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#1876

Anthropic’s $5 Million Push to Measure AI’s Effect on Wellbeing

In this episode, Ray Cochrane records from the Michigan studio on the one year anniversary of losing the show's original host, Todd Cochrane. The featured story is Anthropic's $5 million grant program, which pays outside researchers to measure whether AI is actually good for the people using it. Ray also covers Anthropic's Enterprise Frontier Safeguards, Google's Fairwind cyber defense program, Meta's organizational second brain, sixteen green AI projects across Asia-Pacific, an Oklahoma Bitcoin mine condemned after leaking 3.8 million gallons of water, BepiColombo closing in on Mercury, and the 2026 Ig Nobel Prizes.

#1872 47:33

The Robot That Imagines First

In this episode, Ray Cochrane breaks down NVIDIA's case for world action models, the shift that swaps a robot's picture-describing backbone for one trained to predict what happens next. He also covers Perseverance closing in on the off-world driving record, a derelict SpaceX rocket stage hitting the Moon, and Anthropic's rework of Claude Fable 5's biology safeguards. Finally, he digs into Gemini Omni, Google's undisclosed trip-planning rankings, the Danube's record low, and iFixit's call for Apple to unlock the iPad bootloader.

#1868 32:47

Claude Science: AI Workbench for Scientists

In this episode, Ray Cochrane digs into Claude Science, Anthropic's new AI workbench for researchers, and explains why its auditable, reproducible outputs matter more than the AI itself. He also covers Google's June AI recap, the Pulpie web-cleaning model, the PamStealer Mac malware, a synthetic cell that divides on its own, and the first-ever treatment trial for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola. Finally, he looks skyward with NASA's year-long Mars simulation and a can't-miss July skywatching night.

#1867 42:16

The $200k Star Wars LEGO Consignment War

In this episode, Chris Cochrane leads with a $200,000 Star Wars LEGO collection that exploded into lawsuits, arrests, and a YouTube crusade. Additional stories cover Summer Game Fest 2026, the first Enhanced Games where doping is allowed, an AI collar that claims to translate your dog, Microsoft's new in-house AI coding models, an AI-industry letter urging Congress to screen synthetic DNA, and Blue Origin's New Glenn exploding on the test stand.

#1866 32:57

Colliding Black Holes Reveal a Whirlpool in Spacetime

In this episode, Ray Cochrane unpacks how two colliding black holes revealed a whirlpool in spacetime, a direct detection of frame dragging hidden in the cleanest gravitational-wave signal ever recorded. Additional stories cover the James Webb Space Telescope, counting 16.5 million stars in the Cigar Galaxy, SpaceX rolling out Starship V3, deadly back-to-back earthquakes in Venezuela, GitHub fighting a California law that could break open source, and Meta engineering a battery narrow enough to live in a pair of glasses.

#1857 55:21

OpenClaw, Moltbook and the Rise of AI Agent Societies

This episode kicks off with Moltbook, a social network exclusively for AI agents where 150,000 agents formed digital religions, sold "digital drugs" (system prompts to alter other agents), and attempted prompt injection attacks to steal each other's API keys within 72 hours of launch. Ray breaks down OpenClaw, the viral open-source AI agent (68,000 GitHub stars) that handles emails, scheduling, browser control, and automation, plus MoltHub's risky marketplace where all downloaded skills are treated as trusted code. Also covered, Bluetooth "whisper pair" vulnerabilities letting attackers hijack audio devices from 46 feet away and access microphones, Anthropic patching Model Context Protocol flaws, AI-generated ransomware accidentally bundling its own decryption keys, Claude Code's new task dependency system and Teleport feature, Google Gemini's 100MB file limits and agentic vision capabilities, VAST's Haven One commercial space station assembly, and IBM SkillsBuild's free tech training for veterans.

#1854 40:14

The End of Deadzones and Japan’s new Laser Gunship

In this episode, Ray covers December Tech News! T-Mobile's groundbreaking Starlink satellite beta promises to eliminate dead zones using your regular phone with no special equipment needed. Also discussed: Japan's ship-mounted laser weapon with unlimited ammo, China's record-breaking 387 mph maglev train, Rivian challenging Tesla's camera-only approach with LiDAR, Google's Gemini-powered smart glasses, and physicists 3D printing ice sculptures just