Verge Extras

Verge producer Will Poor attempts to fix up his family’s Mac Classic. The journey takes him to the finer points of soldering, message board flame wars, and a 2,000 year old Greek thought experiment. Links:  The Vintage Computer Federation The “40th Anniversary Macintosh” Follow Jason's tech adventures: @compu_85 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Congress is in the process of passing a non-partisan bill to increase support for enforcement against illegal pirate radio operations: Fines can now go as high as $2 million, and the FCC will fund “enforcement sweeps” in major radio markets. Does this target well-intentioned community radio, designed to speak to immigrant communities? Episode three of The Verge's Pirate Radio mini-series featuring...

How the Hmong diaspora uses the world's most boring technology to make something weird and wonderful. Episode two of The Verge's Pirate Radio mini-series featuring Mia Sato. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When the US entered Afghanistan, local DJs were hired to help with the war effort. And when the American military pulled out, they abandoned those voices, leaving many of them for dead. Episode 1 of The Verge's Pirate Radio mini-series featuring Chris Harland-Dunaway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Better Worlds, The Verge's new series of short fiction, audio, and animation that explores how technology can shape our society and environment in better, more equitable ways. "Machine Of Loving Grace" is the fifth and final installment of the Better Worlds audio adaptations that will appear in Verge Extras. Katherine Cross' story features an AI designed to moderate video games that goe...

Welcome to Better Worlds, The Verge's new series of short fiction, audio, and animation that explores how technology can shape our society and environment in better, more equitable ways. "Skin City" is part four of five audio adaptations of Better Worlds that will appear in Verge Extras. In Kelly Robson's story, a street performer gets into trouble after falling for a radical privacy devotee. For...

Welcome to Better Worlds, The Verge's new series of short fiction, audio, and animation that explores how technology can shape our society and environment in better, more equitable ways. "The Burn" is part three of five audio adaptations of Better Worlds that will appear in Verge Extras. In Peter Tieryas' story, “The Burn,” people around the world fall victim to a mysterious illness called the Bur...

Welcome to Better Worlds, The Verge's new series of short fiction, audio, and animation that explores how technology can shape our society and environment in better, more equitable ways. "Monsters Come Howling In Their Season" is part two of five audio adaptations of Better Worlds that will appear in Verge Extras. In Cadwell Turnbull’s story, “Monsters Come Howling In Their Season,” a journalist t...

Welcome to Better Worlds, The Verge's new series of short fiction, audio, and animation that explores how technology can shape our society and environment in better, more equitable ways. "Online Reunion" is part one of five audio adaptations of Better Worlds that will appear in Verge Extras. In “Online Reunion,” author Leigh Alexander imagines a world in which a young journalist is struggling with...

Welcome to Better Worlds, The Verge's new series of short fiction, audio, and animation that explores how technology can shape our society and environment in better, more equitable ways. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last month, Dril published Dril Official “Mr. Ten Years” Anniversary Collection, a 420-page collection of his best tweets of the last decade. And it works because during that same stretch of time, Dril has defined so much of what it’s meant to be online. Please enjoy a reading of his best work, presented by The Verge’s creative director and resident englishman James Bareham. Learn more about your...

Jaron Lanier is one of virtual reality’s most recognizable figures. He’s credited with popularizing the term itself, and he co-founded VPL, a short-lived but groundbreaking company that built some of the first commercial VR headsets. Since then, Lanier has been better known for his writing on digital ownership and internet ecosystems, with the books You Are Not A Gadget and Who Owns the Future? Bu...

About a month ago my colleague Dan Seifert admitted on Twitter to, basically, not understanding me as a person: "i will never understand the fascination with watching other people play video games" Instead of lashing out in his mentions, I sat on that information until the other day when I finally connected with Dan over Skype to hash it all out. Now you can enjoy our conversation in podcast form,...

theverge.com/2017/6/13/15794060/vox-media-bees-swarm-manhattan-offices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Samantha Cristoforetti is an Italian astronaut with the European Space Agency. She currently holds a few spaceflight records — including being the first person ever to brew an espresso in space. In 2014 and 2015, Cristoforetti spent 199 days aboard the International Space Station, where she performed a variety of scientific experiments. She studied generations of fruit flies to chart gene changes...

Last year in Los Angeles, a mysterious cult began recruiting people through emails, phone calls, and one-on-one consultations. For nine months individuals were drawn into the group’s web of intrigue, discovering that a young woman from Ohio had been taken in and brainwashed. In September, the cult finally opened its doors, and people had the chance to walk its halls and try to find the young woman...

Mark and Scott Kelly are the only twins that have ever traveled to space — and their experience will be invaluable if we want to get to Mars one day. The brothers are taking part in what NASA calls the Twins Study — a genetic experiment to see how our bodies change in zero gravity in the long term. That’s important to understand before we put humans on a spaceship and send them on a round trip to...

On February 1st, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas and Louisiana as it returned from a 16-day mission in space. The cause of the accident was a piece of foam that had fallen off the Shuttle’s external fuel tank during launch. The foam struck the left wing of the shuttle, causing serious damage that ultimately led the vehicle to explode when it reentered Earth’s atmosphere. It...

Now that President Trump has resurrected the hotly contested Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines, here's what you need to know about their pasts — and their futures. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCPWjg-bXTY Host: Rachel Becker Director: Miriam Nielsen & Kimberly Mas Audio: Andrew Marino Special thanks to: Mark A. Barteau Director, Energy Institute DTE Energy Professor of Advanced Energy Res...

Here’s how we know how many people were in the crowd for Donald Trump’s inauguration — and why you won’t hear the number on TV. www.youtube.com/watch?v=boOWZXZXINU Host: Russel Brandom Director: Kimberly Mas Camera: Tom Connors Graphics: William Joel Audio: Andrew Marino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Donald Trump has vowed to dismantle many of the environmental policies passed under president Barack Obama. But environmental groups and some states are ready to fight back and bring the administration to court. Host: Alessandra Potenza Directors: Miriam Nielsen and Kimberly Mas Audio: Andrew Marino Special thanks to: Maria Belenky Director, Policy and Research at Climate Advisers Vicki...

There is nothing more frustrating than taking your car into the mechanic with only the vaguest sense that something is wrong. You know that odd little creak or strange whine is new, but you don’t have a clue what it’s trying to tell you. You would like to know before it becomes a serious problem, and an expert is going to charge you a bunch of money to find out. What if we could diagnose machines,...

What’s the biggest problem you run into while using the popular dating app Tinder? Is it that almost all the children of the Earth seem appalling when reduced to four photos and the opportunity to describe themselves in two sentences? Is it that you are a busy modern creature with precious little time to message the people in your life you already care about, much less strangers about whom you kno...

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It's a familiar problem for podcast listener: a host vaguely references a picture or a video or something in their recording booth, but you can't see what it is this person is talking about. This happened recently on Vergecast 214. Yeah, a video would solve this problem, but you're standing on the train sandwiched between strangers or driving a car or jogging. Isn't that what you listen to podcast...