TechStuff

How much of what you see online is actually real? This week, Reed Albergotti (Semafor) breaks down Anthropic's latest clash with the Trump Administration. Is Anthropic’s own messaging to blame? Then, Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) talked to students that walked out on Google CEO Sundar Pichai's commencement speech at Stanford. Their protest was about much more than AI. Finally, Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) exposes the fake "c...

Is AI happening to you — or for you? Pew Research found that 50% of Americans are more concerned than excited about artificial intelligence. Michele Jawando and John Palfrey think that's a signal that more people need to get involved. 

Oz sits down with Michele, CEO of the Omidyar Network, and John, president of the MacArthur Foundation, to unpack Humanity AI: a coalition of ten major philanthropies pooling $500 million ...

Evan takes his experiment in a new direction by having his AI-powered voice agent converse with … another of his AI-powered voice agents. What can these surreal and hilarious conversations between two AI incarnations of Evan Ratliff tell us about identity, authenticity, and the best and worst of human interaction? Enter this digital hall of mirrors to find out.Shell Game is made by humans. More specifically, it's made by thr...

How much would it take for you to tattoo a memecoin's name on your forehead? Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) tells us about the platform where crypto speculators pay strangers to do almost anything in service of pumping their coin's value: Pump.fun Go. But Taylor argues this is bigger than a weird internet rabbit hole — it’s a burgeoning ‘bounty economy,’ that’s quietly warping reality itself. 

Then: Sri...

Did your college have a secret society? Well, Stanford has a secret off-campus class training the next generation of Silicon Valley billionaires. And it's literally called "How to Rule the World."

Theo Baker arrived at Stanford as an aspiring coder with dreams of building the future. Instead, he stumbled into the "Stanford-within-Stanford" — a hidden pipeline connecting a select few students directly to Silicon Valley CEOs, y...

Evan turns his AI-powered voice agent loose on the people who are always at the forefront of technological adoption: the fraudsters and the rip-off artists. How will the scammers and spammers react when they face Evan’s voice agent in a battle of wits? And what happens when they deploy the same kind of AI voice agents on Evan that he’s using on them? Shell Game is made by humans. More specifically, it's produced and edi...

Blue Origin's latest rocket test ended in what the company called "an anomaly" — and what everyone else would call an explosion. Reed Albergotti (Semafor) explains why blowing things up is just part of the process and why the US Space Program is probably going to be fine.

Then, Kyle Chayka (The New Yorker) pulls back the curtain on the shadow market for pre-IPO equity in OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX. It’s a man...

What if the fastest path to superintelligence is AI that builds itself? That's the bet Richard Socher is making — and he has the track record to back it up. A double unicorn founder and early investor in eight unicorn companies (including Perplexity and Hugging Face), Richard has spent 15 years building the foundational research that powers modern AI. Now he’s co-founded Recursive with an elite team from Google DeepMind...

Most of what happens inside the UFC Octagon is too fast for the human eye to follow. Enter Alon Cohen, Executive Vice President of Innovation for TKO, who has spent 15 years building the data and AI systems that expose the hidden moments that help decide a match. Malcolm Gladwell sits down with Alon to uncover how UFC’s partnership with IBM turns chaos into clarity, giving fans and commentators a deeper story behind every bou...

This is the story of what happens when Evan Ratliff, a longtime tech journalist, makes a digital copy of himself, powered by AI, in order to understand how amazing and scary and utterly ridiculous the world is about to get. In Episode 1, Evan clones his voice, hooks it up to a chat bot and his phone line, and sends it off to tangle with customer service representatives.Shell Game is made by humans. More specifically, it's produced ...

The Pope called for AI to be "disarmed" — then gave Anthropic a seat on the dais. Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) unpacks what the Vatican's landmark intervention means for Silicon Valley. Then, get off Nextdoor, Kyle Chayka (The New Yorker) says hyperlocal publications are in vogue and a respite from algorithmic feeds. And finally, an update on last weekend’s Enhanced Games in Las Vegas. Journalist Chris Gayomali, h...

What happens when you let technology take over your life? Joanna Stern (Fmr. Wall Street Journal / New Things) found out. She spent all of 2025 letting the robots in: Waymos, AI therapists, robot massagers, assistant researcher agents…

During that yearlong experiment, Joanna Stern chronicled her findings in a new book, I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything. She speaks to Oz about letting AI diag...

What does it mean to be at the “foothills of the singularity”? That’s how DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis ended his speech at Google I/O, prompting questions and scratched heads. Oz and Reed Albergotti (Semafor) attempt to dissect the meaning behind Hassabis’s confounding statement. They also discuss why so many commencement speakers are getting booed by college graduates after bringing up AI, and what it means ...

What if Olympic athletes could use steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, legally? They can now, at the Enhanced Games. The Enhanced Games take place on May 24th and it’s anyone’s guess what will happen.

Unless you’re Chris Gayomali, host of the new podcast SuperHuman, which is an inside look at the ‘steroid Olympics.’ Chris Gayomali joins Oz to break down how aging tanks athletes' earn...

This week has it all: geopolitical FOMO, major AI deals, more courtroom drama, and a hacker group that just won't quit. Reed Albergotti (Semafor) breaks down why AI tokens are the new oil, and why Anthropic is buying compute straight from SpaceX. Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) takes us inside the Elon Musk-OpenAI trial, where Shivon Zilis, aka the “Elon Whisperer” and the mother of four of Musk's children, finally t...

How did nine rejection letters and “boring” data lead to “the biggest transformation in sport”? Americans might know Formula One Racing from the hit Netflix show “Drive to Survive.” But F1 has long been a fan favorite in Britain and Europe. Today’s guest, team principal James Vowles, sits down with Oz to discuss how he’s bringing his team, Atlassian Williams F1 Team, from a recent slu...

This week: AI regulation, dark money and data center backlash. Reed Albergotti (Semafor) helps decipher how the Trump Administration actually feels about AI oversight and it seems like a reversal of the hands-off approach they’ve taken so far. Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) exposes a dark money influencer campaign — one she was personally recruited for — that's paying creators to push pro-American AI, anti-China messagi...

What would it mean to be a "great ancestor"? Futurist Ari Wallach believes that's the question everyone, including our tech leaders, should be asking right now.

Ari joins Oz to explain why the systems we're building today are laying rails for centuries to come. And he argues that shifting culture through storytelling is the fastest way to change the systems that govern our lives. He also introduces The Protopias Collection, six gr...

This week, some courtroom drama. It’s Elon Musk v. OpenAI the next few weeks and billionaires are taking the stand and opening their diaries — and memories of Burning Man — to scrutiny. Reed Albergotti (Semafor) breaks down the legal battle and why Elon Musk believes he’s owed billions since OpenAI went for-profit. Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) reports on the Pentagon agreement Google was ‘proud&r...