Radio Motherboard

It's almost Halloween, so Motherboard is exploring the very nature of fear. Why do we still get scared by things that no longer represent any threat to us? How has technology changed how we feel fear? And what happens in a culture that reveres death? This week, Kaleigh Rogers and Jason Koebler talk with Naomi Bishop, a freelance writer who recently spent time with the Tana Toraja people in Indones...

When you log into Facebook, you'll see a list of "suggested friends." They're full of people you went to high school with, random colleagues, and a bunch of people that you do sort of know ... but why does Facebook know that you know them? Motherboard contributor Kari Paul talks to us about her investigation into how Facebook and other social networks learn things about you that you've never purpo...

Two major, solar system-shaking things happened this week. 'The Martian' came out, and we're all thankful that it ended up being a very good film. And Motherboard killed comments. These two things aren't even remotely related, but you're in luck if your interests include major sci fi motion pictures and the future of media. After announcing we were ending comments, there was a bit of a firestorm o...

Radio Motherboard talks to Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet and Google's "internet evangelist," about the company's plans to fly internet-providing balloons over the developing world, encryption and security, and a horrifying scenario where our kitchen appliances start trying to hack our financial institutions. We also discuss Peeple, the "Yelp for People" app that's getting everyone...

Scientists have just proven for the first time that it's possible to engineer yeast to make THC, arguably the most important chemical in marijuana. But do we want to get high using lab-made drugs when the real thing works so well? On this week's Radio Motherboard, we talk about the future of both synthetic drugs and lab-grown natural ones, Senior Editor Brian Merchant tries to make us care about f...

This week is ALL FRONTS, Motherboard's deep dive into what a future of forever war looks like. On this episode of Radio Motherboard, we talk about what it means to always be at war and how technology and automation have made it possible to stay in a perpetual state of war.    We also talk about why fast food restaurants are finally moving away from antibiotic-pumped meat, a weird Quebec phenomenon...

If you've been listening to Radio Motherboard the last few months, thank you very much: It's been a bit of a roller coaster as we try to figure out a format and recording setup that works best for us, and it's been a blast experimenting.    This week, we're experimenting again, as we try out a shorter, more segmented format that's hopefully a bit snappier than some of our more recent episodes. Thi...

If you're American, it's easier than ever to go to Cuba, a country that's remained, mas o menos, off limits for the last 60 years or so. In fact, you can go to cheapair.com, buy a ticket, fill out a couple forms confirming you fit into one of several broad approved categories of person (you probably do), and hop on a flight direct to Havana. But should you? As we've explored in a series of stories...

Who goes to the Pokemon World Championships in 2015? Well, we did, for one—mostly to find out who else was there.  Well over a decade after its heyday, Pokemon is still going strong. There's now nearly 800 Pokemon, but there are still lots of kids, teens, and older nerds trying to catch 'em all. We caught up with some of the best players of both the card game and the video game at Boston's World C...

Uber drivers set their own hours, file taxes independently, and often own their cars. They don’t get health insurance from Uber and they don’t wear uniforms. And yet, Uber controls much of what they do by setting prices, handling their tips, and micromanaging them through its driver rating system. Are these drivers independent contractors, working for a strict boss? Or are they employees, entitled...

Brian Shiro really wants to go to space. He wants to go to space so badly, in fact, that he’s applied to NASA’s astronaut program. Twice. Both times he fell just short. He’s hoping the third time’s the charm. Until then, he’ll be heading up Astronauts4Hire , an appropriately-named astronaut contracting service. Wth A4H, Brian hopes to open doors for aspiring astronauts to the burgeoning commercial...

We travel to the crater of the first atomic bomb with one of the youngest and last surviving Manhattan Project scientists. This is his story. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When did you get rid of your last computer or cell phone? It was probably pretty recently—we replace our technology all the time. But it's not this way for everyone: A contingent of diehard retro computing enthusiasts are still programming, hacking, tinkering with, and playing games on the Apple II, a 38-year-old computer originally released in 1977. And every July, about 70 of these diehards head...

For the last six months or so, you've been listening to us talk at you about simulated universes and head transplants and transhumanism and all sorts of topics (and we thank you very much for that). But we haven't really told you all that much about ourselves. This week on Radio Motherboard, there is no guest, there is no topic, and there are no real rules. Instead, we bring through a whole bunch...

It’s now been just over a year and a half of the biggest Ebola outbreak in history. We’ve dabbled in vaccines , but the best prevention method is still abstaining from contact with symptomatic patients, and the best treatment is still basically hydration. We’ve figured out that Ebola survivors seem at least temporarily immune , making them ideal health workers, but we still haven’t perfected treat...

In October 2012, the gossip site Gawker published an edited video of Hulk Hogan having sex. In response, the former pro-wrestler sued the company. It's now going to court in a case that could have wide-ranging consequences for the First Amendment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this most American of holidays, it’s a good time to take a look at how we select the people who run this ol’ country many of you call home. Like everything else, social media and technology are playing a huge role in campaign strategy.    Much was made of President Obama’s digital campaign, and for good reason: He lapped Mitt Romney in reaching people online with the help of his CTO, Harper Ree...

We assume that the next world war will be a technological one, but the United States and its potential adversaries are increasingly developing tech designed to blast enemies into the past. In  Ghost Fleet , real cybersecurity and war experts Peter W. Singer and August Cole  explore what would actually happen in a war between the United States and China . There's drones and hacking, sure, but what...

We're all living two lives. We've got whatever's going on in the physical world, and then we've got our online personas—our Facebook and Twitter profiles, our Gchat lives, our Reddit accounts, our OKCupid and Tinder profiles. How do you make sense of it all? And how are we supposed to find love when everyone lives in two separate worlds? Comedian Aziz Ansari calls our smartphones the "world's larg...

What happens to our brains and our psyche when a huge portion of humanity spends their lives persistently jacked in to their computers, their tablets, their smartphones, their screens? We don't really know—in a sense, we're performing one massive uncontrolled experiment on most of the developed world.   This week, we've been exploring everything mankind knows about the brain and technology's effec...

It's only June, and it's already been a very good summer for sci-fi. From the soaring optimism of Tomorrowland to the postapocalyptic dreariness of Mad Max to the outright unsettling nature of Ex Machina, there's already been plenty of speculative fiction to chew through. But we at Motherboard had been too busy making the site to enjoy any of the summer's biggest films. So we decided to change tha...

  We talk about Elon Musk and his companies, SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity all the time, but what is Musk's longterm plan? How do the companies fit together and, should Musk manage to create a reusable rocket or launch an array of internet-providing satellites, what happens then? Radio Motherboard talks to Ashlee Vance, author of a new biography about Musk, about how you write a book about one of t...

In this episode of Radio Motherboard, we talked to New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper about the process of researching his new book about Bitcoin. We also spoke to Courtney Marie Warner, who loves Bitcoin, even though it put her boyfriend in prison. And we spoke to some random people at a park to see just how far we have to go before Bitcoin is truly mainstream. Hosted on Acast. See acast.co...

*This podcast contains spoilers for the movie Good Kill* The military's drone pilots are physically removed from the battlefield, but, seven days a week, they spend 12-hour days staring at a screen, waiting for orders to kill from above. And then they go home, or to the bar, or to their daughter's dance recital.    Good Kill and Grounded, a new movie and play starring Ethan Hawke and Ann Hatheway,...

The world seems real, but is it really? As humans get better at simulating artificial intelligence, it seems at least plausible that we could create life that is both conscious and has free will. And if we can create conscious life, who's to say that the universe, as we know it, wasn't created by superintelligent artificial intelligence who wanted to simulate their past? We talk to Nick Bostrom, t...