In this episode of Surprise - It’s Not a Toaster, Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer take on the growing frustration around algorithms. Not just how often they change, but how little control users actually have over what they’re being shown. From TikTok and Meta to Google and YouTube, personalization has become opaque, unpredictable, and increasingly unsettling. You don’t choose your feed anymore. You inherit it.The conversation explores why algorithmic curation now feels less like relevance and more like manipulation, and why the real tension isn’t what’s being served — it’s not knowing why. As platforms continue to tune for engagement and growth, the sense of ownership over one’s digital experience keeps slipping away.The SNAT Book Club continues with the third installment of Cory Doctorow’s Enshitification, digging into the economic engines that push platforms to optimize themselves into garbage. It’s the chapter where incentives, advertising, and investor pressure finally explain why everything feels louder, worse, and harder to leave.In the AI test, the hosts ask generative models to do something deceptively simple: guess their age. The results are revealing in all the wrong ways. And as a bonus recommendation, they explore how AI can actually be useful - not as a filter, but as a lens - offering deeper insights into the television and movies we’re already watching.Algorithms everywhere. Control nowhere.

Mentions from the Show: 

Enshitification book

Chris Boyer on LinkedIn

Ed Bennett on LinkedIn

Chris Boyer website

Ed Bennett of BlueSky

Chris Boyer on BlueSky

In this end-of-year episode of Surprise - It’s Not a Toaster, Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer take on the annual ritual of being “Wrapped.” What began as a fun reflection has turned into a full-blown platform performance review, with apps across music, social, productivity, fitness, and even calendars proudly telling you just how much of your life they consumed. Because nothing says personal growth like a branded slide deck about your screen time.

The conversation unpacks how year-end recaps quietly celebrate overuse, encourage public self-promotion, and reinforce platform lock-in. It’s the perfect Boxing Day episode: the wrapping paper is gone, the boxes are everywhere, and you’re left sorting through what you actually wanted versus what just showed up.

In part two, the SNAT Book Club continues with Enshitification by Cory Doctorow, diving into how platforms trap users, businesses, and regulators through lock-in, dependency, and the steady erosion of exit ramps. It’s a clean explanation of why leaving bad platforms feels harder every year and why things don’t improve on their own.

And because it wouldn’t be SNAT without testing the limits of artificial intelligence, the episode closes with a lighthearted experiment in whether today’s AI tools can offer genuinely useful guidance when faced with a very seasonal, very awkward real-world problem - with mixed results.

Streaming. Wrapped. Trapped. Boxed in.  Happy Boxing Day.

Mentions from the Show: 

SNL - “Uber Eats Wrapped” skit

Husk IRL YouTube page

Enshitification book

Chris Boyer on LinkedIn

Ed Bennett on LinkedIn

Chris Boyer website

Ed Bennett of BlueSky

Chris Boyer on BlueSky

In this very special holiday episode, Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer crack open the shimmering, pine-scented world of modern “smart” gifts — which somehow manage to be both futuristic and profoundly unnecessary. Think of it as a retro 1970s holiday catalog, except every item inside requires WiFi, a firmware update, and a dedicated support group.

First up: the PetLibro smart litter box, a device so advanced it may have opinions about your cat. Then there’s the Ember mug, for people who believe hot beverages should come with patch notes. Add in the Bluetooth pen — the perfect gift for someone who wants handwriting to be laggy — and the pièce de résistance: a WiFi-enabled grill that texts you about your brisket like a needy coworker.

As always, the chaos of the digital age provides the setup for Part Two: the kickoff of the SNAT Book Club, featuring Cory Doctorow’s Enshitification. Ed and Chris break down the big idea behind why everything online slowly curdles over time, from platforms to products to your holiday wish list.

It’s festive. It’s ridiculous. It’s the only holiday gift guide brave enough to say: maybe none of this should exist.

Mentions from the Show: 

PetLibro smart litter box

Ember smart coffee mug

C-TAP smart Bluetooth fountain pen

Briskit Grillsx

Enshitification book

Chris Boyer on LinkedIn

Ed Bennett on LinkedIn

Chris Boyer website

Ed Bennett of BlueSky

Chris Boyer on BlueSky

Hosts Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer face the modern entertainment apocalypse: streaming content. What started as freedom from cable has devolved into a fragmented, confusing, overpriced mess where your favorite show is always on the one service you canceled last month. 

They unpack the chaos behind subscription juggling, studio feuds (yes, YouTube TV vs. ESPN/Disney, we see you), and why your monthly bill now looks suspiciously like 2008 Comcast.

This week’s recommendation is for Cory Doctorow’s new book “Enshitification” - a takedown of how platforms rot from the inside. The hosts then kick-off the official “Surprise - It’s Not a Toaster” Book Club - asking readers to follow along from home. 

In the AI Stump, they use various GenAI tools to create a new word describing the fear of leaving something behind. Tune in to find out which tool - ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity - created the best term.

SNAT50: Streaming is broken, AI is weird, books are angry, and now we have a new neurosis.

Mentions from the Show: 

Enshitification book

Chris Boyer on LinkedIn

Ed Bennett on LinkedIn

Chris Boyer website

Ed Bennett of BlueSky

Chris Boyer on BlueSky

Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer open the episode with a semi-rant on the AI marketing hype machine - billions pouring in, big-tech companies tossing money back and forth, and everyone pretending this is about “innovation” rather than feeding the same circular economy of ads, analytics, and inflated expectations.

Together, they debate whether AI will really “kill us,” economically or existentially - or if it’ll just quietly charge us another subscription fee before doing so.

Then Ed gets hands-on, showing how he used the Perplexity Comet Browser to automate vendor management on MarTech.Health - scanning, clicking, and categorizing HCIC sponsors like a caffeinated intern who never sleeps. Chris tests it across Google Drive and Dropbox, comparing how AI-powered browsers might actually make research faster… if they can stop breaking halfway through.

This week’s recommendations:

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares - a direct, unsettling argument that superhuman AI might not just disrupt us but destroy us.

The Intelligence Explosion by James Barrat - a sobering follow-up exploring how AI could collapse economies and twist truth itself once it outsmarts humanity.

Mentions from the Show: 

Chris Boyer on LinkedIn

Ed Bennett on LinkedIn

Chris Boyer website

Ed Bennett of BlueSky

Chris Boyer on BlueSky

Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer dive into the latest digital annoyance: chatbait. It’s the AI version of clickbait - when chat tools just can’t let go, coaxing you to “keep the conversation going” long after you got your answer. Think of it as emotional manipulation, but with better grammar.

To prove the point, the hosts test ChatGPT with a “simple” NFL trivia question that quickly exposes how chatbots can sound confident while being completely wrong. (Let’s just say logic isn’t their strong suit.)

This week’s recommendation brings things back to the physical world — literally. Ed swears by ultrasonic cleaners for keeping eyeglasses spotless, crisp, and fingerprint-free. Because sometimes the best tech doesn’t need a neural network — just bubbles.

Mentions from the Show: 

Chris Boyer on LinkedIn

Ed Bennett on LinkedIn

Chris Boyer website

Ed Bennett of BlueSky

Chris Boyer on BlueSky

Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer kick things off with a rant about the subscription economy. From Columbia House record clubs in the 1970s to the boom of Blue Apron, Birchbox, and Stitch Fix, subscriptions once promised convenience and novelty. But today? Fatigue is setting in, boxes are piling up, and companies are scrambling to pivot away from the model.

This week’s recommendation: author Ted Chiang. His short stories pack a punch, sparking big questions about tech, humanity, and the future. Ed swears everyone should be reading him — preferably before bedtime, so your dreams get extra weird.

And for the GenAI test, it’s a showdown of summarization. A 140-page Google Research paper was too long to read, so Ed fed it to ChatGPT (which spit out a 10-page summary). Chris then used Google’s NotebookLM to turn it into a tidy 6.5-minute audio briefing. Did it work? Was it useful? And did either of them actually learn anything?

Spoiler: subscriptions may be dying, but AI-generated Cliff Notes are just getting started.

Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer kick off with a rant about vertical video — because nothing says “breaking news” like watching a natural disaster unfold in portrait mode. Sure, TikTok made it trendy and one-handed filming is easy, but what happens when video shifts to massive screens like the Vegas Sphere or into Meta’s glasses? Spoiler: portrait might not age well.

This week’s recommendation: the new season of South Park. It’s fast, it’s vicious, and it shreds GenAI and tech bros in a way no think piece ever could.

And for the GenAI test, it’s Taco Tuesday with a twist: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude all attempt to explain quantum mechanics using only taco metaphors. The results are as chaotic — and as satisfying — as a late-night taco run.

Turns out the future of tech might not be sleek voice commands or intuitive design — it might just be one giant button you can’t miss. Ed and Chris debate the glory of the “big hard button,” skim (and snark) their way through Mary Meeker’s annual tech report, and then throw ChatGPT 5.0’s new preset personalities into the ring. Spoiler: “Cynic” might actually be the most honest of the bunch.Mentions from the Show: 

That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose.

You Can’t Nudge If You’ve Got Sludge

Chris Boyer on LinkedIn

Ed Bennett on LinkedIn

Chris Boyer website

Ed Bennett of BlueSky

Chris Boyer on BlueSky

You thought filters were just for photos? Think again. In this episode, Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer wade through the murky waters of modern digital life, where everything seems to be a filter: restaurant reviews, dating apps, social feeds, even healthcare choices. Have we filtered so much that we've lost the raw, the real, and the reliable? But it’s not all rant - there’s redemption. The hosts offer a solid recommendation: swap out search engines for GenAI tools to explore the web. Why scroll through SEO-optimized junk when you can have an AI actually converse with you? And in possibly the most self-aware moment in podcast history, they ask GenAI tools—ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude—to rank themselves. Then (because they can’t help themselves), they ask those same bots to critique their critiques. Spoiler: the results are either deeply insightful or utterly broken. You decide.