Close All Tabs

Young people are increasingly turning to AI “companion chatbots” to meet their emotional needs. But a new study shows that these chatbots, which are designed to mimic real social relationships, can carry serious risks. In this episode, Morgan and her sister put one chatbot's safety guardrails to the test — and get more than they bargained for. Then, KQED Silicon Valley senior editor Rachael Myrow explains why teens are especially vulnerable, what lawmakers are doing about it, and how parents can talk to their kids about AI. Guests:  Rachael Myrow, senior editor, Silicon Valley News Desk at KQED Further reading:  Kids Are Talking to AI Companion Chatbots. Stanford Researchers Say That’s a Bad Idea — Rachael Myrow, KQED How to Talk With Your Kids About AI Companion Bots — Rachael Myrow, KQED Social AI Companions — AI Risk Assessment Team, Commons Sense Media Read the transcript here Want to give us feedback on the series? Shoot us an email at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org You can also follow us on Instagram Credits: This episode was reported and hosted by Morgan Sung. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts, and also helps edit the show. Sound design by Chris Egusa and Brendan Willard. Original music, including our theme song, by Chris Egusa. Additional music from APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Ethan Toven-Lindsay is our Editor in Chief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Furries are often known for wearing full-body animal suits at conventions — but the characters they inhabit, called “fursonas,” are much more than costumes. They’re deeply personal expressions of identity and creativity. So when someone in the furry fandom dies, how does the community say goodbye? In this episode, Morgan explores a virtual memorial created by a furry named Changa Husky, where mourners gather in VR to remember those they’ve lost — and the fursonas they leave behind. Editor's note: In this episode, we refer to some individuals only by their “fursona” names. We’ve chosen to use these names because members of the furry community are frequently subject to harassment, bullying, and doxxing, and many participants use online handles to maintain their safety and privacy. Guests:  Changa Husky, furry Vtuber and video producer Patch O’Furr, founder and writer, Dogpatch Press Further reading:  Who runs the internet? Furries — Dylan Reeve, The Spinoff  Remembering Mark Merlino (1952-2024), a founder and soul of furry fandom — Patch O’Furr, Dogpatch Press  The Fandom: A Furry Documentary — Ash Coyote, YouTube Read the transcript here Want to give us feedback on the series? Shoot us an email at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org You can also follow us on Instagram Heads up — the Close All Tabs team is taking a break to touch grass, so we won’t have an episode next week. But we’ll be back with another deep dive, and many more tabs, in two weeks. Credits: This episode was reported and hosted by Morgan Sung. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts, and also helps edit the show. Sound design by Chris Egusa and Brendan Willard. Original music, including our theme song, by Chris Egusa. Additional music from APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The animation industry has long struggled to get Black hair right — from the infamous “Killmonger locs,” named after the Black Panther character and copied across video games, to the stiff, oversized afros of The Sims 4. As it turns out, hair animation tools were built almost exclusively with straight hair in mind. Two researchers, A.M. Darke and Theodore Kim, recently published a landmark paper about the physics of animating curly, coiled, and afro-textured hair. Morgan sits down with A.M. and Theodore as they discuss the surprising pushback they encountered in the animation industry, the findings of their paper, and the uphill battle they faced in getting this field of study recognized within academia.  Guests:  A.M. Darke, artist, game designer, and an associate professor of Performance, Play, & Design at UC Santa Cruz Theodore Kim, Professor of Computer Science at Yale University  Further reading:  Lifted Curls: A Model for Tightly Coiled Hair Simulation - Alvin Shi, Haomiao Wu, A.M. Darke, and Theodore Kim Curly-Cue: Geometric Methods for Highly Coiled Hair  - Alvin Shi, Haomiao Wu, A.M. Darke, and Theodore Kim The 'Killmonger Cut' Is Everywhere In Games, Here's Why the Industry Needs to Fix This — Trone Dowd, IGN We’re Much Closer to A Disney Princess With Type 4 Hair — Essence Gant, Allure Open Source Afro Hair Library  - A.M. Darke  Read the transcript here Want to give us feedback on the series? Shoot us an email at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org You can also ⁠follow us on Instagram Credits: This episode was reported and hosted by Morgan Sung. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. This episode was edited by Chris Hambrick and Chris Egusa. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts, and also helps edit the show. Sound design by Maya Cueva, Chris Egusa and Brendan Willard. Original music by Chris Egusa, with additional music from APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Spotify didn’t just change how we listen to music — it changed what a genre even is. In this episode, producer and rapper Quinn reflects on being thrust into the spotlight at age 15 as one of the breakout faces of Spotify’s meteoric Hyperpop playlist.. Then, music journalist Kieran Press-Reynolds breaks down how Spotify’s made-up micro-genres—like Goblincore, Anime Drill, and Bubblegrunge—are reshaping music discovery and putting pressure on artists to conform. Guests: Quinn, independent producer and rapper Kieran Press-Reynolds, independent reporter covering music and internet culture Further reading: How to break free of Spotify's algorithm — Tiffany Ng, MIT Technology Review The Lost Promises of Hyperpoptimism — Kieran Press-Reynolds, Pitchfork Read the transcript here Want to give us feedback on the series? Shoot us an email at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org You can also follow us on Instagram Credits: This episode was reported and hosted by Morgan Sung. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Jen Chien. Sound design by Chris Egusa and Brendan Willard. Theme and credits music by Chris Egusa, with additional music from APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elon Musk and President Trump breaking up? LA protesters clashing with law enforcement? Waymos on fire (again)? Things have been moving fast the last few days — and like you, our feeds are on overload. Today, we’re bringing you a quick reaction episode to catch you up on a couple stories we’ve covered before that are suddenly back in the news. Close All Tabs producer Maya Cueva joins Morgan to break it all down. We’ve talked about a few of these stories before — if you want to go deeper, here are some past episodes to check out: The Broligarchy Pt 1: Chronicles of the PayPal Mafia | KQED The Surveillance Machine, Pt. 1: How We Got Here | KQED Waymo Robotaxis - Uneasiness and Vandalism | KQED Further reading: A timeline of the twists and turns in the Trump-Musk relationship — Nnamdi Egwuonwu, NBC News  Immigration Protests Threaten to Boil Over in Los Angeles — E. Tammy Kim, The New Yorker ICE raids tried to split LA apart, but might have made it stronger — Michael Lozano, LA Public Press  How Waymo got caught in the crossfire of Los Angeles ICE protests —  Joe Berkowitz, Fast Company  Read the transcript here Want to give us feedback on the series? Shoot us an email at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org You can also follow us on Instagram Credits: This episode was reported and hosted by Morgan Sung. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Jen Chien. Sound design by Maya Cueva, Chris Egusa and Brendan Willard. Original music by Chris Egusa, with additional music from APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Liz Pelly, a music journalist and the author of *Mood Machine*, dives into the transformative power of Spotify as it evolves from a basic music library to a data-driven platform tailored to user moods. She discusses the rise of 'ghost artists' and the ethical concerns surrounding music authenticity. Pelly reveals how personalized playlists shift our relationship with music, leading to a potential loss of intimacy in listening. Plus, she creatively explores the mystery of whether she's being haunted by Sabrina Carpenter!

Are you old enough to remember the “Magic Eye” optical illusion mania that gripped the nation in the 90’s—random patterns that you had to squint at just right for the 3D image to pop out?  It turns out it's not just our eyes that can be fooled. Our ears can play tricks on us too. There's a whole world of auditory illusions that seem to say one thing when they're really saying something else, and that matters, especially in our age of digital misinformation. In today’s episode, Morgan talks to KQED Digital Community Producer Francesca Fenzi about why we hear  what we think we hear, and how understanding the limits of our perception might actually make us better at spotting dis- and misinformation online. Guest: Francesa Fenzi, KQED Digital Community Producer  Read the transcript here Want to give us feedback on the series? Shoot us an email at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org You can also follow us on Instagram Credits: This episode was reported and hosted by Morgan Sung. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Jen Chien. Sound Design by Maya Cueva. Original music by Chris Egusa, with additional music from APM. Mixing and mastering by Katherine Monahan and Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hentai, sexually explicit Japanese animation (anime) and comics (manga), is a genre that’s been criticized for depicting violent or ethically questionable scenarios. But some fans also see it as a space for expanding the boundaries of art, culture, and sexuality in a way that reverberates beyond its status as a niche subculture. In this episode, Morgan talks with anime marketer Drea Ramirez about how discovering hentai helped her explore her own sexual identity — and how today’s streaming platforms are stifling weirder, more experimental forms of animation. We’ll also hear from Jacob Grady, CEO of the hentai manga site Fakku, about the challenges of running a licensed and legal business in the face of content piracy, and how anti-trafficking laws like SESTA and FOSTA can make it harder forhentai artists to make a living. This episode is part of a collaboration with our friends at the podcast Never Post. While we’re digging into the culture and industry behind hentai, they’re coming at it from a completely different angle. Give it a listen wherever you get your podcasts. Guests: Drea Ramirez, social media marketing manager at Azuki Jacob Grady, founder and CEO of FAKKU Mike Rugnetta, host of Never Post Further reading: The Hentai Platform Streaming Wars — Aurélie Petit, Porn Studies  Why "The Crunchyroll of Hentai" Failed to Take Off — Jay Allen, Unseen Japan Hentai Sites Go To War, Leaving Animated Porn's Future In Doubt — Cecilia D’Anastasio, Kotaku  FOSTA-SESTA was supposed to thwart sex trafficking. Instead, it’s sparked a movement — Liz Tung, WHYY Read the transcript here Want to give us feedback on the series? Shoot us an email at CloseAllTabs@KQED.org You can also follow us on Instagram Credits: This episode was reported and hosted by Morgan Sung. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Jen Chien. Original music and sound design by Chris Egusa, with additional music from APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nicol Turner Lee, a Senior Fellow at Brookings, digs deep into the chilling realities of surveillance in our lives. She emphasizes how opting out of government monitoring is nearly impossible and the role of tech companies in this dynamic. The discussion reveals how data brokers sell personal information and the implications of surveillance technologies on activism, particularly among students. Turner Lee also highlights the risks activists face and offers strategies to protect digital privacy in an increasingly monitored society.

Don Bell, policy counsel at The Constitution Project, dives into the long history of government surveillance on protest movements, highlighting its growth post-9/11 and during recent activism. He discusses the troubling normalization of invasive surveillance technologies, like social media monitoring, and connects it to the experiences of activists. Columbia University student Jalsa Drinkard shares her firsthand challenges with doxing and surveillance while organizing protests, emphasizing the serious implications for civil liberties and freedom of speech.