Wow If True
Wow If True is your one-stop internet culture shop, explaining how what’s happening online shapes the real world. And we’re the internet experts and real-life besties to unravel it: tech culture journalist Amanda Silberling and science fiction author slash attorney Isabel J. Kim, Esq. More importantly, we’re the only podcast that will mention Neopets and horizontal mergers in the same episode. New episode every other Wednesday.
Episodes
In which Amanda, Isabel, and special guest Julia Schifini record another episode of long-running Glee recap podcast, Wow if Schue. Yes, this entire special episode, originally made for the Multicrew feed, was based on making that joke.
Both Amanda and Isabel have been at various conventions and not "at home" or "recording," so we're pulling this episode from the Multicrew feed (which, if you want more fun stuff like this, WIT patro...
It's the first ever Wow if True live show! At the Kelly Writers House in Philadelphia, Isabel reads from Sublimation, then we talk about our approaches to writing the future from both a sci-fi and journalism perspective. It's fun.
Find Us Online
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/wowiftrue.bsky.social
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wowiftruepod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wowiftrue
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wowiftrue
Amanda is obsessed with Katseye. Editor Allison™ doesn't understand. Isabel is on vacation. Eat zucchini.
Also, BIG NEWS: Wow if True is coming to a city near you, so long as that city is Philadelphia.
Isabel & Amanda are doing a book event for Sublimation together on Wednesday, Sept. 9 at the Kelly Writers House on the University of Pennsylvania's campus in Philadelphia. It's FREE. More info at this link, plus there will be a l...
Good news: Isabel went to Comic Con! Bad news: There is so much AI discourse. Everything is AI. We talk about -- the Hank drama, the new AI friend, the AI crime thriller situation... There are a lot of situations. We are so tired.
Find Us Online
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/wowiftrue.bsky.social
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wowiftruepod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wowiftrue
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wowiftru...
Pangram makes the most accurate detector for flagging AI-generated text, but when your startup is the arbiter of what is real and what is not, you sometimes get into hairy situations. For example, the Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal might say that our country has a Pangram problem. But what's the actual problem: that we can detect AI-generated text, or that so much AI slop exists in the first place? Fortunately, Pangram founde...
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.
If you missed our episodes on the ...
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.com/wowiftruepod
Instagram: https://www...
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
Listen to Dreaming Against the Machine: ht...
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 wouldn't ask. Also, for some reason Ama...
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 TOUR ! Dates below, and more info + tick...
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 our friends and actual scientists ...
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. Since recording, Helen Dewitt has foun...
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
Find Us Online
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/wowiftrue.bsky.social
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wowiftrue
Patreon: https:/...
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://twitter.com/wowiftr...
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-ai-experts-dont-think-openclaw-is-al...
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
Hyperallergic article about crusadercore
Find Us Online
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/wowiftrue.bsky.social
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wowiftruepod
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
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/w...
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!!: https://www.wowiftrue.com/2026-bin...
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; random tangents about baseball?; and ...
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.
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