Recode Decode: Jessica Weisberg traces the history of advice in ‘Asking for a Friend’

Recode Decode: Jessica Weisberg traces the history of advice in ‘Asking for a Friend’

Writer and audio producer Jessica Weisberg talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about her new book, “Asking for a Friend: Three Centuries of Advice on Life, Love, Money, and Other Burning Questions from a Nation Obsessed.” Starting in 1690s London, Weisberg examines how advice became a cultural force in America, and how professional advice-givers presaged the internet by creating the first platform for people to ask difficult questions anonymously. She discusses Ben Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanack,” which made earnest advice more palatable through comedy; the bitter rivalry between twin sisters who both became advice columnists, using the pen names “Ann Landers” and “Dear Abby”; and how the once-strict views of parenting guru Benjamin Spock and other columnists mellowed over their long careers. Weisberg says Google and other internet forums are the new advice-givers for millions of people, and questions whether any one writer today could be as widely read and trusted as these predecessors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episoder(918)

UiPath CEO Daniel Dines on AI agents replacing our jobs

UiPath CEO Daniel Dines on AI agents replacing our jobs

Today, I’m talking with Daniel Dines, the co-founder and once again the CEO of UiPath, a software company that specializes in something called robotic process automation. We’ve been featuring a lot of...

7 Apr 20251h 6min

What AI anime memes tell us about the future of art and humanity

What AI anime memes tell us about the future of art and humanity

Today, we’re diving head first into the AI art debate, which to be honest, is an absolute mess. If you’ve been on the internet this past week, you’ve seen the Studio Ghibli memes. These images are eve...

3 Apr 202555min

How Unity CEO Matt Bromberg stopped the ‘war’ against its customers

How Unity CEO Matt Bromberg stopped the ‘war’ against its customers

Unity is one of those hidden in plain sight companies we love here on Decoder, and CEO Matt Bromberg is in many ways the perfect Decoder guest. He's been on the job less than a year and took over in a...

31 Mar 20251h 10min

Capitalism vs. the bird flu

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Today we’re talking about bird flu, but in a pretty Decoder way. Science journalist Lauren Leffer, who recently wrote a piece for The Verge about bird flu and how it’s becoming a forever war, is joini...

27 Mar 202545min

Splice CEO Kakul Srivastava on why push-button AI is “insulting” to musicians

Splice CEO Kakul Srivastava on why push-button AI is “insulting” to musicians

Today, I’m talking with Kakul Srivastava, CEO of music creation platform Splice, which is one of the biggest marketplaces around for loops and samples. You can just go sign up, pay the money, and down...

24 Mar 20251h 6min

The movement to take down Tesla

The movement to take down Tesla

Today we're talking about the Tesla Takedown protest movement, which has emerged as a way for people to express how deeply unhappy they are with Elon Musk installing himself as a not-so-shadow preside...

20 Mar 202547min

How Trump's tariff chaos is already changing global trade

How Trump's tariff chaos is already changing global trade

I'm talking to Evan Smith, who started Altana in 2019 because he predicted the first wave of globalized manufacturing and trade would end, and that companies would want new powerful tools to adapt the...

17 Mar 20251h 7min

Why the Take It Down Act is a not a law, but a weapon

Why the Take It Down Act is a not a law, but a weapon

Today, I’m talking to Verge policy editor Adi Robertson about a bill called the Take It Down Act, which is one in a long line of bills that would make it illegal to distribute non-consensual intimate ...

13 Mar 202548min

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