Evolution of the Podcast Format

Casey Newton writes the Platformer newsletter. Kevin Roose is a technology columnist for The New York Times. Together they co-host the podcast Hard Fork.

CN: “People actually like to be a little bit confused. They like listening to things where people are talking about things they don’t quite understand, which was very counterintuitive to me. I think a lot of editor-types would scoff at, but I’ve come around.”

KR: “We can revisit subjects and we do. We can change our minds. Print pieces feel so permanent, they feel so definitive. Podcasts, we can just sort of say, ‘I don't know what to make of this, ask me again in a month.’”

Show notes:

• @CaseyNewton
• @kevinroose
• cnewton.org
• kevinroose.com
• Newton on Longform
• Roose on Longform
• Longorm Podcast #337: Casey Newton
• Longform Podcast #81: Kevin Roose
• Newton and Roose’s Hard Fork archive
• Newton’s Platformer archive
• Roose’s New York Times archive
• 3:00 Newton’s Verge archive
• 7:00 “Elon’s X Machina, Crypto Orbs, and a Visit to Google’s Robot Lab” (Newton and Roose • New York Times • July 2023)
• 12:00 Huberman Lab (Andrew Huberman • Huberman Lab • 2023)
• 14:00 Rabbit Hole (Roose • New York Times • 2020)
• 25:00 Futureproof (Roose • Random House • 2022)
• 29:00 “ChatGPT Transforms a Classroom and Is ‘M3GAN’ Real?” (Newton and Roose • New York Times • Jan 2023)
• 29:00 “Dario Amodei, C.E.O. of Anthropic, on the Paradoxes of A.I. Safety and Netflix’s ‘Deep Fake Love Story’” (Newton and Roose • New York Times • July 2023)
• 31:00 “Google C.E.O. Sundar Pichai on Bard, A.I. ‘Whiplash’ and Competing with ChatGPT” (Newton and Roose • New York Times • March 2023)
• 31:00 “Mr. Altman Goes to Washington and Casey Goes on This American Life” (Newton and Roose • New York Times • May 2023)
• 44:00 “Aided by A.I. Language Models, Google’s Robots Are Getting Smart” (Roose • New York Times • July 2023)

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