Close All Tabs

Picture this… You move to a cozy home in an idyllic neighborhood: fresh air and birdsong in the morning and gorgeous sunsets at night. One day, you wake up to find an AI data center is being built right across the street. Your view of trees turns into piles of dirt, the songbird’s trill replaced by the hum of machinery. That’s the reality for many Atlanta metro area residents right now, facing an explosion of AI data center construction. 

 In this episode, Morgan is joined by reporters DorMiya Vance and Marlon Hyde from WABE in Atlanta. Vance and Hyde recently looked into why so many companies are targeting the Atlanta suburbs for their builds. They’ll break down what this means for the infrastructure of local energy companies,  how to contextualize this trend within the historical strain placed on predominately Black communities, and what can be done to prepare for “stranded assets” if the bubble bursts. 

Guests:

DorMiya Vance, Southside reporter at WABE

Marlon Hyde, business reporter at WABE

Further Reading/Listening:

Data centers power our online lives. The business is growing faster in metro Atlanta than anywhere else in the US — Marlon Hyde, WABE

South Atlanta residents brace for major data center development — DorMiya Vance, WABE

Microsoft vows to cover full power costs for energy-hungry AI data centers — Benj Edwards, Ars Technica  

After a White Town Rejected a Data Center, Developers Targeted a Black Area — Adam Mahoney, Capital B

A Historic Black Community Takes On the World's Richest Man Over Environmental Racism — Adam Mahoney, Capital B

The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South — Media Justice

Data centers spark a ‘fight for the soul’ of this mostly Black Maryland county — Lateshia Beachum, The Washington Post

Georgia leads push to ban datacenters used to power America’s AI boom — Timothy Pratt, The Guardian

Read the transcript here.

Credits:

Close All Tabs is hosted by Morgan Sung. Our team includes producer Maya Cueva, editor Chris Hambrick and senior editor Chris Egusa who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music from APM. Audio engineering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief.
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How much does your own AI use matter? With all the warnings about AI’s adverse impact on the environment, it can be tough to understand what that means at the individual level. In this episode, Morgan breaks down the hidden costs of generative AI into something more relatable: microwave time. She’s joined by MIT Technology Review reporters Casey Crownhart and James O’Donnell, who spent months investigating how much energy and water AI systems actually use.

Together, they unpack how AI models are trained and which ones are more resource-intensive, what effect the expansion of AI data centers has on local energy grids and just how much electricity it takes when we ask AI to generate text, images and videos.

Guests:

Casey Crownhart, senior climate reporter at MIT Technology Review

James O'Donnell, senior AI reporter at MIT Technology Review

Further Reading:

We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. — Casey Crownhart and James O’Donnell, MIT Technology Review

 AI Energy Score v2: Refreshed Leaderboard, now with Reasoning 🧠 — 

Sasha Luccioni and Boris Gamazaychikov, Hugging Face

Stop worrying about your AI footprint. Look at the big picture instead. — Casey Crownhart, MIT Technology Review 

Google says a typical AI text prompt only uses 5 drops of water — experts say that’s misleading — Justine Calma, The Verge

Read the Transcript here

Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at [email protected]

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Credits: Close All Tabs is hosted by Morgan Sung. Our team includes producer Maya Cueva, editor Chris Hambrick and senior editor Chris Egusa who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music from APM. Audio engineering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How easy is it to find someone from a single video posted online? To find out, Morgan put her own privacy to the test. She asked TikTok creator JoseMonkey, who’s famous for geolocating people who send him videos asking to be found, to track her down. JoseMonkey started as a geolocation hobbyist who turned to creating videos to bring attention to common mistakes people make when posting online. 

In this episode, Morgan breaks down why personal operational security matters and what digital hygiene actually looks like in practice. JoseMonkey walks through how he finds people using the smallest scraps of information, and the steps you can take to make sure you aren’t exposing too much in your posts. And Eva Galperin, cybersecurity director of Electronic Frontier Foundation, explains how to use a process called “threat modeling” to protect your online privacy in a way that’s practical rather than paranoid.

Guests:

Jose Monkey, content creator and online privacy advocate

Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Further Reading/Listening:

We partnered with KQED’s audience news team on a companion guide that breaks down online privacy in a clear, shareable format. You can find it, along with other explainers and guides, on KQED’s explainers page.

⁠Have LLMs Finally Mastered Geolocation? — Foeke Postma and Nathan Patin, BellingcatSurveillance Self-Defense  — The Electronic Frontier Foundation

How micro-online posting can be a macro privacy risk — JoseMonkey, TedX Talks

Read the transcript ⁠here⁠

Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at ⁠[email protected]⁠

Follow us on⁠ ⁠Instagram⁠⁠ and⁠ ⁠TikTok⁠⁠

Credits:

Close All Tabs is hosted by Morgan Sung. Our team includes producer Maya Cueva, editor Chris Hambrick and senior editor Chris Egusa who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music from APM. Audio engineering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, it became an instant flashpoint in the ongoing escalation of federal law enforcement violence. It also put a spotlight on the U.S. government’s efforts to prevent people from documenting federal agents in public.

In this episode, we dig into a simple but important question: do you have the right to record ICE? Criminal justice reporter C.J. Ciaramella explains how the Trump administration is working to create a chilling effect around filming law enforcement, why legal challenges are intensifying, and how courts are increasingly pushing back.

Guests:

C.J. Ciaramella, Criminal Justice Reporter at Reason

Further Reading/Listening:

ICE officer fatally shoots driver through car window in Minneapolis — Max Nesterak, Madison McVan and Alyssa Chen, The Minnesota Reformer 

The Trump administration says it's illegal to record videos of ICE. Here's what the law says. — C.J. Ciaramella, Reason 

DHS says recording or following law enforcement 'sure sounds like obstruction of justice' —  C.J. Ciaramella, Reason  

Recording the Police: Tips for Safety and Awareness — Carly Severn and Mina Kim, KQED

DHS Claims Videotaping ICE Raids Is ‘Violence’ — Matthew Cunningham-Cook, The American Prospect

ICE detains U.S. citizen for 7 hours after she photographed agents in Oregon — Yesenia Amaro, The Oregonian 

Dozens of felony cases crumble in DOJ push to punish protesters — Michael Biesecker, Jamie Ding, Christine Fernando, Claire Rush, and Ryan J. Foley, The Associated Press 

What Happens When Federal Officers Use Force — Miranda Jeyaretnam, TIME 

California is banning masks for federal agents. Here’s why it could lose in court —  Nigel Duara, CalMatters

Read the transcript here

Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at [email protected]

Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok⁠

Credits:

Close All Tabs is hosted by Morgan Sung. Our team includes producer Maya Cueva, editor Chris Hambrick and senior editor Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music from APM. Audio engineering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a holiday installment of Save or Scroll, Morgan and the Close All Tabs team get together to talk over the stories they can’t stop thinking about. From OpenAI’s concerning new job posting, to a major RAM shortage, AI artists on the come up, and an antidote to the Manosphere, they’ve got a lot to chew on.

Save or Scroll is our series where we team up with guests for a rapid-fire roundup of internet trends that are filling our feeds right now. At the end of each segment, they’ll decide: is the post just for the group chat, or should we save it for a future episode?

Guests:

Morgan Sung, Host of Close All Tabs

Chris Egusa, Senior Editor of Close All Tabs

Maya Cueva, Producer of Close All Tabs

Chris Hambrick, Editor of Close All Tabs

Further Reading/Listening:

Sam Altman is hiring someone to worry about the dangers of AI — Terrence O'Brien, The Verge

Why OpenAI's $555,000 Head of Preparedness Role May Be Hard to Fill — Sarah E. Needleman, Business Insider

Memory loss: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise — John Ruwitch, NPR

Why is RAM so expensive right now? It's way more complicated than you think — Wayne Williams, TechRadar

AI Singer Xania Monet Just Charted On Billboard, Signed $3 Million Deal. Is This The Future Of Music? — Doug Melville, Forbes

How Many AI Artists Have Debuted on Billboard’s Charts? — Xander Zellner, Billboard

The ‘Manosphere’? It’s Planet Earth. — Joseph Bernstein, The New York Times

“2024 self interviewing my 2025 self” — @seanjaye1988, Instagram Reel

Read the transcript here

Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at [email protected]

Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok⁠

Credits:

Close All Tabs is hosted by Morgan Sung. Our team includes producer Maya Cueva, editor Chris Hambrick and senior editor Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music from APM. Audio engineering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices