Channels with Peter Kafka

If Joe Weisenthal didn’t exist, the internet would have to invent him. Because Joe Weisenthal is built for the internet — more specifically, an internet personality: Knows a lot, curious about even more, often right, happy to be wrong, always has something to say about anything.That persona/personality did wonders for Joe in the early days of Business Insider — which, not coincidentally, were also the early days of Twitter, where Joe really took off. Then he took his talents to Bloomberg, and since then has turned himself into a successful business/finance podcaster: Along with co-host Tracy Alloway, they’ve turned “Odd Lots” from a project no one at Bloomberg paid attention to into a genuine hit.Discussed here: Why Joe is still at Bloomberg, instead of doing the indie media route that could make him a gazillion dollars; what makes a perfect podcast guest; and Joe’s semi-secret country music ambitions. Plus, something smart you can say about tariffs, if you’re in a place where people are talking about tariffs.Bonus content! This pod also includes a conversation with filmmaker Adam Bhala Lough, who wanted to make a movie about OpenAI’s Sam Altman, but couldn’t. So he made a fake Sam Altman instead, which is why his movie is called Deepfaking Sam Altman.
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Jeff Bezos used to be the savior of The Washington Post. He bought it for $250 million in 2013, and then invested money and energy into turning it around — and it worked.Now the Amazon founder is decimating the Post’s staff, and his managers are telling the ones who are left that things have to change.So what happened, and what happens next? Erik Wemple is the right person to ask: He spent years covering media at the Post, and now he’s at the New York Times, where he’s covering the collapse of his old home.
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In February 2020, Disney CEO Bob Iger finally announced his successor: Bob Chapek, who ran the company’s parks business. That didn’t work out.Now Iger is running it back: This time around he’s announced that Josh D’Amaro, who runs the company’s park business, is going to succeed him.So: Who is Josh D’Amaro, and what has he done to prove himself CEO-worthy? Why does Iger (and the Disney board) think this one will work? And what happens to all the Disney businesses D’Amaro doesn’t have any background in - you know, the movies and TV shows you think about when you think of Disney?We have an excellent guest to walk us through all of this: Puck’s Julia Alexander, who has been covering Disney for years — and also worked there for a year doing strategy stuff.Julia’s argument in a nutshell: Disney doesn’t know what’s going to happen to the business of making things like movies and TV shows. But it knows people are going to keep coming to its parks and cruises, so it hired the guy that knows that business. Is that the right call?
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In an ideal world, I wouldn’t be bringing you an interview with the editor of the Minnesota Star Tribune about her paper’s coverage of the killing of Alex Pretti in the same episode where I interview the man behind HBO’s newest Game of Thrones show.

But we’re not in an ideal world right now.

So here’s a conversation with Star Tribune editor Kathleen Hennessey — who left the New York Times to take the gig less than a year ago — about the challenges of covering the chaos in the Twin Cities, and how the paper tries to distinguish itself from the many, many competitors it has on this story. From the NYT itself to citizens posting their own videos.

And then I chat with Ira Parker, whose “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” is HBO’s newest GOT extension. But this one differs from the others in ways you can see onscreen — it’s lighter and more fun, and doesn’t require viewers to understand things like the Targaryen family tree — and in offscreen ways you can’t necessarily see — namely, that it’s much cheaper to make.
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Football isn’t just the biggest show on TV — at this point, it’s basically the only reason some TV networks exist. So it’s a very worthy subject for Chuck Klosterman, the provocative and prolific writer, to tackle in his new book, which is called… Football.

The big Channels idea here is to talk about football’s dominance in American media and culture, and What That Means — and how that might end, one day. And we most definitely get into that.

But when you have Chuck Klosterman in studio, you talk about as much as you can. So in this this one, we also get into:

Why football is a “completely mediated,” made-for-tv-even-if-accidentally experience — and why “the only seat” is basically your couch

How video games helped rewire the way fans understand (and even play) football

How gambling created a “fake game” that sits on top of the real one

Why the concussion panic faded even though the hits didn’t

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