Decoder Ring: Why Do So Many Coffee Shops Look the Same?

Slate Technology

Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2024

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The eerie similarity of coffee shops all over the world was so confounding to Kyle Chayka that it led him to write the new book Filterworld: How Algorithms Are Flattening Culture. In today’s episode, Kyle’s going to walk us through the recent history of the cafe, to help us see how digital behavior is altering a physical space hundreds of years older than the internet itself, and how those changes are happening everywhere—it’s just easier to see them when they’re spelled out in latte art. This episode was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Katie Shepherd. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Special thanks to Ben Frisch and Patrick Fort. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends. If you’re a fan of the show, please sign up for Slate Plus. Members get to listen to Decoder Ring and all other Slate podcasts without any ads and have total access to Slate’s website. Your support is also crucial to our work. Go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I made you think you was real.
0:02.0	My name is Caden Sinclair.
0:04.0	Some people call us American royalty.
0:06.0	We were Liars.
0:08.0	A new series on Prime Video.
0:10.0	We were happy. We wanted for nothing.
0:12.0	Based on the best-selling novel.
0:15.0	Something terrible happened last summer,
0:17.0	and I have no memory of what or who hurt me.
0:20.0	No one in my family will tell me.
0:22.7	When you're left for dead, you want answers.
0:25.2	We Will Liars. New series, watch now. Only on Prime Video.
0:33.4	Hi, Kyle.
0:38.4	Hello, how's it going?
0:39.6	It's good, how are you?
0:40.3	Thank you so much for doing this.
0:41.5	Of course. I love coffee shops.
0:44.6	Kyle Cheika is a staff writer at The New Yorker, and we met up in December of 2003 at a cafe
0:50.0	on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
0:53.1	What's your order?
0:59.0	Usually a cappuccino, like as small a cappuccino as possible. Kyle has spent a lot of time in coffee shops.
1:02.0	He's fascinated by them.
	...

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