Podcast · Tech & Science

Better Offline

by Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts · English · Tech & Science

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 17 min
Latest: 7 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

7 Oct 2026 · 50 minNew

"Cycular" Financing w/ GamersNexus

In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Steve Burke of GamersNexus to talk about NVIDIA’s “cycular” financing, Trump’s “superintelligence” accord, the growing bubble in the gaming industry, and the Steam Frame VR headset. Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 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. --- LINKS:…

Play episode WhatsApp Download

Earlier episodes 29 most recent

2 Oct 2026 · 7 min

Monologue: Anthropic's $413bn Burden

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron talks about Anthropic’s $413 billion in non-cancellable compute commitments, and how its future depends on the impossible task of borrowing $50 billion to $100 billion a year from a bond market that’s already strained by endless AI data center debt. Link to details on contracts: https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com/post/3mwoc3p2b2s2m Newsletter: Dead Money: https://www.wheresyoured.at/dead-money/ Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1…
30 Sep 2026 · 8 min

Monologue: Anthropic Lost $8bn In 2025, Was A Worse Business Than OpenAI

In this week's Better Offline, Ed Zitron walks through Anthropic’s 2025 financials, covering how it spent $2.75 to make a dollar, and how it was, at least last year, a worse business than OpenAI. Dead Money: https://www.wheresyoured.at/dead-money/ Anthropic story from Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/anthropics-ipo-prospectus-shows-sweeping-ai-vision-surging-costs-2026-09-28/ Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to…
25 Sep 2026 · 11 min

Monologue: The AI Data Center Overbuild

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron talks about how $200bn to $300bn of AI GPUs are sitting in warehouses, how hyperscalers like Microsoft are overstating their AI capacity, and why the AI data center overbuild is magntiudes worse than the Dot Com era fiber buildout. Where’re All The AI Chips? https://www.wheresyoured.at/wherere-all-the-ai-chips/ Dario quote: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/dario-amodei-2#:~:text=Basically%20I%E2%80%99m%20saying,that%20much%20compute Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter:…
23 Sep 2026 · 55 min

The Hidden Recession Beneath The AI Bubble w/ Paul Kedrosky

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by economist Paul Kedrosky to talk about how AI is distorting the bond markets to the point that it’s changing the price on US Treasuries, how AI data center economics don’t make sense, and the troubling signs he’s hearing out of Anthropic. https://paulkedrosky.com/ The Nick, Dick and Paul Show: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFbDiETo29GTIjg6Lk4imig Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE…
18 Sep 2026 · 8 min

Monologue: Shut The F*ck Up, Dario!

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron delivers a simple message: if Dario Amodei truly believes that Anthropic is building dangerous AI, he should stop any and all cybersecurity model training runs, halt his IPO, limit Claude to only the safest possible functions, or shut the fuck up. Anthropic “80% gross margins” story https://www.ft.com/content/4564e6a5-69e9-40a6-bf0f-a888f2f4f002?syn-25a6b1a6=1 Overcharging story: theinformation.com/newsletters/applied-ai/anthropic-customers-find-errant-charges-auditing-startup-says Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter:…
16 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 6 min

Stopping The AI Safety Cult ft. Adam Becker & Cal Newport

Ed Zitron is joined by computer science professor and writer Cal Newport and journalist and astrophysicist Adam Becker to get the word out that the narrative about existential risk from AI is driven by a religious cult of effective altruists and rationalists. AI Is Already In Dangerous Hands newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-already-in-dangerous-hands/ Adam https://bsky.app/profile/adambecker.bsky.social https://www.youtube.com/@DreamingAgainstTheMachine https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adam-becker/more-everything-forever/9781541619593/ Cal Podcast & Videos:…
11 Sep 2026 · 16 min

Monologue: Jacob Coxon and the AI Safety Grift

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through the nonsensical, pro-AI lab scare campaign driven by former researcher Jacob Coxon, how the media keeps falling for AI safety grifts, and how dangerous AI is already in the wrong hands - those of Anthropic and OpenAI. WIRED interview with Coxon: https://archive.md/2026.09.10-091328/https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-researcher-quits-jacob-coxon-ai-fears-humanity/ Thread on Hubinger and Coxon: https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com/post/3mv4suhyexc2g Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter:…
9 Sep 2026 · 17 min

Managing The Situation

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron walks you through how society continues to manage rather than deal with crises, and how the AI bubble is yet another crisis resulting from a failure to deal with the complexity of the real world. Last Week’s Newsletter: Hyperscale Normalization https://www.wheresyoured.at/hyperscale-normalization/ This week’s newsletter: Concentration Risk https://www.wheresyoured.at/concentration-risk/ Hypernormalization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr7T07WfIhM Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter:…
4 Sep 2026 · 10 min

Monologue: Concentration Risk

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how 80% of Anthropic and OpenAI’s enterprise revenues come from the top 1% of its customers, and how the entire AI bubble is a series of different concentration risks supported by venture capital and debt. Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/hyperscale-normalization/ Ramp Data: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/comments/1w5i9t4/ramp_80_of_openai_and_anthropics_enterprise/ Terrible Groundbreaker piece: https://www.groundbrkr.com/p/the-teaser-period-why-the-ai-boom - please note that many of the numbers in this…
2 Sep 2026 · 43 min

LLMs Will Never Make Art With Caleb Wilson and Arif Hasan

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by Arif Hasan of Wide Left and Caleb Wilson of Kill The Computer to talk about an academic paper on AI slop, and the many reasons why LLMS can never truly make art. Why Slop Matters: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.06060 Arif Hasan wideleft.football x.com/ArifHasanNFL arif.bsky.social Caleb Wilson https://bsky.app/profile/birdrespecter.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/killthecomputer.com Please support me by subscribing to my premium newsletter - here’s $10 off your first year of annual:…
28 Aug 2026 · 9 min

Monologue: Into The Jensenverse

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how the AI bubble has increasingly become Jensen Huang and NVIDIA feeding different companies money, and how NVIDIA’s revenue is mostly dependent on a small handful of customers being able to raise more and more debt every year. EDITOR’s NOTE: I incorrectly say at the beginning of this that NVIDIA’s earnings were this week. They’re next week. Sorry! Newsletter: The AI Hater’s Manifesto: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-ai-haters-manifesto/ Bloomberg Article:…
26 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 5 min

No, AI Is Not "Autonomously Hacking" with Cal Newport

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed talks with computer science professor and writer Cal Newport about what the recent AI hacking incidents actually mean, why we should stop referring to LLMs as AI, and what the post-bubble world looks like for LLMs. Podcast & Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@CalNewportMedia/ Newsletter: https://calnewport.com New Yorker archive: https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/cal-newport Please support me by subscribing to my premium newsletter - here’s $10 off your first year of annual:…
21 Aug 2026 · 10 min

Monologue: AI Hits A Wall

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how Anthropic and OpenAI’s revenue growth is decelerating, and how OpenAI’s pause on model development and collapsing economics create the very real possibility it could collapse. EDITOR’s NOTE: I incorrectly say at the beginning of this that NVIDIA’s earnings were this week. They’re next week. Sorry! Newsletter: What If OpenAI Dies? https://www.wheresyoured.at/what-happens-if-openai-dies/ Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter:…
19 Aug 2026 · 45 min

The AI Clown Car W/ Gamersnexus

In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Steve Burke of GamersNexus to talk about the increasingly-delusional promises of the AI semiconductors industry, the rotten economics of LLMs, and how everything is becoming more frantic and desperate as we reach the end. GamersNexus - There Are No Non-Clowns In The Clown Car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F33Ohjufi9k Support GamersNexus’ AI Surveillance Dystopia Series: https://store.gamersnexus.net/ai-dystopia https://www.youtube.com/gamersnexus https://gamersnexus.net/ https://bsky.app/profile/gamersnexus.bsky.social…
14 Aug 2026 · 45 min

AI Creativity Doesn't Exist With Chloe Radcliffe and Ed Ongweso Jr.

In this week's Better Offline, Ed is joined by comedian Chloe Radcliffe and critic Ed Ongweso Jr. to talk about AI’s attempts to interfere with the creative arts, horrible little robots, Mark Zuckerberg’s terrible AI essay, and why we can’t respect people writing using AI. Chloe’s Show Cheat - https://publictheater.org/performances-jp/2026/c/chloe-radcliffe-cheat/ - August 19th and 20th in NYC! Chloe Radcliffe: https://www.instagram.com/chloebadcliffe/?hl=en Ed Ongweso Jr.: https://bsky.app/profile/bigblackjacobin.bsky.social Ed Ongweso’s newsletter…
12 Aug 2026 · 11 min

Monologue: NVIDIA's No IT Loads Refused Cash Dump

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through NVIDIA’s entirely-theoretical $500 billion AI infrastructure partnership with various asset managers, all to keep up with analyst expectations that it will make more than $1.6 trillion in the next three years. Chloe’s Show Cheat - https://publictheater.org/performances-jp/2026/c/chloe-radcliffe-cheat/ - August 19th and 20th News Story: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/10/nvidia-wall-street-asset-managers-500-billion-ai-push.html Jensen Huang Tweet: https://x.com/JensenHuang/status/2086934705207959965?s=20 WSJ story on…
7 Aug 2026 · 17 min

Monologue: The Pale Horsemen Arrive

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how 70% of Microsoft, Google and Amazon’s AI revenues are from Anthropic and OpenAI, with 7% of Microsoft’s FY26 revenue coming from OpenAI alone, and how this is cast-iron proof that demand for AI doesn’t exist at a scale that warrants any of the trillion dollars in capex they’ve spent. Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 - I’d be so grateful! YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to…
5 Aug 2026 · 54 min

The AI Demand Bubble with Ed Elson

In this week's Better Offline, Ed is joined by Prof G Markets’ Ed Elson to talk about the recent slew of tech earnings, how analyst estimates show that 70% of Microsoft, Google and Amazon’s AI revenues come from OpenAI and Anthropic, and the logical endpoint of his AI bubble thesis. Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 - I’d be so grateful! Ed Elson’s Newsletter: simplyput.profgmedia.com Ed Elson’s Twitter: x.com/edels0n Ed Elson’s Show:…
31 Jul 2026 · 13 min

Monologue: We Live Inside A Dream, But Who Is The Dreamer?

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how the media deliberately ignores reality to hide how Microsoft, Google and Amazon’s cloud growth is near-entirely driven by Anthropic and OpenAI, and how doing so threatens the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people. To celebrate the one year anniversary of the premium newsletter, I’m offering a sale on one-year subscriptions. Between now and midnight July 26, you can get a permanent annual rate of just $60— a $10 discount on the usual price of $70 - for life -…
29 Jul 2026 · 59 min

AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making w/ Nik Suresh

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed is joined by writer and software engineer Nik Suresh to talk about how AI mania is eviscerating global decision-making, weakening businesses and creating a culture of fear that demands workers lie about the benefits of AI to kiss up to Business Idiots. Nik’s blog: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ai-mania-is-eviscerating-global-decision-making/ https://hermit-tech.com/ Brainwash An Executive Today! https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/brainwash-an-executive-today/ To celebrate the one year anniversary of the premium newsletter, I’m offering a…
24 Jul 2026 · 10 min

Monologue: What The Hell Are The Hyperscalers Doing?

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how hyperscalers have wasted $1.1 trillion in capex on AI in a desperate attempt to sustain hypergrowth, and report on how without OpenAI’s claud spend, Microsoft Azure would’ve only grown 8% year-over-year in 2025. The Subprime Data Center Crisis: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-subprime-data-center-crisis/ Nik Suresh: AI Is Eviscerating Global Decisionmaking https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ai-mania-is-eviscerating-global-decision-making/ To celebrate the one year anniversary of the premium newsletter, I’m…
22 Jul 2026 · 59 min

The Cult of the Ultra-Wealthy with Ed Elson

In this week's Better Offline, Ed is joined by Prof G Markets’ Ed Elson to talk about the broken state of the stock market, the collapse of financial regulation, SpaceX’s post-IPO horror show, and how our culture conflates wealth with intelligence. To celebrate the one year anniversary of the premium newsletter, I’m offering a sale on one-year subscriptions. Between now and midnight July 26, you can get a permanent annual rate of just $60— a $10 discount on the usual price of $70 - for life -…
17 Jul 2026 · 15 min

Monologue: OpenAI Could Kill SoftBank and Oracle

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how OpenAI’s collapse could mortally wound SoftBank, throw the Paramount/Warner Brothers deal into chaos, kill Oracle, and destroy Larry Ellison’s empire. To celebrate the one year anniversary of the premium newsletter, I’m offering a sale on one-year subscriptions. Between now and midnight July 22, you can get a permanent annual rate of just $60— a $10 discount on the usual price of $70 - for life -…
15 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 4 min

AI Made Everything Expensive (ft. GamersNexus)

In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Steve Burke of GamersNexus to talk about how demand for AI GPUs helped the RAM cartel make every single consumer electronic more expensive, and how bad it’ll be when things unwind. Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 - I’d be so grateful! GamersNexus on the RAM cartel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVzeHTlWIDY Support GamersNexus’ AI Surveillance Dystopia Series: https://store.gamersnexus.net/ai-dystopia…
10 Jul 2026 · 8 min

Monologue: Blame AI For Making Everything More Expensive

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how AI is inflating the price of memory across the board by diverting fab capacity to building high bandwidth memory for GPUs, and how this situation may end in disaster for everyone involved. GamersNexus: The DRAM Cartel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVzeHTlWIDY HBM to increase 90% Year over Year - https://x.com/pequityresearch/status/2075035164833382909?s=46 Please subscribe to my premium newsletter - save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter:…
8 Jul 2026 · 59 min

Trashfuture x Better Offline: Goosed In The Shell

This week’s Better Offline is the first joint episode with Riley, November, Hussein from TrashFuture, covering SoftBank’s crazy annual shareholder meeting and the general collapse of the AI bubble. Ed Zitron and the TF Crew are on both your feeds this week to discuss the Softbank slide deck breakdown you’ve all been waiting for. It’s nothing other than the goose, and whether or not the goose was valued, and what kind of factory does a goose use to make golden eggs. Shareholder deck for following along:…
3 Jul 2026 · 6 min

Monologue: Meta Admits It Bought Too Many GPUs

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through Meta’s plans to sell its AI compute, and how this is an admission to the grim fact that there isn’t really a reason for anyone to be building all these AI data centers. Ed Zitron on CNBC: Generative AI's Business Model Does Not Work, And Tech Is Out Of Hypergrowth Ideas https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/comments/1ulm3a6/ed_zitron_on_cnbc_generative_ais_business_model/ Bloomberg - Meta Is Planning a Cloud Business to Sell AI Computing Power…
1 Jul 2026 · 35 min

The WSJ On Polymarket's Questionable Ads

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed talks with the Wall Street Journal’s Caitlin Ostroff and Katherine Long about how Polymarket is working with influencers to show videos of fake bets cashing out - and how the prediction markets have grown into a large, barely-regulated operation. Please support me by subscribing to my premium newsletter - here’s $10 off your first year of annual https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/84rt762qen They Looked Like They Were Getting Rich on Polymarket—but None of It Was Real -…
26 Jun 2026 · 24 min

Monologue: Tokenpocalypse Now

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how organizations are freaking out after having to pay the real cost of AI tokens, and how the surge of competitive open weight models could lead to the post-bubble locally-run future of LLMs. Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 - I’d be so grateful! 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. Buy our new…

About 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.

Better Offline is a English tech & science podcast from Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts
Language: English
Category: Tech & Science
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 17 min
Latest episode: 7 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1730587238
Website: iheart.com/podcast/150284547

RSS feed Apple Podcasts Website

More English tech & science 6

Take it with you

The Melo app keeps playing with the screen off, works in the car and on your watch, wakes you to your station, and browses the whole catalogue offline. Free, no ads, no account.