Catalyst Podcast

Marissa Mayer’s Yahoo acquisitions: this week Paul and Rich start the discussion with a recent Gizmodo article about the fate of all 53 companies Yahoo has purchased under Mayer’s leadership. Topics covered include acqui-hires, managing up vs managing down, Silicon Valley’s disdain for humans doing normal human things,  and Rich’s favorite Yahoo acquisition, Summly. They also float an alternate title for the episode: “Daddy Issues.”

Has the internet changed everything? This week Rich and Paul talk to writer and media strategist Rex Sorgatz, who wrote recently about returning to his small North Dakota hometown to see how (or if!) access to the world’s information has changed things there...

Your silent Facebook feed: this week Paul and Rich talk about how video has taken over Facebook—and about how 85% of those videos are viewed silently. They debate form and content, consider user experience, and fixate on a fictional video in which an man drives a Vespa into a hole. They also discuss Rich’s mother’s cooking, and promise to have her on in a future episode.

Aesthetics and digital technology: this week Paul and Rich talk to writer Virginia Heffernan about her new book, Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art. The conversation covers Buddhism, Angry Birds, The 4-Hour Workweek, nuclear war, ancient philosophy, Bay Ridge, and wild horses. And like all the best technology podcasts, it includes both numerous references to Jony Ive and a good amount of Latin.

The media industry versus Silicon Valley: this week Paul and Rich set out to ostensibly talk about the ongoing saga of Gawker vs Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel (recorded just days before the Gawker bankruptcy announcement). Instead, they find themselves debating about the ethics of media and business, free-market capitalism, surge pricing, universal basic income, the ethos of the Valley—and Rich promises Paul that he will never read The Fountainhead.

Design and spotting talent from The New York Times to Adobe: this week Paul and Rich sit down with designer Khoi Vinh, who is currently the director of product design for mobile at Adobe. They trace his career from his early agency in New York to his years as design director of newyorktimes.com to his current work building mobile products for a software giant. They discuss everything from process to scaling to how to build a great design team.

Google’s UX, tech in the classroom, and Spotify’s algorithms: this week Rich and Paul answer a host of listener questions and comments. Topics discussed include the abysmal UX of Google’s ad products, Amazon’s strategies for world domination, the digital technologies in today’s elementary schools, and what exactly Spotify’s Discover Weekly thinks of Paul and Rich. (“Guys. Really? Come on. Get out of my house.”)

What is it like to be an iOS programmer? This week Paul and Rich talk to Natalie Podrazik about, in Paul’s words, “the gestalt of iOS programming.” Natalie traces her journey from studying comp-sci to backend programming to developing for Apple devices, where the title “engineer” often encompasses design and user experience alongside writing code...

What is the AMP format, and how will it affect publishers? This week Rich and Paul unveil Mercury, Postlight’s new AMP-conversion tool. As they break down Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages format, they talk about why they built Mercury—and how web publishers can use it. They also discuss the broader (dire) state of publishing on the web, from the introduction of mobile devices to Facebook’s Instant Articles.

How do you define success—or failure? This week, Paul and Rich tackle ideas about failure in business, the tech industry, and their lives. The result is part topical conversation (Apple, Yahoo, the penetrating gaze of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes) and part therapy session. “I don’t know how to feel successful, personally,” Rich admits early on. Paul eventually matches him, announcing, “I think that everything I do and everything I touch is a failure.”