TechStuff

Did your college have a secret society? Well, Stanford has a secret off-campus class training the next generation of Silicon Valley billionaires. And it's literally called "How to Rule the World." Theo Baker arrived at Stanford as an aspiring coder with dreams of building the future. Instead, he stumbled into the "Stanford-within-Stanford" — a hidden pipeline connecting a select few students...

Evan turns his AI-powered voice agent loose on the people who are always at the forefront of technological adoption: the fraudsters and the rip-off artists. How will the scammers and spammers react when they face Evan’s voice agent in a battle of wits? And what happens when they deploy the same kind of AI voice agents on Evan that he’s using on them? Shell Game is made by humans. More...

Blue Origin's latest rocket test ended in what the company called "an anomaly" — and what everyone else would call an explosion. Reed Albergotti ( Semafor ) explains why blowing things up is just part of the process and why the US Space Program is probably going to be fine. Then, Kyle Chayka ( The New Yorker ) pulls back the curtain on the shadow market for pre-IPO equity in OpenAI, Anthropi...

What if the fastest path to superintelligence is AI that builds itself? That's the bet Richard Socher is making — and he has the track record to back it up. A double unicorn founder and early investor in eight unicorn companies (including Perplexity and Hugging Face), Richard has spent 15 years building the foundational research that powers modern AI. Now he’s co-founded Recursive with...

Most of what happens inside the UFC Octagon is too fast for the human eye to follow. Enter Alon Cohen, Executive Vice President of Innovation for TKO, who has spent 15 years building the data and AI systems that expose the hidden moments that help decide a match. Malcolm Gladwell sits down with Alon to uncover how UFC’s partnership with IBM turns chaos into clarity, giving fans and commentat...

This is the story of what happens when Evan Ratliff, a longtime tech journalist, makes a digital copy of himself, powered by AI, in order to understand how amazing and scary and utterly ridiculous the world is about to get. In Episode 1, Evan clones his voice, hooks it up to a chat bot and his phone line, and sends it off to tangle with customer service representatives. Shell Game is made by human...

The Pope called for AI to be "disarmed" — then gave Anthropic a seat on the dais. Nitasha Tiku ( The Washington Post ) unpacks what the Vatican's landmark intervention means for Silicon Valley. Then, get off Nextdoor, Kyle Chayka ( The New Yorker ) says hyperlocal publications are in vogue and a respite from algorithmic feeds. And finally, an update on last weekend’s Enhanced Games in...

What happens when you let technology take over your life? Joanna Stern ( Fmr. Wall Street Journal / New Things ) found out. She spent all of 2025 letting the robots in: Waymos, AI therapists, robot massagers, assistant researcher agents… During that yearlong experiment, Joanna Stern chronicled her findings in a new book, I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything . She spe...

What does it mean to be at the “foothills of the singularity”? That’s how DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis ended his speech at Google I/O, prompting questions and scratched heads. Oz and Reed Albergotti (Semafor) attempt to dissect the meaning behind Hassabis’s confounding statement. They also discuss why so many commencement speakers are getting booed by college graduates after...

What if Olympic athletes could use steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, legally? They can now, at the Enhanced Games. The Enhanced Games take place on May 24th and it’s anyone’s guess what will happen. Unless you’re Chris Gayomali, host of the new podcast SuperHuman , which is an inside look at the ‘steroid Olympics.’ Chris Gayomali joins Oz to break down h...

This week has it all: geopolitical FOMO, major AI deals, more courtroom drama, and a hacker group that just won't quit. Reed Albergotti ( Semafor ) breaks down why AI tokens are the new oil, and why Anthropic is buying compute straight from SpaceX. Nitasha Tiku ( The Washington Post ) takes us inside the Elon Musk-OpenAI trial, where Shivon Zilis, aka the “Elon Whisperer” and the mothe...

How did nine rejection letters and “boring” data lead to “the biggest transformation in sport”? Americans might know Formula One Racing from the hit Netflix show “ Drive to Survive. ” But F1 has long been a fan favorite in Britain and Europe. Today’s guest, team principal James Vowles, sits down with Oz to discuss how he’s bringing his team, Atlassia...

This week: AI regulation, dark money and data center backlash. Reed Albergotti ( Semafor ) helps decipher how the Trump Administration actually feels about AI oversight and it seems like a reversal of the hands-off approach they’ve taken so far. Taylor Lorenz ( User Mag ) exposes a dark money influencer campaign — one she was personally recruited for — that's paying creators to p...

What would it mean to be a "great ancestor"? Futurist Ari Wallach believes that's the question everyone, including our tech leaders, should be asking right now. Ari joins Oz to explain why the systems we're building today are laying rails for centuries to come. And he argues that shifting culture through storytelling is the fastest way to change the systems that govern our lives. He also introduce...

This week, some courtroom drama. It’s Elon Musk v. OpenAI the next few weeks and billionaires are taking the stand and opening their diaries — and memories of Burning Man — to scrutiny. Reed Albergotti ( Semafor ) breaks down the legal battle and why Elon Musk believes he’s owed billions since OpenAI went for-profit. Nitasha Tiku ( The Washington Post ) reports on the Penta...

Live from The Royal Institution of Great Britain, it's TechStuff ! Oz sat down with two visionaries at an event hosted by Quilt. AI. First, he spoke with Ali Eslami, a Distinguished Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, who built the prototype for what is now AI Search. Ali talked about how working on AI can feel like surfing, and what went into connecting Gemini to Google Search to create what h...

TechStuff presents Two Percent with Michael Easter , a twice-weekly deep dive into the science of living better by doing things the hard way.  In this episode of the podcast, Taylor Lorenz of the Substack User Mag and host of podcast Power User joins Michael to discuss whether social media should be considered addictive. Together, they look at the real science on dopamine, the recent Meta ver...

Many contemporary talking heads take a pessimistic view of the future, but our guest today hopes to change this. Oz interviews Zachary Karabell, host of the podcast What Could Go Right? and founder of the Progress Network, about being an ‘edgy optimist’ and what that means for the future of humanity. After that, TechStuff presents an episode of What Could Go Right? featuring Ian Bremme...

Kyle Law was quite the success on LinkedIn. His posts were getting regular engagement and he was invited to speak to LinkedIn’s marketing team. Then, he was banned from the site. Why? Because Kyle isn’t a person; Kyle is an AI agent. In Season 2 of the hit podcast, Shell Game , journalist Evan Ratliff had AI agents create and run a company and Kyle, the AI co-founder, spent a lot of ti...

The HEINEKEN Company is one of the world’s pioneering global brewers. Founded in 1864, it continues to innovate as it pursues its ambition to become the world’s best‑connected brewer. For the Season 7 premiere of Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell sits down with Surajeet Ghosh, HEINEKEN’s Chief AI Officer, in front of a live audience at SXSW to explore how the company is usin...

Why would Anthropic let select companies use a product deemed too dangerous for the public? Nitasha Tiku ( The Washington Post ) helps us peek behind the curtain of Claude Mythos Preview and explores the scare tactics of AI CEOs. Taylor Lorenz ( User Mag ) breaks down the world of AI twins — how influencers, agencies, and tech moguls are creating their own digital avatars. And Kyle Chayka (...

What do frat boys, nepo babies and the Super Bowl have in common? Prediction markets. Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Katherine Long tells us how information from Jeff Bezos's stepson sparked a bet worth nearly a million dollars, and how a rumor loosely tied to Mark Wahlberg's daughter sent $24 million into a single market. And why college kids are betting in the first place. Kalshi and...

In Smart Talks with IBM Season 7, Malcolm Gladwell reveals how global brands are applying AI and technology to reshape experiences and help solve complex challenges. Go behind the scenes with HEINEKEN, UFC, and Cleveland Clinic. New episodes drop April 21. This is a paid advertisement from IBM. Visit us at  ibm.com/smarttalks See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

OpenAI dominated this week's headlines — and it wasn’t all flattering. Reed Albergotti ( Semafor) breaks down the chaos: IPO drama and Ronan Farrow's probing New Yorker profile of Sam Altman paint a picture of a company under pressure, even as it remains the most talked-about name in AI. Taylor Lorenz ( User Mag) tells us about the AI tools marketed to schools as safety solutions that...

TBPN started with a simple premise: what if the tech world got the ESPN treatment? Eighteen months later, it is a profitable independent media company — until last week, when OpenAI acquired it for hundreds of millions of dollars.  Oz sits down with Emily Sundberg, author of the daily business newsletter Feed Me and frequent TBPN guest, to unpack what the deal actually means. They get i...