Why Do So Many Coffee Shops Look the Same?

Decoder Ring

Slate Podcasts

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2024

⏱️ 34 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

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Alex met Sam at nursery. They were first loves. They built forts together, shared sandwiches in high school, and were each other's first kiss.
0:11.0	They were the dream couple, Sam got into EDM music.
0:17.0	While Alex enjoyed folk, first loves are kind of like your current account. If they aren't working for you anymore,
0:26.7	maybe it's time to switch with the current account switch service. Hi Kyle.
0:38.0	Hello, how's it going?
0:40.0	It's good. How are you?
0:41.0	Thank you so much for doing this.
0:42.0	Of course, I love coffee shops.
0:45.2	Kyle Chika is a staff writer at the New Yorker,
0:47.6	and we met up in December of 2023
0:49.8	at a cafe on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
0:53.5	What's your order?
0:55.4	Usually a cappuccino, like as small a cappuccino
0:58.6	as possible.
0:59.9	Kyle has spent a lot of time in coffee shops.
1:02.4	He's fascinated by them.
1:04.0	A thing that draws me to coffee shops
1:05.6	is there's such centers of like displays of taste and culture.
1:09.1	They're almost like multi-sensory art museums
1:11.8	for the taste of the moment.
1:14.0	He works in them when he's at home and abroad.
1:16.2	And around 2015, 2016, he started to notice something about all of them.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.