Elon Musk’s presence in our lives is inescapable: his cars roam our streets, his satellites orbit our skies, and his purchase of X—formerly known as Twitter—has reshaped the social-media landscape. The staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss a recent biography of Musk, by Walter Isaacson, tracing the familiar archetype of the genius tech founder from the nineteenth-century robber baron to “Batman” ’s Bruce Wayne. The critics examine how, in recent years, the idea of the unimpeachable Silicon Valley founder has lost its sheen. Narratives such as the 2022 series “WeCrashed” tell the story of startup founders who make lofty promises, only to watch their empires crumble when those promises are shown to be empty. “It dovetails for me with the disillusionment of millennials,” Fry says, pointing to the dark mood that the 2007-08 financial crisis and the 2016 election brought to the country. “There’s no longer this blind belief that the tech founder is a genius who should be wholly admired with no reservations.” 

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Gideon Lichfield and Lauren Goode talk to education journalist and author of The Inequality Machine, Paul Tough about the future of higher education. Even as many Americans return to college campuses this month, rising costs and a lower return on investment has raised uncomfortable questions about just what those classes are all leading towards. Can college be saved?

Gideon Lichfield and Lauren Goode talk to Cory Doctorow, a writer, internet activist and the author of The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation. As the US government takes Google to court in an anti-trust case this week, Doctorow explains why he believes monopoly power has made the internet a miserable place and what we can do to get our digital lives back.

Gideon Lichfield and Lauren Goode talk to Chris Urmson, CEO of the self-driving truck company Aurora. They discuss new legislation in California that could help or hinder a driverless future, whether or not self-driving vehicles are actually safer and the consequences for the transportation industry if (human) truck drivers become unnecessary.

Gideon and Lauren talk to Noah Raford, a futurist. Raford spent nearly 15 years working as the UAE’s chief futurist where Noah’s job was to predict what was coming down the pike and offer suggestions on how to prepare for it. His advice? Get comfortable with discomfort.

This episode originally aired on April 26, 2023.

Gideon Lichfield and Lauren Goode talk to Kristen Ghodsee, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Everyday Utopia: What 2000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life. Ghodsee outlines why the traditional nuclear family is failing us and how we can restructure care to build a better future.

Gideon Lichfield and Lauren Goode talk to Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind and InflectionAI. They discuss his new book, The Coming Wave, which outlines why our systems are not set up to deal with the next great leap in tech. Suleyman explains why it's not crazy to suggest that chatbots could topple governments and he argues for a better way to assess artificial intelligence (hint: it has to do with making a million dollars). The Coming Wave: Technology Power and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma is available on September 5th.

Gideon Lichfield and Lauren Goode are joined by c, or as she is more widely known, Grimes. Earlier this year, she launched elf.tech, a website where her fans can use AI to build their very own Grimes songs based on her vocals and stems. They talk about why c wants to push the boundaries of AI art, and why, despite being a techno-optimist at heart, she’s worried about our AI future.

Check out the Big Interview with c by Steven Levy in the September issue of WIRED. If you missed our episode with Puja Patel, the editor in chief of Pitchfork, about the new wave of generative AI in music—and AI-generated Drake—you can catch up here.

Gideon Lichfield and Lauren Goode talk to author Stephen Markley about his book The Deluge, a 900 page epic that attempts to lay out the next couple of decades of the climate crisis. They discuss what our climate future may entail and how future histories like Markley's help us all process and imagine a way through the coming catastrophes.

Gideon Lichfield and Lauren Goode talk to Gül Dölen, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins whose most famous work centers on how psychedelics affect octopus brains. Recently, her lab’s research has shown promising results regarding how psychedelics could help humans recover from everything from PTSD to a stroke.

You can find Rachel Nuwer's profile on Gül Dölen in WIRED.