Technology 🖥

This year we’ve gotten one question more than any other from listeners: is Facebook eavesdropping on my conversations and showing me ads based on the things that I say? This week, Alex investigates. ...Show More

A secretive start-up promising the next generation of facial recognition software has compiled a database of images far bigger than anything ever constructed by the United States government: over thre...Show More

Should I stay or should I go? In every romantic relationship, there is a moment that you ask yourself, “Is it worth it?” Well, Rashied Amini, a NASA engineer with a broken heart, has the answer. He’s...Show More

10,000 tulips, the price of Bitcoin, and competing computers. On this episode of 'Fixed That For You' we ask “Can a computer make art?” If that sounds too philosophical, just remember, artificial inte...Show More

Using artificial intelligence, someone can make an algorithm that sounds just like you. And then they can say... whatever they want you to say. We're entering a brand new era: One where you can no lon...Show More

How is it possible that a restaurant that doesn't exist could become the top-rated restaurant on TripAdvisor? We get the answer from Oobah Butler, artist and prankster, who created "The Shed at Dulwic...Show More

A woman in New Jersey is getting strange phone calls to her office from unknown numbers. Every time she picks up, she finds herself eavesdropping on the life of a different stranger. Unsure what else ...Show More

'Washington Post' tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler talks about how web browsers, phone apps, and smart speakers are tracking users, even when they're asleep. Fowler listened to four years' worth of audi...Show More

The internet was first conceived as a tool to promote free expression, to foster and enliven debate, and to strengthen democratic ideals. But it didn’t quite work out that way. In this episode, Vox’s ...Show More

For months, Tortoise has been investigating big tech companies as if they were countries: holding them to the same standards that we apply to nation states; caring about what they think; understanding...Show More

Writer Jia Tolentino has a new case for Super Tech Support: where are all those bitcoin she bought six years ago? This episode originally aired in January 2018. Further reading: Planet Money's bitco...Show More

Have you ever opened your computer with the intention of sending one email — only to spend an hour scrolling through social media? Maybe two hours? In this episode, we examine the strategies media com...Show More

Elon Musk has a vision of the future, and — as one of the world’s richest men with four corporations under his reign — the means to try to manifest it. In a conversation with Kara Swisher, he outlines...Show More

It’s the latest craze sweeping the internet. NFTs, or “non-fungible tokens”, have been snapped up by celebrities from Jimmy Fallon to Justin Bieber. They are most well known in the form of digital ...Show More

Birds Aren’t Real, a conspiracy theory with an apparently absurd premise, has become surprisingly popular in the past few years. But its followers were in on the joke: The movement’s aim was to poke ...Show More

After Andrea is attacked by a stranger in Mexico City, she just wants to figure out who the guy was. Investigating this question drops her right into the middle of one of Mexico’s biggest conspiracies...Show More

I talk with Sherry Turkle about how our ubiquitous connection to devices affects how we see and relate to ourselves and other people.

Will we eventually reach a point in technology where realistic sex dolls can become suitable companions? This week, Joshua and Jordan speak with Erin Griffith, an investigative journalist who came fac...Show More

Dylan Field is the co-founder and CEO of Figma, which makes a very popular design tool that allows designers and their collaborators to all work together right in a web browser. You know how multiple ...Show More

John Thornhill talks to the social scientist Shoshana Zuboff about her book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, and what we need to do to reclaim the more benign impacts of the digital revolution. Ho...Show More

It was long awaited, and some doubted that it would ever come to pass, but last week, the tech billionaire Elon Musk officially took over Twitter. The platform was once the place of underdogs, a publ...Show More

Sean Illing talks with technology writer and philosopher Ian Bogost about the state of social media — especially in the wake of Elon Musk's recent acquisition of Twitter. They discuss the recent but s...Show More

Are you ready to jack into the metaverse and surf a cyberwave down the information super highway? Stick on these VR goggles and join us as we chat with Dr Dónal Mulligan about the internet and its eff...Show More

Sean Illing talks with Michael Sacasas, an author and teacher exploring the relationship between technology and society in his newsletter, The Convivial Society. This conversation is all about attenti...Show More

“Studying history aims to loosen the grip of the past… It will not tell us what to choose, but at least it gives us more options.” – Yuval Noah Harari Yuval Noah Harari is the star historian who shot ...Show More

Myths. We tend to think they’re a thing of the past, fabrications that early humans needed to believe in because their understanding of the world was so meagre. But what if modern civilisation were it...Show More

The next frontier of the internet is: the metaverse. How might we learn from our experience with social media, in order to design a humane metaverse? This week on Your Undivided Attention, we talk wit...Show More

Sean Illing talks with Timnit Gebru, the founder of the Distributed AI Research Institute. She studies the ethics of artificial intelligence and is an outspoken critic of companies developing new AI s...Show More