Uncanny Valley Podcast

We saw a real important framing around health care and Republicans’ willingness to let the Obamacare tax credits expire. Now, I think Democrats could have stayed stronger and actually gotten a solution there, but elections have…

This week, our hosts discuss why OpenAI and Elon Musk’s legal feud is heating up once again—and happening alongside SpaceX’s IPO filing. They also dive into how a Department of Justice lawyer misled a judge about how they’re handling voter…

If you haven’t heard of UpScrolled before, a brief primer: It’s a social media platform not too different from, say, Instagram or TikTok. You can share photos or short videos, follow accounts, comment on posts, and amass a following of your…

Kate Knibbs: So, you went twice?Makena Kelly: Yes, Kate. I went twice.Kate Knibbs: I missed that.Zoë Schiffer: Wait, is the Pentagon Pizza thing a joke about the pizza predicting the war?Makena Kelly: Yeah.Zoë Schiffer: Oh, my God.Makena…

Chris Hayes makes a living from attention: What deserves some, what doesn’t, and how to make sure the public gives their own limited span of it to the right things.That sounds simple enough. But as I found during my conversation with Hayes,…

Luis von Ahn could have retired to a beach somewhere years ago. Best known as the CEO of the learning app Duolingo, von Ahn in the 2000s invented the captcha, those infuriating little online tests that force people to prove they’re not…

This week on Uncanny Valley, hosts Brian Barrett and Zoë Schiffer discuss the highlights from Nvidia’s annual developer conference, and why Tesla recently got in trouble with some of its most loyal fans online. Plus, Meta’s initial decision…

Brian Barrett: The irony is my favorite part because I feel like venture capitalists have largely positioned themselves as immune to the effects of AI because they're very special and surely a machine can—Zoë Schiffer: It's art, not…

Zoë Schiffer: Emil Michael, you should turn off your views on LinkedIn because people can see when they look at your phone.Brian Barrett: Yeah, that's a tip for Emil Michael if you're listening. And then, if you listen to Uncanny Valley,…

Guys, before we go to break, there's something very near and dear to my heart that WIRED wrote about this week. It's something I love even more than biathlon. It is undersea internet cables.Leah Feiger: I love when you talk about this. I…