Technology, power, and culture under pressure.
Uncanny Valley | WIRED treats Silicon Valley as a political force, not just an industry. Its conversations and roundtables connect AI, platforms, elections, spaceflight, cloud systems, and media attention to the people shaping them.
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Uncanny Valley | WIRED is built for the moment when technology stops looking like a product beat and starts looking like a power map. It follows the people, companies, agencies, campaigns, and platforms that now shape politics, culture, business, science, and media. The show alternates between long-form interviews and faster newsroom conversations. That split gives it useful range. One episode can put Katie Drummond across from Matt Garman to talk about AWS, AI systems, outages, and the infrastructure behind much of the internet. Another can move through OpenAI’s legal fights with Elon Musk, SpaceX’s confidential IPO filing, voter data concerns, and the spectacle of global politics unfolding online. The interviews are polished but not soft. Guests are asked about records, incentives, contradictions, and the mechanics behind their public stories. Kara Swisher talks about Silicon Valley’s fixation on longevity and physical optimization with the familiarity of someone who has covered its moguls for decades. Alex Borges is questioned on Palantir, ICE-related criticism, AI safety, and the tech industry’s role in congressional races. Issam Hijazi explains how a background at Oracle, IBM, Hitachi, and startups shaped his view of social media and algorithmic feeds. Chris Hayes turns attention itself into the story, describing how news competes with every piece of content ever created. Margaret Atwood brings literary wit, doomscrolling, and a personal exchange about writing into the WIRED frame. Victor Glover’s Artemis II conversation slows the pace, focusing on return, memory, family, and the strange silence behind the far side of the moon. The show’s strength is connective tissue. It treats AI, platforms, elections, spaceflight, cloud computing, and media habits as parts of the same operating system. It is skeptical without becoming cynical, and conversational without becoming loose. For listeners tracking Silicon Valley’s influence beyond Silicon Valley, it offers context with a newsroom spine.
Made for: For listeners who follow tech as a force in politics, culture, business, media, and public life. It especially suits people who want reported context on AI, platforms, Silicon Valley money, elections, infrastructure, and attention online.
What sets it apart: Its edge is the WIRED lens: newsroom analysis paired with interviews that connect individual careers to larger systems. The show can move from a foam S3 bucket joke to AI regulation, voter data, or a moon mission without treating any of it as separate worlds.
Welcome to Uncanny Valley—an insider look at the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley—where each week, WIRED’s writers and editors bring you original reporting and analysis about some of the biggest stories in tech. On Tuesdays, The Big Interview with WIRED’s Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond in conversation with influential figures in culture, politics, business, science, and beyond for a discussion captured through the WIRED lens.On Thursdays, WIRED writers and editors Zoë Schiffer, Brian Barrett and Leah Feiger add you to the Slack group thread to let you into what they’re hearing from sources in Silicon Valley and D.C, read you into what trends you should be watching for…
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Chris Hayes connects vertical video, news attention, and Democrats' attention problem with crisp, practical clarity.
Chris Hayes comes through as a familiar evening-news voice with a clear diagnosis of the bind serious journalism is in: it now competes in the same feed as MrBeast, cooking clips, and nearly everything else a viewer might choose.
A hacked casino shuffler makes poker feel like a quiet contest between code and suspicion.
Poker turns into a security story when Andy Greenberg and Joseph use a hacked Deckmate 2 shuffler to learn the order of the deck and show how that knowledge could steer a table.
A clear account of the Trump-Musk split, from the budget bill fight to the clashes that led there.
The Trump-Elon Musk break gives this episode a clean line through a messy political moment: an alliance that had seemed tightly aligned since the inauguration has turned into a public fight over the new Republican budget bill.
Moral questions with consequences for minds, machines, and power.
WSJ reporters unpack the Epstein files, surrogacy industry abuses, and true-crime court battles.
Dan Carlin's solo essays connecting executive power, historical collapse, and American democracy.
AWS CEO Matt Garman discusses the company's AI-centric future, strategy, and decisions shaping cloud infrastructure.
WIRED's Andy Greenberg details how his team hacked the Deckmate 2 card shuffler to cheat at Texas Hold'em in a Las Vegas experiment.
WIRED's Uncanny Valley explores the escalating public feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, following Musk's criticism of the Republican budget bill and his departure from the Department of Government Efficiency.
Uncanny Valley examines a voluntary White House AI accord and OpenAI's launch of always-on agents called Dots.
Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover discusses his return from the moon mission and his difficulty processing the experience.
Kara Swisher discusses her new CNN docuseries on Silicon Valley's obsession with longevity and living forever.
Assemblyman Alex Borges discusses his campaign for Congress, his tech background at Palantir, and the opposition from a pro-AI PAC funding attack ads against him.
This episode covers the renewed legal battle between OpenAI and Elon Musk, SpaceX's confidential IPO filing, concerns over voter data handling by government agencies, and the significance of the Artemis II launch.
Issam Hijazi discusses his background in big tech and the creation of Upscrolld, a social media app prioritizing content over algorithms.
Katie Drummond interviews Chris Hayes about how Donald Trump turns war, foreign policy, and presidential power into attention-grabbing media content.
Brian Barrett's rule is that every consumer technology is '3D TV until proven otherwise.'
Anthropic says an $15 million financial-services deal paused after its supply-chain-risk designation.
Margaret Atwood discusses her memoir Book of Lives and her Canadian roots in a WIRED interview.
AWS CEO Matt Garman discusses the AI-centric future of the cloud platform, strategy, and decisions shaping the next decade of cloud and AI.
WIRED's Zoe Schiffer introduces a conversation between Senior Culture Editor Manisha Krishnan and director Jon M.
Wired's Uncanny Valley explores how the Deckmate 2 card shuffler can be hacked to cheat at poker.