Better Offline

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

September 26, 2025 10 mins

In this week’s Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through NVIDIA and OpenAI’s nonsense deal, and how OpenAI now needs $600 billion in the next four years to survive.

OpenAI and NVIDIA Announce Strategic Partnership to Deploy 10 Gigawatts of NVIDIA Systems
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/openai-and-nvidia-announce-strategic-partnership-to-deploy-10gw-of-nvidia-systems 

New York Times -...

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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 astrophysicist Adam Becker to talk about his new book More Everything Forever, the BS AGI story, why Eliezer Yudkowsky should never be taken seriously, and why billionaires love LLMs.

https://bsky.app/profile/adambecker.bsky.social 
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/ti...

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In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by software engineer Colt Voege to talk about how AI isn’t 10xing the productivity of software engineering, the truth about coding LLMs, and what we can actually expect AI to do for software in the future.

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.

BUY A LIMITED EDIT...

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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, Ed Ongweso Jr. of the Tech Bubble newsletter to talk about the AI vibe shift, OpenAI’s burn rate, what will finally burst the bubble, and something called “Critterz.”

Allison Morrow
https://www.cnn.com/profiles/allison-morrow
https:...

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September 12, 2025 37 mins

In the final part of this week's three-part Better Offline Guide To Arguing With AI Boosters, Ed Zitron walks you through why generative AI is nothing like Amazon Web Services, how the media misled the public about ChatGPT, and why ChatGPT’s popularity does not mean it’s a mass-market product.

Latest Premium Newsletter: Why Everybody Is Losing Money On Generative AI: https://www.wheresyoured.at/why-everybody-is-losing-m...

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September 11, 2025 32 mins

In part two of this week's three-part Better Offline Guide To Arguing With AI Boosters, Ed Zitron walks you through why the AI bubble is nothing like the dot-com bubble, how the cost of inference is actually going up, and why OpenAI’s massive burnrate is nothing like Uber’s.

Latest Premium Newsletter: Why Everybody Is Losing Money On Generative AI: https://www.wheresyoured.at/why-everybody-is-losing-money-on-ai/

YOU CAN...

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September 10, 2025 35 mins

In part one of this week's three-part Better Offline Guide To Arguing With AI Boosters, Ed Zitron walks you through why AI is nothing like the early days of the internet, why it isn’t the early days of the AI industry, and why every booster argues in the future tense.

Latest Premium Newsletter: Why Everybody Is Losing Money On Generative AI: https://www.wheresyoured.at/why-everybody-is-losing-money-on-ai/

YOU CAN NOW BUY BETT...

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In this week’s Better Offline monologue, Ed walks you through how tech and business skepticism has begun to go mainstream, and how it can be the force to push back against the Rot Economy.

Ed On CNN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGVKZQQSJkg&t=2s
Ed On BBC (July): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AxrpXF7MWw&t=1s
Ed On BBC (August): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI9cjWDpmSY
Ed On Bloomberg’s E...

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In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Steve Burke of GamersNexus to talk about the black market for AI GPUs in China - and how Bloomberg suspiciously forced YouTube to take his video down.

Premium Newsletter: AI Bubble 2027 - https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-bubble-2027 

GamersNexus:  
Our Channel Could Be Deleted (GamersNexus) https://youtu.be/tUnRWh4xOCY?si=AD2hyE6z5-ZiyInW  
Mirror of NVIDIA AI GPU Black Mar...

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August 29, 2025 20 mins

In this week’s Better Offline monologue, Ed considers what would happen if he’s right about the AI bubble bursting - and the consequences of three years of myth-peddling journalism and markets addicted to growth at all costs.

FT: Microsoft talks set to push OpenAI’s restructure into next year
https://www.ft.com/content/b81d5fb6-26e9-417a-a0cc-6b6689b70c98

Sherwood: Nvidia, the asset manager, ...

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Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of one of iHeartRadio's satellite studios in New York city. Ed is joined by Kyle Barr of Gizmodo, freelance writer Alex Cranz and content creator Michael Fisher (AKA Mr. Mobile) to talk about the weird and fun gadgets that are still getting made, both in the US and abroad.

Latest newsletter: How To Argue With An AI Booster - https://www.wheresyoured.at/how-to...

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August 22, 2025 28 mins

In a bonus third episode, Ed Zitron reports exclusively on how OpenAI’s new "router-based" ChatGPT-5 makes it impossible for the company to cache the static prompt for any model or tool it uses every single prompt, doubling token burn for mediocre gains.

Better Offline listener deal: Get $15 Off Where's Your Ed At Premium! Deal goes until the end of August.
https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-su...

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August 21, 2025 41 mins

In part two of this week's two-part Better Offline, Ed Zitron walks you through how America’s economic growth has become dependent on Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta’s AI capital expenditures - and how this inevitably harms both the economy and our markets.

Better Offline listener deal: Get $15 Off Where's Your Ed At Premium! Deal goes until the end of August.
https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/pub...

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August 20, 2025 41 mins

In part one of this week's two-part Better Offline, Ed Zitron walks you through how AI startups’ overstuffed valuations make them impossible targets for acquisition or IPO - and how this may cause lasting harm to Silicon Valley when the bubble bursts.

Better Offline listener deal: Get $15 Off Where's Your Ed At Premium! Deal goes until the end of August.
https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subsc...

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August 15, 2025 11 mins

In this week’s monologue, Ed Zitron walks through the rough launch of GPT-5, and how ChatGPT’s fandom-like following has become a huge problem for OpenAI.

The Enshittification of Generative AI: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshittification-of-generative-ai/

The Wall Street Journal - The Next Great Leap in AI Is Behind Schedule and Crazy Expensive:
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-gpt5-orion-delays-639e7693?ref=w...

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In a paper released earlier this year, three academics from the University of Glasgow classified ChatGPT's outputs not as "lies," but as "BS" - as defined by philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt in "on BS" (and yes I'm censoring that) - and created one of the most enjoyable and prescient papers ever written. In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by academics Michael Townsen Hicks, James Humphries and Joe Slater in a free-wheeling conversa...

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In this week’s Better Offline monologue, Ed talks about Anker’s Nebula X1, an expensive, excellent-looking and adaptable projector that can work just about anywhere.

Better Offline listener deal: Get $15 Off Where's Your Ed At Premium! Deal goes until the end of August.
https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/better-offline-discount 
Nebula X1 Projector: https://amzn.to/45...

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In this episode, Ed is joined by writer and critic Molly White to talk about how RSS can purify your news experience, the challenge of the newsletter economy, and what gives her optimism for the future.

Citation Needed Newsletter: https://www.citationneeded.news
Molly on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/molly.wiki

Better Offline listener deal: Get $15 Off Where's Your Ed At Premium! Deal goes until the end of August.
https:/...

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August 1, 2025 8 mins

In this week’s monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through how and why OpenAI and Anthropic use “annualized revenues” to hide that they’re nowhere near their yearly revenue projections.

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/anthropic-revenue-hits-4-billion-annual-pace-competition-cursor-intensifies?rc=kz8jh3 
www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-hits-12-billion-annualized-revenue-breaks-700-million-ch...

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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 Mia Sato of The Verge and Dave Lee of Bloomberg to talk how companies like TikTok and Google change the web with their incentives, the nihilism of Pop Mart's viral Labubus, and why people are more game to pay independent writers.

Mia Sato, The Verge
https://www.theverge.co...

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