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

Personal news: I’m the new host of AARP’s The Perfect Scam podcast

January 13, 2021 Bob Sullivan 4

“So, the Hollywood Reporter received a tip from Jonathan himself in, I believe it was August 2019. And I believe the subject line was something like, “Reality Producer Conned Out of $100,000 by ‘Irish Heiress Con Artist.’” And that, I mean the email had me at Irish Heiress Con Artist [Keep reading]

Podcast: ‘It’s very cheap to be a bad faith actor’ — why disinformation is an ‘infinite game’

October 6, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

When you’re playing a game with someone who doesn’t play by the rules…who doesn’t play by any rules….who doesn’t even really want to win the game….who simply wants to game to go on and on…well, you can’t win. That’s how disinformation works, says today’s guest on the Red Tape Chronicles [Keep reading]

Podcast — Dirty digital politics: ‘Brainwashing’ and a virus attacking democracy

September 11, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

Dirty digital politics is a fact of life all over the world now. Democracies are going to have to learn how to live with it. One thing that could help US voters understand this murky world is to learn about the kinds of tactics being used in other countries. Fortunately, [Keep reading]

Podcast: Why aren’t housing prices going down? Bargain hunters, beware

July 28, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

It seems crazy, but housing prices have actually hit record highs in many places, and the housing market is sweltering. If you thought you might find a bargain during the pandemic, you are out of luck. How can this be? I wrote about this for CNBC’s Grow website recently. [Keep reading]

Podcast: The birth of CNN and 24-hour news, with author Lisa Napoli

July 28, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

Once upon a time, Americans waited until dinnertime to find out what happened in the world that day. Then, Ted Turner had a crazy itch to scratch and everything changed. Not for the better, I’d argue. For starters, people now tune to TV news — and to the Internet — [Keep reading]

Podcast: How to Lose the Information War (Hint: Start playing Whack-A-Troll)

July 1, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

The United States and many venerated European democracies are well on their way to becoming “a fact-free version of Democracy Lite,” warns today’s podcast guest, Nina Jankowicz. She’s the ‘disinformation fellow’ at the Wilson Center in Washington D.C., and she has a new book out called How to Lose the [Keep reading]

Will savers soon have to pay their banks interest? The perils of low interest rates

June 23, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

We’re all used to earning interest at a bank when we save money. But could a financial institution soon charge you ‘interest’ to park your money there? Yes, says Ken Tumin, the man behind DepositAccounts.com. Interest rates are now so low that saving money could soon cost consumers. In today’s [Keep reading]

Podcast: How to detect fake anything in a zero trust world – my conversation with Avivah Litan

June 18, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

Fake News is stoking violence and helping destroy our democracy. Fake pills make people sick and can even kill them. Fake foods, like fake olive oil, or mislabeled fish, rip consumers off and steal profits from honest companies. The world is becoming overrun by fake everything, says Avivah Litan, renowned [Keep reading]

Podcast: How blockchain, and the ‘Internet of Value,’ can fight exploitation and racism

June 15, 2020 Bob Sullivan 8

Too often, people who do the work don’t get paid for that work, or earn only a fraction of the money extracted by institutional layers — middlemen — shoe-horned between producer and consumer. The cook is the least-paid worker at a restaurant chain; the musician or painter gets pennies on [Keep reading]

Where is my puppy??!! As online shopping surges during Covid, so does online fraud

June 8, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

Americans are shopping online at record levels — thanks to Covid-19…and with all that flurry of activity, criminals have flocked to e-commerce, too. Julie Ferguson, CEO of the Merchant Risk Council, talked to me recently about why online credit card fraud and other kinds of fraud seem to be spreading [Keep reading]

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