This Machine Kills

We round up and run down many of the big themes that we think will be important in the coming year and demand our sustained critical attention. Our analysis spans from the new golden age of crypto to ...

10 Jan 20251h 30min

We get into an excellent new report on the rise of on-demand platforms for nursing, which have spurred further exploitation of labor and degradation of care in an industry that has already been hollow...

30 Des 20249min

[Note: we explain TMK's new structure from 0:00-10:28, so skip that to get straight into the episode] We dive into the market for catastrophe bonds (or, “cat bonds”) and talk about how this complex f...

23 Des 20241h 27min

First we talk about the unholy trinity of Anduril, Palantir, and OpenAI working together to secure major contracts from the Pentagon for networking data systems and training AI models. Then we get int...

19 Des 20246min

We’ve got a great reading series that redirects our attention to another big bugbear of TMK: the destruction – and salvation – of nature via asset markets and risk management. We talk about how the bu...

15 Des 20241h 5min

We tie together a number of things: first, the assassination of UnitedHealth Group’s CEO and the reactions to this event; second, a new startup in the Thiel family that rehabilitates Sauron as a shini...

10 Des 20247min

We talk about the legal battles that Musk and Amazon are waging against the National Labor Relations Board, in part by claiming the NLRB is unconditional because it violates employers’ rights to a tri...

7 Des 20241h 22min

We chat about Ed’s brilliant critical review of the new book AI Snake Oil and talk about the shortcomings of analysis that are so focused on demystifying the hype about what AI can do that the hype be...

4 Des 20249min