Decrypted

The Big Take from Bloomberg News brings you inside what's shaping the world's economies with the smartest and most informed business reporters around the world. The context you need on the stories that can move markets. Every afternoon.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Deal, hosted by Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly, features intimate conversations with business titans, sports champions and game-changing entrepreneurs who reveal their investment philosophies, pivotal career moves and the ones that got away. From Bloomberg Podcasts and Bloomberg Originals, The Deal is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, Bloomberg Carplay, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also watch The Deal on Bloomberg Television, and Bloomberg Originals on YouTube.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bloomberg News Now is a comprehensive audio report on today's top stories. Listen for the latest news, whenever you want it, covering global business stories around the world.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At Bloomberg, we're always talking about the biggest business stories, and no one is bigger than Elon Musk. In this new chat weekly show, host David Papadopoulos and a panel of guests including Businessweek's Max Chafkin, Tesla reporter Dana Hull, Big Tech editor Sarah Frier, and more, will break down the most important stories on Musk and his empire. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A live Q&A with this season's host, Jamie Tarabay, and a cybersecurity expert featured in the series, Allan Liska. This bonus episode was recorded following a live production of “Foundering: The John McAfee Story” in San Francisco at the RSA Conference in April 2023. The conversation, moderated by Foundering's editor Mark Milian, explores the reporting process for the show and McAfee's lasting impact on the digital security industry.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Coming soon: When nerdy gamer Sam Bankman-Fried rocketed to fame as the world's richest 29-year-old, he pledged to donate his billions to good causes. But then his crypto exchange FTX collapsed Billions of dollars were missing, and Sam was in handcuffs. Those who knew him were left wondering — who was Sam really? A well-meaning billionaire who made a mistake? Or a calculating con man? From Wondery and Bloomberg, the makers of The Shrink Next Door, comes a new story of incredible wealth, betrayal and what happens when “doing good” goes really really bad. Learn more here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/spellcaster-the-fall-of-sam-bankman-fried/id1685258534See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A desperate escape by sea finds John McAfee deported to Europe. He ends up in a small Spanish town, but the walls are closing in on him. Reporter Jamie Tarabay investigates the final days of McAfee and the circumstances surrounding his death.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John McAfee forms a new operation to capitalize on a financial opportunity in cryptocurrencies. Drugs and paranoia take over. Reporter Jamie Tarabay chronicles the beginning of the end for McAfee.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John McAfee is back in America. He meets a new business partner who helps broker a lucrative deal. As reporter Jamie Tarabay learns, the new associate eventually inspires McAfee to make a long-shot bid for the US presidency.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John McAfee seeks to evade a lawsuit and leaves the US behind. He makes a new life for himself in Central America, but reporter Jamie Tarabay finds it doesn't take long before a new crisis envelops him.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After cashing out, John McAfee uproots and tries to reinvent himself. He starts a new company and forms a yoga retreat. Reporter Jamie Tarabay also looks into a new and extremely dangerous hobby that captures McAfee's interest.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

McAfee antivirus software was ubiquitous in the 1990s, and its creator John McAfee helped define the modern cybersecurity industry. McAfee was an archetype of the Silicon Valley founder — bombastic, enigmatic and brilliant. But his life would take a dark turn. Reporter Jamie Tarabay investigated the early days of his career and found that the warning signs were there from the beginning.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This season of Foundering retraces the life and gruesome death of John McAfee. In the 1980s and '90s, the McAfee name was synonymous with computer antivirus software, and he helped establish the modern cybersecurity industry. But afterward, his life took a strange and dark turn. He was accused of murder and went on the lam. He sought to reinvent himself as a cryptocurrency guru and as a candidate for US president. Reporter Jamie Tarabay interviews McAfee's colleagues, acquaintances, investigators and family members to demystify lies he told throughout his life, reveal the secrets he kept and resolve questions surrounding his public and decades-long self-destruction.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted by Bloomberg Opinion senior executive editor Tim O'Brien, Crash Course will bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic business and social upheavals occur. Every week, Crash Course will explore the lessons to be learned when creativity and ambition collide with competition and power -- on Wall Street and Main Street, and in Hollywood and Washington.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It was the end of an era. Jeff Bezos announced he was leaving the CEO role at Amazon and becoming executive chairman. But as one epic business story was ending, another was beginning. His handpicked successor, Andy Jassy, would have to defuse the company's mounting confrontations with regulators and employees, including a rising labor union at a Staten Island warehouse. Reporter Brad Stone chronicles what happened when Jeff Bezos's feet left the ground – literally. One of the world's wealthiest people wanted to spend more time on space travel, philanthropy, and a life of peripatetic indulgence with his new partner, Lauren Sanchez. But with pressing problems facing his company – and the planet – how serious is Bezos about deploying his vast resources and keen intellect to solving real problems? And 30 years after he started Amazon in a Seattle area garage, what will be Bezos and Amazon's lasting legacy? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A wayward CEO, a tabloid newspaper determined to humiliate the world's richest person, a callously disloyal brother and dramatic allegations of cyberespionage and international intrigue. The events surrounding the divorce of Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott in early 2019 were almost too far-fetched to believe. A day after they announced the dissolution of their 25-year marriage with a tweet, the National Enquirer published an explosive story, detailing Bezos's extramarital relationship. Reporter Brad Stone tells the dramatic story of Bezos's evolving personal life and its impact on the tech giant he founded — leading to his ultimate decision to step back from the role of CEO. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

For its first 20 years, Amazon relied on UPS and other delivery companies to get packages to its customers' doorsteps. Then a shipping disaster one Christmas made Jeff Bezos decide to build his own transportation network. Reporter Brad Stone chronicles the remarkable expansion of the Amazon transportation network into our communities, the company's strained relationship with its delivery contractors and drivers, who wear Amazon uniforms but do not technically work for the tech giant. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Jeff Bezos made an unorthodox decision two decades ago to open the Amazon's virtual shelves to merchandise from outside sellers, turning the site from a simple online store into a virtual flea market. But converting Amazon.com into a marketplace also brought unexpected challenges. Cheap knockoffs flooded onto the site. Small businesses discovered that their professional lives were dictated by the whims of executives in Seattle. Reporter Brad Stone chronicles the epic expansion of the Amazon Marketplace, which generated tremendous growth for the company and unprecedented wealth for Jeff Bezos. It also attracted a litany of complaints from customers and competitors – and the critical attention of regulators around the world. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Before Mrs. Maisel was marvelous and Jack Ryan saved the world, Jeff Bezos was convinced that the internet would change how people watched TV shows and movies. His response to the opportunity was called Prime Video –a seemingly prescient bet to bring a selection of video programming into the bundle of perks for Prime members. Reporter Brad Stone tells the story of Amazon's bumpy road into Hollywood. After an early taste of success, the company navigated a public relations crisis around allegations of inappropriate behavior targeted at studio boss Roy Price. And then Bezos got his first significant brush with celebrity culture, sparking a personal reinvention that would have major consequences for the company and his own muted personal life. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

One day in 2011, a small team of Boston-based AI scientists got an unexpected call: Amazon wanted to buy their company. Its founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, was leading a secret team to develop a unique device, a voice-activated computer that could recognize and respond to user questions from across a noisy room. The world would soon know the device as the Amazon Echo, and its virtual personality as Alexa. Brad Stone tells the Alexa story and sizes up its impact on culture, and conventional notions of privacy. He also tracks down the actress who Amazon got to perform the voice that's now in millions of homes worldwide. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Today Amazon is an inescapable juggernaut. Back in 1994, it was just an idea, pitched by a former Wall Street banker named Jeff Bezos to disbelieving investors at the very birth of the internet era. Reporter Brad Stone, who has spent years chronicling the Amazon story, describes how the company almost flamed out the dot.bomb era and how Bezos rescued the company in part by ginning up two new lines of business – Prime shipping and its digital reader, the Kindle. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

This season of Foundering reexamines a foundational story of the internet age: the rise of Amazon and its ingenious founder Jeff Bezos. Over the last 20 years, Amazon has changed the way we shop, what we watch on TV, how we interact with our devices and how businesses consume computing resources. But is Amazon now too powerful—and unaccountable? And how did Bezos, once widely admired, turn into a controversial figure of unfathomable wealth, whose personal pursuits are avidly covered by the tabloids? Following his best-selling book “Amazon Unbound,” Brad Stone continues his exploration of Amazon and its founder, presenting an unvarnished picture of a company that spans the globe and touches nearly every aspect of our lives—for better or worse. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

On Breakthrough, a new series from the Prognosis podcast, we explore how the pandemic is changing our understanding of healthcare and medicine. We start with an examination of long Covid, a mysterious new illness that has stumped doctors attempting to treat symptoms that last for months and potentially years. It has changed the way hospitals work and forced healthcare officials to prepare for the next pandemic. Covid has also opened the door to revolutionary technology: messenger RNA vaccines. It's a technology that never could have been proven so quickly outside the crucible of that first pandemic year, 2020, and it holds big implications for the future of medicine. Breakthrough launches on Oct. 19. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

In the summer of 2020, amid a pandemic, historic unemployment and racial unrest, President Donald Trump developed a bizarre obsession with TikTok. In this episode, reporter Shelly Banjo and her colleagues take you aboard Air Force One and into the surreal tit-for-tat fight between TikTok and one of the most powerful men in the world. Updated May 27, 2021 to reflect ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming's decision to step down.

After Donald Trump is elected president, tensions between the United States and China escalate. Several American politicians, security experts and even Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg turn their attention toward TikTok. In this episode, reporter Shelly Banjo looks into the fundamental question facing TikTok: What user data does TikTok collect, and can that information wind up in the hands of the Chinese government?

While TikTok is known primarily as a breeding ground for funny memes, dance routines and lip-synching videos, there’s a dark side to TikTok that starts with the young children who populate the app. In this episode, reporter Shelly Banjo looks into the consequences of TikTok’s failure to safeguard its adolescent user base. Warning: This episode contains difficult and disturbing reporting, including stories about the sexual exploitation of minors.

TikTok has redefined American pop culture and upended the music industry, advertising and the economics of fame. In this episode, reporter Shelly Banjo examines TikTok’s hands-on approach with its creators and artists, minting a new generation of social media stars and positioning TikTok’s parent company as the first Chinese tech giant to come out with a truly global consumer app.

TikTok is powered by sophisticated artificial intelligence that predicts what users want to see next. This technology was developed at ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company and the most valuable startup in the world. In this episode, reporter Shelly Banjo explains how ByteDance founder and CEO Zhang Yiming fundamentally changed how a generation consumes media on their phones.

Alex Zhu, a Chinese tech entrepreneur, was seated on a train in Silicon Valley across from a group of teenagers. He watched as the kids were listening to music and making videos on their phones, and he decided to create an app that combined the two cultural obsessions. The resulting platform would become the social media powerhouse now known as TikTok. In this episode, reporter Shelly Banjo explains the genesis of Gen Z’s favorite app.

TikTok emerged as the defining app of a generation: a cultural tastemaker, a musical hitmaker and a launchpad for a new breed of celebrity. But as the app reached over 2 billion downloads, TikTok became a victim of its own success, attracting sharp scrutiny from the world’s two most powerful countries. In this season of Foundering, Bloomberg Technology reporter Shelly Banjo tracks the rise of TikTok by taking listeners inside the mysterious Chinese mega-startup behind the phenomenon and the political hysteria that followed.

A few decades ago, nobody really questioned vaccines. They were viewed as a standard part of staying healthy and safe. Today, the number of people questioning vaccines risks prolonging a pandemic that has already killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. How we got to this moment didn’t start with the rollout of vaccines or in March 2020, or even with the election of Donald Trump. Our confidence in vaccines, often isn't even about vaccines. It’s about trust. And that trust has been eroding for a long time. Doubt, a new series from Bloomberg’s Prognosis podcast, looks at the forces that have been breaking down that trust. We'll trace the rise of vaccine skepticism in America to show how we got here — and where we’re going. Doubt launches on March 23. Subscribe to Prognosis today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

The WeWork Story, Part 7: After WeWork's failed IPO, thousands of employees were laid off and the company teetered on the brink of collapse. Meanwhile, ousted CEO Adam Neumann flew to Israel with a generous exit package in hand. In this final episode of Foundering, reporter Ellen Huet surveys the wreckage of WeWork. Adam's executives and employees were asking themselves: Did Adam ever really believe in the values he preached? And what lessons will the world draw from WeWork's crash?

The WeWork Story, Part 6: WeWork had spent nine years chasing lightning-fast growth, burning billions of dollars, and expanding around the world. In 2019, the company reached a turning point: WeWork needed even more cash, and Adam Neumann decided to take his company public with a massive IPO. But suddenly, in the span of a few weeks, his plan crashed spectacularly. The almost-IPO flopped and WeWork became a laughingstock. In this episode, reporter Ellen Huet asks: How did the company's fortune flip so fast, and why didn't they see it coming?

The killers of Berta Caceres had every reason to believe they’d get away with murder. More than 100 other environmental activists in Honduras had been killed in the previous five years, yet almost no one had been punished for the crimes. Bloomberg’s Blood River follows a four-year quest to find her killers – a twisting trail that leads into the country’s circles of power. Blood River premieres on July 27.

Adam Neumann had a vision: to make his startup WeWork a wildly successful company that would change the world. He convinced thousands of other people -- customers, employees, investors -- that he could make that dream a reality. And for a while, he did. He was one of the most successful startup founders in the world. But then, in the span of just a few months, everything changed. Foundering is a new serialized podcast from the journalists at Bloomberg Technology. This season, we’ll tell you the story of WeWork, a company that captured the startup boom of the 2010s and also may be remembered as a spectacular bust that marked the end of an era. Foundering premieres June 25, 2020.

Bloomberg Technology reporter Ellen Huet has some exciting news about what's coming in the Decrypted feed. We’re launching a new show, Foundering, and spending our entire first season looking at the story of WeWork.

This week on Decrypted, hosts Aki and Brad get together one last time for an announcement: This will be the very last episode of Decrypted. They also look back at some of their favorite episodes from the show, with updates on where those stories are today. (But don't unsubscribe from this feed because we'll be announcing a new show next spring!) For a list of episodes Aki and Brad will be discussing: Young Blood and the Pursuit of Eternal Youth He Sparked the Fake News Boom. Then Facebook Broke His Business A Hacker's Redemption, Part 1 and Part 2 Inside a Multinational Cyber Weapons Deal That Went Bust Meet the Whistleblower Behind a Silicon Valley Meltdown Human vs Machine: Fitness Gadgets

Computers can now drive cars, identify faces and transcribe speech, but many experts said that it would take much longer for AI to tackle creative endeavors. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology's Natalia Drozdiak meets three composers using artificial intelligence to make music, and she and host Aki Ito dissect their robo-generated songs.

Under pressure from users, advertisers and government regulators, YouTube has implemented sweeping changes to its service over the last three years to minimize the spread of harmful and misleading content. But those changes have made it harder for many of its creators to make a living off of the platform. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology's Mark Bergen visits YouTube whisperer Tim Schmoyer, who advises other YouTube creators on how to adapt to the changing platform.

The U.S.-China trade war has dragged on for more than a year now, harming the livelihoods of people around the world who depend on the two superpowers getting along. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology's Shelly Banjo profiles one such person: Michael Michelini, an American who moved to China a decade ago to build out his e-commerce business. At the time, Michelini believed that the internet was making the world a more open and interconnected place. Recent tensions between the world's two largest economies have put that faith in doubt. 

Warehouse workers suffer from an unusually high rate of injury. Now, at some facilities, workers can wear a sensor on their chest, which buzzes when they’re at risk of getting hurt. But this tracking device also gathers detailed information about the employee’s movements – and sends this data to their employer. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology’s Joshua Brustein looks at a new technology, whose proponents say will make workplaces safer, but also inspires concern about workplace surveillance.

Over the summer, Elon Musk unveiled the details of his secretive startup Neuralink. Its goal, he said, is to place electrodes in our brains so we can control a computer with our thoughts. Its experiments have so far been limited to rodents and monkeys, but Neuralink builds on strides already made in medicine, where doctors have successfully placed implants into human brains to treat a variety of illnesses. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology’s Sarah McBride visits the primate lab that’s been carrying out Neuralink’s research, and meets the doctors and the patients at the forefront of this emerging field.