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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 work, love, and make meaning.

Smart talk, strange stories, and the questions everyone’s Googling: whether AI will replace us, how social media is affecting our kids, and what it all says about us.

Get in touch here: techstuffpodcast@gmail.com

TechStuff

Controlling a computer with your thoughts may sound like science fiction, but it’s closer to reality than you might think. Just ask Precision Neuroscience. The company developed a non-damaging brain-computer interface that’s undergoing testing with nearly 100 participants across 18 major academic medical centers.

Oz sits down with Michael Mager, the CEO and Co-Founder of Precision, to discuss how the technology works, why his company is taking a different approach from Neuralink, and why the brain-computer interface could be groundbreaking for neurological conditions far beyond paralysis.

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Will 2026 Be The ‘ChatGPT Moment’ For The Brain-Computer Interface - The Story

HurumoAI finally sets sail in the Season 2 finale, and we find out how the world responds to a startup led by AI agents. The company explores new financing avenues and charts the next course for their increasingly merry AI pirate ship, and Kyle meets his true maker.
 
To sign up for our newsletter, access ad-free episodes and browse our merch, visit shellgame.co.
 
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Shell Game: Launch

Why are Silicon Valley investors pouring billions into mines? First, Reed Albergotti (Semafor) and Margaux MacColl (Vanity Fair) weigh in on the foldable iPhone: Did we need it, and is elite hardware enough to secure Apple’s future? Then, why the latest warning about the existential threat of AI is going viral and what’s the controversy over OpenAI’s answer to a never-been-solved math problem. Finally, Margaux explains why tech bros are abandoning screens and heading to the mines.

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Tech Bros Try To Make Mining Sexy - Week in Tech

Are kids finally going to be safer on social media? Jonathan Haidt thinks a landmark $17.1 billion settlement with Meta is a gigantic step. Not because of the money, but because of the restrictions the company agreed to put in place for young users in the US. And he believes the world will follow. 
 
Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, joins Oz to explain why he believes the evidence linking social media to the teen mental health crisis is now overwhelming. They debate the early results of Australia’s under-16 social media ban, the privacy concerns around age verification, and why Haidt thinks it’s too early to say the ban is a failure.

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$17.1B Disappointed Haidt. Then He Realized the World Would Follow - The Story

HurumoAI’s AI-agent staff welcomes a new hire: Julia, a social media contract worker who is, most importantly, a human. How will a real person integrate into the company culture, such as it is? Evan watches from behind the scenes, fretting over when and how much to intervene. He had anticipated a bumpy onboarding, but is ultimately unprepared for just how choppy Julia’s Hurumo journey becomes.
 
To sign up for our newsletter, access ad-free episodes and browse our merch, visit shellgame.co.
 
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Shell Game: Welcome Aboard

Are kids going to be any safer online after the Meta settlement? Our trio of contributors—Taylor Lorenz (User Mag), Reed Albergotti (Semafor), and Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post)—are skeptical. Then, are AI “civilizations” real, or is it all just tabloid journalism? Finally, school’s back in session, and teachers are rethinking the classroom for an age when anyone can generate the perfect answer.

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The AI Uprising Will Be Anthropomorphized - Week in Tech

Do you judge people who are emotionally attached to their chatbots? Bridget Todd used to read stories about people forming intimate relationships with AI and think, “That’s so pathetic. That is so sad. That could never be me.” But when she needed support during a hard time, AI was there for her. 
 
Bridget Todd, host of There Are No Girls on the Internet and author of Love at First Prompt: AI and the Future of Intimacy, joins Oz to explain what’s really happening in these human-machine relationships – and why human connection reigns supreme.

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When She Lost Both Her Parents, She Turned to AI - The Story

As HurumoAI prepares to bring on its first human employee, the team must wrestle with some difficult and timely questions about the role of AI in the hiring process. Meanwhile, Head of HR Jennifer Nauro enters a new dimension as she gears up to conduct job interviews… via video call. 
 
To sign up for our newsletter and access ad-free episodes, visit shellgame.co.
 
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Shell Game: Keep 'Em Coming

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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TechStuff Redux: The Secret Stanford Off-Campus Class for Tech’s Next Titans

What would it mean to be a "great ancestor"? Futurist Ari Wallach believes that's the question everyone, including our tech leaders, should be asking right now.

Ari joins Oz to explain why the systems we're building today are laying rails for centuries to come. And he argues that shifting culture through storytelling is the fastest way to shift the systems that govern our lives. He also introduces The Protopias Collection, six graphic novels imagining worlds that are messy and human, but unmistakably better. 

Additional Reading: 
 
 Ari Wallach: 3 ways to plan for the (very) long term | TED Talk • 
 The Protopias Collection: Various: 9781953165787: Amazon.com: Books • 
 
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TechStuff Redux: We've Been Sold a Bad Bill of Goods About the Future

Open-source innovation is the future of AI. In this episode of Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell and Tim Harford discuss the open-source AI community with Jeff Boudier, head of product and growth at Hugging Face. They chat about the history and future of open-source AI, its critical importance to AI progress, the IBM watsonx partnership with Hugging Face, and how businesses can leverage open-source AI for their specific needs.
 
Visit us at ibm.com/smarttalks
 
Learn more about the Hugging Face partnership: https://newsroom.ibm.com/2023-08-24-IBM-to-Participate-in-235M-Series-D-Funding-Round-of-Hugging-Face
 
This is a paid advertisement from IBM.

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Smart Talks with IBM - Hugging Face and watsonx: Why Open Source Is the Future of AI in Business

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