Have A Nice Future | WIRED

Listen to more of The Big Story here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://swap.fm/l/wi-bigstorypod-feeddrop Maddie Kowalski is one of countless young women who’ve had their lives destroyed by the burnerverse, a loosely connected online community of sports fans. Now she’s fighting back. Written by EJ Dickson. Originally published on September 14th, 2026. For more of the most ambitious, future-defining stories from our favorite human writers, subscribe to The Big Story newsletter: https://www.wired.com/newsletter/the-big-story Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Listen to more of The Big Story here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://swap.fm/l/wi-bigstorypod-feeddrop A cat wearing a short tie plays music on a cat-shaped keyboard (“Pancake Meowsic Video,” 185,459 views). A woman performs sun salutations with a cat on her back (“Cat Loves Yoga,” 1,539 views). A man slaps two cats on an ironing board to the beat of “Atmosphere” (“Cat Slap Joy Division,” 357,605 views). Written by Gideon Lewis-Kraus. Originally published on August 31st, 2012. For more of the most ambitious, future-defining stories from our favorite human writers, subscribe to The Big Story newsletter: https://www.wired.com/newsletter/the-big-story Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Listen to more of The Big Story here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://swap.fm/l/wi-bigstorypod-feeddrop Right now, there are no rules to keep you from owning a bitchin’ corporate name as your own internet address. Written by Joshua Quittner. Originally published on October 1st, 1994. For more of the most ambitious, future-defining stories from our favorite human writers, subscribe to The Big Story newsletter: https://www.wired.com/newsletter/the-big-story Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Listen to more of The Big Story here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://swap.fm/l/wi-bigstorypod-feeddrop Lost time. Lost jobs. Lost friends. Lost family. Lost Lives. How Israeli checkpoints suffocate Palestinian life in the occupied West Bank. Written by Lama Rabah, Sabrina Slipchenko, Charles Boutaud, Firas Tawil and Elena DeBre. Originally published on September 30th 2026. For more of the most ambitious, future-defining stories from our favorite human writers, subscribe to The Big Story newsletter: https://www.wired.com/newsletter/the-big-story Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Listen to more of The Big Story here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://swap.fm/l/wi-bigstorypod-feeddrop Dispatches from the New American Holiday: Writer Bruce Sterling takes the kids to the Temporary Autonomous Zone, where survival is a personal choice. Written by Bruce Sterling. Originally published in WIRED on November 1st, 1996. For more of the most ambitious, future-defining stories from our favorite human writers, subscribe to The Big Story newsletter: https://www.wired.com/newsletter/the-big-story Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Misinformation lives everywhere. False accounts of events, doctored photos, and purposely misleading news stories are quickly shared and passed around on social media, usually by well-meaning people who don’t know they’re sharing incorrect information. It's a big problem in the best of times, but the stakes become much higher during a heated crisis like the current Israel-Hamas war. As the violence in and around Gaza has continued to escalate, people are turning to places like X (aka Twitter) for the latest news on the conflict. But they've been met with a flood of bad info—old videos, fake photos, and inaccurate reports—that researchers say is unprecedented.This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with WIRED reporter David Gilbert about how misinformation and disinformation spreads across social media, and how recent changes made by X before the Israel-Hamas war have made the problem even worse. We also talk about how the proliferation of generative artificial intelligence tools is making fake photos and videos look more believable.Show Notes:Read David and Vittoria Elliot’s WIRED story about how disinformation is getting worse on X. Read David on the role misinformation played in coverage of the recent Gaza hospital explosion. Also read David’s story about how posts by X owner Elon Musk are seemingly making the platform’s misinformation problems worse.Recommendations:David recommends the book A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney. Mike recommends Bono’s memoir Surrender. Lauren would like you to send her workout playlists. (She prefers Spotify.)David Gilbert can be found on social media @daithaigilbert. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gideon Lichfield and Lauren Goode talk to Michael Casey, Chief Content Officer of the cryptocurrency news site, CoinDesk. Almost a year after a CoinDesk report kicked off a series of events that led to the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, is there anyone who still believes in crypto? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Elon Musk’s presence in our lives is inescapable: his cars roam our streets, his satellites orbit our skies, and his purchase of X—formerly known as Twitter—has reshaped the social-media landscape. The staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss a recent biography of Musk, by Walter Isaacson, tracing the familiar archetype of the genius tech founder from the nineteenth-century robber baron to “Batman” ’s Bruce Wayne. The critics examine how, in recent years, the idea of the unimpeachable Silicon Valley founder has lost its sheen. Narratives such as the 2022 series “WeCrashed” tell the story of startup founders who make lofty promises, only to watch their empires crumble when those promises are shown to be empty. “It dovetails for me with the disillusionment of millennials,” Fry says, pointing to the dark mood that the 2007-08 financial crisis and the 2016 election brought to the country. “There’s no longer this blind belief that the tech founder is a genius who should be wholly admired with no reservations.” New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts: https://link.chtbl.com/tnycriticsatlarge_feeddrop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gideon Lichfield and Lauren Goode talk to Cory Doctorow, a writer, internet activist and the author of The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation. As the US government takes Google to court in an anti-trust case this week, Doctorow explains why he believes monopoly power has made the internet a miserable place and what we can do to get our digital lives back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gideon and Lauren talk to Noah Raford, a futurist. Raford spent nearly 15 years working as the UAE’s chief futurist where Noah’s job was to predict what was coming down the pike and offer suggestions on how to prepare for it. His advice? Get comfortable with discomfort.This episode originally aired on April 26, 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gideon Lichfield and Lauren Goode talk to Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind and InflectionAI. They discuss his new book, The Coming Wave, which outlines why our systems are not set up to deal with the next great leap in tech. Suleyman explains why it's not crazy to suggest that chatbots could topple governments and he argues for a better way to assess artificial intelligence (hint: it has to do with making a million dollars). The Coming Wave: Technology Power and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma is available on September 5th. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gideon Lichfield and Lauren Goode talk to Aaron Perzanowski, a University of Michigan Law Professor and author of two books on our shifting definitions of ownership, The End of Ownership and The Right to Repair. They dive into why “buying” something means less than it used to and if consumers have any hope of clawing back some semblance of ownership rights from big corporations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices