People vs Algorithms
Episodes
Spooning the Gravy
24 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Troy’s vibe coding project has moved into high gear, as institutional and personal memory becomes the point of leverage with media’s ultimate goal...
Humans in the Loop
17 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Troy unveils his vibe-coded media system that produces a daily briefing based on his entire media diet, underpinned with a memory layer that acts as a...
The Great Media Reorientation
10 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
B2B is a refuge; see the Acquired ad rates. The Boston Globe's TikTok star Emily Sweeney proves a Dorchester accent is leverage when the internet has ...
New Media Energy
03 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Troy and Brian react to OpenAI buying TBPN: It pays to have viewpoints and approaches that are preferred by the powerful. FeedMe's Emily Sundberg join...
The War on Slop
27 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
OpenAI is pivoting to the enterprise, Kentucky farmers are modern folk heroes by not selling their land for a datacenter, and Meta and YouTube get the...
First Principles Meet the Real World
20 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
But physiotherapists still use accountants, dentists are in great shape and our own vibe coding experiments run into snags. Plus: The return of Travis...
Systems Are King
13 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
YouTube became a $550 billion juggernaut by building the infrastructure: the algorithm, the ad stack, the creator revenue share, the living room app. ...
Hating the Player and the Game
06 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Block’s 40% employee purge says more about Jack Dorsey’s CEO skills than AI. David Zaslav gets only a PE golf clap for making Warner Bros sharehol...
The AI Reckoning
27 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Data shows widespread trepidation over the AI, whether it’s datacenter construction or possible job displacement, yet little public discussion has t...
Best/Worst of Times
20 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
They unpack the "orality thesis" and what the shift from written to spoken culture means for how we think, communicate, and vote. On the media side, t...
AI Anxiety
13 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The age of AI is off to a shambolic start. Anthropic and OpenAI ran Super Bowl ads that fell flat. The gap is widening between the AI-pilled true beli...
Reputation Matters
06 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Meanwhile, brands are facing reputational crises from their ties to the government as Scott Galloway calls for a boycott of companies who sell their p...
Mind Control
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s mind control comes in the form of black-box algorithmic recommendation systems, autonomous robotics and agentic AI systems. The trust gap ha...
Monitoring the Situation
23 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week, like old Italian men with their hands clasped behind their backs at construction sites, we are monitoring various situations: Snowmageddon ...
Retro Digital
16 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
After two decades of scale chasing, feed optimization, and platform dependence, the industry is rediscovering older mechanics that actually work: even...
Finding Leverage
09 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Troy and Brian talk about agentic advertising and why it’s being sold as salvation, the quiet consolidation happening across media and tech, and the...
Media Goonstate
19 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we wrap up the year with our picks for the biggest narratives, deal guys, hustlers and tech oligarchs.* Watch us on YouTube* Troy Young’s...
The End of the Hollywood Model
12 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Underneath the narrative, the main plotline is the end of Hollywood’s already ailing business model built around scarcity and cable economics. That’...
Code Red
05 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Sam Altman shutters side quests to chase speed, reliability, and personalization, and we ask whether he’s a deals guy or a wartime leader...
The Hustler Ethos
28 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We get into why America attracts them, how the term was coopted and branded, why competitive instinct sits at the center of real hustle, and how the c...
Main Character Energy
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With institutions losing their distribution edge, main-character energy now determines who captures attention. The Olivia Nuzzi spectacle to Michael W...
Media People
14 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We argue that true media people are troublemakers with taste. They’re people who understand narrative, tension, and how to make others feel somethin...
The Charisma Dividend
07 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Meanwhile, the New York Times has proven to the exception to the rule in publishing, as most publishers are dealing with “toxic” pageview assets. ...
Building Good Product
31 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Plus: Anonymous Banker breaks down the logic of Warner Brothers Discovery’s sale, why celebrity investors are rarely additive, and the extractive lo...
Low Sovereignty
24 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Alex has a hard stop, AB is lost in Tokyo, and Brian and Troy go deep on sovereignty — who has it, who’s lost it, and whether it’s ev...
Going Post-Truth
17 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we talk about how the information space rewards vibes over verification, the second-order effects of video swallowing social media, and how...
It’s Cool to Be Human
10 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we talk about Anthropic’s humanist branding, the fading idea of cool in a fractured culture, and why Gen Z’s nostalgia for the analog w...
Alex Was Right
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sora 2’s selfie-movies, Meta’s Vibes, and OpenAI’s Pulse point to shorter, agentic, video-first habits—and a shrinking role for text. Even The...
A Good Racket
26 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Plus: the evolving role of communications officers in the information wars, OpenAI’s new Pulse, Kimmel’s comeback, and the New York Times’ super...
Age of Extremes
19 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week: Trump’s war on the media expands and intensifies; AI doomers vs AI maximalists; and Anonymous Banker on what’s behind the Puck-Air Mail...
The Media Singularity
12 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We talk about how fandom now powers news, why comedians have turned into pundits, and how combat dynamics are incentivized by the feed. We also explor...
Everything is Fine (Really)
05 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Troy surveys the media landscape and finds a rich buffet of options and many admittedly smaller models that are working just fine, notwithstanding the...
The Trough of Disillusionment
29 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Plus: the demise of cultural criticism, publishers embracing apps again, and an activist investor taking on The New York Times.* Watch us on YouTube* ...
Getting Mad At Toasters
22 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We start with Charlie Warzel’s essay in The Atlantic, “AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event”, a sober reframing of where we are with AI right now. Pablos...
AI Is Not Your Friend
15 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Plus: the case for media cooperatives and aperitivo, and why running agencies inside publishers is tough.* Watch us on YouTube* Troy Young's People vs...
Performative Intelligence
08 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We explore how new tools like Snipd and AI chat bots promise frictionless access to knowledge, but may be trading comprehension for convenience. Along...
Winners Take All
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
These aren’t companies operating in a different industry than media; they’re different universes. They’re hoarding compute, restarting nuclear r...
Institutional Collapse
25 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As the old order gives way, the contours of the new media world are coming into view: video and audio are eating text, performance and participation a...
Substack As A Unicorn
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The valuation is a classic bet on potential vs reality, as Substack’s execution has been spotty. We unpack the bet on creating an OnlyFans-like netw...
The AI Head Fake
11 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The real issue isn’t that AI killed media. It’s that the old distribution ecosystem has broken down. Plus: the end of Demand Media and Linda Yacca...
The End of Advertising
04 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we talk about the collapse of traditional advertising, the rise of memetic political communicators like Zohran Mamdani, why words might not...
The Substack Conundrum
27 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Plus: the AI disconnect in Cannes, Momdani’s media savvy and the case for European fruits and park’s supremacy.* Watch us on YouTube* Troy Young's...
AI Optimism in Cannes
20 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We take a mostly optimistic view of publishing in the AI era, even if Neil allows that search traffic will inexorably trend to zero. Plus: A path to p...
Liquid Courage
13 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Alex reviews the “liquid” interface and wonders if anyone at Cupertino actually used the beta outdoors. Plus: a spirited defense of Zaslav as the ...
From Pageviews to Proximity
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As performance metrics grow murky and traditional advertising falters, proximity is becoming the new proxy for value. We talk through the bloated conf...
One-Trick Pony
30 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It used its dominant position in search to be the arbiter for the web. As the web moves into an agentic AI era, we break down how Google is positioned...
From Pages to Protocols
23 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we dive into how the rise of AI agents and new protocols is replacing browsing with prompting, and pages with machine-readable interf...
Brittle Apple
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Plus: we learn that Alex is no David Zaslav because he doesn’t see the genius in a CNN weather app, an appraisal of Airbnb’s “everything” app,...
The AI Overhang
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We unpack Google’s search reinvention, publishers acting like a deer in the highlights, Perplexity’s emergence as a heel, Apple’s AI misfires, a...
Group Chat
02 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
* Watch us on YouTube* Troy Young's People vs Algorithms newsletter* Brian Morrissey's The Rebooting newsletter* Alex Schleifer's Human Computer* Foll...
Tech Bros With Mics
25 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From TBPN to Turpentine, it’s not journalism—it just looks like it. They also explore the “Chaos Economy” through Foxconn’s EV pivot and unp...
Hyperpunditry
18 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week we dig into the spread of hyperpunditry and why the Information Space rewards those who confidently switch lanes with abandon. Plus: AI’s ...
Loro Piana Populism
11 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The tariff wars kicked off and confirmed that we are in a post-expertise era where your bona fides matter less than your confidence. Plus: celebrating...
Media, narratives, markets with Nick Denton
04 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Gawker Media founder Nick Denton joins the show to discuss how narratives and memes run the world, and why it’s better to trade on them than run the...
The Taste Premium
28 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We dig into the idea of taste—how it’s formed, how it signals identity, and where it fits in media and business today. We also unpack how taste on...
The Abundance Agenda
21 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The media industry, like politics, has been stuck in a scarcity mindset—managing decline instead of building for the future. In this episode, we dig...
Oral Exams
14 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
AI is giving rise to vibe coding while old conventions fall away. Thinking on your feet is now more important than rehearsed, polished presentation, w...
Getting Chegged
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Online education company Chegg is suing Google for AI Overviews and might become the first major company felled by AI. We go over the hitlist of other...
Arbitrage Media
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Troy’s at “advanced” tennis camp, so Brian and Alex discuss the shifting dynamics of the newsletter and video game markets. Newsletters are ente...
Messy Media
21 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Media has never been neat, but it’s getting messier. This week, Brian and Troy explore how AI is reshaping the creative process, how different perso...
The Great Realignment
14 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we examine the great realignment as tech and government unite to assert US tech dominance over ideas of digital sovereignty. Meanwhile, Buz...
Does AI need an iPhone moment?
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, on the heels of OpenAI releasing Deep Research, we assess whether AI has caught on with regular people beyond kicking the tires on ChatGPT....
Decentralized Work
31 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The nature of work and careers is undergoing profound changes that are often obscured by debates over return-to-work mandates. This week we consider t...
Tech Oligarchy
24 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Our tech overlords reported for duty to Washington while Troy perused the powder at Davos. This week, we go beyond first principles to consider the se...
The Gospel of Productivity
17 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Economic growth requires labor productivity. We all aspire, in our own ways, to be productive, if only because our productivity is directly tied to ou...
Zuckerberg’s Capitulation, Rabbit Holes and the War on Attention
10 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we discuss Mark Zuckerberg’s craven capitulation on content moderation, even if it was an inevitable decision; the upside of algorithmic ...
The Information Space in 2025
03 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we discuss the outlook in 2025 for legacy media (not great), alternative media (much better), chat as a new media mode, X emerging as a cri...
The End of Artifice
20 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Podcasting challenges late nite, lying in media, shopping as content, super consumers and Alex rediscovers America at Disney.Watch us on YouTubeTroy Y...
The New American Power Center
13 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tech has swallowed media, and is increasingly swallowing other industries and accruing power along the way. Plus: why adding a chatbot won’t save th...
Poly News
06 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Prediction market + news; media’s bifurcating star system; media’s management-labor divide; AI + browsers; car talk; LinkedIn cringeWatch us on Yo...
Age of Spectacle
29 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week: The internet comes to life as spectacle, Elon proclaims you are the media, why publishers need to get to the transactional level, and an as...
Neutering Google
22 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week on People vs. Algorithms, we unpacked London’s charm, the shifting dynamics of media and search, and why Google’s dominance feels both i...
The Art of Modern Persuasion & The Manosphere
15 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The election in many ways confirmed what many had suspected: the information space has superceded and subsumed the traditional media world. Traditiona...
Winners and Losers
08 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We run through the implications of the return of Donald Trump to the presidency after an election that saw the mainstream news media making way for ne...
Complex’s Next Chapter
01 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Complex is a digital media survivor. It has lived many lives, including as a magazine, a dot-com, an ad network, Go90 (RIP) provider, YouTube showrunn...
The New Media Consensus
25 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There’s a new consensus about the media business that is emerging. The past is not coming back, that much is for certain. The challenges are well kn...
The End of Text
18 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Mass media’s extinction event has come first for text content. Text is increasingly being "pushed down the stack" and commoditized due to AI's abili...
Bad Bets
11 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we take a look at making bets that go wrong, and how it’s often difficult to tell if a bet is a bad one in the short term. Was Meta’s b...
Above-the-Line Media
04 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we discuss a new framework for the media industry that separates content into two distinct categories: "above the line" and "below the line...
Productive Tension
27 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The heart of organizations is tension, which when productive can lead to great outcomes. If it goes to extremes, disaster. This week, we discuss tensi...
Parasitic Ad Tech
20 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google as a classic case of fighting the last war. And even if Google’s monopoly is ...
100th Episode with Emily Sundberg
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week we’re joined by Emily Sundberg and celebrate our 100th episode, talking about classic topics like X vs Threads and is Silence the best pro...
Founder Mode
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Founders can force change that managers (call them operators) can’t, at least as efficiently. Plus: AI land grab update, Gannett’s commerce play g...
The Recalibration to Normal
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is shaping up to be a TikTok election where relatability is at a premium. The successful rollout of the Harris-Walz ticket is moving authenticity...
The Olympics and the Future of TV
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we discuss conversations vs interviews, why social networking has been replaced by algorithmic content, YouTube’s pivotal role in the eme...
Monopolies and Memes
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A federal judge has ruled Google a monopoly for locking up distribution with Apple. We discuss the percent and likely impact. Also, memes as the media...
The Future of Search
01 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
OpenAI is readying a new search engine, Meta is pushing further into search with Llama, Perplexity is cutting deals with publishers. This week, we loo...
The Dark Side of Performance
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we’re joined by Joe Marchese, operating and build partner at Human Ventures and veteran media exec. We discuss why the obsession with per...
The Network is the Media
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The assassination attempt on Donald Trump was a stress test for the Information Space, and a reminder of just how much the media has changed. You had ...
Rules of The Information Space
11 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The tidal wave of crap is a reality in the Information Space. This week, we discuss the rules of winning in the Information Space, including why it he...
"Embrace The Chaos"
04 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this July 4th episode, Alex, Brian and Troy chat about whether life will ever get back to 'normal,' Threads vs. X, gamer saints and AI dogs.Troy Yo...
Banana In the Smoothie
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Troy and Brian discuss the realist mood in Cannes, the key to good brand events, why hotels need a good playlist and Perplexity serving as an AI booge...
War on Friction
13 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Apple has entered the AI fray with a compelling view of using it to remove friction that gets in the way of people want to get things done. The issue ...
Compression
06 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Technology acts as a compressor. AI is the latest pressure point. This week, we look at compression in software development, marketing and publishing....
Everyone is Hallucinating
30 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode Brian, Troy, and Alex talk about AI hallucinations, and how they mirror human misperceptions. Troy believes the open web and tradition...
AI Time Machine
23 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What do tech and media look like in five years? Plus: Sam Altman as slippery character and AI comes to search and devices.Troy Young's People vs Algor...
Maybe the AI Hype is Real
16 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Brian, Alex, and Troy get into the new AI updates from OpenAI and Google. They unpack how these big changes might shake up industries like media and a...
Transforming Time with Jess Sibley
09 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jess Sibley, CEO of Time, joins Brian and Troy to discuss adapting Time to today’s digital challenges. Jess shares her strategies for navigating alg...
Can the “Fediverse” Save Us?
02 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Brian, Troy, and Alex discuss the commercialization of the internet and the impact of AI on media. They explore big media-tech partnerships, the evolv...
Omnicom's Jonathan Nelson on Agencies & AI
25 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Omnicom digital chief Jonathan Nelson joins the show to discuss why ad agencies, forever under threat, will adapt to AI. We go into Omnicom's purchase...