Podcast Episodes

Here Comes the A.I. Music Slop

It’s hard to make money in the music industry. But if you could flood every streamer with hundreds of “original” songs without having to, you know, write or produce it yourself, there’s money there—a…

Published on 1 month ago

What Happened After Meta Fired Its Fact-Checkers

In January, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta was moving from employing professional fact-checkers to letting its users fact-check each other. If you’ve heard that it’s going perfectly, then you, t…

Published on 1 month ago

The A.I. Data Center Push That Wasn't

OpenAI’s Sam Altman, flanked by President Trump and Softbank’s Masayoshi Son, announced a hugely ambitious investment in data centers across America to support all the artificial intelligence we’re g…

Published on 1 month, 1 week ago

The Death of an Online Whisper Network

A shadow app for the dating world had its data hacked and exposed, and it laid bare the perils of creating safe spaces for women online — and of relying on tech companies.

Guest: Kate Lindsay, host …

Published on 1 month, 1 week ago

Dupes!

There’s an entire economy devoted to seeing what products are trending—clothing, skin care, even Greek Islands—and delivering you a cheaper knock-off to buy. 

Guest: Mia Sato, reporter for The Verge

Published on 1 month, 2 weeks ago

A Colbert Report

Was the Late Show too unprofitable, or too political?

Guest: Eric Deggans, NPR TV critic and media analyst, Knight Chair, Journalism and Media Ethics, Washington & Lee University.

Want more What Next…

Published on 1 month, 2 weeks ago

When Bots Go Nazi

It’s kind of strange that Grok, Elon Musk’s chatbot, went full Nazi a few weeks ago, and is just…still out there. But, then again, how are you supposed to hold an LLM accountable?

Guest: Drew Harwell…

Published on 1 month, 3 weeks ago

How The Epstein Files Blew Up MAGAworld

The MAGA world has been waiting for Jeffrey Epstein’s client list to be released since the first Trump administration. But with those like Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, who stoked interest in the list …

Published on 1 month, 3 weeks ago

When A.I. is Sycophantic

He started using ChatGPT to help with spreadsheets. But their relationship took a turn, and before long it was telling him he could leap off a 19-story building and fly.

Guest: Kashmir Hill, feature…

Published on 2 months ago

Hot Measles Summer

It’s a record-breaking year for America: we’ve now had the most reported cases of measles since the disease was declared “eradicated” in 2000. 

How did public health backslide so hard that it undid d…

Published on 2 months ago