technology
Hosted by Jacob Ward · technology · EN · 126 episodes
We're in the invisible grip of technology, politics, and our own weirdness. We gotta get better at seeing it. Hosted by veteran journalist Jacob Ward (correspondent for Al Jazeera, PBS, NBC News, and CNN), The Rip Current is your guide to spotting the hidden forces at work in our lives and getting across them safely. Each week we speak to experts in the stuff you didn't know was having an impact on your life, from venture capital to racism to the tried-and-true tactics of bullies, and teach you how to see The Rip Current before it sweeps you out to sea. Read more at TheRipCurrent.com! www.theripcurrent.com
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Contact path
Verified email
Booking probability
34%
Guest openness
Selective
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Signup to Generate a PitchWe're in the invisible grip of technology, politics, and our own weirdness. We gotta get better at seeing it. Hosted by veteran journalist Jacob Ward (correspondent for Al Jazeera, PBS, NBC News, and CNN), The Rip Current is your guide to spotting the hidden forces at work in our lives and getting across them safely.
The Rip Current is hosted by Jacob Ward. The show has published 126 episodes to date.
Recent episodes include "The Fight to Protect You Against AI (with Rep Sara Jacobs)" (24 June 2026, 26 minutes), "The Lightphone Takes Your Choices Away...to Give You More Freedom (with Joe Hollier)" (10 June 2026, 1 minute), and "Comparing Notes with Jacob Ward" (28 May 2026, 45 minutes).
The Rip Current publishes roughly weekly, with episodes averaging 15 minutes across 126 episodes.
Booking probability for The Rip Current is 34%, and the host is rated Selective on guests. The Rip Current requires a Pod Score of 80 or higher. The Rip Current's contact route on record: verified email.
Jacob Ward hosts The Rip Current, a technology show with 126 episodes published.
Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.
The Rip Current
<p>Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) just introduced the Sectoral AI Governance Act, a bill that would let federal agencies enforce existing laws — on housing, hiring, disability rights, benefits — when an algorithm is the one...
The Rip Current
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.com<br/><br/><p>Joe Hollier was 24 when he started building a phone designed to do almost nothing. Calls. Texts. Alarm. Music, maybe...
The Rip Current
<br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe
The Rip Current
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.com<br/><br/><p>Yesterday the Vatican published Magnifica Humanitas — Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical and the Catholic Church’s official...
The Rip Current
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.com<br/><br/><p>A jury in Oakland took ninety minutes Monday morning to dismiss Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI. The...
The Rip Current
<p>Trump brought a dozen of America's most powerful CEOs to Beijing this week — Jensen Huang, Tim Cook, Elon Musk, and others — to meet with Xi Jinping. The optics were big. The results were not. And the whole...
The Rip Current
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.com<br/><br/><p>I watched Sam Altman testified yesterday in the Musk v. OpenAI trial in Oakland — his first and possibly only day on the...
The Rip Current
<p>Read what Altman’s colleagues and cofounders say about his pattern of dishonesty in this morning’s piece, free for everyone.</p><p>Ilya Sutskever — the AI researcher who helped build OpenAI and is widely credited...
The Rip Current
<p>The end of David Sacks’s time as White House AI Czar seems to be the end of the administration’s hands-off policies when it comes to the technology. As Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and White House Chief of...
The Rip Current
<p>I believe the Musk vs Altman case tells us all something important about the goals and tactics of tech billionaires, and especially those pushing A.I. at the moment, so I’m giving this one out for free. Consider...
The Rip Current
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.com<br/><br/><p>Jury selection began on Monday in Oakland in Musk v. Altman — the trial that could determine the future of OpenAI, one of...
The Rip Current
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.com<br/><br/><p>Congress has held hearings on AI. No legislation. The FTC has investigated AI companies. No binding rules. The California...
The Rip Current
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.com<br/><br/><p>The U.S. military spent thirty years weaving GPS into everything it does. Navigation, precision weapons, supply chains —...
The Rip Current
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.com<br/><br/><p>Paid subscribers can read the full analysis here. In 1925, thousands of Stetson Corporation employees gathered in a...
The Rip Current
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.com<br/><br/><p>A new Pew survey and a viral Stanford study are being used to suggest social media barely harms teenagers. The numbers in...
The Rip Current
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.com<br/><br/><p>Journalist Katrina Manson spent years inside the classified and not-so-classified world of U.S. military AI — interviewing...
The Rip Current
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.com<br/><br/><p>Anthropic's new AI model — Claude Mythos — didn't just find undetected security flaws in major systems. It started writing...
The Rip Current
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.com<br/><br/><p>Anthropic just released Claude Mythos Preview — a cybersecurity AI so dangerous, the company won’t let the public touch it...
The Rip Current
<br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe
The Rip Current
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.com<br/><br/><p>The social media addiction verdicts in Los Angeles and New Mexico aren’t just legal milestones — they’re the first time a...
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