🎧 Maggie Haberman | The Atlantic Interview

Listened to Maggie Haberman by Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic Interview
To make sense of President Donald Trump's first year in the White House, many have come to rely on Maggie Haberman. The powerhouse reporter for the New York Times talks with Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg about how her career covering New York City politics for the tabloids has given her a unique view of Trump. To Haberman, Trump's brashness and need for approval are partly products of his distinct experience of New York City.
If possible, click to play, otherwise your browser may be unable to play this audio file. A fascinating interview to be sure. There's some subtlety particularly about Donald Trump that is injected here that I wouldn't have thought about previously. I certainly don't have more hope as a result, but I do have a lot…

🎧 Steve Coll | The Atlantic Interview

Listened to Steve Coll by Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic Interview
Steve Coll is one of the foremost chroniclers of the war in Afghanistan, now in its eighteenth year. Coll talks with Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg about why the war has persisted, well after the idea of a military solution lost any luster it might have had. They discuss Pakistan's struggles during the war in Afghanistan, and why disrupting the terrorism networks that now thrive in the area might require much more than just American troops.
If possible, click to play, otherwise your browser may be unable to play this audio file. I wish I'd caught this podcast earlier to have been able to potentially see Coll at Vroman's in Pasadena last week. I'm putting his books on my to read list. I love some of the discussion, retro and introspection…

🎧 Bill Gates | The Atlantic Interview

Listened to Bill Gates by Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic Interview

The mission of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to ease suffering around the world may be somewhat at odds with the "America First" sentiments that propelled Donald Trump into the presidency. But Bill Gates is moving ahead with enthusiasm. He tells Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic's editor in chief, why he's still optimistic, and how he feels about no longer being the richest man in the world.

Here's a case where this podcast runs a bit off the rails in interviewing someone perhaps too "popular". It's a good interview and certainly a "get", but I'm not sure I learned too much interesting here that I haven't seen or heard elsewhere. Much of the strength of what I've heard thus far stems from…

🎧 Should We Break Up Amazon? | Crazy/Genius | The Atlantic

Listened to Should We Break Up Amazon? from Crazy/Genius | The Atlantic

Has the Everything Store become a dangerous monopoly threatening the U.S. economy?

Some time later this year, Amazon could become the first trillion-dollar company in American history. Its valuation has already doubled in the last 14 months to about $800 billion, and Jeff Bezos, its founder and CEO, is officially the richest man on the planet.

There are ways in which Amazon seems to be the greatest company in American history. It’s revolutionized the global shopping experience and expanded into media and hardware, while operating on razor-thin margins that have astonished critics. But some now consider it the modern incarnation of a railroad monopoly, a logistics behemoth using its scale to destroy competition.

So what is Amazon: brilliant, dangerous, or both? That’s the subject of the latest episode of Crazy/Genius, our new podcast on technology and culture.

To build the case for breaking up the Everything Store, I talk to Scott Galloway, a professor of marketing at NYU and an outspoken critic of big tech, and Lina Khan, a researcher at the Open Markets Institute and a leading expert on antitrust policy. Both of them encourage me to see how a company famous for low prices can still behave in an anticompetitive manner. Making the case against heavy regulation for Amazon are Rob Atkinson, the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a tech think tank, and Michael Mandel, an economist with the Progressive Policy Institute who researches technology and e-commerce. Both encourage me to focus not only on the hidden costs of Amazon’s largeness, but also on the hidden benefits.

hat tip: Atlantic Interview podcast feed

👓 Anchor’s new app offers everything you need to podcast | Tech Crunch

Read Anchor’s new app offers everything you need to podcast by Sarah Perez (TechCrunch)
Broadcasting app Anchor, which helps anyone record and share audio, is relaunching its app today with a new focus on serving the larger podcaster community... Of course, there is one concern for professional podcasters migrating to Anchor’s platform – and that’s whether it will be around in the long-term. For now, the company isn’t generating revenue – it’s living off its funding. Podcasters who pay for hosting or self-host don’t generally have to worry with whether they’ll one day have to quickly migrate elsewhere because the company is shutting down or being acquired – and that’s always a concern with startups.
I appreciate that they both give and highlight some reasonable caveats about using this Anchor given its start-up nature. Mentions of potential site-deaths should have been de rigueur for the past decade and change. It also makes me wonder why an app like this, which has some great and useful higher end utility, doesn't offer…

The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg | National Review

Followed The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg by Jonah Goldberg (National Review)
National Review senior editor and AEI fellow Jonah Goldberg enlists a Cannonball Run-style cast of stars, has-beens, and never-weres to address the most pressing issues of the day and of all-time.
Following The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg podcast after hearing an interview of Jonah Goldberg on The Atlantic Interview. I'll sample it for a bit to see if it's as good as his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg indicated it might be.

🔖 The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen

Bookmarked The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen (Riverhead Books)
The essential journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy. Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own--as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.
Bookmarked after listening to an episode of The Atlantic Interview.

The Two Definitions of Zettelkasten

What do we mean when we say Zettelkasten? There’s a specific set of objects (cards and boxes or their digital equivalents), but there’s also a spectrum of methods or practices which can be split into two broad categories. TL;DR Historically, Zettelkasten as used to describe both Luhmann’s notes and his method is patently in the…

🎧 Sheila Nevins on Age, Sex, Love, Life, and Everything Else | Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

Listened to Sheila Nevins on Age, Sex, Love, Life, and Everything Else by Alan Alda from Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

Sheila Nevins has explored the human condition in the thousand or so documentaries she produced for HBO. From more than 30 years of telling us stories about ourselves, to her experience as a woman in the workplace, Sheila has plenty to say about communicating. And she never holds back. In this delightful episode, Alan Alda talks with Sheila about her life, how she feels about aging, the #MeToo movement, sex, divorce, documentaries, storytelling, and just about everything else! This episode is sponsored by Calm. Check out www.calm.com/alda for more details.

I always forget that Sheila is as old as she is. She does have a great sense of humor. She makes an interesting point about humility that people with power (and especially within the entertainment industry) should be aware of and work to improve. Most shocking was the story she tells about her me too…

Weekly Recap: Interesting Articles 7/24-7/31 2016

Some of the interesting things I saw and read this week