Behind every innovation is a new kind of power. TechStuff unpacks how technology reshapes influence, creativity, and control, from Silicon Valley’s rising moguls to the cultural forces they create. Because tech is the new religion, economy, and entertainment, all at once.
Each week, Oz Woloshyn and the brightest minds covering tech dig into the weird, funny, and sometimes unsettling ways technology, AI, and the internet shape our daily lives. From AI and social media to privacy, digital burnout, and the creator economy, they ask how all this innovation is changing who we are, how we wor
Brands, political parties, and businesses all want to know what you think. But what if you're not telling the truth? Cameron Fink, Ned Koh, and John Kessler, the founders of Aaru, believe the future of market research isn't polling humans—it's simulating them.
They may be onto something. The three friends founded Aaru as teenagers, and it has since grown into a billion-dollar AI startup. Cameron Fink and Ned Koh join Oz to explain how their platform uses thousands of AI-powered "digital twins" to predict everything from consumer behavior and elections to which musicians are poised to break out. They discuss why they believe traditional surveys fail and the ethical questions that come with building a machine designed to forecast the future.
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As Evan gets Hurumo’s employees up and running as fully-functioning colleagues (with support from Maty), he learns what it’s really like to spend your days managing, collaborating with, and socializing alongside autonomous AI agents. And he quickly sees one of the significant cracks in the facade of the AI employee future: It’s one thing to get your agents to start acting like real employees. It’s something else entirely to get them to stop.
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Why is the US banning more Chinese technology? Reed Albergotti (Semafor) fills us in on the robot ban and what it means for American innovation. Then, new research on why Chinese open-source AI models may not be as big a threat as Washington makes it seem. Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) tells us about Substack’s new AI detection tool and what it reveals about how creators’ are using AI to build their content.
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What does it take to power the AI boom? Steve Vassallo, a roboticist turned General Partner at Foundation Capital, helped semiconductor company Cerebras figure it out. Steve and Oz discuss why AI workloads demanded an entirely new kind of chip, what "wafer scale" actually means, and how a decade of near-failures — including a system that literally caught fire — led to the largest semiconductor IPO to date and deals with OpenAI and AWS.
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As AI adoption accelerates and global regulations evolve, digital sovereignty has shifted from policy concept to board-level priority. In this episode of Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell sits down live at VivaTech with IBM’s Ana Paula Assis and AXA CIO Giovanni D’Aniello to explore how organizations can balance innovation, control, trust, and resilience in the age of AI.
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How much can we actually trust AI to stay inside the lines? Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) on the OpenAI models that went rogue — and why this isn't necessarily a sign of the end times… just sloppy security. Reed Albergotti (Semafor) on the company that wants to help anyone make software to power robots. Do we even have to talk about what that means for the future of human labor? Finally, Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) on Phoebe Gates' AI shopping startup Phia. Is it too early to call it nepo slop?
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What are we supposed to make of Palantir — a company whose software has helped organizations save lives, and end them? And what of CEO Alex Karp's warnings that AI could upend American democracy? Journalist Michael Steinberger spent six years reporting on Karp for his biography, The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir, and the Rise of the Surveillance State. He tells Oz that Alex Karp, the former progressive, is a provocateur who embraces the complexity of Palantir’s work and reputation.
Additional Reading:
The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir, and the Rise of the Surveillance State | Simon & Schuster
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Who’s afraid of China’s open-source AI models? Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) breaks down the secret battle between Silicon Valley and Chinese AI labs, why Anthropic was surveilling China-based users, and whether "adversarial distillation" is a national security threat or just a term American companies invented to protect their bottom line.
Then: ‘hot surveillance summer’ is here. Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) on the changing public perception of smart glasses, why the Kylie Jenner partnership was so successful, and where this trend may lead.
Also, Apple is suing OpenAI for allegedly stealing trade secrets.
Additional Reading:
Inside the secret AI war between Silicon Valley and China | The Washington Post
Hot Surveillance Summer, AKA Why Smart Glasses Feel Different This Time | User Mag
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Did you love TechStuff’s last episode, 'The Tech That Helps You Live Forever', and want to hear more from Mangesh Hattikudur? Check out Episode 5 of the podcast Skyline Drive: How to Live Forever.
In this season of Skyline Drive, Mangesh Hattikudur (Part-Time Genius, Mental_Floss) dives into the booming business of living forever—meeting the scientists, biopunks, and entrepreneurs trying to turn immortality into reality, and framing death as a choice. But the more he learns about an immortal future, the more he finds himself drawn to the people he loves…and wondering if an endless life can be a meaningful one. Skyline Drive: How to Live Forever is the follow up to the beloved Skyline Drive (season 1), named a “Series Essential” — an Apple Podcasts honor for top-tier narrative podcasts — and highlighted on several Best of Year lists including NYMag, Guardian, and others.
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What's it like to feel your body age in minutes? And will this tech actually affect how long we live? Oz sits down with Mangesh Hattikudur, host of Skyline Drive: How to Live Forever, to find out.
This season, Mangesh dives into a world familiar to many Silicon Valley billionaires: longevity. He meets the scientists, entrepreneurs, biopunks, and researchers seeking ways to extend life itself — and speaks with the co-founder of a mysterious start-up, a company that sent the MIT Technology Review this statement: "Any allegations of intent or conspiracy to create human clones or humans with brain damage are categorically false."
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Do chatbots have feelings? Anthropic, Google, and Meta are hiring computer scientists, neuroscientists, and philosophers to find out. Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) explains why the search for AI consciousness has gone from fringe theory to Silicon Valley mainstream, and why the answer matters more than you think. Then, Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) traveled cross-country to attend an anti-big tech festival in New York City called the Summer of Ludd. She tells us about cleansing her laptop, talking to the event’s puppet spokesperson, and learning what these young organizers hope the future holds. Finally, Reed Albergotti (Semaphor) on what happens when your AI coding agent goes rogue while you're on vacation in the Alps — and the heroic lengths required to reach an actual human at OpenAI.
Additional Reading:
AI Makes Mistakes, Too | Semafor
They built the world's most powerful AI. They're facing a mystery they can't explain. | The Washington Post
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Do you work with machines, or for machines? Cory Doctorow, who coined the term “enshittification,” has a new book that asks exactly that. In The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence Before It's Too Late, he challenges the belief that AI is inevitable, explains why tech boosters are pushing this message, and how it leads to companies that are “too big to fail… too big to jail… too big to care.”
Cory Doctorow and Oz discuss the economics of a bubble, algorithmic wage discrimination, and what you can do to help save your industry from disruption.
Additional Reading:
The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence Before It's Too Late | Verso Books
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Evan pushes the experiment one step further, sending his AI voice agent to talk to his closest friends and family — his buddies, his daughters, his dad. With their alternately joyful, skeptical, and painful reactions to meeting an AI version of him, he tries to come to terms with what generative AI means in this machine-made age.Shell Game is made by humans. More specifically, it's made by three humans: Evan Ratliff (host and writer), Sophie Bridges (producer), and Samantha Henig (executive producer). Visit shellgame.co to find out more and support the show.
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What drives a man to turn down half a million pounds at 18, test Mark Zuckerberg's sincerity over dinner, and wonder aloud if he can win a second Nobel Prize? For Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, the answer is a lifelong pursuit of artificial general intelligence — and an unshakeable belief that the technology he's creating will change everything about what it means to be human. Oz speaks with journalist and author Sebastian Mallaby about his new book, The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence, tracing Demis's extraordinary journey from chess prodigy to the man at the center of the most consequential technological race of our time.
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How do you build a billion-dollar startup? Ask Mark Pincus.
The founder of Zynga and creator of FarmVille, Mark turned a $350,000 personal investment into one of the most successful gaming companies in history — eventually selling to Take-Two Interactive for over $12 billion. Along the way, he invested early in Facebook, launched one of the first social networks, and learned more from his failures than his wins.
In his new book, Life at the Speed of Play: Launch Products People Love!, Mark shares the product philosophy and founder mindset behind his biggest successes and his biggest swings. In this episode, Mark sits down with Oz to talk about why control is the secret to creativity and what it really takes to spot an opportunity before it's obvious to build something the world didn't know it needed.
Additional Reading:
Life at the Speed of Play
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When Dr. Lara Jehi began treating epilepsy patients in the 2000s, critical surgical decisions were driven more by clinician intuition and expertise than data. Today, she is a leader of IBM and Cleveland Clinic’s Discovery Accelerator, using advanced AI and quantum computing to transform how researchers analyze data, simulate molecules, accelerate drug discovery, and develop more precise treatments. Malcolm Gladwell talks with Dr. Jehi about how quantum computing is changing biomedical research, and what these breakthroughs could mean for the future of healthcare and life sciences.
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Will AI bots replace humans in the workforce? Could one replace Evan… right now? That’s what we tackle on this week’s Shell Game, in which Evan sees just how much of his job his voice agent can handle on his behalf. Shell Game is made by humans. More specifically, it's made by three humans: Evan Ratliff (host and writer), Sophie Bridges (producer), and Samantha Henig (executive producer). Visit shellgame.co to find out more and support the show.
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Is building data centers in space actually feasible? It may be, thanks to Ariel Ekblaw. The scientist, VC investor and co-founder and CEO of Aurelia Institute has devoted her life to democratizing space and ensuring that humans will one day be a spacefaring species. Ariel sits down with Oz to discuss self-assembling space architecture, how science-fiction influences her inventions, and why she doesn’t think billionaires investing in space is a bad thing.
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How close are we to human extinction because of AI? Leading AI expert Professor Stuart Russell believes we’re much too close for comfort and has been raising the alarm for a few years. Ironically, Stuart himself wrote the book that laid the foundation for AI research back in the 1990s. And he was the only AI expert Elon Musk’s team called upon during their trial with OpenAI.
Stuart joins Oz to discuss what changed his mind about pursuing AI superintelligence and makes the argument that human extinction is being treated as an external liability in favor of shareholders.
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Evan looks into the depths of his AI-powered voice agent by sending it on a new mission: going to therapy. Shell Game is made by humans. More specifically, it's made by three humans: Evan Ratliff (host and writer), Sophie Bridges (producer), and Samantha Henig (executive producer). Visit shellgame.co to find out more and support the show.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shellgame.co/subscribe
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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 "caught cheating" videos flooding social media, which are secretly ads for vibe-coded apps promising to catch the unfaithful.
Additional Reading:
US Limits Use of Anthropic AI Models Fable 5 and Mythos | Semafor
The White House Said Anthropic’s Powerful AI was ‘jailbroken.’ Here’s What That Means | The Washington Post
Sundar Pichai faces boos, walkout at Stanford graduation ceremony over Google's Israel, ICE ties | TechCrunch
The Secret Stanford Off-Campus Class for Tech’s Next Titans - The Story | TechStuff
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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 to ensure the future of AI is shaped by — and for — everyone. Along the way, they get into why Michele believes "AI is not destiny, it is design," how Humanity AI grantees are using the technology to serve the public good and what success will look like for the collaborative effort.
Additional Reading:
What the data says about Americans’ views of artificial intelligence | Pew Research Center
Humanity AI
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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 three humans: Evan Ratliff (host and writer), Sophie Bridges (producer), and Samantha Henig (executive producer). Visit shellgame.co to find out more and support the show.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shellgame.co/subscribe
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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: Sriram Krishnan, the Senior White House Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence, is leaving the White House. Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) explains his impact, what this means for the future of federal tech policy and who is jostling for influence in his place.
Finally, Kyle Chayka (The New Yorker) on the ‘show’-ification of everything. Even the tech industry is getting into the game, literally. The Founders Fund just bankrolled a slick YouTube series where tech billionaires like Sam Altman and Palmer Luckey play Mafia, the parlor game. It’s bizarre. So why does Silicon Valley keep trying to make content happen, and who is it actually for?
Additional Reading:
These 430 Viral Videos Are Being Preserved in a British Archive
The Bounty Economy Is Breaking Reality - by Taylor Lorenz
Top Trump artificial intelligence adviser to leave the White House
Kareem Rahma and the Tyranny of Web Video Shows | The New Yorker
Can Tech Legends Find the Liar? (Mafia Episode 1)
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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, yacht parties, and venture capitalists offering millions before you even have an idea. Then he decided to write a book about it.
In How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University, Theo traces his freshman year transformation from tech idealist to award-winning investigative journalist — including the reporting that brought down Stanford's own president. He joins us to talk power, secrecy, and what Silicon Valley is really teaching the next generation.
Additional Reading:
How to Rule the World by Theo Baker
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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 edited by Sophie Bridges, and written and hosted by Evan Ratliff. Samantha Henig is our executive producer. Visit shellgame.co to find out more and support the show.
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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 mania where people are willing to take pre-IPO stock as payment for $2.9M houses. It's frothy out there.
Finally, Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) digs into the concept of a ‘permanent underclass’ — the fear that letting AI run rampant could freeze everyone in their current economic position forever. Do we laugh it off or get serious about regulation?
Additional Reading:
Blue Origin and Amazon Had Momentum. Then Came the Fireball. | The New York Times
A Booming Shadow Market of Sketchy A.I. Investments | The New Yorker
You Are About to Become Economically Worthless | User Mag
Silicon Valley Is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass | The New York Times
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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, OpenAI, and Meta to pursue something more ambitious: a self-improving AI that generates its own scientific breakthroughs — what he calls a "eureka machine."
Richard joins Oz to unpack how recursive superintelligence actually works and why open-ended AI systems could outpace today's giants.
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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 bout.
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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 and edited by Sophie Bridges, and written and hosted by Evan Ratliff. Samantha Henig is our executive producer. Visit shellgame.co to find out more and support the show.
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