Elon Musk’s new temple of energy is open for business in the middle of the desert outside Reno, Nevada. A few weeks ago, I went to the opening of the Tesla Gigagfactory, where Musk proposes to ramp up production of car batteries to the point where Tesla can begin to sell an affordable, mass-market electric cars. Musk’s ideas and Tesla’s futuristic cars get a lot of attention, but the company has still only sold just over 150,000 cars. The good news for Tesla is that many of those 150,000 custome...
Sep 09, 2016•24 min
Your phone uses the equivalent of two refrigerators’ worth of electricity every year. If you add in all of the electricity required to store and move data across high-speed cable and wireless networks and climate-controlled server farms to deliver an hour of video to your phone each week , in the space of a year it adds up to more power than two new Energy Star refrigerators consume in the same time. This week, Douglas Rushkoff takes over Radio Motherboard in partnership with his brand new podca...
Sep 07, 2016•22 min
Soon after news broke that Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones’s website had been hacked and replaced with stolen nude photos and racist memes, I got an urgent email from Whitney Phillips, one of the world’s foremost experts on online trolling and harassment (Phillips quite literally has a doctorate in 4chan). Phillips wanted to know if Motherboard was going to cover the hack, and how we were going to do it. “I have some thoughts on the ethics of amplification—how, we can't not comment on stories lik...
Aug 26, 2016•40 min
As our lives become ever more digitized, the security of our data will become ever more important to protect. So far, judging by the daily routine of data breaches and large scale hacks, it seems like we're failing to secure our most precious digital belongings. As some in the world of information security say, everything will get hacked. But is that really true? As part of The Hacks We Can't See , Motherboard's theme week exploring the future of hacking, we asked real hackers what they think th...
Aug 02, 2016•53 min
Hello, friend. If you’ve been a Radio Motherboard listener, you know that we’re big fans of Mr. Robot, USA’s moody, disorienting hacker drama. In fact, Motherboard and Mr. Robot’s respective moods align so closely that Amy Teitel, a former Motherboard freelancer, is now a staff writer for the show’s second season. We talk to Amy about how she made the shift from security journalism to tv writing, why she thinks Mr. Robot hasn’t gotten hacked, and her brand new play debuting soon off Broadway. Th...
Jul 25, 2016•1 hr 6 min
Radio Motherboard's Jason Koebler and Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai are going to talk about the real-life hacks that we see in Mr. Robot season two. This is #fsociety, coming your way all summer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jul 13, 2016•2 min
This podcast contains spoilers for Independence Day and Independence Day 2: Resurgence. We had 20 years to prepare. That's the tagline for Independence Day 2. It refers to Earth, and how long we had to get ready for a second alien invasion. But it also applies to Roland Emmerich and the team behind the sequel. In this podcast, Radio Motherboard interviews Emmerich, goes to see ID4-2, and talks about what made the first film such a hit and the second one, not so much. Hosted on Acast. See acast.c...
Jul 08, 2016•25 min
David Farrier is used to uncovering bizarre information. But his latest project investigating the online world of competitive tickling was a lesson in the strange side of life, even for him. We talked to the journalist and filmmaker about his new movie, Tickled, and what it reveals about online harassment, internet tribes, and hacking. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jul 01, 2016•35 min
For two weeks, Motherboard writer Kate Lunau skipped her soap and deodorant—spritzing herself with a “live bacteria spray” instead. Her goal was to colonize her skin with ammonia-eating bacteria, which are supposed to neutralize the smell of sweat. There are a growing number of believers out there: Chemist David Whitlock, who came up with this, hasn’t showered in 13 years. But are live bacteria products really the future of skincare? And, maybe more importantly, how bad did Kate smell by the end...
Jun 16, 2016•29 min
Sometime in the last few weeks, or months, or years, you may have heard about this idea called “universal basic income.” It’s the idea that maybe governments should give a monthly stipend—no questions asked—to everyone who lives there. It’s an idea we’ve covered quite a bit over the years, and it’s one that’s increasingly gaining steam among people on both sides of the political spectrum. Conservatives and libertarians say that it can simplify the bureaucracy associated with things like welfare ...
Jun 09, 2016•59 min
Remember when Uber came to your city? It was probably exciting—you could hail a car without talking to anyone or standing on a cold, rainy corner. It’s so easy , maybe you thought. Maybe the taxi commission or some local politicians expressed worry about this new interloper from San Francisco. But Uber has this game down . It comes to town, becomes incredibly popular, worries about regulations later and usually wins because the general public likes the service. Soon, you forget about there ever ...
May 26, 2016•42 min
Edgar Mitchell, who passed away in February at the age of 85, was exceptional, even among astronauts. Like an archetypal moon man, he was a Boy Scout and a military test pilot with a protestant upbringing and an impressive command of engineering and aeronautics. In February 1971, on Apollo 14, he became the sixth man on the moon. But more so than other astronauts, Mitchell’s brief exploration of outer space led to a deep exploration of inner space and the entire universe of phenomena explained a...
May 13, 2016•38 min
Even if you’re not a Trekkie, you’ve got to feel for the Klingons of Earth. Their language is under threat of being taken back by the very company that commissioned its creation, raising the very important question: Can a language even be copyrighted? News that Paramount is suing the creators of a Star Trek fan film for copyright infringement quickly spread across the galaxy last week. More traditional copyright issues such as the likenesses of characters came into play, but the company also sai...
May 06, 2016•58 min
Former Blink 182 guitarist Tom DeLonge has a newproject: telling the world the truth about UFOs. DeLonge has alwaysbeen interested in the supernatural, and he’s been researching andreporting the topic as part of a multimedia project called SekretMachines that involves books, movies, music, and other movingparts. His first book, co-written by bestselling author AJ Hartley,is a pageturner novel called Chasing Shadows about a skepticaljournalist who runs a UFO debunking website, a Holocaust survivo...
Apr 29, 2016•1 hr 52 min
We often talk about the gender gap in Silicon Valley—there are far too few female computer engineers and startup founders—but there’s one field where women do dominate Silicon Valley: public relations. Most research suggests that about 70 percent of all public relations professionals are women, and that number seems to hold up when you look specifically at the breakdown in tech PR. Anecdotally, when I deal with press people at tech companies, they are overwhelmingly women. In the vast majority o...
Apr 21, 2016•26 min
En esta edición muy especial de Radio Motherboard, viajamos a la zona fronteriza entre los Estados Unidos y México para evaluar la viabilidad de "control remoto," una nueva táctica de contrabando en que los migrantes guía de contrabando a través de la frontera por teléfono celulares. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Apr 14, 2016•19 min
In this very special edition of Radio Motherboard we travel to the US-Mexico borderlands to gauge the viability of "remote control," a new smuggling tactic in which smugglers guide migrants across the border by phone. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Apr 14, 2016•18 min
Ever notice that the piano part from “Dancing Queen” is tucked into the end of MGMT’s song “No Time To Pretend”? Or that The Album Leaf kept the squeaking of an old piano pedal in the final recording of their song “The Outer Banks?” These are just a taste of the sonic details most listeners would miss before they’re revealed by Song Exploder, a podcast by Hrishikesh Hirway that has musicians like Bjork, Wilco, Ghostface Killah, and Iggy Pop peel back the layers of their songs and talk about how ...
Apr 01, 2016•22 min
Twitter is a place where anyone can say anything, to anyone, at any time. But what happens when you don’t want to hear what someone else has to say? What if someone is attacking you personally, or getting all their friends to attack you? On this week’s Radio Motherboard, we talk about when to block, when to mute, and we consult with the master of the Twitter debate, rapper Talib Kweli. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mar 25, 2016•57 min
Hollywood, 1992. Mark Snow was already a pro at TV scores—dramas, procedurals, comedies—when a producer recommended him to Chris Carter, a veteran of Disney TV movies who needed music for a new TV pilot, The X Files , an unlikely supernatural procedural inspired partly by Kolchak, The Twilight Zone, and Twin Peaks . As he sat in his garage home studio one day, stumped in his search for the right sound for the show’s theme music, Mark accidentally put his elbow on the keyboard. A delay echo blurt...
Mar 18, 2016•30 min
Sometimes, it can be hard to know how to act around artificial intelligence. In the first half of Radio Motherboard this week, staff writer Jason Koebler explores how people treat Microsoft’s digital assistant Cortana when no one’s listening. (A small spoiler: Apparently, people like to harass it. One new challenge in AI programming is learning how to gently smack down haters.) In the second half, editorial fellow Louise Matsakis looks at a group that runs a “rationality” workshop that teaches h...
Mar 11, 2016•23 min
So scientists are saying an earthquake—a quake that is so big and so powerful you probably can’t even properly comprehend it—is probably going to hit your city, hard. It could be five years out, ten years, fifty years, or it could be tomorrow. But it’s going to come. How do we go about organizing that kind of information in we brains? How do we understand it on a rational, sensible level? Then, what do we do about it? We can write science fiction stories about it, for one thing. That’s what the ...
Mar 04, 2016•36 min
The tyranny of the set-top box may soon be over. The way it works now, you’re forced to rent a cable box from the likes of Time Warner Cable and Comcast to the tune of about $230 per year. The very idea that in 2016 you need a dedicated piece of hardware, whether it’s Comcast’s X1 or Time Warner Cable’s latest “whole home” DVR, just to tune into Guy’s Grocery Games on Food Network is crazy on its own, but the fact that you have to rent these boxes in perpetuity is even worse. The Federal Communi...
Feb 26, 2016•30 min
Earlier this week, a federal judge in California ordered Apple to help the FBI brute force hack into the encrypted iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, setting up a legal showdown that could have far-reaching ramifications for the future of encryption and privacy in the United States. Here's what you need to know. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Feb 18, 2016•25 min
There aren’t many black characters in video games with speaking roles, which is why it’s controversial when some of them are voiced by white actors. The most recent example is Nadine Ross, the strong, black, female antagonist in the upcoming Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, who is played by a white voice actress. To some black players, the fact that major black characters—few and far between as they are—are often voiced by white actors is a reflection of a systemic problem. It’s not the same as a bla...
Feb 12, 2016•58 min
The hyperloop, Elon Musk’s futuristic, tube-based “fifth mode of transportation” has stoked imaginations unlike any recent transportation technology except for maybe self driving cars. Lots has been said about it—Musk called it a “cross between a Concord, a railgun, and an air hockey table,” while the media has latched on to the promised speeds of more than 700 mph and travel times between San Francisco and Los Angeles of 35 minutes. But much of the promise of the hyperloop still remains theoret...
Feb 05, 2016•32 min
The Zano drone raised £2.3 million in one of the most successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaigns of all time. A year later all the money is gone, Zano’s creator is having a nervous breakdown, and its 13,000 backers are livid. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jan 29, 2016•39 min
What does it take to get a good night’s sleep? In this episode of Radio Motherboard, managing editor Adrianne Jeffries talks to the greatest sleep hacker she knows: her little brother William. We cover blackout curtains, smart light bulbs, sleep headphones, the best white noise mixes, and sleeping in the office. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jan 22, 2016•56 min
If you live in India, or happen to have visited in the past month, you probably noticed the seemingly-ubiquitous advertising for something called Free Basics. It's what you might call a full-court press: full-page ads in newspapers, billboards, and movie theater trailers. Also, if you were to log into Facebook, you'd be presented with an ad (and possibly if you were in the US, too ). The first thing to understand is that Free Basics is Facebook, and Facebook is Free Basics, and they're both basi...
Jan 15, 2016•21 min
If you want high speed internet in most any spot in New York City, you’re stuck with Time Warner Cable. Or at least, that’s how it usually works. But increasingly around the city, citizens and small community groups are setting up their own locally owned and operated free wifi networks. This week on Radio Motherboard, we take a trip to a meetup where two nascent but potentially disruptive groups were discussing how to collaborate in order to provide new connection options to people around the ci...
Jan 08, 2016•36 min
