Selfies at the Pope’s funeral — May 3rd, Hour 4

May 3, 2025

Snapping pics with the Pope’s body? The Vatican wasn’t ready for smartphone culture. Plus, a new app uses AI to analyze your messages and tell you how compatible — or cringe — your past relationship was. I also talk to Stephanie from Mesa, Arizona, who fell for an online Ponzi scheme. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tags: download, messages, online, relationship, scheme

Digital self-destruction for fun and paranoia

ChatGPT

How to make any USB drive self-destruct

“Kim, I’m paranoid about losing my USB drive. Is there any way to make it so if someone steals it, they can’t see or open anything?” — Dave in Denver

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📵 Phones down, eyes up: That’s the YMCA’s new water safety campaign for parents this summer. Why? Drowning is the number one cause of death for kids ages 1 to 4, and it often happens within 25 yards of a distracted parent. It’s usually silent, with no splashes, and can happen in 30 seconds or less. I know there’s someone you need to share this with.

Cluckin’ wild

The Minecraft movie is meh, but Jack Black’s unhinged chicken ballad, “Steve’s Lava Chicken,” shot up to # 78 on Billboard’s Hot 100. It’s now the shortest song ever to hit the famed list, clocking in at 34 seconds, making it both a record and maybe a cry for help for our attention spans. Listen here, you have been warned.

23%

That’s how many HTML attachments are malicious. They usually show up in your inbox with names like “invoice.html,” and when you click, they redirect you to phishing websites. That’s where scammers steal your info or drop malware on your device. Moral of the story? Stay sharp and use real-time protection. My pick is TotalAV, just $19 a year.

Third Neuralink implant is in: This time, it’s a dad with ALS who’s fully paralyzed, and he’s also the first nonverbal patient to get the chip. Brad posted on X, using only his brain to type a message thanking Elon Musk. And get this: He even edited a video with his mind and used AI to bring back his old voice. Amazing.

🎭 Deepfakes just got sneakier: It’s getting harder to figure out if that person is real or not. A good way to spot them used to be skin color changes that matched a heartbeat. Bad news: New AI can mimic those. How can you tell? The person’s facial features are too perfect, or they worked at CGI Fridays.

82%

The percentage of Americans who want businesses to disclose when they use AI. People just want to know if they’re talking to a human after years of chatbot creep, fake reviews and AI content. At this rate, Clippy from Microsoft Word would be a trusted news anchor.

💀 DIY neck crack: Chiropractic neck “adjustments” are all over TikTok. So are reports of strokes, nerve damage and ruptured arteries. The internet’s favorite crack (not that one) could basically snap your brain off. So before you adjust yourself straight into the void based on something you saw online, heed my words: Please don’t.

AI eats its own: Prompt engineer was tech’s hot new job title in 2023, featuring $300K salaries, fully remote work and bragging rights in Discord. Fast-forward to 2025: AI doesn’t need prompt engineers anymore. It writes its own prompts. Imagine training your replacement that never takes lunch breaks and doesn’t need caffeine. Congrats, prompt engineers, you played yourself, in natural language.

$10 million

How much revenue TikTok creators are collectively pulling in daily. New data also shows it’s now the second most-watched livestreaming platform on the net. So far in Q1: Twitch has 4.85 billion hours, TikTok Live 8.03 billion and YouTube leads with 14.98 billion hours. Dang, that’s crazy.