Best Peter Kafka Podcasts (2025)

1
The Future of Late Night TV, Jimmy Kimmel, and The First Amendment 26:53

2d ago26:53

26:53

When’s the last time you stayed up to watch a late night TV monologue? Months? Years? Decades? I’m not sure, either. But I stayed up Tuesday night to watch Jimmy Kimmel’s return. James Poniewozik, who covers TV for the New York Times, just caught up with it the next day on YouTube. Which underscores one of the odder parts of the Trump v. Kimmel fig…

1
Ep 721 - The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka 1:10:29

4d ago1:10:29

1:10:29

Some of us read a book. Some of us research the author and the historical context. Some of us sit in front of our microphones and record a podcast. Some of us edit it together and upload it to the website. Some of us write the description that goes up with it. Boy I hope this bit works! Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis. Follow @overdue…

1
I tried Zuckerberg's $800 Ray-Bans. Are they the future? With Alex Heath 45:00

9d ago45:00

45:00

A year ago I got try a pair of $10,000 computer goggles from Meta. The tech was super-impressive, but you couldn’t buy them them. You still can’t. Now Mark Zuckerberg is trying a similar idea. But this time around the the tech is scaled-down, lighter and way cheaper: the new version costs $800, and you’ll be able to buy them in a couple days. Why w…

1
How TBPN Made a Tech News Splash 39:10

11d ago39:10

39:10

John Coogan knows what you’re thinking: the world does not need another tech podcast. And the world does not need another podcast featuring two dudes talking. Yet Coogan and Jordi Hays have started another tech podcast, featuring the two of them talking and… it’s a hit. In the span of a year, TBPN has become the place where tech execs go to chop up…

1
Ep 720 - Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell 1:10:44

11d ago1:10:44

1:10:44

Perhaps Elizabeth Gaskell’s best-known work, Cranford chronicles the lives of some Victorian era LMMs (Ladies of Modest Means). Their customs and relevance may be waning as Industrialization advances, but that doesn’t mean they won’t find ways to entertain us with their wit, their foibles, and their heart. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. …

1
Episode #236 ... Meditations - Marcus Aurelius 36:57

13d ago36:57

36:57

Today we talk about the collection of journals known as Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. We mark the differences between Stoicism, modern Stoic ethics, and the journals of Marcus Aurelius. We talk about the divine logos, indifferents, and how metaphysical assumptions ladder up into the virtue ethics of the ancient Stoics. We talk about some of the c…

1
Patch’s AI Experiment: Thousands of Newsletters, Zero Humans 39:07

16d ago39:07

39:07

Everyone agrees that the decline/disapperance of local news is a big problem. No one agrees about the best way to solve it. So let’s check in on a new AI push from Patch, the people who have been trying to do local news, online, at scale, for more than two decades. Last spring, Patch CEO Warren St. John announced that he was running local newslette…

1
Ep 719 - The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi 1:11:12

18d ago1:11:12

1:11:12

For anyone who’s ever loved a movie or TV show where people in silly outfits pretend to be giant city-crushing lizards and/or robots, this week’s book plays around in a pretty entertaining space. If the references to the mid-to-late-2020 stretch of the COVID pandemic and the 2020 US presidential election date it a little, and if every single named …

1
Episode #235 ... The Philosophy of Zen Buddhism - Byung Chul Han 38:19

20d ago38:19

38:19

Today we talk about one of Han's earlier books where he offers an alternative to classic western ideas about subjectivity. We talk about Zen as a religion without God. Substance and emptiness. Alternatives to the reified self. Dwelling nowhere. Original friendliness. And death as an event we desperately try to control. Hope you love it! :) Sponsors…

1
Oliver Darcy Thinks the Media Doesn’t Get It. So He Built Status 53:40

23d ago53:40

53:40

One thing about the internet is that it lets you build really, really fast. A little more than a year ago, Oliver Darcy was an unemployed former CNN media reporter. Today he’s the proprietor of Status, his must-read media newsletter. In our conversation, we spend a little bit of time talking through the mechanics of his two-man operation, and how h…

1
Ep 718 - The Four Million, by O. Henry 1:20:14

25d ago1:20:14

1:20:14

The name O. Henry is synonymous with more than just a candy bar. It's become shorthand for a brief, punchy tale that ends with a magical little twist. And this collection, his second published, contains such classic examples as the "Gift of the Magi" and "The Cop and the Anthem." Can you guess the ironic twist ending of this podcast? This episode i…

1
Sit Me Baby One More Time Ep 02 - Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls (The Baby-Sitters Club #2) 52:20

28d ago52:20

52:20

The Club has been humming along for two months until a spat of terrifying phone-based burglaries have our sitters sittin' scared! Also, it's Claudia time! Between gigs, she must repair her relationship with her sister and figure out how to catch the eye of the dreamiest poet around: Trevor Sandbourne. These episodes posted first for our Patreon sup…

1
Why Henry Blodget is Building Another Media Company 57:56

1M ago57:56

57:56

Henry Blodget can’t help himself. The Business Insider founder is starting another media business, knowing full well how difficult the industry can be. You can watch him build it in real time: Regenerator on Substack, and Solutions on TikTok, YouTube and everywhere you hear your favorite podcasts. Henry — who hired me to work at Business Insider in…

1
Ep 717 - Bad Summer People, by Emma Rosenblum 1:02:22

1M ago1:02:22

1:02:22

As a reader, you cannot get upset if you read a book called "Bad Summer People" and it's filled with terrible people and all the stuff that they do to each other over the course of One Fateful Summer. You are allowed, of course, to get upset if you summered in the same place as the author and you recognize the town and all the people in it and also…

1
ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro on streaming, the NFL and sports betting 48:14

1M ago48:14

48:14

The media industry has been waiting for ESPN to cut the cord for a decade. Now it’s finally happening: This week the sports TV giant will let you start streaming — without a cable TV subscription — for $30 a month. Why now? ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro is quite frank about it: Along with his boss — Disney CEO Bob Iger — he wanted to make as much money fr…

1
Ep 716 - An Extraordinary Union (Loyal League #1), by Alyssa Cole 1:21:41

1M ago1:21:41

1:21:41

The secret Union organization Elle Burns spies for swears by the four Ls: Loyalty. Legacy. Life. Lincoln. But what about…Love? Enter Malcolm MacCall, a brash but lovable Scot posing as a Confederate soldier. And the rest, as they say, is historical fiction. Also it’s a pretty successful romance novel! Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis. …

1
Episode #234 ... The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera 35:03

1M ago35:03

35:03

Today we try to produce a philosophical guide for the book The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. We talk about Parmenides, Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, kitsch as something more than just an aesthetic category, existential codes and his animal test of morality. Hope you love it! :) Sponsors: ZocDoc: https://www.ZocDoc.com/PHILO Nord…

1
A Busy - and Expensive - Summer for AI, with NYT's Mike Isaac 51:42

1M ago51:42

51:42

What makes a particular engineer worth $250 million to Mark Zuckerberg? What does Trump 2.0 mean — and not mean — to people building large language models? I didn’t know the answers to these questions either. So I got the New York Times’ Mike Isaac, who covers this stuff for a living, to walk me through some of the biggest questions in AI right now…

1
Ep 715 - Mrs. Caliban, by Rachel Ingalls 56:01

2M ago56:01

56:01

We've all heard this story before—giant fish man escapes secret laboratory, giant fish man takes up with unfulfilled housewife, fish man and housewife have deeply meaningful affair, lots of people die. Tale as old as time! Suffice it to say the characters in Mrs. Caliban have a very different reaction to a giant fish than the characters in Jaws. Th…

1
Why the Algorithm is Making Comedy Boom, Again 58:53

2M ago58:53

58:53

The last time I talked to Jesse David Fox about the comedy boom it was… March 5, 2020. Since then, some things have changed. But in other ways it’s just the same: comedy - or at least, some kinds of comedy - seems almost custom-built for our current technological and cultural moment, and it’s easier than ever to get this stuff on your devices whene…

1
Episode #233 ... A philosophy of self-destruction. (Dostoevsky, Bataille) 33:57

2M ago33:57

33:57

Today we talk about two different theories for why we ritualize self-destructive behavior. We check out a lesser-known work from Dostoevsky called The Gambler. We consider how much we can hold people morally accountable for this kind of stuff. Then we look at the work of Georges Bataille, his book The Accursed Share, and how a hidden underlying eco…

1
Ep 714 - Jaws, by Peter Benchley 1:23:26

2M ago1:23:26

1:23:26

The first blockbuster movie started with a blockbuster book about a fish busting up blocks in a small seaside town. Anyone familiar with Steven Spielberg's movie will recognize the basic plot of Benchley's original novel Jaws -- there's just a lot more chum in the water. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice …

1
What is TV’s endgame? 47:28

2M ago47:28

47:28

A decade ago, Disney CEO Bob Iger freaked out the media industry by acknowledging something many of us saw coming — his previously unassailable TV business was starting to erode. But even with a 10-year warning, today’s moguls seem unable to cope with 2025’s reality: The pay TV business is permanently eroding, and there’s nothing in its place that’…

1
Ep 713 - Bonjour Tristesse, by Françoise Sagan 53:42

2M ago53:42

53:42

You know how sometimes you just want to bro out with your cool hot dad? How sometimes you just need to concoct a scheme where you encourage your casual boyfriend and your dad's casual ex-girlfriend to pretend to be in a relationship together, so that your dad gets jealous, so that he leaves his current more-serious girlfriend, who is really harshin…

1
Why Trump is defunding NPR and PBS - and suing Rupert Murdoch 35:59

2M ago35:59

35:59

Reporting on the place you work is not fun. But it is an occupational hazard for media reporters — particularly for NPR’s David Folkenflik. That’s because National Public Radio — along with Public Broadcasting Service, its TV counterpart — is quite frequently the target of attacks from critics on the right, who would like the federal government to …

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