FT Tech Tonic
Episodes
Tech in 2026: Silicon Valley’s power plays and players
22 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How will Silicon Valley’s most powerful figures shape technology — and politics — in 2026? Last year, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg aligned...
Tech in 2026: Inside the AI bubble
14 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Is 2026 the year that AI hype meets reality? In a new mini-series from Tech Tonic, the FT’s tech editor Murad Ahmed speaks with the paper’s report...
Tech in 2026: Inside the AI bubble
14 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Is 2026 the year that AI hype meets reality? In a new mini-series from Tech Tonic, the FT’s tech editor Murad Ahmed speaks with the paper’s report...
Untold: Toxic Legacy, Ep. 1
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Hughes receives a tip that horses are dropping dead in Wales. As she investigates, she finds decades of academic studies researching the problem...
Defying death: The future of forever
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Gene and stem cell therapies have been touted as the next phase in the longevity movement, with promises to rejuvenate the body at the cellular level ...
Defying death: The longevity lab
03 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Singapore has become a model for longevity-focused healthcare. With an ageing population and citizens willing to spend money on anti-ageing treatments...
Defying death: The origins of ageing
26 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How much do we really know about ageing? For decades, scientists have been trying to understand the biology of the ageing process - what happens to ou...
Coming soon: Defying death
19 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Investors are spending billions of dollars on novel ways to extend human life through inventive treatments, therapies, and even manipulating our genes...
Introducing Untold: Toxic Legacy
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Introducing Toxic Legacy, a new season of Untold from the Financial Times. Host Laura Hughes uncovers a lead poisoning epidemic across the UK. You mig...
Mission to Mars: Bad science fiction
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, science fiction writers have envisaged colonising Mars, even building cities on the red planet. Advocates for Mars exploration, such as E...
Mission to Mars: The new space race
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
US President Donald Trump wants to “plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars”. But more than 50 years on from the moon landings, America’s...
Mission to Mars: Elon Musk's 'Starship' enterprise
08 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Elon Musk wants humans to settle on Mars, and his rocket company SpaceX is spending billions of dollars on developing the spacecraft to take us there....
Coming soon: Mission to Mars
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
US President Donald Trump has pledged to “plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars”, China could send its first crewed mission to Mars withi...
Vote for Tech Tonic in the Signal Awards!
30 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tech Tonic has been nominated for a Signal Award in the Technology category! It's a Listener Choice award, which means we need your help. Vote for us ...
AI Music: ‘Theft machines’?
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
AI models have learned to create their own music by harvesting millions of songs from the internet. But critics say they’re using musicians’ work ...
AI Music: The Infinite Jukebox
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Generative AI models trained on vast swaths of popular music can create songs almost indistinguishable from human-made work. For some, they represent ...
Coming soon: Will AI ruin music?
27 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
AI music generators - platforms that use artificial intelligence to create new, original music from scratch - can make songs that are almost indisting...
Trump’s tech bros: The enigma of Peter Thiel
08 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Thiel is unlike any other Trump tech bro. As well as a wildly successful investor, he’s seen as a thinker - the philosopher king of Silicon Va...
Trump’s Tech Bros: Is ‘Maga Mark’ the real Mark Zuckerberg?
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has undergone a transformation, both physical and political. The skinny teenager who founded Facebook in his dorm...
Trump’s Tech Bros: Has Jeff Bezos sold out?
24 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was once a vocal critic of Donald Trump. But that changed during last year’s election campaign. Now, he has instructed the...
Trump's Tech Bros: The tragedy of Elon Musk
17 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Donald Trump re-entered the White House, Elon Musk came with him as his ‘tech bro-in-chief’, tasked with rebooting the government machine. Bu...
Trump’s Tech Bros: Can Tim Cook save Apple from the trade war?
10 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
During the US president’s first term in office, Tim Cook appeared to be the ultimate Trump whisperer, winning tariff exemptions despite Apple’s he...
Coming soon: The rise and fall of Trump’s tech bros
09 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Can Tim Cook save Apple from the trade war? Has Mark Zuckerberg really been a fan of Donald Trump all along? And is the bromance between Elon Musk and...
Future weapons: Tomorrow’s technology
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How is defence tech reshaping geopolitics? And what does the battlefield of the future look like? In the final episode of our series on the technologi...
Future weapons: Rearming Europe
06 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For European leaders, the war in Ukraine has strained relations with the US and prompted major questions about how the continent will defend itself in...
Future weapons: Battlefield AI
29 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Israel has long been a leader in hi-tech warfare. In this episode, the Financial Times innovation editor John Thornhill explores the Israel Defense Fo...
Future weapons: The defence tech bros
22 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Defence tech is booming in the US. Start-ups building drones, missiles and AI systems are competing with established companies for a piece of the US d...
Future weapons: Ukraine’s army of drones
22 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The conflict in Ukraine has turned into the world’s first fully fledged drone war. The remote-controlled flying machines are now used by both sides ...
Coming soon: The future weapons of war
15 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
New technologies such as drones, robots and AI systems are finding their way into conflict zones around the world. In this season of Tech Tonic, ...
Making money from AI: After DeepSeek
18 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The biggest companies in tech are fighting to be the leader in generative AI - even as the path to profitability for the technology remains unclear. S...
Making money from AI: Searching for a ‘killer app’
11 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Is generative AI over-valued? At the heart of the generative AI boom has been the premise that a ‘killer app’ for AI will make investors a return ...
Coming soon: Will AI ever make any money?
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Generative AI is impressive, but can it be profitable? Since the emergence of ChatGPT in 2022, Silicon Valley investors and tech giants have poured bi...
Tech in 2025: The EU vs Big Tech
04 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The past two years have seen the EU bring in landmark legislation to curb the power of big tech companies such as Apple, Google and Meta, threatening ...
Tech in 2025: China’s AI ‘Sputnik moment’
28 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Chinese company DeepSeek has shocked the world with an AI model that could rival those built by the biggest artificial intelligence companies in S...
Tech in 2025: All hail the AI revolution
28 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Murad Ahmed interviews Reid Hoffman - billionaire founder of LinkedIn, venture capitalist, self-proclaimed AI optimist and generally speaking a big na...
Tech in 2025: Trump and the tech bros
21 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Incoming president Donald Trump has shown he’s ready to act decisively on tech, giving a stay of execution to TikTok after the US Supreme Court uphe...
Tech in 2025: Hi, I’m your AI-powered assistant
14 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, generative AI tools have been helping us answer questions, write essays and create AI images and videos. But ...
Coming soon: How will technology shape the world in 2025?
07 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In a new season of Tech Tonic, the FT’s technology editor Murad Ahmed asks some of the big questions likely to shape the tech world in 2025, with th...
The geopolitics of chips: Nvidia and the AI boom
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Amid the artificial intelligence boom, demand for AI chips has exploded. But this push for chips also creates new challenges for countries and compani...
The geopolitics of chips: Taiwan’s ‘Silicon Shield’
26 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The global tech industry depends on Taiwan’s semiconductor chips and many believe the sector plays a key role in the island’s national security, h...
The geopolitics of chips: A manufacturing miracle
19 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Semiconductors are one of the most complex and technically difficult pieces of hardware to make in the world – which is why they’ve become a flash...
The geopolitics of chips: Chips in the USA
12 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The next superpower will be a tech superpower, and to be that superpower you need to have some control over the semiconductor industry which is drivin...
Coming soon: The fight for the future of chips
07 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There's a battle going on for control of the global semiconductor industry – the chips that are in virtually every piece of electronics we use ...
The Telegram case: Privacy vs security
10 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What are the limits of privacy when it comes to our online lives? If authorities are investigating a crime, should they be able to access private mess...
The Telegram case: Pavel Durov
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The FT’s Innovation editor John Thornhill and San Francisco tech correspondent Hannah Murphy have in the past both met and interviewed Pavel Durov, ...
The trouble with deepfakes: Beyond control?
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Anita was scrolling on Twitter when she found someone had made deepfake porn of her, without her permission. But that was just the start of her proble...
The trouble with deepfakes: Liar’s dividend
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A new breed of AI generated fake pictures, videos and audio clips is spreading across the internet - content anyone with an internet connection can ge...
China's race to tech supremacy: New frontiers
18 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
China is pushing the frontiers of scientific research, launching missions to the Moon and exploring the remotest places on Earth. It’s part of China...
China's race to tech supremacy: Chatbots & chips
11 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the emergence of chatbots like ChatGPT, China has made building its own advanced AI a priority. But to build AI it needs the most advanced compu...
China’s race to tech supremacy: Robot generation
04 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In China, you can find robots serving food in restaurants, delivering room service in hotels, and cleaning floors in office buildings. But it’s in f...
Introducing Untold: Power for Sale
30 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Introducing Power for Sale, a new season of Untold from the Financial Times. In Untold: Power for Sale, host Valentina Pop and a team of FT corre...
China's race to tech supremacy: Embracing Africa
28 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, long-time FT China correspondent James Kynge travels to Lagos to hear about the success of Chinese-backed companies in Nigeria – an...
China's race to tech supremacy: Driving into Europe
21 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
China’s BYD has become one of the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturers, thanks to its low production costs. The US has slapped a 100% ta...
China's race to tech supremacy: Shenzhen speed
14 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How did China go from tech imitator to innovator? The FT’s James Kynge reports from Shenzhen, known as China’s Silicon Valley, where he explores t...
Coming soon: China, the new tech superpower
07 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In a new season of Tech Tonic, longtime FT China reporter James Kynge travels around the world to see how China is pushing towards tech supremacy. Wil...
Introducing: Swamp Notes from The FT News Briefing
05 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you have questions about this year's US presidential election, we have answers.Swamp Notes is a new podcast from the FT News Briefing. Listen every...
Introducing Untold: The Retreat
12 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Introducing Untold, a new podcast from the special investigations team at the Financial Times. In its first series, The Retreat, host Madison Marriage...
Superintelligent AI: Conscious Machines
12 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As the race to human-level AI accelerates, researchers are increasingly confronted with the question of what it would mean to develop conscious AI. Wi...
Superintelligent AI: Transhumanism etc.
05 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What are the ideas driving the pursuit of human-level AI? In the penultimate episode of this Tech Tonic series, hosts Madhumita Murgia and John Thornh...
Superintelligent AI: can chatbots think?
28 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Are generative AI systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT really intelligent? Large language models such as GPT 4 appear to use human-level cognitive abili...
Superintelligent AI: The Utopians
21 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If even AI companies are fretting about the existential threat that human-level AI poses, why are they building these machines in the first place? And...
Superintelligent AI: The Doomers
14 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the first episode of a new, five-part series of Tech Tonic, FT journalists Madhumita Murgia and John Thornhill ask how close we are to building hum...
Coming soon: Superintelligent AI
31 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In a new series of Tech Tonic, FT journalists Madhumita Murgia and John Thornhill look at the concerns around the rise of artificial intelligenc...
Can AI help us speak to animals? Part two
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A hardware revolution in recording devices and a software revolution in artificial intelligence has convinced some scientists that humans will eventua...
Can AI help us speak to animals? Part one
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A hardware revolution in recording devices and a software revolution in artificial intelligence is enabling researchers to listen in to all kinds of c...
Can AI help us speak to animals? Karen Bakker interview
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Canadian scientist and author Karen Bakker, who died unexpectedly in August this year, was a leading voice in the bioacoustic research community. ...
Coming soon: Can AI help us speak to animals?
12 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Some scientists believe that rapid advances in artificial intelligence may also hold the key to decoding animal sounds, allowing us to ‘translate’...
The quantum revolution: Live at Founders Forum
22 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A bonus episode to go with our Quantum Revolution season. The FT’s John Thornhill and Madhumita Murgia host a panel of experts at the Founders Forum...
Introducing: The Russian Banker
18 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Who is Sergei Leontiev? To the US asylum system, he’s an exiled Russian banker who was persecuted by the state and forced to flee. To Russia, he’s...
Peak social media: The future
01 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the final episode of this Tech Tonic season, FT correspondents weigh in on the trends that will determine the future of social media. From Meta’s...
Peak social media: Building better platforms
25 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Can we get rid of the bad bits of social media and keep the good? Is it possible to create a more positive social media experience than the ...
Peak social media: The power of influencers
18 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Social media today is less about making friends and more about following popular content creators. While those creators are starting to hold some powe...
Peak social media: The debate over young users’ mental health
11 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There’s a growing feeling that social media is bad for us: bad for society and bad for our wellbeing. That trend has culminated in a new wave of leg...
Peak social media: The ads machine
04 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Zuckerberg used advertising to turn Facebook into the first global social media giant, boasting 3bn users around the world. But today there are q...
Peak social media: Trouble at Twitter
27 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Elon Musk took over Twitter with the promise of promoting free speech and making the loss-making platform profitable again. But his critics say he’s...
Coming soon: Peak social media
23 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Social media platforms have defined our experience of the internet for nearly two decades. But as host Elaine Moore, deputy editor of the FT’s Lex c...
Introducing Behind the Money: Night School
21 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There’s been a lot of big finance and economics news in 2023. Whether it's stories about rising interest rates, tech industry layoffs or bank runs, ...
The quantum revolution: The way the world is
11 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the final episode of this series, we hear how radical quantum ideas are reshaping our fundamental understanding of the universe. Nobel Prize winner...
The quantum revolution: Brain waves
04 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Quantum computers aren’t the only form of groundbreaking technology that use quantum physics. Madhumita Murgia hears from Dr. Margot Taylor, ne...
The quantum revolution: First port of call
28 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Port of Los Angeles is one of the world’s busiest — and most inefficient. It’s now using an early quantum computing application to help solv...
The quantum revolution: ‘Spooky action’
21 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Tech Tonic dives into the science at the heart of quantum computing. How do technologists use unexplained subatomic phenomena to buil...
The quantum revolution: The race to build a quantum computer
14 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tech companies including Google, Microsoft and IBM are all working on plans for a commercially viable quantum computer. They say that these machines w...
The quantum revolution: Q-Day
07 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the cybersecurity world they call it Q-Day, the day when a quantum computer will be built that can break the encryption of the internet. John Thorn...
Coming soon: The Quantum Revolution
28 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tech companies and labs around the world are building a revolutionary new computer. Quantum computers harness the mysteries of quantum physics to perf...
Climate tech to save the planet: Techno-optimism or greenwashing?
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Billions of dollars are being spent by tech companies and investors on new technology to fight climate change. In the final episode of this series of ...
Climate tech to save the planet: Star power
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nuclear fusion is the reaction that powers stars and scientists say replicating it on Earth could produce all the energy we’ll ever need without the...
Climate tech to save the planet: Hype and hydrogen
08 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The joke about hydrogen is that it’s the fuel of the future, and always will be. But green hydrogen is made from renewable energy and emits only wat...
Climate tech to save the planet: How to keep flying
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As more people fly, aviation is on track to becoming a much bigger problem for climate change. Host Pilita Clark, FT columnist and climate journalist,...
Climate tech to save the planet: Out of thin air
25 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Direct air carbon capture - taking carbon dioxide straight out of the air around us - sounds like science fiction. In this episode Pilita Clark visits...
Coming soon: Will climate tech save the planet?
24 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The climate crisis threatens the future of the planet. But don’t worry, technology will save us. At least that’s the message from startups, innova...
A sceptic’s guide to crypto: the crypto Wild West
13 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the fifth episode of the latest season of Tech Tonic, FT columnist and host Jemima Kelly looks at crypto regulation, and why there’s so little of...
A sceptic’s guide to crypto: the church of bitcoin
06 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the fourth episode of the latest season of Tech Tonic, FT columnist and host Jemima Kelly looks at the enduring faith in cryptocurrency. What do bi...
A sceptic’s guide to crypto: NFT mania
30 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the third episode of the latest season of Tech Tonic, FT columnist and host Jemima Kelly unpacks the craze around non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Block...
A sceptic’s guide to crypto: bonus interview with a16z’s Chris Dixon
23 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A bonus episode of Tech Tonic featuring a full, unedited interview between John Thornhill, FT innovation editor, and Chris Dixon, head of Andreessen H...
A sceptic’s guide to crypto: the ‘smart’ money
23 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the second episode of the latest season of Tech Tonic, FT columnist and host Jemima Kelly tries to understand why an influential Silicon Valley inv...
A sceptic’s guide to crypto: boom and bust
16 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A new season of Tech Tonic asks whether crypto and its supporting technology - the blockchain - have a future following a market crash. In the first e...
Coming soon: A Sceptic’s Guide to Crypto
15 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Even after the crypto markets crashed this year, there are still a number of people who believe there’s a future for digital assets and blockchain t...
Introducing: Hot Money
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When Financial Times reporter Patricia Nilsson started digging into the porn industry, she made a shocking discovery: nobody knew who controlled the b...
Behind the Money is back!
19 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Behind the Money is back with all-new episodes! From hostile takeovers to C-suite intrigue, Behind the Money takes you inside the business and financi...
US-China Tech Race: The great decoupling
02 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the final episode of this season of Tech Tonic, we ask if the growing tensions between the US and China could split the world into two competing te...