Joanna Stern on quitting the Wall Street Journal and building a media business with AI

Google VP of marketing and Frontier CMO podcast host Josh Spanier joins Ben in Mountain View to talk about the state of marketing today, and why the predicted CMO armageddon for 2026 never happened. Ben asks Josh why he thinks even sophisticated advertisers are only a few meters into the AI race and how Google uses incrementality and thousands of AI-generated budget scenarios to prove what’s working. They also get into Josh’s daily watch channel, what CMOs learn by being forced to post every day, and a lightning round of Signal or Noise.

New York Times veteran and "AGI Chronicles" author Kevin Roose joins Mixed Signals to talk about what it was like to be patient zero for the AI media moment (a Valentine's Day evening where he stayed up chatting with a Microsoft chatbot that told him to leave his wife). Max and Ben ask Kevin how he used AI aggressively to write his book without letting it actually write a word, and whether taking a grant from an AI safety–linked nonprofit is a problem. They also get into his new show at NPR, and why he decided to leave the New York Times.

Documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney joins Mixed Signals to talk about his four-hour film on Elon Musk. Max and Ben ask Gibney how he built an AI avatar of Musk using only his actual words when Musk refused to participate, what Elon’s first wife, Justine Musk, taught him about “gaslighting” as a management strategy, and why he thinks Musk’s political turn was less ideological than it was transactional and childlike.

Actor and producer Kasey Esser joins Mixed Signals to explain the multi-billion dollar "microdrama" industry, and why he's become one of its biggest stars. Max and Ben ask Kasey how a werewolf Romeo-and-Juliet show that shot in just a week for a hundred thousand dollars became a global hit, what it's like to translate Chinese scripts for American audiences in real time on set, and how microdramas make all of their money.

Liquid Death founder and CEO Mike Cessario joins Mixed Signals (with Semafor business editor Liz Hoffman filling in for Max) to explain how he built a billion-dollar water company by treating his ads like SNL sketches. Ben and Liz ask Mike why he thinks comedy is a more durable marketing genre than celebrity testimonials, why big companies almost never win when they sue smaller ones, and whether Liquid Death will fizzle out into the graveyard of buzzy consumer brands that came before it.