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Channels with Peter Kafka

Channels with Peter Kafka

By: Vox Media Podcast Network
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 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.© 2019 Vox Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved Art Politics & Government
Episodes
  • AI Can Make Software Now. That Changes Everything, with Paul Ford

    AI Can Make Software Now. That Changes Everything, with Paul Ford
    Apr 29 2026
    Learn to code, they told us. Then the computers went and learned to code. Now anyone can do it, in theory, courtesy of Claude Code and other vibe coding apps. Tech people I talk to are very, very excited about this. But they often have a hard time explaining to me, a non-coder, why AI-powered coding is such a big deal. And whether it’s a big deal to everyone who already codes or deals with software for a living — or whether it’s a big deal for everyone who uses software. All of us, that is. Here to the rescue is Paul Ford, a guy who learned to code and who also learned to write and talk, like a human. Paul is the guy who wrote an entire issue of Businessweek dedicated to a single question — What is Code? — and blogs at Ftrain.com; but his day job is making software, which he does at Aboard. Paul is not the guy who can tell you what’s going to happen to Saas stocks, or if AI is going to wipe out all the jobs, some jobs or will create a gazillion new jobs. Anyone who tells you any of those answers with confidence, he says, is making it up. But he can tell you and me why the recent change in AI-produced software — something that really kicked in over the last few months — is changing his life, and why it’s going to change software for good. And he’ll help you think about what that means for you, a normal person. You’ll like this one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    53 mins
  • Jason Blum Built a Hit-Making Movie Machine. Does It Still Work?

    Jason Blum Built a Hit-Making Movie Machine. Does It Still Work?
    Apr 22 2026
    Jason Blum built one of Hollywood’s smartest businesses: make low-budget horror movies, give filmmakers room, pay talent on the back end, and let the hits carry the misses. It worked so well that it became a Harvard Business Review case study.But the movie business that made that model work has changed: Theatrical is weaker, lots of people are making horror movies, studios are consolidating, and AI is the latest thing Hollywood is supposed to fear — or embrace.So I sat down with Blum at a live Business Insider event in San Francisco to ask what still works. We talked about why his new Mummy movie is a very different bet than the movies that built Blumhouse, why he thinks consolidation is bad for Hollywood even if new buyers like Amazon and Apple help offset it, why he’d make AI disappear from moviemaking if he could — while still insisting his team learn how to use it — and what he learns from flops. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    27 mins
  • Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz on Sam Altman’s Trust Problem

    Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz on Sam Altman’s Trust Problem
    Apr 13 2026
    Sam Altman has spent years presenting himself as the face of AI: The guy warning that the technology could change everything, and the guy insisting that he should be the one to build it. Now we are facing some overdue questions: Can we trust Sam Altman with the massive power AI may generate? And should we trust anyone with that power? Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz join me to talk about their New Yorker profile of the OpenAI CEO, the internal fights around OpenAI’s mission, and why so many people who’ve worked with Altman keep coming back to the same concerns about trust. We talk about Altman’s talent for telling different audiences different things; why Silicon Valley’s usual tolerance for founder myth-making looks different when the product is AI; and how OpenAI went from warning about dangerous race dynamics to helping kick one off with ChatGPT. Then we broaden out: if the real problem is structural, not just personal, what kind of oversight should exist for the people building a technology they say could reshape all of our lives? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    47 mins
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