Brian McCullough's daily tech news digest, mixing solo rundowns with reporter interviews.
Techmeme Ride Home tracks the day’s major technology stories with a dry, industry-literate eye. It moves quickly from reported facts to the business-model questions underneath them.
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Techmeme Ride Home is a tech news show hosted by Brian McCullough that adapts Techmeme.com's aggregated headlines into short spoken episodes. The dominant format is a solo news rundown in which McCullough moves briskly through several stories per episode, connecting them with a recurring analytical thread such as 'follow the hidden revenue' behind hardware, media, or logistics businesses. A secondary format is the one-on-one interview, where McCullough brings on a journalist or outside expert to unpack a single story in more depth, such as Bloomberg's Mark Bergen on Google's internal culture conflicts or CoinDesk's Brady Dale on crypto's 2019 rebound. Guests also include non-journalist experts, like human rights lawyer Flynn Coleman discussing AI ethics and her book 'A Human Algorithm.' Recurring subject matter includes big tech corporate strategy and leadership (Google, Alphabet, Facebook), artificial intelligence and its ethical questions, cryptocurrency and blockchain regulation, startup fundraising and business-model analysis, and autonomous vehicle policy. The show frequently references specific companies, executives, and reporters by name rather than staying abstract, and treats stories as ongoing threads followed across multiple episodes (e.g., Libra's regulatory troubles, Google's leadership shakeup). Sponsor reads for products like Mealime and Pixel Union are folded into episodes. The likely audience is people who want a compact, spoken-word summary of the day's tech industry news without needing to read multiple articles. Episodes run roughly 20-30 minutes, consistent with the show's 'day's tech news in 15 minutes' premise, and the tone is conversational news analysis rather than narrative storytelling or debate.
Made for: People who want a short daily spoken briefing on big tech, AI, and startup news, plus occasional deeper interviews with tech journalists.
What sets it apart: Built directly on Techmeme's headline aggregation rather than original reporting, it runs as a near-daily short-form digest that alternates solo news analysis with interviews featuring named beat reporters.
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm. From Techmeme.com, Silicon Valley's most-read news source. 15 minutes and you're up to date.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Brian McCullough connects technology headlines to the corporate power, policy choices, and economic incentives operating beneath them.
Techmeme Ride Home turns technology news into a brisk account of how products, corporate decisions, and public policy collide. Brian McCullough explains the mechanics behind stories such as Chrome wiping app data and smart televisions collecting information, then follows the…
Chrome bugs, Google culture fights, and crypto reality checks reach you with the useful follow-up already asked.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A brisk tech roundup that ties a smart-home standard, cloud skepticism, and a holiday wrapping trick together.
The episode keeps a busy tech day readable without flattening it. Apple, Amazon, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance move the smart-home standard story forward, while the rest of the lineup shifts from the last broadcast holdout moving to video streaming to Gary Larson coming to the…
A brisk tech roundup that turns headlines into business-model questions.
Techmeme Ride Home spends this Monday moving from a Chrome 79 Android bug that wiped data from some apps into a broader point about where tech companies still make money once hardware gets cheap.
A sober 2019 crypto check-in that treats Libra as a regulatory grind, not hype.
Brian McCullough uses this weekend bonus episode to take a hard look at crypto at the end of 2019, with Brady Dale of CoinDesk bringing useful perspective.
A sharp look at Google's culture fights and the company becoming more conventional under pressure.
Techmeme Ride Home frames Google's leadership change and internal dissent as two parts of the same question: how much of the old Google culture can survive once management starts acting more like a normal corporate hierarchy.
A thoughtful AI conversation that treats the technology as a human rights and public responsibility issue.
Brian McCullough uses this Techmeme Ride Home bonus episode to ask why AI deserves more than gadget coverage, and Flynn Coleman answers from a human rights frame.
Host Jack Rhysider narrates true hacking, breach, and privacy stories from the people involved.
David Pierce and Verge staffers cover AI industry news, gadgets, and tech policy weekly.
Aria Knight breaks down one AI case study per episode, from Amazon's biased hiring tool to TikTok's voice cloning.
Season-long reported deep dives into one giant company at a time, from Disney to Tesla.
A New York Times investigation reveals how dozens of unknown companies track 12 million Americans' precise locations through smartphone apps, creating detailed profiles of private activities with no federal oversight.
This episode covers major tech news including a new smart home standard alliance, security flaws in Ring devices, Google's potential exit from cloud computing, Gary Larson launching The Far Side online, and the geometry behind a viral gift-wrapping trick.
December 16, 2019 opens with Chrome breaking things.
Crypto reaches the end of 2019 still messy.
Brian McCullough brings Flynn Coleman on for a plainspoken AI conversation that keeps circling back to people, not just machines.
Google was already on the docket.