Maybe you've seen the president of the United States promoting what seems like obvious cryptocurrency scams. Or perhaps you've been frustrated lately with the amount of AI-generated "slop" polluting social media lately. What you may not know is that the industries behind both of those things have been working hard (sometimes together) to forcefully ingrain themselves in our nation's government -- spending hundreds of millions of dollars in political campaigns and helping to inflate Trump's personal net worth in obviously corrupt ways. That affects all of our lives, whether you're excited about these technologies or deeply skeptical of them.

Jared and Mike are joined by Molly White, a researcher and writer who has spent years chronicling the sector of so-called "Web 3.0" tech and the cryptocurrency industry's growing influence on US politics. Together, they talk about Trump's bizarre cryptocurrency gambits, the regulatory favors his administration has handed out to crypto, and why so many of the same people who became notable for selling the public sleazy NFTs and meme coins are now selling us artificial intelligence.

This one's for all the apes we lost along the way.

Links for Molly:

• Tech Influence Watch

• Web3 is Going Just Great

• "Citation Needed" newsletter

• Bluesky: @molly.wiki

Transition Music: "Prelude" by Crystal Joy