This week Jason, as both a drones and aliens reporter, tells us what is most likely happening with the mysterious drones flying over New Jersey. After the break, Joseph explains how cops in Serbia are using Cellebrite phone unlocking tech as a doorway to installing malware on activists' and journalists' phones. In the subscribers-only section, Sam tells us all about an amazing art project using traffic cameras in New York City.
Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
Kylie Kelce said that there are toys she wouldn't want in her house on the latest episode of "Not Gonna Lie."
Her 'please don't buy this for my children' gift guide includes toys with too much glitter and pets.
Kelce's podcast topped the charts on Spotify and Apple after its premiere last Thursday.
If you're wondering what gifts to buy — or not buy — for kids this festive season, Kylie Kelce has got you covered.
On Thursday, duringthe second episode of her podcast "Not Gonna Lie," the media personality and wife of Jason Kelce shared her "brutally honest" gift guide for kids.
"I don't know about you guys, but I often see toys when I'm out shopping or scrolling social media, and I just think to myself, 'Not in my house,'" she said.
Referring to the list as her 'please don't buy this for my children' guide to holiday shopping, she recommended that other parents share it with"aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends — anyone who has asked, 'What can I get the kids for Christmas?'"
"This is your opportunity to have me deliver that harsh reality," said the soon-to-be mom of four.
1. Toys that require more than 5 minutes to assemble
When a kid sees a box with a picture of the toy, they will immediately want to play with it, the former field hockey player said.
"And you know what they're going to do the whole time you're trying to assemble it on a Christmas morning, a Hanukkah evening?" she said. "They're going to stand behind you and say, 'Are you done yet? Are you done yet?'"
"Don't do that to people. Let's not," she said.
2. Anything with too much glitter
As a mom of three daughters, all aged 5 and under, Kelce said that "pretty much everything" they get has glitter on it. "It makes their hearts so happy. I can't veto glitter as a whole," she said.
What she doesn't like about it is how glitter falls everywhere. "I need you to get something that glitter is sealed; I need it attached to that surface; I need it not leaving it," she said.
3. Toys with no volume control
Kelce said that when her daughter Wyatt was 2, she received an electronic drum set. However, it didn't come with volume control.
"I tried taping over the speaker, I tried putting it on a blanket when Wyatt wanted to play with it," she said.
She eventually retired the toy a week later but said the same person, Ed Kelce, her father-in-law, got her kid a new drum set the following Christmas. Thankfully, the new drum set did have volume control, she said.
"But there's still a lot of deep amount of guilt associated with the fact that I hid a Christmas gift from my child because I couldn't stand to listen to that damn thing for one more minute at the volume that it was playing at," she said. "I'm so sorry, Ed."
4. Anything with a heartbeat
Her kids have yet to be gifted a pet, but Kelce said she fears that when the time eventually comes, she will have to respond by returning it.
Calling it a "sick, twisted joke to gift," Kelce added that it's the parents who will end up taking responsibility for the pet.
"I'm already proud of myself when I can keep three children alive each day. I don't need to be working on any more pets, specifically pets that I have not chosen to bring into my household," she said.
5. Toys with too many pieces
"Once the kids start playing with toys that have a million pieces, I then have to go around and pick up all the little pieces," Kelce said. Eventually, pieces go missing, rendering the toys useless, and she ends up stepping on them, she added.
6. Toy weapons
Kelce said her kids have received a few toy weapons. On one occasion, her daughter, Elliotte, got "picked off" in the backyard by an airplane gun that Wyatt played with.
"So, they've proved that they have not earned the trust required to receive weapons, because they will try to take each other out, and I don't want to mediate any of that again," she said.
"Not Gonna Lie" dethroned "The Joe Rogan Experience" to take the top of the charts on Spotify Podcasts and Apple Podcasts after the release of its first episode last Thursday.
"It absolutely blew my mind," Kelce said at the beginning of her second episode. "I really appreciate you guys having such positive feedback, considering I'm still a rookie, and we're working out the kinks."
The podcast is produced by Wave Sports + Entertainment, the company behind her husband's podcast, "New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce." In August, the brothers signed a three-year deal with Amazon's Wondery worth over $100 million.
"Hot Ones" host Sean Evans doing a version of his interview show with Jimmy Fallon and Priyanka Chopra Jonas in 2019. Now the show will be owned by George Soros.
Andrew Lipovsky/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
BuzzFeed used to be a high-flying digital publisher. Now it has shrunk considerably.
BuzzFeed needed to find a way to pay off a big debt obligation due this month.
It solved that problem by selling the company behind "Hot Ones" for $83 million to a fund controlled by investor George Soros.
Good news for BuzzFeed: It no longer has a huge debt problem looming over its head.
Slightly less good news for BuzzFeed: Solving the debt problem means the company needed to sell one of its buzziest assets — First We Feast, the production company that owns the "Hot Ones" interview show.
And now Hot Ones — the show where celebrities answer questions while eating increasingly spicy chicken wings — is going to be owned by … investor George Soros and his family.
There's a bit going on here. We can break it down in a minute. But the big picture is that BuzzFeed, once considered a world-beating digital publisher, has staved off a potential extinction event (and, for what it's worth, has likely extinguished a threat posed by investor and political player Vivek Ramaswamy). And in addition, George Soros has added another asset to an interesting collection of media investments he has assembled in the past few years.
But now BuzzFeed has sold First We Feast/Hot Ones to what it's calling a consortium "led by an affiliate of Soros Fund Management LLC" for $82.5 million in cash. Then it took the proceeds from that sale, threw in some cash it already had on hand, and paid back some $90 million of its debt obligations. BuzzFeed says it has $30 million in debt remaining, and that money is due in a year.
"BuzzFeed says its remaining businesses — BuzzFeed, the pop culture site best known for listicles, quizzes, and celebrity news; Huffington Post, the left-leaning news site; and Tasty, its food vertical — will power the company in the future, along with what CEO Jonah Peretti calls "new AI-powered interactive experiences."
First We Feast, meanwhile, says it will now operate as a standalone company. It says the deal and its new ownership structure will let it "fuel existing and new content franchises" and fund "future partnerships and acquisitions with other creators." A press release from the company says "Hot Ones" host Sean Evans is one of the investors in the new company, which suggests he's going to be sticking around for a while.
And while it might seem weird for Soros, who is worth a reported $7.2 billion and whose funding of liberal causes has made him a bogeyman for some US conservatives, to own a celebrity interview show, it's not a total shocker, for a couple of reasons.
For starters, Soros' empire — now run by his son Alex — has been making movies into media over the last few years. In 2022, it acquired a minority stake in Crooked Media, the podcast company best known for its "Pod Save America" show. And earlier this year, Soros acquired a controlling stake in Audacy, a bankrupt radio company with more than 200 stations in the US — a deal that incensed some Republicans.
There's also some connective tissue between Soros and BuzzFeed at play here via media executive Michael Del Nin. Back in 2021, Del Nin put together the deal that allowed BuzzFeed to go public, and he was set to become one of BuzzFeed's top executives in 2022. Instead, Del Nin went to Soros, where he leads the investment company's media unit.
The deal also means that BuzzFeed has reduced its risk that Ramaswamy, an investor and soon-to-be DOGE cochair advising the next Trump administration, will have meaningful influence in its future.
Earlier this year, Ramaswamy bought up a 9% stake in BuzzFeed and told Peretti he should bring a group of conservative media types onto BuzzFeed's board and turn BuzzFeed into a Twitter-style platform. Then he suggested that when BuzzFeed's debt came due this month, the company would be unable to pay it back and that somehow Ramaswamy would end up controlling the company. That doesn't seem like an option anymore.
This week we start with Joseph's story about how the weapon found on the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO murderer was a particular 3D printed design. Then Jason tells us what he found about the alleged killer Luigi Mangione through his online accounts, and why, ultimately, this kind of journalism might not matter. After the break, Sam talks about how various healthcare companies removed pages about their leadership after the murder, and what we're seeing when it comes to social content moderation around it. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about Congress getting big mad at Apple and Google after 404 Media's reporting on deepfake apps.
Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
We start this week with Sam's stories about multiple people building big datasets of Bluesky users' posts. People are not happy! After the break, Jason talks all about reverse-engineering Redbox machines, and a trip he took to see one being ripped up. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph explains two big moves the U.S. government is making against data brokers.
Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
This week we start with Emanuel's couple of stories about Niantic, the company that makes Pokémon Go, and its plan to build an AI model based on data collected by its users. After the break, Jason and Emanuel talk about their big investigation into the rise of "AI pimping." In the subscribers-only section, Joseph explains why he doesn't use a mobile phone and how he uses an iPad Mini instead.
Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
It's neat? But WEIRD!! Very weird!!! No thank you!
One of the indignities inflicted on parents of young children is Spotify Wrapped. Each December, thousands of adults open up their year-end treat to discover the sad fact that they listened to "Baby Shark" more times than anything else.
As a parent, this has been my fate for the last few years. (My Spotify account is connected to our Amazon Echo, which means that in some years, my kids' requests for songs about potty words have ended up on my Wrapped.)
I take very little pleasure in Spotify Wrapped, although I know it's a massively popular thing that many people —presumably those who don't listen to Raffi on repeat — really look forward to.
However, this year, there's a new feature. And I struggle to imagine how anyone won't feel mildly weirded out by it: Spotify uses Google's new NotebookLM AI-powered feature to create an individualized AI-generated podcast with two talking heads discussing your listening habits in a conversational, podcast-y tone. Yikes!
I received a 3-minute podcast with a man and woman chatting about how impressive it was that I had listened to "Cruel Summer" by Taylor Swift — my 4-year-old's current favorite tune, narrowly edging out "Let It Go" this year — so many times that I was in the Top 0.02% of listeners. (I should note here that the podcast said I was in the Top 0.02%, while the main Wrapped said it was 0.05%. Possibly the podcast version hallucinated?)
I can understand why people like sharing screenshots from their Wrapped. It's normal to want to share what music you like — and what those lists say about you and your personality.
But listening to an AI podcast about it? Voiced by robots? I'm not sure anyone wants that.
Google's NotebookLM is a fascinating product — I've played around with it a little, and it is very cool, if not uncanny. You can add in text or a PDF or other kinds of data, and it will create a conversational podcast episode with two hosts — "likes" and "ums" and all.
It's got that factor about GenAI that makes you go "whoa," like trying ChatGPT for the first time to have it write a poem.
It's got the dog-walking-on-its-hind-legs element: It's impressive because the dog can do it at all, not because it's doing it particularly well. The idea that AI could generate a chatty podcast that sounds almost real is, admittedly, mindblowing. But would you want to actually listen to it? I'm not really so sure.
I've wondered what this would be used for — I assume some people find listening to something makes it easier to engage with than simply reading it. You could take the Wikipedia page for "The War of 1812," plug it into AI, and generate an engaging history podcast instead of slogging through dry text.
And in a business setting, perhaps a busy exec could upload an accounting report and listen to it while on the putting green instead of reading a stale PDF. (I tried uploading my tax return and created what may be the most boring podcast in human history.)
But NotebookLM is a pretty niche product so far — and Spotify Wrapped is a massively popular feature on a massively popular app. It's likely that this will be many people's first exposure to NotebookLM's abilities.
I imagine it will be mindblowing for many people! But I urge restraint and moderation. Although seeing a screenshot of your friends' top artists might be fun, no one wants to hear a podcast about it.
"I'm always practicing before I go in because you don't want the thing you're leading with to be your nerves," she said.
Although it's "nerve-racking" to go to someone in a position of power and negotiate for more, "half of business is the way that you're presenting," said Cooper, who launched the advice and relationship podcast in 2018.
At this point in her career, Cooper, 30, said she knows she can walk into any room in business and close the deal.
"Half of it has nothing to do with my business IQ — it's really just my emotional EQ. Half the time, I'm leading with EQ, not IQ, because that's what moves the needle," said Cooper, who also owns a media company targeted at Gen Zs.
"So I think practicing what you want to say to someone, and how you are going to approach it, and how you are being confident and calm—that goes farther half the time than what's actually coming out of your mouth," she continued.
Cooper said she also writes outnotes on what she wants to say — a habit she learned from her mom. The next step is to practice out loud.
"That helps, though, because then the first time that you're projecting it to someone, you're like, 'Oh, I've done this so many times,'" she said. "Now you get to practice your swag, how you're sitting, is my leg crossed, am I using my hands, and am I making eye contact? That's how I go about it."
Cooper's three-year deal with SiriusXM is more than double the value of her 2021 deal with Spotify, which was worth $60 million, per Variety.
The deal allows SiriusXM to oversee the advertising and distribution of her "Call Her Daddy" podcast from 2025. It also covers her podcast network, Unwell Network, which includes shows from influencers such as Alix Earle and Harry Jowsey, per a statement from SiriusXM.
Last year, "Call Her Daddy" was ranked the number two podcast globally on Spotify, behind "The Joe Rogan Experience."
The podcast was originally known for conversations about sex, but has since grown to cover a range of topics from body positivity to relationships. It has featured A-list guests such as Miley Cyrus and Hailey Bieber. In October, Vice President Kamala Harris was also a guest on the show.
In the same statement, Scott Greenstein, president and chief content officer at SiriusXM, said that the audio entertainment company is the "perfect home for Alex to continue her amazing growth trajectory."
"Alex is the voice of a new generation, and I can't wait to see what we do together in the years to come," he added.
However, industry insiders told Business Insider in August that SiriusXM will only shell out $125 million if her "tremendous value" is fully realized over the next three years.
A representative for Cooper did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.
The art of negotiation
Negotiating is a critical skill to master, whether to seal a business deal or secure a job offer.
Leigh Thompson, a professor at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the author of the new book "Negotiating the Sweet Spot: The Art of Leaving Nothing on the Table," previously wrote for BI that successful negotiators are "relational" instead of "transactional." This means they treat the discussion as a conversation between people with a shared interest instead of a hard-nosed transaction-focused approach.
She added that negotiators should seek mutual gains for both parties. "Successful negotiators think about how to expand-the-pie and grow-the-sandbox, not just how many toys they're entitled to," she wrote.
When it comes to landing a job offer, Chris Williams, a former vice president of human resources at Microsoft, previously told BI that signing bonuses, higher commissions, more paid time off, and healthcare benefits are among the things to negotiate.
"I try to remember something I once heard: If your counteroffer doesn't make you feel a little guilty — like you've gone a little too far — you haven't pushed enough," he said.
"So negotiate that job offer, and get what you deserve."
