On June 1, 2026, Kevin Roose and Casey Newton announced they were leaving The New York Times and Hard Fork to launch Machine Gods Media and its Machine Gods podcast. The show is published in partnership with NPR under a deal that leaves the pair owning it, and Roose has disputed Bloomberg's reported $5 million figure for that arrangement. The Tarbell Center for AI Journalism has since given Machine Gods a $480,000 grant. What remains open is the deal's actual terms and how the company's output beyond the podcast takes shape.