Podcasts about senior executive editor

Vania Wisdom, Senior Executive Editor at The Lancet and the journal's Oncology Ambassador, joins Gavin Cleaver to discuss what's being published at this year's American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting, what she's excited to see at the conference, and why ASCO is so important to the field.Continue this conversation on social!Follow us today at...https://thelancet.bsky.social/https://instagram.com/thelancetgrouphttps://facebook.com/thelancetmedicaljournalhttps://linkedIn.com/company/the-lancethttps://youtube.com/thelancettv

Melissa Murray is in for Ali Velshi and is joined by producer and MSNBC Political Contributor, Steve Benen, host and MSNBC Political Analyst, Molly Jong-Fast, NBC News' Senior Executive Editor and author of ‘Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, the FBI, and the War on Democracy”, David Rohde, Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Rohit Chopra, Chair of the Transgender Law Center, Imara Jones, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, Leah Litman, MSNBC Political Analyst and author, ‘Resistance: How Women Saved Democracy from Donald Trump', Jennifer Rubin, New York Times Bestselling author of ‘The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America – and What We Can Do to Stop It', Reproductive Rights Advocate, Kaitlyn Kash, Co-Chair of American Bridge 21st Century, Fmr. Gov. Steve Bullock (D-MT), Fmr. U.S. Senator for Alabama (D) and author of ‘Bending Toward Justice', Fmr. Sen. Doug Jones

Ali Velshi is joined by former Executive Vice-President of the Trump Organization Barbara Res, Producer of The Rachel Maddow Show Steve Benen, retired U.S. Army Colonel Eugene Vindman, Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of PennsylvaniaAnthea Butler, Senior Executive Editor at Bloomberg Opinion Tim O'Brien, Opinion Writer at The Washington PostJennifer Rubin, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Rohit Chopra, Presidential Distinguished Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Michael Mann

Charles Coleman Jr is in for Ali Velshi and is joined by Special Correspondent at Vanity Fair MollyJong-Fast, Professor of Philosophy at Yale University Jason Stanley, NBC News' Julie Tsirkin, Associate Director-Counsel of the Legal Defense Fund Tona Boyd, NBC News' Meagan Fitzgerald, former President of the Alabama Library Association Matthew Layne, Founding Member of Read Freely Alabama Angie Hayden, Senior Executive Editor at Bloomberg Opinion Tim O'Brien,  Investigative Reporter at The New York Times Susanne Craig,  President and Executive Director of Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Damon Hewitt, Chairwoman of the West Bonner County School District Rebuild Dana Douglas, Treasurer of the West Bonner County School District Rebuild Candy Turner

Ali Velshi is joined by producer of the Rachel Maddow Show Steve BeneN, Vanity Fair's Molly Jong-Fast, NBC's Hala Gorani, former U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Vindman, President of the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten, MSNBC Host of ‘Inside with Jen Psaki' Jen Psaki, Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Madeleine Dean, Professor at University of California, Berkeley M. Steven Fish, and Senior Executive Editor of Bloomberg Opinion Tim O'Brien.

Birth is one of the most fraught and polarized issues of our time, at the center of debates on abortion, gender, work, and medicine. But birth is not only an issue; it is a fundamental part of the human condition, and, alongside death, the most consequential event in human life. Yet it remains dramatically unexplored. Although we have long intellectual traditions of wrestling with mortality, few have ever heard of natality, the term political theorist Hannah Arendt used to describe birth's active role in our lives. On February 7, 2024, Morningside held a talk with Jennifer Banks, Senior Executive Editor of Yale University Press, on her new book revealing a provocative counter tradition of birth from Nietzsche and Wollstonecraft to Arendt and Morrison.For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Brendan Murray, Trade Tsar at Bloomberg news, joins to discuss supply chain concerns amid uncertainty in the Middle East. Will Kennedy, Senior Executive Editor for Energy and Commodities with Bloomberg News, joins to talk moves in oil. Nancy Tengler, CEO and CIO at Laffer Tengler Investments joins to discuss markets and outlook for the Fed next week. Ian Whittaker, Managing Director and Owner at Liberty Sky Advisors, joins to discuss the media landscape and outlook for consolidation. Hosted by Paul Sweeney, Kailey Leinz, and Caroline Hyde.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Food prices set to rise again in 2024, some cause for optimism (1:43) Guest: Matias Margulis, Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and Faculty of Land and Food Systems, University of British Columbia Genetic testing firm 23andMe admits hackers accessed DNA data of 7m users (15:55) Guest: Kerry Bowman, Professor of Bioethics and Global Health, University of Toronto Canada's Jewish community faces rise in antisemitism as it gets set to mark Hanukkah (32:49) Guest: Michael Levitt, President/CEO, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center Canada TIME names Taylor Swift 2023 Person of the Year (48:33) Guest: Kelly Conniff, Senior Executive Editor, TIME Oil and gas sector warns emissions cap could lead to production curtailments (1:03:28) Guest: Brandon Schaufele, the Director of the Ivey Energy Policy and Management Centre, Western University He is the most sought after free agent in baseball, what makes Shohei “Shotime” Ohtani such a special player (1:18:33) Guest: Jeff Fletcher, beat writer, Los Angeles Angels, author of Sho-Time: The Inside Story of Shohei Ohtani and the Greatest Baseball Season Ever Played

In Our Defence team is back and how! With a different avatar! In Season 2, India Today TV Output's Senior Executive Editor, Shiv Aroor, joins host Dev Goswami, where they will talk of more guns and battles, wars and coups, interspersed with tales of glory from the battlefields! This episode delves into major global events—Russia's war in Ukraine, the India-China conflict, and the Israel-Hamas conflict. Shiv provides on-the-ground insights from Tel Aviv, analysing whether Israel, in combating terrorists, might inadvertently adopt tactics resembling those they oppose. He recounts a former IDF chief telling him, that “Israel will spend the next 25 years recovering its reputation”. Why does the Israel-Hamas issue persist cyclically? What unfolds in the Russia-Ukraine war, and how concerned should India be? “I see a lot of blood between Russia and Ukraine next summer but the silver lining is that they will be in some way forced to a resolution,” Shiv says. And what developments are on the horizon for the India-China front?  Listen in! Produced by Anna Priyadarshini Sound Mix by Kapil Dev Singh

As you've probably heard by now, TIME's 2023 Person of The Year is Taylor Swift. In this special bonus episode, host Charlotte Alter sits down with TIME's Editor in Chief, Sam Jacobs, and Senior Executive Editor, Kelly Conniff, for a behind-the-scenes look at the history of TIME's legendary, annual Person of the Year issue and to hear all the reasons why Taylor Swift is this year's Person of The Year.   Person of The Year 2023: Taylor Swift | TIME https://time.com/6342806/person-of-the-year-2023-taylor-swift/   For all of TIME's 2023 Person of the Year coverage, visit time.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The Hamilton Review Podcast, we are happy to welcome bestselling author Larry Loftis to the show!  Larry Loftis is the New York Times and international bestselling author of four nonfiction thrillers: "The Watchmaker's Daughter" (international bestseller), "The Princess Spy". "Code Name: Lise" and "Into The Lion's Mouth". In this episode, Mr. Loftis shares all about his book, "The Watchmaker's Daughter", a compelling story about World War II Heroine, Corrie ten Boom. A must listen episode friends, Larry Loftis is a brilliant writer and we are honored to have him on The Hamilton Review Podcast. A two-time winner of the Florida Book Award, Larry's books have been translated into numerous languages and can be found in Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Italy, Serbia, Czech Republic, Mexico, Taiwan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, and throughout the UK. Before becoming a full-time writer, Larry was an AV-rated corporate attorney and adjunct professor of law. His academic legal works have been published in the National Law Journal, Florida Bar Journal and the law reviews of the University of Florida, University of Georgia and Suffolk University. He received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Florida, where he served on the Law Review as the Senior Executive Editor and Senior Articles Editor.     How to contact Larry Loftis: Larry Loftis Instagram Larry Loftis Facebook Larry Loftis Twitter Larry Loftis TikTok How to contact Dr. Bob Hamilton: Dr. Bob on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChztMVtPCLJkiXvv7H5tpDQ Dr. Bob on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drroberthamilton/ Dr. Bob on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bob.hamilton

Join us as we delve deep into the pivotal March 18, 2023 local coverage determination (LCD) that has shaken the pain medicine community by limiting access to sacral lateral branch radiofrequency ablation and imposing stringent documentation requirements to demonstrate the medical necessity for sacroiliac (SI) joint injections.In this episode, host Dr. Shravani Durbhakula, MD, MPH, MBA, and co-host Dr. Mustafa Broachwala, DO, tackle the contentious LCD that threatens to restrict options for patients suffering from chronic SI joint pain and their dedicated doctors. To shed light on this vital issue, they're joined by Zachary L. McCormick, MD, Chief of Spine and Musculoskeletal Medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine and Deputy Editor-in-Chief for AAPM's journal, Pain Medicine;  Lynn Kohan, MD, Chief of Pain Medicine and Fellowship Director at the University of Virginia School of Medicine; and Steven Cohen, MD, the Chief of Pain Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Senior Executive Editor for Pain Medicine.All guests come with a wealth of experience and insight, having been at the forefront in addressing the ramifications of this LCD.

Michael Zeldin, former federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice, and Kailey Leinz, Bloomberg TV and Radio host, join to talk about the fourth indictment of Donald Trump. Drew Reading, Senior Home Builders Analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence, joins to break down Home Depot earnings. Amol Dhargalkar, global head of corporates at Chatham Financial, joins to discuss US real yields reaching a 14-year high and also talks about global economies amid a China slowdown and tightened conditions in the US. Michael Schumacher, Head of Rates and Macro Strategy at Wells Fargo, and Neil Grossman, former CIO at TKNG Capital, join to break down retail sales and Home Depot earnings and how it affects rate hikes for the Fed. Tim O'Brien, Senior Executive Editor with Bloomberg Opinion, and June Grasso, legal analyst with Bloomberg News and host of Bloomberg Law, join to talk about the Trump indictment. Andy Bischof, Utilities Strategist at Morningstar Research Services, discusses the future of Hawaiian Electric after the devastating Hawaii wildfires. Hosted by Paul Sweeney and Matt Miller.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Charles Coleman is in for Ali Velshi and is joined by NBC News' Ryan Reilly, Senior Executive Editor of Bloomberg Opinion Tim O'Brien, President and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics Noah Bookbinder, NBC News' Monica Alba, Opinion Writer with The Washington PostJennifer Rubin, Columnist with The New York Times Michelle Goldberg, NBC News' Steve Patterson, Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter Charlottesville Don Gathers, Author and Poet Caroline Randall Williams, Professor at Georgetown School of Law Paul Butler, Criminal Defense Attorney Danny Cevallos, Fmr. Florida 9TH Judicial Circuit State Attorney Monique Worrell, NBC News Senior Reporter Ben Collins, Founder of Algorithmic Justice League Dr. Joy Buolamwini

Author and award-winning food journalist Summer Miller talks about her first book, New Prairie Kitchen, which won a 2016 Nebraska Book Award for Non-Fiction and was heralded by Oprah Winfrey's private chef as a "love letter to the Heartland.” Miller also talks about balancing being a creative and a mother who works full time, her recipe for developing recipes, and the intersection of food and love and life.Summer Miller's work has appeared in Eating Well, Saveur, Every Day with Rachel Ray, Edible Omaha, Edible Feast, and Grit among others. Miller currently works as the Senior Executive Editor for Suzy Karadsheh's media company, The Mediterranean Dish. In her former life she was a humanitarian aid worker in South Africa, served as the editor-in-chief of The Reader, executive editor of Neighborhood News, and spent time as a public relations professional.

We are thrilled to welcome Sara Sargent, Senior Executive Editor at Random House Books for Young Readers, to the podcast. In our cozy member lounge format (rather like a neighborhood potluck, we think, that happens to feature publishing experts), we asked her questions about how editors choose books, how writers get book deals without agents, and the inner workings of a publishing house—and what this means for you when you pitch your book. Want to try out our new “leave a voicemail” feature (in beta)? Check it out here. We can't wait to hear from you: https://www.podpage.com/the-manuscript-academy/ You can book a meeting with Sara here: https://manuscriptacademy.com/faculty-members/sara-sargent Sara Sargent is a Senior Executive Editor at Random House Books for Young Readers. She has previously held positions at HarperCollins Children's Books, Simon & Schuster, New York Magazine, and Meet the Press. Sara has worked with New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USAToday bestselling authors such as #1 New York Times bestselling authors Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, plus TV star Daymond John, celeb power couple Ciara and Russell Wilson, Olympians Laurie Hernandez and Karen Chen, TV personality Ainsley Earhardt, YouTube star StacyPlays, and fiction writers Abbi Glines, Rosamund Hodge, and Lisa Maxwell. Sara has also worked with internationally bestselling author and actress Lily Collins; National Book Award finalist Deb Caletti; and social media influencers Laci Green, Matthew Espinosa, Baby Ariel, and Arden Rose. Sara received her Master of Science in journalism from Northwestern University. She lives in Brooklyn. Sara is looking for picture books that serve a true purpose—perhaps the perfect bedtime, holiday, potty-training, other-growth-moment story. She loves funny stories with great rhythm and cadence. And she especially loves stories about both identities and childhood experiences that are under-explored and under-served in the current market.

Tim O'Brien, Senior Executive Editor with Bloomberg Opinion, joins to break down the indictment of former President Donald Trump. Annmarie Hordern, Washington correspondent with Bloomberg TV, and Bloomberg Law host June Grasso join to discuss the political and legal implications of the Trump indictment. Michael Zeldin, Former Federal Prosecutor & Former Special Counsel to Robert Mueller when he worked at DOJ, joins to discuss the legal outlook for the Trump indictment. Director of the Center for American Politics and Policy for Brown University, Professor Wendy Schiller, also joins to discuss the outlook for Trump's re-election and the political landscape now that a former US president has been indicted. John Authers, columnist with Bloomberg Opinion, discusses today's PCE data, outlook for rates and inflation, and today's column on “Moneyball Investing.” Anna Han, VP and Equity Strategist at Wells Fargo, discusses markets and investing strategies and how markets are reacting/not reacting to an historic day in America. Hosted by Paul Sweeney and Matt Miller.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode show notes:Welcome to another episode of Just Checking In. Today our guest is noted tech journalist and author Brad Stone. As senior executive editor for global technology at Bloomberg News and author of books including The Everything Store and Amazon Unbound, Brad has followed Amazon's and Jeff Bezos's personal evolution. In this episode, you'll hear about the profound changes Amazon and Bezos have gone through over the last 10 years, many of them related to the company's near-compulsive need to innovate across industries and maintain a mindset Amazon calls “Day 1.” Finally, we discuss Amazon's notoriously tough corporate culture and Bezos's surprisingly sharp PR skills, deployed when an extra-marital affair sparked a high-profile media scandal.Join technology comms pros Becky Buckman and Keyana Corliss as they cut to the heart of today's tech-news cycle and the general craziness that is high-tech corporate communications right now. With a short, not-too-serious take on the industry - with plenty of humor and irony thrown in - they'll bring you the best in the biz, across comms and media together, for one-of-a-kind insights and perspectives you won't hear anywhere else!Jump straight into:00:33 - Welcome back to Season 2 of Just Checking In! 1:45 - The new environment of the tech comms industry - “If you're a tech comms person these days, right? The news cycle is different. You've got different internal dynamics, you're trying to make do with less. It may be a good opportunity for people to reset and really think about their priorities.”2:22 - Layoffs, layoffs, layoffs - “It's been a very interesting few weeks this past week. It's just been one layoff after another. Yeah, I mean, it was kind of like if you're not laying off people, are you even in tech? 3:18 - Season 2 guest lineup - “Let's talk about who we're going to hear from this season, cause I think we have an amazing lineup.” 5:53 - Keyana's life recovery run - “I took a couple of months off and then I took a role outside of Silicon Valley, still in tech. And, you know, I'll sort of ease my way back into the crazy.”7:05 - Intro to Brad Stone - “Excited about our guest today, Brad Stone, who I think many of you probably know, but he is the Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News. He's also the author of some really, really awesome books. Many of them about Jeff Bezos and Amazon. The most recent one, Amazon Unbound”.9:30 - The genesis of Brad's books - “With that kind of sort of intuition based as with all things, uh, for all journalists in insecurity and the feeling like, I didn't know this, this story as well as I was pretending to, I thought, oh, maybe there's room for part two of the story.” 10:43 - Looking for Amazon's cooperation - “I sent one to Jeff and I explained what I wanted, to do. They got back to me and through a series of, I would say kind of negotiations. Over well, or discussions over what I wanted to do and how I would go about it.”14:15 - The real challenge in writing books about Amazon: The case of AWS - “While the chapters are kind of categories, I'm also trying to tell a story.”17:10 - Finding the common thread: Telling a time-coherent story in the ever-changing world of Amazon and Bezos - “The company almost needs to be inventive because, if you don't, you eventually slow down.”18:15 - The Day 1 mentality: Amazon's working culture - “Day one is the...

The European Central Bank and the Bank of England have raised interest rates again, one day after a similar move by the US Federal Reserve. But amid those big players, Britain seems in particular trouble, with the International Monetary Fund warning it will be the only major economy to shrink in 2023. In the UK, the pain and anger poured into the streets on Wednesday when the country saw its biggest strikes in a decade, with as many as half a million workers walking out, from transport to teachers. There's little light at the end of the tunnel, with a cost-of-living crisis forcing around four million children into poverty. Correspondent Nada Bashir was there on "walkout Wednesday."  Also on today's show: Shevaun Haviland, Director General, British Chambers of Commerce; Stephanie Flanders, Senior Executive Editor, Bloomberg; Gina Prince-Bythewood; Director, “The Woman King”; Yascha Mounk; Author, “The Great Experiment” To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy

Joining Iain Dale on Cross Question this evening are environmental campaigner and former Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey, Social Mobility Minister Mims Davies, economist and Senior Executive Editor at Bloomberg Stephanie Flanders and Labour MP Barry Gardiner.

Failings in the probation service, Cross Question & should women get menopause leave? Joining Iain Dale on Cross Question this evening are environmental campaigner and former Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey, Social Mobility Minister Mims Davies, economist and Senior Executive Editor at Bloomberg Stephanie Flanders and Labour MP Barry Gardiner.

The financial markets have been in turmoil since the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, unveiled a big package of economic measures last Friday. Traders responded to the prospect of major tax cuts by selling the pound. The Bank of England then had to intervene to protect the UK's pension system.What exactly is causing the financial instability and what might that mean for the British economy over the next few years?Joining David Aaronovitch in The Briefing Room are: Dharshini David, BBC Economics Correspondent. Toby Nangle, Economics commentator and former asset fund manager. Martin Weale, Professor of Economics at King's College, London. Chris Giles, Economics Editor of the Financial Times. Stephanie Flanders, Senior Executive Editor for Economics at Bloomberg.Producers: Octavia Woodward, Daniel Gordon and Simon Watts Editor: Richard Vadon Sound Engineer: Neil Churchill Production Co-ordinators: Siobhan Reed and Helena Warwick-Cross PHOTO: The Bank of England (Getty Images)

Bloomberg's Senior UK Economist, Dan Hanson, says Prime Minister Liz Truss' energy package, thought to total some £200bn, can help avert a recession. He joins Bloomberg anchors Caroline Hepker and Alex Webb to analyse the new Conservative government along with Bloomberg's Political Editor Kitty Donaldson and Senior Executive Editor for EMEA David Merritt.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If These Walls Could Talk with Wendy Stuart & Tym MossHosts: WENDY STUART & TYM MOSSSpecial guest: CATHERINE SCHULLERWednesday, December 15th2pm EST LIVE from PANGEA Restaurant, NYCWatch LIVE on YouTube at Wendy Stuart TVShe has been Image and Style Advisor for the past 14 years with Divabetic, a charity outreach for women living with, at risk of or affected by the epidemic of diabetes in America today. She teaches sustainability at LIM and is a member of the NYC Fair Trade Coalition. She recently curated and coordinated models and designers for the world's largest clothing swap endeavor called DAFT BRUNCH with Common Objective and Global Fashion Exchange. She curates and creative directs for a new Fashion + Tech platform called hiTechMODA: Fashion Forward Innovation and ReGen Runway now in its 4th season at the National Geographic Encounter venue. Her secret identity is widow and legacy advocate of the legendary Senior Executive Editor, Mark Gruenwald. He was called the “heart and soul of Marvel Comics” having overseen the continuity and editing for more than 3,000 titles and actually wrote Captain America (1985-1995) longer than any other writer in the history of the famed character. She launched CosMODA: Cosplay Runway at the Marriott Marquis in September 2021 in his honor claiming the descriptive tag line, “if Comic had a baby with Fashion Week, that's CosMODA!”Who else but hosts Wendy Stuart and Tym Moss could “spill the tea” on their weekly show “If These Walls Could Talk” live from Pangea Restaurant on the Lower Eastside of NYC, with their unique style, of honest, and emotional interviews, sharing the fascinating backstories of celebrities, entertainers, recording artists, writers and artists and bringing their audience along for a fantastic ride.Wendy Stuart is an author, celebrity interviewer, model, filmmaker and hosts “Pandemic Cooking With Wendy,” a popular Youtube comedic cooking show born in the era of Covid-19, and TriVersity Talk, a weekly web series with featured guests discussing their lives, activism and pressing issues in the LGBTQ Community.Tym Moss is a popular NYC singer, actor, and radio/tv host who recently starred in the hit indie film “JUNK” to critical acclaim.

John Liu, Bloomberg's Senior Executive Editor for Greater China, on China weighing a mortgage grace period. He spoke with hosts Doug Krizner and Juliette Saly on Bloomberg Radio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Session 5 at The Economy 2030 Inquiry conference. How should the UK confront its legacy of low growth and high inequality? Will the UK have the bandwidth to renew its economic strategy given the major change coming in the 2020s: Brexit, net zero and the legacy of Covid? And what could Labour's economic strategy for Britain in the 2020s look like? Join Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves to discuss these questions and more with Senior Executive Editor of Bloomberg, Stephanie Flanders. Read the full report: https://economy2030.resolutionfoundation.org/reports/stagnation-nation/  Watch back the full event: https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/events/stagnation-nation/ 

Boris Johnson's government is imploding. His attempt to stop the rebellion in his party by quickly installing senior Tories as chancellor and health secretary has clearly not worked. In this week's In The City, Bloomberg Westminster reporter Alex Wickham paints a dire picture for Downing street and looks ahead to what kind of chancellor Nadhim Zahawi will be--depending on how long he'll be able to stick around. Plus, Senior Executive Editor for Economics and Government Stephanie Flanders and Bloomberg Opinion columnist Marcus Ashworth join to discuss what the political turmoil could mean for the UK economy. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

 After Boris Johnson scraped through a leadership challenge, will the worsening economic outlook be the next storm the Prime Minister faces? Bloomberg's Senior Executive Editor for EMEA David Merritt and Bloomberg Opinion Columnist Marcus Ashworth discuss the outlook for the challenging months ahead. Plus, Caroline Hepker and Stephen Carroll speak to the journalist Mary Ann Sieghart about her book 'The Authority Gap', and the hurdles female leaders she interviewed have experienced in their careers.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Fed is considering an aggressive rate-hiking plan to keep consumer prices from skyrocketing higher. Some economists feel the Fed's plan could backfire and do serious harm to the economy, possibly triggering a recession. Should we be concerned now about a worst case scenario? If so, what does this all mean for investors and how do we prepare?In this episode, we'll hear from a guest with a long history as a financial market writer and editor. Gary Alexander has been Senior Writer at Navellier since 2009. He helped the company's namesake, analyst Louis Navellier, in launching Navellier's Blue Chip Growth and Global Growth newsletters and currently edits Navellier's weekly Marketmail and writes a weekly Growth Mail column. Before that he spent 20 years as the Senior Executive Editor at InvestorPlace Media where he worked with several top analysts including Navellier. He's also worked as an editor at other financial publications including Wealth Magazine and Gold Newsletter, and he's authored various investment research reports.He earned the nickname “The Elder Statsman” when he was 25 years old because he kept pointing out how numbers were being misused in news reports to his newsroom boss. He says the word “elder” was a play on his youth but he's truly “elder” now! Let's call him a “wise elder”!If you'd like to "up your game" in the investment world and learn how to create passive income with single-family rentals, go to realwealthshow.com and sign up for free. As a member, you'll get access to the Investor Portal where you can see sample properties and connect with our network of resources. That includes experienced investment counselors, property teams, lenders, 1031 exchange facilitators, attorneys, CPAs and more. And please remember to subscribe to our podcast and leave a review! Thank you!

What are the limits of free media? The Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries is calling on regulator Ofcom to consider action against Russian "propaganda" in the UK, shining a spotlight on TV channel RT. Elsewhere in the UK, the Supreme Court has stopped Bloomberg from publishing an investigation, on privacy grounds. Some have condemned this as threat to journalists' ability to investigate. So when should a state or the law intervene in press freedom? Guests: Erika Solomon, Berlin Correspondent at the Financial Times; David Merritt, Senior Executive Editor at Bloomberg News; Hugh Tomlinson QC; Francis Scarr, BBC Monitoring journalist in Moscow; Chris Curtis, Editor-in-Chief at Broadcast Magazine. Studio engineer: Tim Heffer Producer: Hannah Sander Presenter: Ros Atkins

Hosts Guy Johnson and Alix Steel speak with Stephanie Flanders, Senior Executive Editor for Economics and Head of Bloomberg Economics, and Kriti Gupta, Bloomberg Markets Correspondent.

Author of that Jeff Bezos biography, it's safe to say Brad Stone understands everyone's favourite cardboard abuser, Amazon like the back of his hand. As the company turns a pivotal moment as the baton is handed to Andy Jassy from Jeff Bezos, where does it go next? How will it maintain and strengthen its power? Find out this and a whole lot more on Mouthwash.ABOUT BRAD (@bradstone)Brad Stone is Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News where he oversees a team of 65 reporters and editors that covers high-tech companies, startups, cyber security and internet trends around the world. Over the last ten years, as a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, he's authored over two dozen cover stories on companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Softbank, Twitter, Facebook and the Chinese internet juggernauts Didi, Tencent and Baidu. He's a regular contributor to Bloomberg's technology newsletter Fully Charged, and to the daily Bloomberg TV news program, Bloomberg Technology. Author of four books, including Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley; it's safe to say Brad gets Silicon Valley and specifically, everyone's favourite cardboard abuser, Amazon.Previously a San Francisco-based correspondent for The New York Times and Newsweek, Brad lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three daughters. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

601: In this interview, Brad Stone, Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News and bestselling author of his latest book Amazon Unbound, focuses on Amazon's growth since his last book and what the future of Amazon looks like. Brad describes his decision to write about Amazon again after his 2013 book and shares insights from it on how Amazon manages to succeed despite its increasing size. He also talks about what the handoff of the CEO role to Andy Jassy will look like, Amazon's headwinds when it comes to regulatory scrutiny, and Amazon's overall impact on society. Brad discusses how Amazon continued its massive growth during the pandemic, how Amazon attracts and retains technical talent in a competitive market, and how Amazon strategizes its acquisitions. Finally, Brad gives his perspective on how Jeff Bezos's personal life influences his success at Amazon, how Brad's access to Amazon and Bezos's circle of friends changed after his first book, and what Brad Stone sees as his next big topic to investigate.

601: In this interview, Brad Stone, Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News and bestselling author of his latest book Amazon Unbound, focuses on Amazon's growth since his last book and what the future of Amazon looks like. Brad describes his decision to write about Amazon again after his 2013 book and shares insights from it on how Amazon manages to succeed despite its increasing size. He also talks about what the handoff of the CEO role to Andy Jassy will look like, Amazon's headwinds when it comes to regulatory scrutiny, and Amazon's overall impact on society. Brad discusses how Amazon continued its massive growth during the pandemic, how Amazon attracts and retains technical talent in a competitive market, and how Amazon strategizes its acquisitions. Finally, Brad gives his perspective on how Jeff Bezos's personal life influences his success at Amazon, how Brad's access to Amazon and Bezos's circle of friends changed after his first book, and what Brad Stone sees as his next big topic to investigate.

Lauren Horwtiz is a Senior Content Director for Informa, writing primarily for IoT World Today. Prior to her role at Informa, Lauren was Managing Editor of Cisco.com and Senior Executive Editor in the Business Applications and Architecture group at TechTarget. With over 20 years of experience in the digital publishing industry under her belt, Lauren has an extensive knowledge of digital trends. She joins ConnectThe2 to discuss her favorite aspects of covering IoT, the upsides and downsides of PR pitches, the future of smart environments and more. Quotes • “I spent many years of my career trying to really cultivate that roster of smart, tech-savvy freelancers who either really understand technology or they're good writers. And certainly the technologists, the IT pros that we use for stories are also sometimes our sources for comments.” (11:20-11:52) • “I like to think of IoT Today as always offering in some of our longer stories still that opportunity to cover the waterfront and really hear from different sources on a topic and do a state of the nation. It's very labor-intensive….in media, we're moving at a faster pace now, so investing resources in one story gets harder and harder, but I still think it's the best way to do a story.” (16:15-16:43) • “I think PR people spend a lot of time writing really lengthy pitches, but actually they'd be better served not spending so much time on the prose and really distilling the information down, so that it's really efficiently presented for people who are getting 50, 60, 100 pitches a day.” (21:28-21:48) • “When you look at some of the smart environments that are being built right now, they're often for residential and corporate use combined, there's a lot of mixed use stuff happening, and we're just looking at a whole different way of living and working, often in tandem.” (23:01-23:25) Links https://www.iotworldtoday.com/2021/03/11/digital-twins-in-health-already-helping-in-disease-treatment/ https://tmt.knect365.com/iot-world/ https://www.iotworldtoday.com/event/iot-world-2021/ Learn more about Connect2 Communications Website: https://www.connect2comm.com/ Podcast home page: https://www.connect2comm.com/podcast Twitter handle: @Connect2_Comm Instagram handle: @connect2_comm LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/connect2-communications Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Connect2-Communications

Welcome to the The Voice of Retail , I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.On this special episode I am thrilled to be sharing a excerpt from the recent season three opener of my Remarkable Retail podcast, where my podcast partner Steve Dennis and I interview Brad Stone. Brad is the senior executive editor of global technology at Bloomberg News and author of Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire.  Let's listen in now starting with an introduction by Steve. Remarkable Retail is back with Season 3 and we kick it off with our special guest Brad Stone, senior executive editor for global technology at Bloomberg News and bestselling author of several books, including his latest Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire.In this fast-paced interview--nicely timed for the week that Andy Jassy takes over as CEO of Amazon--we have the opportunity to dig into the company's journey since Brad's last book ( The Everything Store) and take an insider's view of Jeff Bezos' unique leadership style. In addition to unpacking some of the keys to the company's remarkable growth--and apparent invincibility--Brad shares some illuminating and amusing anecdotes. We also tee up what's most important to keep an eye on in the future.Brad Stone is the author of four books, including Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, published by Simon & Schuster in May 2021. It traces the transformation of Amazon into one of the largest and most feared companies of the world and the accompanying emergence of its founder, Jeff Bezos, as the richest man alive.Brad is also the author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, which chronicled the foundational early years of the company. The book, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, was translated into more than 35 languages and won the 2013 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. In 2017, he also published The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley. Brad is Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News where he oversees a team of 65 reporters and editors that covers high-tech companies, startups, cyber security and internet trends around the world. Over the last ten years, as a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, he's authored over two dozen cover stories on companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Softbank, Twitter, Facebook and the Chinese internet juggernauts Didi, Tencent and Baidu. He's a regular contributor to Bloomberg's technology newsletter Fully Charged, and to the daily Bloomberg TV news program, Bloomberg Technology.He was previously a San Francisco-based correspondent for The New York Times and Newsweek. A graduate of Columbia University, he is originally from Cleveland, Ohio and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three daughters.Steve Dennis is an advisor, keynote speaker and author on strategic growth and business innovation. You can learn more about Steve on his       website.    The expanded and revised edition of his bestselling book  Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption is now available at  Amazon or just about anywhere else books are sold. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a      Forbes senior contributor and on       Twitter and       LinkedIn. You can also check out his speaker "sizzle" reel      here.Michael LeBlanc  is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice.   He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.  Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada's top retail industry podcast,       The Voice of Retail, plus        Global E-Commerce Tech Talks  and       The Food Professor  with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois.  You can learn more about Michael       here  or on       LinkedIn. 

In today's episode, Trey Lockerbie sits down with Brad Stone, the Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg. Brad is also a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of titles such as The Everything Store, The Upstarts as well as his new book Amazon: Unbound. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN:(02:07) Why his first book on Amazon deserved a sequel (11:05) Amazon's explosive growth in multiple industries, as well as failures like the Fire phone.(25:36) The leadership style of Bezos, good and bad*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.BOOKS AND RESOURCES:Brad Stone books: Amazon: Unbound, The Everything Store, The Upstarts. Preston, Trey & Stig's tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) hereSupport our free podcast by supporting our sponsorsHELP US OUT!Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It takes less than 30 seconds, and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Brad Stone is a Senior Executive Editor at Bloomberg News. He joins me this week to talk about his excellent book Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire. We talk about automation, HQ2, Prime Studios, fake reviews, Seinfeld, and the tension between creativity and analytics at the world's largest e-tailer.Support the show

July 2021 is a big month for Amazon's Founder and former CEO, Jeff Bezos. Not only did he step down as CEO of the company he built into a $1.63 trillion empire, he will also fly into space on the first crewed flight of his New Shepard rocket ship. And yet, the space trip is just the most recent of Bezos' boundary-breaking endeavors. Bezos and his company have revolutionized American business, extending their reach into nearly every industry— from retail, to media, to healthcare, and cloud computing. Brad Stone—the author, most recently, of Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire—explains that the e-commerce giant has often seemed “unbound from the laws of corporate gravity.” While most companies eventually plateau, Stone says that Amazon has defied these business norms by continuing to grow rapidly. Stone, a Senior Executive Editor at Bloomberg News with years of experience reporting on the company, examines Amazon's various successes and Bezos' sweeping influence. Specifically, he traces Bezos' transformation from a frugal tech nerd to a buff billionaire whose high-profile divorce made headlines. But what exactly accounts for Amazon's extraordinary rise? If there is one thing that drives Bezos, Stone points out, it's his deep fear of stasis.

We're back with Season 3 and we kick it off with our special guest Brad Stone, senior executive editor for global technology at Bloomberg News and bestselling author of several books, including his latest Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire.We open up the episode with our quick takes on recent earnings announcements from Nike and Bed, Bath & Beyond, pending IPO action from digitally native brand pioneers Warby Parker and Allbirds and what we should make of deal activity in the lingerie category. Indeed, we over it all!Then, in a fast-paced interview--nicely timed for the week that Andy Jassy takes over as CEO of Amazon--we have the opportunity to dig into the company's journey since Brad's last book ( The Everything Store) and take an insider's view of Jeff Bezos' unique leadership style. In addition to unpacking some of the keys to the company's remarkable growth--and apparent invincibility--Brad shares some illuminating and amusing anecdotes. We also tee up what's most important to keep an eye on in the future.NOTE: We'll be releasing episodes every two weeks, through September 7, when we'll move back to a weekly format.Brad Stone is the author of four books, including Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, published by Simon & Schuster in May 2021. It traces the transformation of Amazon into one of the largest and most feared companies of the world and the accompanying emergence of its founder, Jeff Bezos, as the richest man alive.Brad is also the author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, which chronicled the foundational early years of the company. The book, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, was translated into more than 35 languages and won the 2013 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. In 2017, he also published The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley. Brad is Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News where he oversees a team of 65 reporters and editors that covers high-tech companies, startups, cyber security and internet trends around the world. Over the last ten years, as a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, he's authored over two dozen cover stories on companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Softbank, Twitter, Facebook and the Chinese internet juggernauts Didi, Tencent and Baidu. He's a regular contributor to Bloomberg's technology newsletter Fully Charged, and to the daily Bloomberg TV news program, Bloomberg Technology.He was previously a San Francisco-based correspondent for The New York Times and Newsweek. A graduate of Columbia University, he is originally from Cleveland, Ohio and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three daughters.Steve Dennis is an advisor, keynote speaker and author on strategic growth and business innovation. You can learn more about Steve on his       website.    The expanded and revised edition of his bestselling book  Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption is now available at  Amazon or just about anywhere else books are sold. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a      Forbes senior contributor and on       Twitter and       LinkedIn. You can also check out his speaker "sizzle" reel      here.Michael LeBlanc  is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice.   He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.  Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada's top retail industry podcast,       The Voice of Retail, plus        Global E-Commerce Tech Talks  and       The Food Professor  with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois.  You can learn more about Michael       here  or on       LinkedIn. 

Google Play Store audiobook preview, "Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the invention of a Global Empire," by Brad Stone, Senior Executive Editor of Global Technology at Bloomberg News. Author of the New York Times Bestseller "The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the age of Amazon," translated into over 35 languages, and "The Upstarts: Uber, AirBnB," and "The battle for the New Silicon Valley." He has covered Silicon Valley for more than 20 years and lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

We are back in the studio of Equipped To Be for part II of my interview with international bestselling author Larry Loftis. We begin this episode with how I met Mr. Loftis through a mutual friend.   During this part of the conversation, I share an untold story of how his advice positively impacted my journey to becoming a first-time author with a well-known publishing house. While writing Parenting Beyond the Rules: Raising Teens with Confidence and Joy,  Mr. Loftis provided sage advice that helped me navigate the publishing world with increased confidence.   In the next segment, we change the topic back to Mr. Loftis. He began his writing career early in life by publishing numerous scholarly legal articles in university law reviews and professional bar journals. His desire for excellence drove him to author several business books, which he found dry and boring. When the housing market collapsed in 2008, he decided to take some time off to figure out what he was passionate about and interested in.   Listen in for the whole story and read the full show notes here: https://conniealbers.com/interview-with-larry-loftis-part-ii/   About Larry Loftis Larry Loftis is the New York Times and international bestselling author of the nonfiction spy thrillers CODE NAME: LISE: The True Story of the Woman Who Became WWII's Most Highly Decorated Spy and Into the Lion's Mouth: The True Story of Dusko Popov—World War II Spy, Patriot, and the Real-Life Inspiration for James Bond. His third nonfiction thriller, The Princess Spy: The True Story of World War II Spy Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones, is now out and was an instant New York Times bestseller. His books have been translated into multiple languages around the world, including Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese, Czech, and Serbian.   Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Mr. Loftis was a corporate attorney, publishing scholarly legal articles in the University of Florida Law Review, Suffolk Transnational Law Journal, Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law, Florida Bar Journal, National Law Journal, and Florida Banking. He also has served as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Florida Law School, where he taught writing and appellate advocacy. He received his B.A. and J.D. from the University of Florida, where he served on the Law Review as Senior Executive Editor and Senior Articles Editor.

In this episode, we sit down with Brad Stone, the author of Amazon Unbound. Building off of the book, the conversation explores the leadership of Jeff Bezos, Amazon in healthcare, leadership changes within Amazon, and more.

The odds of becoming a published author are low, but becoming a bestselling author is extremely difficult. Larry Loftis not only beat the odds, but he has also hit the NYT bestseller list multiple times. He is a highly acclaimed nonfiction thriller author who specializes in writing about WWII espionage.   Mr. Loftis joins me for a candid interview to discuss how he did beat the odds and the lessons he learned along the way.   Read more of our conversation and get links to the resources discussed in the full show notes: https://conniealbers.com/interview-with-larry-loftis/   About Larry Loftis Larry Loftis is the New York Times and international bestselling author of the nonfiction spy thrillers CODE NAME: LISE: The True Story of the Woman Who Became WWII's Most Highly Decorated Spy and Into the Lion's Mouth: The True Story of Dusko Popov—World War II Spy, Patriot, and the Real-Life Inspiration for James Bond. His third nonfiction thriller, The Princess Spy: The True Story of World War II Spy Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones, is now out and was an instant New York Times bestseller. His books have been translated into multiple languages around the world, including Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese, Czech, and Serbian.   Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Mr. Loftis was a corporate attorney, publishing scholarly legal articles in the University of Florida Law Review, Suffolk Transnational Law Journal, Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law, Florida Bar Journal, National Law Journal, and Florida Banking. He also has served as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Florida Law School, where he taught writing and appellate advocacy. He received his B.A. and J.D. from the University of Florida, where he served on the Law Review as Senior Executive Editor and Senior Articles Editor.

Brad Stone, Bloomberg’s Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology, covers high-tech companies, startups, cybersecurity, and internet trends around the world. His most recent book, Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, builds on his 2013 bestseller as a gateway to how technology changes lives. He joins the podcast to talk about scoops in Silicon Valley and how companies like UBER (NYSE:UBER) and Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) are continuing to thrive through uncertain times.   Inside the ICE House: https://www.theice.com/insights/conversations/inside-the-ice-house  

Purchase Brad’s books (Amazon Unbound, The Upstarts, and The Everything Store) at The Realignment’s Bookshop store: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-realignment-bookshop Brad Stone, Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News and author of Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, joins The Realignment to discuss the challenges, impact, and scope of Jeff Bezos and Amazon’s ambitions in cloud computing, streaming services, news media, retail, politics and more.

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew is joined by Brad Stone, the author of "Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire", to discuss how a retail upstart became one of the most powerful and feared entities in the global economy. Brad Stone is the author of four books, including Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, published by Simon & Schuster in May 2021. It traces the transformation of Amazon into one of the largest and most feared companies of the world and the accompanying emergence of its founder, Jeff Bezos, as the richest man alive. Brad is also the author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, which chronicled the foundational early years of the company. The book, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, was translated into more than 35 languages and won the 2013 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. In 2017, he also published The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley. Brad is Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News where he oversees a team of 65 reporters and editors that covers high-tech companies, startups, cyber security and internet trends around the world. Over the last ten years, as a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, he’s authored over two dozen cover stories on companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Softbank, Twitter, Facebook and the Chinese internet juggernauts Didi, Tencent and Baidu. He’s a regular contributor to Bloomberg’s technology newsletter Fully Charged, and to the daily Bloomberg TV news program, Bloomberg Technology. He was previously a San Francisco-based correspondent for The New York Times and Newsweek. A graduate of Columbia University, he is originally from Cleveland, Ohio and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three daughters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

EP263 - Amazon Unbound Author Brad Stone  In 2014 Brad Stone wrote the seminal biography of Amazon, "The Everything Store." In it, he discovered Jeff Bezos birth father, and even earned a negative review on Amazon, from Amazon's co-founder Mckinsey Scott (then McKinsy Bezos). Brad is also a Senior Executive Editor with Bloomberg News, and can be found at his personal website brad-stone.com. This year Brad followed it up with Amazon Unbound, which released on May 11, 2021. Chronicling the dramatic growth of Amazon and Jeff. Bezos (now the richest person in the world). In this episode we interview Brad to find out all about the Amazon Unbound. Episode 263 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday May 13, 2021. Disclosure: Links are affiliate links http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 263 being recorded on Wednesday May 12th 2021 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Well Jason had would not be a Jason Scott show if we didn't talk a little bit about Amazon and for all you Amazon lovers out there this whole episode is a hundred percent Amazon in fact when you think of Amazon V book that is the defining book about Amazon is called the everything store one of my favorite books and it's by this dude I know bradstone well we have some exciting news Brad has a follow-up book called Amazon Unbound and we are really excited to have him on the Jason Scott show to talk about the book and all things Amazon welcome to the show Brad. Brad: [1:16] Thank you guys it's great to be here. Jason: [1:19] Oh my God we are thrilled to have you I'm pretty sure that when we put together the show schedule for the year Scott circled this date on his calendar back in back in January he's so excited about Amazon books. Scot: [1:33] Close to me fourth which is also one of my. Brad: [1:35] Let me just say also you know I've been covering Amazon for you know probably 20 years to date all of us and you know through the years I can count on one hand like the people who've been like my guides and you both you guys have been like tremendous sources of insight over the years Scot like when I was at the times I would always bug you for insight and Jason and I think you were at retailgeek the same and so it's just great to great it's I've been a fan of the podcast and it's great to now be a guest. Jason: [2:09] We are thrilled to have you we're I want to jump in but for. The the Casual with our core listeners are super familiar with you to be quite honest bread but for the Casual listener who maybe isn't familiar with you when you are not writing Amazon books what is your day job can you give. Brad: [2:31] I am an editor at Bloomberg News and I actually run the technology team at Bloomberg and so that's 65 journalists around the world who cover the big tech companies and the disruptive startups and venture capital and cybersecurity and cyber crime and it's a great gig Bloomberg's a great organization I've written three books while I'm there they're really supportive and we have a TV show we do a podcast we do a newsletter you can find it all at bloomberg.com Tech and it's a really great team. Jason: [3:07] That is awesome and can you tell us how you sort of got the original Amazon bug that I assume triggered the first book. Brad: [3:15] So you know I'm at the New York Times in the late mm first decade of the 2000s what do we call that the two thousand owes and I'm writing about the Kindle and I'm calling up you know Scott Wingo every time they have earnings or some announcement to try to make sense of it all and and then eventually I think I sort of decided. [3:41] I was looking for another book I had written one book that was not well received it was about robots and I was looking for like the you know the the the makeup project the dignity restoration project and I just you know saw that there were Facebook books and Apple Books and Google Books and and no one had I felt it done a great job with Amazon and I was the Amazon reporter at the times and the Kindle had had kind of upended the book publishing industry and Amazon maybe for the first time since the.com boom was sort of seen as interesting and disruptive. [4:18] And I had no foresight that this was like the defining Juggernaut company of our time or that Bezos would be the wealthiest person in the world it was it was simply like it it felt like a little bit of a clear Avenue for me to try it again to be an author and and to take on this really complicated company so that was the inspiration for the first book and you know and then I know you're probably wondering like why why the heck am I such a glutton for punishment that I would do it again and simply the story just kept on evolving and you know I'd written about the Kindle company, but it was the Alexa company and the 100 billion dollar company was the trillion dollar company and the marketplace have been globalized and they had bought at Whole Foods and acquired a transportation arm built a transportation arm I should say and and it's just seemed like chapter to Scotts a big Star Wars fan and you know I had written Star Wars and I felt like okay it was time for The Empire Strikes Back. And that was kind of the inspiration. Scot: [5:18] Yeah you could you could squeak at work Trilogy out of this and maybe even a saga if you keep going. Brad: [5:23] Yeah that sounds painful right now but the metaphor does suggest that at some point there needs to be Return of the Jedi. Scot: [5:29] Yeah one of when you I remember you know when the first book came out you know you broke some news you had discovered Jeff's biological father and that was kind of a really big breaking news and today actually the timing is perfect because you had breaking news and that you discovered something about a tiny little boat that Jeff was was was buying tell us more about this I think it's called a dinghy is that right a dinghy. Brad: [5:55] Exactly well as I was sort of like charting his personal transformation you know the guy who you know. I had interviewed and who was the leader of Amazon 2010-2012 you know he never really went for big extravagant personal Indulgence has a lot of his a lot of his like assets or you know luxury is tended to be like time-saving things a home in New York so he could crash there when he was on the East Coast or an airplane a personal jet you know as one has to to save himself time but he wasn't a boat guy and and so. A couple things happened which may it just made me sort of wonder if he was embracing the lifestyle he was photographed on David Geffen's yacht or maybe was Barry Diller Jack probably both and you know and of course. Lauren Sanchez his new partner you know moved in those circles and at the same time I saw a Facebook post from Ocean actually with someone observing an ocean Co yacht and it was like the whole of what they described as like the largest sailing yacht in existence and that sent me down this path of wondering well I should say people were speculating that Bezos had bought another boat. Now and I was looking into that and that proved to be incorrect but yes he he has he is spending hundreds of billions millions of dollars to build a one of the. [7:20] Biggest sailing yachts in the world and part of the Revelation and the book is it has a support yeah because you can't land a helicopter on the sailing yacht because of the mass so. PCS gotta is building two boats. Scot: [7:33] It's tonight so it kind of brings another boat just to hold the helicopter kind of a think very cool wonderful and smart rockets on there at some point. Brad: [7:41] I wonder if any of us will be invited to the party on the boat it's probably not I would think. Scot: [7:48] Jason because of the successful podcast we have a jet and that the hardest part about it is sharing it with Jason you always he spills the Starbucks on their his kid comes on and makes a mouse so so if you're going to get a jet like get your own it's not really nice to share this. Huh. Jason: [8:05] It's a good goal for Scott to be successful enough to not have to share my jet anymore Brett I have to be honest like when I first read the yacht thing I assumed it was a hoax and. And I don't mean that like I don't mean to be light of that but there actually was. I want to say like a almost equally credible news organization the Telegraph and London like into 2020 reported that Bill Gates had bought like a 650 million dollar yacht, I don't know if you remember this but it was kind of like a meme for for a month and it turned out to be totally untrue. Brad: [8:48] Hmm. Jason: [8:49] Um and so when I and a largely like in the past Bill Gates had talked about like. What atrocious thing it is for the earth and the planet for one you know human being too. To own a half billion dollar yacht and so it seemed wildly out of character for him to have bought one so then fast forward in this year and I like we're maybe jumping way ahead but I it kind of feels like there's a little bit of a Jeff Bezos reputation. Repair program underway an element of which went live today I think he announced a billion-dollar Earth Earth fund and you know for sure in the shareholder letter he's weaning heavily into. For a well wellness and all these things it just seems like buying a half billion dollar or more yacht like. Is not does not fit very well in that neck. Brad: [9:45] It doesn't do wonders for the for the reputation and and yeah the the accumulation of wealth is so controversial and polarizing these days that you know time of like income inequality and suffering through the pandemic but this is the transformation this is why the book I think is in it cat tries to tell an interesting story because it's not just as a business story you know a small or a big company getting bigger it's the story of a person changing and and like a human right who is. You know probably vulnerable to you know everything that you know from flattery to the attention that comes with being really famous to the luxuries that come with extravagant wealth and he didn't start out as a boat guy but he seems to have ended up as one and so that is you know I hope that that runs that theme runs through the book that getting getting into Hollywood. You know bringing Amazon to Hollywood owning The Washington Post fighting with Trump fighting with MBS and Saudi Arabia that these are always stations on like an incredible transformation of one of the most famous business people in the world that's been happening really before our eyes. Jason: [11:03] Yeah and I mean just side know like if you're gonna pick enemies I feel like president of the United States and like Sovereign leader of Saudi Arabia are like the perfect two guys to make enemies I do want it you alluded to it I want to jump right into the structure of the book so it's interesting this time you you sort of broke the narrative up into these three big chunks you have the invention chunk The Leverage Chunk in the inventor, invincibility chunk can you kind of walk us through the thought process there and what readers should expect. Brad: [11:38] Yeah sure I mean one it was an incredibly challenging book to organize because as you guys can appreciate it's all happening at once right Marketplace and Alexa and India and Hollywood and groceries Transportation advertising and then the personal stuff blue origin Washington Post, HQ to the personal Scandal I mean you know and readers want to read a chronological story and if you're going to. Describe a story of change you know you started the beginning and you know the caterpillar morphs into the butterfly and so that was a useful way to organize it um I kind of fit into a narrative chronology but invention is essentially the new stuff it's the story of Alexa the the retail technology is like the ghost or the expansion into India and Mexico and then Hollywood and also Jeff's. Ownership of the Washington Post a little bit of AWS and I and that's like or I think of that is fundamentally 2010 to 2015 with a lot of fast forwards leverage or really operating Leverage is the acceleration of the Core Business and how. [12:52] You know Bezos and his lieutenants built these platforms at where the revenues were able to grow as they slow down the growth of the fixed cost and they did that by building these Self Service platforms. Like Marketplace. [13:08] Or you know the automation the Fulfillment centers or the algorithms that govern the drivers or the ad system you know that lead to tremendous growth but also have some really significant unintended side effects. Exploding hoverboards or fraud in the ABS system or. You know accidents on the road so that's that's part two and then invincibility for part 3 are sort of trying to come up with a way to describe the last part of the book which includes hq2 and the National Enquirer drama an antitrust in the pandemic. And I probably cycled through a bunch of names and I thought you know what these are all great stories but none of it's slow to Amazon down at all you know the the company if anything grew more in the past four years than at any time in its history at least in terms of economic growth and market cap and sales growth and so I can't I just struck upon like in this company's Invincible they keep making mistakes and keep steering into controversy and it never seems to hurt them so that's where I that's where I kind of gave up with that. Jason: [14:14] That makes total sense and I really enjoyed that structure I have to say because I probably. Open the book expecting sort of a chronology of everything that happened since the last book but I found myself really enjoying. Being able to follow each each individual thread in its entirety sometimes going back further than than I expected and kind of giving you the whole story. I like to think I follow the company pretty closely but I still, you connected a bunch of dots for me though there was interesting and useful and at one point during the book I kind of said like man this is a little bit like I'm horrible at American history but I imagine the people that are well-versed in American history like still read David McCullough. 1776 and and find it enjoyable and dramatic and in the same way like I knew most of the facts but like. Still like putting it together in a cohesive story was was sort of fun for me it made me remember a bunch of things and then for almost every story you uncovered new things that I didn't know so that I thought. Brad: [15:22] Well I was joking about Star Wars but sometimes I thought of it really is like The Godfather Part 2 which is like it continues the story picks up from the last book continue to the story but I do have flashbacks like the early years of Dave Clark in the Operations Division or Bezos ripping up a document in 2009 and chucking it down the table at an employee to illustrate how dramatically his his Co style has changed so yeah flashbacks and flash-forwards. Scot: [15:55] One of the so I've worked with a ton of large companies and the thing that always amazes me is even as Amazon's gotten so big you know they just passed like a million people I think in the company they're still so agile and they can still invent at scale and you know when you did that kind of kind of married invention and invincibility you know that that's kind of you know having watched them they just don't really miss a step they make some mistakes but it doesn't seem to hurt him I think a lot of it is this culture that they've built what are some of the cultural elements you've picked out as you've written both books that you think. Anna and and then my follow-up I'll go and ask my follow-up is you know with with Bezos leaving do you think that's so baked in that it will continue or do you think that that he's kind of the core of it. Brad: [16:41] Yeah it's interesting you know basis particularly lately is likes to call himself an inventor and he is an inventor he's come up with you know we talked about Alexis kind of springing from his mind and and some bad ideas like the fire phone too but what he's really created is a system of invention. Like a culture that seems to to be fertile enough that you know lots of decentralization. Lots of employees or teams moving quickly sometimes in competition with another and. He's he's put together a lot of the building blocks and you know yeah people talk about the 14 leadership principles and folks are probably familiar with those but it's also you know the gist the customs and the rituals of Amazon starting every meeting with the meditational reading of a six-page document. Or you know the quarterly business reviews and the opieop 1 and op2 and the fact that senior Executives can kind of hover above everything but then audit individual business units when they get an email from a customer complaining about a problem and the idea single-threaded leaders or a sort of team leader whose sole responsibility is the success of that team was kind of the CEO of their own fiefdom and all this stuff. [18:03] You know the culture can be kind of criticized as mean and I think sometimes it is but it has been remarkably effective right and and they've the reason I call it Amazon Unbound is because Amazon's been kind of. [18:16] Immune from the laws of gravity that can often bring down or slow down large companies and it's it's Unbound from that and those sort of playing with that and I think it's the culture that bezos's invented and they answer the second question. It's a it's a it's like the great Challenge and question for Andy Jassie you know because Bezos made it work because people respected and admired and maybe feared him a little bit you know and he could keep the plates spinning and then return to them and you know spin him again disappear for a while come back. Now he's not going anywhere he says he's going to be executive chairman so you know maybe it doesn't make a difference I think eventually he does drift away slowly but you know Jesse doesn't have the same Founders magic so yeah I can't answer it so I'll just say it's a good question does the culture work as effectively when the the magic of the founder isn't isn't you know, present as it is now. Scot: [19:13] Yeah I kind of wonder if he'll be able to keep his hands out of there that's you know I've done the same thing on a very very tiny set scale and it's it's a hard discipline to kind of it's almost like putting on your kids up for adoption or something there hark there's not a great analogy for you know think of all the time and effort he's put in to hold those. Brad: [19:29] Why you didn't even have a luxury yacht to go Retreat to you know. Scot: [19:33] True yeah. Brad: [19:34] Yeah or 10 billion dollar philanthropy so I don't know it'll be interesting will be and also a reputation on the line with the space company that hasn't produced anything so there's a lot of other stuff that could draw Bezos away. Jason: [19:49] Yeah side note on now that one you know people are always I get asked these questions all the time like what what event how does someone eventually beat Amazon. And in they ask in the context of retail and one of my hypothesis is always that that retail gets to be too irrelevant and uninteresting for them that you know that they it just doesn't get the attention anymore because so many of these new things become so successful. Brad: [20:20] Yeah I think that's true and and also you know they get so big and they have so many constituencies that they need that they have to make choices and I think a good example is how you know the retail you know the consumer division has really tilted towards Marketplace and and the opportunities of third for third-party Sellers and Global Sellers and one of the things that suffered a little bit I think is Amazon's relationship with brands and Brands feeling like Amazon can be a safe space to sell you know we've seen that with Nike Etc and that has created an opportunity for you know companies like Shopify and you know and and like those competitors don't can't take on Amazon you know the whole thing but there's a lot little. Avenues of opportunity for competitors who want to focus because Amazon's doing so much it it can't satisfy everyone. Jason: [21:14] Yeah no I for sure one of the the big topics in the book that was kind of fun to have laid out was the whole invention of the Alexa and I'll confessed I wasn't quite aware of how directly Jeff was involved in the original ideation so that was fascinating and and frankly at the very beginning when Scott asked if you broke any big news in the new book, I was expecting you to say that you you uncovered the voice actress behind Alexa. Brad: [21:49] Well I thought he was going there but then he brought up the yacht but I'm happy to tell that's I'm happy to tell that story. Jason: [21:55] Yeah yeah please do. Brad: [21:56] Okay well actually it sort of started with me thinking for this book How will I ever top the the discovery of the biological dad from the first book and if you guys remember and of course you can't top that and sadly there no there no hidden long lost relatives to an earth and but I thought you know I remembered that Susan Bennett was the voice actress behind Siri. And that was a big Revelation in 2013 and no one had ever asked the question well who the heck is coming out of the echo speakers and you know long story short so I put that as one of my goals to figure that out. [22:36] And in the in the in my research and yeah Alexa was totally Jeff's idea it was an email to Executives can we create a 20 dollar computer whose brains are in the cloud that's completely controllable but by voice in the book I have is first whiteboard sketch of a of an echo speaker and but one of the things they did early on was they bought a Polish company called a vona. And that was the let me get this right the text-to-speech engine so they created synthetic voices and you know so I was like okay I'll start there in trying to figure out who the voice is. And I learned that actually they had contracted with the same studio in Atlanta that did the Siri voice company called GM voices and I spent you know months trolling LinkedIn and figuring you know trying to contact people in who work there who knew people who work there and I heard little tidbits she'll never find out it's a closely guarded secret but she's a singer and she lives in Colorado. And then finally I got a couple of more clues and I found I found I got her name Nina Raleigh and I went to her website. [23:48] I wasn't completely sure but I went to her website and she had a clips of herself doing advertisements from years ago before she started working for Amazon and I clicked play on a couple of them and I was like my God that is the voice of a all right. And I called her up and she you know immediately like you know awkwardness like felt like High School and she said she wasn't allowed to talk to me and you know in some. Weird awkward way it was like the final bit of confirmation that I needed but and then I asked Amazon if I could talk to her and they said no and you know you could kind of put the pieces together. Jason: [24:27] Yeah and side note how the heck did you get that diagram by the way. Brad: [24:31] I asked Amazon for it and they give it to me. Jason: [24:34] Now that's a clever way yeah I ask them for things all the time and they almost never give up. Brad: [24:40] You know and I interviewed Greg Hart who is just hiei and who built the Alexa business in the early years and you know he was he was he had never given an interview before I think about the early days of Alexa and it was it was a lot of the I think the untold story there and yeah a lot of it maybe yeah was actually like credit to Amazon right. They decided that it was you know better to work with me and to tell some elements of the story I think I think big tech companies realize now that you know when they when they shut the door to everyone you know the depictions aren't you know let's put it this way if they cooperate at least they're relaying their side of the story and things are likely to reflect their point of view. And so on this one they agreed to cooperate. Jason: [25:27] Very cool and another thing that I learned in that version of the store a the original Kindle had a microphone in it that wasn't used. Brad: [25:39] Books like the second or third I can't remember the maybe the third version yeah yeah. Jason: [25:44] But it sounds like the germ of the idea was starting to form like even in this this vestibule vestigial feature in the Kindle and it sounds like Jeff fought for that feature women when the product team wander accent. Brad: [26:02] Yeah yeah I mean he's a Star Trek fan like like Scott and he you know he always thought that we would talk to our computers one day like like the Star Trek computer and that was like a big part of the vision and the reason why he fought for it to be more conversational and not just the music player or a thing that recites the whether he really wanted a conversational agent and actually today I would say Amazon is not eat not even there yet I mean my and about your guys Alexa but mine is dumb as a rock so you know they still have a lot of work to do there. Scot: [26:36] Yes still still still working the so folks if you haven't read the first book so go go get that one so go get the anything store in the the thing I always enjoy about Brad's writing is its kind of see your tech-savvy so you kind of you're not afraid to go into some of the technology side of it but then you're also an investigative reporter and that's where you find all these really cool tidbits and the real story behind so always enjoy you doing that on that side you cover in the book you cover a bunch of the rough spots which of those do you think has been has had any impact so the ones are kind of the antitrust which is Jason Jason's favorite con that kind of thing to talk about losing the Jedi you know kind of over politics I think. The hq2 thing was I think everyone agrees was a bit of a debacle that kind of over overplayed that are any of those things unraveling them at all or bother them at all or just doesn't seem to bother me at all. Brad: [27:31] The three you listed I mean the antitrust threat is still in the future HQ to they suffered some bad press and it went away quickly. What was the other thing that you. Yeah Jedi they might the government might reward that contract a judge ruled that the legal scrutiny will continue and we might see the Pentagon basically just start the process all over again so none of those things so far I would say antitrust maybe the most but I would put. The controversy over the quality of work in the Fulfillment centers and the unionization effort even though Amazon one that in Alabama that to me feels more impactful because really you know none of these things make a difference unless people start to feel or think twice or feel ambivalent about clicking the buy now button and I look the the results in the last quarter were Stellar so clearly it's not having much of an impact but you do see mostly I think because of the labor tangling. Some stain on the Amazon reputation and I think the labor stop is more important and has had more of an impact in the other things that you mentioned. Scot: [28:47] Yet I think the ultimate play is they'll eventually be able to get rid of the labor with robots and that oddly that maybe a the best political move you know even though there be a lot of jobs lost it you know robots don't pee in bottles and. Brad: [29:01] Isn't that years off I mean how long before robot before you can have a ghost fulfillment center with no workers. Scot: [29:09] Well you can get it down to Cuba system gets it down to just the pickers and Packers which is which is a very small fractional I think it's like a quarter Jason fact check me like 25% of the. The people footprint which is funny it goes back to your first book and I just saw today maybe it was yesterday that Amazon's investing a fair amount in a robot Factory which I kind of made my Spidey Sense tingling little bit that's the. A it feels a little bit like the Terminator but then be you know you don't start building a factory for these things until you unless you're going to really start scaling them up so, most of the see if they'd go that way. Brad: [29:46] Yeah well though there will be another political storm that just as there were for the cash earless robots right the cashier Le stores you know yeah the that's going to make Amazon a Target in the different way. Jason: [30:00] Yeah it is into I think there are parts of their business that will you know the Amazon could certainly automate a lot of Labor out of pretty quickly but there are other parts of their business that that that's not in the short term Horizon right like I I'm a big believer in driverless cars but driverless Last Mile. Or you know human let's last mile is going to be a long time and at this point like the labor force in last mile is growing faster than the the Fulfillment center labor force. Brad: [30:33] Yeah and we'll all we should say write a contract labor force and that's another threat to Amazon like well it's another critical decision at what point you know do they feel like those drivers need to be employees or do they do this the criticism get much louder because you know they can't control the last mile or they're exerting so much control over those drivers in terms of the uniforms and the surveillance cameras and the rules that ultimately you know the lawsuits basically I mean FedEx fought these battles for years but ultimately a judge somewhere says you know. Like if they have with Uber drivers these are employees you got to start treating them like like employees. Jason: [31:14] Yeah although Uber found a way out of that is it if you spend 200 million dollars you can just make your own laws. Brad: [31:20] All right. Jason: [31:21] And Jeff has that kind of money but I did want to ask you a question about that because you you kind of painted a picture that like anti-union is much more in Amazon's DNA than. Then maybe was like. Super obvious right in you you highlighted that like they made decisions about how to scale their their last Mile in their Logistics. Based on you know avoiding the traditional fulfillment model which like is heavily unionized right. And I'm kind of curious if you have a hypothesis why I like you you had an interesting sentence in the book that kind of you know made me think for a second. I'm not sure Jeff is just like fundamentally unions are bad for America and I don't want unions because then I can't exploit the workers the way I want like I almost wonder if it goes back to his day one. Philosophy and just this fear that if you. If you you know get this a large entrenched Workforce you know which is often epitomized by unions that it reduces your ability to be as agile as. He aspires to be. Brad: [32:42] There's a canonical story inside Amazon I tell this in the in the day of Clark Logistics section of the book of like. You know one of the early fulfillment centers 2001 2002 and Dave Clark and the colleague named Arthur Bell devs are like themselves in a Ryder Truck delivering the last batch of packages to the UPS facility and I think it's Lexington through a snowstorm eating Burger King on the way and they get there you know with Christmas in the back of this truck and the and the the teamsters at UPS won't let them in because they're not union workers and eventually they get managers to allow them to come in and the union guys are banging it on the truck and and yelling at them and that is is a you know a story that's passed on like lure at Amazon because yeah what you were saying Jason it's like they want to be flexible the customer is Almighty they want to fulfill their promises to customers and they view you know an inner mediating Force like a union as as you know interfering with that and and I and Amazon fire me bitterly on this because I quote Jay. [33:57] Jeff saying to a colleague an HR colleague in the book one of the greatest dangers to Amazon is an entrenched and hourly work force and he was looking at the the auto makers and other you know manufacturers and and concluding that you know the unions were really impeding their ability to be flexible and to innovate and their little things that he encoded in the worker relationship and Amazon for example you know you the raises stop after three years unless you're promoted. That doesn't get a lot of attention it seems really unfriendly frankly but he does doesn't want employees sticking around getting entrenched getting comfortable. Possibly organizing and you know and and it's maybe a little bit lacking in empathy but it's just a brutal kind of Ruthless tactics tactical decision that Amazon is better off having a direct relationship with its employees. Scot: [34:54] One one question I wanted to just kind of explore is in lately here on the show there's been an increased tension between Shopify and Amazon did you pick up on any of that as you're writing the book. Brad: [35:06] You know I didn't really Veer in that direction I would say that you know the the the tent and you know now I'm like in the territory where you guys are probably you know much more deeper you know than I am but I what I sense was that Brands felt increasingly uncomfortable and the detention is between Western brands and a Marketplace that seems to favor, overseas Sellers and scrapping newcomers and people with lower cost structures and and you know the brands on Amazon are like crazy right it's like sometimes you feel like maybe there's some software coming up with some of these names and the and the big Brands you know who may be charged a premium. For their label I don't feel comfortable there and they don't feel like their brand is protected and they don't feel like their prices are protected and that's maybe more the tension and Shopify has come in you know to take advantage of that and Amazon which you know fights on all fronts all the time you know has identified the competitive incursions try to do some things to kind of shore up that flank I haven't spent enough time looking at Shopify and I'm looking forward to doing that a little bit more but that seems like a tremendous success story and the virtue for Amazon is that when they get hauled in front of. Congress you know to get the Jason's favorite topic you know they can point to. [36:31] Strong competitors on all fronts and it's not just Google and Microsoft in the cloud or Walmart in retail but now it's a company like Shopify which is a real competitive threat when it comes to you know online retail and representing Brands online. Scot: [36:47] Yeah it's funny you mentioned the brand thing because we've also followed on the show really closely and we've had a couple folks representative of this is there's these new kind of like super combinations of FBA sellers they call them that if you know like thrashy oh and. I think what are they raised Jason like two billion dollars globally were tracking no to go yet to go buy these little micro brands that are kind of born and on Amazon's that that's kind of yeah if anything that's going to accelerate it. Excuse me how about you mentioned ads anything interesting going on in the Amazon ads world. Brad: [37:24] I am so in Amazon Unbound I tell the story of the ad business and you know so interesting how they started out a decade ago and they were bands also skeptical of ads you know he thought it could interfere with the customer experience that it could jeopardize you know the the main. Revenue model of you know selling things on amazon.com and they experimented they went through banner ads they went to. Sponsored links that send you off the site to like Nordstrom you know or another retailer and then finally they kind of ReDiscover the Google gold mine and start search. Advertising and first it's the bottom of the search page and then it's on the side of the search page and here's the interesting point Bezos himself. Makes a decision to start toying with them at the top of search results and they study it and they determine that there is a decrease in customer satisfaction and in customers purchasing items the. [38:28] The app the tabs on the top of search results are meaningfully like harmful to the customer experience small but but trackable. And this is a little bit of a turning point in the book I think because basil says you know this impact would have to be implausibly large to really outweigh the gold mine the new Revenue source and he agrees to do something that you know arguably is not a great customer experience if you look at, searches the search results on Amazon it's kind of you know I'm over merchandise like it's ads and private label stuff and. You know pay-for-play but the revenue stream is so enticing to him because he can invest in movies and TV shows you can build the next Alexa he can expand internationally and maybe that is the Turning Point the inflection point and Amazon being fully customer-focused and really compromising a little bit on the customer experience to pursue these grander goals of world domination. Jason: [39:32] Yeah it was interesting too well a on the I did want to touch on one thing on the add thing first the we get asked all the time you know we do all these Amazon talks and and we still have to debunk that Amazon's not profitable and so we talked about you know obviously the marketplace is overwhelmingly profitable and and AWS but I have a hypothesis that the ad business is now as much or more profitable than a WS. Brad: [40:03] Yeah yeah. Jason: [40:05] And I. You know it's interesting that that Jeff is like accepting the revenue even at the expense of customer when you think of kind of the original premise that will be the most customer-centric. Brad: [40:19] I mean when just on that point Jason like AWS profits go into building more aw s right you have to keep building data centers advertising like what are the fixed costs right they built an auction system and they basically you know I call that chapter the gold mine in the backyard because it's there all along and they just have to go kind of dip into it. Jason: [40:39] Yeah I was there's one Inconvenient Truth in that like in general I like to say like oh gosh that ad business is 96 percent margin for them because there's no. There's like you know there's almost no costs against it the one Inconvenient Truth in that fact as Amazon is also the largest Advertiser on Google so like there's a way in which you can almost think of it as Arbitrage that. Did they buy 11 billion dollars worth of customers from Google and then sell it for 20 billion dollars on Amazon. Brad: [41:08] Right right. Jason: [41:09] Um what yeah so it is interesting I a couple of the things that also jumped out at me you. Wait I know Scott wants to go deep into the antitrust story and obviously you know Amazon you know. Often says like hey we don't see search we would never you know play games with prioritizing Surge and we never use. Brand sales data to inform our own private label but you had people go on the record in both cases that are X Amazonian saying we absolutely did do that. Brad: [41:45] I mean I think yeah the truth is the Inconvenient Truth for Amazon is that it's a decentralized place. And employees are given ambitious goals and they're trying to keep their jobs and the safeguards the guardrails weren't there for a couple of years and it's not just my book yes in my book and I've got I had employees showing me the data the spreadsheets that they took. You know from looking at third-party sellers to go build private Brands but it's also been reported elsewhere and frankly I think Amazon said in DC that they were going to study it. And I've never seen anything I don't know why they are incapable of admitting an error and announcing maybe a new set of precautions because it really does call into question The Trusted third-party sellers have in the marketplace but no clearly you know they had they were exploiting their data Advantage I don't know if it was that significant I mean what they might say is that look every retailer has the data at their disposal and you don't necessarily need the third party sales data to go you know look at Nielsen report or whatever to see you know what the customer trend is but. Clearly for a Time gave Amazon at an advantage and building that private label business and and in prioritizing their private label Brands giving them a head start in search results. Scot: [43:11] Yep another one of my favorite topics is fulfillment and you and I have had this conversation probably for 20 years and I've every year on this podcast we do a prediction and I've historically predicted that old Bill compete more directly with with FedEx and UPS is taking longer than I thought it would but I think I think most people can kind of see that did you get any any kind of Vibes off of what's going on in the Fulfillment side. Brad: [43:37] I don't I don't see that in the short-term just because their own needs are ramping so quickly that you know it's hard to imagine them being able to kind of offer turn around and offer that, the third parties and if they did they get into the awkward situation of you know Peak comes along and will absolutely of course Amazon's going to start prayer you know prioritize its own packages particularly you get closer to Christmas and. You know in suddenly UPS runs out of capacity or FedEx and you know that would be just awkward right so I don't. I don't know that I see that in the near future I think Amazon. Yeah is its own biggest customer for its Logistics arm and I don't you know and it's only customer I don't necessarily see that changing in the short-term. I don't know maybe we settle that in five years. Jason: [44:34] Yeah that that that's going to be an interesting one I mean even if ba which is I would argue wildly successful for them you know you still see like them them strain to scale that and you know kind of curtail the amenities that they offer to have ba. Brad: [44:52] And during the pandemic they did that right yeah. Jason: [44:55] Yeah absolutely the. We are running up on time I want to make sure that we get all the good stuff in are there any favorite stories or topics you have from the book that we failed to ask you about. Brad: [45:13] There's one okay here's the here's the one of the stories I like the most the story of the single cow Burger you know we talked about Bezos the inventor you know his love for new technologies but he really is like this maniacal sponsor of. Of all sorts of bizarre wacky ideas and basically in like 2050 nereids a Washington Post article about how a burger can contain the meat from like a hundred cows and the article says that making burger from a single cow would be hard and expensive and those of course you know those are the keywords for Bezos and he authorized the see the creation of a single cow burger inside Amazon Fresh and then he like he taste test the early burgers and he'd like rejects them for being too fatty here heard the grill and and he makes everyone's life miserable on the team. [46:08] And you know and illustrates a couple things one you know as he has gotten wealthier maybe he like has a little bit lost the the touch in the taste of the Common Man dare we say but that it's not just technology like he says advocate for all sorts of new things inside Amazon and he is kind of capable of turning up you know like like Samantha and bewitched I guess Rick did she twinkle her nose I can't remember you know at the desk of any unsuspecting employee and suddenly their life is you know they're they're off searching for a single cow Burger so to speak and to me it was like this weird bizarre wacky delightful story oh and by the way that thing is still for sale and that hasn't certain been a game-changer and yet you had the CEO of the company and probably at the time one of the wealthiest people in the world spending all this time trying to advocate for it. Jason: [47:02] Yeah I have to say though just like superficially it sounds like a brilliant idea we my family rushed out to try the single cow Burger I have to admit. Brad: [47:10] How was it how was it. Jason: [47:12] It was good and you know I'm not I can't remember if you mentioned this in the book or not but. You know people have different preferences for their temperature of meat and and like traditionally you have to cook ground beef much higher than other flavors of beep because of the risk of mad cow because. Of all those cows in there so you can actually it's safer to eat that single cow Burger more rare of that sir. Brad: [47:37] Yeah I mean he he looked at all that stuff and he he advocated for a couple different varieties of it and I you know it is a little distillation of Life at Amazon. Jason: [47:47] Yeah you well the distillation of me was like you relayed the conversation when he was you know he's like how hard could it be and I might thinking like that's got to be the worst question to ever get from Jeff Bezos. Brad: [47:58] Totally totally. Jason: [48:00] Well you also during that story you kind of highlighted his increasingly exotic taste you talked about the iguana and whatnot and it reminded me of a story in your first book. Of the Blackhawk ink octopus breakfast which was also a fun. Brad: [48:16] Oh that's right wasn't that the CEO of woot Maybe. Jason: [48:19] It was Matt Rutledge yeah yeah I talked to him occasionally and I always remind him of that story because of you. We'll listen Brad we could talk all night but it is happen again we have used up all of our allotted time so we're going to have to leave the audience wanting a little bit more. As always if folks enjoyed this show we sure would appreciate that five-star review on iTunes and if you have any questions or comments about the show please hit us up on Twitter or Facebook. Scot: [48:52] Yeah the name of Brad's book is Amazon Unbound it's available now your favorite book sellers and hardcover it's on e-readers and then also the audio book is available for those of you that like to listen to things while you commute Brad if you working obviously people can find you at Bloomberg so you're right there on their TV but but do you where is your favorite place to kind of for people to check what you're up to is it Twitter or. Brad: [49:16] Brad Brad - stone is my website at bradstone on Twitter and let me just thank you guys you know you both have been sort of mentors to me and the in the wild. World of Amazon e-commerce and it's like a pleasure to be on this podcast. Scot: [49:32] Thanks Brad we really appreciate you taking time to join us. Brad: [49:37] Okay thanks guys. Jason: [49:38] It was entirely my our pleasure and until next time happy Commercing.

About BradAuthor and Senior Executive Editor, Bloomberg TechnologyBrad Stone is the author of four books, including Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire,published by Simon & Schuster in May 2021. It traces the transformation of Amazon into one of the largest and most feared companies of the world and the accompanying emergence of Jeff Bezos as the richest man alive. Brad is also the author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, which chronicled the foundational early years of the company and its founder. The book, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, was translated into more than 35 languages and won the 2013 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. In 2017, he also published The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley.Brad is Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg Newswhere he oversees a team of 65 reporters and editors that covers high-tech companies, startups, cyber security and internet trends around the world. Over the last ten years, as a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, he’s authored over two dozen cover stories on companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Softbank, Twitter, Facebook and the Chinese internet juggernauts Didi, Tencent and Baidu. He’s a regular contributor to Bloomberg’s technology newsletter Fully Charged, and to the daily Bloomberg TV news program, Bloomberg Technology. He was previously a San Francisco-based correspondent for The New York Times and Newsweek. A graduate of Columbia University, he is originallyfrom Cleveland, Ohio and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wifeand three daughtersLinks: The Everything Store: https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Store-Jeff-Bezos-Amazon/dp/0316219282/ Amazon Unbound: https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Unbound-Invention-Global-Empire/dp/1982132612/ Andy Jassy book review: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1Q4CQQV1ALSN0/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00FJFJOLC TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Thinkst. This is going to take a minute to explain, so bear with me. I linked against an early version of their tool, canarytokens.org in the very early days of my newsletter, and what it does is relatively simple and straightforward. It winds up embedding credentials, files, that sort of thing in various parts of your environment, wherever you want to; it gives you fake AWS API credentials, for example. And the only thing that these things do is alert you whenever someone attempts to use those things. It’s an awesome approach. I’ve used something similar for years. Check them out. But wait, there’s more. They also have an enterprise option that you should be very much aware of canary.tools. You can take a look at this, but what it does is it provides an enterprise approach to drive these things throughout your entire environment. You can get a physical device that hangs out on your network and impersonates whatever you want to. When it gets Nmap scanned, or someone attempts to log into it, or access files on it, you get instant alerts. It’s awesome. If you don’t do something like this, you’re likely to find out that you’ve gotten breached, the hard way. Take a look at this. It’s one of those few things that I look at and say, “Wow, that is an amazing idea. I love it.” That’s canarytokens.org and canary.tools. The first one is free. The second one is enterprise-y. Take a look. I’m a big fan of this. More from them in the coming weeks.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by VMware. Because let’s face it, the past year hasn’t been kind to our AWS bills, or honestly any cloud bills. The pandemic had a bunch of impacts: it forced us to move workloads to the cloud sooner than we would have otherwise, we saw strange patterns such as user traffic drops off but infrastructure spend doesn’t. What do you do about it? Well, the CloudLIVE 2021 virtual conference is your chance to connect with people wrestling with the same type of thing, be they practitioners, vendors in the space, leaders of thought—ahem, ahem—and get some behind the scenes look into various ways different companies are handling this. Hosted by CloudHealth by VMware on May 20, the CloudLIVE 2021 conference will be 100% virtual and 100% free to attend, so you really have no excuses for missing out on this opportunity to deal with people who care about cloud bills. Visit cloudlive.com/coreyto learn more and save your virtual seat today. That’s cloud L-I-V-E slash Corey. C-O-R-E-Y. Drop the E, we’re all in trouble. My thanks to VMware for sponsoring this ridiculous episode.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I’m Corey Quinn. Sometimes people tell me that I should write a book about Amazon. And that sounds awful. But to be sure, today, my guest is Brad Stone, someone who has written not one, but two books about Amazon, one of which coming out on May 11th, or as most of you will know while listening to this, today. Brad, thanks for joining me.Brad: Corey, thanks for having me.Corey: So, what on earth would inspire you to not just write a book about one of what is in many ways an incredibly secretive company, but then to go back and do it again?Brad: Yeah. I’m a glutton for punishment. And Corey, my hair right now is completely white way before it should be, and I think that Amazon might be responsible for some of that. So, as you contemplate your own project, consider that this company—will you already know: it can age you. They are sometimes resistant to scrutiny.So, to answer your question, I set out to write The Everything Store back in 2011, and this was a much smaller company. It was a cute little tiny internet company of about $100 billion in market value. And poor, impoverished Jeff Bezos maybe had, I’d be guessing maybe $50 billion.So anyway, it was a much different time. And that was a great experience. The company was kind of flowering as the book came out. And to my surprise, it was embraced not by Bezos or the management team, who maybe we’ll talk about didn’t love it, but by Amazon employees, and customers, and competitors, and prospective employees. And I was really proud of it that this had become a kind of definitive account of the early years of the company.And then a funny thing happened. The little cute little internet company became a juggernaut, a $1.5 trillion market cap. Bezos is the wealthiest guy in the world now with a $200 billion fortune, and Alexa, and the rise of AWS, and the Go store, and incursions into India and Mexico and other countries, I mean, so much had changed, and my definitive history felt a little out of date. And so back in 2017—also a different world, Bezos is a happily married man; he’s the CEO of Amazon, Amazon’s headquarters are in Seattle only—I set out to research and write Amazon Unbound. And as I was writing the story, yeah, just, like, the ground kept shifting under my feet.Corey: Not a lot changes in the big sphere. I mean, one of the things that Bezos said is, “Oh, what’s going to be different in 10 years? I think the better question is, ‘what’s going to not be different in 10 years?’” but watching the company shift, watching it grow, just from the outside has been a real wild ride, I’ve got to say. And I restrict myself primarily to the AWS parts because well, there’s too much to cover if you go far beyond that, and two, it’s a very different place with very different challenges around it.I viewed The Everything Store when it came out and I read that, almost like it was a biography of Jeff Bezos himself. And in some respects, Amazon Unbound feels like it hews in that direction as well, but it also goes beyond that. How do you approach separating out the story of Amazon from the story of Jeff Bezos?Brad: Yeah, you’re putting your finger on almost the core challenge, and the adjoining challenge, which is how do you create a narrative, a linear story? Often readers want a chronological story out of a miasma of overlapping events, and initiatives, and challenges. Amazon’s really decentralized; everything is happening at once. Bezos is close to some things, he was very close to Alexa. He is really distant from other things.Andy Jassy for years had a lot of independence to run AWS. So, how do you tell that story, and then keep Bezos in the center? I mean, Andy Jassy and Jeff Wilke and everyone, I mean, those are great business people. Not necessarily dynamic personalities as, Corey, you know well, but people want to read about Jeff Bezos. He is a larger-than-life figure.He’s a pioneer. He’s an innovator. He’s controversial. And so the challenge all along is to, kind of, keep him in the center. And so that’s just, like, a writing challenge. It’s a narrative challenge.And the lucky thing is that Amazon does tend to orbit around Jeff Bezos’s brain. And so in all the storytelling, even the AWS bits of the book, which we can talk about, as an author, you can always bring Bezos back just by following the facts. You’ll eventually get, in the evolution of any story, to an S Team meeting, or to an acquisition discussion where Jeff had an impact, said something insightful, walked out of a meeting, raise the bar, had impossibly high standards. So, the last thing I’ll say is, because Amazon’s so decentralized, when you write these books you have to talk to a lot of people. And then you get all the pieces of the puzzle, and you start to assemble them, and the challenge as a writer is to, kind of, keep Bezos, your main character in the lens at all times, never let him drift too far out.Corey: One of the things that I learned from it was just the way that Bezos apparently talks to his senior executives, as far as, “I will invest in this project, more than you might think I would.” I guess I’ve never really heard of a budget meeting talking about, “I”—in the first person—“Will invest.” Like, that is what happens, but for some reason the business books never put it quite that starkly or frame it quite that way. But in hindsight, it made a lot of things of my own understanding of Amazon fall into place. That makes sense.Brad: He’s got a lot of levers, ways in which he’ll back a new initiative or express his support. And one of them is simply how he spends his time. So, with Alexa in the early years, he would meet once or twice a week with that team. But another lever is just the amount of investment. And oftentimes teams will come to him—the India team is a great example—they’ll come to the S Team with a budget, and they’ll list out their priorities and their goals for the coming year, and he’ll say, “You know, you’re thinking about this all wrong. Don’t constrain yourself. Tell us what the goals are, tell us what the opportunity is, then we’ll figure out how much it costs.”And his mindset is like you can kind of break up opportunity into two categories: one are the land grabs, the big immediate opportunities where he will go all out, and India was a great example of that, I think the failed fire phone was another example, Prime Video, he doesn’t cap the investment, he wants to win. And then there are the more greenfield opportunities that he thinks he can go slower on and groceries for a long time was in that category. And there the budgets might be more constrained. The other example is the much older businesses, just like the retail business. That’s 20 years old—I have a chapter about that—and the advertising business, and he recognized that the retail business wasn’t profitable and it was depending on advertising as a crutch, and he blew it up because he thinks that those older divisions shouldn’t require investment; they should be able to stand on their own.Corey: One quote you had as well, that just really resonated with me, as far as basically my entire ethos of how I make fun of Amazon is—and I’m going to read the excerpt here. My apologies. You have to listen to your own words being read back toward you—Brad: [laugh].Corey: These were typically Amazonian names: geeky, obscure, and endlessly debated inside AWS since—according to an early AWS exec—Bezos had once mused, “You know, the name is about 3% of what matters, but sometimes 3% is the difference between winning and losing.” And I just want to call that out because I don’t think I’ve ever seen an AWS exec ever admit that names might be even 3% worth of important. Looking at how terrible some of their service names are, I would say that 3% might be an aspirational target for their worldview.Brad: [laugh]. Let me throw this back at you, Corey. Have you ever figured out why certain AWS services are Amazon and why others are AWS?Corey: I did. I got to sit down—in the before times—with then the VP of Global Marketing, Ariel Kelman—who’s now Oracle’s Chief Marketing Officer—and Jeff Barr. And the direction that they took that in was that if you could use an AWS service without getting into the AWS weeds of a bunch of other services, then it was called Amazon whatever. Amazon S3, for example, as a primitive service doesn’t need a bunch of other AWS services hooked into it, so that gets the Amazon moniker. Whereas if you’re dealing with a service that requires the integration of a whole bunch of AWS in the weeds stuff—Brad: Mmm, right.Corey: —then it’s AWS. For example, AWS Systems Manager is useless without a whole bunch of other Amazon services. And they say they don’t get it perfectly right all the time, but that is the direction that it’s gone in. And for better or worse, I still have to look a lot of them up myself because I don’t care nearly as much as their branding people do.Brad: Right. Well, I’ll tell you in the chapter about AWS, that quote comes up when the team is contemplating the names of the databases. And they do go into long debates, and I remember talking to Charlie Bell about the search for Redshift, and they go back and forth on it, and the funny thing about that one was, of course, Oracle interpreted it as a competitive slight. Its corporate color, I guess, being red, which he intended it more as a physics term. But yeah, when they were launching Aurora and Redshift, they contemplated those names quite a bit. And I don’t know if it’s 3%. I don’t know if it does matter, but certainly, those services have become really important to a lot of businesses.Corey: Oh, yeah. And once you name something, it’s really hard to rename it. And AWS does view for—better or worse—APIs as a promise, so when you build something and presented a certain way, they’re never going to turn it off. Our grandkids are going to have to deal with some of these decisions once they get into computers. That’s a problem.And I understand the ethos behind it, but again, it’s easy to make fun of names; it’s an accessible thing because let’s be very real here, a lot of what AWS does is incredibly inaccessible to people who don’t live in this space. But naming is something that everyone can get behind making fun of.Brad: Absolutely. Yep. And [laugh] it’s perhaps why they spend a lot of time on it because they know that this is going to be the shingle that they hang out to the world. I don’t know that they’re anticipating your ridicule, but it’s obviously key to the marketing process for them.Corey: Some of the more aware ones do. But that’s a different topic for a different time. One question I have for you that I wrestle with myself is I’ve been spending the last four years or so basically studying AWS all the time. And there’s a lot of things they get right; there’s a lot of things that they get wrong. But for better or worse, it’s very difficult not to come away from an in-depth study with an appreciation for an awful lot of the things that they do. At least for me.I’m not saying that I fall in love with the company and will excuse them their wrongs; I absolutely do not do that. But it is hard, bordering on impossible for me, to not come away with a deep respect for a lot of the things that they do and clearly believe. How do you feel about that? Looking at Amazon, do you come away with this with, “Ooh. Remind me to never to become a Prime member and get rid of everything with an Amazon logo in my house,” versus the you’re about to wind up wondering if they can hire you for some esoteric role? Where do you fall on that spectrum?Brad: I think I’m probably with you. I come away with an admiration. And look, I mean, let me say upfront, I am a Prime member. I have a Alexas in my home, probably more than my wife and kids are comfortable with. We watch Prime Video, we have Prime Video.We order from Amazon all the time, we ordered from Whole Foods. I’m an Amazon customer, and so part of my appreciation comes from, like all other customers, the fact that Amazon uniquely restores time to our lives rather than extracts it. I wouldn’t say that about the social networks, right? You know, those can be time-wasters. Amazon’s a great efficiency machine.But in terms of my journalism, you know, now two books and this big in-depth study in Amazon Unbound, and you have to admire what they have built. I mean, a historic American institution that has not only changed our economic reality, in ways good and bad but over the last year and a half, in the pandemic was among the few institutions that functioned properly and served as a kind of lifeline. And there is a critique in Amazon Unbound and we can talk about it, but it’s hard to come away—I think you said it well—it’s hard to come away after studying this company and studying the top executives, and how Jeff Bezos, thinks and how he has conceived products without real admiration for what they have built over the last 25 years.Corey: Well, let’s get into your critique of Amazon. What do you think is, from what you’ve seen with all of the years of research you put into this company, what’s the worst thing about them?Brad: Well, that’s a good way to put it, Corey. [laugh]. Let me—Corey: [laugh]. It’s like, talk about a target-rich opportunity. Like, “Oh, wow. It’s like my children. I can’t stand any of them. How in the world could I pick just one?” But give it a shot.Brad: Right. Well, let me start this way, which is I often will listen to their critiques from Amazon critics—and I’m sure you might feel this way as well—and just think, like, “Do they get it?” They’ll argue that Amazon exercised its size and might to buy the companies that led to Alexa. As I write in the Alexa chapter, that’s not true at all. They bought a couple of small companies, and those executives were all horrified at what Amazon was trying to do, and then they made it work.Or the critics will say, “Fifty percent or more of internet users start their product searches on Amazon. Amazon has lock-in.” That’s not true either. Lock-in on the internet is only as strong as a browser window that remains open. And you could always go find a competitor or search on a search engine.So, I find at least some of the public criticism to be a little specious. And often, these are people that complained about Walmart for ten years. And now Amazon’s the big, bad boogeyman.Corey: Oh, I still know people who refuse to do business with Walmart but buy a bunch of stuff from Amazon, and I’m looking at these things going, any complaints you have about Walmart are very difficult to avoid mapping to Amazon.Brad: Here’s maybe the distillation of the critique that’s an Amazon Unbound. We make fun of Facebook for, “Move fast and break things.” And they broke things, including, potentially, our democracy. When you look at the creation of the Amazon Marketplace, Jeff wanted a leader who can answer the question, “How would you bring a million sellers into the Amazon Marketplace?” And what that tells you is he wanted to create a system, a self-service system, where you could funnel sellers the world over into the system and sell immediately.And that happened, and a lot of those sellers, there was no friction, and many of them came from the Wild West of Chinese eCommerce. And you had—inevitably because there were no guardrails—you had fraud and counterfeit, and all sorts of lawsuits and damage. Amazon moved fast and broke things. And then subsequently tried to clean it up. And if you look at the emergence of the Amazon supply chain and the logistics division, the vans that now crawl our streets, or the semi-trailers on our highways, or the planes.Amazon moved fast there, too. And the first innings of that game were all about hiring contractors, not employees, getting them on the road with a minimum of guidance. And people died. There were accidents. You know, there weren’t just drivers flinging packages into our front yards, or going to the bathroom on somebody’s porch.That happened, but there were also accidents and costs. And so I think some of the critique is that Amazon, despite its profession that it focuses only on customers, is also very competitor-aware and competitor-driven, and they move fast, often to kind of get ahead of competitors, and they build the systems and they’re often self-service systems, and they avoid employment where it’s possible, and the result have been costs to society, the cost of moving quickly. And then on the back-end when there are lawsuits, Amazon attempts to either evade responsibility or settle cases, and then hide those from the public. And I think that is at the heart of what I show in a couple of ways in Amazon Unbound. And it’s not just Amazon; it’s very typical right now of corporate America and particularly tech companies.And part of it is the state of the laws and regulations that allow the companies to get away with it, and really restrict the rights of plaintiffs, of people who are wronged from extracting significant penalties from these companies and really changing their behavior.Corey: Which makes perfect sense. I have the luxury of not having to think about that by having a mental division and hopefully one day a real division between AWS and Amazon’s retail arm. For me at least, the thing I always had an issue with was their treatment of staff in many respects. It is well known that in the FAANG constellation of tech companies, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google, apparently, it’s an acronym and it’s cutesy. People in tech think they’re funny.But the problem is that Amazon’s compensation is significantly below that. One thing I loved in your book was that you do a breakdown of how those base salaries work, how most of it is stock-based and with a back-loaded vesting and the rest, and looking through the somewhat lengthy excerpt—but I will not read your own words to you this time—it more or less completely confirms what I said in my exposé of this, which means if we’re wrong, we’re both wrong. And we’ve—and people have been very convincing and very unified across the board. We’re clearly not wrong. It’s nice to at least get external confirmation of some of the things that I stumble over.Brad: But I think this is all part of the same thing. What I described as the move fast and break things mentality, often in a race with competition, and your issues about the quality, the tenor of work, and the compensation schemes, I think maybe and this might have been a more elegant answer to your question, we can wrap it all up under the mantle of empathy. And I think it probably starts with the founder and soon-to-be-former CEO. And look, I mean, an epic business figure, a builder, an inventor, but when you lay out the hierarchy of qualities, and attributes, and strengths, maybe empathy with the plight of others wasn’t near the top. And when it comes to the treatment of the workforce, and the white-collar employees, and the compensation schemes, and how they’re very specifically designed to make people uncomfortable, to keep them running fast, to churn them out if they don’t cut it, and the same thing in the workforce, and then the big-scale systems and marketplace and logistics—look, maybe empathy is a drag, and not having it can be a business accelerant, and I think that’s what we’re talking about, right?That some of these systems seem a little inhumane, and maybe to their credit, when Amazon recognizes that—or when Jeff has recognized it00, he’s course-corrected a little bit. But I think it’s all part of that same bundle. And maybe perversely, it’s one of the reasons why Amazon has succeeded so much.Corey: I think that it’s hard to argue against the idea of culture flowing from the top. And every anecdote I’ve ever heard about Jeff Bezos, never having met the man myself, is always filtered through someone else; in many cases, you. But there are a lot of anecdotes from folks inside Amazon, folks outside Amazon, et cetera, and I think that no one could make a serious argument that he is not fearsomely intelligent, penetratingly insightful, and profoundly gifted in a whole bunch of different ways. People like to say, “Well, he started Amazon with several $100,000 and loan from his parents, so he’s not really in any ways a self-made anything.” Well, no one is self-made. Let’s be very clear on that.But getting a few $100,000 to invest in a business, especially these days, is not that high of a stumbling block for an awful lot of folks similarly situated. He has had outsized success based upon where he started and where he wound up ending now. But not a single story that I’ve ever heard about him makes me think, yeah, that’s the kind of guy I want to be friends with. That’s the kind of guy I want to invite to a backyard barbecue and hang out with, and trade stories about our respective kids, and just basically have a social conversation with. Even a business conversation doesn’t feel like it would be particularly warm or compelling.It would be educational, don’t get me wrong, but he doesn’t strike me as someone who really understands empathy in any meaningful sense. I’m sure he has those aspects to him. I’m sure he has a warm, wonderful relationship with his kids, presumably because they still speak to him, but none of that ever leaks through into his public or corporate persona.Brad: Mmm, partially agree, partially disagree. I mean, certainly maybe the warmth you’re right on, but this is someone who’s incredibly charismatic, who is incredibly smart, who thinks really deeply about the future, and has intense personal opinions about current events. And getting a beer with him—which I have not done—with sound fantastic. Kicking back at the fireplace at his ranch in Texas, [laugh] to me, I’m sure it’s tremendously entertaining to talk to him. But when it comes to folks like us, Corey, I have a feeling it’s not going to happen, whether you want to or not.He’s also incredibly guarded around the jackals of the media, so perhaps it doesn’t make a difference one way or another. But, yeah, you’re right. I mean, he’s all business at work. And it is interesting that the turnover in the executive ranks, even among the veterans right now, is pretty high. And I don’t know, I mean, I think Amazon goes through people in a way, maybe a little less on the AWS side. You would know that better than me. But—Corey: Yes and no. There’s been some turnover there that you can also pretty easily write down to internal political drama—for lack of a better term—palace intrigue. For lack of a better term. When, for example, Adam Selipsky is going to be the new CEO of AWS as Andy Jesse ascends to be the CEO of all Amazon—the everything CEO as it were. And that has absolutely got to have rubbed some people in unpleasant ways.Let’s be realistic here about what this shows: he quit AWS to go be the CEO of Tableau, and now he’s coming back to run AWS. Clearly, the way to get ahead there is to quit. And that might not be the message they’re intending to send, but that’s something that people can look at and take away, that leaving a company doesn’t mean you can’t boomerang and go back there at a higher level in the future.Brad: Right.Corey: And that might be what people are waking up to because it used to be a culture of once you’re out, you’re out. Clearly not the case anymore. They were passed over for a promotion they wanted, “Well, okay, I’m going to go talk to another company. Oh, my God, they’re paying people in yachts.” And it becomes, at some level, time for something new.I don’t begrudge people who decide to stay; I don’t begrudge people who decide to leave, but one of my big thrusts for a long time has been understand the trade-offs of either one of those decisions and what the other side looks like so you go into it with your eyes open. And I feel like, on some level, a lot of folks there didn’t necessarily feel that they could have their eyes open in the way that they can now.Brad: Mm-hm. Interesting. Yeah. Selipsky coming back, I never thought about that, sends a strong message. And Amazon wants builders, and operators, and entrepreneurial thinking at the top and in the S Team. And the fact that Andy had a experienced leadership team at AWS and then went outside it for the CEO could be interpreted as pretty demotivating for that team. Now, they’ve all worked with Adam before, and I’ve met him and he seems like a great guy so maybe there are no hard feelings, but—Corey: I never have. He left a few months before I started this place. So, it—I get the sense that he knew I was coming and said, “Well, better get out of here. This isn’t going to go well at all.”Brad: [laugh]. I actually went to interview him for this book, and I sat in his office at Tableau thinking, “Okay, here’s a former AWS guy,” and I got to tell you, he was really on script and didn’t say anything bad, and I thought, “Okay, well, that wasn’t the best use of my time.” He was great to meet, and it was an interesting conversation, but the goss he did not deliver. And so when I saw that he got this job, I thought, well, he’s smart. He smartly didn’t burn any bridges, at least with me.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at ChaosSearch., you could run Elasticsearch or Elastic Cloud—or OpenSearch as they’re calling it now—or a self-hosted ELK stack. But why? ChaosSearch gives you the same API you’ve come to know and tolerate, along with unlimited data retention and no data movement. Just throw your data into S3 and proceed from there as you would expect. This is great for IT operations folks, for app performance monitoring, cybersecurity. If you’re using Elasticsearch, consider not running Elasticsearch. They’re also available now in the AWS marketplace if you’d prefer not to go direct and have half of whatever you pay them count towards your EDB commitment. Discover what companies like HubSpot, Klarna, Equifax, Armor Security, and Blackboard already have. To learn more, visit chaossearch.io and tell them I sent you just so you can see them facepalm, yet again.Corey: No. And it’s pretty clear that you don’t get to rise to those levels without being incredibly disciplined with respect to message. I don’t pity Andy Jesse’s new job wherein a key portion of the job description is going to be testifying before Congress. Without going into details, I’ve been in situations where I’ve gotten to ask him questions before in a real-time Q&A environment, and my real question hidden behind the question was, “How long can I knock him off of his prepared talking points?” Because I—Brad: Good luck. [laugh].Corey: Yeah. I got the answer: about two and a half seconds, which honestly was a little bit longer than I thought I would get. But yeah, incredibly disciplined and incredibly insightful, penetrating answers, but they always go right back to talking points. And that’s what you have to do at that level. I’ve heard stories—it may have been from your book—that Andy and Adam were both still friendly after Adam’s departure, they would still hang out socially and clearly, relationships are still being maintained, if oh, by the way, you’re going to be my successor. It’s kind of neat. I’m curious to see how this plays out once that transition goes into effect.Brad: Yeah, it’ll be interesting. And then also, Andy’s grand homecoming to the other parts of the business. He started in the retail organization. He was Jeff’s shadow. He ran the marketing department at very early Amazon.He’s been in all those meetings over the years, but he’s also been very focused on AWS. So, I would imagine there’s a learning curve as he gets back into the details of the other 75% of Amazon.Corey: It turns out that part of the business has likely changed in the last 15 years, just a smidgen when every person you knew over there is now 10,000 people. There was an anecdote in your book that early on in those days, Andy Jesse was almost let go as part of a layoff or a restructuring, and Jeff Bezos personally saved his job. How solid is that?Brad: Oh, that is solid. An S Team member told me that, who was Andy’s boss at the time. And the story was, in the late 90s—I hope I remember this right—there was a purge of the marketing department. Jeff always thought that marketing—in the early days marketing was purely satisfying customers, so why do we need all these people? And there was a purge of the marketing department back when Amazon was trying to right-size the ship and get profitable and survive the dotcom bust.And Jeff intervened in the layoffs and said, “Not Andy. He’s one of the most—yeah, highest ceiling folks we have.” And he made him his first full-time shadow. Oh, and that comes right from an S Team member. I won’t say the name because I can’t remember if that was on or off the record.But yeah, it was super interesting. You know what? I’ve always wondered how good of a identifier of talent and character is Bezos. And he has some weaknesses there. I mean, obviously, in his personal life, he certainly didn’t identify Lauren Sánchez’s brother as the threat that he became.You know, I tell the story in the book of the horrific story of the CEO of Amazon Mexico, who Jeff interviewed, and they hired and then later ended up what appears to be hiring an assassin to kill his wife. I tell the story in the book. It’s a horrible story. So, not to lay that at the feet of Jeff Bezos, of course, but he often I think, moves quickly. And I actually have a quote from a friend of his in the book saying, “It’s better to not be kind of paranoid, and the”—sort of—I can’t remember what the quote is.It’s to trust people rather than be paranoid about everyone. And if you trust someone wrongly, then you of course-correct. With Andy, though, he somehow had an intuitive sense that this guy was very high potential, and that’s pretty impressive.Corey: You’re never going to bet a thousand. There’s always going to be people that slip through the cracks. But learning who these people are and getting different angles on them is always interesting. Every once in a while—and maybe I’m completely wrong on this, but never having spent time one on one with Andy Jassy, I have to rely on other folks and different anecdotes, most of them, I can’t disclose the source of, but every time that I wind up hearing about these stories, and maybe I’m projecting here, but there are aspects of him where it seems like there is a genuinely nice person in there who is worried, on some level, that people are going to find out that he’s a nice person.Brad: [laugh]. I think he is. He’s extraordinarily nice. He seems like a regular guy, and what’s sort of impressive is that obviously he’s extraordinarily wealthy now, and unlike, let’s say Bezos, who’s obviously much more wealthy, but who, who really has leaned into that lifestyle, my sense is Andy does not. He’s still—I don’t know if he’s on the corporate jet yet, but at least until recently he wasn’t, and he presents humbly. I don’t know if he’s still getting as close from wherever, [unintelligible 00:32:50] or Nordstroms.Corey: He might be, but it is clear that he’s having them tailored because fit is something—I spent a lot of time in better years focusing on sartorial attention, and wherever he’s sourcing them from aside, they fit well.Brad: Okay, well, they didn’t always. Right?Corey: No. He’s, he’s… there’s been a lot of changes over the past decade. He is either discovered a hidden wellspring of being one of the best naturally talented speakers on the planet, or he’s gone through some coaching to improve in those areas. Not that he was bad at the start, but now he’s compelling.Brad: Okay. Well, now we’re talking about his clothes and his speaking style. But—Corey: Let’s be very honest here. If he were a woman, we would have been talking about that as the beginning topic of this. It’s on some level—Brad: Or we wouldn’t have because we’d know it’s improper these days.Corey: We would like to hope. But I am absolutely willing to turn it back around.Brad: [laugh]. Anyway.Corey: So, I’m curious, going back a little bit to criticisms here, Amazon has been criticized roundly by regulators and Congress and the rest—folks on both sides of the aisle—for a variety of things. What do you see is being the fair criticisms versus the unfair criticisms?Brad: Well, I mean, I think we covered some of the unfair ones. But there’s one criticism that Amazon uses AWS to subsidize other parts of the business. I don’t know how you feel about that, but until recently at least, my reading of the balance sheet was that the enormous profits of AWS were primarily going to buy more AWS. They were investing in capital assets and building more data centers.Corey: Via a series of capital leases because cash flow is king in how they drive those things there. Oh, yeah.Brad: Right. Yeah. You know, and I illustrate in the book how when it did become apparent that retail was leaning on advertising, Jeff didn’t accept that. He wanted retail to stand on its own, and it led to some layoffs and fiercer negotiations with brands, higher fees for sellers. Advertising is the free cash flow that goes in Prime movies, and TV shows, and Alexa, and stuff we probably don’t know about.So, this idea that Amazon is sort of improperly funneling money between the divisions to undercut competitors on price, I think we could put that in the unfair bucket. In the fair bucket, those are the things that we can all look at and just go, “Okay, that feels a little wrong.” So, for an example, the private brand strategy. Now, of course, every supermarket and drugstore is going to line their shelves with store brands. But when you go to an Amazon search results page these days, and they are pockmarked with Amazon brands, and Whole Foods brands, and then sponsored listings, the pay-to-play highest bidder wins.And then we now know that, at least for a couple of years, Amazon managers, private label managers were kind of peeking at the third-party data to figure out what was selling and what they should introduce is a private Amazon brand. It just feels a little creepy that Amazon as the everything store is so different than your normal Costco or your drugstore. The shelves are endless; Amazon has the data, access to the data, and the way that they’re parlaying their valuable real estate and the data at their disposal to figure out what to launch, it just feels a little wrong. And it’s a small part of their business, but I think it’s one where they’re vulnerable. The other thing is, in the book, I tried to figure out how can I take the gauge of third-party sellers?There’s so many disgruntled voices, but do they really speak for everyone? And so instead of going to the enemies, I went to every third-party seller that had been mentioned in Jeff Bezos’s shareholder letters over the past decade. And these were the allies. These were the success stories that Bezos was touting in his sacrosanct investor letter, and almost to a one, they had all become disgruntled. And so the way in which the rules of the marketplace change, the way that the fees go up, and the difficulty that sellers often have in getting a person or a guiding hand at Amazon to help them with those changes, that kind of feels wrong.And I think that maybe that’s not a source of regulation, but it could be a source of disruptive competition. If somebody can figure out how to create a marketplace that caters to sellers a little better with lower fees, then they could do to Amazon with Amazon years ago did to eBay. And considering that Marketplace is now a preponderance of sales more than even retail on amazon.com, that can end up hurting the company.Corey: Yeah, at some point, you need to continue growing things, and you’ve run out of genuinely helpful ways, and in turn in start to have to modify customer behavior in order to continue doing things, or expand into brand new markets. We saw the AWS bleeding over into Alexa as an example of that. And I think there’s a lot of interesting things still to come in spaces like that. It’s interesting watching how the Alexa ecosystem has evolved. There’s still some very basic usability bugs that drive me nuts, but at the same token, it’s not something that I think we’re going to see radically changing the world the next five years. It feels like a hobby, but also a lucrative one, and keeps people continuing to feed into the Amazon ecosystem. Do you see that playing out differently?Brad: Wait, with Alexa?Brad: Absolutely.Brad: Yeah. I agree with you. I mean, it feels like there was more promise in the early years, and that maybe they’ve hit a little bit of a wall in terms of the AI and the natural language understanding. It feels like the ecosystem that they tried to build, the app store-like ecosystem of third-party skills makers, that hasn’t crystallized in the way we hoped—in the way they hoped. And then some of these new devices like the glasses or the wristband that have Alexa feel, just, strange, right?Like, I’m not putting Alexa on my face. And those haven’t done as well. And so yeah, I think they pioneered a category: Alexa plays music and answers basic queries really well, and yet it hasn’t quite been conversational in the way that I think Jeff Bezos had hoped in the early days. I don’t know if it’s a profitable business now. I mean, they make a lot of money on the hardware, but the team is huge.I think it was, like, 10,000 people the last I checked. And the R&D costs are quite large. And they’re continuing to try to improve the AI, so I think Jeff Bezos talks about the seeds, and then the main businesses, and I don’t think Alexa has graduated yet. I think there’s still a little bit of a question mark.Corey: It’s one of those things that we remain to see. One last thing that I wanted to highlight and thank you for, was that when you wrote the original book, The Everything Store, Andy Jassy wrote a one-star review. It went into some depth about all the things that, from his perspective, you got wrong, were unfair about, et cetera.And that can be played off as a lot of different things, but you can almost set that aside for a minute and look at it as the really only time in recent memory that Andy Jassy has sat down and written something, clearly himself, and then posted it publicly. He writes a lot—Amazon has a writing culture—but they don’t sign their six-pagers. It’s very difficult to figure out where one person starts and one person stops. This shows that he is a gifted writer in many respects, and I don’t think we have another writing sample from him to compare it to.Brad: So, Corey, you’re saying I should be honored by his one-star review of The Everything Store?Corey: Oh, absolutely.Brad: [laugh].Corey: He, he just ignores me. You actually got a response.Brad: I got a response. Well.Corey: And we’ll put a link to that review in the [show notes 00:40:10] because of course we will.Brad: Yes, thank you. Do you—remember, other Amazon executives also left one-star reviews. And Jeff’s wife, and now ex-wife Mackenzie left a one-star review. And it was a part of a, I think a little bit of a reflexive reaction and campaign that Jeff himself orchestrated at my—this was understanding now, in retrospect. After the book came out, he didn’t like it.He didn’t like aspects of his family life that were represented in the book, and he asked members of the S Team to leave bad reviews. And not all of them did, and Andy did. So, you wonder why he’s CEO now. No, I’m kidding about that. But you know what?It ended up, kind of perversely, even though that was uncomfortable in the moment, ended up being good for the first book. And I’ve seen Andy subsequently, and no hard feelings. I don’t quite remember what his review said. Didn’t it, strangely, like, quote a movie or something like that?Corey: I recall that it did. It went in a bunch of different directions, and at the end—it ended with, “Well, maybe someday he’ll write the actual story. And I’m not trying to bait anyone into doing it, but this book isn’t it.” Well, in the absence of factual corrections, that’s what we go with. That is also a very Amazonian thing. They don’t tell their own story, but they’re super quick to correct the record—Brad: Yeah.Corey: —after someone says a thing.Brad: But I don’t recall him making many specific claims of anything I got wrong. But why don’t we hope that there’s a sequel review for Amazon Unbound? I will look forward to that from Andy.Corey: I absolutely hope so. It’s one of those things that we just really, I guess, hope goes in a positive direction. Now, I will say I don’t try to do any reviews that are all positive. And that’s true. There’s one thing that you wrote that I vehemently disagree with.Brad: Okay, let’s hear it.Corey: Former Distinguished Engineer and VP at AWS, Tim Bray, who resigned on conscientious objector grounds, more or less, has been a guest on the show, and I have to say, you did him dirty. You described him—Brad: How did I—what did I do? Mm-hm.Corey: Oh, I quote, “Bray, a fedora-wearing software developer”—which is true, but still is evocative in an unpleasant way—“And one of the creators of the influential web programming language, XML”—which is true, but talk about bringing up someone’s demons to haunt them. Oh, my starts.Brad: [laugh]. But wait. How is the fedora-wearing pejorative?Corey: Oh, it has a whole implication series of, and entire subculture of the gamer types, people who are misogynist, et cetera. It winds up being an unfair characterization—Brad: But he does wear a fedora.Corey: He does. And he can pull it off. He has also mentioned that he is well into retirement age, and it was a different era when he wore one. But that’s not something that people often will associate with him. It’s—Brad: I’m so naive. You’re referring to things that I do not understand what the implication was that I made. But—Corey: Oh, spend more time with the children of Reddit. You’ll catch on quickly.Brad: [laugh]. I try, I try not to do that. But thank you, Corey.Corey: Of course. So, thank you so much for taking the time to go through what you’ve written. I’m looking forward to seeing the reaction once the book is published widely. Where can people buy it? There’s an easy answer, of course, of Amazon itself, but is there somewhere you would prefer them to shop?Brad: Well, everyone can make their own decisions. I flattered if anyone decides to pick up the book. But of course, there is always their independent bookstore. On sale now.Corey: Excellent. And we will, of course, throw a link to the book in the [show notes 00:43:31]. Brad, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I really appreciate it.Brad: Corey, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you.Corey: Brad Stone, author of Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, on sale now wherever fine books are sold—and crappy ones, too. I’m Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you’ve hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice and then a multi-paragraph, very long screed telling me exactly what I got wrong.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

What does the early evidence tell us about the economic impact of Brexit and what the future holds? At this event organised in partnership with the Centre for European Reform and LSE's Centre for Economic Performance, speakers discussed. Panel: Stephanie Flanders, Senior Executive Editor for Economics, Bloomberg and Head, Bloomberg Economics Anna Jerzewska, Founder, Trade & Borders Thomas Sampson, Associate Professor, Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics & Political Studies John Springford, Deputy Director, Centre for European Reform Chair: Anand Menon, Director, UK in a Changing Europe

In this podcast, Stephanie Flanders, Senior Executive Editor, Bloomberg Economics, and Abhishek Gupta, India Economist at Bloomberg Economics, provides an assessment of the impact of Covid-19 on the global economy, global supply chains, labour markets and government finances. They also offered a perspective on the Indian economy and a forward view on what to expect in the coming months.

Laura Zelenko is Senior Executive Editor overseeing talent, diversity, training, and standards across Bloomberg's global newsroom. As part of her role, Laura set out a comprehensive initiative to improve gender representation on every platform, including a tracking system for sourcing and a media training program for women executives. Within the newsroom, she works with managers to make meaningful progress towards gender parity and increased ethnic diversity at every level and leads new training, recruiting and development efforts to meet those goals. Laura began working for Bloomberg 26 years ago in Prague and has run numerous global reporting teams, most recently managing all of Bloomberg's business, finance, energy, and investigative coverage. She is a graduate of Princeton University with a BA in politics. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/toby-usnik/support

Barry Ritholtz, Founder of Ritholtz Wealth Management and Bloomberg Opinion columnist, on what's driving markets. Ramesh Ponnuru, Senior Editor at the National Review and a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, discusses Trump's acquittal and the Democratic race. Brad Stone, Senior Executive Editor of Global Tech and Bloomberg Businessweek writer, on tech earnings, IPOs, and regulation of Big Media Tech. Chris Edwards, Director of Tax Policy Studies at The Cato Institute and editor of Down​siz​ing​Gov​ern​ment​.org, on how we are marching into a fiscal crisis. Hosted by Lisa Abramowicz and Paul Sweeney.

Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO and Chief Strategist for Quill Intelligence LLC, former adviser to the Dallas Fed and a Bloomberg Opinion contributor, discusses the economy and what to expect from the Fed. David Garrity, Chief Market Strategist for Laidlaw & Co, and Partner at BTblock, discusses Apple and Big Tech media earnings. Ed Al-Hussainy, Senior Interest Rates and Currencies Analyst for Columbia Threadneedle Investments, on the Fed, the yield curve, and currencies. Stephanie Flanders, Senior Executive Editor for Bloomberg Economics and former Advisor to US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, on the global economy. Hosted by Lisa Abramowicz and Paul Sweeney.

Kevin spoke with Bloomberg's Senior Executive Editor for Government and Economics Marty Schenker, Kevin Walling, Democratic Strategist at HG Creative Media, and A.B. Stoddard, Associate Editor & Columnist @ Real Clear Politics. They discussed USMCA, Impeachment, healthcare and the 2020 elections.

Kelly speaks with Luke Brussel, an attorney, Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law, and former Senior Executive Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Constitutional Law Journal, and with Suzanne Berger, and attorney and Chair of the Greenburgh Democratic Committee in Westchester County, New York, about the judiciary: how Trump and conservatives have packed the courts with activist conservative judges; what a Progressive Judiciary would look like; and how we can achieve it.

Kelly speaks with Luke Brussel, an attorney, Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law, and former Senior Executive Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Constitutional Law Journal, and with Suzanne Berger, and attorney and Chair of the Greenburgh Democratic Committee in Westchester County, New York, about the judiciary: how Trump and conservatives have packed the courts with activist conservative judges; what a Progressive Judiciary would look like; and how we can achieve it.

The Action Network Business Reporter and Senior Executive Editor joins the guys from Radio Row at Super Bowl LIII to discuss the business surrounding the big game as well as what the Action Network can do to help those who want to add a little excitement to the play on the field.

Brian Levitt, OppenheimerFunds Senior Investment Strategist, says a trade war could lead to a stronger dollar. Elizabeth Economy, CFR Senior Fellow & Author of "The Third Revolution", says tariffs are good for shock value but past that, they don't do much. And Bloomberg's Senior Executive Editor for Economics Stephanie Flanders hosts a panel of central bankers in Sintra, Portugal. We hear from ECB President Mario Draghi and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

The real James Bond is finally revealed: A few years ago Larry Loftis decided to stop publishing legal articles and work full-time on researching and writing the story of Dusko Popov, the daring World War II double agent who worked tirelessly to keep the Nazis off guard about the upcoming D-Day invasions. That work became his book Into the Lion's Mouth: The True Story of Dusko Popov: World War II Spy, Patriot, and the Real-Life Inspiration for James Bond. Loftis received his undergraduate degree and his Law degrees from the University of Florida. His background in writing stems from his time on the university's Law Review as the Senior Executive Editor and Senior Articles Editor. He is the author of a number of scholarly legal articles. But you'd never know about Larry's background in dry academic writing by reading his book. Into the Lion's Mouth is a riveting narrative that is as unbelievable as it is addictive. Even former CIA director Michael Morrell called it "impossible to put down. The most shocking aspect of this book is that every word in it is absolutely true. With the attention to detail that only a lawyer could bring to researching a book of this magnitude, Loftis poured through thousands of historical documents (including MI5 archives) related to Popov and his missions, even revealing that it was actually Popov's adventures which inspired the many tales of Britain's 007, James Bond. 1. Popov was captured by the Nazis before he became a spy. Dusko Popov was a student in Germany as the Nazis took power and began to persecute the German Jews. No fan of the Nazis, Popov thumbed his nose at the thugs who came to intimidate patrons of Jewish businesses. He was quickly visited by the Gestapo, who imprisoned him and tortured him for information. He was able to escape Germany because of his family's connections. Hermann Göering ordered his release to Yugoslavia. 2. He was recruited by his best friend.   Johann-Nielsen Jebsen – known as "Johnny" – went to school with Popov. But Jebsen is from a very wealthy European family with German roots. They met each other at the university of Freiburg but where Popov was expelled from Germany, Jebsen, as a German citizen, was forced to join the Nazi war effort. He joins the Abwehr (German military intelligence) as a spy recruiter. His first recruit is Dusko Popov and the two both became double agents for the British. 3. He warned the U.S. about the attack on Pearl Harbor Popov warned the FBI on Aug. 18, 1941, that the Japanese were about to attack Pearl Harbor. Popov and his MI6 supervisor met FBI officials at the Commodore Hotel and for three hours laid out the entire plan. Popov was in the country to set up a spy ring in New York and recon the defenses at Pearl Harbor. The attack was supposed to be a repeat of the British attack on the Italian fleet at the defended port of Taranto in 1940. The Japanese wanted to know how they could be as successful as they enter the war against the Americans. The reason President Roosevelt never saw the information will enrage you. Check out the book (or finish this podcast) to find out! 4. He was critical to the success of D-Day. The British determined that the best way to keep the Germans off guard on D-Day was to convince them that the invasion would come at Pas-de-Calais, not Normandy. At the risk of his life, with interrogators who were convinced that Popov was compromised by the British, Popov returned to Germany. He gave the Nazis the false information the British wanted them to believe during multiple, marathon interrogation sessions that lasted for hours at a time over a series of days. Popov was the only spy who was interrogated by the Nazis about D-Day. 5. His real-world girlfriend was a movie star. Just like his silver screen counterpart, James Bond, Popov had a slew of women he used for various reasons as a undercover agent for two opposing countries. But his heart belonged to just one – and she was as glamorous as the rest of his World War II life: Hollywood movie star Simone Simon.

Tim and his wife just returned from a five-night sailing on Carnival Cruise Line's Carnival Liberty. Hear a review of this Bahamas cruise from Port Canaveral.  Stewart has cruise news on:  Recent updates to Princess Cays  Carnival Cruise Line adding more Cuba sailings in 2019  Carnival Corporation's new WiFi hardware blows away competitors  Cruise Awards Cruise Critic recently revealed their 2018 Cruiser's Choice awards. These awards are voted by members of the site's cruising community. Colleen McDaniel, Senior Executive Editor of CruiseCritic.com stops by to share a few of the winners with us. You can get a rundown of all the winners by clicking here.    Listener Questions:  What is the status of Princess Cruises' Ocean Medallion program?  Why does every Carnival Cruise Line ship always stop in Nassau, Bahamas?   Questions or comments? doug@cruiseradio.net  

In the spirit of iconic Silicon Valley renegades like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, another generation of entrepreneurs is using technology to upend convention and disrupt entire industries. These are the upstarts, idiosyncratic founders with limitless drive and an abundance of self-confidence. The Upstarts is the definitive story of Uber and Airbnb, two new titans of business and a dawning age of tenacity, conflict, and wealth. Brad Stone, Senior Executive Editor of Global Technology at Bloomberg News and the author of the New York Times bestseller “The Everything Store,” illuminates the smart, driven, and often comically-flawed people who are upending industries and changing the way we all live and work.   Join us as Shannon Stubo, our Chief Marketing Officer and SVP of Corporate Communications, hosts Brad at a fireside chat to discover what it took to change the world.

Head west. Start up. Get rich. The Silicon Valley mythos describes a steady stream of young, idealistic startup founders who have made it big. No longer content on joining the next “unicorn” (the unprofitable startup with a billion dollar valuation), entrepreneurs now chase the goal of the “deca-corn” - the 10 billion dollar startup. But what about the rest of those many unknown entrepreneurs battling to make it to the top? Alexandra Wolfe, staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal and author of Valley of the Gods, takes us on a journey into the unique Silicon Valley culture, turning her relentless gaze and unflinching wit on the life and times of the startup bubble. What makes these Silicon Valley entrepreneurs tick? How do these young up-and-comers balance Silicon Valley’s endless optimism with its lofty expectations? Who are these men and women of Silicon Valley, whose hubris and ambition are changing the world? Speaker Alexandra Wolfe is an author and Staff Reporter at the Wall Street Journal. The conversation is moderated by Brad Stone, Senior Executive Editor for Technology at Bloomberg News. For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/event-calendar/event/1673

Brad Stone is Senior Executive Editor for technology at Bloomberg News and author of the New York Times bestseller The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World.   Today he’ll discuss how both companies got there starts including how a James Bond movie inspired Uber and how a wiley illegal hotelier who almost wrecked AirBnB’s plans in New York City. We’ll talk about the rideshare wars between Uber and Lyft, Uber’s efforts to muscle in on the Chinese market, and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s decision to resign from President Trump’s business advisory council. We’ll also discuss why the rivals to Uber and AirBnB failed to take off, we’ll talk about Amazon’s latest experiments with blimps, drones, and cashless convenience stores, and why it’s good to be a “cockroach” in Silicon Valley. Order Brad Stone’s book The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World on Amazon or you can download the audio version at www.audibletrial.com/kickassnews. Read Brad Stone’s articles at www.bloomberg.com or www.brad-stone.com and subscribe to his podcast Decrypted on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.  Follow Brad on twitter at @BradStone. Today's podcast is sponsored by GoDaddy. Visit www.GoDaddy.com and enter our promo code "KICK30" to get 30% off a new domain. Please subscribe to Kickass News on iTunes and take a moment to take our listener survey at www.podsurvey.com/KICK. And support the show by donating at www.gofundme.com/kickassnews. Visit www.kickassnews.com for more fun stuff.

Cruise Critic's experts, Colleen McDaniel, Senior Executive Editor and Chris Gray Faust, Senior Editor, explain the in's and out's of cruise ship beverage packages. A guide to cruise line... For more information about cruising visit http://www.cruisecritic.com/. You can also email us at podcast@cruisecritic.com or leave a voicemail 609-583-0108 to ask us a cruise question or share your story.