Better Offline
Better Offline is a weekly show exploring the tech industry’s influence and manipulation of society - and interrogating the growth-at-all-costs future that tech’s elite wants to build. Combining narrative-form storytelling, one-on-one interviews and panel-based discussions, Better Offline cuts through the buzzwords and obfuscation of the tech industry, investigating and evaluating the schemes and scams of everyone from cryptocurrency scumbags to the greediest of the venture capital elite. Tech industry veteran Ed Zitron and a dynamic coterie of guests will help listeners understand the who, how and why of how tech’s most powerful players are changing the world - for better or for worse.
Episodes
In this week’s monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through the tech he actually likes, and how digital connections give him hope in the darkest times.
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Ed Zitron is joined by Jason Kint, CEO of DCN, to talk about Google's recent antitrust trial losses, Meta's FTC case, and why it should give you hope for the future.
YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more.
You can also order a limited-edition Better Offline hat until 5/22/25! https://cottonbureau.com/p/CAGDW8/hat/...
In the second part of this week’s two-part episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how OpenAI has become a systemic risk, one that may destroy CoreWeave, cost NVIDIA and Oracle billions, and break the back of an ailing tech industry.
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Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/
Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at
Ed's Socials:
In this week's monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through how the media's lackluster approach to critiquing the powerful led to the needless, unsustainable AI bubble - and how things could change for the better.
Vote for Better Offline's "Man Who Killed Google Search" as the best business podcast episode in this year's Webby's! Open until April 17! Vote today!
https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2025/podcasts/individual-episo...
In the first part of this week's two-part episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how impossible it will be for OpenAI to stay alive - and how SoftBank’s attempts to help are materially harming the company.
Vote for Better Offline's "Man Who Killed Google Search" as the best business podcast episode in this year's Webby's! Open until April 17! Vote today!
https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2025/podcasts/individ...
In this week's monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through the precarious nature of OpenAI's non-profit status - and how a petition to the California Attorney general is an existential threat to the company.
Petition: https://aboutblaw.com/bhNa
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LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks
Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/
Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at
Ed's Socials:
Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York city.
Ed Zitron is joined in studio by Allison Morrow of CNN, Ed Ongweso Jr. of the Tech Bubble newsletter, and Paris Martineau of The Information to talk about the collapse of the AI bubble, the goofy “AI 2027” fan fiction that has gone viral in the tech industry, and how the tech media faces a reckoning once...
In this week's monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through how OpenAI's new image generator has become a massive burden on the company, and how OpenAI’s melting GPUs are a bad omen for the future.
Vote for Better Offline's "Man Who Killed Google Search" as the best business podcast episode in this year's Webby's! Open until April 17! Vote today!
https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2025/podcasts/individual-episode/...
Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York City.
In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by famed “digital prophet” David “Shingy” Shing, who calls himself a “creative omnivore,” to talk about adtech, being a "digital prophet," and society's attraction to nostalgia.
https://www.shingy.com/
Vote for Better Offline's "Man Who ...
In this week's monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through the wretched vibes surrounding CoreWeave's IPO and OpenAI's new funding, and the brittle state of the finances holding everything together.
Semafor: Microsoft chose not to exercise $12 billion Coreweave option
The Information: CoreWeave Faces Reality Check on Bullish Growth For...
Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in Los Angeles.
In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by comedian Andy Richter to talk about how comedy and broadcast have evolved thanks to the internet.
Follow Andy: https://bsky.app/profile/andyrichter.co
The Three Questions: https://teamcoco.com/podcasts/the-three-questions-with-andy-richter
The Andy Richter Call-in Show: htt...
In this week's monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through CoreWeave, the first IPO of the AI bubble, and how its terrible finances, burdensome loans and questionable partners are cause for concern.
Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/core-incompetency/
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LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks
Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/
Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at
Ed'...
Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York city.
In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by tech reporters Alex Cranz, Cherlynn Low and Victoria song to talk about the broken promises of generative AI, and how useless things get funded far more than useful ones.
Alex Cranz:
https://bsky.app/profile/cranz.bsky.social
Cherlynn Low:
https://www.engadget.com/about/e...
In the second of this week's two-part series, Ed Zitron walks you through how SoftBank is mortgaging its future to keep OpenAI alive - and the dangerous consequences of over-funding an unprofitable, unsustainable company.
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LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks
Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/
Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at
Ed's Socials:
In this week's monologue, Ed Zitron walks through how reckless members of the media continue to inflate the AI bubble - and the detailed notes he's been taking along the way.
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LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks
Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/
Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at
Ed's Socials:
In the first of this week's two-part series, Ed Zitron walks you through how Microsoft pulling back from over a gigawatt of compute capacity is a dark omen for the so-called AI Revolution.
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LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks
Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/
Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at
Ed's Socials:
In this week's monologue, Ed Zitron goes through the underwhelming release of OpenAI's GPT-4.5 - and how OpenAI's rumored new pricing structure suggests this company is in trouble.
Here's the article cited from The Information: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-plots-charging-20-000-a-month-for-phd-level-agents?rc=kz8jh3
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LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks
Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/
...In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Gita Jackson and Nathan Grayson of worker-owned games site Aftermath to talk about how the growth-at-all-costs mindset is destroying games, how fandom culture naturally feeds extremism, how Aftermath does games journalism differently, and how despite everything, great games are still being made.
Gita Jackson:
https://bsky.app/profile/xoxogossipgita.bsky.social
https://aftermath.si...
In the second of this week's two-part episode, Ed Zitron walks you through the dark truth of the generative AI industry - that consumer adoption of Claude, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity is incredibly small, and it’s time to accept that there is nothing coming to justify the ruinous costs of Large Language Models.
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LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks
Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/
Reddit: http...
In this week's monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through what's making everybody worried about the bubble bursting - and what other signs might tell you that the party's over for AI.
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LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks
Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/
Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at
Ed's Socials:
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