China’s surveillance of Uyghurs has leapt from the physical world to the digital one. No longer just QR codes on doorways, it’s now hidden in cloud services and software updates. This week on Click Here’s Mic Drop, how digital tools meant to protect identity are being used to erase it. 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.

It started as a going-away party… and became the most legendary hacker conference in the world. This week, Jeff Moss—aka Dark Tangent—tells us how DEF CON began, what it became, and why it still matters.

Australia wants to keep kids off social media. But to do that, it may have to crack open everyone’s digital ID. Privacy advocates say this isn’t just about protecting children– it is about rewriting the social contract for the rest of us.

An episode from "Arachnid: Hunting the web’s darkest secrets" from TVO Podcasts, the Investigative Journalism Bureau, The Toronto Star, and Piz Gloria Productions: The images are out there—millions of them. Each one a crime scene, each one a permanent scar. But while the Internet forgets nothing, a group of survivors and digital sleuths are trying to change that. They’re challenging the world’s biggest tech platforms to stop looking the other way—and start deleting the evidence.

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. 

What do you get when you cross a marine biologist with a machine learning engineer? Someone who is convinced that humpback whales may have something to say—and that artificial intelligence might be the tool to decode it. This week, we return to a story about interspecies communication, where tech meets tails and signals meet song.

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

In Russia, military families are cashing in on a wartime housing surge. Defense budgets are ballooning, property values are rising… and beneath it all, a troubling question: what happens when the war economy becomes just… the economy?

Before the war, Serhii Zenin played Metallica and joked with listeners on Ukraine’s Radio ROKS. Now he wears fatigues. And the station? It's still playing heavy metal—but now it’s also broadcasting news, coordinating aid, and holding the line in its own way. We return to a story where the frontlines and the airwaves meet.

While most of us were staring at the auroras lighting up our Instagram feeds last year, a small group of analysts at the Space ISAC were focused on something a little less… pretty. Think solar flares. Think sabotage. Think space debris with a grudge. This week, we revisit our story about the watchers who don’t get much attention.

In this week’s CyberMonday crossover with WAMU’s 1A, we revisit a Click Here episode and take your calls—this time, about the cluttered chaos orbiting above us. Space debris isn’t just a cleanup problem. It’s a threat vector. What happens when an old satellite, long forgotten, becomes the perfect cover for a cyberattack? Or worse… a weapon?

Drones promised progress — as lifesavers in floods, storytellers in newsrooms, even assistants to archaeologists. But somewhere along the way, they took a darker turn. Now they hover over protests, shadow 911 calls and surveil our neighborhoods from above. Researcher Faine Greenwood discusses how we normalized the hum of surveillance — and why all this is starting to resemble something much more authoritarian.

Today: A story about a technology that began in the fields — tracking cattle — and is now on the ankles of immigrants. It’s part of a program called “alternatives to detention.” And these ankle monitors, smartphone apps, GPS check-ins have changed. They’re not just tools to monitor. Increasingly, they’re being used to entrap. And for some immigrants, complying with the system means walking straight into ICE detention.

A Chinese hacking group walked right into a trap. Not a firewall. Not a filter. A honeypot. This week, Amazon CSO Steve Schmidt explains how a digital decoy called MadPot helped expose Volt Typhoon—and why, in the age of AI, the real vulnerability isn’t software. It’s people.

TRON was supposed to be just another Ethereum knockoff — faster, cheaper, maybe a little flashier. But over time, it's become something else entirely: the go-to blockchain for illicit finance.

Zoom was built for speed. But in its rush to connect us, it may have left a few doors open. This week, a cybersecurity expert walks us through how one of Zoom's most mundane features became a hacker's best friend — and why the weakest link in crypto isn't the blockchain … it's the person who thinks they're too smart to get scammed.

Jake Gallen was a rising star in crypto. Then, after what seemed like a routine YouTube interview, his digital world unraveled. His NFTs? Liquidated. His social accounts? Hijacked. It turns out, the hackers didn’t need phishing links or fake job offers. They needed something much simpler: a Zoom invite.