People vs Algorithms
by Troy Young, Brian Morrissey, Alex Schleifer
Latest episode
It’s the Context, Stupid
It’s the Context, Stupid
About this podcast
Uncovering patterns of change in media, culture, and technology, each week media veterans Brian Morrissey, Alex Schleifer and Troy Young break down stuff that matters.
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Episodes
The newest 20 of 209 episodes
- It’s the Context, Stupid · 1 h 41 min · Season 5 Episode 208Troy and Brian dig into what happens when AI stops imitating Odie as the overly eager helper and starts owning the workflow, the coordination and the organizational memory, why a…
- Answers Without Questions · 1 h 4 min · Season 5 Episode 207We dig into Claude Duet, Meta’s Muse and the rest of the new assistants that suggest before you ask, why Muse’s retention numbers look shaky, and what happens to businesses built…
- SaaSpocalypse Now · 1 h 1 min · Season 5 Episode 206An anonymous developer used Claude to ship open-source clones of Adobe’s big five, then Word, Excel, Keynote, AutoCAD and Figma within days, and the lesson is that software is a…
- The Friction Economy · 59 min · Season 5 Episode 205This week we dig into how much of the economy is built on friction, and what happens when AI agents start removing it. Also: why students are so gloomy about AI, Vanity Fair’s…
- The Mother of All Interface Battles · 1 h 19 min · Season 5 Episode 204Brian, Troy and Alex debate who will control the interface to your life, whether convenience will steamroll privacy concerns, and how the winner gets to collect a toll on…
- The AI Interface Shift · 1 h 20 min · Season 5 Episode 203Brian and Troy dig into Muse, Meta’s push to make AI assistants mainstream, and why the next big platform battle is over the interface itself. They also look at what this shift…
- Nobody Asked For Dragons · 1 h 12 min · Season 5 Episode 202Brian and Troy map the whole cast: who's the wizard, who's the arms dealer, who's the schoolyard bully, and who gets stuck playing the citizens of King's Landing who never asked…
- Cognitive Struggle · 1 h 20 min · Season 5 Episode 201They debate warnings from Anthropic researchers that AI could kill humanity, whether anyone can credibly calibrate those risks and whether a visible catastrophe will be required…
- Strong Meat · 1 h 17 min · Season 4 Episode 200We look ahead to the release of GTA 6 while tackling the implications of the doomsday sci-fi AI narrative, the use of social cost to coerce behaviors, and how giant sports events…
- Owning the Narrative · 1 h 33 min · Season 4 Episode 199Dolly Parton owned a very American narrative of being born poor but making something out of nothing through talent and hard work. In contrast, tech tried to control its narrative…
- Social Media is Dead · 38 min · Season 4 Episode 198What replaced it is an algorithmic entertainment machine where everyone is selling something, AI makes authenticity harder to trust, and the platforms increasingly have little to…
- The Provenance Problem · 1 h 1 min · Season 4 Episode 197Suno makes real songs harder to tell from fake. Launch videos are coming across as fake — and the engagement is fake. Drawing the line between creative tool and robot authorship…
- Sales Energy · 1 h 3 min · Season 4 Episode 196They take risks, they’re fueled by rejection, they know the power of relationships, they’re competitive and they will do shots. The best sellers follow the way of Catalan…
- AI’s High School Cafeteria · 58 min · Season 4 Episode 195This week we unpack Silicon Valley’s latest AI power struggle, asking whether the battle over open models is really about competition or about taking down Anthropic. We also…
- The New Moat · 1 h 16 min · Season 4 Episode 194Publishers see the writing on the wall for traffic-based models and are instead looking to experiential gatherings that bring together communities. We discuss why events are…
- In Praise of Aggregation · 1 h 29 min · Season 4 Episode 193AI should eliminate the need for human content aggregation, yet it's still going strong, as seen by the influential subscriber base of News Items and popularity of…
- Protecting Alpha · 1 h 19 min · Season 4 Episode 192This week, we discuss why the AI safety narrative is shifting from doomerism to the risk of AI eliminating both companies’ and individuals’ alphas, or what makes them unique and…
- The Coldplay Protocol · 1 h 10 min · Season 4 Episode 191We dig into the tangled collision of journalism and the creatory economy. Emily Sundberg’s Zuckerberg interview, Brian’s christening as the Matt Belloni-of-advertising, and why…
- Cannes is CES with Rosé · 59 min · Season 4 Episode 190This week’s episode leans heavily into Cannes, which is a world where everyone is selling and many are lying. Creators are the cool kids of Cannes, while the site of a drone show…
- Americamaxxing, AI Taste Wars, World Cup Soft Power · 1 h 6 min · Season 4 Episode 189We debate whether Anthropic painted itself in a corner with its safety messaging, if Snap Specs pass the taste test, Elon as American icon, and the World Cup and Trump’s UFC…
