Ashlee Vance on robot gladiators and the future of AI combat

Ashlee Vance reports from San Francisco's underground robot fight clubs, where humanoid machines controlled by virtual reality pilots battle in steel cages before roaring crowds. China dominates the hardware, America provides the spectacle, and artificial intelligence makes the robots increasingly lethal. The technology is advancing at breakneck speed — raising questions about entertainment, military applications, and what happens when these machines become truly intelligent.

Todd S. Purdum, veteran journalist and author of the new book "Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television," explains how a Cuban refugee revolutionized Hollywood from his adopted home in Los Angeles. Though underappreciated as a showbiz entrepreneur, Arnaz pioneered the three-camera sitcom format, shifted television production from New York to Los Angeles, and created the business model that would sustain the industry and TV production for seven decades.

John Freeman, author of "California Rewritten: A Journey Through the Golden State's New Literature," talks about how California has become America's new literary center, challenging New York's dominance. He discusses the pandemic book club that sparked his journey, the state's evolving mythology, and how diverse voices are redefining what it means to imagine America's future.

Filmmaker Ari Gold turns the camera on his own family in "Brother Verses Brother," an ambitious one-shot musical that follows him and his identical twin brother searching for meaning through the streets of San Francisco's North Beach, alongside their 99-year-old novelist father, Herb. Gold explains how this experimental work, executive produced by Francis Ford Coppola and generating serious buzz on the festival circuit, blurs the line between documentary and fiction, asking uncomfortable questions about art, family, and what we're willing to expose in pursuit of truth.

Dina Gilio-Whitaker, author of the new book "Who Gets to Be Indian?" explores how California became ground zero for Native American identity fraud — from Hollywood's early film lots to today's casino capitalism and tribal disenrollment crisis. The state's confluence of entertainment industry, counterculture movements, federal relocation programs, and gaming wealth created perfect conditions for "Indianness" to become commodified, challenging authentic tribal sovereignty and belonging across the nation.

Mike Magee is the president of Minerva University, which has earned the No. 1 ranking in the World University Rankings for Innovation for four consecutive years. Founded in San Francisco in 2012, Minerva reimagined higher education — eliminating campuses, lectures, and tenure while sending students to live and study across seven global cities. Magee discusses how Minerva, with only a 4% acceptance rate and students from more than 100 countries, is preparing the next generation of leaders for an interconnected world.

Tim Higgins discusses his new book "iWar," examining how one of California's corporate crown jewels, Apple, faces an unprecedented rebellion. Tech leaders such as Spotify's Daniel Ek and Epic's Tim Sweeney are waging a legal war over what they have portrayed as a shakedown operation — the 30% App Store cut that generates massive profits for Apple while stifling competition. As this battle imperils Apple's hold on the mobile world, the rise of artificial intelligence is threatening to potentially displace the smartphone era altogether.

Jeff Chang, in his new biography "Water Mirror Echo," explores how the short of life of Bruce Lee helped make Asian America. Born in San Francisco's Chinatown, Lee was denied the lead role in Warner Bros.'s 1970s TV series "Kung Fu," which was given instead to David Carradine in yellowface. Lee's collision with Hollywood rejection became a catalyst for his rise at a time of emergent Asian American political consciousness. Chang discusses how Lee became a global symbol of Asian American dignity, and how his legend has only grown in the decades since his death.

Satsuki Ina was born behind barbed wire at Tule Lake, where she became one of roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. Her parents, both U.S. citizens, lost their freedom and faith in America, leaving a legacy of silence and trauma. Today, as immigrant families are again separated and detained, Ina's memoir "The Poet and the Silk Girl" chronicles her family's journey through California's network of assembly centers and permanent camps. It's a reminder, she says, that what happened then is not just history — it's a warning about how easily such chapters of fear and racism repeat themselves.

Peter Jones turned his camera on his former classmates from the Harvard School for Boys, a former military academy for boys in Los Angeles, for his new documentary "Fortunate Sons," chronicling the lives of the 1974 graduating class through their 50th reunion. What started as pandemic Zoom calls became surprisingly honest conversations about addiction, suicide, and the pressure of living up to successful fathers. Jones discovered that wealth can't shield against every hardship, and that the men now in their 60s were finally ready to drop the macho act and talk about what really happened.