Episodes
-
Lately, we’re feeling nostalgic for the Y2K era. The glitter-slathered techno-optimism of the millennial moment continues to shape our darker present.
Our guest, author Colette Shade, has written a 2000s nostalgia fest. Y2K: How the 2000’s Became Everything (Essays on the Future That Never Was) is a memoir and a cultural critique of an optimistic era that ended with a financial crash. She joins the show to talk about the end of history, inflatable furniture and chatroom usernames.
Also, Vass and Katrina wear butterfly clips and Ugg boots in the snow.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe’s online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
-
Lately, the video games industry is in turmoil. The rise and fall of Blizzard, the trailblazing and toxic studio behind World of Warcraft, shows us why.
Our guest, Jason Schreier, is an investigative reporter who covers the video game industry for Bloomberg News. His most recent book is the best-selling Play Nice: The Rise, Fall and Future of Blizzard Entertainment. Jason shares his years-long reporting on the frat-like culture at Blizzard, the scandal-plagued games developer that Microsoft bought for $75.4 billion (U.S.).He talks about how commercial success can lead to creative decline, why Candy Crush is evil, and the future of gaming.
Also, Vass and Katrina go on an epic quest.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe’s online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
-
Missing episodes?
-
Lately, millions of Canadians are unpartnered. Business and tech companies are rushing to meet the needs of the new me-market. For Valentine’s Day, we’re asking: “Is this actually a great time to be single?”
Our guest, Yuthika Girme, is the director of SECURE, the Singlehood Experiences and Complexities Underlying Relationships Lab, at Simon Fraser University. She joins Lately to unpack anti-single prejudice, the four archetypes of singletons, and explains how this growing demographic is shaping a new ‘solo economy.’
Also, Vass and Katrina refuse to share their cake.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe’s online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
-
Lately, our bosses are going further than reading our emails. New technologies that can track our motions and our moods are ushering in a new age of workplace surveillance. Is this productivity hacking, or counterproductive micromanagement?
Our guest, David Murakami Wood, is the Canada Research Chair in Critical Surveillance and Security Studies and a professor at the University of Ottawa. He joins the show to walk us through recent mind-blowing advances in employee tracking technology and whether all this surveillance actually makes workplaces more efficient. He also explains why he didn’t get a cell phone until two years ago.
Also, Vass and Katrina undergo theoretical brain surgery.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe’s online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
-
Lately, the internet has broken the White House. Influencers and tech CEOs now have unprecedented access to the Trump administration. How will the “broligarchy” change our world?
Our guest, Taylor Lorenz, covers the influence of influencers on User Mag, her tech and online culture Substack. The former Washington Post reporter literally wrote the book on how the internet took over politics: Extremely Online, The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet.
Lorenz weighs in on the big tech transformation of the U.S. government, why banning TikTok is a bad idea, and what it’s like to party with the content creators who shaped the U.S. election.
Also, Vass and Katrina discuss hostile haberdashery.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe’s online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
-
Lately, we’re sharing our darkest secrets with robots. The market for AI mental health aides is booming but how does it actually feel to bond with a therapy bot?
Our guest, Graham Isador, just started his job as The Globe’s new Healthy Living reporter. Traditional therapy can be expensive and scarce, so Graham turned to AI and found a therapist who’s cheap, always available and not at all human. To his surprise, he kind of liked it.Graham describes his strange experience turning over his mental health to a chatbot. His article on the topic appears this week in The Globe.
Also, Vass and Katrina discuss what voice they would choose for their own AI therapists.
You can also hear about the mother who says an AI chatbot led to her son’s death over on The Globe and Mail podcast Machines Like Us.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe’s online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
-
Lately, lingerie behemoth Victoria’s Secret is trying to claw its way back to relevance after a spectacular crash. How did a brand that once defined the culture fail to keep up?
Our guests, Lauren Sherman and Chantal Fernandez, tell the story of a retail giant’s rise and fall in their new book Selling Sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon.
They chart the company’s evolution from a fledgling sex toy business to a global fast-fashion pioneer. But when social media transformed the meaning of sexy, and the CEO’s association with Jeffrey Epstein made headlines, the fashion shows got canceled and the shares crashed. We’re asking where that leaves Victoria’s Secret today... and who is Victoria anyway?
Plus, Vass reveals her new advertising partnership with an underwear brand from her youth.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe’s online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
-
Lately, we aren’t all getting the same price for the same product. Is the rise of data-driven “personalized pricing” corporate innovation or just next-gen gouging?
Our guest, Lindsay Owens, is an economic sociologist and former policy advisor to U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren. She’s the co-author of “The Age of Recoupment” in The American Prospect’s issue on How Pricing Really Works, and the executive director of Groundwork Collaborative.
Owens discusses how major retailers are using digital surveillance to set individual prices for individual customers. She talks about the evolution of pricing, from the bazaar to the department store to the Taco Bell app, and why AI software may be enabling price-fixing schemes in real estate that are driving up rents across North America.
Also Vass and Katrina compete for hotel deals.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe’s online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
-
Lately, we’ve been getting the news from The Decibel, the Globe and Mail’s daily news podcast.
In this bonus episode, Lately’s sister pod reveals what it took for Rogers to outmaneuver the competition and buy up some of the biggest sports teams in Canada.
A colossal business deal recently took place when a set of rivals came to an unexpected agreement. Rogers Communications Inc. bought BCE Inc.’s 37.5-per-cent stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment for $4.7-billion. The transaction makes Rogers the majority owner of all of Toronto’s major professional sports teams.
Andrew Willis, a columnist and reporter for The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business, explains to Decibel host Menaka Ramn-Wilms how Rogers has the money to do this, why Bell agreed to sell to a major competitor and how investors may be able to buy their own stake in their favourite sports team one day.
Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email [email protected]
-
Professor Timothy Caulfield researches health misinformation, especially when it intersects with celebrity culture. In the new CBC documentary Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, Caulfield takes a trip to the “manosphere” and meets the men who buy and sell the promise of masculinity in this growing segment of the $5-trillion wellness market. Caulfield talks to Lately about debunking the pseudoscience of drinking urine, how traditional masculine values can actually harm men’s health, and how the manosphere might have propelled Donald Trump to victory.
Plus, Vass finds out what lightly grilled bull testicle tastes like.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe’s online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
-
Lately, LinkedIn has become cringe... or cool, or more important than ever, depending on who you ask. So, is LinkedIn working well for us, or has it devolved into yet another shouty social media site?
Tim Kiladze is a Globe and Mail business reporter, Bay Street veteran and LinkedIn connoisseur. He wrote a compelling report on the evolution of LinkedIn: The tone has shifted to more performative “thought leadership,” the line between personal and professional has blurred – and now Bay Street executives are peacocking their post stats over lunch. But if you stay away from LinkedIn, are you sabotaging your career?
Vass Bednar would like to connect. Accept/Reject?
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe’s online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
-
A bonus episode from our Globe and Mail sister show Machines Like Us. How is Silicon Valley’s shift to the right affecting the US election?
The tech lobby has quietly turned Silicon Valley into the most powerful political operation in America.Pro-crypto donors are now responsible for almost half of all corporate donations this election. Elon Musk has gone from an occasional online troll to, as one of our guests calls him, “MAGA’s Minister of Propaganda.” And for the first time, the once reliably blue Silicon Valley seems to be shifting to the right. What does all this mean for the upcoming election? To help us better understand this moment, we spoke with three of the most prominent tech writers in the U.S. Charles Duhigg (author of the bestseller Supercommunicators) has a recent piece in the New Yorker called “Silicon Valley, the New Lobbying Monster.” Charlie Warzel is a staff writer at the Atlantic, and Nitasha Tiku is a tech culture reporter at the Washington Post.
Machines Like Us is a Globe and Mail tech show about AI and people. It's hosted by Taylor Owen and comes out every other Tuesday.Mentioned:
“Silicon Valley, the New Lobbying Monster” by Charles Duhigg
“Big Crypto, Big Spending: Crypto Corporations Spend an Unprecedented $119 Million Influencing Elections” by Rick Claypool via Public Citizen
“I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is” by Charlie Warzel
“Elon Musk Has Reached a New Low” by Charlie Warzel
“The movement to diversify Silicon Valley is crumbling amid attacks on DEI” by Naomi Nix, Cat Zakrzewski and Nitasha Tiku
“The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” by Marc Andreessen
“Trump Vs. Biden: Tech Policy,” The Ben & Marc Show
“The MAGA Aesthetic Is AI Slop” by Charlie Warzel
-
Lately, Big Tobacco says it wants to phase out cigarettes and promote, of all things, healthier options. But can the tobacco industry actually sell wellness? And is this pivot to vapes and pouches a smoking off-ramp or just a one-way ride to nicotine addiction?
Award-winning journalist Luc Rinaldi takes us behind the curtain of Big Tobacco’s machinations to report on how an industry built on addiction is looking to reinvent itself for the wellness age. His cover story "Blowing Smoke" appears in this month’s edition of the Globe and Mail's Report on Business Magazine.
Also, Vass shares her secret to social success.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
And subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where we unpack more of the latest in business and technology.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
-
Companies in Canada are being bought up by private equity at an incredible rate. The list includes Rexall, MEC, Value Village, WestJet and Sleep Country.
But it also includes local businesses: vets, dentists, retirement homes and more. Critics say it’s an unchecked shift in the economy that results in negative, often dangerous outcomes – where the profit motive can mean higher prices and lower quality of care.
We’re speaking to someone who has brokered such deals: Rachel Wasserman is a lawyer and former investment banker who left that world behind to become a researcher for the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project. Her forthcoming paper is called The Private Equity Playbook: Understanding the Secretive Industry Hollowing Out the Canadian Economy.
She joins us to talk about the cutthroat world of leveraged buyouts, the risks of corner-cutting, and what a private-equity future means for Canada’s economy.
Plus: producer Jay’s cat, Leo, is doing his own investigating to find out why his vet stopped giving out so many treats.This is Lately. Every week, we take a deep dive into the big, defining trends in business and tech that are reshaping our every day.
Lately is hosted by Vass Bednar. Our executive producer is Katrina Onstad. The show is produced by Jay Cockburn. Our sound designer is Cameron McIver.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where we unpack more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
-
When Erika Ayers Badan beat out 74 men to become the first CEO of Barstool Sports, the company was small, dominated by brash bros, and indivisible from the controversial reputation of its founder, Dave Portnoy. But she corralled Barstool and turned it into a media empire with a $500-million exit.
So where do you go after helming a culture-quaking company? Ayers Badan became CEO of the cooking and lifestyle brand Food52 – new industry, new struggles. She was hired after layoffs, terrible Glassdoor reviews, and a predecessor who had lasted less than a year.
In a live conversation at Elevate, Canada’s tech and innovation festival, Ayers Badan speaks with Lately about how to manage the unmanageable, what she learned as a woman leading a fratty company that was sold twice in one year, and about her new book, Nobody Cares About Your Career: Why Failure Is Good, The Great Ones Play Hurt, and Other Hard Truths.
Also, Vass shares her secret for successful public speaking with Katrina: sour keys. But she doesn’t literally share them.
This is Lately. Every week, we take a deep dive into the big, defining trends in business and tech that are reshaping our every day.
Our executive producer is Katrina Onstad. The show is produced by Jay Cockburn. Our sound designer is Cameron McIver. Our host is Vass Bednar.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where we unpack more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
-
That creeping feeling that everything online is getting worse has a name: “enshittification,” a term for the slow degradation of our experience on digital platforms. The enshittification cycle is why you now have to wade through slop to find anything useful on Google, and why your charger is different from your BFF’s.
According to Cory Doctorow, the man who coined the memorable moniker, this digital decay isn’t inevitable. It’s a symptom of corporate under-regulation and monopoly – practices being challenged in courts around the world, like the US Department of Justice’s antitrust suit against Google.
Cory Doctorow is a British-Canadian journalist, blogger and author of Chokepoint Capitalism, as well as speculative fiction works like The Lost Cause and the new novella Spill.
This is Lately. Every week, we take a deep dive into the big, defining trends in business and tech that are reshaping our every day.
Our executive producer is Katrina Onstad. This episode is produced by Jay Cockburn and Andrea Varsany. Our sound designer is Cameron McIver.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where we unpack more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
-
Tupperware just filed for bankruptcy, but the direct sales model it pioneered lives on.
These days, the hustle might be candles, leggings or sex toys. You may be recruited to join via a Facebook friend, who calls it “social selling.” But really, it’s multi–level marketing – a $300–billion industry where the vast majority of salespeople make little to no money.
Our guest is Peabody and Emmy Award–winning investigative journalist Jane Marie, host of the podcast The Dream and author of Selling the Dream: The Billion-Dollar Industry Bankrupting Americans, an exposé of the dark side of MLMs.
Marie talks to us about how the business model attracts good people in a bad economy. And instead of #bossbabe independence, they find themselves broke and ashamed, drowning in unsellable stuff, wondering: “Hey, am I in a cult?”This is Lately. Every week, we take a deep dive into the big, defining trends in business and tech that are reshaping our every day.
Our executive producer is Katrina Onstad. This episode is produced by Andrea Varsany and Jay Cockburn. Our sound designer is Cameron McIver.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where we unpack more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
-
Workplace productivity apps like Slack, Notion, and Trello are encroaching on our personal lives. According to a trending article in San Francisco Standard, new apps specifically for couples and families, like Lovewick and Coexist, are gaining traction in Silicon Valley. These tools promise to balance domestic labour by optimizing everything from your chores to your #couplegoals. But is life a project that needs to be perfectly managed? Could there really be an app for that?
Our guest, Oliver Burkeman is best known as the author of the weekly self-help column “This Column Will Change Your Life” for The Guardian. In this episode, we speak with him about the rise of productivity apps in our personal lives, whether technology can divorce-proof a marriage and what we might be missing when our relationships are too optimized. Oliver’s new book is Meditations for Mortals. He is also the author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. His newsletter, “The Imperfectionist,” is about productivity, mortality, and building a meaningful life in an age of bewilderment.
Also, Vass and Katrina discuss Vass’ greatest organizational tool: her new pencil case.
This is Lately. Every week, we take a deep dive into the big, defining trends in business and tech that are reshaping our every day.Our executive producer is Katrina Onstad. The show is produced by Andrea Varsany. Our sound designer is Cameron McIver.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where we unpack more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
-
Welcome to Lately. Every week, we take a deep dive into the big, defining trends in business and tech that are reshaping our every day.
In an encore of our very first episode, we tackle the fake review economy: how online reviews got corrupted and if we can ever trust them again. Our guest is Joseph Reagle, an associate professor at Northeastern University and the author of several books, including Reading the Comments. He recently posted a positive review of a dog raincoat on Temu.
Also, Vass and Katrina talk about what it’s like to find your own name on a review for a rug you never bought!
Lately is a Globe and Mail podcast.
Our executive producer is Katrina Onstad.
The show is hosted by Vass Bednar and produced by Andrea Varsany.
Our sound designer is Cameron McIver.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where we unpack more of the latest in business and technology.
Find a copy of this episode's transcript here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions, or ideas to [email protected].
-
Shein and Temu have completely disrupted Amazon’s global domination plans by selling clothes and home goods for ultra-cheap prices, if not ultra-fast delivery – but at what cost?
Our guest, journalist Louise Matsakis, has covered technology, the internet and China for The Atlantic, Wired, The Guardian and NBC News. She also writes a newsletter about e-commerce in China called You May Also Like. She dives into the secretive world of made-in-China e-commerce, the stakes for competitors, and the ethical concerns for consumers who want to shop responsibly without breaking the bank.
Also, Vass tells Katrina that she can’t figure out her Shein shopping cart.
This is an encore presentation of an episode from our first season. We’ll be back with brand new episodes in the fall.
This is Lately. Every week, we take a deep dive into the big, defining trends in business and tech that are reshaping our every day.
Our executive producer is Katrina Onstad. The show is produced by Andrea Varsany. Our sound designer is Cameron McIver.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where we unpack more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to [email protected].
- Show more
