The 404 Media Podcast

The Chinese Deepfake Software Powering Scams

We start this week with Joseph’s story about how we obtained Haotian AI, a sought-after piece of realtime video deepfake software that lets you turn into anyone else during Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, ...

2026-05-13

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How the World Became a Casino (With Natasha Schüll)

The logic behind Polymarket, Kalshi and sports betting apps can be traced back to the inner workings of the slot machine. How did we get to a point where it’s legal for anyone to bet on anything? Be...

2026-05-11

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Flock Used Cameras at a Children’s Gymnastics Center for a Sales Pitch

This week we start with Jason's story about Flock accessing cameras in a children's gymnastics room as a sale pitch demo. After the break, Emanuel tells us why Nature retracted a paper about the alleg...

2026-05-06

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The New Luddites: Why People Are Destroying Surveillance and AI Infrastructure

This week, we talk to Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine, about a rash of people physically destroying AI and surveillance infrastructure. Brian puts this wave of attacks in the historical...

2026-05-04

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How This Trippy Image Started A Massive Conspiracy Theory

This week, Jason explains the conspiracy theory circulating behind a trippy stock image that went viral after the White House Correspondents’ Dinner—was it sent here by a time traveler? (Spoiler: It w...

2026-04-29

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Government Hacking Tools Are Now in Criminals' Hands (with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai)

This week Joseph talks to Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, a journalist at TechCrunch. Lorenzo has possibly the deepest understanding of one of the wildest cybersecurity stories in years: how an employe...

2026-04-27

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How Algorithms Make Us Feel Bad and Weird

This week Sam unpacks how social media algorithms manipulate our emotions around everything from engagement rings to wedding dresses to babies, and what it feels like getting lost in the #Weddingtok s...

2026-04-22

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Why Journalists Are Leaving Big Media (with Maddy Myers)

This week, Sam is joined by Maddy Myers, editor-in-chief of Mothership. She’s also a co-host of the video games podcast Triple Click. Maddy launched Mothership with co-founder Zoë Hannah in January....

2026-04-20

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How the FBI Extracted Deleted Signal Messages

We start this week with Joseph’s story on the inherent friction between secure chat apps like Signal and the phone they’re running on. Incoming message content can be stored in a phone’s internal noti...

2026-04-17

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How the Internet Became Hell (with Whitney Phillips)

‘The Ambivalent Intent’ and ‘The Shadow Gospel’ author Whitney Phillips on how online got so bad Why does the internet feel like it’s getting worse every single day, and why does it feel like the pol...

2026-04-13

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Wildlife Cops Are Searching AI Cameras for ICE

This week we start with Jason’s story about how wildlife cops are doing Flock lookups for ICE. It shows that ICE is gaining access to this sort of information through pretty unexpected ways. After the...

2026-04-08

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The Lawyer Fighting Government Surveillance for 30 Years (With EFF's Cindy Cohn)

This week Jason brings you an interview he did with The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s executive director Cindy Cohn, who recently announced she would be stepping down from the legendary digital rig...

2026-04-06

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Inside the AI Slop Propaganda Wars

This week Matthew Gault joins us to discuss his article about Iran’s AI slop and LEGO-focused propaganda, and why the creators chose LEGO. After the break, Jason tells us all about the new automated s...

2026-04-01

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The Journalist Who Tracked Epstein Island Visitors’ Phones

This week Joseph talks to Dhruv Mehrotra, a journalist and technologist at Bloomberg. Before that, Dhruv was at WIRED, where you probably saw a ton of his interesting work. Dhruv sits in a very unusua...

2026-03-30

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The Company Secretly Turning Your Zoom Meetings into Podcasts

This week we start with Emanuel’s crazy story about WebinarTV, a company that is secretly recording Zoom meetings and turning them into AI-powered podcasts. It’s nuts. After the break, Joseph tells us...

2026-03-25

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The Marketing Tricks of "Artificial Intelligence"

This week, Sam talks to Emily Bender and Alex Hanna about the marketing ploys of “artificial intelligence,” why ridicule works to keep big tech’s claims in check, and what makes them hopeful for the f...

2026-03-23

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The Disappearing DOGE Depositions

This week we start with Joseph’s series of articles about the DOGE depositions. He watched hours and hours of them, then a judge ordered them removed from YouTube. But, they’ve already been archived a...

2026-03-18

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Google Street View's Unmappable City

There's only one city in America that isn't on Google's Street View. Documentary filmmaker Chris Parr set out to map it, using North Oak, Minnesota's byzantine rules and the help of a drone. His exper...

2026-03-16

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How to Talk to Your Friend Experiencing 'AI Psychosis'

This week we start with Sam’s story discussing something that has come up a lot but no one has really answered: how do you speak to your friend or family member falling into AI psychosis? After the br...

2026-03-11

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Understanding Roblox’s Grooming Problem

Cecilia D’Anstasio on Roblox efforts to protect children from pedophiles. Roblox is one of those games that is more popular than you can imagine, but unless you are of a certain age group and live i...

2026-03-09

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The 404 Media Podcast

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