Audiobooks by Ben Smith

Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral

"Engrossing and suspenseful.' -The New York Times "Expertly pulls readers in." -The Guardian "Smith sharply chronicles the revolutionary moment." - Financial Times The origin story of the Age of Disinformation: the candid inside tale of two online media rivals, Jonah Peretti of HuffPost and BuzzFeed and Nick Denton of Gawker Media, whose delirious pursuit of attention at scale helped release the dark forces that would overtake the internet and American society. If attention is the new oil, Ben Smith's Traffic is the story of the time between the first gusher and the impact of climate change. The curtain opens in Soho in the early 2000s, after the first dotcom crash but before Google, Apple, and Facebook exploded, when it seemed that New York City rather than Silicon Valley might become tech's center of gravity. There, within a few square blocks, Nick Denton's merry band of nihilists at his growing Gawker empire and Jonah Peretti's sunnier crew at HuffPost and BuzzFeed were building the foundations of viral internet media. It was tech's age of innocence: the old establishment might have been discredited by the Iraq War, but digital news would facilitate the spread of truth. After all, didn't progressive activists online get Barack Obama elected? Ben Smith, who would go on to earn a controversial reputation as BuzzFeed's editor-in-chief, was there to see it, and he chronicles it all with marvelous lucidity scored with dark wit, sparing no one-and certainly not himself. Smith tells a nuanced story: yes, Denton's ideology of radical transparency was problematic, but at least he had an ideology. Jonah Peretti survived long after Denton's Gawker perished because his focus on clicks was relentlessly content-agnostic. But unintended consequences began to snowball. Traffic explores one of the great ironies of our time: the internet, which was going to help the left remake the world in its image, has become the motive force of right populism. People like Steve Bannon and Andrew Breitbart and Gavin McInnes and Chris Poole, the creator of 4chan, all seemed like minor characters in the narrative in which Nick and Jonah and crew were the stars. By 2020, any reasonable observer might wonder if the opposite wasn't the case. To understand how we got here, Traffic is essential and enthralling reading.

Ben Smith (Author), Ben Smith, Ian Putnam (Narrator)

Audiobook

Drugs, Guns and Lies

A story from the inside when Queensland had the most corrupt police force in the country. This is what it's really like to be an undercover police officer. 'Undercover was like guerrilla warfare; to understand your enemy, you had to walk amongst them, to become them. The trick was to keep an eye on that important line between who you were and who you were pretending to be.' This is the true story of Keith Banks, one of Queensland's most decorated police officers and his journey into the drug scene as an undercover operative in the 1980s. In an era of corruption, often alone, with no backup, he and other undercover cops quickly learned to blend into the drug scene, smoking dope and drinking with targets, buying drugs and having dealers arrested. Very quickly, the lines were blurred between his identity as a police officer and the life he pretended to be part of. This is a raw and confronting story of undercover cops who all became casualties of that era, some worse than others and where not everyone with a badge could be trusted.

Ben Smith, Keith Banks (Author), Joel Jackson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Doggerland

'The Road meets Waiting for Godot: powerful, unforgettable, unique' Melissa Harrison, author of At Hawthorn Time. Doggerland is a superbly gripping debut novel about loneliness and hope, nature and survival - set on an off-shore windfarm in the not-so-distant future. 'His father's breath had been loud in the small room. It had smelled smoky, or maybe more like dust. He had knotted and unknotted a strap on the bag he was holding - he must have been leaving to go out to the farm that day. 'I'll get out,' he'd said. 'I'll come back for you, ok?' The boy remembered that; had always remembered it. And, for a time, he'd believed it too.' In the North Sea, far from what remains of the coastline, a wind farm stretches for thousands of acres. The Boy, who is no longer really a boy, and the Old Man, whose age is unguessable, are charged with its maintenance. They carry out their never-ending work, scoured by wind and salt, as the waves roll, dragging strange shoals of flotsam through the turbine fields. Land is only a memory. So too is the Boy's father, who worked on the turbines before him, and disappeared. The boy has been sent by the Company to take his place, but the question of where he went and why is one for which the Old Man will give no answer. As his companion dredges the sea for lost things, the Boy sifts for the truth of his missing father. Until one day, from the limitless water, a plan for escape emerges... This beautifully crafted novel about loneliness and hope, nature and survival, is as haunting as it is compelling - a very special debut indeed.

Ben Smith (Author), Peter Noble (Narrator)

Audiobook