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This week on The Interface: is World Cup tech taking the human magic out of football?

For our season finale before the summer break, Karen, Thomas and Nicky start with the World Cup - and ask what happens when football becomes a showcase for ever more technology. This year鈥檚 tournament has brought referee body cameras, faster semi-automated offside decisions, and more AI-powered match analysis for teams and broadcasters, all in the name of accuracy, transparency and engagement. But as the game gets ever more engineered, there鈥檚 a bigger question underneath it: do these tools improve the sport, or do they slowly sand away some of the human error, chaos and competitive tension that made it thrilling in the first place?

Also this week: the infinite workweek. AI was supposed to take tasks off our plates 鈥� but in practice, it may be doing the opposite. Microsoft鈥檚 research on the鈥渋nfinite workday鈥� warned that work is already bleeding into mornings, nights and weekends, and that AI could make that worse if companies simply speed up broken workflows instead of redesigning them. And as more people work alongside AI agents, some describe a strange new role: not freed by automation, but stuck supervising it 鈥� an always-on form of 鈥淎I babysitting鈥� in which the machine keeps working, and you鈥檙e never fully off duty.

And because this is the last episode of season one, Thomas, Karen and Nicky also look back on their favourite moments from season one, dip into the listener mailbag, and revisit some of the stories we鈥檝e followed over the past 20 weeks - before The Interface heads off for a summer (screen) break.

The Interface is your weekly guide to the tech rewiring your week and your world. Hosted by journalists Karen Hao, Thomas Germain and Nicky Woolf, each episode unpacks, week by week, how technology is shaping all our futures. No guests. No jargon. Just three sharp voices debating the stories that matter 鈥� whether they shook a government, broke the internet, or quietly tipped the balance of power.

New episodes drop every Thursday on 麻豆社 Sounds in the UK. Outside the UK, find us on 麻豆社.com or wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the video version on YouTube (search鈥淭he Interface podcast鈥�).
To get in touch with the team: theinterface@bbc.com
The Interface is a 麻豆社 Studios production.
Producer: Natalia Rodriguez Ford
Executive Editor: Philip Sellars