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A single field mismatch bricked fleets of Windows machines. A simple gesture turned dating into a swipe. A major grocer is hacked and down for 45 days. A driverless car pulled up with no one inside.

As we gear up for the launch of Season Two on March 3, Hannah shares her favourite stories from Season One. We went under the hood and explained tech in an accessible way for every curious listener. In this episode, we share what you've missed and our favourite parts for our loyal listeners.

We start by pulling apart the CrowdStrike outage to show why software that runs deep in the operating system is powerful and dangerous. Then we shift to the Marks and Spencer ransomware story to examine how attackers slip in at the edges, escalate privileges over months, and force hard choices about rebuilds and business continuity. From there, we pivot to product craft with a candid story from Google Maps, where watching Apple sparked a smarter roadmap and a useful parking feature. The theme: humility, fast learning, and disciplined shipping beat ego every time.

Our AI segments tackle the bigger shift: language models trained on trillions of tokens that summarise and reason without a tidy explanation of how. We cut through the hype with grounded numbers on GPUs, training timelines, and cost, and we explain why inference feels cheap while training burns the budget.

Then the interviews bring it home. Tinder co‑founder Jonathan Badeen traces swipe right back to flashcards, illustrating how a physical metaphor became a mobile-native flow that reduced friction and changed behaviour. Waymo’s engineering leader Nick Pelly breaks down the robotaxi experience, the safety data across one hundred million autonomous miles, and the sprawling software and hardware stack that makes autonomy work today. He also paints a vivid picture of tomorrow’s cities, where fewer car parks free space and travel time becomes time to work, play, or sleep.

We wrap with practical basics—LANs, WANs, data centres by rivers—and a reminder that legacy systems like COBOL still run banks and still pays.

If you enjoy smart stories backed by clear numbers, credibility, and lessons you can act on, this highlights edition was made for you.

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