Wow If True

Updated: 06 Aug 2025 • 121 episodes
art19.com/shows/wow-if-true

​​Wow If True is your one-stop internet culture shop, explaining how what’s happening online shapes the real world. And we’re the internet experts and real-life besties to unravel it: tech culture journalist Amanda Silberling and science fiction author slash attorney Isabel J. Kim, Esq. More importantly, we’re the only podcast that will mention Neopets and horizontal mergers in the same episode. New episode every other Wednesday.

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06 Aug 2025 • EN

120: Two Humans Talking

We spent last episode taking to AI chatbots. What if we, two humans, simply chatted with each other while speaking in NPR voices? Don't worry, the NPR voices don't last long. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Isabel and Amanda sacrifice the sanctity of their souls and talk to Ani, the very horny anime waifu that is now part of Elon Musk's Grok app. But don't worry, we balance it out by telling you a weirdly wholesome story about Tony Hawk. [This episode is NSFW; if you do not want to hear an AI panda talk about burning down

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Isabel and Amanda talk about two very different kinds of AI grift. In one, a man pretends to be real social media for the (probably) AI band "The Velvet Sundown." In another, Soham Parekh simply gets employed by every single AI startup at once. Sources The Velvet Sundown: https://medium.com/@andrew.frelon/i-am-andrew-f

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25 Jun 2025 • EN

117: AI Boyfriends

Isabel and Amanda throw out their other plans and instead talk about the subreddit “myboyfriendisAI” which is about, you guessed it, AI boyfriends and other types of digital partners. We also discuss Meta’s not-amazing practices and the LLM paper doing the rounds on the AI hater part of the internet, with Iz’s human pa

63 min
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11 Jun 2025 • EN

116: Q+A (Unexpected Wet)

You had questions. We have answers. We tell you about: the most "white lady" email we have sent; our screen time; fears of unexpected wet; life hacks for 29-year-olds specifically; Amanda's undying love for HBO Girls; cursed food content; political memes and earnestness; is there any good use of AI; and, unfortunately,

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We explore all the ways that various AIs are going weird—sycophantic, white genocide focused, blackmailing its users, and not trusting Chargers fans. Also, we talk way too much about Sam Altman's olive oil choices, the Hugos, and Isabel talks for fifteen minutes about trying to get the internet installed. Which, hey, t

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