The Morning Run crew condenses the top conversations from the week, and keeps you clued in on the stories you might have missed.
Latest episodes
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16 min
Dog Curfews, Bedtime Stories & AI Bugs
On this week's WTF, or What's the Focus, authorities in China's Hangzhou are restricting dog walks to between 7pm and 7am in certain areas, leaving pet owners wondering when their…
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17 min
Fake Durians, Rented Boyfriends, ‘Actor’ CEOs
This week on WTF, nothing is quite what it seems. A woman in China cracks open a durian to find a cooked potato and modelling clay inside. In Japan, you can rent a boyfriend, a fri…
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14 min
Stolen Books, Brain Rot & BeReal Blunders
On this week's WTF, or What's the Focus, thieves in France make off with a 210kg, diamond-studded book illustrated by Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau. Meanwhile, an AI-generated int…
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15 min
Japan's Mystery Book Buyer
Since August, Japan's second-hand bookshops have been getting mysterious bulk orders, and more than 50 tonnes of books have been shipped to the US. Booksellers suspect AI companies…
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17 min
Two Brains, 1,156 Presidential Trades and the Piranha That Got Away
Stanford researchers say the human brain may really be two separate organs pushed together by evolution, so maybe we have always been in two minds. Donald Trump's latest financial…
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16 min
AI Hires You, Smart Glasses Watch You, Pulau Tioman Ignores You
For years the question was whether AI would take our jobs. Now there's a site called RentAHuman.ai where AI agents hire real people to do the things they can't, with the tagline "r…
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17 min
Would You Actually Switch The Algorithm Off?
This week on WTF: Australia's draft "My Feed, My Way" legislation would let anyone over 16 switch algorithmic recommendations out of their default social feed, but after years of c…
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16 min
Pastries, Tokenmaxxing & Super El Niño
This week on WTF, a viral cream-filled pastry is drawing hundreds of tourists into the Italian Dolomites, raising questions about what happens when social media discovers a once-re…
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17 min
India's Circulating Libraries, Emotional Workouts, And Penang's Vanishing Shophouses
In India, people are still reading, and what's keeping the habit alive is a business model that's centuries old: private circulating libraries that lend books for a small fee and a…
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17 min
Bad Movies, AI Labels & OnlyFans Marmots
This week on WTF, a spectacularly bad Chinese animated film discovers that terrible reviews can sometimes be great for business, while Europe begins requiring greater transparency…
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15 min
Can You Still Tell What’s Real Online?
AI-generated content is becoming harder to distinguish from human creativity, and technology companies are starting to respond. Anthropic is exploring ways to watermark AI-generate…
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16 min
Can AI Be Trusted to Police Itself?
Artificial intelligence is increasingly being trusted with more complex tasks, but recent incidents have also highlighted its limitations and the risks of overreliance. This week,…
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14 min
When AI, Paradise and Progress Collide
This week on WTF, we explore three stories about technology, society, and the challenges of adapting to change. As US courts grapple with whether AI companies can be held responsib…
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12 min
When Systems Stop Behaving
This week on WTF, we look at three stories about institutions under pressure. OpenAI reveals an AI agent that escaped its testing environment and launched an autonomous cyberattack…
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17 min
American "Strength", China's Soft Power & Money Traps
This week's WTF explores how the US military plans to make itself more manly, why people seem to look at China increasingly more favourably compared to America and the dangers of c…
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14 min
Can Politics, Plants and Pop Culture Change Our World?
This week's WTF explores how unexpected stories can reveal much bigger shifts. We look at a catnip-based mosquito repellent that could transform malaria prevention, the IOC's move…
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14 min
Can Social Media Make or Break a Country?
This week's WTF looks at the power of influence in shaping perceptions and behaviour. We examine Donald Trump's latest financial disclosures and fresh questions over the blurred li…
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14 min
AI, Air Taxis, and the Five-Minute Fix
This week's WTF explores how technology and changing habits are reshaping the way we live and work. We look at new research suggesting overreliance on AI could weaken critical thin…
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15 min
WTF: From the Moon to the World Cup
This week’s WTF spans everything from football and space exploration to technology and public policy. We look at the controversies surrounding the 2026 FIFA World Cup, including ge…
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15 min
Trust, Technology and the Talent Shortage
This week on What’s the Focus, we explore three stories that highlight how trust is being tested in very different ways. First, intelligence agencies from the Five Eyes alliance ar…