The podcast that tells true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. We take listeners into the world of cyber and intelligence without all the techie jargon. Every Tuesday and Friday, former NPR investigations correspondent Dina Temple-Raston and the team draw back the curtain on ransomware attacks, mysterious hackers, and the people who are trying to stop them.
As the Trump administration pressures Apple and Google to remove apps that track ICE activity from their stores, locals are going old-school. Francisco Chavo Romero, an LA-based activist, explains how it works. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
When the Trump administration began rounding up immigrants, a new kind of resistance took shape — digital, crowdsourced, and built for the smartphone era. Activists used apps and social media to keep watch on the government. But before long, the government started watching back. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Polish developer Kuba Gretzky wanted to prove that multi-factor authentication wasn’t foolproof. He succeeded—maybe too well. What happens when a cybersecurity warning becomes the threat itself? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
You’ve likely received a scam call or text at some point. Some of these messages come from elaborate compounds found mostly in Southeast Asia. These compounds look like call centers but operate more like prisons. In this CyberMonday crossover with WAMU’s 1A, we return to an episode and hear from listeners — on how these centers cropped up and what’s being done to stop them. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
We usually think of getting online as something that requires cables—strung under oceans or buried beneath our feet. Mahesh Krishnaswamy of Taara thinks the future may lie in beams of light pointed at the sky. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
What does it take to get everyone online? A maze of cables, satellites — and politics. We meet one farmer in Mississippi chasing a signal, and discover that what’s really at stake isn’t just access to the internet — it’s access to the future itself. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
In Tuesday’s episode, novelist Bruce Holsinger imagined the moral fallout of an autonomous car crash in his new book Culpability. Today, we leave fiction behind and ask a more urgent question: Can we really trust driverless cars on the road? Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist and AI ethicist at NYU, cuts through the hype. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
What happens when an algorithm doesn’t just crunch data, but reshapes morality? In his new novel Culpability — an Oprah Book Club pick — Bruce Holsinger explores how AI collides with family, justice, and blame. We talk with him about where responsibility lies when machines make the choices… and what that means for all of us. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Tech giants say artificial intelligence can outsmart the storm, predicting tomorrow’s weather faster than ever. We talk to Paris Perdikaris of the University of Pennsylvania about a new tension: forecasts are only as good as the public data that fuels them – and now even that is in doubt. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Artificial intelligence is rewriting the rules of weather forecasting — spotting storms sooner, warning us faster, and increasing the potential to save lives. But cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service threaten the very data that makes it possible. Veteran meteorologist John Morales takes us inside the green screens and satellite feeds to show what’s at stake. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Leaked Chinese documents from a company called GoLaxy reveal a chilling new playbook for information war: an army of A.I. personas, engineered to look like us, think like us… and win our trust. Vanderbilt University’s Brett Goldstein and Brett Benson explain why the threat isn’t coming—it’s already here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Visa denials. Frozen grants. Whispers of disloyalty. It all feels strangely familiar. This week: the story of Qian Xuesen—an exiled Chinese scientist who once helped America win a war, only to be driven out in a season of suspicion. His exile isn’t just history. It’s a warning. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
For decades, the U.S. has led the world in cyber innovation. But when it comes to resilience — the ability to withstand and recover from an attack — we’ve fallen dangerously behind. Anne Neuberger, former deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, explains how AI-powered “digital twins” could help us catch up — and maybe even get ahead. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Scams aren’t always loud. They don’t always come with pop-ups, typos, or promises of instant riches. The most effective ones whisper and tap into our better angels. And once they’re done that… they have us. In this CyberMonday crossover with WAMU’s 1A, we return to a Click Here episode and take your calls—on scams that prey not on our wallets but on our humanity. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Kremlin has mastered controlling the message online. But now, tens of thousands of soldiers are coming home from Ukraine with stories the state can’t erase. Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, explains why those voices scare Vladimir Putin — and how far he’ll go to keep them quiet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Kremlin claims it’s slowing mobile internet to keep Ukrainian drones at bay. But that’s just the cover story. What’s really happening is Vladimir Putin’s long-imagined plan for a walled-off Russian internet — a plan that’s fast becoming a model for strongmen around the world. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The A.I. boom is reshaping our world—and quietly guzzling power. This week, sustainable code advocate Stuart Clark explains how the race to build smarter machines is heating up our planet—and how we can code our way to a cleaner future. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
For years, companies have been collecting our data—tracking what we search, where we go, what we buy. But now, empowered by AI and fewer government protections, that data is being used to do something unsettling: personalized prices. We look at how it works. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
What happens when a government erases a people’s digital past? This week on Click Here’s Mic Drop, the story of China’s quiet purge of the Uyghur web—and the lone coder determined to bring it back to life. ERASED is a four-part investigation into how China is wiping Uyghur culture from existence — one law, one app, one person, one website at a time. From shuttered schools to vanishing websites, ERASED uncovers an authoritarian regime’s campaign to delete a culture — and the unlikely rebels racin...
Ekpar Asat dreamed of building a digital home for his people—a place where Uyghurs could share music, stories, and a sense of belonging. Beijing saw that dream as a threat. They erased the network, and then they erased him. But what happened in Xinjiang wasn’t only about one man or one community. It has become a blueprint for how repression spreads—far beyond China’s borders. ERASED is a four-part investigation into how China is wiping Uyghur culture from existence — one law, one app, one person...
China’s surveillance of Uyghurs has leapt from the physical world to the digital one. No longer just QR codes on doorways, it’s now hidden in cloud services and software updates. This week on Click Here’s Mic Drop, how digital tools meant to protect identity are being used to erase it. ERASED is a four-part investigation into how China is wiping Uyghur culture from existence — one law, one app, one person, one website at a time. From shuttered schools to vanishing websites, ERASED uncovers an au...
In a small classroom in western China, children once learned to sing and count in the language of their ancestors — Uyghur. Then the doors were locked, and founder Abduweli Ayup went from teacher to enemy of the state. ERASED is a four-part investigation into how China is wiping Uyghur culture from existence — one law, one app, one person, one website at a time. From shuttered schools to vanishing websites, ERASED uncovers an authoritarian regime’s campaign to delete a culture — and the unlikely...
DEF CON began as a rogue hacker meetup. Then came the prosecutors, the NSA, and the policy panels. This week on Click Here’s Mic Drop, how a game of "Spot the Fed" turned into an uneasy alliance—and what that says about crime, power, and trust in the digital age. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
It started as a going-away party… and became the most legendary hacker conference in the world. This week, Jeff Moss—aka The Dark Tangent—tells us how DEF CON began, what it became, and why it still matters. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Australia wants to keep kids off social media. But to do that, it may have to crack open everyone’s digital ID. Privacy advocates say this isn’t just about protecting children– it is about rewriting the social contract for the rest of us. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
An episode from " Arachnid: Hunting the web’s darkest secrets" from TVO Podcasts, the Investigative Journalism Bureau, The Toronto Star, and Piz Gloria Productions: The images are out there—millions of them. Each one a crime scene, each one a permanent scar. But while the Internet forgets nothing, a group of survivors and digital sleuths are trying to change that. They’re challenging the world’s biggest tech platforms to stop looking the other way—and start deleting the evidence. Learn about you...
Dr. Stephen Xenakis has spent years treating veterans and pushing the bounds of psychiatry. Now, he’s asking if artificial intelligence could become a kind of digital therapist for veterans struggling with mental health. We return to our interview from earlier this year. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
What do you get when you cross a marine biologist with a machine learning engineer? Someone who is convinced that humpback whales may have something to say—and that artificial intelligence might be the tool to decode it. This week, we return to a story about interspecies communication, where tech meets tails and signals meet song. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Billionaire Frank McCourt wants to buy TikTok. Not to go viral—but to rewire the web. He says 170 million users could help him turn the Internet into something less addictive… and more democratic. Is that idealism, delusion… or both? As President Trump extends the deadline on the sale of the app, we return to our discussion with Frank McCourt. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
An episode from " Understood: Who Broke the Internet " from CBC podcasts: We were promised a digital utopia. What we got was a pay-to-play hellscape of pop-ups, bots, and algorithmic sludge. Writer and internet contrarian Cory Doctorow charts the internet’s slow descent—from open commons to corporate enclosure—and lays out a path to take it back. Listen to the full series: https://link.mgln.ai/ClickHere Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
