kill switch

Tech companies are constantly putting out new products to chase the hype – but they’re not all winners. Each year, nonprofit consumer advocates put on an award ceremony recognizing the lousiest of the bunch, called the Worst in Show. Dexter talks with Liz Chamberlain, who runs Worst in Show, about this year’s awards, the products that earned them (spoiler: a product featured during the Super Bowl is on the list), and what we risk when we chase the hype (read: add AI to everything).
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up [email protected], or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Read + Watch:
This year’s Worst In Show: https://www.ifixit.com/News/115344/worst-in-show-returns-at-ces-2026-calling-out-gadgets-that-make-things-worse
Worst In Show website: https://www.worstinshowces.com/
kill switch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@killswitch_pod
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For a while, the internet felt like it might actually work. Dexter talks with legal scholar and author Tim Wu about his new book The Age of Extraction and how that early optimism faded as companies learned how to extract value from just about everything.
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up [email protected], or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Read + Watch:
The Age of Extraction, by Tim Wu: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/691177/the-age-of-extraction-by-tim-wu/
kill switch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@killswitch_pod
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When an editor at a local magazine in Toronto received a pitch from a promising new freelancer, he didn’t expect it to spiral into an obsessive investigation. What followed was a deep dive into a web of fake interviews, impossible bylines, and fake reporting. Dexter talks with Nicholas Hune-Brown to trace how he uncovered an AI journalist and what it reveals about journalism today.
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up [email protected], or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Read:
“Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era” https://thelocal.to/investigating-scam-journalism-ai/
“The Fallout From Our AI Freelancer Investigation” https://thelocal.to/fallout-from-ai-freelancer-investigation/
The Local’s recent issue, “The Cost of Care” https://thelocal.to/winter-2026/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 2005, Myspace pages were flooded with the saying “Samy is my hero” and then suddenly, the platform went dark. Dexter talks with Jack Rhysider, host of the podcast Darknet Diaries, about Samy Kamkar, how he accidentally took down the biggest social media platform at the time, and how it changed the modern Internet.
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up [email protected], or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Listen:
Jack’s Darknet Diaries episode with Samy: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/61/
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From language learning to investments to Amazon leaderboards, it seems like everything has become a game. But are these gamified things actually fun, or are we the ones being played? Dexter talks to philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, who recently wrote a book about why gamification can suck the life out of things called The Score. They talk about why the same mechanism in games and gamified metrics – the scoring system – works so differently, why gamification can trick you into caring about the wrong thing, and how this phenomenon hits everything… even baptisms.
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up [email protected], or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Read:
C. Thi Nguyen’s book, The Score: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/735252/the-score-by-c-thi-nguyen/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.