The Interface
The Interface is a BBC podcast that offers a fast and funny take on how technology is changing everything. Hosted by journalists Tom Germain, Karen Hao, and Nicky Woolf, each episode unpacks the week's tech news stories that matter, from TikTok's geopolitical shifts to AI's impact on daily life. The show features no guests and no jargon, just three sharp voices debating the tech titans building our future.
Episodes
The battle to delete your embarrassing online history
What if you could delete your most embarrassing photos from the internet, even the ones other people posted? A new California law addendum lets the children of family vloggers demand that content of them be taken down when they turn 18, and parents and platforms have to comply. Could this be the future for everyone?
Thomas Germain and Jessica Maddox ask what happens when childhood becomes content,
Can AI feel pain?
Should you be nice to your chatbot? Anthropic says its Claude models will be able to end conversations if users are needlessly cruel. Thomas Germain and Jessica Maddox ask why AI companies are increasingly talking about AI welfare, and what it could mean for the rest of us if the industry starts weighing a model's wellbeing against ours.Tom and Jess dig into the research behind the claims, the onl
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen on the real Social Reckoning.
Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, joins Jess Maddox and Thomas Germain on The Interface to talk about The Social Reckoning, the new film that follows her story and acts as a sequel to The Social Network. It stars Mikey Madison as Haugen, alongside Jeremy Strong and Jeremy Allen White.Haugen, who leaked internal documents known as the Facebook Files in 2021, explains why she believes Meta
Should we let AI read our break-up emails?
The Interface returns for season two with a new co-host. BBC technology columnist Thomas Germain is joined by Jessica Maddox, a University of Georgia professor who studies memes and internet culture, to break down the tech stories that actually matter in your day-to-day life.Is AI going to kill us all? After high-profile tech workers warned of an AI apocalypse, Tom and Jess look at where the indus
Is tech ruining the World Cup?
This week on The Interface: is World Cup tech taking the human magic out of football?For our season finale before the summer break, Karen, Thomas and Nicky start with the World Cup - and ask what happens when football becomes a showcase for ever more technology. This year’s tournament has brought referee body cameras, faster semi-automated offside decisions, and more AI-powered match analysis for
Teens banned from social media - what next?
This week on The Interface: the UK’s under-16s social media ban - is America next?The UK is preparing to go further than almost any other country on children and social media: under-16s will be blocked from platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook and X, while messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal are expected to be excluded. Ministers are also considering overnight cur
Why is AI burying my CV?
This week on The Interface: is AI quietly sending your CV to the graveyard?Karen starts with the growing role of AI in hiring and why it may be far more powerful, and more worrying, than most jobseekers realise. Automated hiring systems are now used across large parts of the labour market, and Stanford researchers say a handful of dominant models are creating an “algorithmic monoculture”, where th
What goes on in TikTok's Farlands?
This week on The Interface: the horrifying world of the TikTok Farlands.Tom and Nicky head deep into the TikTok Farlands - the semi‑mythical place you supposedly reach if you scroll too far, too late, until your feed stops looking normal and starts serving up surreal, eerie and deeply unhinged videos. The name comes from Minecraft’s Far Lands, the glitched edge of the map where the world used to b
Can Pope Leo save us from AI?
Google is changing up its search engine. At its recent developer conference, among a host of new AI tools, it announced the biggest changes to Google Search in its history. What will we see now? An intelligent search box. Longer text predictions. More answers to search queries instead of a list of websites. But if Google keeps us inside the answer box, with fewer clicks and fewer website visits, t
Are we entering a world without screens?
Karen Hao’s away this week — but it’s a special episode: Thomas and Nicky welcome their first ever guest, senior reporter at MS NOW, Brandy Zadrozny, to decode the tech stories rewiring your week and your world.First: are we heading for a world without screens? Bloomberg reports Apple is in late‑stage testing of AirPods with tiny cameras - not for selfies, but to give Siri “eyes” so it can underst
Is AI harvesting your knowledge on the cheap?
AI is coming for your job — but not in the way you think.Karen says the real shock isn’t mass replacement (yet). It’s that AI is already reshaping work into something more precarious, more fragmented, and easier to squeeze. Data annotation and “AI training” are booming - but now the growth is in skilled labour. AI firms are hoovering up graduates and specialists to teach models the expertise they
Who is really paying the influencers?
Who is paying for the influencer campaign making you fear Chinese AI? A new report alleges a coordinated influencer marketing campaign urging audiences to back “American AI” while quietly stoking fear about Chinese AI. Marketing agencies are reportedly offering creators thousands of dollars per post to weave in “Team USA” talking points as lifestyle content - with limited transparency about who is
Why is everything a conspiracy?
What's the playbook that gets real‑world breaking news moments to become instant conspiracy theories? After an attempted attack at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, clips and early reports were quickly represented as “staged” narratives online. We dig into why big, chaotic events are now prime fuel for conspiracy thinking, how the state does little to suppress it and what this do
Is your iPhone about to change forever?
Tim Cook resigns: what does a new Apple boss mean for your smartphone?Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down later this year, with John Ternus — a long‑time hardware leader — named as his successor. We look past the boardroom drama and asks what this means for the thing most of us hold all day: your phone. Apple’s design choices set the tone for the entire industry; when Apple shifts, everyone else t
Is the new AI model really too dangerous to release?
Claude Mythos: is this a real risk or the AI industry’s latest fear campaign?Anthropic’s unreleased model, Claude Mythos, is being talked about in the headlines as the next genuinely dangerous leap in AI - powerful enough, the company says, that it can’t be safely released to the public. But we at The Interface think we should take this self created panic with big serving of caution. The AI indust
Will algorithms increase your grocery bill?
Walmart’s digital price tags. The retail giant is rolling out shelf labels that allow prices to be updated instantly across stores. This isn’t a new trend. Airlines and hotels constantly adjust pricing based on demand. But if grocery prices can change in real time, what will this mean for your bill? And will pricing ever be adjusted using customer data or behavioural signals to maximise profit? Ni
Why Can't People Stop Watching AI Fruit?
Infidelity in the fruit bowl; why are so many people watching AI generated fruit fall in and out of love? In a week of contrasting fortunes — Fruit Love Island, the TikTok synthetic‑reality hit, goes viral while OpenAI’s text‑to‑video tool Sora shuts down - Tom and Nicky ask what our love/hate relationship with “AI slop” says about taste, humour and, yes, misogyny. And who actually earns money whe
Can we prove we’re real online?
"Am I really real?"Tom runs a simple test, involving his dear Aunt Eleanor, with far‑reaching consequences: can a real human prove they’re not a machine? The experiment was sparked by two viral moments; Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu scrambling to show he was alive after a suspected fake image, and a too‑perfect “MAGA dream girl” who convinced millions she was real. We explore the “lia
What Was Pokemon Go really up to?
When we play a game or fill in a form, are we training robots without knowing it - and would we consent if asked?Remember Pokémon Go? The company behind it is repurposing the 30 billion images players captured to help robots navigate the real world. It’s the tip of a bigger trend: turning play into data collection. From CAPTCHAs to viral stunts like the Mannequin Challenge, our seemingly harmless
Will a new law change the internet forever?
What happens when the tools built to protect children risk exposing everyone else, and who should decide which parts of the internet are “safe” enough to access without showing ID?As lawmakers in the US push forward with the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a much bigger battle over the future shape of the internet is coming into view. At the heart of the debate is age verification, a measure design
Is AI running modern warfare?
As Washington moved toward a joint US and Israeli response to Iran, a parallel fight over military access to frontier AI broke into the open. Anthropic, maker of Claude, refused a Pentagon demand for “unrestricted” use of its models, citing red lines on domestic mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth then labelled the firm a “supply chain risk,” a designa
Is Havana Syndrome really real?
In 2016, diplomats reported a strange burst of sound — followed by months of debilitating symptoms. “Havana Syndrome” sparked questions and conspiracy theories across the web about a possible unseen weapon. Now, new reports from Norway describe a scientist experiencing similar effects after testing a microwave device. Host Nicky Woolf asks: if such technology exists, who owns it and what are they
Can you hack ChatGPT?
Do you trust the answers that AI chat bots like Chat GPT, Claude and Grok tell you? This week, The Interface put entirely fictitious information on the internet, to see if the AI chat bots would show any kind of caution in reporting it as the truth. They did not. Our example was about a made-up hot dog eating championship, but what if other operators out there are steering the AI towards more sini
Is your doorbell using AI to spy on you?
Ring’s new AI “lost dog” feature promises to reunite missing pets with their owners using doorbell camera footage. But could this same technology be used to build a far more sinister surveillance network? Our hosts take a closer look at Search Party, announced in an ad during this year’s Super Bowl, and explore why this seemingly feel-good function is sparking privacy concerns.Also on The Interfac
Trailer
Want to know how your world is changing, and what it will be like to live in a future being built for you right now? Don’t be distracted by politics - it’s tech driving that change.Karen Hao, Nicky Woolf and Tom Germain - three of the sharpest voices in tech - dive into the stories behind the headlines: AI breakthroughs, big-tech power, digital culture, cybersecurity, misinformation - and discover
