Codebreaker

The gadget that saved a refugee in the middle of the Aegean Sea, how an agent uses technology to patrol the U.S. border with Mexico, and how a journalist in exile broadcasts the news with WhatsApp. Listen, decode, and decide: Can technology crossing borders save us?

A proposal to bioengineer shorter humans with cat eyes, a decades-old idea for a totally new kind of power, a battery made from trash and Bill Nye the Science Guy tries to get us in gear. Listen, decode, and decide: Can world-building save us?

The man who collected too much data, cyborgs who want to make their body-hardware mainstream, robots that rebuild your hairline and a conversation with Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge aka LeVar Burton. Listen, decode, and decide: Can the augmented self save us?

A therapist who creates virtual reality experiences for people with dangerous disorders, a grandmother who uses a headset to escape her surroundings and Ernest Cline on virtual reality in fact and fiction. Listen, decode, and decide: Can alternate realities save us?

A toddler who saved her mother’s life with Siri, a man whose mysterious ailment opened up a world of voice recognition technology and a dating service that wants to scan the faces of all your exes. Listen, decode, and decide: Can recognition software save us?

How targeted ads for a pair of men’s sandals broke up one relationship, the researchers trying to keep data tracking honest, and the casualties of ad blockers. Listen, decode, and decide: Is data tracking evil?

How people-rating app Peeple drew rage and put its co-founders in danger, how a 16-year-old embraced identity through virality, and the funny video that threatened to put its makers into crushing debt. Listen, decode, and decide: Is going viral evil?

A guy who thinks machines can prevent crime, another who thinks machines could destroy humanity and a machine-learning algorithm outsmarted by squirrels. Listen, decode and decide: Is the decisive machine evil?

A software update that almost brought down the International Space Station with astronauts inside, updating software inside your body, and the days when even geeks dreaded installing new programs. Listen, decode, and decide: Is the software update evil?

A couple is forced onto the dark web to buy life-saving medicine; Ben buys a drug scale; and a researcher who says the dark web might make the illegal drug trade safer. Listen, decode, and decide: Is the dark web evil?

A man whose job is scrubbing porn from the web; adult film star Stoya’s battle against free, pirated porn; and the dirty history of tagging. Listen, decode and decide: Is internet porn evil?

A woman answers a mysterious email and finds herself on a plane, spam buries our inbox, and a band falls apart over the send button. Listen, decode, and decide: Is email evil?

Produced by Marketplace in partnership with Tech Insider, Codebreaker is a podcast that dares to ask — and answer — the fundamental questions about technology that consume us every day. In season one, we’re starting with three deceptively simple words: Is it evil? In each episode, host Ben Johnson applies this question to a different technology. Codebreaker launches November 11, 2015.