Eliot Brown And Maureen Farrell are the authors of The Cult of We: WeWork and the Great Start-Up Delusion . The new book digs into the rise and fall of Adam Neumann's WeWork. And though it's the story of one company, it's really a lens through which you can see all the markets' irrationality. The authors join for a macro discussion of the factors that led WeWork — a real estate company — to become the world's most valuable "tech" startup. And why it couldn't keep the show rolling. Check out the ...
Jul 21, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 56
Chris Best is the CEO of Substack, an email newsletter platform that lets writers send newsletters and charge subscribers a monthly fee. The platform — which I use for my Big Technology newsletter — is squarely in the middle of the battle over online speech, looked at by some as an alternative that will displace professional media. Best joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss his company's position in these speech battles, how he personally feels about the professional media, his investor Andres...
Jul 14, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 55
“Are you trying to fucking destroy the company?” That’s what Bill Gates told Microsoft board member Maria Klawe when she asked why Microsoft wouldn’t consider a single women out of 50 candidates it was evaluating to replace then-CEO Steve Ballmer. When Microsoft settled on Satya Nadella, he later joined Klawe at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women In Computing and told her that instead of asking for a raise, women should just have faith in the system to get it right. The incident caused an upr...
Jul 07, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 54
Jim Lanzone is the CEO of Tinder. He took over the world’s most popular dating app last summer, in the heart of the pandemic, and is starting to evolve its product to give people new ways to connect. Lanzone joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss how Gen Z wants to date online, how their behavior differs from millennials, and how that factors into his product vision. We also talk about the business of Tinder, whether Lanzone lets his kids use the app, and where its next challenger might come fr...
Jun 30, 2021•56 min•Season 1Ep. 53
Adam Kovacevich is the CEO of the Big Tech-funded Chamber of Progress. The former Google policy executive joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the origins of his organization and why Big Tech would rather fund him vs. stick their own necks out. Tune in for a revealing conversation of what happens behind the scenes in Big Tech's battle against regulation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 24, 2021•51 min•Season 1Ep. 52
Marshall Kosloff and Saagar Enjeti host The Realignment, an excellent podcast about politics and tech in our fast-changing world. I joined the show his week to talk about the new set of bills in Congress aimed at Big Tech and asked them if we could air the show here on the Big Technology feed as well. Graciously, they agreed! So this week, we'll run this episode as a bonus on a Tuesday, and then we’ll be back on Thursday with our regularly scheduled show, with Adam Kovacevich, who runs a big-tec...
Jun 22, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 51
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the co-anchor of Squawk Box on CNBC, founder and editor of Dealbook at the New York Times, and the author of Too Big To Fail. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the wild state of the market, the rise of meme stocks, the promise and drawbacks of bitcoin, SPACs, Big Tech antitrust, Elon Musk, and when the party will come to an end. Tune in for a wide-ranging interview about the world's most pressing financial and tech issues. Buy Andrew's book: https://amzn.to/3zFPTXp...
Jun 16, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 50
Andrew Callaghan is the force behind All Gas No Breaks, a hit YouTube show that featured Callaghan putting a mic in front of people and just... letting them talk. Callaghan's recently gone independent, taking his unique interviewing style to a new home, Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan, and building a substantial following there. Callaghan joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss why his alternative to traditional news is hitting a nerve, what he's learned about the American people from his travel...
Jun 09, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 49
You've heard this story before: Two Stanford kids take on a big bad industry, one that harms people, and they disrupt it. Typically, these stories are portrayed as heroic in Silicon Valley. Yet the story of Juul is different. The company sells sleek e-cigarettes packed with nicotine to cigarette smokers looking for a less harmful solution. But flush with VC cash and determined to grow, the company ended up addicting millions of kids, leading to a serious backlash and decline. Lauren Etter, a Blo...
Jun 02, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 48
Jack Nicas joins Big Technology Podcast fresh out of the Epic v. Apple trial, where the Fortnight maker is suing Apple over the 30% cut it takes out of every dollar we spend on apps downloaded from the App Store. Nicas takes us inside the courtroom, explains what’s at stake, and makes a prediction for where things net out. In the second half, Nicas breaks down his reporting on Apple’s questionable privacy practices in China, where the company stores user data in servers all but owned by the Chin...
May 26, 2021•52 min•Season 1Ep. 47
Professor Scott Galloway swings by to discuss how our economy can at once feel rigged yet loaded with opportunity. Galloway describes a “tilted” system that makes life difficult for young people and wage workers while lifting up assets like stock and equity and helping older generations. We talk not only about the problems, but the solutions for the system and the individuals within it. As usual, Galloway is a tour de force who comes loaded with insights and keen observations. Check out our spon...
May 19, 2021•49 min•Season 1Ep. 46
Brad Stone is the author of Amazon Unbound , a new book about the inner workings of Amazon, which releases this week. Stone joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the book, Bezos's transformation, Amazon's culture, and what's in store for the company now that Bezos is leaving the CEO role. Check out our sponsor, Flatfile: https://flatfile.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
May 12, 2021•44 min•Season 1Ep. 45
Sridhar Ramaswamy is CEO of Neeva, an ads-free search engine he helped found after running Google's ads and commerce business. Ramaswamy spent seventeen years inside Google, and eventually grew disillusioned with its business. Now he's trying to create the solution with $77.5 million in funding. In this conversation, we discuss his evolving view on advertising, what decoupling search from ads allows from a product standpoint, and how the current anti-trust environment is opening Google up to the...
May 06, 2021•55 min•Season 1Ep. 44
Julie Owono is a member of the Facebook Oversight Board, which today announced it's leaving Donald Trump's indefinite suspension in place. Owono joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the decision, the board's deliberations, and what comes next for Facebook and Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
May 05, 2021•42 min•Season 1Ep. 43
Today's economy is a wild ride, and it's time to demystify it with Ranjan Roy and Can Duruk from Margins. Consider the following: Doge, a joke cryptocurrency, seems to be minting new millionaires daily. NFTs, tokens that enable the buying and selling of digital art, are going for millions. Bitcoin's price is volatile, up $10,000 one week, down by the same amount the next. The overall market, meanwhile, is cranking. In this week's episode, we go deep into what's actually taking place, and discuss...
Apr 28, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 42
Platformer's Casey Newton returns to Big Technology Podcast to discuss the intensifying battle among Facebook, Clubhouse, Spotify, Apple, and Twitter in the new, social audio space. Fresh off a conversation with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Newton discusses Facebook's plans, Clubhouse's potential for longevity, and what empowering the individual vs. the institution really means. Plus we discuss this week's big Apple release event. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Apr 21, 2021•50 min•Season 1Ep. 41
Elaine Kwon was a vendor manager in Amazon's retail organization when the company started to turn her tasks over to machine learning in a program called "Hands Off The Wheel." She joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss how and why Amazon rolled the program out, how she and her fellow vendor managers reacted, and what it portends for the rest of us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Apr 14, 2021•48 min•Season 1Ep. 40
ProPublica senior reporter Alec MacGillis highlights the growing economic divide in the U.S. — through the lens of Amazon — in his new book, Fulfillment . MacGillis joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the state of the union push inside Amazon, how labor has changed more broadly in the U.S., and the uneasy political coalition between those packing and delivering Amazon packages and those receiving them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Apr 07, 2021•54 min•Season 1Ep. 39
Carole Cadwalladr and Yael Eisenstat are two of the most prominent Facebook critics worldwide. Cadwalladr is the journalist who broke open the Cambridge Analytica story for the Guardian and The Observer. Eisenstat, a former CIA officer, worked on election integrity inside Facebook for six months before quitting and speaking out against the company. The two Facebook critics join Big Technology Podcast to discuss some people’s disenchantment with tech criticism, the role of Facebook’s Oversight Bo...
Mar 31, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 38
BuzzFeed News executive editor Mat Honan has long covered the way society interacts with technology. He joins Big Technology Podcast this week to discuss the “Zoom Class,” the rise of NFTs, and how San Francisco may change after the pandemic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mar 24, 2021•51 min•Season 1Ep. 37
Rest Of World is a new publication that covers technology outside of North America and Europe. Sophie Schmidt and Louise Matsakis join Big Technology Podcast to discuss why they believe it's setting a new path forward for international tech coverage. Schmidt founded the publication in 2019 after growing convinced that the next tech decade belongs to the rising giants outside of the Western world. Growing up while her father, Eric Schmidt, ran Google taught her some important lessons along the wa...
Mar 17, 2021•50 min•Season 1Ep. 36
Senator Amy Klobuchar will be leading the charge in Congress as the legislature interrogates the power of big tech, and potentially takes action to restrain it. She's the new Chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, so it's in her hands now. Klobuchar and I spoke this past week ahead of the first hearing she held to kick the off process. And rather than simply writing the conversation up, which I did on the Big Technology newsletter t...
Mar 13, 2021•19 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Kayvon Beykpour is one of Silicon Valley’s busiest product executives. As Twitter’s head of product, he’s survived for years in a formerly-cursed role that seemed to turn over every few months. Now, Beykpour’s team is shipping . Twitter just released a Clubhouse clone, called Spaces. It bought Revue, a newsletter platform. And it just announced Super Follow, a feature that wraps it all together by letting you pay for added access and content from people you follow on Twitter. This is new territo...
Mar 10, 2021•55 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Artificial intelligence may take our jobs, or it may give us new freedom in the workplace. The debate is heating up as this technology is starting to enter the workplace in a real way. New York Times columnist Kevin Roose returns to Big Technology Podcast for a bonus episode for a discussion on what's actually happening based on the research. His book on the subject — Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation — comes out today. You can order Futureproof here: https://www.kevinroos...
Mar 09, 2021•53 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Will Cathcart runs WhatsApp, the 2 billion user app that's the de facto tool for messaging and calling for many across the globe. Cathcart joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss Facebook's feud with Apple, its battle with Signal, its bungled privacy update, new laws in India that might force it to break encryption, the way it thinks about content moderation and advertising, and plenty more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Mar 03, 2021•50 min•Season 1Ep. 32
In 2011, Wael Ghonim created a Facebook page that sparked the overthrow of the Egyptian regime. Since then, the former Google marketing director has kept a close eye on social media's evolution, and has plenty to say about where it's gone wrong, and how it can get better. Ten years after Cairo residents painted "Facebook" on the walls after the revolution, Ghonim stops by Big Technology Podcast to revisit what happened and where we go from here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone....
Feb 24, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami, Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway of Madison, and Mayor Steve Adler of Austin join Big Technology Podcast to discuss the future of tech in the U.S. They’re showing up on a tech podcast because they see an opportunity to take some of the growth once headed to the Bay Area, and bring it home. They may have a chance. Out of the four mayors I asked to be on the show, only San Francisco Mayor London Breed declined. That says something. What’s clear from speaking with the mayors...
Feb 16, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 30
In India, the Narendra Modi government is threatening to put Twitter officials in jail unless they block approximately 250 accounts of people they don’t like. They include activists, political commentators, a movie star, and an investigative news magazine. That’s why we’re doing a bonus, emergency podcast on this quick developing situation, and what it means for the future of speech on the internet, and social media more broadly. Joining us to discuss is Pranav Dixit, a reporter at BuzzFeed News...
Feb 13, 2021•47 min•Season 1Ep. 29
Jeff Bezos is headed for the door at Amazon, and because 2021 is the craziest news year on record, we mostly haven’t stopped to consider this seismic story and what it means for the business world. Joining us to discuss what Amazon looks like after Bezos is Jason Del Rey, a senior correspondent at Recode and author of a forthcoming book on Amazon’s battle with Walmart. Here's Jason's story on what to expect from incoming CEO Andy Jassy: https://www.vox.com/recode/22264330/amazon-ceo-andy-jassy-j...
Feb 10, 2021•26 min•Season 1Ep. 28
In January, I wrote a story for OneZero about the content moderation war in store for smaller social platforms like Clubhouse, Spotify, and Substack. As part of my reporting, I reached out to Glenn Greenwald, a strident voice against moderation who left The Intercept for Substack last year. While I'm not in lockstep with Greenwald ideologically, I wanted to hear his thoughts at length. This week’s Big Technology Podcast features my full conversation with Greenwald, where we discuss his move to S...
Feb 03, 2021•38 min•Season 1Ep. 27
