Whole Foods based its brand on a certain standard of quality—but there are some things that shoppers nevertheless want. Amazon believes it has found a way to keep the shelves looking like Whole Foods, while getting you the Tide PODS  and Cheez-Its you deeply desire.

Guest: Peyton Bigora, staff reporter for Grocery Dive

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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.

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The good news is voters are more persuaded by factual claims than emotional appeals or appeals to fear. But the bad news is that A.I. chatbots, trying to convince you, will keep making factual claims long after it runs out of actual facts.

Guest: David Rand, professor of information science, marketing and psychology at Cornell University

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Donald Trump—or at least the tech guys who have his ear—is ready to clear the regulatory runway for A.I. but other Republicans aren’t too sure. Can he bring them around? Or will the bubble burst first?

Guest: Gerrit De Vynck, tech reporter for the Washington Post.

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A tech mogul who made bank from Paypal with his Stanford buddies and has endeared himself to right-wing politicians and enriched himself the same way? No not him; this one’s South African..no, not him either.

Guest: Ryan Mac, reporter for the New York Times. 

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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.

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As the U.S. upgrades and updates its defense and military systems, the question isn’t whether A.I. will be integrated, but where, how much, and how much decision-making are we ceding to the machine?

Guest: Josh Keating, senior correspondent at Vox and a fellow at the Outrider Foundation where he’s reporting on nuclear weapons and AI.

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Note: This episode was originally published on July 27, 2025. 

There’s an entire economy devoted to seeing what products are trending—clothing, skin care, even Greek Islands—and delivering you a cheaper knock-off to buy.

Guest: Mia Sato, reporter for The Verge

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Podcast production by Evan Campbell and Patrick Fort.

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Tracking a license plate across the country has never been easier, which is good news if your car has been stolen, but in an era of ICE and Border Patrol raids, these warrantless searches feel increasingly invasive—and unconstitutional.

Guest: Joseph Cox, co-founder of 404 Media and host of the 404 Media podcast.

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Trump promised to stop the “persecution” of the cryptocurrency industry. He did call off the SEC investigations that began under Biden, and pardoned Binance cofounder and ex-CEO Changpeng Zhao. But is the crypto industry ultimately better off because of that? 

Guest: David Yaffe-Bellany, tech reporter for the New York Times.

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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.

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The parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta, doesn’t (just) have a scam problem—with 10 percent of its revenue coming from scam ads, and a third of all successful scams in America using a Meta platform at some point, it’s more an interdependence with scammers.

Guest: Jeff Horwitz, tech reporter for Reuters.

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They don’t cut cleanly along party lines, but data centers, and where they get built, became an election issue in Virginia. With so many more data centers to build, are we looking at a new trend? 

Guest: Margaret Barthel, reporter covering northern Virginia for WAMU. 

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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.

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Tesla shareholders just approved a trillion dollar (with a t!) pay package for Elon Musk. Is it enough incentive to keep him around the company and away from verbal spats with government officials? Because the whole Musk empire is still reeling from that dalliance.

Guest: Faiz Siddiqui, tech reporter at The Washington Post and author of Hubris Maximus: the Shattering of Elon Musk.

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