Technology

Tech reporter JOANNA STERN. She’s chief technology analyst for NBC news. Her new book is called I am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to do (almost) Everything. It chronicles the experiment she tried throughout most of 2025, handing over every task, large and small, to AI - if AI was capable of doing it. From reading her mammogram and ultra sound, to folding her t-shirts, responding to her email and texts, serving as her therapist, and helping her write her book.

(1.) Journalist GEORGE PACKER is a staff writer at The Atlantic. His new article is titled The Venture-Capital Populist: How David Sacks and the New Tech Right went Full Maga and Captured Washington.” He writes about how and why many Silicon Valley leaders have become identified with the Right, with President Donald Trump and MAGA. These tech billionaires are now often referred to as oligarchs, because of their money, power, and access to the White House. (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW).

Bloomberg journalist Katrina Manson discusses the Pentagon's secretive campaign to build America's AI warfare capabilities and the obsessive Marine colonel behind it. Her new book is Project Maven.

Anthropic is one of the world's most powerful AI firms. New Yorker writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus explains how they're trying to make chatbot Claude more ethical, and the implications of AI's widening use.

Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age is about how tech is helping and exploiting us. Vauhini Vara analyzed the feedback AI gave her to explore the abilities, shortcomings and biases of the chatbot.

New York Times reporter Kashmir Hill explains how AI is being integrated into our lives, impacting education and daily decisions, and how this could define the future of privacy and human connection.

Gary Rivlin is here to help us understand all these issues and developments. Rivlin has worked for The New York Times among other publications and published 10 previous books. In 2017, he shared a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Panama Papers. His new book is "AI Valley: Microsoft, Google, And The Trillion-Dollar Race To Cash In On Artificial Intelligence."

Terry Gross interviews Ryan Mac on his new book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter.

Congress and President Biden say TikTok must shed its financial ties to China or face a ban in the U.S. But Washington Post tech reporter Drew Harwell says selling the company is complicated.

NYT reporter Kashmir Hill says Clearview AI has a database of billions of photos scraped from the internet, which it sells to governments and police departments. Her book is Your Face Belongs To Us.

The Army and Navy are testing new weapons that rely on cutting-edge technology and AI. Journalist Eric Lipton explains the benefits, risks and ethical questions surrounding these weapons.

Artificial intelligence experts recently signed an open letter warning that AI could destroy humanity. New York Times reporter Cade Metz explains why we are at a turning point with this technology.

Tech journalist Casey Newton says Elon Musk did not inherit a company in crisis — but after massive layoffs and upheaval the social media giant is losing money and Musk is warning of bankruptcy.

White noise streams are a kind of sonic wallpaper. For many, they help keep some parts of the brain distracted so that other parts may better focus on things, like writing, studying or sleeping.

Like, Comment, Subscribe author Mark Bergen says YouTube has ushered in a world of abundant content and creativity, of influencers and hustlers, of information overload and endless culture wars.

Washington Post technology columnist Geoffrey Fowler says smartphones and apps are harvesting our personal data — and that of our kids — on a scale that would shock most users.

WSJ reporter Jeff Horwitz says Facebook executives often choose to boost engagement at the expense of tackling misinformation and mental health problems, which are rampant on their platforms.

Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Max Chafkin talks about the tech billionaire who broke with most of Silicon Valley in backing Trump. Thiel also secretly funded the lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker.

In her new book, Pipe Dreams, Chelsea Wald examines the health issues related to human waste — and what she calls the "urgent quest" to rethink the toilet. She says the tools Americans rely on to remove and process our bodily waste aren't available to billions of people across the globe.

Are robots coming for your job? New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose says companies and governments are increasingly using automation and artificial intelligence to cut costs, transform workplaces and eliminate jobs — and more changes are coming.