Hard Fork - What’s a Hard Fork?

Episode Date: September 27, 2022

Hosts Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore stories from the wild frontier of tech.What’s real? What’s hype? “Hard Fork” is here to help you make sense of it. Tune in every Friday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Casey, how would you describe our podcast, Hard Fork, to someone who's never heard of it before? I'd say the premise of our show is, what if an esteemed technology columnist for the New York Times was constantly interrupted by his gay friend? And then we just kind of did that for an hour. No, it's a lot more than that. It's a show where we talk about the news. So Sam Bankman-Fried is having one of the worst weeks because this week he went to jail. We'll go to a robot lab. Hello, Kevin and Casey. Ride around in self-driving cars.

We're getting picked up in a car called Banana Slug. And get creative with AI. Here's the prompt we gave ChatGPT. Give me a recipe for a cocktail that features all three of the following ingredients. Kiwi hot sauce, lavender, and lime. Oh my God. Cheers. Woo!

I've had worse cocktails. I'll be honest. We talked to the biggest players in tech, like the CEO of Google. I do think it's a bit ironic that Microsoft can call someone else an 800-pound gorilla, you know, given the scale and size of their company. We're talking to school teachers, college professors,

and listeners with real tech problems in their lives that need to be solved. Kate, should this person create a synthetic version of their beloved's voice and have it tell them that they love them? No, they should not. It's a conversation about tech and the future. We're two friends, both reporters. We get together once a week to talk about the biggest stories in tech.

And gossip a little. Let's be real. Oh, yeah. You can find Hard Fork wherever you get your podcasts.