Skip to content
Click Here artwork

Click Here

Recorded Future News·Hosted by Dina Temple-Raston·345 episodes

NewsCyber storiesPublic radio styleTwice weeklyAccessible techInvestigative reportingStandalone episodes

The podcast that tells true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. We take listeners into the world of cyber and intelligence without all the techie jargon. Every Tuesday and Friday, former NPR investigations correspondent Dina Temple-Raston and the team draw back the curtain on ransomware attacks, mysterious hackers, and the people who are trying to stop them.

Why listen

Click Here turns cyber, intelligence, AI, surveillance, and online conflict into accessible reported stories, without requiring listeners to speak fluent security jargon. Dina Temple-Raston and the Recorded Future News team mix narrative reporting, expert interviews, and human stakes, so an episode about ransomware, propaganda, satellites, or data pricing feels like a story about power rather than a tech briefing. It is a strong fit for listeners who like public radio journalism, geopolitics, and technology’s consequences in the real world.

Series(1)

Episodes

19 min
Jun 2, 2026
The job that wasn't

The ad seemed straightforward. The recruiter seemed legitimate. The opportunity seemed real. A story about what happens when all three turn out to be something else. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

18 min
May 29, 2026
No face to hide

A missing daughter. An unidentified body. A single photograph uploaded into a machine. Facial recognition is helping authorities solve cases that once seemed impossible. But the technology doesn’t stop working after the missing are found. And that’s where the story gets complicated. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

32 min
May 26, 2026
Shaping the record

Police reports often become the first official account of what happened during an encounter. Now AI is helping write them. In this CyberMonday crossover with WAMU and NPR’s 1A news magazine, we look at what changes when that account starts with a machine. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

16 min
May 22, 2026
Miracles and wonder

Somewhere right now, a camera is scanning a face. A license plate reader is logging a car. And most of us barely notice anymore. We sit down with NYU law professor Barry Friedman to talk about how surveillance became the background noise of modern life — and what it’s doing to democracy. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

28 min
May 19, 2026
Faces in the crowd

In Edmonton, police tested facial-recognition-equipped body cameras in the first pilot program of its kind in Canada. The experiment raised a deeper question: what happens when anonymity disappears from public life? Zach Hirsch reports on the uneasy future of always being seen. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

19 min
May 15, 2026
Drowning out the truth

China's propaganda machine doesn't argue with the story. It buries it. From flooding Xinjiang hashtags to bot networks testing their reach during a U.S. Senate race, Beijing has turned information warfare into a numbers game. Now it's exporting that playbook — with teams working nine-to-five shifts to drown out anything China doesn't want you to see. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

37 min
May 12, 2026
The people we sent away

America became a scientific superpower by attracting talent from around the world. But sometimes fear gets in the way. Qian Xuesen — a Chinese rocket scientist forced out during the Cold War — went on to help build China’s missile program. In partnership with 1A, Click Here looks at whether America is repeating its mistakes. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

14 min
May 8, 2026
The firehose of falsehoods

Ahead of Hungary’s recent parliamentary elections, fake social media accounts began warning of political violence. But what caught researcher Antibot4Navalny’s attention was this: the Kremlin-linked campaign wasn’t reacting to events. It was trying to create them. We look at how these operations work, and why the goal may not be to make you believe a lie... but to doubt the possibility of truth itself. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

27 min
May 5, 2026
It didn’t look like propaganda

Propaganda works best when it disappears—into morning assemblies, lesson plans, even the alphabet on the wall. That’s what Pavel “Pasha” Talankin saw inside his classroom in Russia. So he started filming it all and what he captured became not just an Oscar-winning movie — but a record of how control settles in, one school day at a time. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

16 min
May 1, 2026
Access, denied.

You buy a phone. A car. A tractor. But what do you actually own? We talk to legal scholar Aaron Perzanowski about how software and contracts are reshaping ownership — and why the right-to-repair movement is gaining traction. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

22 min
Apr 28, 2026
Not quite yours

You buy something. A phone. A car. A tractor. It feels like it’s yours. But, it turns out, the software inside sets the terms—controlling how it works, how it’s fixed, even whether it runs at all. This week: how code is redefining ownership. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

18 min
Apr 24, 2026
Rage against the machine

AI learns by scraping our work — often without asking. Now people are fighting back. Not just in court, but raging against the machine itself — quietly corrupting the data it depends on. Which raises a question: If AI learns from us, what happens if we start teaching it the wrong lessons? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

44 min
Apr 21, 2026
The price tag of you

In this CyberMonday crossover with WAMU’s 1A, we hear from listeners and return to an episode on how companies are using our data to customize how online goods are priced from consumer to consumer. What happens when technology reshapes the rules of the marketplace? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

11 min
Apr 17, 2026
The space debris strikes back

Last week, Artemis II returned from the Moon. For a moment, it all felt clean. Simple. But space isn’t empty anymore. It’s crowded. It’s noisy. It’s filling up with the things we’ve left behind. And sometimes… those things come back. We return to a story we did on an Australian farmer who had an unexpected visitor from space—a charred piece of metal, dropped from low Earth orbit into his field. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

26 min
Apr 14, 2026
Defying gravity

The Artemis II mission that made its trip around the Moon didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was built in part on a mission that happened a couple of years ago. We return to a story about  a scrappy lunar lander that nearly didn’t make it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

16 min
Apr 10, 2026
Reverse engineering us

With digital copies of the human mind, scientists at MIT now have a new kind of testing ground --- a brain they can probe, no surgery required. It's to study how we remember, how we learn, and even how language begins. But if this mind is built—not born— are we studying the brain or engineering a version we can finally control? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

DTEG
24 min
Apr 7, 2026
Every breath you fake

We lie with our faces. With our voices. Even with our pauses. Now AI says it can see through all of it. But is it actually detecting the truth…or just telling a very convincing story about how we feel? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

20 min
Apr 3, 2026
The Village that built the internet

To live in the modern world, you have to be online. But in many places, that connection still doesn’t exist. So people aren’t waiting. They’re building their own internet—creating and running their own providers from the ground up. And in the process, redefining who gets to connect… and who gets to decide. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

DTZH
27 min
Mar 31, 2026
Almost heaven, no reception

What does it take to get everyone online? More than wires and satellites. We return to a story about a Mississippi farmer searching for a reliable connection—and end up uncovering a problem that stretches back nearly a century. What’s at stake isn’t just internet access, but who gets to be part of what comes next. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

14 min
Mar 27, 2026
Internet at the speed of light

We usually think of getting online as something that requires cables—strung under oceans or buried beneath our feet. Mahesh Krishnaswamy of Taara thinks the future may lie in beams of light pointed at the sky. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

SPDTMK
43 min
Mar 24, 2026
A wrinkle in time: GPS jamming in Ukraine

In this CyberMonday crossover with WAMU’s 1A, we hear from listener and return to an episode on how satellites, electronic warfare, and a team of American techies MacGyver-ed a way to keep the power flowing in Ukraine. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

SPDT
23 min
Mar 20, 2026
The other battlefield

A cyberattack on a U.S. medical device company didn’t ask for money—it tried to wipe systems clean. It may be the start of a wave of Iran-linked hacks as tensions rise in the Middle East. So this week, we revisit a story about how Iranian hackers wage war from the shadows. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

DTSP
27 min
Mar 17, 2026
Return to code red: hacking the halls of medicine

Sky Lakes Medical Center in south-central Oregon never imagined it could become the target of a cyberattack. Then, one day, its computer systems went dark. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

DTSP
19 min
Mar 13, 2026
The rise of high-tech despotism

Noura Al-Jizawi thought she’d left the repression of the Assad regime behind when she left Syria with her sister. Instead she became the target of an online subversion campaign.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

DTNASPRD
21 min
Mar 10, 2026
Smuggling signals out of Iran

After Tehran throttled the internet during nationwide protests in 2022, Iranians started preparing a workaround: Starlink. Smugglers brought thousands of satellite terminals into the country. So when war began, and the regime tried to cut its people off from the rest of the world, they still found a signal. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

DTSPAA
18 min
Mar 6, 2026
When morality meets the machine

When a new tool starts appearing in places where humans once wrestled with right and wrong, it’s worth asking not just what the technology can do — but what it may be doing to us. Shannon Vallor, a philosopher at the University of Edinburgh, examines the hidden costs of offloading our moral judgment to machines. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

SVDT
24 min
Mar 3, 2026
AI’s divine intervention

Churches are turning to AI to write sermons and reach new congregants. But when faith is filtered through an algorithm, does it change what – or who – we’re actually listening to? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

31 min
Feb 27, 2026
Dispatches from the Ukrainian front

Four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an air-defense officer named Zhan describes a battlefield dominated by drones and connectivity — and we return to a story about the tech detectives who trace the component parts that keep those weapons flying. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

46 min
Feb 24, 2026
Your data, commodified

You’ve likely received a scam call or text at some point. Some of these messages come from elaborate compounds found mostly in Southeast Asia. These compounds look like call centers but operate more like prisons. In this CyberMonday crossover with WAMU’s 1A, we return to an episode and hear from listeners — on how these centers cropped up and what’s being done to stop them. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

21 min
Feb 20, 2026
Chasing shadows with The Citizen Lab

The early Internet was ushered in with this widespread hope about its utopian possibilities. But the founder of The Citizen Lab, Ron Deibert, suspected there was a dark underbelly of government surveillance and censorship lying beneath and he was determined to unmask  it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

25 min
Feb 17, 2026
Reading North Korea

As reports grow that Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter could soon be formally designated as his successor — extending the family’s rule to a fourth generation — we’re revisiting a story about the outsiders who watch North Korea when almost no one else can. In a country closed to inspectors and journalists, open-source “tech detectives” comb through satellite images, videos, and propaganda for tiny clues, trying to piece together what the regime is actually doing — and what it wants the world to believe — as it prepares for what could be a historic handoff of power. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

21 min
Feb 13, 2026
Miss Lonelyhearts and the money mules

We return to a special Valentine’s Day episode, and look at the evolution of romance scams. They aren’t just about bilking lonely people out of their life savings anymore – scammers have diversified, and they’re making victims accomplices in a roster of cyber crimes from email scams and check fraud to money laundering. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

28 min
Feb 10, 2026
Defying Gravity

Former astronaut Ed Lu once worried about asteroids. Now he’s turning his attention to space debris —and a new question it raises: could adversaries turn it into a weapon? Some officials are beginning to worry the answer may be yes. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

23 min
Feb 6, 2026
Coded music

A Cold War story about musicians, dissidents, and the quiet ways people push back when a system decides who gets to exist — and who doesn’t. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

22 min
Feb 3, 2026
The people vs. the cloud

When Big Tech brought plans for a giant data center to St. Charles, Missouri, one college student decided to fight back. And it raises a question that small towns all over the US are asking: What happens when the cloud touches ground? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

14 min
Jan 30, 2026
Gone in 60 hacks

Car theft has gone digital. We talk to a white-hat hacker about how cars became computers on wheels—and why, in the race for smarter tech, safety is still trying to catch up. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

26 min
Jan 27, 2026
Move fast and brake things

Volvo built its reputation on safety. Then a software update nearly sent one driver off a cliff. We look at what happens when car companies start acting like tech companies — and discover the danger of “move fast and break things” on the open road. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

12 min
Jan 23, 2026
The neighborhood patrol

As the Trump administration pressures Apple and Google to remove apps that track ICE activity from their stores, locals are going old-school. Francisco Chavo Romero, an LA-based activist, explains how it works. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

28 min
Jan 20, 2026
Watching the watchers

When the Trump administration began rounding up immigrants, a new kind of resistance took shape — digital, crowdsourced, and built for the smartphone era. Activists used apps and social media to keep watch on the government. But before long, the government started watching back. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

14 min
Jan 16, 2026
Can AI fix its own energy problem?

The A.I. boom is reshaping our world—and quietly guzzling power. This week, sustainable code advocate Stuart Clark explains how the race to build smarter machines is heating up our planet—and how we can code our way to a cleaner future. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

22 min
Jan 13, 2026
AI and the secret lives of whales

What happens when you cross a marine biologist with a machine-learning engineer? You get someone who thinks humpback whales might be saying something meaningful—and that artificial intelligence could help us finally understand it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

12 min
Jan 9, 2026
Blockchain buzzkill — one miner’s lament.

We return to a story about bitcoin mining in Kentucky. When Richard Hunter heard about the state's generous crypto incentives, he packed up his bitcoin machines and pointed them south. He imagined a booming business, jobs for locals, and maybe — just maybe — a shot at redemption. But what he got … was a buzzkill. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

25 min
Jan 6, 2026
Crypto in Kentucky: The next extraction

Since the collapse of coal, Eastern Kentucky has lived through a procession of supposed revivals. Each new idea was treated as something close to salvation. But things like cryptocurrency and AI data centers may not offer a break with history – just a continuation of it. We return to a story we did last year about Kentucky's crypto mining industry. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

12 min
Jan 2, 2026
Cloudy with a chance of Algorithms

Tech giants say artificial intelligence can outsmart the storm, predicting tomorrow’s weather faster than ever. We return to a conversation we had with Paris Perdikaris of the University of Pennsylvania. He tells us about a new tension: forecasts are only as good as the public data that fuels them – and now even that is in doubt. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

45 min
Dec 30, 2025
AI and the weather forecast

Artificial intelligence is rewriting the rules of weather forecasting — spotting storms sooner, warning us faster, and increasing the potential to save lives. But cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service threaten the very data that makes it possible. In this CyberMonday crossover with WAMU’s 1A, we hear from listeners as we return to an episode that takes us inside the green screens and satellite feeds to show what’s at stake. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

17 min
Dec 26, 2025
Erased: The curious case of UyghurEdit++

China’s surveillance of Uyghurs has leapt from the physical world to the digital one. No longer just QR codes on doorways, it’s now hidden in cloud services and software updates. This week on Click Here’s Mic Drop, we return to a story on how digital tools meant to protect identity are being used to erase it.ERASED is a four-part investigation into how China is wiping Uyghur culture from existence — one law, one app, one person, one website at a time. From shuttered schools to vanishing websites, ERASED uncovers an authoritarian regime’s campaign to delete a culture — and the unlikely rebels racing to stop it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

33 min
Dec 23, 2025
Erased: Silencing a kindergarten

In a small classroom in western China, children once learned to sing and count in the language of their ancestors — Uyghur. Then the doors were locked, and founder Abduweli Ayup went from teacher to enemy of the state. We return to the first episode in our series, ERASED.ERASED is a four-part investigation into how China is wiping Uyghur culture from existence — one law, one app, one person, one website at a time. From shuttered schools to vanishing websites, ERASED uncovers an authoritarian regime’s campaign to delete a culture — and the unlikely rebels racing to stop it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

14 min
Dec 19, 2025
The ego exploit

Zoom was built for speed. But in its rush to connect us, it may have left a few doors open. We return to a conversation with Dan Guido, the CEO of the cybersecurity firm Trail of Bits. He walks us through how one of Zoom's most mundane features became a hacker's best friend — and why the weakest link in crypto isn't the blockchain … it's the person who thinks they're too smart to get scammed. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

33 min
Dec 16, 2025
Introducing kill switch

An episode from kill switch:On October 20, an Amazon Web Services outage knocked out big swaths of the internet — from Snapchat and Reddit to smart beds and government services. On the series kill switch, host Dexter Thomas talks with Dr. Corinne Cath, a cultural anthropologist and tech researcher, about how three companies — Amazon, Microsoft, and Google — came to dominate the cloud, why that’s risky for democracy, and what we can do about it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

15 min
Dec 12, 2025
The algorithm will see you now - AI and psychiatry

We return to a conversation we had with Dr. Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist and retired Army brigadier general. He's has always had an open mind when it comes to cutting-edge technology. Now he’s looking at AI to see if it can help doctors treat veterans struggling with mental health. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices