Radio Motherboard

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.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

*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, respectively, take a look at the psychological toll being a drone pilot takes on a person. Motherboard talks with Hawke and director Andrew Niccol about the making of the film, its accuracy, and its importance as a first step toward showing Americans the brutal truth behind the targeted killing program.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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, the Oxford University philosopher who originally came up with this theory. Then we switch gears ever so slightly to talk with Craig Hogan, a Department of Energy researcher who is actively trying to prove that we're living not in a simulation, but in a hologram, which is a completely different thing. Finally, the Motherboard staff talks about glitches in the Matrix or moments that seem totally unreal. Radio Motherboard is sponsored by Casper Mattresses. You can enter code VICE for $50 off any mattress: 

  Why would someone willingly spend years hanging out with people who make fun of recently dead teens? To write a book about the experience, of course. Motherboard meets Whitney Phillips, a Humboldt State University researcher and author of 'This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things,' an academic look at why internet trolls act the way they do.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

  In 2017, Valery Spiridonov hopes to become the first human to have his head transplanted onto a new body. We talk to Val, his would-be surgeon Sergio Canavero, and Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist about the process. Then, Motherboard's staff talks about Cookie Clicker, our new office obsession.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Do we have to die? The world's first transhumanist candidate for president doesn't think so.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The ​Silk Road trial has only been going on for two weeks, and already it’s had its fair share of drama: There have ​been setups by the prosecution, ​accusations and alternative theories tossed out by the defense, and, ​yes, selfies. Motherboard’s Kari Paul has been at the trial every day of the week, and our reporters have been covering Silk […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

​If you see the words “copyright” and “law” juxtaposed next to each other, and your eyes glaze over, we don’t necessarily blame you. But copyright law is insane, and a wonderful, constant source of nutty human interest cases that explore every part of art, culture, and greediness. This week on Radio Motherboard, we invited the Electronic Frontier […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The ​first season of the ultra-popular podcast Serial is over, but lots of questions remain, in no small part due to the lack of evidence tying then-high school student Adnan Syed to the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. Huge swaths of Sarah Koenig’s longform storytelling (and reporting) experiment are dedicated to frustratingly minute details of what cell […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In her filmmaking, the director Laura Poitras—my guest on this edition of Radio Motherboard—likes to document reality as it happens, those moments of uncertainty that often don’t appear on film. “There’s something about how we look at the past which has a kind of finality and closure to it, where life doesn’t usually happen that way,” she told me. […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Interstellar may not be a great film—then again, it might be—but it does cut to the heart of quite a few of the themes we regularly hit on here at Motherboard: Space colonization, ecological collapse, near and far future dystopias, theoretical physics, the enduring power of love. Maybe not so much that last one, but […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.