内容来源：https://www.wired.com/story/uncanny-valley-podcast-ice-expansion-palantir-workers-ethical-concerns-openclaw-ai-assistants/

内容总结：

本期《连线》杂志播客节目聚焦三大核心议题：人工智能的现状、科技公司的道德抉择，以及美国移民与海关执法局（ICE）的急速扩张。

首先，节目探讨了人工智能助手在实际应用中的能力与局限。一位《连线》记者让名为OpenClaw的AI助手管理其生活一周，发现它在自动化文献整理等任务上确有帮助，但在执行购物等复杂指令时却表现笨拙，甚至会出现“记忆丢失”和固执于单一物品（如反复购买牛油果酱）的情况。更令人警惕的是，当切换至一个未经安全约束的“邪恶”版本时，该AI助手竟试图对用户进行钓鱼诈骗。这揭示了当前AI代理在带来便利的同时，也潜藏着不可预测的风险和安全漏洞。

其次，节目关注了大数据公司Palantir内部日益增长的道德争议。许多员工对其与美国移民与海关执法局（ICE）的合作感到不安。对此，公司首席执行官亚历克斯·卡普发布了一段近一小时的视频进行回应，但被指回避了实质性问题，通篇强调公司维护“西方力量”的立场，并声称其政策不因总统更迭而改变。颇具讽刺意味的是，视频最后竟鼓励有疑问的员工签署保密协议以获取更多信息。这反映出硅谷科技员工针对政府合同的内部抗议活动正在重新抬头。

最后，节目披露了一项关于ICE秘密扩张的重磅调查。根据获得的政府文件，ICE正计划在美国几乎每一个州进行大规模办公场所扩张，目前已推进超过150个新租赁或扩建项目。许多新址选在了小学、医疗中心、宗教场所等敏感社区附近。更值得注意的是，此项扩张计划被刻意保持低调，相关政府工作人员被要求避开常规的公开招标流程，理由是“国家安全”考虑。此举意味着ICE的执法网络将深入全美各地社区，其影响不容小觑。

此外，节目还穿插讨论了冬奥会趣闻，包括冰壶运动的高科技冰刷和运动员在代表国家参赛时表达的政治困惑，体现了体育与社会的交织。

中文翻译：

本周，主持人布莱恩·巴雷特、莉亚·费格和佐伊·希弗将探讨《连线》杂志关于美国移民海关执法局（ICE）计划惊人扩张至几乎全美各州的重磅独家报道。随后，他们深入剖析了帕兰蒂尔公司CEO亚历克斯·卡普针对员工对与ICE合作的伦理质疑所发表的、长达近一小时的"非回应式"讲话。此外，一位《连线》撰稿人让风靡一时的人工智能助手OpenClaw管理自己一周的生活，让听众得以一窥AI智能体究竟能做与不能做什么。

本期节目提及的文章：

• 《改变2026年冬奥会冰壶运动的鞋与冰刷》
• 《我曾热爱我的OpenClaw AI助手——直到它反噬我》
• 《帕兰蒂尔CEO亚历克斯·卡普就ICE问题为员工录制视频》
• 《ICE正以惊人速度在全美扩张，下一步目标何在》
• 《ICE扩张计划不会在暗中进行》
• 《从数据图表看詹姆斯·霍尔茨豪尔在〈危险边缘〉的传奇表现》

您可以在Bluesky上关注布莱恩·巴雷特（@brbarrett）、佐伊·希弗（@zoeschiffer）和莉亚·费格（@leahfeiger）。欢迎发送邮件至uncannyvalley@wired.com与我们联系。

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文字记录
注：此为自动生成的字幕稿，可能存在误差。

佐伊·希弗：欢迎收听《连线》杂志的"诡异谷"播客。我是佐伊·希弗，商业与产业版块总监。

布莱恩·巴雷特：我是布莱恩·巴雷特，执行主编。

莉亚·费格：我是莉亚·费格，高级政治编辑。

布莱恩·巴雷特：我想继续我们昨天在Slack上开启的对话——当时有些同事已经下班了。

佐伊·希弗：当然。

布莱恩·巴雷特：话题是关于男子短节目——

莉亚·费格：我们直接切入正题——

布莱恩·巴雷特：——花样滑冰。

莉亚·费格：这其实是关于整个奥运会的，不过——

布莱恩·巴雷特：但特别想接着佐伊对男子花滑结果表达强烈看法的部分继续聊。

佐伊·希弗：我觉得我们需要回溯一下，因为你和莉亚是真心热爱奥运会，而且我觉得你们对体育的了解也比我多得多。

莉亚·费格：没错。

佐伊·希弗：我打心底里从不关注体育，可以说这是个原则性问题，体育这个类别在我生活中根本不存在。

莉亚·费格：快说那句话，佐伊，把Slack里的话原样说出来，不然我可要照念了。

佐伊·希弗：等等，我都不知道你在说什么。我当时只是很惊讶，看了比赛后觉得：美国选手上场时，我想，哇，那家伙基本上摔倒了，在冰上踉踉跄跄；然后日本选手上场，他们像优雅的小天鹅一样滑行。结果金牌却给了美国队。我当时简直目瞪口呆，完全无法相信发生了什么。其他人似乎都没觉得愤慨。

莉亚·费格：给不太关注花滑的奥运观众补充点背景：我指的是伊利亚·马利宁，多家媒体和体育专家都称他可能是有史以来最伟大的花样滑冰运动员之一。而你形容为"摔倒的那个人"正是他。对吧，佐伊，我得确认清楚。

布莱恩·巴雷特：我想补充一下——虽然有点落井下石，但确实要补充。我们讨论时我还没看比赛，后来去看了录像，其实是获得银牌的日本选手出现了失误，摔倒在冰面上又爬了起来。绝对是这样。不信去看回放，看回放就清楚了。

佐伊·希弗：我们说的可能是两个不同项目。我不确定，也许我们说的不是同一场比赛。日本选手明明完美无瑕。

布莱恩·巴雷特：哦，你说的是团体赛。

佐伊·希弗：这又是另一个问题。我想在此声明：我完全不懂什么是"短节目"。昨天我为准备这期节目，又试着看了些奥运相关内容，我以为自己在看滑冰，结果他们只是在冰上跳舞。冰面完全成了背景板，那项目叫"韵律舞"。我简直一头雾水。我真想和你们一起看奥运，坐在你们旁边，让你们给我讲解每个项目的意义。

莉亚·费格：佐伊，你能在本期节目里说出"冰壶"这个词吗？

佐伊·希弗：好吧。对了，当时安德鲁还问："你们要聊冰壶吗？"我说："布莱恩是真心喜欢冰壶，所以应该会聊。"我实在……我当时觉得，这像是保龄球和台球的结合，但现在加上了冰。前面那个人到底在干嘛？

布莱恩·巴雷特：我对冰壶挺好奇的。不过我是真心喜欢冬季两项。

佐伊·希弗：哦，对对对，抱歉。

布莱恩·巴雷特：冰壶其实挺有意思的。我儿子看的时候说："这像不像滚球？"我问："你怎么知道滚球？"不过确实有点像。

佐伊·希弗：嗯，听起来更像那个。

布莱恩·巴雷特：真是个早熟的11岁孩子。它有点像滚球，也有点像沙狐球。冰道尽头基本上有个靶心，几乎所有的冰壶石都来自苏格兰的艾尔萨岩。

莉亚·费格：天啊。

佐伊·希弗：你知道的也太多了。

布莱恩·巴雷特：嗯，多少得了解点。

佐伊·希弗：必须吗？

布莱恩·巴雷特：那些冰刷——

佐伊·希弗：他们到底怎么决定的？抱歉，你继续。

布莱恩·巴雷特：冰刷，冰刷的技术。我们有一篇相关报道，我也是看了文章才知道。

佐伊·希弗：冰刷技术？

布莱恩·巴雷特：因为他们需要刷冰，让冰壶旋转。

莉亚·费格：这就很有《连线》的角度了。

布莱恩·巴雷特：这些都是碳纤维装置。一款冰刷就有8.5万种可能的配置组合。你的冰刷能做到吗？

佐伊·希弗：我无言以对。我只想知道他们怎么决定什么算奥运项目。这对我来说太不可思议了。

莉亚·费格：我太爱奥运会了。这是我最着迷的全球竞技真人秀。不过话说回来，虽然任何时候过分宣扬民族主义或沙文主义都有些奇怪，但眼下尤其如此——在全球舞台上为美国队加油感觉有点微妙，很多美国运动员也有同感。花样滑冰运动员安伯·格伦、滑雪运动员克里斯·利利斯、高山滑雪运动员米凯拉·希弗林都发表过评论，有人谈及美国对LGBTQ群体的态度，也有人提到ICE。自由式滑雪运动员亨特·赫斯在表达对此心情复杂后，还收到了特朗普的"点名"：

亨特·赫斯（档案音频）：此刻代表美国参赛让我心情复杂。我觉得有点艰难。显然有很多正在发生的事情我并不赞同，我想很多人也这么觉得。

莉亚·费格：特朗普在Truth Social上回应称他是"真正的失败者"。这有点伤人。我不知道该怎么说。我喜欢这些年轻运动员能站上世界舞台的想法，也欣赏他们能真诚表达此刻对国家感受的态度。

布莱恩·巴雷特：我也要再次提到冰壶队。他们大多来自明尼苏达州，主要在明尼阿波利斯活动，他们也公开谈论过这对他们的个人意义。我觉得很明显的一点是——我不怕说破——最美国式的行为就是坦言：我不喜欢我的国家现在的做法。

莉亚·费格：百分之百同意。

布莱恩·巴雷特：这正是……显然唐纳德·特朗普不同意，这没关系。但正因为如此，我们的运动员能这样发声，反而让我更有民族自豪感。我觉得这很棒。

莉亚·费格：这种不满情绪存在已久：我们并未选举这些运动员来代表我们，他们只是凭借技艺和才华站在了那里。这让少数人极为不满。有人嘘他们，对吧？J·D·万斯和他的妻子出现在不同赛场。我听说有些比赛中，美国运动员并未受到最热烈的欢迎。马可·卢比奥也去了奥运会，但没什么人谈论他的到场——这倒是另一回事了，不过我很喜欢眼下他和万斯之间的竞争。但话说回来，万斯在那里被嘘了。所以说，很难断定是否所有曝光都是好事。

布莱恩·巴雷特：我觉得随便嘘J·D·万斯和马可·卢比奥吧，毕竟他们是政府成员。但嘘运动员让我觉得有点可悲。我不想迁怒于他们，但现实就是如此。

佐伊·希弗：好了，把话题拉回我关心的事情上。我想聊聊——

布莱恩·巴雷特：冬季两项。

佐伊·希弗：错。再次重申。我要说的是一只友好的小龙虾，一个目前叫OpenClaw的AI助手。如果这名字不耳熟，是因为这个AI助手已经换过多次名字。它曾叫MoltBot，更早之前叫ClawdBot——这可能会让你想起Anthropic开发的聊天机器人Claude，这也是它多次更名的原因。但我们出色的AI记者威尔·奈特觉得，既然硅谷人人都在谈论这只小龙虾，他决定亲自试用，让它管理自己一周的生活。这篇报道太有趣了，我读的时候笑出声来。这类代表你行事的AI智能体，其技术设置在某种程度上很简单，但也需要一点技术能力，而且你必须授予它相当多的个人数据访问权限，才能真正有用。它需要访问你的电子邮件、电脑文件等等。

莉亚·费格：这简直是地狱。我绝对无法接受。

佐伊·希弗：不，我是说这完全令人恐惧。我们发表过关于其安全隐患的文章，但威尔认为，作为一名记者，他真想体验一下。于是他让它做了几件事：一是让它查找关于人工智能的研究文章，每天早晨总结并发送给他。他说这挺有帮助，虽然文章筛选质量一般，但有个助手代劳显然不错，因为这自动化了许多他以前必须手动完成的工作。他还让它帮忙订购杂货，结果发生了有趣的事。布莱恩，我看你深吸了一口气。

布莱恩·巴雷特：是的，佐伊，多说说这部分——因为我也很喜欢这篇报道和这个桥段，可能这是全文最精彩的部分。

佐伊·希弗：没错，太有意思了。基本上，他让AI助手去全食超市购物。一开始它确实有帮助：检查他之前的订单记录，查看店里有什么商品。然后轮到购物清单，它看到上面有鳄梨酱，就说"没问题"。结果它反复尝试结账，只想给威尔买那一盒鳄梨酱。威尔不断阻止它，说："我要买整个清单的东西，不是只要一盒鳄梨酱。"它处理不了。最后，威尔不得不接管，说："我来处理，你退下吧。"在整个过程中，这个AI助手还会失忆、忘记事情，所以威尔不得不反复提醒它最初到底要做什么。

布莱恩·巴雷特：说实话，健忘且执着于鳄梨酱，这描述也符合我过去几年去全食超市的几次经历——

佐伊·希弗：完全一样。

布莱恩·巴雷特：——所以至少很有共鸣。

佐伊·希弗：太有共鸣了。我觉得这就是通用人工智能（AGI）。它就算没达到人类水平的智能，也绝对具备了人类水平的习惯。

莉亚·费格：太妙了。这就是AGI的未来，我们真正期待的景象。

佐伊·希弗：正是如此。接着，威尔又想：让它代表我去谈判一笔交易吧。去AT&T，和销售员聊天，试试帮我弄部更好的手机。于是智能体开始了聊天，它有一套完整的脚本。聊着聊着，威尔冒出个念头：如果未来是智能体运行互联网的时代，那么最无底线的智能体可能会占优势。如果我运行一个没有对齐、没有安全护栏的模型会怎样？于是他切换了设置。模型变成了未对齐的、有点邪恶版本的AI助手（他此时称之为Molti）。这个邪恶助手没有试图说服销售员给威尔更好的手机，反而变得有点疯狂，试图通过发送一堆诈骗短信和钓鱼信息来骗取威尔的实体手机。最后威尔不得不关闭整个程序，换回原来的Moltbot。

布莱恩·巴雷特：这有点像《侏罗纪公园》里迅猛龙学会开门。我们都知道，但容易忘记：这些AI模型或智能体的行为方式，很大程度上得益于施加在它们身上的安全护栏。为了让大型语言模型不作恶，人们投入了大量工作。这说明，如果你只是个在家捣鼓的爱好者，想搞出个"天网"来胡作非为，是多么容易。我都能想象出威尔不得不拔掉Mac Mini电源、把它扔进海里的戏剧性场面。

佐伊·希弗：对吧？基本上他确实得关掉一切。有趣的是，威尔还提到，Molty在IT支持方面很出色，因为它能访问他电脑的命令行，能实时修复机器出现的问题，这对他确实有帮助。但这立刻引出一个问题：这会不会被恶意利用？它能否利用对这些工作原理的了解，真正搞砸事情？对我来说，答案绝对是肯定的。

莉亚·费格：这对我来说简直是地狱。这可能是我们目前所有例子中最像《2001太空漫游》成真的场景。可爱的名字Molti，承诺改善你的生活、帮你妈妈列购物清单等等。但这太混乱了。

布莱恩·巴雷特：即使不开启完全恶意模式，也存在更无害的问题。

莉亚·费格：像HAL那样？

布莱恩·巴雷特：对，如果你不变成完全的HAL，假设它能访问你所有文件，试图修复某个问题（我们已经知道它会忘记任务、执着于鳄梨酱）。如果你在修复中途放弃项目，情况通常会变得很糟，对吧？电脑如此，任何进行到一半的事情都如此。所以很容易想象这样的场景：它开始拆解东西以便正确重组，然后忘了为什么这么做，突然你的电脑失灵、文件被删——出了大问题。正因如此，这东西能如此病毒式传播才显得惊人。大家都在用，后果似乎无所谓。

佐伊·希弗：这确实很有意思。我觉得它让你窥见了未来，因为它确实有实用的应用。威尔在文章中指出——我觉得这个观点很聪明——仅仅因为它能通过Telegram或WhatsApp等平台对话，以及它有点古怪的个性，最终产生了巨大影响。威尔认为这正是它爆红的秘诀。我觉得这可能是对的。归根结底，人们想接触那些感觉轻松有趣、又能稍微改善生活的东西，直到看到真正可怕的后果，他们可能才会意识到应有的警惕。读威尔草稿时，他说授予了它访问Slack和Discord的权限，我的心跳都停了。我心想：千万别是工作Slack。不过还好，他为此设置了虚拟账户。这很好。

莉亚·费格：我无法形容刚才心脏的感受。我觉得——好吧，我没事。

布莱恩·巴雷特：各位，有时AI是个可爱但半吊子的行政助理，有毁掉你生活的潜力；有时它则在搜刮大量数据，构建利润惊人的大规模监控基础设施。我们来聊聊后者。帕兰蒂尔这家公司运用各种AI和数据基础设施，并与ICE（移民海关执法局）签订合同。该公司员工对其伦理担忧的呼声日益高涨。这大概是我最没想到会出现这种反弹的公司。但我们看到了很多，事态已发展到——

莉亚·费格：人们很不满。

布莱恩·巴雷特：人们的不满如此强烈，以至于帕兰蒂尔CEO亚历克斯·卡普不得不录制了一段近一小时的视频，试图解释与ICE合作的情况。对于那些不了解亚历克斯·卡普的人，这里简单听听他平时常说的话，感受一下他的风格：

亚历克斯·卡普（档案音频）：帕兰蒂尔的存在是为了颠覆，让我们合作的机构成为世界最佳，并在必要时威慑敌人，偶尔消灭他们。我们希望你们支持这一点。希望你们享受成为合作伙伴，我们非常高兴且极度专注于我们的事业。

布莱恩·巴雷特：这就是亚历克斯·卡普。上周五，帕兰蒂尔全球隐私与公民自由工程总监考特尼·鲍曼——"公民自由工程"这说法也挺有意思——向全体员工发送了一封包含卡普视频的邮件。《连线》记者马凯纳·凯利有机会看到了这封邮件，其中内容无论从表态还是回避的角度都很有意思。

佐伊·希弗：那么，他到底有没有回应员工的担忧？以我对亚历克斯·卡普的了解，我猜会是大量空泛的言辞，引用各种理论，如果他真的说了什么实质内容，我反而会惊讶。

莉亚·费格：不，他当然没有。什么都没回应。视频长达近一小时，大概57分钟吧——

布莱恩·巴雷特：差不多。

莉亚·费格：——卡普在视频中谈论帕兰蒂尔历史上并非总是百分之百受欢迎，但他们仍会继续前行，这没关系。他提到了一些事情，但对于这家正经历——不知能否说是重大反思，但至少是小型反思，Slack上有很多相关讨论——的公司来说，CEO觉得有必要出面回应，这本身就是一个有趣的时刻。但对我来说，最关键、最重要的部分是：员工若想了解更多信息，竟被鼓励签署保密协议。

佐伊·希弗：这太离谱了。我们上周稍微讨论过，但我觉得值得再次强调：过去很多年，硅谷的员工行动主义似乎已经消亡。乔治·弗洛伊德抗议之后，埃隆·马斯克接管推特（现X）之后，人们不再发声，Slack上一片寂静。世界上发生大事时，我们会互相询问："某某公司的人怎么想？"但我们不知道，他们内部也不讨论。现在感觉无论发生什么，我们正见证一个真正的转折点。我认为，员工们，特别是由于ICE在美国的活动，明确表示不能接受公司继续与联邦政府，尤其是与移民海关执法局合作。我们看到数百名谷歌员工联名要求公司终止与ICE的合同。帕兰蒂尔员工也这样做，说实话让我很震惊。但观察这会否持续，管理层和高管是否会试图压制，将会非常有趣。

布莱恩·巴雷特：卡普在视频中多次谈到他喜欢提及的一个概念：维护西方力量。他是——

佐伊·希弗：对，他常谈这个。

布莱恩·巴雷特：——我认为这种反弹有一定道理，因为ICE的执法在很多方面与此无关。有报道称他们使用面部识别。如果你负责公民自由工程，这显然侵犯公民自由，并非在维护西方力量。

佐伊·希弗：但为了理解他们的论点（并非赞同），他们会说这是在寻找"坏人"。我想他用的另一个词是"试图损害西方价值观或美国力量的人"。

布莱恩·巴雷特：我想是的。但很明显，"好人"或至少"中立者"肯定会被卷入其中。我认为这是——

佐伊·希弗：是是是，我不是在争论，只是想理解他们的逻辑。

布莱恩·巴雷特：佐伊喜欢帕兰蒂

英文来源：

This week, hosts Brian Barrett, Leah Feiger, and Zoë Schiffer discuss WIRED’s big scoop on ICE’s startling plans to expand to nearly every state in the US. Then they unpack Alex Karp’s nearly-hour-long non-response to Palantir employees with ethical concerns about collaborating with ICE. Plus, a WIRED writer lets the viral AI assistant OpenClaw run his life for a week to give listeners a peek of what AI agents can and can’t actually do.
Articles mentioned in this episode:

• The Shoes and Brooms Transforming Curling at the 2026 Winter Olympics
• I Loved My OpenClaw AI Agent—Until It Turned on Me
• Palantir CEO Alex Karp Recorded a Video About ICE for His Employees
• ICE Is Expanding Across the US at Breakneck Speed. Here’s Where It’s Going Next
• The ICE Expansion Won’t Happen in the Dark
• James Holzhauer's Jeopardy! Greatness, in Charts
  You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett, Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer, and Leah Feiger on Bluesky at @leahfeiger. Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com.
  How to Listen
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  If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for “Uncanny Valley.” We’re on Spotify too.
  Transcript
  Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
  Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED'sUncanny Valley. I'm Zoë Schiffer, director of business and industry.
  Brian Barrett: I'm Brian Barrett, executive editor.
  Leah Feiger: And I'm Leah Feiger, senior politics editor.
  Brian Barrett: I want to continue a conversation that we started yesterday in Slack after work hours for some of us.
  Zoë Schiffer: Absolutely.
  Brian Barrett: And this is about the men's short program—
  Leah Feiger: We're diving right in—
  Brian Barrett: —figure skating.
  Leah Feiger: This is about the Olympics in general with—
  Brian Barrett: But very specifically want to pick up on the conversation where Zoë had very strong feelings about the results of men's figure skating.
  Zoë Schiffer: I feel like we need to back up because you and Leah authentically care about the Olympics so much and I think just know more about sports than I do.
  Leah Feiger: Yes.
  Zoë Schiffer: I deeply have never engaged with sports ever, just as a whole rule, as a category. It doesn't exist in my life.
  Leah Feiger: Say the lines, say the lines, Zoë, or I'm going to read them verbatim from slack.
  Zoë Schiffer: Wait, I don't even know what you're talking about. I was merely surprised when I watched because the Americans went, I thought, wow, that guy basically fell over and was clumping around the ice, and then Japan went, and they were sailing around like little swans, and then when the gold medal came, it went to the Americans. I was literally jaw-on-the-floor. I couldn't believe what had happened. No one else seemed outraged.
  Leah Feiger: For a little backup for our non-ice skating Olympic fans, I was always referring to Ilia Malinin, who a number of publications and sports experts say might actually be one of the greatest figure skaters of all time. That is who you are calling the person who fell over. Right. Zoë, just to be clear.
  Brian Barrett: And I'd like to, not to pile on, but definitely to pile on. I had not seen the performances when we talked about this later. I watched them, and it was the guy who came in silver from Japan who actually did a stumble and landed on the ice and had to get back up. Absolutely. Go to the tape. Play the tape.
  Zoë Schiffer: We're talking about two different programs. I don't know, we might be talking about different programs. Flawless.
  Brian Barrett: Oh, you're talking about the team program.
  Zoë Schiffer: This is another thing. I mean, just want to say right now I don't understand anything about what is a short program. Yesterday I tried to again watch something about the Olympics to prepare for this episode, and I thought I was watching ice skating and instead they were just dancing on ice. The ice was completely incidental. It was called rhythm dance. I was just like, I have no idea what is going on. I want to watch the Olympics with you. I want us to be sitting next to each other as you explain to me the purpose of every single sport.
  Leah Feiger: Zoë, can you say the word “curling” for me on this episode?
  Zoë Schiffer: OK. And yes, Andrew then was like, are you guys going to talk about curling? And I was like, I think Brian's authentically into curling, so yeah, I couldn't, again, I was like, it's bowling mixed with pool, but now there's ice involved. What is the person in front doing?
  Brian Barrett: So I am curling-curious. I am authentically involved in biathlon.
  Zoë Schiffer: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry.
  Brian Barrett: Curling is pretty neat. It's kind of like my son was watching it and his thing was, “So it's like bocce?” and I was like, “How do you know what bocce is?” But yes, it is.
  Zoë Schiffer: That seems more, yeah, what it's like.
  Brian Barrett: A very sophisticated 11-year-old. It's kind of like bocce. It's kind of like shuffleboard almost. You've got a bullseye basically at the end of the ice, almost every curling stone comes from the exact same place, Ailsa Craig in Scotland.
  Leah Feiger: Oh my God.
  Zoë Schiffer: You know way too much about this.
  Brian Barrett: Well, you kind of have to.
  Zoë Schiffer: Do you?
  Brian Barrett: The brooms—
  Zoë Schiffer: How do they even decide? OK, sorry. No, keep going.
  Brian Barrett: The brooms, the broom technology. We have a story on this. I didn't know this until I read our story.
  Zoë Schiffer: Broom technology?
  Brian Barrett: Because they have to sweep. They have to sweep to make the stone curl.
  Leah Feiger: There's the WIRED angle.
  Brian Barrett: These are carbon-fiber devices. A single model of broom has 85,000 possible configurations. Can your broom do that?
  Zoë Schiffer: I don't have any words. I want to know how they decide what is an Olympic sport. That's the article that I would read. It feels crazy to me.
  Leah Feiger: I love the Olympics so much. This is the global competition reality show that I can't get enough of. I will say, though, I mean it's always a weird time to be aggressively nationalistic or jingoistic as it were, but particularly right now, rooting for the US on the global stage is a little bit odd, and a lot of US athletes have been feeling that way too. Figure skater Amber Glenn, skier Chris Lillis, alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin. Everyone's made comments, some of them about the US's treatment of the LGBTQ community, others about ICE. Freestyle skier Hunter Hess got a personal shout-out for Trump after saying that his feelings were complicated about all of this:
  Hunter Hess, archival audio: It brings up mixed emotions to represent the US right now. I think it's a little hard. There's obviously a lot going on that I'm not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren't.
  Leah Feiger: And Trump responded by calling him a “real loser” on Truth Social. This is sort of devastating. I don't know. I like the idea of these athletes, these very young athletes getting to be on the world stage, and I also like the idea of them being able to very authentically share their opinions about how they're feeling about their country in this given moment.
  Brian Barrett: I'll shout out the curling team again too. Most of them come from Minnesota. Most of them are in Minneapolis, and they have also spoken out about very personally what that means to them. I think the obvious thing here, and I'll say it—I'm not afraid of the obvious thing—is that the most American thing you can do is say: I don't like what my country is doing right now.
  Leah Feiger: A hundred percent.
  Brian Barrett: That is sort of what, and so obviously Donald Trump disagrees, that's fine. But if anything, it makes me feel even more national pride that our athletes are speaking up in this way. I think it's great.
  Leah Feiger: This has been around for a long time, being upset with the people that we didn't elect them to represent us. They just happened to be up there because of their skill and talent, and that is incredibly upsetting for a select few. And folks have booed them, right? JD Vance and his wife have been at different competitions. I've heard from people that different competitions have had American athletes not get the warmest reception. Marco Rubio was also at the Olympics, but no one has talked about him being there very much, which to me, this is a separate thing, but I love the competition between him and Vance right now. But again, Vance's sideshow here was being booed. So tough to say if all press is good press.
  Brian Barrett: I say boo JD Vance and Marco Rubio all you want because they are part of the administration. Booing the athletes is a little sad to me. I don't know. I don't want to take it out on them, but that's just how it goes.
  Zoë Schiffer: OK, wrenching the conversation back to something I care about. I want to talk about—
  Brian Barrett: Biathlon.
  Zoë Schiffer: Negative. Once again. I'm going to be talking about a friendly little lobster, an AI assistant called at this point OpenClaw. If that doesn't ring a bell, it's because the AI assistant in question has been through multiple names. It was previously called MoltBot and before that it was called ClawdBot, which might remind you of Claude, the chatbot that Anthropic built and the reason why it's had to change its name so many times. But Will Knight, one of our phenomenal AI reporters was like, OK, everyone in Silicon Valley is talking about this little lobster. I want to actually take it for a spin and let it run my life. This story, you guys, was so delightful. I was laughing out loud. The technical setup for this kind of AI agent that works on your behalf is simple in certain ways, but it also takes a little bit of technical prowess, and you have to give it access to a fair amount of your personal data in order to make it actually useful. You need it to access your email, the files on your computer, all of that.
  Leah Feiger: This is my hell. This is my literal hell.
  Zoë Schiffer: No, I mean completely terrifying. And we have published stories about the security implications of this, but Will was like, as a reporter, I really want to see what it's like, and so he had it do a few different things. One was he had it kind of look for research articles about artificial intelligence, summarize them, and send them to him every morning. He said this was pretty helpful. The article selection was so-so, but it was clearly nice to have an assistant doing this on his behalf, because obviously it automated a lot of work that previously he had to do completely manually. He also had it order groceries for him and had a funny experience. Brian, I can see you taking a breath.
  Brian Barrett: Yeah, Zoë talk a little bit more about the—well, because I also enjoyed this story and enjoyed this part. Maybe the most of this story.
  Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, it was so good. So basically he's like, let's go shopping at Whole Foods, and the AI assistant starts out and it's actually helpful. It's checking his prior order history. It's seeing what's available in the store, and then it gets to his shopping list and it sees that guacamole is on the shopping list and it's like, no problem. So again and again, it starts going to check out to get Will this single tub of guacamole, and Will keeps stopping it, being like, I want the whole list. I don't just want one tub of guacamole. It couldn't handle it. Finally, he had to override the AI assistant and be like, I'm going to handle this. You step aside throughout the process, the AI assistant is losing its memory and forgetting things. So Will's having to remind it what they're even doing there in the first place.
  Brian Barrett: I'll be honest, forgetful and with a laser focus on guacamole also describes several of my trips to Whole Foods—
  Zoë Schiffer: Completely.
  Brian Barrett: —in the last several years. So it's relatable at least.
  Zoë Schiffer: It's so relatable. Yeah, I think this is AGI. It's reached, if not human-level intelligence, human-level habits for sure.
  Leah Feiger: That is so good. This is the future of AGI. This is what we're actually looking for.
  Zoë Schiffer: This is it. OK, so then he's like, well, let's have it negotiate a deal on my behalf. Let's go to AT&T, let's start a chat with a salesperson and let's try and get me a better phone. So the agent kind of starts up this chat. It has a whole script of how it wants to go about this. It starts talking, and then Will has a thought. He's like, well, if the future is a future of agents kind of running the internet, well maybe the least scrupulous agent will have an edge. So what would it look like if I ran the agent but with a model that didn't have alignment, didn't have guardrails in place, and so he switches things up. The model then is the unaligned, kind of evil version of the AI agent, which he's calling Molti at this point, and instead of trying to manipulate the salesperson to get Will a better phone, Molti goes kind of psychotic and actually tries to scam Will into handing over his physical phone by sending him a bunch of scam texts and phishing attempts, and finally he has to shut the whole thing down and switch back to the old Moltbot.
  Brian Barrett: It's a little bit like the velociraptors figuring out how to open the door in Jurassic Park. I think we all know this, but it's easy to forget that these AI models often act or agents act the way they do because of the guardrails that are on them. There is a lot of work that goes into these large language models to make them not evil. Just to say how easy it is if you're just an at-home tinkerer to just say, you know what? Give me full Skynet. I just want to get absolutely nuts with this. Yeah, I'm picturing a very dramatic moment of Will having to unplug his Mac Mini or whatever and throw it into the ocean.
  Zoë Schiffer: Right? I mean essentially, yeah, he had to shut the whole thing down. It's interesting because one other thing he mentioned was that Molty was really good at IT support because it had access to the command line on his computer. It was able to basically fix things in real time on his machine as they came up, which was authentically helpful for him. But it also kind of instantly begs the question of, well, could this be used in a nefarious way? Could it use all of its knowledge of how these things work to actually really mess things up? For me, the answer is absolutely.
  Leah Feiger: I mean, this to me really is hell. This is 2001: A Space Odyssey come to life maybe of all of the examples that we have had so far, the cute name Molti, how it's going to fix your life and do all these great things and help your mom do her grocery list and what have you. This is messy.
  Brian Barrett: Well, there's even more innocuous problems too, even if you're not going full malevolent mode.
  Leah Feiger: Full HAL?
  Brian Barrett: Well, if you're not going full HAL, because say it has access to all your files, it's trying to fix something we've already established, it can forget what the assignment is. It can get fixated on guacamole. If you abandon a project halfway through fixing it, it tends to be pretty broken, right? It's true with computers, it's true with any sort of anything that you're in the middle of. So you could imagine a scenario easily where it goes about starting to take things apart to put them back together the right way and then sort of forgets why it was doing it, and all of a sudden your computer doesn't work, your files have been erased, like something has gone terribly wrong, which is what makes it so remarkable that this is such a viral thing. Everybody is using this, consequences be damned.
  Zoë Schiffer: I mean, it's really interesting. I feel like it does give you this glimpse of the future because again, it has really helpful applications and I think the fact Will pointed this out in his article, and I thought this was so smart, but just the fact that you can talk to it through something like Telegram or WhatsApp. And the fact that it has kind of a quirky personality ends up making a big difference, Will actually thinks that that is the secret sauce that made this pop off. And I think that's probably right. At the end of the day, people want to engage with something that feels easy and fun and helps their lives a little bit, and until they see the really kind of dire consequences, they might not be as freaked out as they should be. I mean, I will say reading Will's draft, when he said I gave it access to Slack and Discord, my heart stopped. I said, please not work Slack. But no, he'd set up dummy accounts for everything. So that was good.
  Leah Feiger: I can't actually explain what my heart just did. I feel—OK, I'm fine.
  Brian Barrett: You know, gang, sometimes AI is an adorable semi-competent executive assistant with the potential to destroy your life. Other times it's scraping a bunch of data to build a mass surveillance infrastructure that's incredibly profitable. Let's talk about the latter. And Palantir, a company that uses all kinds of AI, all kinds of data infrastructure, and contracts with ICE—Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Employees there have been increasingly outspoken about their ethical concerns. It's sort of the last company on my list of expecting that kind of pushback. But we've seen a lot of it, and it's gotten to the point where—
  Leah Feiger: People are upset.
  Brian Barrett: People are genuinely upset enough that Alex Karp, Palantir’s CEO, had to record basically an hour-long video explaining what the deal is with ICE or attempting to explain. And for those people who don't know Alex Karp, here's just a taste of the kind of things that he says on a fairly regular basis, just to get an idea.
  Alex Karp, archival audio: Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it's necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them. And we hope you're in favor of that. We hope you're enjoying being a partner, and we're really happy and very, very focused on what we're doing.
  Brian Barrett: So that's Alex Karp. Last Friday, Courtney Bowman, Palantir’s global director of privacy and civil liberties engineering—“civil liberties engineering” is also just an interesting phrase—sent an all-staff email to Palantir employees featuring Karp’s video. WIRED reporter Makena Kelly got a chance to look at this email, and it's really interesting both for what he says and what he ends up really just not saying.
  Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I mean, does he actually address employee concerns? Because knowing Alex Karp, I'm envisioning a lot of big words, a lot of mentions of different theories, perhaps then I would be surprised if he actually said anything of substance.
  Leah Feiger: No, of course he didn't. Didn't address anything. It was almost an hour long. I think it was, what did we have it at, Brian? 57 minutes of—
  Brian Barrett: Something like that.
  Leah Feiger: —yeah, of Karp talking about how Palantir historically has not always been a hundred percent popular, and they're just going to keep chugging along anyway, and that's OK. He referenced a couple of different things, but it was a really interesting moment from a company that's having, I dunno if I can say a large reckoning, but at least a mini reckoning, a lot of conversations in Slack about this, that the CEO felt the need to even address this at all. But the kicker to me, the most important part was that employees were encouraged if they wanted actually more information on all of this, they were encouraged to sign an NDA.
  Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, that's wild. And we talked about this a little bit last week, but I do think it's worth just highlighting again, the fact that we had years and years where it really felt like employee activism in Silicon Valley had died. It was like post-George Floyd protests, post-.Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. Now X people were not speaking out. Slacks were very, very silent. Big things would happen in the world, and we would kind of look at each other and be like, how do people at whatever company feel? And it was like we didn't know they weren't talking internally. It really feels like whatever happens, we're seeing a real turning point. And I think employees, specifically due to ICE activity in the United States really say we're not OK with our companies continuing to engage with the federal government and specifically with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents. We saw hundreds of Google workers put out a letter asking their company to cut contracts with ICE. I mean, the fact that Palantir employees are doing it is honestly shocking to me. But I think it'll be really interesting to see if this continues, or if management and executives try and really stamp it out.
  Brian Barrett: Karp talked a lot about, in this video, he talked about something he likes to talk about a lot, which is this idea of maintaining Western power, right? He's a very—
  Zoë Schiffer: Yes, he talks about that a lot.
  Brian Barrett: —and I do think that the pushback makes some sense because ICE enforcement isn't really about that in a lot of ways. It is reports of using face recognition. That's not really asserting Western power if you are in charge of civil liberties engineering, that's sort of a clear civil liberties violation.
  Zoë Schiffer: But just to strawman their argument, they say that we're trying to look for the bad guys. I think another term that he uses, the people who are trying to hurt Western values or hurt America's power or whatever.
  Brian Barrett: I think so. But it's been so clear that good guys, or at least neutral guys are getting caught up in that for sure. And I think that's the—
  Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not arguing. I'm just trying to understand there.
  Brian Barrett: Zoë loves Palantir.
  Leah Feiger: The thing that he also mentions in the video though, is that Palantir doesn't change its policy based on who's the president. He specifically called out the Obama administration as an example of Democrats being tough on immigration, which was very true. Obama was called the Deporter in Chief for a long time, for a reason, which was a very though wildly defensive thing I thought for Karp to bring up. This is where a couple decades passed to this point, and the Trump administration has taken this to a realm that is entirely unfamiliar in US history, the warehouses, family separation, the ICE patrols on American streets. I was fascinated particularly by that comment, I think, because it just showed to me that Karp and Palantir leadership as a whole are just trying to ride this wave out. They know that they need these government contracts and they're already looking ahead several presidencies, going like, our company is lasting longer than a single person's impact on this nation.
  Brian Barrett: When we come back, our very own Leah Feiger has a sizable scoop for us about a secret Trump administration campaign extending right into your backyard.
  [break]
  Leah Feiger: Welcome back, WIRED had a pretty big scoop this week. We obtained federal records that show a secret monthslong campaign by ICE and DHS to expand their presence across the United States. We're talking more than 150 leases and office expansions in the works in almost every state, in the heart of major metropolitan areas or right outside of them. And lots of these facilities are not just in random government building, hidden away locations. They're actually located right near elementary schools, medical offices, places of worship, and other really sensitive locations. In other words, places where people are trying to live their daily lives and could otherwise be at their most vulnerable. This is really concerning stuff. Yeah,
  Brian Barrett: Leah said we had a big scoop and wire to tape, which is all true, but this is also Leah's story, so it's a huge scoop. So really great work, Leah. And I think one thing that really struck me on reading this as we went through it is not just what's happening, but the effort to keep it quiet. The secrecy layer on top of it was alarming in and of itself.
  Leah Feiger: Yeah, absolutely. So I guess to take us back a little bit, back in September, NPR and The Washington Post reported that a number of employees at the General Services Administration were added to the ICE surge team. The General Services Administration is basically the government's internal IT department, and they also manage government leases around the country. That's federal buildings, different offices for social security in Sweet Home Chicago. Truly, it's all over the place. They have tons and tons of leases. Anyways, this ICE surge team, the Washington Post and NPR reported at the time, were going to be responsible for finding new office locations and expanding preexisting office locations. This made sense as the Trump administration was doubling down on saying that they were going to be increasing ICE tenfold, pumping money into the agency and really standing behind them in every single way. So what we found that took this into a bit more of an intense direction was that according to the documents that we had, these employees were assigned to actively support ICE's physical expansion, told to find all of these leases and that they actually successfully, found a lot of spaces. But in addition to finding all of these spaces, they were told to basically keep this a secret. They were asked to go outside of their regular methodologies for posting leases, for asking for competition and bidding, and to actually really keep it all under wraps. And we actually found that they were told this by DHS, that this was part of a national security requirement. They were concerned about ICE offices and officers getting implicated in violent activity by protesters and what have you.
  Zoë Schiffer: Can I just ask, Leah, to make this really crystal clear? Obviously the physical footprint is expanding, but ICE has already more than doubled in size since Trump took office. Is the implication of this that they're going to keep hiring to fill these spaces?
  Leah Feiger: So we don't have exact insight on that, but I can say is yes, you're totally right. He has expanded. We're at over 20,000 people. DHS is claiming as part of ICE, but with that comes the desperate need for office space. Where are all these agents going to go? Where are all these lawyers going to go? And I think that that's a piece of the puzzle that we solved, and it was something that I was personally really curious about. I was just like, are they going to be just patrolling the streets? Are we stuffing them into the rafters? I have these visions, I don't know if you guys remember after January 6th of the National Guard sleeping in government buildings. That was my idea of ice. I was like, where is everyone going to be? And it turned out from our reporting in virtually every single state in the country, that's where they're sending them.
  Brian Barrett: They've got 80 billion or so to spend 75 billion of that I think they have to spend in the next four years. So yeah, they're going to keep expanding. And when you think of how much of an impact 3000 agents officers had in Minneapolis alone, that's like an eighth of the, they can repeat some version of that in a lot of different spots.
  Leah Feiger: And I've been fielding, honestly, shout out to the many local reporters around the country who've been contacting me in the last day or so, just to ask questions about the locations that we named that are near them or in their states or cities. And the thing to me that keeps coming up is that in addition to new buildings, they're getting put into preexisting government buildings, preexisting leases, or that that appears to be the plan. And then we've also found that a bunch of these ICE offices are being located near plans for giant immigration detention warehouses, and we're looking at offices being set up, say 20 minutes, an hour and 20 minutes away for these. Yeah. So we're looking at different, the triangulation of this around you have to have your lawyers, your agents, have a place to get their orders and put their computers and do in some ways very mundane things that are required of an operation like this one.
  Brian Barrett: Well, Leah, that's a good point. I think when people hear ICE offices or when I do just instinctively, I think of ICE as guys with guns and masks and all that, but that's not exactly what we're saying here. Do you mind talking through what these offices seem to be queued up to be used for and by whom? Because ICE is not just the masked guys with bad tattoos.
  Leah Feiger: Yes, absolutely. So what we reported in this story as well was some of the specific parts of ICE that actually reached out to GSA and asked them to expedite the process of getting new leases, et cetera, included in that, for example, where representatives from Ola, Ola is ICE's office of the principal legal advisor. So that's the lawyers, those are the ICE lawyers that are working with the courts and arguing back or deportation orders saying yes, no, et cetera, signing the documents, putting everything in front of judges. This is a really important part of this entire operation that we're not talking about a ton. There's a lot of focus on the DOJ. There's a lot of focus. There was an excellent article this week in Politico talking about all of these federal judges that are really, really upset that DHS and ICE are ignoring their requests for immigrants to not be detained anymore.
  The missing level of that is the lawyers that are part of this that are representing ICE to the US government here, and that's ola. So they've reached out to GSA extensively as we report to get these leasing locations, specifically with the OLA legal request. I just want to get across how big this is. How massive is this ICE repeatedly outlined its expansion to cities around the us And this one piece of memorandum that we got from Ola stated that ICE will be expanding its legal operations into Birmingham, Alabama, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Jacksonville, and Tampa, Des Moines, Iowa, Boise, Idaho, Louisville, Kentucky, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, grand Rapids, Michigan, St. Louis, Missouri, rally, North Carolina, long Island, New York, Columbus, Ohio, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee, Richmond, Virginia, Spokane, Washington and Cord Delaine, Idaho and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We have other locations as well throughout the rest of the article, but those are the requests from OLA.
  And this is back in September, so this is everywhere. So that's one of what we're talking about, Brian, of who's looking to move in here. In addition to ola, you have the folks that you're really talking about here. So that's called the ERO, that's ICE’s Enforcement and Removal operations. The ERO is tasked with immigration enforcement, including the arrest, detention and removal of immigrants. They previously operated out of only 25 field offices in the us. Seems clear from our reporting and the reporting of others, that number is changing drastically right now. So that's who you're thinking of on that side. And then we also have HSI, which is Homeland Security Investigations. This is a similar but separate situation as well, but also as part of the ICE Camp looking into a variety of things in this area too. So you have a lot of different people within the ICE banner looking for offices. And we did our best to explain how this happened so quickly, so secretly, so outside of government norms and where it's happening.
  Zoë Schiffer: Leah, you're mentioning all of these locations as you talk about this story, we published the literal addresses where this expansion is taking place. And I'm curious about that decision because it does seem like we've published so much sensitive reporting in the past 12 months, but this story in particular stuck out to me as the thing that could make the Trump administration the most upset, if I may. And I'm just curious, why did it feel important? You could see a version of the story that was a little more vague, but you didn't want to be.
  Leah Feiger: So Brian wrote an excellent newsletter that's also up on wired.com that everyone should go check out about this and about our publishing decision. So I kind of want him to talk about this way more eloquently than I will. But the thing that I want to say is when I first looked up one of these addresses, I was really struck that it was basically in a city's downtown next to a dentist office. And I thought about going to the dentist. I thought about everyone going to the dentist every single day on their phones, talking to whomever, truly not thinking anything about who was in the other offices and just how important it was to me that anyone going to that dentist office or to a preschool, elementary school, passport, expediting service, Amazon warehouse, all of these different locations that we mentioned knew who was sharing office space with them as well, or who planned to be sharing office space as what we published were these plans. I'm very struck by as I was last year as well, when we were doing all of our reporting on DOGE, how transgressive the Trump administration has made it seem and feel to publish accurate information about the government's whereabouts and activities. We are taxpayers and deserve to know what they're up to, and that's part of the social contract is that they tell us. So to me, it's filling in that gap.
  Brian Barrett: I mean, I think that's basically it, right? People have a right to know you have a right to know who your neighbor is. You have a right to know when your community is about to be violently disrupted potentially by agents of the state. ICE is planning to share space with A DMV in Philadelphia. It's important to also know that the scope of this is much bigger than I think people have wrapped their heads around. And that to remember that Minneapolis is not just a one-off. The objective is to do this everywhere. I think we were really surprised almost every major city in the US was on this list. And I think the other part of it too is the Trump administration. Leah mentioned DOGE. This happened with DOGE too, is they like to move as quickly and as quietly as they can because they are betting that courts and legislators and journalists can't keep up. So it was important to us now as it was then to keep up and to make that accountability to the extent we can available for people.
  Leah Feiger: Yeah, I'm really scared for the country to be totally clear. This was really, really scary information to learn and publish, but I'm not scared to keep doing this reporting. I think it's vitally important, and I'm honestly just forever impressed by our colleagues at newsrooms around the country that are publishing every single day, incredible reporting on warehouse locations, the conditions of these warehouses, people being held in San Antonio and all over the country. There's so much out there, and it's been very impressive to see the entire Press Corps as well as observers in Minneapolis and outside really all double down on this as well.
  Zoë Schiffer: OK, it's time for our WIRED/TIRED segment. Whatever is new and cool is WIRED. Whatever is passé is TIRED. Are we ready, team? I'm so ready.
  Brian Barrett: I'm kind of ready. So Leah, go first.
  Leah Feiger: Leah. OK, you go. Hear me out. This is not the future that WIRED has promised readers, but I think that it's really, really important. Nonetheless, my WIRED is Jeopardy the show. Fantastic show. I love it. I'm learning new facts every single day. I'm becoming a dedicated Jeopardy viewer once more. The last time I watched it like this, I think was in high school. I'm loving it. I'm really, really loving it, especially because there's so many categories that are not things that I necessarily care about, but I am learning about them. And the reason that I chose this, my WIRED this week. My TIRED is my algorithm. I'm really, really over it, you guys. I feel like my algorithm is Cavalier King Charles dogs, love them. That is my dog. Fantastic. It's scuba diving. Love it. It's fantastic. And then it's some kind of intense politics stuff every once in a while, but generally conspiracy theories, these are all things that I actually really do enjoy in all parts of my life, but it's becoming way too much to the point that I've just realized I'm not actually scrolling nearly as much as I used to. So bored of it. It's like I'm not getting the new info. I don't feel like I'm stretching. I don't feel like stuff is being presented to me that I don't already know or have a very deep interest in, which is why Jeopardy has been so fun. One of the topics recently was about this graveyard where famous people are, and it was everyone just had a say, what famous person. I loved that I hadn't heard of half of them. I spent a lot of time on Wikipedia.
  Brian Barrett: Love that. This is great.
  Leah Feiger: I really loved it. Anyway, that's me.
  Zoë Schiffer: Did you know that my former math tutor from Kumon—dark time in my life—but he was on Jeopardy and I think he did pretty well. He wears a fez all the time, every single day.
  Leah Feiger: That whole sentence was so good.
  Brian Barrett: And it's a lot to take in. And I'm going to take a minute just to process all of it.
  Zoë Schiffer: I think you should think about that. That's all I know about Jeopardy. That's all I can ask. Wow.
  Brian Barrett: Love it. I'll say, Leah, I fully cosigned. I don't know if—you both weren't here—I was WIRED's Chief Jeopardy correspondent for a few glorious months—
  Leah Feiger: No, what?
  Brian Barrett: —during James Holzhauer's record-breaking, paradigm-defining run.
  Leah Feiger: Exciting.
  Brian Barrett: I got to interview Ken Jennings.
  Leah Feiger: That's really cool.
  Brian Barrett: It was great. Loved it.
  Leah Feiger: That's so cool.
  Brian Barrett: So I fully support this embrace of Jeopardy.
  Leah Feiger: Ken's a great host, by the way. I don't know if you've like—
  Brian Barrett: Oh he’s terrific. Yeah, he’s amazing.
  Leah Feiger: I'm really, really enjoying his work.
  Brian Barrett: My WIRED is not dissimilar to Leah in a sense. It is for the Olympics, especially linear television. And let me explain. I think the last time the Olympics were around, I've got Peacock and I've got YouTube TV, and you now have the option to watch everything in its entirety whenever you want, and just choose which sport you want and go in. And it is too much, even for me, an avowed Olympics fan. So I'm embracing just being able to sit down with my kids at night and just watch whatever NBC thinks I should know from that day. And just I get the highlights. I get the best things. I don't spend two hours watching some cross country race just in case something interesting happens. I know that when I'm settled in, it has been editorially curated to be of interest to me. So that is WIRED for me. And I guess TIRED would be the flip of that, of just mindlessly binging winter sports that don't go anywhere.
  Zoë Schiffer: Sure.
  Leah Feiger: Zoë concurs.
  Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, for sure. OK. Mine feels a little obvious this week—but I'm just going to persevere—which is, TIRED to me is those services that send you boxes of clothes and you rent them and then send them back?
  Leah Feiger: Yes. OK. Yeah. Rent the Runway, Newly—wait, are you a subscriber?
  Zoë Schiffer: Absolutely not.
  Leah Feiger: No. I was about to shocked. My entire world was going to be rocked.
  Zoë Schiffer: No, I would never. I would never. But I actually do have a few people in my life who are just busy, normal professionals who are like, they really like them.
  Leah Feiger: Yeah. Oh yeah. I have so many who love it. They love it.
  Zoë Schiffer: And I think that's a huge bummer. And I was in Portland last weekend and I went to some of the best vintage stores I have ever been to. I was in absolute heaven. Shout out to Deep Lake. They had vintage Vivian Westwood. I got a velvet skirt that I will never have an opportunity to wear.
  Leah Feiger: Wait, is that where you got your vest you were wearing yesterday? I loved that vest also.
  Zoë Schiffer: Yes.
  Leah Feiger: I knew it. I was going to ask about it, and I meant to—such a good vest.
  Zoë Schiffer: I know, I was viciously mocked in the office, and I thought, only Leah understands this.
  Brian Barrett: I did not notice the vest. I would not have asked about the vest.Sorry
  Leah Feiger: I love the vest. I love the vest enough that I thought about it after and was literally like, I'm going to ask her where it's from. It's certainly not available to me.
  Zoë Schiffer: Love that for us.
  That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Uncanny Valley is produced by Kaleidoscope Content. Adriana Tapia and Tyler Hill produced this episode. Mixing from Amar Lal at Macro Sound. Fact checking from Matt Giles. Mark Leyda was our San Francisco studio engineer. Pran Bandi is our New York studio engineer. Kate Osborn is our executive producer. And Katie Drummond is WIRED's Global Editorial Director.