TechStuff
HowStuffWorks
TechStuff is getting a system update. Everything you love about Tech Stuff now twice the bandwidth with new hosts, Oz Woloshyn (Sleepwalkers) and Karah Preiss (Sleepwalkers).
Oz and Karah bring humour and wit to the table as they break down what's happening in tech...and what it says about us.
TechStuff is the podcast where technology meets culture.
We speak to the folks building the future to understand what tomorrow will look like and how our technology is changing us: how we live, how we love, how we work and even how we die. With a healthy dose of drama, too, as tech titans clash over their interstellar ambitions.
Get in touch here: techstuffpodcast@gmail.com
Location:
Atlanta, GA
Description:
TechStuff is getting a system update. Everything you love about Tech Stuff now twice the bandwidth with new hosts, Oz Woloshyn (Sleepwalkers) and Karah Preiss (Sleepwalkers). Oz and Karah bring humour and wit to the table as they break down what's happening in tech...and what it says about us. TechStuff is the podcast where technology meets culture. We speak to the folks building the future to understand what tomorrow will look like and how our technology is changing us: how we live, how we love, how we work and even how we die. With a healthy dose of drama, too, as tech titans clash over their interstellar ambitions. Get in touch here: techstuffpodcast@gmail.com
Twitter:
@TechStuffHSW
Language:
English
Contact:
HowStuffWorks.com One Capital City Plaza 3350 Peachtree Road, Suite 1500 Atlanta, GA 30326 404-760-4729
Email:
media@howstuffworks.com
Episodes
Week in Tech: You, Me & Ghibli
4/4/2025
How do LLMs solve math problems? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah explore what AI models could mean for the fashion industry, the humble-but-mighty device our modern world depends on, and what Anthropic’s researchers learned about the inner workings of their LLM. On TechSupport, The Washington Post’s technology reporter Gerrit De Vynck explains the state of the AI race and how some of tech’s biggest companies are vying for position.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Duration:00:41:08
The Story: McLaren Racing's Human-Machine Interaction w/ Zak Brown
4/2/2025
Zak Brown is the CEO of McLaren Racing, the second-oldest Formula 1 team. When he joined in 2016, McLaren was in a difficult spot — lagging behind in race wins, sponsorships, and morale. Brown set out to transform the team by elevating their in-house racing technology and fostering active collaboration. He led the team to win the F1 Constructors’ Championship last year, their first one after more than 25 years. In this episode, Oz visits McLaren's headquarters to speak with Brown about how the team made their comeback, and what they’re doing to keep their edge this season. Plus, he shares his candid reflections on #LandoNoWins and Netflix’s Drive to Survive.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Duration:00:32:32
Week in Tech: 23andBankruptcy
3/28/2025
What even is a crypto mixer? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah dig into potential Slack-enabled corporate espionage, the recall of a Kim K-beloved product and the group chat that broke the internet. On TechSupport, The Washington Post’s technology columnist Geoffrey Fowler discusses 23andMe’s financial woes and what it means for the genetic data of the roughly 15 million people who bought DNA testing kits from the company.
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Duration:00:37:30
The Story: Levittown Deepfakes
3/26/2025
This is the first episode of a new podcast called Levittown. It’s a real-life horror story for the AI generation. In this six-part series from Bloomberg, Kaleidoscope and iHeartPodcasts, reporters Olivia Carville and Margi Murphy take listeners from the quiet suburbs of New York to as far as New Zealand and into the darkest corners of the internet. Where tech moves faster than the law, and it’s up to everyday people to hold back a rising tide of explicit deepfakes.
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Duration:00:31:15
Week in Tech: Careless People, Mindful Chatbots
3/21/2025
How do you calm down a chatbot? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and producer Eliza Dennis dig into the book that Meta doesn’t want you to read, chatbot reactions to stressful stimuli, and the new home of Pokémon Go data. On TechSupport, 404 Media’s Joseph Cox discusses a tool with surprising data scraping capabilities that is used by US agencies like ICE.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Duration:00:27:56
The Story: An Innovation Playground w/ Astro Teller
3/19/2025
Astro Teller is Alphabet’s Captain of Moonshots. He oversees projects at X – the moonshot factory behind innovations like Waymo and Google Brain. To celebrate X’s 15 years of pushing boundaries, Astro Teller decided to take listeners inside the factory. On The Moonshot Podcast, inventors and entrepreneurs behind breakthrough technologies reflect on their projects, both the highs and the lows. Teller sits down with Oz to discuss the process of experimentation, the importance of accepting failure and the future of innovation at Alphabet’s X.
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Duration:00:34:22
Introducing: ScienceStuff
3/15/2025
Ever wonder if your pet is lying to you, what's inside a black hole, or whether you'd survive being cryogenically frozen? With infectious curiosity, cartoonist and former roboticist Jorge Cham makes science fun and accessible as he answers your biggest questions.
Listen here and subscribe to ScienceStuff on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts!
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Duration:00:00:59
Week in Tech: Duping Big Tech’s Tech Test
3/14/2025
Could AI help you land an internship? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and producer Eliza Dennis explore the rise of vibecoding, what it means for the future of software development and how one college programmer hopes to reform the Big Tech hiring process. On TechSupport, Oz chats with the founder and researcher of the Exponential View newsletter, Azeem Azhar, about the latest AI innovation and its significance in the battle for technological supremacy.
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Duration:00:31:34
The Story: What is AI Love? w/ David Eagleman
3/12/2025
David Eagleman is a neuroscientist, author, entrepreneur and host of the podcast Inner Cosmos. In his podcast, he explores how our brains interpret the world and construct reality. Eagleman sits down with Oz to discuss AI relationships, the human urge to anthropomorphize chatbots and the benefits of living on the exponential curve.
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Duration:00:30:29
Week in Tech: Can a Woolly Mouse Make a Mammoth?
3/7/2025
What if AI could read your mind? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and producer Eliza Dennis explore the latest tech investment in the US, Meta’s brain-to-text breakthrough and the creation of the woolly mouse. On TechSupport, 404 Media’s Jason Koebler takes us to an AI-generated film festival… spoiler: the tech isn’t there yet.
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Duration:00:30:01
The Story: A Spymaster Sheikh’s AI Ambitions w/ Bradley Hope
3/5/2025
Bradley Hope is a journalist, author and co-founder of Project Brazen, a narrative non-fiction production studio. His piece in Wired, ‘A Spymaster Sheikh Controls a $1.5 Trillion Fortune. He Wants to Use It to Dominate AI,’ outlines how one Gulf royal – Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan – came to control vast sums of sovereign wealth. Hope sits down with Oz to discuss Sheikh Tahnoun’s early obsession with AI, his path to becoming the UAE’s national security advisor and the country's role in the global AI race.
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Duration:00:31:47
What the Tech? w/ Jonathan Strickland in Doha
2/28/2025
This week, Oz is on the road, at the Web Summit Qatar, and he’s not alone. Joining him from the iHeart pop-up studio in Doha is a very familiar figure, Jonathan Strickland. Oz and Jonathan sit down to discuss some of the highlights of the Web Summit, including the future of the AI chip race, advances in augmented reality and how news organizations are grappling with AI.
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Duration:00:38:53
The Story: Russia’s Espionage ‘Laboratory’ w/ Ben Taub
2/26/2025
Ben Taub is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and staff writer at The New Yorker. His piece, “Russia’s Espionage War in the Arctic,” covers tensions at the Russian border with Norway. An area Russia uses as a testing ground for future intelligence operations. Taub sits down with Oz to discuss the technology being used for survival and for espionage, as the war in Ukraine escalates and things heat up with NATO.
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Duration:00:31:58
TechStuff x Part-Time Genius: Redefining ‘Luddite’ w/ Brian Merchant
2/21/2025
This week, TechStuff teams up with Part-Time Genius for a special crossover episode. Oz and Mangesh Hattikudur, host of Part-Time Genius, discuss a largely misunderstood group of machine destroyers. The Luddites. Joining them is tech journalist Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine, to dig into the history of humans fighting against job automation, why we equate Luddites with technophobes and what we can learn from these 19th century rebels in the age of AI.
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Duration:00:43:53
The Story: Liar, Liar, Deepfakes on Fire w/ Hany Farid
2/19/2025
Hany Farid is a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He's been a leading voice on digital forensics for over two decades—pioneering ways to identify if an image, audio or video has been digitally altered. Since the rise of social media, Farid has kept busy helping news organizations, government agencies and law enforcement determine what is real and what is fake online. Farid sits down with Oz to talk about his initial interest in digital forensics, the effects of misinformation on society, and whether he wants an AI likeness of himself to live on after he dies.
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Duration:00:29:19
Week in Tech: Musk and Federal Money–A Love Story
2/14/2025
What do the Brits want from Apple? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and producer Eliza Dennis explore how lithium-ion batteries and wildfires don’t mix, the UK government’s demand for a backdoor to iPhones and the James Webb Space Telescope–it rocks! On TechSupport with 404 Media’s Emanuel Maiberg, a new study finds that AI might affect our critical thinking skills. And finally, Oz digs into Elon Musk’s government contracts.
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Duration:00:28:32
The Story: Denial Isn’t the Answer w/ Geoffrey Hinton
2/12/2025
Geoffrey Hinton is a computer scientist, cognitive psychologist, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics. His work on artificial neural networks earned him the title, ‘Godfather of AI,’ but in recent years, he’s warned that without adequate safeguards and regulation, there is an “existential threat that will arise when we create digital beings that are more intelligent than ourselves.” Hinton sits down with Oz to discuss his upbringing, research, time at Google and how his experience with grief informs how he thinks about the future of AI.
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Duration:00:36:18
Week in Tech: Are You There God? It’s Me, AI
2/7/2025
Do smart fridges help business? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and producer Eliza Dennis unpack Walgreens’ refrigeration woes, the future of supersonic planes, and what the Vatican has to say about AI. On TechSupport with 404 Media’s Joseph Cox, the FBI’s unique relationship to one encrypted phone company. And finally, Oz tests out Google’s virtual office assistant in When Did This Become a Thing?
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Duration:00:35:23
The Story: Ask Lots of Questions w/ Meredith Whittaker
2/5/2025
Meredith Whittaker is the president of the Signal Foundation and serves on its board of directors. She is also the co-founder of NYU’s AI Now Institute. Whittaker got her start at Google, where she worked for 13 years until resigning in 2019 after she helped organize the Google Walkouts. She speaks with Oz about learning on the job, championing data privacy and being awarded the Helmut Schmidt Future Prize for “her commitment to the development of AI technology oriented towards the common good.”
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Duration:00:42:41
Week In Tech: DeepSeek Freak Out
1/31/2025
Is China winning the AI race? This week in the News Roundup, the story that roiled US stock markets on Monday – DeepSeek. Oz and producer Eliza Dennis unpack the hype. On TechSupport with 404 Media’s Jason Koebler, how human ingenuity continues to subvert tech. We hear how one coder has decided to entrap AI web crawlers. And finally, Oz digs into our love affair with personal data in When Did This Become a Thing?
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Duration:00:33:51