Plus: Goldman Sachs forms a new team to focus on financing data centers to capitalize on the AI boom. And China’s Defense Ministry purges several high-ranking military officials. Zoe Kuhlkin hosts.
An artificial-intelligence tool assisted in the making of this episode by creating summaries that were based on Wall Street Journal reporting and reviewed and adapted by an editor.
Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Sam Altman says ChatGPT will start to have erotic chats with interested adults 2) Also, more sycophancy? 3) Is sycophancy the lost love language 4) Is erotic ChatGPT good for OpenAI’s business? 5) Is erotic ChatGPT a sign that AGI is actually far away? 6) OpenAI’s latest business metrics revealed 7) Google’s AI contributes to cancer discovery 8) Anthropic’s Jack Clark on AI becoming self aware 9) Is Zuck poaching Apple AI engineers mostly to hurt Apple? 10) AI’s sameness problem 11) Ranjan rants against workslop
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Kenya's opposition leader, and former prime minister, Raila Odinga, has died suddenly at the age of eighty. We explore his legacy in Kenya and the rest of Africa.
The world's largest producer of cobalt is the Democratic Republic of Congo. It replaces the ban with quotas but what does that mean for the DRC economy and its local mining communities?
And did you know that young women can get perimenopause. We ask what it is?
Presenter: Nyasha Michelle
Producers: Mark Wilberforce, Yvette Twagiramariya, Stefania Okereke
Technical Producer: Craig Kingham
Senior Producer: Sunita Nahar
Editors: Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi.
President Zelensky of Ukraine is in Washington ahead of crucial talks with Donald Trump. He's expected to press for long-range Tomahawk missiles to strike Russia. Also: China's ruling Communist Party expels nine senior military officials. New Yorkers are preparing to vote for a new mayor, as a Muslim candidate emerges as the clear frontrunner. The state funeral of a revered opposition leader in Kenya. Spotify develops its own AI music tools. And the EU's top court rules that pets can be classified as 'luggage' on flights.
The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight.
Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment.
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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is in Washington ahead of crucial talks with Donald Trump. The meeting comes a day after Mr Trump spoke on the phone with Vladimir Putin -- and agreed to hold a summit in Hungary to discuss how to end the war. On his arrival, Mr Zelensky said Moscow was rushing to the negotiating table to stop America from supplying long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine.
Also in the programme: The second highest general in China has been removed and faces corruption charges along with eight other senior military officials; and we hear from Marie Kondo, who became famous by teaching us how to tidy up.
(Photo: A handout photo made available by Ukrainian Presidential Press Service shows US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York, 23 September 2025. Credit: Photo by Presidential Press Service handout EPA /Shutterstock)
Bitcoin fell to $105K with $1.2B in crypto positions liquidated.
Bitcoin fell to $105,000 as leveraged traders faced significant losses, with $1.2 billion in crypto positions liquidated. What was the cause of the decline? CoinDesk's Jennifer Sanasie hosts "CoinDesk Daily."
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This episode was hosted by Jennifer Sanasie. “CoinDesk Daily” is produced by Jennifer Sanasie and edited by Victor Chen.
Global stocks took a hit today. There was red across the board from New York to Japan as investors have started to worry about the health of regional banks in the U.S., and the recent bankruptcies of an auto lender and car parts manufacturer. We'll learn the latest. Also, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is suing to block the Trump administration's planned visa charges, and fewer international travelers are opting to come to the States.
Episode overview:
Prince Nwadeyi spent years providing market research that unlocked South Africa's R600 billion (~USD 34.4 billion) informal economy for blue-chip clients. The likes of Swiss Re, Liberty, NASPARS all wanted the insights. Few wanted the execution risk.
In conversation with Andile Masuku, Nwadeyi explains why his holding company SAG Ventures stopped selling insights and started building businesses. From Mustard Finance Group (formerly Setana Capital) providing working capital to township spaza shops (micro convenience stores), to Purchase Pal embedding funeral cover into everyday groceries, Nwadeyi's ventures share a common thread: aligning incentives across entire value chains whilst playing a longer game than quarterly-focused corporates can stomach.
His journey from UCT postgrad researcher to operator deploying millions in credit with a claimed 99.9% repayment rate offers a masterclass in strategic patience and the power of granular consumer understanding.
Key insights:
- On why insights alone don't create impact: "We realised that some of the executives were not willing to take the risk, not for any risk of their own, but really just how the incentive structure set up within corporate." Nwadeyi discovered that knowing differently doesn't translate to acting differently when bonuses hang in the balance. The solution? Stop asking permission and build the innovation yourself.
- On aligning incentives to unlock impossible markets: Working capital finance to informal retailers seemed impossible until Nwadeyi mapped the ecosystem. Wholesalers wanted more sales but couldn't offer credit. They did have transaction data. "Can we build a technology solution that interprets that data at scale to enable unique insight that traditional finance institutions don't have access to?" The result: finance the stock purchase to the wholesaler, the SME repays over 14 days, everyone wins. One of their spaza shop clients recently scaled from one store to three and bought her first house for R1 million (~USD 57,400) cash.
- On thinking in decades whilst executing in months: "You don't have to think in days. You have to think in decades." Purchase Pal (what Nwadeyi claims to be "the world's first FMCG-embedded funeral insurance") represents one piece of a five-year strategy spanning multiple financial services verticals. The long game enables patient execution whilst maintaining corporate relevance. "What's my exit point? What's my entry point? Am I wanting to build this alongside?"
- On why research beats assumptions every time: A tearful interview during his MPhil research - a woman describing the humiliation of borrowing money to bury her mother whilst neighbours gossiped about her poverty - sparked the Purchase Pal concept. "What if we could unlock quote unquote, what I call, no cost insurance?" Years of ethnographic research revealed the margin structure in FMCG goods, the cost burden of traditional insurance intermediation, and the customer stickiness problem facing consumer goods manufacturers. Research made the impossible obvious.
Notable moment:
The pivot from consultant to operator: Walking through a Cape Flats township, Nwadeyi's co-founder encountered a spaza shop owner struggling for financing. "All I ever wanted to do is to feed myself, feed my family or feed my business." That human story, repeated across thousands of township retailers, shifted SAG from insight provider to solution builder. Traditional finance wouldn't touch these operators. Nwadeyi's team reportedly deployed over R100 million (~USD 5.7 million) and achieved 99.9% repayment rates.
Image credit: SAG Ventures
We discuss last night's NYC mayoral debate, in which Zohran Mamdani was bad, Andrew Cuomo was worse, and Curtis Sliwa was Curtis Sliwa. And we talk about the terrorist-run city of Birmingham, UK. Give a listen.
Plus: The auto industry is panicking about a potentially damaging supply-chain disruption after the Dutch government took control of Chinese-owned chip maker Nexperia. And a teenage girl sues the maker of fake-nude software. Zoe Kuhlkin hosts.