Wow If True

The Enhanced Games are Silicon Valley's version of the Olympics -- the athletes are invited to bulk up with performance enhancing drugs, then gather in Las Vegas for competition, and of course, it's funded by some notorious figures in venture capital. Amanda's colleague, Lucas Ropek, got to attend this carnival of debauchery and is here to tell us all about it. And yes, he saw Byran Johnson there....

In which Amanda makes the worst PowerPoint ever (it's about rationalists and fan fiction, iykyk), Isabel goes on book tour, and we experiment with flip phones. The PowerPoint in question: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ch0rBRdr8PGindVGa0cGQaKDiYR5rFmMiclL58CPci8/edit?slide=id.p#slide=id.p Find Us Online  Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/wowiftrue.bsky.social Twitter: https://twitter...

In this collab-isode, we're joined by Dr. Adam Becker of Dreaming Against the Machine, a podcast about envisioning a realistic and hopeful future in the face of tech oligarchs... or, as we call them, Horrible Little Guys. Sublimation is out now!!: https://bookshop.org/p/books/sublimation-isabel-j-kim/75bdbf4afed5475f?ean=9781250376794&next=t Join our Patreon: https://patreon.com/wowiftrue List...

HAPPY SUBLIMATION PUBLICATION DAY! Or, Publimation Day! Isabel's long-awaited debut novel SUBLIMATION is out now. Everyone is very excited. We are proud of Isabel here at Wow if True HQ. Isabel did a billion other podcast interviews about the book, so we decided that on our podcast, we'll ask Isabel some questions that maybe people who are meeting her for the first time via podcast interview would...

Google is broken, and so is Amanda, apparently, because she is seeking validation from an AI chatbot. Also, video games. Sublimation is out on 6/2. This is what we have for you. We'll be back next week for the "Sublimation is out!" spectacular, but you should pre-order it now: https://bookshop.org/p/books/sublimation-isabel-j-kim/75bdbf4afed5475f?ean=9781250376794&next=t Also, ISABEL IS ON TOU...

Party drugs are out, and injecting grey market peptides with your LinkedIn connections at Silicon Valley house parties is in. Yes, the biohacker tech bros have peptide dealers in China who are sending them dubious chemicals to construct things like "the Wolverine stack," which are supposed to make them more alert and/or younger and/or tanner? This doesn't make any sense, which is why we brought in...

Isabel and Amanda talk about raising $1,234,567 dollars for your startup, Giggles, that began as a meme, and also finding your cofounder in Minecraft, along with the latest analysis of which human person Satoshi might actually turn out to be, and also, turning down $175,000 dollars because you can't figure out the wifi, something that happened to a real human person last week. It's ok, though. Sin...

We're talking about Shy Girl, the horror novel cancelled over alleged AI use, the conclusion of a romantasy lawsuit, recent Meta rulings, and a bunch of other random stuff in the middle because come on, you know us, we love to gab. Sources Shy Girl timeline Writers telling on themselves Meta lawsuits Find Us Online  Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/wowiftrue.bsky.social Instagram: https://ww...

We have found the literal worst song: "Take the Lead" by Tilly Norwood, who is an AI actor, and is singing about overcoming the oppression that AI actors face. Yes, this is real. Also: we talk about Isabel's wedding. Yay parasociality! Sources AI ‘actor’ Tilly Norwood put out the worst song I’ve ever heard Find Us Online  Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/wowiftrue.bsky.social Twitter: https:...

Iz and Amanda talk about Moltbook, a forum only for AI agents (and the humans pretending to be them), which caused a brief moment of panic that our AI overlords were going to rise up against us. Special guest star Iz's fiance weighs in on the eigenvector of evil and also, whether sommelier-ing is anything. Sources Amanda's Moltbook article: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/16/after-all-the-hype-some...

We made a collabisode with Dr. Matthew Gabriele of American Medieval, a real life historian of medieval history! It turns out that there's actually a significant crossover between internet culture and the middle ages. We are as surprised as you are. Links American Medieval Hyperallergic article about crusadercore Find Us Online  Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/wowiftrue.bsky.social Twitter:...

Will you come to our cottage... to talk about Heated Rivalry with us? The beloved Queer Hockey Show ™ has taken over the internet, so who better to talk to us about it than very online Multitude CEO and Heated Rivalry/romance novel superfan Amanda McLoughlin!? (For some reason my audio is ass, but I am saying it is an homage to the amount of ass that appears in Heated Rivalry.) Find Us Online&nbsp...

We're back for the new year, joined by pop culture writer + narrative strategist Eteng Ettah to create a bingo card for the cursed events of 2026 that likely await us. We apologize in advance, both for mentioning possible horrors like "MrBeast IPO" and "Caroline Ellison book deal," but also, because Amanda was at her parents' house and recorded on AirPods. Links Bingo cards! Get your bingo cards!!...

It's holiday time! That means you get a stocking stuffer worth of an episode -- a handful of topics we wanna chitchat about but aren't big enough for their whole episode (Is this how stockings work? Amanda is writing this). So, tune in for: we didn't get 30 under 30 because we didn't do fraud; what do Elon Musk, Luigi Mangione, and Isabel J. Kim have in common; 'Extremely kidpilled' Sam Altman; ra...

We finally give Mr. Don't Die himself, Bryan Johnson, his own episode, on account of him doing some seminal college student activities. You know, like doing drugs while listening to a Grimes set. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

TW: we talk about suicide induced by ChatGPT and lawsuits related to these suicides in this episode! We talk about the lawsuits that Social Media Victims Law Center brought against OpenAI and the ways in which ChatGPT and other AI products can super negatively impact mental health, to deeply worrying degrees. We also talk about the patterns in AI "chosen one" and "religion" narratives—have you hea...

We read a bunch of articles about the state of dating/dating apps and yes, THAT gooning article, and talked about them. It's like English class where you read a bunch of stuff and talk about it except you haven't done the reading!!! But you can do the reading. It's right here. This is the reading. Reading The Goon Squad (Harper's) "But PornosexualGooner101 Died 35 Years Ago...This Very Night!" (Th...

Amanda went viral on Tiktok for having an AI pet. Really, this is the apex of our journey on this podcast. The Moflin is an AI-enabled pet that retails for $430 dollars, and Amanda has just spent a month living with it in her home. Also, we talk about Grimes' new music video. (Behind the scenes supplementary moflin content on Patreon!) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California...

We're teaming up with Dr. Claire Aubin of our sibling show, This Guy Sucked, to talk about something that is not a guy, but does suck: the internet! It's easy to say that the internet sucks, but what makes it suck, how did it get this way, and how can we fix it? Using Cory Doctrow's new book "Enshittification" as a guide, we talk it out. Find Us Online  Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/wowif...

The news cycle of 2025 has somehow once again broken us so severely that we have simply just opted out and decided to talk about Silksong, a game that people waited so long for that they created a whole new genre of shitposting. Also, Undertale and Pokopia, the forthcoming game that makes us confront everything we've ever known about Ditto. If you were hoping that we were going to talk about The N...

Did you have to verify your government ID to listen to this podcast? We hope not, but in some parts of the world, this is becoming a reality. We're talking about why age verification laws are becoming more popular in the U.S. and U.K., and how the pursuit of children's online safety -- when legislated irresponsibly -- can just create new problems of surveillance and censorship. Also, Isabel went t...

We're chatting with Kaila Yu, author of "Fetishized," about her experience growing up online in the 90s and 00s and reckoning with her relationship to Asian fetishization. Yu started as an "import model" and pin-up girl who appeared in "Playboy" and the "Fast and Furious" franchise, then became a MySpace star and lead of the all Asian-American punk band Nylon Pink, and now, she's a writer and cont...

We spent last episode taking to AI chatbots. What if we, two humans, simply chatted with each other while speaking in NPR voices? Don't worry, the NPR voices don't last long. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Isabel and Amanda sacrifice the sanctity of their souls and talk to Ani, the very horny anime waifu that is now part of Elon Musk's Grok app. But don't worry, we balance it out by telling you a weirdly wholesome story about Tony Hawk. [This episode is NSFW; if you do not want to hear an AI panda talk about burning down schools, you also might wanna skip this one] Sources Amanda's article about Ani...

Isabel and Amanda talk about two very different kinds of AI grift. In one, a man pretends to be real social media for the (probably) AI band "The Velvet Sundown." In another, Soham Parekh simply gets employed by every single AI startup at once. Sources The Velvet Sundown: https://medium.com/@andrew.frelon/i-am-andrew-frelon-the-guy-running-the-fake-velvet-sundown-twitter-fcab2b7e471b Soham: https:...