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Even if you have If you’ve never taken a puff from a vape pen in your life, you already know Juul. At the company’s peak in 2018, its e-cigarette was one of the most recognizable consumer devices on the planet, and Juul Labs was worth $38 billion. A few years later, after coming under pressure from government regulators and prohibitionist anti-smoking advocates, Juul’s valuation plummeted and its market share evaporated.
The history of Juul (and its thousands of imitators) is described in It failed: The vaping wars, a new nine-part podcast from Prologue Projects. The show traces the history of e-cigarettes, nicotine vaporizers and synthetic nicotine, following the paths of Juul and its thousands of competitors as vaping companies gain public acceptance, fight for market share and clash with government agencies. It’s a fascinating journey full of new reports, so even if you’ve read and heard everything about Juul and vaping, you’ll hear new and shocking information in this series.
this week in gadget labwe spoke with It was counterproductiveThe hosts, Arielle Pardes and Leon Neyfakh.
Show notes
It was counterproductive It’s an Audible original, so go to audible.com/counterproductive hear. See also Louise Matsakis’ story on the next generation of cheap, illegal vapes coming from China.
recommendations
Arielle recommends Timeshifter’s Jet lag app. León recommends the Yoto Player to attract children to podcasts. Lauren recommends The bee sting, by Paul Murray. Mike recommends Mediocre poola game of Hole creator Martín Jonasson.
You can find Arielle Pardes on social media @pardesoteric. Leon Neyfakh is @leoncrawl. Lauren Goode is @Lauren Goode. Michael Calore is @snack fight. Bling the main hotline at @gadget lab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our musical theme is Solar keys.
How to listen
You can always listen to this week’s podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get all the episodes, here’s how:
If you’re on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for Gadget Lab. If you’re on Android, you can find us in the Google Podcasts app by simply playing here. They were in Spotify also. And in case you really need it, here is the RSS feed.
