Bob Sullivan’s podcast projects

Bob is currently the host of AARP’s The Perfect Scam podcast. Listeners ride along weekly as scam victims and professional con artists tell their stories. A 2023 Webby award winner

Debugger is a podcast about technology and democracy, produced with help from Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics.

Breach is a deep-dive audio documentary that investigates history’s biggest hackers. Bob is co-host with Alia Tavakolian of Spoke Media. Season 1 uncovers the role of Russia in the massive Yahoo hack; Season 2 examines the comedy of errors that led to the Equifax breach. Sponsored by Carbonite. A Shorty Award finalist.

No Place to Hide is a 6-episode miniseries examining the state of privacy in America, from abusive digital police tactics to abusive romantic partners who hunt down victims through cyberspace. Bob co-hosts with Spoke Media’s Alia Tavakolian. Part fiction, part non-fiction. Sponsored by Intel.

“So, Bob?” is a weekly investigation of the unintended consequences of technology.

LATEST EPISODES

Billions in fines might not change Big Tech, but $5,000 per victim payouts just might

September 11, 2026 Bob Sullivan 0

When Facebook parent Meta had agreed to a $17 billion settlement in August, you couldn’t blame consumers for shrugging. Facebook has faced big fines before, with little impact. But last year’s Flo Health period tracking app case is different. It went to trial. Victims testified. Experts exposed Meta’s misbehaviors. A [Keep reading]

Sugar High, part 4: The future of music is what we’ll make — transcript

July 23, 2026 Bob Sullivan 0

The Debugger miniseries ‘Sugar High’ examines the impact Big Tech and AI will have on the music industry. In this conclusion, folk musician Tift Merritt and Duke Professor David Hoffman discuss all the tools society has to encourage both innovation and art. And we learn a bit more about Tift’s [Keep reading]

A decade of heartbreaks: His identity has been used in hundreds of romance scams

July 23, 2026 Bob Sullivan 0

I sat down at his table and he had probably 100 cards and letters and gifts and boxes and he said, ‘I bet there’s at least 500 …. This isn’t nearly all of it.’ And he really lost count. There were just stacks of love letters and gifts and cards, [Keep reading]

What’s an amygdala hijack? And why is crafting a great cybersecurity tool?

April 14, 2026 Bob Sullivan 0

The most dangerous hack is a brain hack. And criminals are getting very, very good at that. Meanwhile, I fear, the rest of us have spent precious little time learning to defend against brain hacks. Hopefully today’s piece will help a little. Today I’m going to discuss an important way [Keep reading]

Sugar High, part 3: Does it have to be tech vs art?

March 1, 2026 Bob Sullivan 0

Jen Jacobsen of the Artist Rights Alliance joins host Bob Sullivan to talk about the decades-long ‘battle’ between artists and tech firms. Will it come to a head with AI music? Can we build incentives into the system that reward creators? This is part 3 of Debugger’s miniseries on [Keep reading]

Sugar High, part 2: AI=layoffs. But will AI=Grammy Awards?

February 27, 2026 Bob Sullivan 0

The parent company of Cash App, After Pay and Square laid off nearly half its staff this week. Wall Street cheered, sending the stock up nearly 20%. Get used to headlines like this. Owner Jack Dorsey — the founder of Twitter — claims AI enabled the workforce slashing. My hunch [Keep reading]

Sugar High, part 1: Is AI the Future of ‘Music?’ – a Debugger podcast with Tift Merritt

February 13, 2026 Bob Sullivan 0

The next time you fire up your favorite streaming service, the music you hear might be made by a robot. Maybe you don’t care; you’re just looking for something to help you kill those 30 minutes on the treadmill. But you should care. The sound you might not hear is [Keep reading]

Why banana bread is the solution to the world’s fraud problem

December 1, 2025 Bob Sullivan 1

By any measure you can find, fraud is soaring in the U.S. and around the world. I spent an hour on WHYY radio recently discussing the causes for this, but I can boil it down to one concept: big, uncaring companies have dehumanized customers and employees alike, creating a perfect [Keep reading]

Thanksgiving was stolen from this mom; a taxpayer hacking scandal was revealed

October 31, 2025 Bob Sullivan 0

UPDATE 10/31/2025 — With SNAP benefits about to be suspended due to the government shutdown, I checked the “theft scoreboard” to see if there’d been any improvement in this situation. In fact, it’s grown worse. More than $100 million was stolen in the most recent quarter, and the total is [Keep reading]

From homeless to helping North Korea’s weapons program; the vexing problem of laptop farms

October 13, 2025 Bob Sullivan 0

It’s a dark, cluttered room full of bookshelves, each shelf jam-packed with laptop computers. There are dozens of them humming away, lights flickering. And each one has a Post-It note attached with a single name on it. And there’s a pink purse just hanging off the side of one of [Keep reading]

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