Top 15 Most Listened Tech Policy Press Podcasts in 2025

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Tech Policy Press published 86 podcast episodes in 2025, featuring critical conversations on issues ranging from AI hype, platform regulation, and internet governance to the threats tech billionaires and authoritarians pose to democratic systems. Below are the top 15 most listened podcasts of the year.

We’re grateful to our guests and to our listeners, many of whom subscribe to the feed via their favorite podcast service. We look forward to delivering more engaging debate and discussion at the intersection of technology and democracy in 2026. Want to support this work? You can make a donation here.

1. Unpacking the Politics of the EU's €120M Fine of Musk’s X — December 7

In December, the European Commission fined Elon Musk’s X €120 million for breaching the Digital Services Act, delivering the first-ever non-compliance decision under the European Union’s flagship tech regulation. To discuss the enforcement action, the politics surrounding it, and a variety of other issues related to digital regulation in Europe, I spoke to Joris van Hoboken, a professor at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam, and part of the core team of the Digital Services Act (DSA) Observatory.

2. Decolonizing the Future: Karen Hao on Resisting the Empire of AI — May 23

In May, I interviewed Karen Hao about her book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Hao has appeared on the podcast before to help us understand how the business model of social media platforms incentivizes the deterioration of information ecosystems, to consider the series of events around OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s abrupt firing in 2023, and to unpack the furor around the launch of DeepSeek last year.

3. Adam Becker Takes Aim at Silicon Valley Nonsense — April 27

From visions of AI paradise to the project to defeat death, many dangerous and unscientific ideas are driving Silicon Valley leaders. In April, I spoke to Adam Becker, a science journalist and author of the book MORE EVERYTHING FOREVER: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity.

4. DOGE and the United States of AI — April 6

A day after hundreds of "Hands Off" protests across the United States last April, where protestors called for billionaire Elon Musk to be ousted from his role in government and for an end to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), I spoke to four individuals who were following DOGE closely. Guests included Eryk Salvaggio, a fellow at Tech Policy Press; Rebecca Williams, a senior strategist in the Privacy and Data Governance Unit at ACLU; Emily Tavoulareas, who teaches and conducts research at Georgetown's McCourt School for Public Policy and is leading a project to document the founding of the US Digital Service; and Matthew Kirschenbaum, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of English at the University of Maryland.

5. The Open Internet is Dead. What Comes Next? — October 12

In October, I spoke with Mallory Knodel, executive director of the Social Web Foundation and founder of a weekly newsletter called the Internet Exchange, and Burcu Kilic, a senior fellow at Canada’s Center for International Governance Innovation, or CIGI. The conversation revolved around a post the two wrote for the Internet Exchange titled, “Big Tech Redefined the Open Internet to Serve Its Own Interests,” which explored how the idea of the ‘open internet’ has been hollowed out by decades of policy choices and corporate consolidation.

6. How Venture Capital Warps the World — May 4

Catherine Bracy is a civic technologist and community organizer whose work focuses on the intersection of technology and political and economic inequality. In May, I spoke with her about her book, World Eaters: How Venture Capital is Cannibalizing the Economy. In it, she suggests how the venture capital industry must be reformed to deliver true innovation that advances society rather than merely outsized returns for an increasingly monolithic set of investors.

7. The Dangerous Combination of Technology and Capitalism — February 2

In February, I spoke with Jathan Sadowski, a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia; co-host of This Machine Kills, a weekly podcast on technology and political economy; and author of the new book The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism from the University of California Press. He says that right now, technology escapes even the bare minimum of public accountability–let alone public control–that we demand from other forms of power.

8. New Insights on Tech and the Crisis of Democracy — August 24

In a new book published this summer by Oxford University Press called Connective Action and the Rise of the Far-Right: Platforms, Politics, and the Crisis of Democracy, a group of scholars from varied research traditions set out to find new ways to marry more traditional political science with computational social science approaches to understand the phenomenon of democratic backsliding and to bring some clarity to the present moment, particularly in the US. I spoke to two of the volume’s editors and two of its authors: Steven Livingston, a professor and founding director of the Institute for Data Democracy and Politics at the George Washington University; Michael Miller, managing director of the Moynihan Center at the City College of New York; Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington and a co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public; and Josephine Lukito, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin and senior faculty research associate at the Center for Media Engagement.

9. Considering Trump’s AI Plan and the Future It Portends — July 24

In July, President Donald Trump took to the stage at the "Winning the AI Race Summit" to promote the administration's AI action plan. To discuss the plan and its implications, I spoke to Sarah West, co-director of the AI Now Institute; Maia Woluchem, program director of the Trustworthy Infrastructures team at Data and Society; and Ryan Gerety, director of the Athena Coalition.

10. A Critical Look at Trump's AI Executive Order — December 14

This month, Trump invited reporters into the Oval Office to watch him sign an executive order intended to limit state regulation of artificial intelligence. Trump said AI is a strategic priority for the United States, and that there must be a central source of approval for the companies that develop it. To learn more, I spoke to Olivier Sylvain, a professor of law at Fordham Law School and a senior policy research fellow at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Shortly after the order was released, he wrote "Why Trump’s AI EO Will be DOA in Court," a perspective published on Tech Policy Press.

11. Interrogating Tech Power and Democratic Crisis — June 29

This year, we produced a series in collaboration with Data & Society called “Ideologies of Control: A Series on Tech Power and Democratic Crisis.” The articles in the series examine how powerful tech billionaires and authoritarian leaders and thinkers are leveraging AI and digital infrastructure to advance anti-democratic agendas, consolidate control, and reshape society in ways that threaten privacy, labor rights, environmental sustainability, and democratic governance. For this episode, I spoke to four of the authors who made contributions to the series, including: Jacob Metcalf, program director of the AI On the Ground Initiative at Data & Society; Tamara Kneese, then program director of the Climate, Technology and Justice program at Data & Society; Reem Suleiman, then the outgoing US advocacy lead at the Mozilla Foundation and member of the city of Oakland's Privacy Advisory Commission; and Kevin De Liban, founder of TechTonic Justice.

12. Is an Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence Possible? — March 23

What is necessary to develop a future that is less hospitable to authoritarianism and, indeed, to fascism? How do we build collective power against authoritarian forms of corporate and state power? Is an alternative form of computing possible? Dan McQuillan is the author of Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence, published in 2022 by Bristol University Press.

13. Taking on the AI Con — June 1

Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna are the authors of a new book that The Guardian calls “refreshingly sarcastic” and Business Insider calls a “funny and irreverent deconstruction of AI.” They are also occasional contributors to Tech Policy Press. In June, I spoke to them about their new book, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want, just out from Harper Collins.

14. A Conversation with Dr. Alondra Nelson on AI and Democracy — March 16

Dr. Alondra Nelson holds the Harold F. Linder Chair and leads the Science, Technology, and Social Values Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study, where she has served on the faculty since 2019. From 2021 to 2023, she was deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and acting director and principal deputy director for science and society of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She was deeply involved in the Biden administration’s approach to artificial intelligence. She led the development of the White House “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights,” which informed President Biden’s Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. I caught up with her in March to discuss the trajectory of AI policy under the Trump administration and the need to develop policies that keep people—not technology or corporations—at the center.

15. A National Heist? Evaluating Elon Musk’s March Through Washington — February 9

As Donald Trump’s second presidency entered its third week, Elon Musk was center stage as the Department of Government Efficiency kicked off its campaign to gut federal agencies. I spoke with two experts who were following these events closely: David Kaye, a professor of law at the University of California Irvine and formerly the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression; and Yaël Eisenstat, director of policy impact at Cybersecurity for Democracy at New York University.