Scams aren’t always loud. They don’t always come with pop-ups, typos, or promises of instant riches. The most effective ones whisper and tap into our better angels. And once they’re done that… they have us. In this CyberMonday crossover with WAMU’s 1A, we return to a Click Here episode and take your calls—on scams that prey not on our wallets but on our humanity.

The Kremlin has mastered controlling the message online. But now, tens of thousands of soldiers are coming home from Ukraine with stories the state can’t erase. Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, explains why those voices scare Vladimir Putin — and how far he’ll go to keep them quiet.

The Kremlin claims it’s slowing mobile internet to keep Ukrainian drones at bay. But that’s just the cover story. What’s really happening is Vladimir Putin’s long-imagined plan for a walled-off Russian internet — a plan that’s fast becoming a model for strongmen around the world.

The A.I. boom is reshaping our world—and quietly guzzling power. This week, sustainable code advocate Stuart Clark explains how the race to build smarter machines is heating up our planet—and how we can code our way to a cleaner future.

For years, companies have been collecting our data—tracking what we search, where we go, what we buy. But now, empowered by AI and fewer government protections, that data is being used to do something unsettling: personalized prices. We look at how it works.

What happens when a government erases a people’s digital past? This week on Click Here’s Mic Drop, the story of China’s quiet purge of the Uyghur web—and the lone coder determined to bring it back to life.

ERASED is a four-part investigation into how China is wiping Uyghur culture from existence — one law, one app, one person, one website at a time. From shuttered schools to vanishing websites, ERASED uncovers an authoritarian regime’s campaign to delete a culture — and the unlikely rebels racing to stop it.

Ekpar Asat dreamed of building a digital home for his people—a place where Uyghurs could share music, stories, and a sense of belonging. Beijing saw that dream as a threat. They erased the network, and then they erased him. But what happened in Xinjiang wasn’t only about one man or one community. It has become a blueprint for how repression spreads—far beyond China’s borders.

ERASED is a four-part investigation into how China is wiping Uyghur culture from existence — one law, one app, one person, one website at a time. From shuttered schools to vanishing websites, ERASED uncovers an authoritarian regime’s campaign to delete a culture — and the unlikely rebels racing to stop it.

In a small classroom in western China, children once learned to sing and count in the language of their ancestors — Uyghur. Then the doors were locked, and founder Abduweli Ayup went from teacher to enemy of the state. 

ERASED is a four-part investigation into how China is wiping Uyghur culture from existence — one law, one app, one person, one website at a time. From shuttered schools to vanishing websites, ERASED uncovers an authoritarian regime’s campaign to delete a culture — and the unlikely rebels racing to stop it.

DEF CON began as a rogue hacker meetup. Then came the prosecutors, the NSA, and the policy panels. This week on Click Here’s Mic Drop, how a game of "Spot the Fed" turned into an uneasy alliance—and what that says about crime, power, and trust in the digital age.

Dr. Stephen Xenakis has spent years treating veterans and pushing the bounds of psychiatry. Now, he’s asking if artificial intelligence could become a kind of digital therapist for veterans struggling with mental health. We return to our interview from earlier this year. 

Billionaire Frank McCourt wants to buy TikTok. Not to go viral—but to rewire the web. He says 170 million users could help him turn the Internet into something less addictive… and more democratic. Is that idealism, delusion… or both? As President Trump extends the deadline on the sale of the app, we return to our discussion with Frank McCourt.

An episode from "Understood: Who Broke the Internet" from CBC podcasts:

We were promised a digital utopia. What we got was a pay-to-play hellscape of pop-ups, bots, and algorithmic sludge. Writer and internet contrarian Cory Doctorow charts the internet’s slow descent—from open commons to corporate enclosure—and lays out a path to take it back.

Listen to the full series:

https://link.mgln.ai/ClickHere