Channels with Peter Kafka7 Maj 2025

Ian Rogers tells me I need a crypto wallet

I wanted to talk to Ian Rogers about his fascinating career. He wanted to talk to me about Ledger, the crypto wallet company he’s working at now. So we did both things. Background: Rogers was an important figure in the digital music business, back when the music business was being fundamentally reshaped by digital. He helped the Beastie Boys get on the internet, long before every band did that. Then he helped bring digital music to millions of people in the MP3 era - first at AOL, then Yahoo — and then in the streaming era — first at Beats, and then Apple Music. Then he did digital stuff at LVMH, the luxury goods conglomerate. Now he’s chief experience officer at Ledger, a French company that has sold 7 million physical storage devices for crypto. I remain confused and skeptical about crypto, but I’m always open to hearing from folks who are passionate about it — to see if they can convince me that I’m missing something. And the most persuasive argument I hear is usually from folks like Rogers — people who were around when the internet was novel and exciting in the 90s, and think they’re seeing the same kind of tectonic shift this time around. It’s a pitch that’s part FOMO — you wouldn’t want to be one of the people who thought the internet was a fad in 1995, right? — and part blue-sky optimism: What if it was 1995 and you could get in on the ground floor of the internet? Take a listen and let me know what you think. Help us plan for the future of Channels by filling out a brief survey: ⁠⁠voxmedia.com/survey⁠⁠. Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Larry Ellison’s Media Ambitions & Kevin Roose on AI’s Biggest Gamble

Larry Ellison bought his son a media empire. What does he want from it? Vanity Fair’s Tom Dotan joins me to talk about the billionaire behind Paramount and Warner Bros., his connection to TikTok, and ...

7 Okt 1h 1min

David Ellison's Paramount-Warner Empire & The Fight That Comes Next

David Ellison has won Warner Bros. Discovery. Now he has to figure out what, exactly, to do with it. LightShed analyst Rich Greenfield joins me to talk through the next version of the Paramount-Warne...

30 Sep 44min

Meta's New $1300 Glasses and the Fight to Control AI

I went to Meta’s Silicon Valley headquarters to try Mark Zuckerberg’s newest face computer: a $1,300 pair of virtual-reality glasses that are much lighter and cheaper than Apple’s Vision Pro, and stil...

23 Sep 40min

AI Wants to Shop for You. What Could Go Wrong?

AI companies have spent years telling us that we’ll be able to use them to go shopping for us, or book us airplane tickets, or get us awesome restaurant reservations. None of that ever materialized.Bu...

16 Sep 40min

The Atlantic’s CEO on AI, Billionaire Owners, and Moonlighting as a Creator

Nicholas Thompson runs one of the few media companies that can say things are going pretty well: The Atlantic is profitable, growing, and boasts 1.6 million subscribers.But that's today. What comes ne...

11 Sep 54min

Data Centers, Elon Musk, and the New Politics of Tech, with David Weigel

Not long ago, most Americans had never heard of data centers. Now most Americans are actively opposed to them.It’s a head-snapping change — one that is befuddling tech bosses, and forcing some politic...

2 Sep 53min

The Weird, Big Business of Microdramas

Microdramas are the new phone-first soap operas: stories chopped into dozens of one-minute episodes: Low-budget productions filled with romance, werewolves, secret babies, and cliffhangers—and, eventu...

26 Aug 48min

The $12.5 Billion Lakers, the NFL’s TV Fight, and Sports Media’s Big Split

Sports teams keep selling for more money because, in theory, their media rights keep becoming more valuable. But the companies that actually pay for sports TV are starting to push back. John Ourand o...

19 Aug 42min