Author: Alex Kantrowitz

Tripp Mickle is a reporter for The New York Times and author of After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul. He joins Big Technology Podcast for a special episode looking inside Apple after the death of Steve Jobs and evaluating its leadership's performance. Join us for a broad, deep discussion leaning on Tripp's years of reporting on one of the world's most fascinating companies.

Rich Greenfield is a founding partner at LightShed Partners, and a preeminent analyst in the tech and media world. He joins Big Technology Podcast this week to discuss why companies like Netflix, Snap, Meta, and Spotify are getting crushed in the public markets. Join us for a discussion about tech stocks that digs into the broader story of what's happening to the global economy.

Alex Roetter ran engineering at Twitter from 2014 to 2016 and is currently a general partner at Moxxie Ventures. He joins Big Technology Podcast to evaluate the product changes Elon Musk has expressed interest in, looking at whether they are feasible and could actually help the company. We go point by point through six potential changes and then discuss whether society, Twitter users, and Musk himself will be happy with the deal five years from now.

Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer-prize-winning reporter and the author of Smarter Faster Better and The Power of Habit. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss what's happened with SPACs — special purpose acquisition companies — that seemed ready to revolutionize the IPO process just last year but have now fallen out of favor. Duhigg explains SPACs' rise, their decline, and what the financial world will look like once they settle into place. We also spend the first ten minutes discussing Elon Musk's Twitter bid and whether he's flying a bit too close to the sun.

Come chat with about this episode with me here on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6922620355924647936/

You can find Duhigg's story here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/07/the-pied-piper-of-spacs

Ranjan Roy is the co-author of Margins, a Substack newsletter about the financial markets. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss Elon Musk's bid to buy Twitter and its implications. Join us for this 'emergency' episode where we discuss whether Musk will improve the service, whether he can pull it off, and why he's making the move.

Antonio Garcia Martinez is an early Facebook employee, author of Chaos Monkeys, former Apple engineer, and writes the Pull Request on Substack. He joins Big Technology Podcast for a wide-ranging discussion touching on what he learned about Apple's ad platform in his short tenure at the company, how he's navigated being held as a symbol for new-right politics and then pushed back on its pro-Putin narrative, what the meme about Ukraine support being "the current thing" really means, and why he's converting to Judaism if he disdains dogma.

Christopher Mims is a tech columnist for the Wall Street Journal. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss Elon Musk's ascent to Twitter's board this week and purchase of 9.2% of the company's shares. Join us for a deep conversation about what Elon might be up to, how much power he'll have, how Twitter employees are responding, and where this likey leads.

Cher Scarlett is an ex-Apple engineer who led a movement for pay transparency within the company — and suffered consequences. She joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss why she spoke out, how Apple responded, and whether the company's culture can handle dissent. Listen for an inside perspective on Apple's culture and a conversation about the future of dissent within the tech giants.

Teddy Schleifer covers billionaires as a reporter and founding partner at Puck. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the sanctions against Russian oligarchs, how (and if) oligarchs differ from billionaires, and whether putting pressure on the oligarchs can help end Russia's war in Ukraine. Stay tuned for the second half where we discuss tech's connection to the oligarchs, and whether their money plays a role in Silicon Valley.

Orchid Bertelsen and David Herrmann are two senior advertising professionals who’ve watched Apple’s anti-tracking changes upend the digital ad industry from the ground. They join Big Technology Podcast to discuss how what Apple’s “ask not to track” notification actually works, how it’s changed the way advertisers do business, how small businesses have felt the impact, and which platforms it's empowered at Facebook’s expense. Stay tuned for the second half where we discuss how Apple, TikTok, and Amazon’s businesses have changed thanks to this massive, underrated power move.

This week's direct-to-consumer article: “A Reckoning.” The Direct To Consumer Craze Is Slamming Into Reality.