Offline with Jon Favreau

224: The Big Tech Critic Trump Is Trying To Deport

Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, joins Offline to talk about the horrifying trends his team has unearthed across social media platforms…and how it’s put him in the crosshairs of the Trump Administration. To date, Imran has weathered multiple lawsuits, stood up to Elon Musk, and won. But now, the State Department is trying to get him deported back to the UK—just for publicizing how platforms are hotbeds of bigotry and self harm content. He and Jon talk about how Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is a cancer on our democracy, why Tech Oligarchs view the rest of us as NPCs, and how the “things" Silicon Valley is moving fast and breaking are actually our own children.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

223: Zuckerberg Takes the Stand, Pete Hegseth vs. AI, and Max-Maxxing with Max Fisher

Max Fisher returns to the show to podmaxx with Jon about the latest Offline-worthy news, including the landmark court case that's put Mark Zuckerberg on trial and internal drama at the AI giants that has the companies feuding with the Department of Defense, Hollywood, and their own employees. Plus, the two discuss the role citizens' social media videos have played in holding ICE agents accountable and attempt to make sense of Clavicular, a 20-year-old "looksmaxer" who has taken over their Twitter feeds.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

222: The Philosopher Teaching AI to Be Good

AI company Anthropic has a new, values-oriented “constitution” that they’re feeding their chatbot, Claude. Amanda Askell, the company’s in-house philosopher, joins Offline to talk about what it means to teach ethics to an LLM, whether the AI skews more human or more robot, and how she is training Claude to make its own judgements. Breaking with other AI models—and social media’s attention obsession—Amanda is trying to teach Claude not to be sycophantic or engagement-driven, but a kind soul who may, one day, be considered sentient.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

221: Can Truth Survive the Trump Era?

Charlie Warzel, Atlantic staff writer and host of the "Galaxy Brain" podcast, joins Offline to break down the news of the week: how Elon Musk's negligence and the Epstein Files continue to corrode our society, whether we’ve reached The Singularity with new AI-only social media sites like Moltbook, and how phones—and neighborliness—have been the saving grace of Trump’s assault on Minnesota.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

220: Adam Friedland Just Wants to Understand

Adam Friedland sits down with Jon to make sense of his unlikely rise from the self deprecating (and self defecating) cohost of Cum Town to…a public intellectual? "The Adam Friedland Show" has a knack for jolting politicians and celebrities out of their canned talking points, and its host shares what he thinks of the format he initially set out to skewer, the questions we need to be asking about the ICE crackdown, and his issues with Republicans and Democrats alike. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.