Tech skepticism with geek-household fingerprints.
Terrifying Robot Dog is a conversational tech-culture show where Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver test big technology stories against ordinary life. Episodes move from quantum computing, facial recognition, and platform rules to game books, smart speakers, quarantine routines, and writing-project detours.
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Terrifying Robot Dog is a tech-culture show about the friction between new tools and actual human life. Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver usually begin with a technology story, then follow it into the practical, social, and occasionally absurd places it leads. The show is conversational first. It is not a lecture series. A topic like quantum computing becomes a discussion about encryption panic, research hype, defense uses, large-scale computation, and where the real bottlenecks might remain. A story about DNA-based face mapping turns into a wary conversation about law enforcement, facial databases, false positives, and the danger of treating software like magic. The same grounded skepticism shows up in episodes about YouTube rules for children's content, targeted advertising, free speech debates, AI hiring, smart speakers, and accessibility requirements after an ADA ruling. Big claims get poked at. Small conveniences get taken seriously. The speakers are interested in technology that survives contact with daily routines, which is why voice assistants, calendars, lights, audiobooks, and household gadgets can matter as much as headline-grabbing breakthroughs. There is also plenty of nerd-culture texture. The Expanse, D&D, tabletop accessories, mint-tin games, holiday gift ideas, and behind-the-scenes writing plans recur as part of the show's natural vocabulary. Later episodes also carry a reflective tone, with talk of hiatus, book work, quarantine, and the possibility of a new podcast about writing. The pacing is loose and sometimes deliberately rambling, especially in After Dark episodes. That looseness is part of the appeal. The show suits listeners who want tech analysis that admits uncertainty, laughs at overconfidence, and keeps asking what the technology will do once ordinary people have to live with it.
Made for: For listeners who like tech stories filtered through everyday consequences, nerd culture, and practical skepticism. It especially suits people who enjoy conversational shows that wander productively rather than racing through headlines.
What sets it apart: Terrifying Robot Dog stands apart by treating technology news as lived experience, not just industry movement. Its mix of surveillance concerns, smart-home practicality, tabletop-game chatter, and writing-life updates gives the analysis a personal, textured shape.
A weekly podcast about how technology is changing the way we interact with the world. Hosted by Jonathan Stark and Kelli Shaver.
The gadget gift guide barely has gadgets; your D&D dice get the spotlight instead.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A delayed quarantine update finds two writers balancing book plans, isolation, and the odd routines of working from home.
Terrifying Robot Dog turns a delayed return into a candid check-in on quarantine life. Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver pick up their book project after about ten weeks away, acknowledge that the promised update slipped, and talk through how isolation and working from home have…
A loose year-end sign-off turns into a candid look at a podcast changing shape.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver use a year-end, end-of-season sign-off to talk through Terrifying Robot Dog at a turning point. Their look back at The Expanse season four is warm and specific, crediting the show for turning what they describe as one of the weaker books into a…
A nerdy holiday gift guide about technology that may actually deserve a lasting place at home.
Terrifying Robot Dog frames its holiday gift guide as a small argument for buying technology with more intent. Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver start from a familiar place: new gadgets often feel like refinements of things people already own, and Christmas shopping has become…
A tense, practical look at DNA-derived faces, police databases, and the false positives inside both.
Terrifying Robot Dog turns a frightening forensic possibility into a practical technology question: what happens when police use DNA to generate a face, then search that image against a facial database?
A skeptical, conversational pass through YouTube Kids, targeted ads, and the uncertainty around platform rules.
Terrifying Robot Dog takes a sideways route into free speech, beginning with Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver unpacking a mint-tin game before settling into the harder question of YouTube content aimed at children.
Quantum computing gets framed as powerful, constrained, and still years away, with a Ferrari analogy doing the clearest work.
Terrifying Robot Dog turns quantum computing into a question of scale, demand, and friction. Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver move from mathematical speed to practical use, weighing who might need that much calculation first, with the Defense Department and Pixar floated as early…
Fast questions, sharper game tangents.
Tech talk with useful detours.
Few questions, long tangents, wherever the conversation goes
Engineer brain, tech culture, no polish.
Tech culture through working humans.
Practical tech talk with visible process.
Terrifying Robot Dog's "The Pandalorian" turns a Pandemic Legacy Season 3 joke into a practical discussion of remote work during the pandemic.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver open Terrifying Robot Dog with a tease about "end of year news, end of season news, and maybe, ooh, end of show news" before moving into holidays and The Expanse season four.
["Terrifying Robot Dog's more-or-less annual holiday gift guide opens with Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver saying this year's picks are mostly refinements and 'cheap plastic merch from YouTube channels.'", "Stark leads with Adam Savage's Every Tool Is a Hammer, while Shaver adds Stuff Matters and How to Invent Everything as maker-friendly books with concrete prices and use cases.", "The middle of the episode moves through a Nintendo Switch, Dragon Fire, Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, a Leatherman Squirt PS4, and headphones, including AirPods and noise-canceling models.", "The strongest stretch is the smart-home section, where Echo devices, Hue bulbs, Nest gear, and security cameras are described as things the hosts use every day."]
["Terrifying Robot Dog's \"Ya Gonna Eat That?\" moves from Thanksgiving and black belt chatter into two linked technology stories: thispersondoesnotexist.com and DNA phenotyping in China.", "Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver describe AI-generated headshots that look real at first glance, then compare them with deepfake video, virtual influencers, and recycled YouTube content.", "They then walk through a New York Times story about China using DNA to infer a face, including an 80 million-record DNA database, an 8 billion-image facial search, and the risk of false positives.", "The discussion ends on privacy, private property, dog DNA tests from Embark, and whether products could ever block or scramble the DNA people leave behind."]
Terrifying Robot Dog's 'Free Lies' contrasts Twitter's ban on political ads with Facebook's decision to keep them, even after Facebook said they make up a half a percent of ad income.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine a Google quantum-computing paper and a benchmark described as reducing an IBM supercomputer’s 10,000-year task to 200 seconds.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine voice-computing gadgets including Amazon Echo Auto, Echo Show’s Show and Tell, and Google Recorder.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine the ADA dispute involving Domino's website accessibility and the consequences for customers using assistive devices.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver correct their earlier Echo Frames discussion by noting that Amazon also announced Echo Buds, Echo Loop, Echo Glow, and Echo Flex.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine Nick Bostrom’s simulation argument, including the possibility that software could reproduce a conscious human brain.
Terrifying Robot Dog’s “Eyeball Fairy” opens season 10 with Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver comparing a rapidly expanding nonprofit onboarding startup, homemade games, karate training, prosthetic eyes, and technology.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver compare a 70,000-person Gen Con trip in Indianapolis with Jonathan’s four-day Steve Vai guitar camp in Glen Cove, Long Island.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver connect gravity, Gravity Superstar, Ender's Game, and The Expanse before examining Bob Lazar's account of alien technology near Area 51.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine an AI-created flu-vaccine booster from Australian scientists and the prospect of predictive vaccines that address future mutations.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver discuss pop-culture nostalgia through Mad magazine, Stranger Things season three, Game of Thrones, and I Am Mother.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine Facebook-backed Libra, a proposed global digital currency designed around stable value and low-cost transactions.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver discuss a car-insurance driving app that deducted points for evasive braking and turns near a lake.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine technology, parenting, and work through Kira's difficulty finding an under-18 summer job in a small college town.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver debate whether technological abstraction could contribute to civilization's collapse, beginning with a keynote speaker's warning that people forget the layers beneath modern tools.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine a Chinese program that can waive some first-time parking violations after a WeChat confession receives 20 likes.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine facial recognition, machine learning, Google Assistant, blockchain, and VR/AR through everyday technology examples.
Terrifying Robot Dog’s “Leadfoot Shaver” examines SRI International’s prototype for conducting traffic stops through a telescoping robot equipped with a camera, screen, printer, and helmet.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver discuss The Expanse novel Tiamat’s Wrath, the second book in a nine-book series divided into three trilogies.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver open Terrifying Robot Dog's “Ear Breath” with an update on Jonathan's tabletop game These New Worlds, including its completed artwork and revised rules at these new worlds.com.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine OpenAI’s GPT-2, which generated a credible 500-word argument against recycling from a single premise.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver announce a downloadable beta of These New Worlds, a two-player galactic-conquest card game designed for 20-to-30-minute sessions.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Schaber examine Wobot, an app presented as a conversational life coach, alongside AI customer-service systems from Nuance.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine CNET's report that Japan's Hena Na Hotel fired half its robot staff after machines failed at tasks such as cleaning and guest interaction.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine Isaac Asimov’s 1950 collection I, Robot, focusing on the Three Laws of Robotics and the gray areas created by the word “harm.” They discuss Susan Calvin, testers Donovan and Powell, and a story in which a robot concludes that humans could not have created it because they are “inferior beings.” The hosts connect Asimov’s positronic robots to autonomous vehicles, voice assistants, and the risk of an AI following an innocuous instruction to destructive extremes.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine Chinese pilot-school uniforms containing two chips that reportedly provide GPS positioning and connect with facial-recognition surveillance.
Terrifying Robot Dog examines Netflix's Bandersnatch, an interactive film in which viewers choose between onscreen options that alter the story's path.
Terrifying Robot Dog hosts Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine why consumer gadgets feel less novel after a decade of smartphone-driven innovation.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine electric cars, autonomous driving, and mobility services on Terrifying Robot Dog's "Belly Up To The Car." They cite Endesa's plan in Spain for 100,000 charging stations, including about 8,000 public stations, as an infrastructure bet aimed at electric-vehicle adoption.
Terrifying Robot Dog’s “Smells Like Celery” revisits deepfakes after Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver predict blockchain authentication and find companies called Truepic and Serelay using it for photos.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine digital trust through Alexa’s Jimmy Fallon joke feature and the possibility of synthetic voices.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine an MIT Media Lab game in which more than 1,000 internet users vote on commands that a person performs in real life.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine molecular biologist Joe DeRisi's approach to diagnosing difficult infections by sequencing all DNA in a patient sample and separating human from non-human material.
Terrifying Robot Dog’s “Blue Raincoat” examines Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project and the difficulty of creating a decentralized identity system.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver review the Rocketbook Everlast, a 36-page reusable notebook that uses Pilot Friction pens and smartphone scanning.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver use the 2017 NotPetya attack on Maersk to describe failed key cards, phones, shipping operations, ATMs, and gas pumps.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver review Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead by Hod Lipson and Melba Kerman, covering autonomous-car technology, traffic, and city planning.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver recap roughly a day and a half at Gen Con in Indianapolis, where the convention spans hotels, common areas, and a football stadium.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver discuss Tommy Hilfiger’s Xplore clothing line, which embeds a chip that pairs with a phone and tracks when the garment is worn.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine James Bridle's TED Talk about disturbing children's YouTube videos and question whether the discussion overstates the danger.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Schaefer compare machine learning with relational databases before SQL, arguing that new enabling layers first answer existing questions and then create new use cases.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine a 90-pound cheetah-class robot that climbs stairs covered with wood blocks without cameras, using proprioception to sense its body in space.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine AI tools that can move people, reconstruct backgrounds, and produce believable images of events that never happened.
Jonathan Stark and Kelly Shaver examine VR headsets as possible tools for reducing pain during procedures such as setting a dislocated shoulder.
Terrifying Robot Dog’s “Duster Diamonds” covers organic compounds found by NASA’s Curiosity rover, a disturbing MIT AI experiment, Apple’s WWDC 2018 announcements, and augmented-reality demonstrations.