Alexis C. Madrigal is an editor-at-large for Fusion, where he’s producing the upcoming podcast, Containers.

“Sometimes you think like, 'Man the media business is the worst. This is so hard.' When you spend time with all these other business people, you probably are going to say, ‘Capitalism is the worst. This is hard.’ Competition that’s linked to global things is so hard because global companies are locked in this incredible efficiency battle that just drives all of the slack out of the system. Like media, there’s no slack left, and I don’t know where things go after that.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Stamps.com, and Casper for sponsoring this week's episode.


@alexismadrigal
alexismadrigal.com
Madrigal on Longform
[00:00] Longform Podcast Survey
[03:00] Madrigal’s Archive at The Atlantic
[03:45] Consumer Conspicuous
[05:00] Ross Andersen on the Longform Podcast
[05:30] "First-Gen T. Rex Was No Bigger Than You" (Wired • Sep 2009)
[06:45] Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology (Da Capo Press • 2011)
[12:45] Nuzzel
[15:30] "BuzzFeed editor-in-chief in year-end memo: ‘Fake news will become more sophisticated’ than ever in 2017" (Oliver Darcy • Business Insider • Dec 2016)
[19:00] "The alpha dog that wouldn’t hunt: How Trump’s ludicrous ‘alpha male’ act is destroying him" (Matthew Rozsa • Salon • Oct 2016)
[24:00] "How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything" (Atlantic • Sep 2012)
[27:45] "A Fleet of One" (John McPhee • New Yorker • Feb 2003)
[28:15] Uncommon Carriers (John McPhee • Farrar, Straus and Giroux • 2006)
[29:15] Madrigal’s Archive at Fusion
[29:15] Real Future
[37:45] Slacker
[46:00] "American Aqueduct: The Great California Water Saga" (Atlantic • Feb 2014)
[48:45] Madrigal’s Archive at NPR