The New Luddites: Why People Are Destroying Surveillance and AI Infrastructure
This week, we talk to Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine, about a rash of people physically destroying AI and surveillance infrastructure. Brian puts this wave of attacks in the historical...
4 Maj 52min
How This Trippy Image Started A Massive Conspiracy Theory
This week, Jason explains the conspiracy theory circulating behind a trippy stock image that went viral after the White House Correspondents’ Dinner—was it sent here by a time traveler? (Spoiler: It w...
29 Apr 47min
Government Hacking Tools Are Now in Criminals' Hands (with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai)
This week Joseph talks to Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, a journalist at TechCrunch. Lorenzo has possibly the deepest understanding of one of the wildest cybersecurity stories in years: how an employe...
27 Apr 51min
How Algorithms Make Us Feel Bad and Weird
This week Sam unpacks how social media algorithms manipulate our emotions around everything from engagement rings to wedding dresses to babies, and what it feels like getting lost in the #Weddingtok s...
22 Apr 58min
Why Journalists Are Leaving Big Media (with Maddy Myers)
This week, Sam is joined by Maddy Myers, editor-in-chief of Mothership. She’s also a co-host of the video games podcast Triple Click. Maddy launched Mothership with co-founder Zoë Hannah in Januar...
20 Apr 55min
How the FBI Extracted Deleted Signal Messages
We start this week with Joseph’s story on the inherent friction between secure chat apps like Signal and the phone they’re running on. Incoming message content can be stored in a phone’s internal noti...
16 Apr 44min
How the Internet Became Hell (with Whitney Phillips)
‘The Ambivalent Intent’ and ‘The Shadow Gospel’ author Whitney Phillips on how online got so bad Why does the internet feel like it’s getting worse every single day, and why does it feel like the...
13 Apr 1h 4min
Wildlife Cops Are Searching AI Cameras for ICE
This week we start with Jason’s story about how wildlife cops are doing Flock lookups for ICE. It shows that ICE is gaining access to this sort of information through pretty unexpected ways. After the...
8 Apr 50min
