In the days before his inauguration, President Trump announced his own cryptocurrency, TRUMP coin, a move that could stand to make the Trump family significantly wealthier. And now, Trump has offered investors something else– access to him, when he recently announced he’ll hold a private dinner with the largest investors in TRUMP coin. In this week’s episode, we talk about Trump's venture into cryptocurrency and the giant web of ethical concerns it presents.

You can follow our hosts on Bluesky—Michael Calore is @snackfight, Lauren Goode is @laurengoode, and Katie Drummond is @katie-drummond.

When former national security advisor Mike Waltz had a picture taken of him last week, he didn’t expect for the whole world to see that he was using TeleMessage, a messaging app similar to Signal. Now the app has been hacked, with portions of data linked to government entities like Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and companies like Coinbase. Today on the show, we’re joined by WIRED senior writer Lily Hay Newman to discuss what this incident tells us about the growing vulnerabilities in government communications.

Articles mentioned in this episode:

• Mike Waltz Has Somehow Gotten Even Worse at Using Signal
• The Signal Clone the Trump Admin Uses Was Hacked
• The Signal Clone Mike Waltz Was Caught Using Has Direct Access to User Chats

You can follow Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky @zoeschiffer, and Lily Hay Newman @lhn.

In the year 2000, measles were declared eliminated from the United States. But thanks to declining vaccination rates, Americans may have to contend with a much scarier future for the deadly disease. Today on the show, we talk about the state of measles, and we explain the role Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, has played in the shifting culture around vaccines in America.

You can follow our hosts on Bluesky—Michael Calore is @snackfight, Lauren Goode is @laurengoode, and Katie Drummond is @katie-drummond.