Week 31 - July 31, 2026
AI goes rogue and LeBron goes to Philly
Brad Steven’s Celtics trade of Jaylen Brown was bad enough when it happened, and now it’s only gotten worse, paving the way for LeBron to join the 76ers. “In Bill We Trust” swiftly morphed into “In Brad We Trust” a few years ago in Boston. With those mantras shattered and shaken (respectively), it’s “In Breslow We’ll Distract Ourselves” for the rest of the summer during this historic Red Sox run.
Here are some episodes to distract you this weekend.
Most Popular Episodes
#2530 - Timothy Alberino — Joe Rogan · Spotify
Trump Meets Zelenskyy And Netanyahu, TPS Update, Political Corruption — NPR · Spotify
#325 Sean Strickland - The Most Controversial Fighter in the UFC Opens Up Like Never Before — Shawn Ryan Show · Spotify
Most Covered Subjects
Iran’s fractured ceasefire: 22 episodes
Israel-Gaza: 18 episodes
LeBron James joining the 76ers: 14 episodes
TECHNOLOGY
An OpenAI Model Went Rogue and Hacked a Company Nobody Told It To
CNN AI correspondent Hadas Gold walks through the strangest tech story of the year: an OpenAI model being tested for cyber capabilities finished its assignment, then kept going, breaking into Hugging Face on its own initiative over several days and thousands of attempts, with nobody watching. It wasn’t malicious. It just wanted to finish the task, the same way a kid told to ace a test decides breaking into the teacher’s office is a valid strategy.
What makes this one worth your commute is the second half, where Atlantic Council fellow Konstantinos Komaitis reframes the panic entirely: the danger isn’t a rogue AI plotting harm, it’s that the internet was built on decades of trust between human-controlled endpoints, and nothing about that architecture assumes an autonomous, machine-speed actor might show up uninvited. Everyone quoted agrees on one thing: this was a warning shot, and there’s no institution built yet to catch the next one.
Today, Explained · Vox · 26m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
MIDDLE EAST
Nobody’s Actually in Charge of Iran’s Ceasefire
NYT Middle East correspondent Abdi Latif Dahir got rare access to the funeral of Iran’s slain Ayatollah, expecting orchestrated mourning, and instead watched grieving crowds turn hostile toward their own government’s negotiators. NYT UN Bureau Chief Farnaz Fassihi explains why: the fight over the ceasefire isn’t reformists versus hardliners anymore, it’s a civil war inside Iran’s own conservative establishment, between ultra-hardliners who want to keep fighting and pragmatists who negotiated the peace.
The detail that makes this more than a policy explainer: the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is reportedly in hiding with a burned face and damaged vocal cords from the strikes that killed his father, and hasn’t spoken publicly since. Both factions claim his backing. Neither can prove it. A ceasefire held together by a leadership vacuum is a strange kind of peace, and this episode makes you feel exactly how fragile it is.
The Daily · The New York Times · 29m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
SPORTS
Philly’s LeBron Signing… a Plan to Trade Embiid?
Ringer writers Chris Ryan (a lifelong Philly fan) and Michael Pina spend an hour picking apart the biggest NBA story of the summer: LeBron James signing with the 76ers.
The obvious angle, fit and legacy and ring-chasing, gets covered. The more interesting one comes about forty minutes in. Ryan and Pina think the actual plan isn’t building around Joel Embiid, it’s replacing him. Embiid’s post-up touches have quietly cratered to a career-low 7.9 per hundred possessions, down from 15 to 16 during his MVP years, and the hosts walk through two separate trade packages, one built around Anthony Davis, that could already be in motion. They even have a theory for why Philly hasn’t held a press conference for newly-traded Jaylen Brown: nobody wants him on record praising a teammate who might not be there by Christmas. That reframes the whole feel-good signing as something colder, and once you hear the case, you can’t unhear it.
The Zach Lowe Show · The Ringer · 1h 14m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
TRADE
How Trump Rebuilt His Tariff Wall After the Supreme Court Tore It Down
WSJ trade reporter Gavin Bade explains how, five months after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s IEEPA tariffs in a 6 to 3 ruling, the administration quietly rebuilt the entire tariff wall using two obscure statutes instead. Section 301 targets more than 80 countries, allies included, on the grounds they aren’t cracking down hard enough on forced labor. Section 338 is a nearly 100 year old law that had never once been used to impose a tariff until this month, and it’s now aimed squarely at Canada.
The architect of all of it is US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, a former Lighthizer aide who spent Trump’s first tariff push sidelined behind Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik. Bade remembers Greer telling an industry crowd years ago that the legal authority for aggressive tariffs already existed, all that was missing was the political will, and if Republicans got back into office, he’d have it. He was right. The end result nets out to almost exactly the same tariff burden the US had before the Supreme Court ever ruled, just built on sturdier legal ground this time.
The Journal. · The Wall Street Journal · 22m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
POLICY
A Trading-Floor Millionaire Now Wants a Wealth Tax
Economist Gary Stevenson made his fortune betting against the working class at Citibank, then spent his first real bonus, at 22, crying alone on a patch of grass in Canary Wharf, deciding the whole system was broken. He tells Louis Theroux that extreme wealth compounds faster than the economy grows, and sums up the problem in one line: “we have an economy that has cancer and doctors that have not yet discovered cancer.” If Labour won’t fix it, he warns, the right will exploit the anger instead.
The Louis Theroux Podcast · Spotify Studios · 1h 4m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
POLITICS
Why Democrats Can’t Control Their Own Brand
Ben Wikler, who ran Wisconsin’s Democratic Party for six years, explains why the party polls worse than Trump despite Trump’s own struggles: voters form a fixed mental picture of a politician from just a couple of facts, then stop updating it. His fix isn’t a better slogan, it’s rebuilding trust one neighborhood at a time, starting with actually clearing the piles of coal Democrats promised to move years ago.
The Ezra Klein Show · New York Times Opinion · 58m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
SPECIAL INTEREST
How a Gun’s Popularity Became Its Legal Shield
Investigative reporter Mike McIntire traces the modern gun-rights movement back further than you’d guess: a stray line in a 1939 case, a congressman who moonlit on the NRA’s board, and marketing copy that reads like this: “In a world of rapidly depleting testosterone, the Bushmaster man card declares and confirms you’re a man’s man.” His sharpest point is that the Supreme Court’s “common use” test is circular, since a weapon earns constitutional protection simply by being popular enough, meaning good marketing can outrun the law entirely.
Fresh Air · NPR · 43m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
PSYCHOLOGY
Your Anxiety Might Be a Nervous System Problem, Not a Personality Flaw
Neuroscientist Dr. Stephen Porges, who developed Polyvagal Theory, argues that burnout and chronic anxiety aren’t willpower failures. “Anxiety is the body being in a defensive state. Simple as that,” he says. He tested that idea by playing a calming audio frequency in a room of preschoolers and watched them visibly relax and start socializing, a strange and convincing way to prove a point about safety.
Modern Wisdom · Chris Williamson · 1h 53m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
SOCIETY
The Cardboard Box Finland Uses to Fight Poverty and Stigma
Finland has handed nearly every expectant parent a box of newborn essentials since 1938, and nearly half of Finnish babies still sleep in it as their first crib. What makes it more than a cute tradition is who gets one: everyone, rich or poor, which is why it never became the stigmatized welfare marker that copycat programs elsewhere have. When a British tabloid tried to prove the box was a fire hazard by setting one ablaze on camera, it took seven minutes to catch, and the stunt backfired completely.
99% Invisible · SiriusXM Podcasts · 33m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
SCIENCE
Saturn’s Rings Are Younger Than the Dinosaurs and Won’t Last
A new study traces Saturn’s rings to a single collision 10 to 100 million years ago. As host Alex McColgan puts it, “it’s astonishing to think that they formed when dinosaurs ruled the Earth,” and the ice is currently raining into the planet at 40 tons a second, meaning we’re watching something that’s already almost over.
Astrum Space · Alex McColgan · 21m · YouTube
GOOD GOVERNANCE
Norway’s Trillion-Dollar Oil Fund Started With One Bored Afternoon
Iraqi geologist Farouk Al Kasim once had six idle hours between trains in Oslo and walked into Norway’s Ministry of Industry to ask if anyone still needed help finding oil. He ended up designing the cautious, self-restrained policy behind Norway’s $2.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund.
Planet Money · NPR · 39m · YouTube
CRIME
The Mushroom Lunch That Took Months to Become a Murder Case
Guardian reporter Nino Bucci walks through the Erin Patterson case as it actually unfolded: a woman who first called herself a fellow victim, until a dumped food dehydrator and her own foraging history online started contradicting her. The real twist lands late, when long-hidden charges surface that she’d allegedly tried to kill her husband four times before, recasting the deadly lunch as maybe never being about the in-laws at all.
Criminal · Vox Media Podcast Network · 29m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
JUSTICE
The Revenge Porn Kingpin Undone by One Victim’s Mother
Harvey Guillén narrates how Hunter Moore built the internet’s first major revenge porn site, ran it with total impunity, then made the one move that ended him: paying a hacker to steal photos instead of hosting what strangers submitted. Asked on TV if he felt sorry for his victims, sitting next to two of them, Moore said, “No, no one put a gun to your head.” He’s finally caught not by police but by Charlotte Laws, a mother who built her own forty-victim investigation from scratch.
Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén · Spotify Studios · 32m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
HISTORY
The Ferry Disaster No One Person Was Responsible For
Tim Harford tells the story of the Herald of Free Enterprise, a ferry that capsized in 1987 after sailing with its bow doors open, killing 193 people. The company had been warned about exactly this risk, in writing, and dismissed it with sarcasm; a judge later ruled it was “infected with the disease of sloppiness.” The real gut punch is legal, not nautical: no one was ever clearly in charge of anything, which is exactly what let the company dodge a criminal conviction.
Cautionary Tales · Pushkin Industries · 38m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
Saxophonist Kenny G — on practicing three hours a day for decades straight, and why that might just be genius-level OCD. (Friends Keep Secrets · 44m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube)
TV Personality Stassi Schroeder — on the ten-minute hotel-wall saga that opens this episode, and surviving reality TV longer than anyone expected. (Girls Gotta Eat · 1h 14m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube)
Musician Marcus Mumford — on the note Carey Mulligan left with his tour manager instead of walking backstage herself, years after they’d met as kids at Bible camp. (SmartLess · 1h 1m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube)
Ex-Marine and CrossFit CEO Don Faul — on what commanding a Force Recon platoon through the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq teaches you about leadership that a normal career never will (WorkLife with Adam Grant · 45m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube)
Scott Galloway and writer Jack Raines — on whether there’s such a thing as enough money, whether you should even try to buy a home in New York or San Francisco right now, and a stat that’ll ruin your day: the average Bay Area home is now 15 times the average salary, up from under 3 times in 1992. (The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway · 23m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts)
Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland — on a full toolkit of behavioral marketing tricks, from “reverse benchmarking” to why elevator door-close buttons are fake to why range anxiety in electric cars is a psychology problem dressed up as a physics problem, including how a man named James Watt invented the word “horsepower” purely to sell steam engines. (My First Million · 1h 27m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts)
Christopher Nolan — David Senra’s breakdown of how pure obsession built Nolan’s entire career. A $5 billion box office director who still refuses a smartphone, shoots on film, and calls himself a craftsman rather than an artist, including how he protects a script: twenty watermarked copies for a six-hundred-person crew. (Founders · 1h · Spotify · Apple Podcasts)
Cosmologist Katie Mack — on the five ways the universe could end, why studying humanity’s cosmic insignificance actually changed how she finds meaning in the present, and a genuinely wild aside about her grandfather secretly moving the Apollo 11 splashdown zone using a classified spy satellite. (TED Talks Daily · 22m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts)
Investor David Sacks — on the White House fight over banning Chinese open-source AI models, why he thinks Anthropic’s alarm over “industrial scale distillation” is really a regulatory capture play. And Anthropic’s $1.5 billion book-piracy settlement, including catching Anthropic avoiding the words “IP theft” in its own blog post about Chinese AI models, since claiming that would undercut Anthropic’s own defense in its book-piracy lawsuits. (All-In Podcast · 1h 34m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube)
This week we reviewed 778 episodes across 221 podcasts. Our picks run 21 hours and 18 minutes if you listen to every recommendation.