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Better Offline

Better Offline

Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

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.

  • 54 minutes 38 seconds
    The Hidden Recession Beneath The AI Bubble w/ Paul Kedrosky

    In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by economist Paul Kedrosky to talk about how AI is distorting the bond markets to the point that it’s changing the price on US Treasuries, how AI data center economics don’t make sense, and the troubling signs he’s hearing out of Anthropic.

    https://paulkedrosky.com/
    The Nick, Dick and Paul Show: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFbDiETo29GTIjg6Lk4imig

    Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1

    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.

    ---

    LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

    Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/

    Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ 

    Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

    Ed's Socials:

    https://twitter.com/edzitron

    https://www.instagram.com/edzitron

    https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com

    https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

    Email Me: [email protected]

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    23 September 2026, 4:00 am
  • 8 minutes 10 seconds
    Monologue: Shut The F*ck Up, Dario!

    In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron delivers a simple message: if Dario Amodei truly believes that Anthropic is building dangerous AI, he should stop any and all cybersecurity model training runs, halt his IPO, limit Claude to only the safest possible functions, or shut the fuck up.

    Anthropic “80% gross margins” story https://www.ft.com/content/4564e6a5-69e9-40a6-bf0f-a888f2f4f002?syn-25a6b1a6=1

    Overcharging story: 
    theinformation.com/newsletters/applied-ai/anthropic-customers-find-errant-charges-auditing-startup-says

    Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1

    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.

    ---

    LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

    Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/

    Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ 

    Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

    Ed's Socials:

    https://twitter.com/edzitron

    https://www.instagram.com/edzitron

    https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com

    https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

    Email Me: [email protected]

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    18 September 2026, 4:00 am
  • 1 hour 5 minutes
    Stopping The AI Safety Cult ft. Adam Becker & Cal Newport

    Ed Zitron is joined by computer science professor and writer Cal Newport and journalist and astrophysicist Adam Becker to get the word out that the narrative about existential risk from AI is driven by a religious cult of effective altruists and rationalists.

    AI Is Already In Dangerous Hands newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-already-in-dangerous-hands/

    Adam
    https://bsky.app/profile/adambecker.bsky.social
    https://www.youtube.com/@DreamingAgainstTheMachine
    https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adam-becker/more-everything-forever/9781541619593/

    Cal
    Podcast & Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@CalNewportMedia/
    Newsletter: https://calnewport.com

    Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1

    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.

    ---

    LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

    Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/

    Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ 

    Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

    Ed's Socials:

    https://twitter.com/edzitron

    https://www.instagram.com/edzitron

    https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com

    https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

    Email Me: [email protected]

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    16 September 2026, 4:00 am
  • 16 minutes 25 seconds
    Monologue: Jacob Coxon and the AI Safety Grift

    In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through the nonsensical, pro-AI lab scare campaign driven by former researcher Jacob Coxon, how the media keeps falling for AI safety grifts, and how dangerous AI is already in the wrong hands - those of Anthropic and OpenAI.

    WIRED interview with Coxon: https://archive.md/2026.09.10-091328/https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-researcher-quits-jacob-coxon-ai-fears-humanity/
    Thread on Hubinger and Coxon: https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com/post/3mv4suhyexc2g

    Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1

    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.

    ---

    LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

    Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/

    Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ 

    Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

    Ed's Socials:

    https://twitter.com/edzitron

    https://www.instagram.com/edzitron

    https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com

    https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

    Email Me: [email protected]

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    11 September 2026, 4:00 am
  • 17 minutes 13 seconds
    Managing The Situation

    In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron walks you through how society continues to manage rather than deal with crises, and how the AI bubble is yet another crisis resulting from a failure to deal with the complexity of the real world. 

    Last Week’s Newsletter: Hyperscale Normalization https://www.wheresyoured.at/hyperscale-normalization/ 
    This week’s newsletter: Concentration Risk https://www.wheresyoured.at/concentration-risk/ 
    Hypernormalization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr7T07WfIhM 


    Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1

    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.

    ---

    LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

    Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/

    Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ 

    Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

    Ed's Socials:

    https://twitter.com/edzitron

    https://www.instagram.com/edzitron

    https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com

    https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

    Email Me: [email protected]

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    9 September 2026, 4:00 am
  • 10 minutes 26 seconds
    Monologue: Concentration Risk

    In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how 80% of Anthropic and OpenAI’s enterprise revenues come from the top 1% of its customers, and how the entire AI bubble is a series of different concentration risks supported by venture capital and debt.

    Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/hyperscale-normalization/
    Ramp Data: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/comments/1w5i9t4/ramp_80_of_openai_and_anthropics_enterprise/
    Terrible Groundbreaker piece: https://www.groundbrkr.com/p/the-teaser-period-why-the-ai-boom - please note that many of the numbers in this piece are wrong and it’s written by Claude, but the overall thesis is useful.

    Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1

    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.

    ---

    LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

    Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/

    Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ 

    Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

    Ed's Socials:

    https://twitter.com/edzitron

    https://www.instagram.com/edzitron

    https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com

    https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

    Email Me: [email protected]

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    4 September 2026, 4:00 am
  • 42 minutes 55 seconds
    LLMs Will Never Make Art With Caleb Wilson and Arif Hasan

    In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by Arif Hasan of Wide Left and Caleb Wilson of Kill The Computer to talk about an academic paper on AI slop, and the many reasons why LLMS can never truly make art.

    Why Slop Matters: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.06060

    Arif Hasan
    wideleft.football
    x.com/ArifHasanNFL
    arif.bsky.social

    Caleb Wilson
    https://bsky.app/profile/birdrespecter.bsky.social
    https://bsky.app/profile/killthecomputer.com

    Please support me by subscribing to my premium newsletter - here’s $10 off your first year of annual: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/84rt762qen

    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.

    ---

    LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

    Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/

    Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ 

    Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

    Ed's Socials:

    https://twitter.com/edzitron

    https://www.instagram.com/edzitron

    https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com

    https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

    Email Me: [email protected]

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    2 September 2026, 4:00 am
  • 8 minutes 57 seconds
    Monologue: Into The Jensenverse

    In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how the AI bubble has increasingly become Jensen Huang and NVIDIA feeding different companies money, and how NVIDIA’s revenue is mostly dependent on a small handful of customers being able to raise more and more debt every year.

    EDITOR’s NOTE: I incorrectly say at the beginning of this that NVIDIA’s earnings were this week. They’re next week. Sorry!

    Newsletter: The AI Hater’s Manifesto: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-ai-haters-manifesto/
    Bloomberg Article: https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/nvidia-500-billion-plan-envelops-164209178.html

    Please support me by subscribing to my premium newsletter - here’s $10 off your first year of annual: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1

    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.

    ---

    LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

    Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/

    Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ 

    Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

    Ed's Socials:

    https://twitter.com/edzitron

    https://www.instagram.com/edzitron

    https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com

    https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

    Email Me: [email protected]

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    28 August 2026, 4:00 am
  • 1 hour 5 minutes
    No, AI Is Not "Autonomously Hacking" with Cal Newport

    In this week’s Better Offline, Ed talks with computer science professor and writer Cal Newport about what the recent AI hacking incidents actually mean, why we should stop referring to LLMs as AI, and what the post-bubble world looks like for LLMs.

    Podcast & Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@CalNewportMedia/
    Newsletter: https://calnewport.com
    New Yorker archive: https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/cal-newport

    Please support me by subscribing to my premium newsletter - here’s $10 off your first year of annual: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/84rt762qen

    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.

    ---

    LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

    Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/

    Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ 

    Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

    Ed's Socials:

    https://twitter.com/edzitron

    https://www.instagram.com/edzitron

    https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com

    https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

    Email Me: [email protected]

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    26 August 2026, 4:00 am
  • 9 minutes 58 seconds
    Monologue: AI Hits A Wall

    In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how Anthropic and OpenAI’s revenue growth is decelerating, and how OpenAI’s pause on model development and collapsing economics create the very real possibility it could collapse.

    EDITOR’s NOTE: I incorrectly say at the beginning of this that NVIDIA’s earnings were this week. They’re next week. Sorry!

    Newsletter: What If OpenAI Dies? https://www.wheresyoured.at/what-happens-if-openai-dies/

    Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 - I’d be so grateful! 

    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.

    ---

    LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

    Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/

    Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ 

    Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

    Ed's Socials:

    https://twitter.com/edzitron

    https://www.instagram.com/edzitron

    https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com

    https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

    Email Me: [email protected]

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    21 August 2026, 4:00 am
  • 44 minutes 51 seconds
    The AI Clown Car W/ Gamersnexus

    In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Steve Burke of GamersNexus to talk about the increasingly-delusional promises of the AI semiconductors industry, the rotten economics of LLMs, and how everything is becoming more frantic and desperate as we reach the end.

    GamersNexus - There Are No Non-Clowns In The Clown Car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F33Ohjufi9k
    Support GamersNexus’ AI Surveillance Dystopia Series: https://store.gamersnexus.net/ai-dystopia
    https://www.youtube.com/gamersnexus
    https://gamersnexus.net/
    https://bsky.app/profile/gamersnexus.bsky.social
    https://x.com/GamersNexus 

    Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 - I’d be so grateful! 

    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.

    ---

    LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

    Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/

    Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ 

    Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

    Ed's Socials:

    https://twitter.com/edzitron

    https://www.instagram.com/edzitron

    https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com

    https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

    Email Me: [email protected]

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    19 August 2026, 4:00 am
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