At first glance, Mike Solana and Ted Gioia might not seem to have much in common. Mike, the publisher of the newsletter Pirate Wires, is very much a child of the internet, a strong proponent of the tech industry and scientific progress, with a career in venture capital (working in marketing) after a brief stint in book publishing. Ted, who writes The Honest Broker and has been a guest on The Active Voice before, is one of America’s greatest music critics, founder of the Jazz Studies program at Stanford University, and the author of 12 books. What they share is a deep love for words and their significance in shaping culture. And even though they will both deliver us the bad news about the latter’s collapse, there is an underlying optimism in their insistence on protecting it, from their own little corner.
This week we brought them together at Substack’s headquarters in San Francisco for a conversation on The Active Voice about maintaining our optimism at a time of neck-breaking technological change. What followed was a wonderful and wide-ranging jam session on everything from the disappearance of counterculture to the significance of trustworthy voices in the age of AI to the ongoing collapse of the media industry and the rise of something new from its ashes. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it!
We have another of these writer dialogues planned for a later episode and may do more of them depending on your feedback—so please let us know what you think in the comments.
https://tedgioia.substack.com/ https://www.piratewires.com/
Show notes
Subscribe to Pirate Wires by Mike Solana, and The Honest Broker by Ted Gioia, on Substack
Find Mike on Twitter, and Pirate Wires on Twitter and Instagram
Find Ted on Twitter, Instagram, and his website
Read Mike’s pinned tweet
[5:55] The changing media landscape
[12:10] Spotify’s algorithm
[16:32] Grimes and AI
[22:10] AI and writing
[25:10] What is “content”
[35:30] The counterculture
[45:00] Traditional publishing
The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. This episode was produced by Sophia Efthimiatou and Hamish McKenzie, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, and content production by Hannah Ray. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
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