Season two of Codebreaker is here. Listen to each episode, and crack the code to unlock the next one immediately. If decoding isn’t your thing, a new episode will hit your podcast feed every week.
The gadget that saved a refugee in the middle of the Aegean Sea, how an agent uses technology to patrol the U.S. border with Mexico, and how a journalist in exile broadcasts the news with WhatsApp. Listen, decode, and decide: Can technology crossing borders save us?
How encryption hides all around us, how it was used in 18th century Paris to separate merchants from their money, and the difference between your brain and your fingertip. Listen, decode, and decide: Can encryption save us?
A proposal to bioengineer shorter humans with cat eyes, a decades-old idea for a totally new kind of power, a battery made from trash and Bill Nye the Science Guy tries to get us in gear. Listen, decode, and decide: Can world-building save us?
A small city known for its Amish population and surveillance cameras, an old lady in Northern Ireland who watches video feeds in Brazil and getting footage from the fin of a shark. Listen, decode, and decide: Can watching save us?
The man who collected too much data, cyborgs who want to make their body-hardware mainstream, robots that rebuild your hairline and a conversation with Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge aka LeVar Burton. Listen, decode, and decide: Can the augmented self save us?
A therapist who creates virtual reality experiences for people with dangerous disorders, a grandmother who uses a headset to escape her surroundings and Ernest Cline on virtual reality in fact and fiction. Listen, decode, and decide: Can alternate realities save us?
A toddler who saved her mother’s life with Siri, a man whose mysterious ailment opened up a world of voice recognition technology and a dating service that wants to scan the faces of all your exes. Listen, decode, and decide: Can recognition software save us?
Missed Season one? It’s not too late to listen, decode and decide. You can still crack the codes below. If you would rather just listen, each episode is already unlocked.
A woman answers a mysterious email and finds herself on a plane, spam buries our inbox, and a band falls apart over the send button. Listen, decode, and decide: Is email evil?
A man whose job is scrubbing porn from the web, adult film star Stoya's battle against free, pirated porn, and the dirty history of tagging. Listen, decode, and decide: Is internet porn evil?
The couple forced onto the dark web to buy life-saving medicine, Ben buys a drug scale, and a researcher who says dark web markets might make the illegal drug trade safer. Listen, decode, and decide: Is the dark web market evil?
The software update that almost brought down the International Space Station with astronauts inside, updating software inside your body, and the days when even geeks dreaded installing new programs. Listen, decode, and decide: Is the software update evil?
A guy who thinks machines can prevent crime, another who thinks machines could destroy humanity, and the machine-learning algorithm outsmarted by squirrels. Listen, decode, and decide: Is the decisive machine evil?
How people-rating app Peeple drew rage and put its co-founders in danger, how a 16-year-old embraced identity through virality, and the funny video that threatened to put its makers into crushing debt. Listen, decode, and decide: Is going viral evil?
How targeted ads for a pair of men’s sandals broke up one relationship, the researchers trying to keep data tracking honest, and the casualties of ad blockers. Listen, decode, and decide: Is data tracking evil?