Foundering

This week on Decrypted, hosts Aki and Brad get together one last time for an announcement: This will be the very last episode of Decrypted. They also look back at some of their favorite episodes from the show, with updates on where those stories are today. (But don't unsubscribe from this feed because we'll be announcing a new show next spring!) For a list of episodes Aki and Brad will be discussi...

Computers can now drive cars, identify faces and transcribe speech, but many experts said that it would take much longer for AI to tackle creative endeavors. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology's Natalia Drozdiak meets three composers using artificial intelligence to make music, and she and host Aki Ito dissect their robo-generated songs. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informatio...

Under pressure from users, advertisers and government regulators, YouTube has implemented sweeping changes to its service over the last three years to minimize the spread of harmful and misleading content. But those changes have made it harder for many of its creators to make a living off of the platform. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology's Mark Bergen visits YouTube whisperer Tim Schmo...

The U.S.-China trade war has dragged on for more than a year now, harming the livelihoods of people around the world who depend on the two superpowers getting along. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology's Shelly Banjo profiles one such person: Michael Michelini, an American who moved to China a decade ago to build out his e-commerce business. At the time, Michelini believed that the intern...

Warehouse workers suffer from an unusually high rate of injury. Now, at some facilities, workers can wear a sensor on their chest, which buzzes when they’re at risk of getting hurt. But this tracking device also gathers detailed information about the employee’s movements – and sends this data to their employer. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology’s Joshua Brustein looks at a new technolog...

Over the summer, Elon Musk unveiled the details of his secretive startup Neuralink. Its goal, he said, is to place electrodes in our brains so we can control a computer with our thoughts. Its experiments have so far been limited to rodents and monkeys, but Neuralink builds on strides already made in medicine, where doctors have successfully placed implants into human brains to treat a variety of i...

Bloomberg's Travel Genius podcast is back! After clocking another hundred-thousand miles in the sky, hosts Nikki Ekstein and Mark Ellwood have a whole new series of flight hacking, restaurant sleuthing, and hotel booking tips to inspire your own getaways—along with a who's who roster of itinerant pros ready to spill their own travel secrets. From a special episode on Disney to a master class on pa...

Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests have ensnared a number of companies, including one U.S. company that has the most to lose in China: Apple Inc. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology's Alistair Barr breaks down the iPhone maker's controversial decision to reject an app built to aid Hong Kong residents living through the protests, and discusses what's at stake for Apple both at home and abr...

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Congress, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice and state governments across the U.S. are investigating the tech giants for anti-competitive behavior. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology’s Eric Newcomer walks us through those investigations, and outlines how a Democratic president may take it even further in 2021.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on Decrypted, we're re-airing our story about CeCe Moore, who helps law enforcement track down killers by combing through databases of consumer DNA test results. At the end of the episode, host Aki Ito catches up with reporter Kristen V. Brown to see what's new in this emerging field.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Over the last few weeks, WeWork's parent company has lurched from one crisis to the next as it scrambled to keep its IPO alive⁠—resulting in founder Adam Neumann leaving his job as CEO. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology's Ellen Huet traces We Co.'s meteoric rise to a $47 billion giant and dissects the chaos of the last few weeks.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ahead of the 2016 elections, Illinois' voter database was infiltrated by Russia's state-backed hackers. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology's Kartikay Mehrotra investigates what Illinois has done since to prepare for the next presidential election, and whether states and counties across the country are ready for 2020.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For years, critics have accused Amazon.com for not doing enough to curb its impact on the environment—and recently, a group of Amazon employees joined in to try to force the issue by filing a shareholder resolution. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology's Spencer Soper takes us inside the uprising. And he'll also ask which is worse for the planet: driving to the store ourselves, or having e...

On Sept. 10, Apple will be unveiling its new products for the year. Ahead of the event, Bloomberg Technology’s Mark Gurman previews the changes Apple’s planning for its three versions of the iPhone, as well as the company’s other products. Will these upgrades help Apple out of its recent funk? Also: our own announcement at the start of the show.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information...

On this new season of Prognosis, we look at the spread of infections that are resistant to antimicrobial medicines. You're probably more likely to have heard of these as superbugs. Their rise has been described as a silent tsunami of catastrophic proportions. We travel to countries on the frontline of the crisis, and explore how hospitals and doctors around the world are fighting back. Prognosis’...

When police officer David Gomez was first stationed at a school in rural Idaho, he thought he’d spend his time breaking up fights in bathrooms and scanning the hallways for weed. Instead, he found that almost every problem was either happening on social media or started there. This week on Decrypted, reporter Shelly Banjo explores how age-old dangers like drugs, child predators and school shooters...

A few years ago, reporter Sarah McBride noticed that a top engineer at Twitter was also an expert on the brains of birds. Then, more and more, she started seeing that many top tech companies have bird brain experts in their highest ranks⁠—that includes Apple, Google, Intel and a secretive startup founded by Elon Musk. This week on Decrypted, Sarah and fellow reporter Ashlee Vance set out to unders...

Google has long had a special relationship with staff, encouraging employee input on all sorts of internal matters. For the last two decades, this approach has worked well. But after a series of controversies and protests in the last two years, some workers are openly at war with Google. This week on Decrypted, editor Alistair Barr speaks to Irene Knapp, a senior software engineer who has had a fr...

Northern White Rhinos are functionally extinct: The two remaining females have no males to breed with. But an ambitious plan is underway to save the species. This week on Decrypted, reporter Kristen V. Brown meets the scientists using cutting edge stem cell science to create a rhino embryo in a San Diego lab. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference is an annual pilgrimage for software developers whose businesses are built on the App Store. This week, Bloomberg Technology's Mark Gurman speaks to Phillip Shoemaker, the former head of app review at Apple who played a role in past WWDC conferences. They discuss the early days of the App Store and its place at the heart of Apple's nearly $50 billion-a-year...

Marty Markowitz had his share of problems. His parents had recently died. He had troubles at work. A failing relationship. He needed someone to help him through this rough patch in his life. So he decided to get some professional help from a psychiatrist. What he did not count on, was what happened in his life over the next twenty-nine years. This is a story about power, control, and turning to th...

Mountain View, California, is home to Google and Silicon Valley's tech boom. Rents and home prices have soared, and hundreds of people have been forced to live in recreational vehicles parked on the city's streets. This week on Decrypted, we explore how the rising cost of living is fueling tension between homeowners and vehicle residents, resulting in a parking ban on RVs.  See omnystudio.com/list...

Cycling enthusiasts have a new way to work out at home: By hooking their bikes up to Zwift, they compete in a video game with other stationary cyclists. This week on Decrypted, reporter Gerrit de Vynck spends a month training on Zwift. He explores whether its new racing leagues could soon become a spectator sport.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's finally happening. A decade after Uber started out as a black car service in San Francisco, it's going public in one of the largest IPOs of all time. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology's Eric Newcomer joins Brad Stone to discuss what it will take for Uber to become a profitable business, the potential of its other ventures, and what it would mean for Silicon Valley if Uber achieves...