Shows / Close All Tabs
Close All Tabs
Ever wonder where the internet stops and IRL begins? Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor. From internet trends to AI slop to the politics of memes, Close All Tabs covers it all. How will AI change our jobs and lives? Is the government watching what I post? Is there life beyond TikTok? Host Morgan Sung pulls from experts, the audience, and history to add context to the trends and depth to the memes. And she’ll wrestle…
Episodes
- Close All Tabs
Sickfluencers, the Covid-Conscious Lesbian Bar and the Algorithmic Ableism Trap
When viral stories like the Last Ditch bar masking controversy and the “sickfluencer” debate whipped the internet into a frenzy, disabled people found…
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Cinema Is So Back. And Gen Z Is Behind It.
In 2020, movie theaters were on their last legs. Lockdowns and years of declining interest had forced historic cinemas to shutter, including an LA icon, the…
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Cursed All Tabs: Portals, Creepy Caves, Jumpscares and Haunted Objects
In this special Halloween edition of Close All Tabs, we’re diving into creepypastas: horror stories that spread online until they become urban legends on their…
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“Sister, yesss!” What’s Behind the Viral Nun Podcast?
This year’s internet breakout star was an order of Catholic sisters with a podcast. Within weeks of launching, Dominican Sisters Open Mic went mega viral…
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Are Chatbots Harming Our Relationships? | Close All Tabs Presents
Humans are complicated, and relationships can be messy, so it may be no surprise that people are falling in love with chatbots. They are available 24/7, hang…
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Influencers Are Peddling Peptides, but Is Tanmaxxing Worth the Risk?
Seems like everywhere you turn these days, influencers are gushing about their peptide use and how it’s done wonders for their appearance and health. One of…
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Can We Cool Data Centers With… Pee?
People really seem to hate data centers. And the more people learn about the amount of resources these server-packed buildings need, the bigger the backlash…
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AI, Artists, and the Future of Creative Work from Life, Automated | Close All Tabs Presents
While the Close All Tabs team churns out our next few episodes, we bring you this must-listen from Life, Automated. Generative AI is able to conjure new…
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Save or Scroll: Fake NFL Players, Girly Coding, AI Music Scams and Community Garden Drama
Host Morgan Sung and the Close All Tabs team pull up the stories they can’t stop thinking about. From a fake NFL player catfishing women on dating apps, to…
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Close All Tabs Presents Snap Judgment: Runaway Car
Close All Tabs is on break this week, but we’re sharing a captivating episode about technology gone wrong from our friends at KQED’s Snap Judgment. A 19 year…
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What Happened to the Quantified Self Movement?
Before Apple Watches, Oura Rings and Fitbits delivered mountains of health data to the masses, a group of obsessive self-tracking enthusiasts in Silicon Valley…
Close All TabsGoing Down the AI Music Slop Chute with Camilo Landau | Dream Machines
Can people tell the difference between a song made by human musicians, and one prompted by AI? Oftentimes not, it turns out. But that doesn’t make the…
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AI Agents Are Turning Marxist Under Stress
In an effort to study how AI agents respond to different working conditions, three researchers ran an experiment: one set of AI agents received grinding work…
Close All TabsCould AI Transform How Science Gets Done? with Jungwon Byun | Dream Machines
What happens when AI moves beyond answering questions and starts helping scientists decide what to investigate next? Dream Machines hosts Alexis Madrigal and…
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The Emily Hart Saga, Part 2: The AI Thirst Trap Grift
Emily Hart, the bikini-wearing right-wing AI influencer, had captured the hearts, minds and more of MAGA men online. But her creator, Sam, had grown sick of…
Close All TabsAI Will Create Enormous Wealth — But Who Benefits? with Erik Brynjolfsson | Dream Machines
AI is advancing at a breakneck pace, but how quickly will that actually transform the economy? Dream Machines hosts Alexis Madrigal and Robin Sloan talk to…
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The Emily Hart Saga, Part 1: MAGA’s AI Dream Girl
Emily Hart was a pickup-driving, Trump-supporting blonde bombshell who frequently posted photos on Instagram along with captions about “deporting illegals.”…
Close All TabsLanguage, Landscapes and Robot Minds with Annalee Newitz | Dream Machines
San Francisco has been at the center of successive waves of technological and cultural change — from the literal Gold Rush days to the current gold rush-like…
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Why The Ethan Klein Fair Use Lawsuits Are Way More Than Internet Beef
When Twitch streamer Denims made a reaction video about Ethan Klein's nearly two-hour takedown video of Hasan Piker, she wasn’t expecting to be sued for…
Close All TabsIntroducing: Dream Machines from KQED
We’ve got guests in the feed all August — a new series from KQED called Dream Machines! Today Morgan talks to co-hosts Alexis Madrigal and Robin Sloan about…
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The Pink Pill Pipeline and the Online War Against Birth Control
It starts with aspirational lifestyle content about “embracing your femininity,” but ends with alt-right ideology and conspiracy theories about reproductive…
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How the Furry Fandom Says Goodbye (Reload)
Anthrocon, the largest gathering of furries in the world, just celebrated its 20th anniversary in July — so we’re re-airing one of our favorite episodes yet…
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Are We Doomed If The Internet Goes Dark?
What are the chances that the internet could go down forever? How bad for humanity would it be if it did? And what would a shift back to the before-times look…
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'Get The Flock Out': The Fight Over License-Plate Readers Heats Up
Flock Safety’s license plate readers have become a flashpoint for a debate across the country. On one side: law enforcement and their supporters, who say the…
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Meet the Grads Grappling With AI and Their Futures
Everyone seems to have an opinion about AI, but what about those who will likely be affected most — recent graduates? This cohort of grads is unique. They…
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The $55B Deal That Has Sims Players Worried
When shareholders of gaming giant Electronic Arts approved an acquisition of the company by a group that includes Jared Kushner’s private equity firm and the…
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A Queer History of The Sims
“Did The Sims make you gay?” is a long-running joke among Sims players. For millions, The Sims has been more than a video game — it’s been a place to…
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How To Prove You're Not AI
During a recent phone call, BBC tech columnist Thomas Germain couldn’t convince his aunt that he wasn’t AI. Being unable to distinguish a real person from a…
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Escaping the Surveillance Pricing Trap
When JetBlue replied to an angry customer on X that they should clear their cookies for a better flight price, it seemed to confirm a long-held consumer…
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Musk v. Altman Was Peak Silicon Valley Theatrics
For three weeks, all eyes were on a salacious courtroom drama unfolding in Oakland, California. The Musk v. Altman trial had everything you’d expect from a…
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Iran Is Winning The Slopaganda War
AI-generated Lego videos have become a tool of war. Since the U.S.-Israel war with Iran began in late February, increasingly elaborate videos featuring LEGO…
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How an OnlyFans Model and a Cosplayer Are Fighting Nonconsensual Deepfake Porn
We’re diving into the world of nonconsensual deepfake porn and why this problem reaches far beyond influencers and sex workers. When users on X started asking…
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My Therapist Is a Chatbot (Reload)
What happens when your therapist is… a chatbot? For KQED health reporter Lesley McClurg, it started with a late-night spiral over dating. Instead of texting a…
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Somebody’s Watching Me: The Crackdown on Stalkerware
In 2018, researcher Eva Galperin made a discovery about a colleague. He had been sexually abusing women for decades, and threatening to expose their private…
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The H-1B Visa Process But Make It a Video Game
Life on an H-1B visa — a visa that lets U.S. companies hire foreign-born workers for specialized jobs — is difficult, unpredictable, and has gotten even harder…
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Save or Scroll: Looksmaxxing, AI Fruit Love Island, BTS Arirang, and Meta Lawsuits
In a spring installment of Save or Scroll, Morgan teams up with culture journalist Steffi Cao to dig into the stories they can’t stop thinking about. From…
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The Secret Lives of Mormon Momfluencers
Only 2% of Americans identify as members of the Church of Latter-day Saints — and yet a striking number of American social media influencers are Mormon. Why?…
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Bee Movie, "We Are Charlie Kirk," and the Enduring Bait-and-Switch Meme
According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The…
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To Hack a Tractor: How Farmers Won the Right to Repair
What do pissed off farmers and broken McFlurry machines have to do with each other? More than you’d think. Both are part of the story behind the modern…
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The Fight for Your Right to Repair
Today’s culture of overconsumption urges us to simply throw broken items away and buy new ones. But there’s a growing shift to treat non-working devices…
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'Twitter on a Vape' and The Great E-Waste Crisis
A legal loophole has led to a surge in single-use vapes packed with a surprising amount of electronic components. It’s also a glimpse into how our disposable…
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Sex Workers Tried to Warn Us About Age Verification Laws
Requiring internet users to verify their ages before accessing mature content may sound reasonable. Shouldn’t we be doing a better job protecting kids from…
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Send Pics? Roblox Wants to Know Your Age
Roblox is one of the most popular gaming platforms for kids, with millions of young gamers playing user-created games. It’s also been heavily criticized for…
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Lessons for U.S. Netizens from Behind China’s Great Firewall
Are you going through “a very Chinese time in your life”? If so, maybe you’re one of the many American social media users who’ve jumped on the Chinamaxxing…
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Love In The Time Of Doom Scrolling
In honor of Valentine’s Day, we’re bringing you an episode about love. We start with TikTok creator Jojo Manzo, who turned his late-night doomscrolling into a…
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How the AI Data Center Boom Impacts Black Communities
Picture this… You move to a cozy home in an idyllic neighborhood: fresh air and birdsong in the morning and gorgeous sunsets at night. One day, you wake up to…
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The Real Cost of AI Slop
How much does your own AI use matter? With all the warnings about AI’s adverse impact on the environment, it can be tough to understand what that means at the…
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Your Digital Footprint Reveals More Than You Think
How easy is it to find someone from a single video posted online? To find out, Morgan put her own privacy to the test. She asked TikTok creator JoseMonkey…
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Are You Allowed to Record ICE?
When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, it became an instant flashpoint in the…
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Save or Scroll: OpenAI’s Head of Preparedness, Global RAM Shortage, AI Artists, and a Manosphere Antidote
In a holiday installment of Save or Scroll, Morgan and the Close All Tabs team get together to talk over the stories they can’t stop thinking about. From…
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Death, Robotaxis, and a Cat Named KitKat
When KitKat, a beloved bodega cat, was killed by a Waymo in San Francisco in late October of this year, the incident quickly went viral. It ignited grief and…
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One Year Later, The Internet’s Still Talking About Luigi Mangione
On December 4, 2024, United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed outside a Midtown New York hotel. The subsequent arrest of 26-year-old Luigi…
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What Happened to Purple Moon Games for Girls?
Editor’s note: We updated one line to add context about a character in one of the Purple Moon games, which may affect how the character is understood. Thirty…
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Meet Ukraine’s ‘Geeks of War’
The Ukraine-Russia war has been called the most technologically advanced war in history. Ukrainian citizens receive notifications about incoming missile and…
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Where Do Games Go When They Die?
When Ubisoft, publisher of the sprawling open-world racing game The Crew shut down the game’s servers, cutting off access to even its single-player mode, fans…
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Alice Bucknell on How Virtual Spaces Help Us Cope With Reality
When wildfire engulfed much of Los Angeles earlier this year, artist and game designer Alice Bucknell found themselves stuck inside, replaying “Firewatch,” a…
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A Political Reckoning for Twitch?
TwitchCon, Twitch’s annual convention in San Diego for all things streaming and gaming, is facing heightened scrutiny after streamer Emiru was assaulted there…
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Satanic Panic in the Age of the Internet
What do colorful and plush Labubu dolls have in common with Mesopotamian mythology? If you believe some viral TikToks, everything. Recent conspiracy theories…
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Beyond the AI Hype Machine
When ChatGPT launched in 2022, it kicked off what some have called the “AI hype machine” — a frenzy of promotion and investment that has sent some tech…
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The All-Seeing Eyes of Modern Dating
What happens to dating when every misstep has the potential to go viral? That’s what happened in 2022, when social media posts warning about a few bad dates…