’s ...
11.11.2021 What is Twitter Blue and is it worth $3? Twitter is free. But Twitter Blue — a new service for Twitter super-users — costs $3 a month. So what is Twitter Blue and why should you pay for it? Twitter product executive Tony Haile, who joined the company last ...
11.04.2021 Facebook’s Metaverse explained - by metaverse explainer Matthew Ball. Plus Justin Smith builds a media biz for Bloomb Before Mark Zuckerberg told the world he was turning Facebook into a Metaverse company, he called Matthew Ball, one of the Metaverse’s chief evangelists. Now Ball tells Recode’s Peter Kafka what Facebook’s move means. Then Bloomberg Media Group CEO Justin ...
10.28.2021 How to cover the Facebook leaks + SNL’s Heidi Gardner Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen is handing over thousands of documents to reporters like The Verge’s Alex Heath. The next step: Sorting through all of those files, and figuring out how and when to write about them. Heath talks to Recode’s ...
10.21.2021 Dotdash CEO Neil Vogel on his $2.7 billion Meredith deal Neil Vogel had no publishing experience before he took over About.com, the how-to website he turned into Dotdash for owner Barry Diller. Now Vogel is about to become one of the most powerful people in media if he completes a ...
10.14.2021 Land of the Giants: "He's No Steve Jobs" Steve Jobs co-founded Apple and infused it with his love of product design and attention to detail. His successor, Tim Cook, is widely perceived as lacking Jobs’ vision and innovation. But he managed to do something Jobs never could: make ...
10.07.2021 Ozy Media, RIP with NYT’s Ben Smith + Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on remaking a magazine giant Five days after the New York Times’ Ben Smith wrote an astonishing piece about the fakery supporting Ozy Media, the digital publisher announced it was shutting down. What, if anything, does the fiasco tell us about media startups and investors? ...
09.30.2021 Streamers shrink Hollywood, again + What’s a “Hate Raid”? More consolidation in Hollywood - but this time it’s talent agency CAA buying rival ICM. Puck’s Dylan Byers sits down with Recode’s Peter Kafka to explain why the streaming boom has created another merger. Then, podcaster and game streaming expert ...
09.23.2021 How Peter Thiel went from Silicon Valley to The White House with Max Chafkin Peter Thiel used to be a Silicon Valley investor best-known for early investment in Facebook. But in recent years he seems to have shifted into something different: A Trump-supporting billionaire who wants to remake American politics - and someone who ...
09.16.2021 Instagram boss Adam Mosseri on teenagers, Tik-Tok and paying creators Instagram is no longer going to be a photo-sharing app, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri announced earlier this summer. So what is Instagram going to be instead? Mosseri talks to Recode’s Peter Kafka about his plans to emphasize video and commerce ...
09.09.2021 Big changes at Apple: New phones, new AR glasses, and big app store changes. Mark Gurman has been one of the best-sourced Apple reporters since he was in high school. Literally. Now he’s at Bloomberg, with deep insight into Apple’s new product line - new iPhones this year, new “mixed reality” headsets next year ...
09.02.2021 Defector Media: Life after Deadspin is good (and profitable) Defector Media launched a year ago as a digital publishing experiment: What if the former staff of Deadspin built and owned their own site, fueled entirely by subscriptions? Now it looks like we have an answer: It’s working, really well. ...
08.26.2021 OnlyFans’ weird week with MEL’s Magdalene Taylor; BuzzFeed’s Joe Bernstein on the problem with our misinformation problem. What is OnlyFans, and why did OnlyFans abandon and then come back to its primary business model in the span of a week? MEL Magazine’s Magdalene Taylor joins Recode’s Peter Kafka to explain the rise of the NSFW platform, and ...
08.19.2021 WWE’s Nick Khan on pivoting his streaming strategy and getting back in the ring Nick Khan used to be a CAA agent who represented the WWE. Now he’s president of the pro wrestling company and is pivoting it from a direct-to-consumer strategy into a content studio for the likes of Peacock and Fox. Khan ...
08.12.2021 NYT’s Shira Ovide on the everything and nothingness of tech. The New York Times’ Shira Ovide, writes the popular and incisive “On Tech” newsletter, which means she gets to write about… everything. She sits down with Recode’s Peter Kafka to discuss some her latest stories in her column like why ...
08.05.2021 Reese’s $900 million deal; ScarJo vs Disney with Matt Belloni, + Derek Thompson on how the media covers Delta Puck News Hollywood expert Matthew Belloni sits down with Recode’s Peter Kafka to discuss the biggest stories in the past week: Reese Witherspoon’s new $900M deal and the lawsuit between Scarlett Johansson and Disney. Then, The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson joins ...
07.29.2021 Director Tom McCarthy on Stillwater, finishing a movie in a pandemic and playing one of the Wire’s best villains Stillwater was supposed to debut in theaters last fall, but the pandemic changed those plans along with everything else. Academy Award-winning director and writer Tom McCarthy explain how he used the extra time to improve the Matt Damon movie, why ...
07.22.2021 Deep fakes come to the movies and Hollywood resets for the streaming era Anthony Bourdain is dead. So how does a new documentary have audio of him reading his emails? It’s not him: It’s a deep fake. The New Yorker’s Helen Rosner explains. Then journalist Richard Rushfield takes us behind Hollywood’s closed doors ...

Older episodes

Recode Media

What's Recode Media about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Recode Media episodes:

Is this a Netflix problem or a streaming problem?

Bill Simmons on podcasts, celebrity interviews and life at Spotify

Why is this VC on your TikTok?

Engineer Molly White explains why Web3 isn’t going great

Is Big Tech getting better about misinformation?

What can you learn from the guy who built the iPod?

Ronan Farrow: “We are living in a post-privacy age”

Behind the scenes at Apple with journalist Tripp Mickle

NYT’s Wesley Morris on writing, podcasting and staying off TikTok

Can Elon Fix Twitter? Can Reed Fix Netflix?

Elon and Twitter: A love/hate story

Disney vs. Itself vs. The Right

The State of Streaming

Judd Apatow on The Bubble, TikTok and The Slap

The Oscars: Hollywood’s smallest biggest night?

Dan Le Batard on life after ESPN; Russia sanctions upend big-time soccer

Big Tech takes a side, finally + Zappos' tragic founder

Covering the war in Ukraine, online and on the ground

Uber, but for TV

Chuck Klosterman relives the 1990s & Sarah Palin loses her NYT libel suit

What's next for CNN? + The Afterparty's Ben Schwartz writes jokes for C-3PO

Is Spotify’s Joe Rogan problem over? Plus how to launch a new media startup.

Game on: Behind the sports betting boom

Gaming out Microsoft’s $69 billion Activision Blizzard deal

So … what the hell is Web3? With the Chernin Group’s Jarrod Dicker

How the right covers 1/6 + tales from the Theranos trial, with Oliver Darcy and Erin Griffith

The Verge’s Ashley Carman on podcasting’s big year

What the hell happened in 2021? With Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw.

WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar’s almost-exit interview

BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti has gone public

@Jack is leaving Twitter. What now? + Lina Khan’s battle with Big Tech

Director Rhys Thomas on his unlikely journey from SNL to Disney’s Hawkeye

The inside story of HBO, with Jim Miller

What is Twitter Blue and is it worth $3?

Facebook’s Metaverse explained - by metaverse explainer Matthew Ball. Plus Justin Smith builds a media biz for Bloomb

How to cover the Facebook leaks + SNL’s Heidi Gardner

Dotdash CEO Neil Vogel on his $2.7 billion Meredith deal

Land of the Giants: "He's No Steve Jobs"

Ozy Media, RIP with NYT’s Ben Smith + Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on remaking a magazine giant

Streamers shrink Hollywood, again + What’s a “Hate Raid”?

How Peter Thiel went from Silicon Valley to The White House with Max Chafkin

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri on teenagers, Tik-Tok and paying creators

Big changes at Apple: New phones, new AR glasses, and big app store changes.

Defector Media: Life after Deadspin is good (and profitable)

OnlyFans’ weird week with MEL’s Magdalene Taylor; BuzzFeed’s Joe Bernstein on the problem with our misinformation problem.

WWE’s Nick Khan on pivoting his streaming strategy and getting back in the ring

NYT’s Shira Ovide on the everything and nothingness of tech.

Reese’s $900 million deal; ScarJo vs Disney with Matt Belloni, + Derek Thompson on how the media covers Delta

Director Tom McCarthy on Stillwater, finishing a movie in a pandemic and playing one of the Wire’s best villains

Deep fakes come to the movies and Hollywood resets for the streaming era