Channels with Peter Kafka

Figure skating commentators Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir talk with Recode's Peter Kafka about the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea. Lipinski and Weir, both former professional skaters, got their start as commentators at the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia, and explain why the official ban on Russian participation this year will not take away from the drama of their sport...

Steven Soderbergh and Scott Frank talk with Recode’s Peter Kafka about their new western miniseries, “Godless.” The duo brought Frank's 180-page movie script to Netflix and witnessed firsthand how the streaming service gets its shows noticed: Rather than aiming for a specific opening weekend like a traditional movie studio would, Netflix waited to spend much of the marketing budget for “Godless” u...

The Young Turks CEO Cenk Uygur talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about running an online media company for young left-wingers. Uygur says the Washington establishment is just now waking up to the power of the internet, but he and his colleagues have been broadcasting live video over the internet since 2005. Cable news is overrated, he explains, because it's on in the background of stores and press r...

Andy Weir, the author of the hit science fiction novel "The Martian," talks with Recode's Edmund Lee about his new book, "Artemis." Set in a city on Earth's Moon in the late 2080s, "Artemis" is a crime caper that centers on a smuggler named Jazz, a young woman who moved to the Moon from Saudi Arabia. Weir explains how "The Martian" became an accidental hit thanks to Amazon's Kindle platform, but a...

Kim Masters, the editor-at-large of the Hollywood Reporter, talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about covering the entertainment industry at a time of daily tumult. Masters says the sexual harassment allegations against people like Miramax's Harvey Weinstein and comedian Louis C.K. are just the beginning; Many powerful men who have harassed and abused people in the workplace have yet to be exposed, sh...

Pando CEO Sarah Lacy talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about her new book "The Uterus Is a Feature, Not a Bug," which is part memoir and part feminist guide to "overthrowing the patriarchy." Lacy explains why she rejects the type of "careerism feminism" advanced by books like Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In." Amusingly, Facebook rejected ads for Lacy's new book because the title contains the word "uterus...

Comedian Dana Gould talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about his comedy-horror television series "Stan Against Evil," which just returned for a second season on IFC. Gould says the show never would have made it to the air when there were only three networks on TV and praises the fact that nearly "all programs are niche programs" in 2017. He also explains why it's important for content creators to be...

Author Joe Hagan talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about his new book, "Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine." In the book, Hagan traces Wenner's rise as an eccentric, spendy and sometimes barbaric media mogul and how Rolling Stone became the "entire internet" for the music world before the internet existed. Wenner — who commissioned the biography — publicly d...

Michael Barbaro, the host of the New York Times podcast "The Daily," talks with Recode's Peter Kafka in front of a live audience at Joe's Pub in New York City. Barbaro explains how "The Daily" gets made and what it signifies as the once-omniscient and authoritative tone of the Times has softened, allowing journalists to talk about their reporting process and admit when they don't know something. H...

"Full Frontal" host Samantha Bee and TBS President Kevin Reilly talk with Recode's Peter Kafka, recorded in front of a live audience at Joe's Pub in New York City. Bee dissects how her show has approached the sexual assault scandals rocking Silicon Valley and Hollywood, particularly that of movie producer Harvey Weinstein, and why her show is able to cover them so well. She also talks about "Trump...

Scroll CEO Tony Haile talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about his company's not-yet-launched product that will let news consumers pay once for a clean, ad-free experience across multiple news outlets and across all platforms. Haile says Scroll, which has taken funding from companies like News Corp, Axel Springer and the New York Times Company, is trying to solve the media business model for the vast...

The eponymous host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” tells Recode’s Peter Kafka how speaking out about political issues on his show has affected his life online and on TV. Kimmel says he agrees with Disney CEO Bob Iger that he should try not to get political too often and stay “in the middle” by default. He acknowledges that politics may turn off some of his show’s viewers, but that issues like health care...

Brit + Co CEO Brit Morin talks with Recode’s Peter Kafka about launching a media and commerce company aimed at millennial women when she was 25. Brit + Co has since raised about $40 million, and has branched out beyond online content to include education, merchandise and live events. Morin explains how she fought against the sexist assumptions of investors that she was merely “Dave Morin’s wife” (...

Wall Street Journal sports columnist and Vogue contributor Jason Gay talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about the raging debate over NFL players kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality against African Americans. Sports have always been political, Gay says, and the football players who have taken a knee are especially brave given the NFL's lack of loyalty to players. He also ta...

Jad Abumrad, the co-host of WNYC Studios' hit show Radiolab, talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about the new season of More Perfect, a spinoff podcast about the Supreme Court. Abumrad says he was getting "restless" a couple years ago at Radiolab, and so dispatched his team to find interesting stories from the judicial system. He also talks about the intense process of making Radiolab — episodes can...

Simulmedia CEO Dave Morgan talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about the future of TV advertising, which has historically been "not so broken that it’s had to be fixed." However, Morgan's company is betting that big advertisers will want their TV ads to start working more like digital ads, personalized to each viewer and able to be connected with buying behavior. He also talks about how his first comp...

Documentarian Ken Burns talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about his new 18-hour documentary, "The Vietnam War." Burns says he sought to upend conventional wisdom about the war by rewinding the iconic images, stories and music of the time and telling history through the lens of all the countries involved in the fighting. He believes we are in a "golden age" of documentaries, but Burns says he has no...

Mother Jones Editor in Chief Clara Jeffery talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about how the progressive magazine made its business model work on the web, with more than $15 million in revenue per year. Jeffery says the media put itself in an economic crisis by ignoring the business side of its work and argues that the best way to fund "stuff that's not just cat videos" is to ask readers and viewers f...

Tim Armstrong, the CEO of Verizon's media properties Yahoo and AOL, talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about how those sites — collectively known as Oath — will survive and evolve. Armstrong, previously an early sales exec at Google, says competing directly against Google and Facebook for advertising dollars would be "the worst thing we could do" and instead, Oath plans to find other ways to win a pi...

CNN's Oliver Darcy and BuzzFeed's Charlie Warzel talk with Recode's Peter Kafka about how they report on the many facets of the far-right media, which has exploded in prominence thanks to President Trump. They talk about how ideas, memes and conspiracy theories originated on websites like Breitbart or message boards like Reddit's /r/The_Donald can bubble up to more traditional conservative outlets...

Writer Chuck Klosterman talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about his new book, "Chuck Klosterman X," a collection of essays and profiles he wrote for such outlets as Esquire, Grantland and the New York Times Magazine. Klosterman says he wants people to talk about what he writes, not how he writes it, and considers how politics, social media and the rise of media analytics have reshaped the work of jo...

Patreon CEO Jack Conte talks with Recode’s Peter Kafka about why the current version of the web, where content is mostly free and supported by ads, is not necessarily the “best version.” Conte’s site makes it possible for subscribers — or "patrons" — to pay creators for what they make and get bonus content or other perks in return, and it's on track to process $150 million in 2017. He predicts tha...

Univision's new Chief Revenue Officer Tonia O'Connor talks with Recode's Edmund Lee about how the company has grown from a handful of Spanish-language TV channels to 17 TV and digital channels. O'Connor says TV is still the hot ticket for everyone, even once-digital-only players like the former Gawker sites, which Univision acquired last year for $135 million. She also talks about how the company...

Tastemade CEO Larry Fitzgibbon talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about building a digital media company around food-as-lifestyle that reaches more than 200 million people per month. Fitzgibbon, who was previously an executive at Demand Media, says quality is the new key to succeeding in online video across all platforms — social, mobile and possibly TV. Later in the show, Eater Editor at Large Helen...

Writer, marketer and self-proclaimed media manipulator Ryan Holiday talks with Recode’s Peter Kafka about his new book, “Perennial Seller,” which explores “the art of making and marketing work that lasts.” He argues that creators over-value how their work launches, and don’t pay enough attention to how their decisions — from start to finish — affect its staying power. Holiday also talks about how...