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Latest Episodes:

Don't Call Them Winged Rats—These Pigeons Are Exquisite Jul 16, 2018

Show notes

The Wompoo Pigeon, also called the Wompoo Fruit Dove, forages for fruit in the forests of Australia and New Guinea. The Nicobar Pigeon has long, blue-gray neck feathers that resemble a mane. A white patch marks the eyes and throat of the White-breasted Ground Dove. It lives in New Guinea. The Topknot Pigeon of eastern Australia wears a crest of gray, brown, and black feathers on its head. The Kereru Wood Pigeon can grow nearly two feet in length.

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Could a Text-Based Dating App Change Selfie-Swiping Culture? Jul 16, 2018

Show notes

Juniper was over Tinder. A recent college grad living in rural Connecticut, they’d been subject to the swipe-and-ghost thing a few too many times. Then, this spring, Juniper submitted an ad to @_personals_, an Instagram for lesbian, queer, transgender, and non-binary people looking for love (and other stuff). The post, titled "TenderQueer Butch4Butch," took Juniper two weeks to craft, but the care paid off: the ad ultimately garnered well over 1,000 likes—and more than 200 messages.

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In the Age of Despair, Find Comfort on the ‘Slow Web’ Jul 13, 2018

Show notes

Surfing the web used to feel a lot more like actual surfing. Grab your (key)board, paddle out, and spend some time bobbing in the calm waters of the worldwide web. Now? It's a bit like trying to surf a tsunami. Our devices buzz and bleep for our attention all day long. Our brains are permanently frenzied. Sitting through an entire video or reading an entire article online now seems impossible without opening another tab or reaching for another device.

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The Engineering Behind Elon Musk's Bid to Save Thailand's Cave Boys Jul 13, 2018

Show notes

Around 6 pm Tuesday at Tham Luang in Thailand, the last of the 13 survivors who had spent 18 days trapped in a cave emerged to safety. A rescue team had spent the past three days getting the boys out after five days of desperate planning and calculations since their discovery. As the boys’ oxygen supply dwindled, doubts in the rescuers’ ability to save them mounted.

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BlackBerry Key2 Review: A Comfy Keyboard and Long Battery Life Jul 12, 2018

Show notes

Last year, we eviscerated the BlackBerry Keyone. Physical “keyboards are bad,” we argued, and they were never better than on-screen keyboards. You could make all the same angry arguments against the new BlackBerry Key2, but after using this unique, productivity-focused device for a few weeks, I don’t get the hate. It’s true that the BlackBerry of old did not keep up with trends, became uncool, and died a slow and painful death.

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Roborace's Self-Driving Car Takes On England's Swankiest Track Jul 12, 2018

Show notes

Once a year, the bucolic grounds of Goodwood House in West Sussex, England, are consumed by the smell of exhaust fumes, the sound of engines revving, and an excited crowd of 100,000 people, all wanting a look at the special cars on show. They gather here because Charles Gordon-Lennox, the 11th Duke of Richmond, likes to occasionally open his home to host the Goodwood Festival of Speed, a celebration of all the history, the heritage, and the future of motor racing.

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Brava Smart Oven: Price, Specs, Release Date Jul 11, 2018

Show notes

It's hard to know, at first, what problem the Brava smart oven is supposed to solve. Its value proposition—to use the Silicon Valley parlance—is a bit diluted.

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How Pokémon Go Still Dominates Even After Its Initial Fade Jul 11, 2018

Show notes

Two years ago today, a studio called Niantic released a game with a novel proposition: Go outside. Point your smartphone at the real world. Catch some monsters. Within a day, Pokémon Go was at the top of every app store chart. Within 200 days, players had spent a billion dollars on in-game upgrades—the shortest time to reach that milestone by a wide margin. In the summer of 2016, you couldn’t walk two blocks without running into, sometimes literally, a person in hot Pidgey pursuit.

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Sex, Beer, and Coding: Inside Facebook’s Wild Early Days in Palo Alto Jul 10, 2018

Show notes

Mark Zuckerberg’s knockoff site was a hit on campus, and so he and a few school chums decided to move to Silicon Valley after finals and spend the summer there rolling Facebook out to other colleges, nationwide. The Valley was where the internet action was. Or so they thought. In Silicon Valley during the mid-aughts the conventional wisdom was that the internet gold rush was largely over. The land had been grabbed. The frontier had been settled. The web had been won.

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How Facebook Checks Facts and Polices Hate Speech Jul 10, 2018

Show notes

Chris Cox has long been the Chief Product Officer for Facebook. He has also recently been promoted to run product at WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram, which means he is effectively in charge of product for four of the six largest social media platforms in the world. He recently sat down with Wired Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Thompson at the Aspen Ideas Festival to talk about the responsibilities and plans of the platforms he helps run. Nicholas Thompson: I'm going to start with a broad question.

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