Latest Episode
AI’s Confidently Wrong, Job-Intensifying Era Meets Election Rhetoric, Wildlife Crackdowns, Mideast Detentions, Tanker Intercepts, Baltic Drills, and Old-School Jet Nightmares
Chatbot Review Summaries, Now With Extra Bias
Researchers found shoppers were 32% more likely to buy after reading a chatbot-generated summary than the original human reviews, mainly because the AI summary quietly dialed up the positivity. Translation, we built a hype machine that sounds “helpful,” and it works.
AI Is Not “Intelligent,” It Is Just Confident About Being Wrong
AI systems mostly remix statistical patterns from training data, and when you ask for something outside that comfort zone, like comparing a skyscraper to a slide trombone, you can get weird, inaccurate output. It is great at imitation, less great at reasoning, and spectacular at pretending those are the same thing.
The YF-17 Cobra, The Fighter That Lost, Then Won Anyway
The YF-17 started as a cheaper alternative in the Air Force Lightweight Fighter program but lost to the YF-16. Its twin-engine design and engineering lessons still proved invaluable for the Navy, helping set the stage for the F/A-18 family.
Hungary Election Watch, Orbán Turns Up the Anti-Ukraine Volume
With two months until Hungary’s April election, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has escalated anti-Ukraine rhetoric, with attention also on the EU and Donald Trump. Challenger Péter Magyar is campaigning on curbing corruption and offering tax relief for low-income earners.
Interpol’s Wildlife Trafficking Crackdown Goes Big
A late-2025 Interpol-coordinated operation across 134 countries seized roughly 30,000 live animals, confiscated illegal plant and timber products, and flagged about 1,100 suspected traffickers for national investigations. Technology is increasingly being used to track and disrupt wildlife trafficking networks, because apparently we have to keep explaining to adults that selling endangered animals is bad.
Israel Detains Lebanese Sunni Group Official in Southern Lebanon Operation
An Israeli force detained an official from Jamaa al-Islamiya, a Lebanese Sunni group allied with Hamas, during an operation in southern Lebanon.
US Intercepts Oil Tanker Aquilla II After Tracking From the Caribbean
The U.S. military intercepted the oil tanker Aquilla II in the Indian Ocean after tracking it from the Caribbean, saying it operated in defiance of President Trump’s quarantine of sanctioned vessels. The Pentagon did not say whether the vessel was seized.
The B-58 Hustler, Mach 2 Ambition, Maintenance Nightmare
The B-58 Hustler was a delta-wing U.S. bomber built to outrun Soviet interceptors at Mach 2, but the performance came with punishing complexity. It was difficult to fly and maintain, suffered a high accident and loss rate, and shifting Cold War strategy reduced its practical value.
Study Finds AI Can Intensify Work Instead of Reducing It
Early findings from a 2025 Berkeley Haas study of 200 employees at a U.S. tech company suggest AI often increases task parallelism and context-switching. Workers juggle more threads, check outputs constantly, reopen deferred work, and end up with higher cognitive load and fatigue, fueling calls for structured organizational “AI practices” to reduce burnout.
Ghislaine Maxwell Invokes the Fifth Before House Committee
Ghislaine Maxwell declined to answer questions from a House committee, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in an interview sought over matters tied to Jeffrey Epstein.
Los Angeles Starts Planning the Next Super Bowl
After Super Bowl LX concluded, organizers in Los Angeles began planning for Super Bowl LXI, bringing the NFL championship game back to the city next year. Nothing says “civic priority” like immediately spinning up the mega-event machine again.
Baltic Security Drills, Lithuania Simulates Kaliningrad Transit Incident
Lithuania ran a drill simulating a security incident involving a Russian transit train to Kaliningrad as regional tensions rise. Poland also conducted exercises with K2 tanks to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank.
About
This podcast is a fully automated experiment in AI-generated content. Generative AI handles the entire process, including code, content selection, summarization, and audio production. The podcast processes material from various sources, condenses it into concise text, and converts it into speech. No human intervention is involved in the production process.
Subscribe
Spotify /
Apple /
Amazon /
iHeart /
Pandora /
Pocket Casts /
Deezer /
Google /
Podcast Index /
RSS