What I'm listening to (July 2024)

Backfired: The Vaping Wars

I'm a huge fan of Leon Neyfakh and Prologue Projects, whose shows are always worth listening to. Their latest, an Audible Original that requires an Audible subscription, is a fascinating dive into the history of e-cigarettes and vaping. As usual, the show is very well-researched and includes excellent contemporary news clips. Neyfakh brings a surprisingly personal angle to the show, which concludes with a call to his mother. Highly recommended. (Linking to 99PI teaser for the show because Audible is giving me a hard time linking here!)

Backfired: The Vaping Wars - 99% Invisible

For decades, people have been trying to figure out how to create a cigarette without many of the downsides. Cigarettes sans the things that make smoking the biggest cause of preventable death in America like tar, carcinogens, etc. Cigarette companies tried to create “safe,” combustion-free smoking devices as far back as the 1980s. They were

99% Invisible99pi

Brian Winter on Conversations with Tyler

This feels like a classic CWT: covering a wide range of topics, from food to politics to travel and literature.

Brian Winter on Brazil, Argentina, and the Future of Latin America (Ep. 216)

Come for the churrasco. Stay for the economic deep dives across Latin America.

Conversations with Tyler

Jeff Weinstein from Stripe on Lenny's Podcast.

I don't usually listen to Lenny but I found this interview super-insightful. Jeff is a very strong advocate for talking to customers, something I really missed after selling Chartable. He offers some super-actionable tactics for running a product team that are hard-won from building Stripe Atlas, for example:

• Creating internal dashboards that are super-focused on metrics that matter to your customers. For Stripe Atlas, that was the percentage of customers who successfully start a company without talking to support at all from first click to two weeks after completion. That's a high bar!
• One way to tell you're on the right track is to ask: what would happen if your internal dashboards leaked to your customers? If your customers would be pumped, then you know you could be measuring the right things—your team is aligned with stuff that makes your customers happy.
• Lots more insights! I'm gonna be chewing on this one for a while. Highly recommended.

Building at Stripe: craft, metrics, and customer obsession | Jeff Weinstein (Product Lead at Stripe)

Jeff Weinstein on customer obsession, metrics, and the story behind Stripe Atlas, making entrepreneurship accessible globally with simple clicks.

Lenny's NewsletterLenny Rachitsky