Shows / Uncanny Valley | WIRED
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
Welcome to Uncanny Valley—an insider look at the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley—where each week, WIRED’s writers and editors bring you original reporting and analysis about some of the biggest stories in tech. On Tuesdays, The Big Interview with WIRED’s Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond in conversation with influential figures in culture, politics, business, science, and beyond for a discussion captured through the WIRED lens. On Thursdays, WIRED writers and editors Zoë…
Episodes
Uncanny Valley | WIREDAre Dating Apps Getting Worse?
Dating apps have evolved a lot over the years, with apps dedicated to any romantic niche– dog lovers, astrology heads, and big, bushy beards. Despite the…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDWIRED News Update: Keeping Tabs on DOGE
WIRED Politics Senior Editor Leah Feiger joins Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond to talk about the latest at DOGE and the inexperienced engineers…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDTikTok Stole Our Hearts, But Can It Last?
On a Sunday in January, TikTok users were greeted with a notification in the app which said that TikTok was no longer available to use in the U.S., but that it…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe World According to Marc Andreessen
It wasn’t that long ago that one of Silicon Valley's most prominent and influential venture capitalists, Marc Andreessen, was a major supporter of the…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDZuck Ends Fact-Checking. What Could Go Wrong?
With the news that Meta is ending its third-party fact-checking program, we dig into the future of content moderation. From Community Notes to automated…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDWe Turned Our Lives Over to AI Assistants
Sometimes you just need a little help. That’s where the robots come in! But, have we actually reached a place where AI is more helpful than working with a…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDMusk Takes Washington
What do Dogecoin and the Department of Government Efficiency have in common? Elon Musk, of course. This new government committee led by Musk and Vivek…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDFrom Critics at Large: Will Kids Online, In Fact, Be All Right?
In her new FX docuseries “Social Studies,” the artist and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield delves into the post-pandemic lives—and phones—of a group of L.A. teens…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDAll of Our Hopes and Fears for Tech
Wearable tech, self-driving cars and AI mishaps. There were a lot of new product launches this year – some more successful than others. This week on Uncanny…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDIs This The Year We Quit Social Media?
In a post-Twitter world, text-based social media apps have taken a new shape. X, BlueSky, and Threads are home to wildly different types of discourse. So…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDIn Sam Altman We Trust?
Sam Altman is the king of generative artificial intelligence. But is he the person we should trust to guide our explorations into AI? This week, we do a deep…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDIs Silicon Valley Actually Libertarian?
It's long been believed that Silicon Valley is a hotbed for libertarian ideals, but where did that idea come from? Aside from some high-profile tech founders…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDHow to Not Die in Silicon Valley
Blood boys. Cryogenic freezing. Living by the algorithm. Silicon Valley is known for a culture of health optimization, but some recent biohacking ventures are…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDBig Tech Wants You Back in the Office
Much of the tech workforce has become accustomed to remote or hybrid jobs over the last several years. But lately, we’ve seen big tech companies demanding…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDMark Zuckerberg’s Midlife Crisis
For years, Mark Zuckerberg’s style could be summed up in a look: the hoodie. But now, he’s entered a new style era. One that involves gold chains and oversized…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDWelcome to Uncanny Valley!
Welcome to Uncanny Valley—an insider look at the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley. Join hosts Lauren Goode, Michael Calore, and Zoë Schiffer as…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDSome Personal News
Everybody wants to talk to their pet. Or to try to get them to listen, anyway. So it’s no wonder that some startups think the way to break through the…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDHow Should We Feel About Ring?
Ring cameras have come a long way. Since the security camera brand launched 11 years ago, its video doorbells and cams have become vigilant, constant surveyors…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDSemaglutide for the People
Ozempic has been hailed as a miracle drug. It is the most well known of the GLP-1 medications, a class of drugs that can help regulate appetite, digestion, and…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDIs Underwater AI Any Cleaner?
AI data centers are so hot right now. Each time generative AI services churn through their large language models to make a chatbot answer one of your…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDDon't Feed the Neighbors' Kids
One surefire way to go viral on Threads—the Meta-owned Instagram-spinoff social network with more than 200 million users—is to ask a ridiculous question that…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe First Real AI iPhone
On Monday of this week, Apple held one of its splashy media events. This one was used to show off its next round of iPhones, AirPods, and Apple Watches. These…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDSeriously, Use Encrypted Messaging
Encrypted messaging is a godsend for mobile communications, whether you’re just sending standard texts to your friends that you want kept private, or engaging…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDEveryone's Pumped About Heat Pumps
People everywhere are hot for heat pumps. These electric appliances—which perform the same heating and cooling tasks as traditional HVAC systems, just much…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe ‘Wild West’ of EV Charging
Electric Vehicles are having a real moment. People by and large prefer EVs because they're greener, quieter, and often more fun to drive than gas cars. But one…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDYour Photos Aren’t Real
At a splashy media event this week at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, Google announced four new Pixel phones. But the really important stuff…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDGood Luck Selling Your AI Startup
There has been a no wilder time than the present to build a company around artificial intelligence. The server bills are astronomical, for one. Also the market…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDDating Games
If the idea of going on a date makes you anxious, and all you’d really rather do with your evening is stay home and play video games, well, have we got the app…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe Ocean's Tipping Point
If you haven’t heard of it before, you’re about to become intimately familiar with the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. This system of…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe Blurred Reality of Human-Washing
Voice assistants have become a constant presence in our lives. Maybe you talk to Alexa or Gemini or Siri to ask a question or to perform a task. Maybe you have…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDSemaglutide for the People
Ozempic has been hailed as a miracle drug. It is the most well known of the GLP-1 medications, a class of drugs that can help regulate appetite, digestion, and…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThinking About Buying a Hybrid Car? Listen Up
Back in March, the US Environmental Protection Agency finalized a long in the works rule requiring automakers here to dramatically increase the number of…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe Rise and Fall of Juul
Even if you’ve never taken a puff from a vape in your life, you know about Juul. At the company’s peak in 2018, its e-cigarette was one of the most…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDGood Search Borrows, Great Search … Steals?
Web crawling—the act of indexing information across the internet—has been around for decades. It has primarily been used by search engines like Google and…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThinking Different About Apple AI
This week, Apple executives used the keynote address of the company’s annual developers conference to debut all of the artificial intelligence capabilities…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDLearning to Live With Google's AI Overviews
Google has spent the past year lustily rolling out AI features across its platforms. But with each launch, it is becoming more clear that some of these…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe Weird World of an AI Clickbait King
Domain names have value, even when the websites that were once hosted there are shut down or abandoned. Prospectors will often swoop in and snatch up an unused…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDEveryone's Pumped About Heat Pumps
People everywhere are hot for heat pumps. These electric appliances—which perform the same heating and cooling tasks as traditional HVAC systems, just much…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe End of Google Search As We Know It
Google held its annual I/O developer event this week. The company gathered software developers, business partners, and folks from the technology press at…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDHow Black Twitter Defined Culture
For all the influence Twitter has had on our culture, no community there has made quite as much impact as Black Twitter. The virtual community grew from a…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThinking About Buying a Hybrid Car? Listen Up
Back in March, the US Environmental Protection Agency finalized a long in the works rule requiring automakers here to dramatically increase the number of…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDWe Demystify the Internet's Acronyms
Do you know what TCP/IP means? (Hint: you’re using it right now.) What about CDMA? Or GPT? While the concepts and the execution of these technologies are clear…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDA Chat About Airchat
Silicon Valley tech types love their edgy new social media startups. The latest is Airchat, an audio-first social app that lets its users express their every…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDFrom WIRED Politics Lab: How Election Deniers Are Weaponizing Tech To Disrupt November
Election deniers are mobilizing their supporters and rolling out new tech to disrupt the November election. These groups are already organizing on hyperlocal…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDShopping for a New Social Feed
Hey, did you see the ad for that Bluetooth-enabled Shiatsu foot massager? How about the one for the organic mushroom supplement powder? They're probably not…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDDOJ Calls Out Apple in the Group Chat
Apple has gotten used to being a favorite target of rivals and government agencies. The company has been repeatedly scrutinized by regulators, and other tech…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDA 3-Body Podcast
3 Body Problem is Netflix’s new big, meaty prestige sci-fi series. Based on the book of the same name by author Liu Cixin, the show about an impending alien…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe TikTok Ban
You may only know TikTok as the massively popular social video app for phone-obsessed teens, but lately the app has been caught in the political fray. On…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDGoogle’s ‘Woke AI’ Problem
The last few months have been rough for Google. Company executives have been in the hot seat because of some embarrassing missteps, the most awkward of which…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe Non-Techie's Guide to Nvidia
Unless you were really into desktop PC gaming a decade ago, you probably didn't give Nvidia much thought until recently. The company makes graphics cards…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDTech Workers Are Stressed Out
tech companies seemed immune to large-scale layoffs, and as their profits skyrocketed, those cushy jobs became highly sought-after. But economic headwinds, and…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDThe Weird World of an AI Clickbait King
Domain names have value, even when the websites that were once hosted there are shut down or abandoned. Prospectors will often swoop in and snatch up an unused…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDSeveral People Are Talking
At its core, Slack is a chat app. Every day, millions of people use it to communicate, share files, and gossip with coworkers or friend groups in one organized…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDApple’s Uncanny Valley Pro
Apple's first ever mixed reality headset, the Vision Pro, arrives tomorrow. Apple has a knack for revitalizing and legitimizing a product category—something…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDI Know What You Did With That Bitcoin
If you’ve committed any internet crimes lately, you probably shouldn’t have paid for them with Bitcoin. While many crypto-evangelists have long thought of…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDAI Hits the Campaign Trail
It's an election year in the US, which means you can expect a fresh tsunami of campaign ads in your feeds, in your inbox, and jammed in front of YouTube…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDC’ES la Vie
It's CES week. Yes, it's time to dive back into that glitzy, chaotic showcase where thousands of startups, companies, and general technology weirdos gather to…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDAbortion Pill Orders Are Soaring
In 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that protected abortion rights in the United States. Since then, many states…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDLive on Stage: Reid Hoffman and Fei-Fei Li
Artificial intelligence was inarguably the biggest newsmaker in the tech industry this year. Whether it was ChaptGPT writing term papers, AI-generated Drake…
Uncanny Valley | WIREDOops, All Recommendations!
It’s been a year, that’s for sure. Every week on Gadget Lab, we end the show by bringing you our recommendations for all of our favorite tech, books, TV shows…