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Tyler Shultz, a former Theranos employee and whistleblower, recounts joining Elizabeth Holmes’s dazzling startup, uncovering its secretive culture and unreliable blood tests, and risking everything to speak out. He discusses Holmes’s alleged retaliation, the role of family ties, and why recent documentaries have made audiences question the story all over again.

Sam Kessler, a Wall Street Journal data reporter and investigative journalist, traces North Korea’s covert push into American tech jobs. The story begins with a crypto tip and unfolds through remote hiring, AI-assisted interviews, recruiting cells, laptop farms, stolen identities, and American facilitators. It’s a startling look at how sanctioned workers enter companies and funnel earnings back to Pyongyang.

Stephen Witt, journalist and author of The Thinking Machine, explores Jensen Huang’s extraordinary path from reform school to NVIDIA’s helm. They trace the risky bets on GPUs and CUDA that powered the AI revolution, then examine Huang’s conviction that AI safety is an engineering problem. The conversation weighs that confidence against warnings of cyberattacks, financial turmoil, geopolitical conflict, and catastrophe.

Meghan O’Gieblyn is a writer and essayist exploring faith, technology, spirituality, and addiction. She reflects on her evangelical childhood, abandoning belief, and how drinking reshaped her sense of meaning. They explore blackouts, relapse, the mind’s talent for self-deception, and why recovery may require attention, surrender, and a new source of spiritual devotion.

Casey Newton, a technology journalist and Platformer founder, and Kevin Roose, a technology columnist and AI observer, revisit the rise and fall of the Forkiverse, their small federated social network. Nearly 10,000 users joined before dwindling interest and hosting limits turned it into a ghost town. Then Russian propaganda arrived, forcing a reckoning over moderation, responsibility, online community, and whether better digital spaces can survive.

Bjarke Ingels, Danish architect and founder of BIG, joins journalist Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics. They explore creative leadership, architecture’s long path and financial challenges, and Ingels’s philosophy of “utopian pragmatism.” Topics include rebuilding Brooklyn’s BQE, designing for the future, lunar construction, New York’s creative energy, and why an architect’s best work may lie decades ahead.

Ranjit Kaliskar, a retired pharmacist and serial entrepreneur from Mumbai, pours his savings into an extraordinary Hindi film about time travel, a talking donkey, and a cauliflower. His son suspects a scam after bizarre payment requests, but a trip to Mumbai reveals a real production. Along the way: failed business ventures, Bollywood’s unpredictable film culture, and one man’s determination to turn an impossible dream into cinema.

W. David Marx, a Tokyo-based cultural historian and author, and Roland Kelts, a Japan-U.S. culture scholar and Waseda professor, explore America’s sudden fascination with Japan. They discuss anime, manga, Pokémon, fashion, craftsmanship, social media, and the weak yen. Along the way, one overwhelmed Tokyo resident’s spreadsheet reveals just how many Americans are making the trip.

Yasin Musharbash, an investigative reporter who led the Die Zeit serialized probe into Mahmoud's death. Tim Howard, an experienced editor and producer who edited and discussed the series. They explore how a soup‑kitchen operator became a focal point in a wartime investigation. Short scenes cover hospitals as contested sites, family history, efforts to register the kitchen for protection, the siege, final days and lingering questions about targeting.

Lane Rasberry, a Wikimedian in residence and data scientist who professionally edits Wikipedia and champions medical and LGBT content. They tour the saga of how Wikipedia selects anatomy images. Short takes cover editorial debates, talk pages and transparency, representation and trans imagery, and the decade-long fight over which photo becomes the lead image.