TechStuff

What kind of technology do air traffic controllers use? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah discuss how AI determines your real age, why chatbots can lead to delusions and what to know about a familiar sounding blood-testing startup. On TechSupport, features writer at New York Magazine’s Intelligencer, James D. Walsh, explains how AI-fueled cheating has overtaken college campuses, wh...

Chaim Gingold is a game designer and author of the book Building SimCity: How to Put the World in a Machine , which explores the simulation games created by developer Will Wright. Gingold sits down with Oz to discuss why a computer game about city planning became such a big hit in the ‘90s, the surprising legacy of SimCity, and the deeper cultural and technological significance of simulation...

Could you be on a livestream for three years straight? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah explore the push to include AI education in schools, the parallel universe of the Chinese car market and why criminals should be wary of Interpol. On TechSupport, The Washington Post ’s technology reporter Drew Harwell reflects on his time shadowing Emilycc, the record-breaking Twitch streamer...

Nicolas Niarchos is a journalist whose work focuses on conflicts, migration and, most recently, the energy transition. Specifically, the hidden costs of extracting minerals like cobalt, which remains a critical element in the technology we use to run our lives. Niarchos sits down with Oz to discuss what he’s observed in mineral-rich Congo and Indonesia – and how the battle for geopolit...

Can AI help search-and-rescue dogs do their job? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah explore the AI-powered technologies being used in war and why some Meta staffers worry about underage users interacting with their AI companions. On TechSupport, Olivia Carville, an investigative reporter at Bloomberg and the host of the podcast Levittown , discusses the Take It Down Act and what it means...

Evan Ratliff is an investigative journalist and podcast host. His Wired article, “The Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of the Zizians,” marked the culmination of a two-year deep-dive into a group of young tech radicals and their spiral into violence. Ratliff sits down with Oz to unpack how the group formed, what they believed – the parts we can decipher, at least –...

Should you delete yourself from the internet? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah dig into humanoid robots running a half-marathon, the AI-generated personas helping law enforcement interact with potential suspects and Google’s updated ‘Results About You’ tool. On TechSupport, Jeff Rosenthal, the co-founder of the venture capital firm CIV, discusses the role of private in...

Lionel Barber is a journalist, author, and former editor of the Financial Times . He’s interviewed state leaders like former US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But in Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son , Barber chronicles the life of SoftBank’s enigmatic CEO from his childhood as an ethnic Korean in Japan to becoming the richest man i...

How would Salvador Dalí have used generative AI? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah dig into this year’s most common uses for generative AI, the rise of code editor, Cursor, and how Google DeepMind’s Veo2 interprets a surrealist screenplay. On TechSupport, The Washington Post’s staff writer, Naomi Nix, discusses the first week of Meta’s antitrust trial. See...

Jen Statsky is a comedian, writer, and producer who’s worked on some of TV’s biggest comedies like The Good Place , Parks & Recreation and Broad City . Most recently, she’s been behind the scenes as one of the co-creators of the hit show Hacks . Jen sits down with Karah to talk about how writing and producing for TV has changed in the face of accelerating AI, the “secon...

What’s a ‘mega API’? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah break down the ever-evolving landscape of tariffs and what it all means for tech companies, Tinder’s ChatGPT-powered dating game, and the rise of ‘Frankenstein’ laptops in India. On TechSupport, The Wall Street Journal’s Family & Tech Columnist Julie Jargon explains how imposter scams are...

Reid Hoffman is a longtime entrepreneur, venture capitalist and author. Throughout his career, Hoffman has helped build or support some of the biggest tech companies we know today. He was one of PayPal’s first employees, a co-founder of LinkedIn and an early investor and board member for OpenAI. These days, Hoffman spends a lot of time thinking about the potential positive outcomes of AI dev...

How do LLMs solve math problems? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah explore what AI models could mean for the fashion industry, the humble-but-mighty device our modern world depends on, and what Anthropic’s researchers learned about the inner workings of their LLM. On TechSupport, The Washington Post’s technology reporter Gerrit De Vynck explains the state of the AI race and h...

Zak Brown is the CEO of McLaren Racing, the second-oldest Formula 1 team. When he joined in 2016, McLaren was in a difficult spot — lagging behind in race wins, sponsorships, and morale. Brown set out to transform the team by elevating their in-house racing technology and fostering active collaboration. He led the team to win the F1 Constructors’ Championship last year, their first one...

What even is a crypto mixer? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah dig into potential Slack-enabled corporate espionage, the recall of a Kim K-beloved product and the group chat that broke the internet. On TechSupport, The Washington Post’s technology columnist Geoffrey Fowler discusses 23andMe’s financial woes and what it means for the genetic data of the roughly 15 million peop...

This is the first episode of a new podcast called Levittown. It’s a real-life horror story for the AI generation. In this six-part series from Bloomberg, Kaleidoscope and iHeartPodcasts, reporters Olivia Carville and Margi Murphy take listeners from the quiet suburbs of New York to as far as New Zealand and into the darkest corners of the internet. Where tech moves faster than the law, and i...

How do you calm down a chatbot? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and producer Eliza Dennis dig into the book that Meta doesn’t want you to read, chatbot reactions to stressful stimuli, and the new home of Pokémon Go data . On TechSupport, 404 Media ’s Joseph Cox discusses a tool with surprising data scraping capabilities that is used by US agencies like ICE. See omnystudio.com/...

Astro Teller is Alphabet’s Captain of Moonshots. He oversees projects at X – the moonshot factory behind innovations like Waymo and Google Brain. To celebrate X’s 15 years of pushing boundaries, Astro Teller decided to take listeners inside the factory. On The Moonshot Podcast , inventors and entrepreneurs behind breakthrough technologies reflect on their projects, both the highs...

Could AI help you land an internship? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and producer Eliza Dennis explore the rise of vibecoding, what it means for the future of software development and how one college programmer hopes to reform the Big Tech hiring process. On TechSupport, Oz chats with the founder and researcher of the Exponential View newsletter, Azeem Azhar, about the latest AI innovation and...

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist, author, entrepreneur and host of the podcast Inner Cosmos . In his podcast, he explores how our brains interpret the world and construct reality. Eagleman sits down with Oz to discuss AI relationships, the human urge to anthropomorphize chatbots and the benefits of living on the exponential curve. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What if AI could read your mind? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and producer Eliza Dennis explore the latest tech investment in the US, Meta’s brain-to-text breakthrough and the creation of the woolly mouse. On TechSupport, 404 Media ’s Jason Koebler takes us to an AI-generated film festival… spoiler: the tech isn’t there yet.  See omnystudio.com/listener for priva...

Bradley Hope is a journalist, author and co-founder of Project Brazen, a narrative non-fiction production studio. His piece in Wired , ‘A Spymaster Sheikh Controls a $1.5 Trillion Fortune. He Wants to Use It to Dominate AI,’ outlines how one Gulf royal – Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan – came to control vast sums of sovereign wealth. Hope sits down with Oz to discuss She...

This week, Oz is on the road, at the Web Summit Qatar, and he’s not alone. Joining him from the iHeart pop-up studio in Doha is a very familiar figure, Jonathan Strickland. Oz and Jonathan sit down to discuss some of the highlights of the Web Summit, including the future of the AI chip race, advances in augmented reality and how news organizations are grappling with AI. See omnystudio.com/li...

Ben Taub is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and staff writer at The New Yorker . His piece, “Russia’s Espionage War in the Arctic,” covers tensions at the Russian border with Norway, an area Russia uses as a testing ground for future intelligence operations. Taub sits down with Oz to discuss the technology being used for survival and for espionage, as the war in...

This week, TechStuff teams up with Part-Time Genius for a special crossover episode. Oz and Mangesh Hattikudur, host of Part-Time Genius , discuss a largely misunderstood group of machine destroyers. The Luddites. Joining them is tech journalist Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine , to dig into the history of humans fighting against job automation, why we equate Luddites with technophob...