IRL: Online Life is Real Life

Mozilla’s multi-award winning podcast is back! "In Season 8, Bridget Todd explores how AI is reshaping our desires, our systems, and our futures—and the choices we still have to shape it back."

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Season 8

2: Our Heads in the Cloud

There are some good reasons to let AI into our brains. But how much do we know about the privacy of brain data? Show Notes

Published: June 24, 2025

There are some good reasons to let AI into our brains. But how much do we know about the privacy of brain data? Host Bridget Todd explores how AI is interacting with our thoughts, memories, and (dis)abilities, and what it all means for brain privacy.

Ian Burkhart had an experimental brain implant that allowed him to move his hand and fingers after he was paralyzed in an accident. Now Ian leads a coalition to help others have the same opportunity.

Maria Paz Canales is a digital rights advocate who argues against creating a new set of rights focused solely on the privacy of brain data.

Pau Aleikum Garcia, co-founder of Domestic Data Streamers, uses generative AI to help people preserve their core memories.

Episode transcript

1: We Found Love in an AI Place

Will my new AI boyfriend be a green flag? Bridget Todd explores how encounters of love and sex are secretly shaped by data and algorithms. Show Notes

Published: June 17, 2025

Will my new AI boyfriend be a green flag? Bridget Todd explores how encounters of love and sex are secretly shaped by data and algorithms.

Love is intimate. It’s private. It’s human. So naturally tech companies see it as a money-maker. Host Bridget Todd uncovers the algorithmic racism and bias built into most popular dating apps, and meets the people who are coming up with better alternatives.

Apryl Williams interviewed more than 100 dating app users for her book “Not My Type-Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating” and learned a lot about race-based discrimination in dating algorithms.

After he was diagnosed with Autism and ADHD early in the pandemic, Jamie Johnston founded Mattr, a dating app where neurodiversity is celebrated and people have a less addictive algorithmic dating experience.

Jen Caltrider led Mozilla’s Online Product Reviews. She reviewed the privacy policies of dozens of dating apps and love robots and concluded this is an industry of spyware for our most intimate thoughts.

Episode transcript

Trailer: We're Back! IRL Season 8: AI and Us

Bridget Todd is on a journey to find out how AI affects us on a personal level. From her love life to her city, to the privacy of her memories, Bridget digs deep to uncover the relationship between us and AI. She talks to people who question the status quo, and pour their hearts into shaping AI that will change our lives without invading our privacy. Show Notes

Published: June 10, 2025
Bridget Todd is on a journey to find out how AI affects us on a personal level. From her love life to her city, to the privacy of her memories, Bridget digs deep to uncover the relationship between us and AI. She talks to people who question the status quo, and pour their hearts into shaping AI that will change our lives without invading our privacy. Episode transcript

Season 7

  • 5: The Art of AI Listen now. December 5, 2023

    From Hollywood to Hip Hop, artists are negotiating consent for use of AI in the creative industries. Bridget Todd speaks to artists who are pushing the boundaries.

  • 4: Lend Me Your Voice Listen now. November 21, 2023

    Big tech’s power over language, means power over people. Bridget Todd talks to language community leaders paving the way for voice AI in their own languages and dialects.

  • Why does it so often feel like we’re part of a mass AI experiment? What is the responsible way to test new technologies? Bridget Todd explores what it means to live with unproven AI systems that impact millions of people as they roll out across public life.

  • They’re the essential workers of AI — yet mostly invisible and exploited. Does it have to be this way? Bridget Todd talks to data workers and entrepreneurs calling for change.

  • Are today’s large language models too hot to handle? Bridget Todd digs into the risks and rewards of opening up the tech that makes ChatGPT talk.

  • This season, Bridget Todd meets people who are balancing the upsides of AI with the downsides coming into view worldwide. The first of five biweekly episodes launches on October 10!

Season 6

  • Life, death and data. AI’s capacity to support research on human health is well documented. But so are the harms of biased datasets and misdiagnoses. How can AI developers build healthier systems? We take a look at a new dataset for Black skin health, a Covid chatbot in Rwanda, AI diagnostics in rural India, and elusive privacy in mental health apps.

  • How can platforms stop disinformation that spreads like wildfire during elections? A record number of elections are taking place around the world in 2022. Voters’ social media feeds will be flooded with political, AI driven disinformation campaigns. Grassroots organizations are tackling the problem head on, aggressively tracking disinformation and hate speech and fighting AI with AI.

  • 3: AI from Above Listen now. August 15, 2022

    From above the clouds, our world is surveilled and datafied. Power over that data means power over what stories get told about people and places: whose needs are counted, whose needs are erased. How can people reclaim power over their own maps and stories using AI?

  • Gig workers around the world report directly to algorithms in precarious jobs created by secretive corporations. We take you to the streets of Quito, Ecuador where delivery workers are protesting against artificial intelligence, and we hear solutions from people in several countries on how to audit the algorithms and reclaim rights.

  • Where should tech builders draw the line on AI for military or surveillance? Just because it can be built, doesn't mean it should be. At what point do we blow the whistle, call out the boss, and tell the world? Find out what it's like to sound the alarm from inside a big tech company.

  • Meet IRL's new host, Bridget Todd, who is on a journey to meet people around the world who are making AI more trustworthy, in real life.

Season 5

Season 4

Season 3

Season 2

Season 1