Better Offline
Better Offline is a weekly show exploring the tech industry’s influence and manipulation of society - and interrogating the growth-at-all-costs future that tech’s elite wants to build. Combining narrative-form storytelling, one-on-one interviews and panel-based discussions, Better Offline cuts through the buzzwords and obfuscation of the tech industry, investigating and evaluating the schemes and scams of everyone from cryptocurrency scumbags to the greediest of the venture capital elite. Tech industry veteran Ed Zitron and a dynamic coterie of guests will help listeners understand the who, how and why of how tech’s most powerful players are changing the world - for better or for worse.
Episodes
In this week’s monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through the pale horses of the AIpocalypse - and how the AI bubble’s deepest weakness is that it’s almost entirely based on vibes.
Anthropic’s new data center in Indiana: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/24/technology/amazon-ai-data-centers.html
YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for ...
Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York City.
Ed Zitron is joined in studio by actor, writer and producer Brian Koppelman, Engadget Managing Editor Cherlynn Low and comedian Mike Drucker to talk about the current state of the tech industry, what AI can actually do, and what the tech industry looks like in the next year.
In part two of this week's two-part Better Offline, Ed Zitron makes a plea to the tech media - to stop automatically accepting what the tech executives have to say, and to admit that these people sound really, really stupid, even if they use long words.
YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more.
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LINKS: https://ww...
In this week’s monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through how Anthropic jacked up prices on its largest customer Cursor - and how it’s a sign that the Subprime AI Crisis has begun.
Premium Newsletter covering this:
https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropic-and-openai-have-begun-the-subprime-ai-crisis/
Bluesky thread summarizing: https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com/post/3ltfabnj3ec23
In part one of this week's two-part Better Offline, Ed Zitron walks you through a radical new idea: make fun of CEOs, tear down their legacies and push back on their empty promises.
YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more.
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LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks
Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at...
In this week’s monologue, Ed Zitron talks about why you should get into vinyl, and why analog music is so much fun in the digital age.
U-Turn Audio: https://uturnaudio.com/pages/turntables
Discogs: Discogs.com
YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more.
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Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York city.
Ed Zitron is joined in studio by Allison Morrow of CNN, Victoria Song of The Verge and Gare Davis of It Could Happen Here to talk about the fairy tale of AGI, AI boosters’ religious attachment to the industry’s success, and how the tech industry fears admitting they’re out of ideas.
Allison ...
In this week’s monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through the murky lawsuit between OpenAI’s soon-to-be-acquired hardware wing and Iyo, a company they met with multiple times that makes a similar-sounding product with a near-identical name.
Sam Altman tweets: https://x.com/sama/status/1937606794362388674
Jason Rugolo tweets: https://x.com/jasonRugolo/status/1936933761964511721
In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Steve Burke of GamersNexus to talk about NVIDIA’s approach to the media, AI pushing out real tech at Computex, and the weird world of consumer graphics.
Follow GamersNexus:
https://www.youtube.com/gamersnexus
https://gamersnexus.net/
https://bsky.app/profile/gamersnexus.bsky.social
https://x.com/GamersNexus
YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cotton...
In this week’s monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through OpenAI’s desperate attempts to lean on Microsoft to change the terms of their agreement, and how the entire AI bubble may rest on this negotiation.
WSJ: OpenAI and Microsoft Tensions Are Reaching a Boiling Point https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-and-microsoft-tensions-are-reaching-a-boiling-point-4981c44f
The Information: OpenAI Seeks New Financial Co...
Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York city.
Ed Zitron is joined in studio by Pablo Torre of Pablo Torre Finds Out and David Roth of Defector to talk about independent media, what makes a compelling show, and what it’s like raising a turtle.
Pablo Torre Finds Out: https://www.youtube.com/@PabloTorreFindsOut
Investigating Belichick's Girlfriend...
In part three of this week's three-part Better Offline, Ed Zitron walks you through how the era of the Business Idiot has led to a dramatic deceleration in innovation - and how the tech media must fight back against their ridiculous narratives to save Silicon Valley.
YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more.
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In part two of this week's three-part Better Offline, Ed Zitron walks you through how Business Idiots demanded we all return to the office to hide their own lack of utility - and how this directly led to their desperation to adopt generative AI.
YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more.
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LINKS: https://www.tinyur...
In part one of this week's three-part Better Offline, Ed Zitron walks you through how Business Idiots have captured our society, with middle management losers breeding out true meritocracy and value-creation in favor of symbolic growth and superficial intelligence.
YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more.
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In this week’s monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through how the media is misleading you about AI job loss as a form of propaganda for OpenAI and Anthropic - and the Business Idiots behind it.
CNN - The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine - https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/30/business/anthropic-amodei-ai-jobs-nightcap
Oxford Economics - Educated but unemployed, a rising reality for college g...
In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Carl Brown, a veteran software developer and host of The Internet of Bugs, to talk about the realities of software development, what coding LLMs can actually do, and how the media gets it wrong about software engineering at large.
https://www.youtube.com/@InternetOfBugs
New GitHub Copilot Research Finds 'Downward Pressure on Code Quality' - https://visualstudiomagazine.com/artic...
In this week’s monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through the awesome world of handheld gaming PCs - and why you should pick one up over a Nintendo Switch 2.
Rog Ally X: https://rog.asus.com/us/gaming-handhelds/rog-ally/rog-ally-x-2024/
Lenovo Legion Go S: https://amzn.to/4kgZCKD
MSI Claw: https://amzn.to/43PPNNG
YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use c...
In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by producer Sophie Lichterman to answer questions about life, technology, and Better Offline itself.
YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more.
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LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks
Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bett...
In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through the ridiculousness of OpenAI acquiring Jony Ive’s pre-product hardware startup for $6.5bn in stock - and why it only proves how washed the company might be.
YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more.
WSJ: What Sam Altman Told OpenAI About the Secret Dev...
In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Dan Ryckert, Jeff Bakalar and Jeff Grubb, the new owners of gaming website Giant Bomb, to talk about the hopeful, independent future for games journalism - and media at large.
http://www.giantbomb.com/join
Dan Ryckert: https://bsky.app/profile/danryckert.com
Jeff Grubb: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bdacp2cmuuyawx553cv2spdy
Jeff Bakalar: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc...
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