People vs Algorithms
Episodes
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...
Sex, AI and Advertising
18 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode Alex, Brian and Troy dive into topics like how AI is changing advertising, the ways tech meets human needs, and the big shifts society...
The Power Play
11 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode Brian, Troy, and Alex dive into AI mishaps in Teslas, muse over BuzzFeed's AI pivot, and ponder the future of creativity in tech. They...
Shifting Tides in the Media Business with Axios’s Sara Fischer
04 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With Alex still on vacation, Axios senior media reporter Sara Fischer joins Troy and Brian to break down the current state of the media business, incl...
The Business of Influence with Emily Sundberg
28 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Emily, Brian and Troy delve into the complex world of influencers and celebrities as they navigate public scrutiny and fame in the digital age. They e...
Algorithmic Sameness with Kyle Chayka
21 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of 'People vs. Algorithms,' hosts Brian Morrissey, Troy Young, and Alex Schleifer engage in a wide-ranging discussion on how algorithm...
Platform Shifts
14 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As Alex says, the ground is shifting more and faster than it has in some time in the tech world, which usually means gaping craters are opened to swal...
Change at CNN and Google
07 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we discuss how to turn the ship at two very different companies facing different challenges: CNN and Google. At CNN, former New York Times ...
Survivors
29 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we're joined by Puck fashion correspondent Lauren Sherman, who gives her view on how to build a career in journalism during what's billed a...
DDM's Neil Vogel on Navigating Change
22 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dotdash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel joins the show to discuss how a publisher reliant on search traffic is back in growth mode, the future of the affiliat...
The New Internet
15 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The arrival of AI means the paradigm of searching for information and entertainment will give way to instant delivery. This week, we discuss the impli...
Blending Realities with Rafat Ali
08 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode Alex, Brian, and Troy, with guest Rafat Ali, discuss the future of technology, focusing on the Apple Vision Pro's impact on work, pers...
Game Over
01 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With an era of digital media ending in chaos, we look ahead to the challenges media companies face in fixing a product that in most instances is far b...
The Gravity of Platforms
25 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Layoffs at The Los Angeles Times, the end of the road for Pitchfork, and an uncertain future for Sports Illustrated illustrate how digital media is ar...
CES, Ackman’s War, News App Fails
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week we talk CES, the ongoing silliness of the Bill Ackman-Business Insider feud, and why news aggregation apps are the obvious solution in searc...
Hit Pieces, Fairness, Drugs & VR
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we dig into the latest front into the so-called hit piece. Last week, Business Insider published a pair of stories that dug into the acade...
New Year, New Optimism
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The New Year is maybe the perfect holiday. It’s celebrated by just about every culture and creed. And in a time of great division, we sorta come tog...
The New SERP, the New Syndication
21 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Troy and Brian go over some of the lessons of 2023 and look ahead to 2024, starting with the end of the long era of dominance of the search engine res...
Minisode: Troy and Alex discuss AI
15 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Troy and Alex kept the conversation going after the recording of last episode. After sharing a "transcendental" experience with Chat GPT, Alex explain...
2024 Storylines
14 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In news, we discuss Google's antitrust loss, the miracle of Cheddar selling for $200 million, 5-Hour Energy Guy cleaning house at SI and zombie cable ...
Conspirituality, Celebrity, E-Acc vs Decels, GTA
07 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We live in an age of cults, narratives and fleeting fame. Centralization is giving way to a fragmented culture and media landscape that is open, chaot...
What’s Next for the Open Web?
30 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The website might be dying. How will this affect media and advertising? We cover this and other hot topics in today’s episode.Troy Young's People vs...
OpenAI and the Culture of Silicon Valley
23 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The OpenAI drama exposed fault lines in the very unique culture of Silicon Valley, highlighting the imperfect methods used to serve as a check on the ...
The New Interface
16 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
AI agents will accelerate the interface shift and change the economics of software, media and beyond. Troy Young's People vs Algorithms newsletterBria...
Will Brands Still Matter?
09 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The power of brands has eroded, particularly media brands. The path forward for legacy media brands is uncertain but almost assuredly both less glamor...
Gen Z Is Built Different
02 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
9-5 Girl on TikTok sparked a debate over the outdated ideas of the 9-5 work day, which was stared by Henry Ford for the Industrial Era. Time and agai...
The Information Space
26 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
While many people pretend that “the media” are still gatekeepers to information, those days are past. The information space is a free for all in ...
More With Less
19 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On a crossover episode of The Rebooting Show and People vs Algorithms, Alex and Brian discuss zero-interest rate phenomena and how they distorted by ...
Chris Kimball Says Screw the Algorithm
12 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
“Deliver something nobody else is delivering,” advises Milk Street’s Christopher Kimball. The media veteran, who created Cooks Country and Ameri...
Product People
05 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
You don't have to be an engineer or be a developer to be a product person, although it helps. This week, we discuss how Elon Musk makes products, why...
Bustle's Bryan Goldberg on the Post-Scale Era
28 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bustle Digital Group's Bryan Goldberg joins to discuss why the scale era wasn't as great as it was portrayed. The future of digital media will be abou...
Misaligned Media
21 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Most of the challenges facing media come down to misaligned incentives. Publishers face a bad set of options to serve the competing interests of adver...
Dismembering Disney
14 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we discuss the rebundling, with a focus on the future of pay TV and why tech companies will inevitably be the rebundlers with media compani...
Heroes, Villains and A******s
07 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
One person's "fire-breathing dragon" is another person's a*****e. The zero-interest rate era is in the rearview mirror, and businesses will be under m...
Mass Media Crackup
24 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The foundations of mass media continue to erode, from the declining relevance of presidential debates to the uncertain future of TV in a streaming era...
Media Is From Mars, Tech Is From Venus
16 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this Brian-free episode Troy and Alex discuss the tension between media and tech, what changed and why. Plus: weird billionaire takes, the next int...
Summer Media
09 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week Troy, Brian and Alex talk about their summer media habits when on vacation or just trying to unplug.Troy Young's People vs Algorithms newsle...
More With Less
03 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Maybe publishing stinks as a scaled business, and it won't ever be otherwise. The most promising models I see tend to focus on elite audiences of bus...
Distribution Chokepoints
26 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week: Media cannot escape being aggregated; Elon Musk's superapp fever dream; Hollywood's dead-cat bounce with Barbieheimer; and publishers look ...
Distribution Disruption
19 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Every business deals with disruption and challenges, but the media business is somewhat unique in having such profound upheavals to its distribution ...
The Talent Repricing
12 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The zero-interest rate is in the rearview mirror. And now comes the repricing, not just of assets but also talent. ESPN's been cutting high-priced on-...
Twilight of the Open Web
07 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The open web has never faced more threats, and the prevailing winds of the digital economy are working against the principles and infrastructure that ...
Dark Patterns
30 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The FTC has declared war on dark patterns, the use of design to manipulate people into taking actions against their interests. It settled with Publish...
NYT vs CNN
14 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The old levers of the media business aren't working. This is a time of existential change in many parts of the media business. This week, Troy and Bri...
Enter the Face Computer
07 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Apple has unveiled its long-anticipated entree into mixed reality, with the announcement of a headset that will be available starting next year. We ...
The End of Ads and The Last Impression
01 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ads are like cockroaches. You might not like them, but they always find a way to survive and multiply. But without a doubt, the ad industry is facing ...
Advertising Is Bugs
25 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Troy, Alex and I discuss a variety of topics, ranging from Alex’s beef with advertising, whether gaming will ever be fully mainstream, th...
The Deterioration of Webpages
17 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The pageview has long been the atomic unit of the internet. The business of digital publishing has revolved around it. But in a world of chatbots brin...
Ambient Media
10 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The battle for engagement has long been a losing battle. The arrival of AI, and the prospect of limitless synthetic content, means media companies on ...
The New Interface
03 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The commanding heights of the digital economy are control of the interface. It’s the interface through which the vast expanses of the tangle of data...
Why Buzzfeed News got shut down
26 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talk about why a lack of alignment led to the demise of the once buzzy Buzzfeed News. We also dive into local news, how AI changes the scale ...
AI meets tech's friction paradox
19 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nobody likes friction, at least in the moment. It stands in the way of accomplishing a task. Modern life in many ways has been an exercise in applying...
Ideation time
13 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Troy, Alex and Brian discuss how we come up with ideas and take them through to execution. We break down the phases, from thinking to makin...
Fear and Loathing, AI Edition
05 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we discuss how the conversation about AI has broken into camps of maximalists, doomers and fatalists. AI looks poised at a minimum to accel...
The death of ad formats
29 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It's been 20 years, and despite endless attempts to bend the internet to its will, advertising remains a fraught part of the digital media experience....
Format, shmormat
22 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Brian, Troy, and Alex tackle the fascinating topic of formats and explore why they can make or break media companies. Note: this is a re-upload of the...
Bank failure or culture war?
14 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Brian, Troy, and Alex jump on a call to talk about that SVB thing and the discourse around it. Some links:Troy Young's People vs Algorithms newsletter...
Substack is probably important
08 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week Brian, Troy and Alex discuss Substack, why it's turning into a platform, and why e-mail may or may not be its future. Some links:Troy Young'...
Alex wants to burn the ad industry down
01 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today Brian, Troy and Alex ask themselves "what is premium"? They also discuss bundling in its many different forms. How it changed internet media and...
Publishing is a perpetual hackathon
22 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Software has eaten the world, and for publishers that means a continuous battle to fend off second-order impacts of decisions made by tech companies b...
The new media interface
16 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Troy, Alex and Brian discuss what's next for interfaces and how we will be getting our media in the future.Show notes:Troy Young's People vs Algorithm...
Uniqueness, differentiation and building the next media brand
08 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Troy, Alex and Brian discuss differentiation or uniqueness and what it means as the algorithmic age moves into new territory.Show notes:Troy Young's P...
The state of optimism, was Steve Jobs a psychopath and the coming bumper sticker renaissance.
03 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we discuss the virtues and misuses of optimism. We dig into how optimism gets applied to the way we build strategies, teams, and produ...
How we make decisions
26 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week we’re talking about decisions: how to make them, when they go wrong, and the tough decisions that are often forced on you. The longer your...
Death of the Racket: 2023 Winners and Losers
21 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We're still in January so we thought we might as well slip in a late predictions episode. Everyone came prepared.Show notes:Troy Young's People vs Alg...
Brian goes to CES and AI freakouts
13 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Brian's fresh off CES, where he saw no robots at all but definitely got a coffee behind a guy just wrapping up a big night. We’re going to talk abou...
Death of the Link
06 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we consider whether we’re on the cusp of the end of the link era. The web was built on links. It connected the disparate nodes of the web...
The 2023 Expectation Reset
23 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The end of calendar years tend to be times for resets. We like to use them as an excuse for a fresh start. This is why we have Sober January and even ...
People vs Platforms
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We’re closing out the year with a series of conversations that look at the trends that will define these patterns in media, technology and culture i...
People vs AI
09 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Thanks to AI, 2023 will likely be the year when we fall in love again with the magic that can be technology and also confront the thorny questions ar...
The disappointments of the open web
02 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Troy, Alex and Brian discuss the fate of the open web through the lens of building sustainable publishing business models. One key shortcom...
Extremely hard core reality checks
19 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this week's episode, Troy, Brian and Alex examine why we seem to be more susceptible to cults than ever before. We all have our own versions of rea...
Bad week for billionaire geniuses
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Between the collapse of FTX and the endless chaos and drama at Elon Musk's Twitter, this wasn’t a great time to be an all-knowing oracle. FTX is now...
Transitional Times
05 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We live in a period of transitions. These periods are only clear in retrospect, of course. But much of the world is moving from an old era to a new er...
Catastrophism and media
27 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week we discuss what's making everyone feel so pessimistic. Plus Lex, Ye, the Coffee Lady, TikTok and rebranding Jesus. Brian's intro: "This is o...
Is AI coming for your job?
21 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we are talking about the future of work, but not the way it is usually discussed these days. Instead of focusing on the how of work, we exa...
Zuck's metaverse, AI art, the future of work
14 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Big topic this week. Troy and Brian discuss AR/VR, AI art, and the many other ways humans are being turned into cyborgs. Troy's got a contrarian take ...
Ephemeral media
10 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week we tackle everything from the fate of Twitter under Elon Musk; how you build brands in a media environment dictated by flow; and why in many...
WTF is a media company now?
01 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We are in a strange time for the media business. There is a consensus that having a loyal audience has never been more valuable. You regularly hear pe...
RIP Long Tail
24 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When media becomes more niche, institutional brands suffer. What used to be thought of as the long tail has now become a thick tail. Individual creato...
Is media better now?
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today, Brian and Troy discuss whether media is better or not today? It's definitely different and there's some interesting stuff done in personal and ...
Mr Beast Burgers, Shein, MAGA Brands
10 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today Brian and Troy discuss media, products, and how they come together. Lots of talk of fast food, fast fashion, and fast takes on todays media land...
Pilot - Apple, Facebook, NFT Communities, Quiet Quitting
31 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this inaugural episode Brian and Troy discuss who's the biggest a*****e, Apple or Facebook? Also, is quiet quitting a thing and if so, is it bad? P...