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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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