The Rip Current with Jacob Ward
By Jacob Ward
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Subscribers: 39
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Episodes: 90
Description
The Rip Current covers the big, invisible forces carrying us out to sea, from tech to politics to greed to beauty to culture to human weirdness. The currents are strong, but with a little practice we can learn to spot them from the beach, and get across them safely.
Veteran journalist Jacob Ward has covered technology, science and business for NBC News, CNN, PBS, and Al Jazeera. He's written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, and is the former Editor in Chief of Popular Science magazine.
| Episode | Date |
|---|---|
|
The CEOs Who Went to China and Got Nothing
|
May 16, 2026 |
|
Sam Altman Under Oath
|
May 14, 2026 |
|
Sam Altman's Own Hero Calls Him a Liar. Now He Faces a Jury.
|
May 13, 2026 |
|
Musk vs Altman: What I Saw at the Courthouse
|
May 02, 2026 |
|
Juicy A.I. Billionaire Drama Exposed
|
Apr 30, 2026 |
|
Nine Random People Decide the Fate of A.I. — Starting Now
|
Apr 29, 2026 |
|
U.S. Spies are Using Banned A.I.
|
Apr 26, 2026 |
|
Is Social Media Bad for Kids?
|
Apr 24, 2026 |
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Why Tim Cook's Apple Era Is Over — And What Comes Next
|
Apr 23, 2026 |
|
Is Social Media Bad for Kids? Only the Companies Know For Sure.
|
Apr 22, 2026 |
|
How America Built an AI Kill Machine (with Katrina Manson)
|
Apr 21, 2026 |
|
The A.I. that Escaped Its Own Cage
|
Apr 21, 2026 |
|
An A.I. Doomsday Machine...and the Private Club that Has It
|
Apr 10, 2026 |
|
Can Sam Altman Be Trusted?
|
Apr 09, 2026 |
|
Tech Companies Already Know When You've Had Enough
|
Apr 03, 2026 |
|
The Verdict that Ends Social Media As We Know It (with Nita Farahany)
|
Mar 28, 2026 |
|
Social Media Found Guilty
|
Mar 28, 2026 |
|
Social Media Found Guilty
|
Mar 25, 2026 |
|
Is America Ready for "Behavioral Harm?"
|
Mar 24, 2026 |
|
BREAKING: Meta Just Lost. Here Come 1600 More Lawsuits
|
Mar 24, 2026 |
|
Hollywood Is Pulling Up the A.I. Drawbridge
|
Mar 21, 2026 |
|
When Gen Z Makes Jokes, They're Screaming
|
Mar 20, 2026 |
|
Hackers Leaked the DHS AI Surveillance Database — Here's What's Inside
|
Mar 18, 2026 |
|
Did Meta Connect Predators to Children? (With AG Raúl Torrez)
|
Mar 15, 2026 |
|
A Silicon Valley Congressman Faces the Shifting Sands of A.I.
|
Mar 08, 2026 |
|
Lethal Beta: Gaza Was the Test Run. Iran Is the Launch.
|
Mar 05, 2026 |
|
7 Terrifying Things AI Can Already Do (That Most People Don't Know About)
|
Feb 28, 2026 |
|
Anthropic's CEO Built an AI With Ethics. The Pentagon Just Told Him to Drop Them.
|
Feb 26, 2026 |
|
A Big Week for Tech Accountability
|
Feb 26, 2026 |
|
State of the Union: Tech Anxiety Edition
|
Feb 25, 2026 |
|
Zuckerberg's Testimony: What to Watch For
|
Feb 20, 2026 |
|
The Social Media Trial Explained
|
Feb 19, 2026 |
|
Social Media's Big Tobacco Moment
|
Feb 09, 2026 |
|
Why ICE Agents Wear Masks: Inside the Billion-Dollar Surveillance System Targeting Us All
|
Feb 02, 2026 |
|
We're a Match Flare in an Infinite Darkness — And We're Wasting It Fighting Each Other
|
Jan 28, 2026 |
|
Big Tech Knew Exactly How Much It Was Harming Kids — The Documents Prove It
|
Jan 27, 2026 |
|
Wells Fargo Is Firing Thousands of Workers Because of AI — And Bank Tellers Are Unionizing for the First Time Ever
|
Jan 23, 2026 |
|
Davos Is Just a High School Reunion — And AI Companies are the Cool Kids
|
Jan 22, 2026 |
|
Robots are Ready for Human Factory Jobs — and No One Voted on It
|
Jan 08, 2026 |
|
Every Oil Empire Thinks This Time Will Be Different.
|
Jan 05, 2026 |
|
Why So Many People Hate AI — and Why 2026 Is the Breaking Point
|
Jan 02, 2026 |
|
AI Has Us Lying to One Another (and It's Changing How We Think)
|
Jan 02, 2026 |
|
Did Weed Just Escape the Culture War?
|
Dec 19, 2025 |
|
AI Data Centers Are Draining Our Power — and Making Strange Political Allies
|
Dec 17, 2025 |
|
AI Isn’t Just a Money Risk Anymore — It’s Bigger than That
|
Dec 15, 2025 |
|
The President Just Moved to Kill State AI Laws. Here's What Happens Next.
|
Dec 12, 2025 |
|
AI Is Even More Biased Than We Are: Mahzarin Banaji on the Disturbing Truth Behind LLMs
|
Dec 10, 2025 |
|
Australia Just Rebooted Childhood — And the World Is Watching
|
Dec 10, 2025 |
|
AI is Creating a ‘Hive Mind' — Scientists Just Proved It
|
Dec 04, 2025 |
|
OpenAI Declares "Code Red" — And Takes Aim at Your Brain
|
Dec 02, 2025 |
|
Trump’s New Big Tech Era, TSMC’s Shift, and the A.I. Conferences Steering 2026
|
Dec 02, 2025 |
|
AI Distortion Is Here — And It’s Already Warping Us All
|
Nov 25, 2025 |
|
Insurers Are Backing Away From A.I.—and That Should Scare You More Than Any Sci-Fi Predictions
|
Nov 25, 2025 |
|
The Executive Order That Would End AI Regulation in America
|
Nov 21, 2025 |
|
When AI Stops Being About Jobs — and Starts Being About Us
|
Nov 20, 2025 |
|
Are We Overbuilding AI? Tulsa, Rail Mania, Space Data Centers & the Billion-Dollar Reality Check
|
Nov 18, 2025 |
|
AI Money Is Reshaping Global Power: Buffett Buys Big, Thiel Bails, Robots Faceplant, and Saudi Arabia Arrives
|
Nov 17, 2025 |
|
Is America Ready to Fight Big Tech? (with Sacha Haworth)
|
Nov 12, 2025 |
|
Can Journalism Survive? (with UC Berkeley Journalism Dean Michael Bolden)
|
Nov 05, 2025 |
|
BONUS EPISODE: Jake on the Urgent Futures Podcast
|
Nov 04, 2025 |
|
AI Addiction is Coming (with Zachary Gidwitz)
|
Oct 29, 2025 |
|
Brazil is an Alternate Universe (with Cristina Tardaguila)
|
Oct 22, 2025 |
|
Is AI Pessimism Feeding the Powerful? (with Rumman Chowdhury)
|
Oct 15, 2025 |
|
BONUS: Jake on Keen on America
|
Oct 10, 2025 |
|
Can AI Be Ethical? (with Olivia Gambelin)
|
Oct 02, 2025 |
|
Why Big Tech's Lawyers are SCREAMING Right Now
|
Sep 29, 2025 |
|
The War Over TikTok (with Emily Baker-White)
|
Sep 24, 2025 |
|
The Rise of AI Psychosis (with Morten Rand-Hendricksen)
|
Sep 17, 2025 |
|
Who Runs Mars? (with David Ariosto)
|
Aug 27, 2025 |
|
99% of Crypto is a Scam (with Molly White)
|
Aug 06, 2025 |
|
How to Be Two-Marshmallow Humans (with Aza Raskin)
|
Jul 23, 2025 |
|
How to Defeat Loneliness (with David Jay)
|
Jul 09, 2025 |
|
The Life and Death of Booze (with Adam Rogers)
|
Jun 25, 2025 |
|
The Trump Moment is Global (with Bart Bonikowski)
|
Jun 18, 2025 |
|
An Expert in Violence Explains the Path to Peace (with Lord John Alderdice)
|
Jun 11, 2025 |
|
Bonus: What It's Like at a Protest, and Why It's So Dangerous!
|
Jun 11, 2025 |
|
The Battle for Your Brain (with Nita Farahany)
|
Jun 04, 2025 |
|
Reading: The All-American Surveillance System is Coming
|
Jun 02, 2025 |
|
Why Tech Hates Us Journalists (with Paris Martineau)
|
May 22, 2025 |
|
How to Kill Corruption with Technology (with President of Estonia Toomas Ilves)
|
May 16, 2025 |
|
Bonus Reading: A.I. Wants to Steal Your Ideas. The White House Seems to Be Fine With That.
|
May 14, 2025 |
|
Addiction in America (with Dr. Keith Humphreys)
|
May 07, 2025 |
|
The Best You Can Hope For in a Democracy (with John Patty and Elizabeth Penn)
|
Apr 30, 2025 |
|
Bonus Reading: The Creator Economy is a Trap
|
Apr 23, 2025 |
|
Renee DiResta on Our Invisible Rulers and Building a Credibility Counterculture
|
Apr 16, 2025 |
|
Law Professor Lawrence Lessig on Corruption, AI, and the Need to Rethink Everything
|
Apr 09, 2025 |
|
Journalist Kat Tenbarge on Misinformation, Media, and How Influencers Work You
|
Apr 02, 2025 |
|
Psychologist Jennifer Freyd on the Language of Betrayal
|
Mar 26, 2025 |
|
Historian Andrew Ward (My Dad) on Slavery and DEI
|
Mar 19, 2025 |
|
Catherine Bracy on Venture Capital and How It's Eating the Economy
|
Mar 12, 2025 |