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.
Latest episodes
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37 min
148: Chekov's Shrooms
Having experienced technology and culture in real life, Amanda and Isabel talk about all their travels and the wondrous sights they've seen, like a robot making lemonade, and also,…
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52 min
147: Wow if Schue (feat. Julia Schifini)
In which Amanda, Isabel, and special guest Julia Schifini record another episode of long-running Glee recap podcast, Wow if Schue. Yes, this entire special episode, originally made…
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1 h 04
146: Writing the Future (LIVE at Kelly Writers House!)
It's the first ever Wow if True live show! At the Kelly Writers House in Philadelphia, Isabel reads from Sublimation, then we talk about our approaches to writing the future from b…
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60 min
145: Katseye (ft. Allison Mills)
Amanda is obsessed with Katseye. Editor Allison™ doesn't understand. Isabel is on vacation. Eat zucchini. Also, BIG NEWS: Wow if True is coming to a city near you, so long as that…
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55 min
144: AI (is not our) Friend
Good news: Isabel went to Comic Con! Bad news: There is so much AI discourse. Everything is AI. We talk about -- the Hank drama, the new AI friend, the AI crime thriller situation.…
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50 min
143: @Pangram is this AI? (ft. Max Spero)
Pangram makes the most accurate detector for flagging AI-generated text, but when your startup is the arbiter of what is real and what is not, you sometimes get into hairy situatio…
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41 min
142: The Enhanced Games (ft. Lucas Ropek)
The Enhanced Games are Silicon Valley's version of the Olympics -- the athletes are invited to bulk up with performance enhancing drugs, then gather in Las Vegas for competition, a…
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55 min
141: The Worst PowerPoint Ever
In which Amanda makes the worst PowerPoint ever (it's about rationalists and fan fiction, iykyk), Isabel goes on book tour, and we experiment with flip phones.The PowerPoint in que…
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1 h 02
140: Horrible Little Guys (ft. Adam Becker)
In this collab-isode, we're joined by Dr. Adam Becker of Dreaming Against the Machine, a podcast about envisioning a realistic and hopeful future in the face of tech oligarchs... o…
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46 min
139: The Sublimation Special
HAPPY SUBLIMATION PUBLICATION DAY! Or, Publimation Day! Isabel's long-awaited debut novel SUBLIMATION is out now. Everyone is very excited. We are proud of Isabel here at Wow if Tr…
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42 min
138: Claude doesn't know ball
Google is broken, and so is Amanda, apparently, because she is seeking validation from an AI chatbot. Also, video games. Sublimation is out on 6/2. This is what we have for you.We'…
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1 h 02
137: Chinese Peptides (ft. Tiny Matters)
Party drugs are out, and injecting grey market peptides with your LinkedIn connections at Silicon Valley house parties is in. Yes, the biohacker tech bros have peptide dealers in C…
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52 min
136: Will the Real Satoshi Please Stand Up
Isabel and Amanda talk about raising $1,234,567 dollars for your startup, Giggles, that began as a meme, and also finding your cofounder in Minecraft, along with the latest analysi…
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47 min
135: Shy Girl and other book drama
We're talking about Shy Girl, the horror novel cancelled over alleged AI use, the conclusion of a romantasy lawsuit, recent Meta rulings, and a bunch of other random stuff in the m…
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53 min
134: The Literal Worst Song
We have found the literal worst song: "Take the Lead" by Tilly Norwood, who is an AI actor, and is singing about overcoming the oppression that AI actors face. Yes, this is real. A…
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1 h 04
133: Moltbook
Iz and Amanda talk about Moltbook, a forum only for AI agents (and the humans pretending to be them), which caused a brief moment of panic that our AI overlords were going to rise…
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1 h 11
132: Crusadercore (ft. American Medieval)
We made a collabisode with Dr. Matthew Gabriele of American Medieval, a real life historian of medieval history! It turns out that there's actually a significant crossover between…
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51 min
131: Heated Rivalry (ft. Amanda McLoughlin)
Will you come to our cottage... to talk about Heated Rivalry with us? The beloved Queer Hockey Show™ has taken over the internet, so who better to talk to us about it than very onl…
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1 h 15
130: Our 2026 Bingo Card (ft. Eteng Ettah)
We're back for the new year, joined by pop culture writer + narrative strategist Eteng Ettah to create a bingo card for the cursed events of 2026 that likely await us. We apologize…
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51 min
129: We haven't done any fraud :)
It's holiday time! That means you get a stocking stuffer worth of an episode -- a handful of topics we wanna chitchat about but aren't big enough for their whole episode (Is this h…