Better Offline

By: Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts
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  • Summary

  • Better Offline is a weekly show exploring the tech industry’s influence and manipulation of society - and interrogating the growth-at-all-costs future that tech’s elite wants to build.

    Combining narrative-form storytelling, one-on-one interviews and panel-based discussions, Better Offline cuts through the buzzwords and obfuscation of the tech industry, investigating and evaluating the schemes and scams of everyone from cryptocurrency scumbags to the greediest of the venture capital elite. Tech industry veteran Ed Zitron and a dynamic coterie of guests will help listeners understand the who, how and why of how tech’s most powerful players are changing the world - for better or for worse.
    2025 iHeartMedia, Inc. © Any use of this intellectual property for text and data mining or computational analysis including as training material for artificial intelligence systems is strictly prohibited without express written consent from iHeartMedia
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Episodes
  • Monologue: OpenAI's Non-Profit Problem

    Monologue: OpenAI's Non-Profit Problem
    Apr 11 2025

    In this week's monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through the precarious nature of OpenAI's non-profit status - and how a petition to the California Attorney general is an existential threat to the company.

    Petition: https://aboutblaw.com/bhNa

    ---

    LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

    Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/

    Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/

    Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

    Ed's Socials:

    https://twitter.com/edzitron

    https://www.instagram.com/edzitron

    https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com

    https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    8 mins
  • Radio Better Offline: Allison Morrow, Paris Martineau & Ed Ongweso Jr.

    Radio Better Offline: Allison Morrow, Paris Martineau & Ed Ongweso Jr.
    Apr 9 2025

    Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York city.

    Ed Zitron is joined in studio by Allison Morrow of CNN, Ed Ongweso Jr. of the Tech Bubble newsletter, and Paris Martineau of The Information to talk about the collapse of the AI bubble, the goofy “AI 2027” fan fiction that has gone viral in the tech industry, and how the tech media faces a reckoning once the bubble truly bursts.

    Vote for Better Offline's "Man Who Killed Google Search" as the best business podcast episode in this year's Webby's! Open until April 17! Vote today!
    https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2025/podcasts/individual-episode/business

    Vote for Weird Little Guys in this year’s Webby’s! https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2025/podcasts/individual-episode/crime-justice

    Allison Morrow
    https://www.cnn.com/profiles/allison-morrow
    https://bsky.app/profile/amorrow.bsky.social

    Ed Ongweso Jr.
    https://thetechbubble.substack.com/
    https://bsky.app/profile/edwardongwesojr.com

    Paris Martineau
    https://www.theinformation.com/u/parismartineau?rc=kz8jh3
    https://bsky.app/profile/paris.nyc

    https://ai-2027.com/

    New York Times article on AI 2027 - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/technology/ai-futures-project-ai-2027.html

    CNN - Apple’s AI isn’t a letdown. AI is the letdown - https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/27/tech/apple-ai-artificial-intelligence/index.html

    CNN - The AI bubble may not be bursting, but tariff chaos is sure helping to deflate it https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/01/business/ai-bubble-markets-tariffs-nightcap/index.html

    WSJ - How Is SoftBank Funding Its Mega Investment in OpenAI? A Lot of Debt - https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/openai-softbank-investment-debt-51b4a130

    TechCrunch - OpenAI reportedly mulls buying Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s AI hardware startup - https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/07/openai-reportedly-mulls-buying-jony-ive-and-sam-altmans-ai-hardware-startup/

    ---

    LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

    Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/

    Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/

    Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

    Ed's Socials:

    https://twitter.com/edzitron

    https://www.instagram.com/edzitron

    https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com

    https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    1 hr and 25 mins
  • Monologue: OpenAI's Albatross

    Monologue: OpenAI's Albatross
    Apr 4 2025

    In this week's monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through how OpenAI's new image generator has become a massive burden on the company, and how OpenAI’s melting GPUs are a bad omen for the future.

    Vote for Better Offline's "Man Who Killed Google Search" as the best business podcast episode in this year's Webby's! Open until April 17! Vote today!
    https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2025/podcasts/individual-episode/business

    Vote for Weird Little Guys in this year’s Webby’s! https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2025/podcasts/individual-episode/crime-justice

    OpenAI’s new image generator is now available to all users - https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/31/openais-new-image-generator-is-now-available-to-all-users/

    OpenAI Forecast Shows Shift From Microsoft to SoftBank (citation for $13 billion number) - https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-forecast-shows-shift-from-microsoft-to-softbank?rc=kz8jh3

    ---

    LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

    Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/

    Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/

    Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

    Ed's Socials:

    https://twitter.com/edzitron

    https://www.instagram.com/edzitron

    https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com

    https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
    Show more Show less
    10 mins
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worth a listen

fairly objective but critical, good patter. a much-needed more upbeat addition to cooler zone. thus far not much Doom or gloom

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Exposing the rot

No one else can get across how frustrating it is that silicon valley promised a bright future and instead delivered a corporate dystopia.

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