Episodes

  • Golden Eggs and AI God Complexes

    Golden Eggs and AI God Complexes
    Jun 29 2026
    SoftBank has explained the future of AI using a golden goose, a conveyor belt of ASI eggs and the calm financial logic of a man trying to turn PowerPoint into scripture. Duncan and Ollie ask whether the AI boom has become a bubble, a religion, or just a very expensive bird with ARM inside it.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    14 mins
  • What's going on with Meta

    What's going on with Meta
    Jun 25 2026
    Prediction markets, smart glasses, a Kylie Jenner voice in your sunglasses. Meta will copy anything that moves. Today: the most profitable company on earth with no idea what it actually wants to be.

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    12 mins
  • The Open AI Money Pit

    The Open AI Money Pit
    Jun 24 2026
    OpenAI is burning through money fast enough to make a small country nervous, so we worked out how long the runway really is and what happens when one of these AI giants can't pay its bills. It's also really, really hot.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    14 mins
  • Cursor Bought, Social Media Ban, Google's Chips

    Cursor Bought, Social Media Ban, Google's Chips
    Jun 20 2026
    This week on Short Fuse News, Duncan and Ollie tackle SpaceX buying Cursor, the UK’s looming social media ban, and Google deciding it might quite like to sell chips after all. Expect AI wrappers, Jensen jail, tech bros building tents full of servers, and the usual disciplined attempt to stay on topic.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    39 mins
  • IPOs, Fable 5

    IPOs, Fable 5
    Jun 15 2026

    The US government has told Anthropic that Fable is off-limits to anyone who isn't American. Is it genuinely too dangerous, or the best marketing stunt since a deodorant advert convinced a generation of boys they'd be chased down the street? Duncan and Ollie work through it via Occam's razor, Aesop, and what the name "Fable" might have been trying to tell us all along.

    Then SpaceX floats, goes up thirty percent, and starts selling the idea that your data centre belongs in orbit. We get into why cooling a computer in space is harder than anyone admits, why mining asteroids still doesn't add up, and why every tech IPO on earth is suddenly happening at once.

    Bubble or business? You decide.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    41 mins
  • Backpeddling! Pope! Quantum!

    Backpeddling! Pope! Quantum!
    May 29 2026
    Sam Altman woke up, put on his red velour dressing gown, and decided your job is safe after all. Duncan and Ollie get into the great AI climbdown, the Pope's beef with the machines, and the growing public urge to take a hammer to a data centre.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    31 mins
  • Zeitgeist

    Zeitgeist
    May 19 2026
    In this episode, Duncan and Ollie explore the concept of the zeitgeist, analyzing various perspectives from AI models and their own insights. They discuss societal trust, technological change, cultural shifts, and potential future scenarios, offering a deep and humorous look at the mood of our times.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    34 mins
  • Musk Sues Open AI, Mythos Locked, Meta Layoffs, Tokenomics, More Robots

    Musk Sues Open AI, Mythos Locked, Meta Layoffs, Tokenomics, More Robots
    Apr 30 2026

    Musk is suing OpenAI, Anthropic is keeping Mythos locked behind Project Glasswing, and the age of subsidised AI is ending. We're back after a break to work through the news that piled up.

    Duncan and Ollie cover the OpenAI lawsuit and what discovery might surface, why Mythos staying behind closed doors is as much an economics story as a safety one, the Opus 4.7 pricing sleight of hand, Meta's keystroke logging and latest round of layoffs, the missing AI productivity gains, and humanoid robots at CES vs Hannover Messe.


    00:00 Welcome Back and Podcast Overview

    00:47 Elon Musk vs OpenAI: The Lawsuit

    03:39 The Future of AI and OpenAI's Challenges

    07:05 Consumer Preferences in AI: Anthropic vs OpenAI

    08:35 Meta's AI Strategy and Workforce Concerns

    10:30 Mythos and Cybersecurity: The Cost of AI Models

    14:53 The Economics of AI: Subsidies and Costs

    20:04 Humanoid Robots: CES vs Hannover Messe



    Short Fuse is a podcast about emerging tech, human behaviour, and cultural movements. Hosts take long and short positions on the stories that matter and defend their reasoning.

    Visit shortfuseresearch.com for written analysis, the discovery tracker, and bespoke research.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    28 mins