Radio Motherboard

It’s a brutally hot summer, a great time to cool off in an air conditioned movie theater or to catch up on some of those TV shows you’ve had on your list forever. But did you know the people who make the fine entertainment you know and love are on strike? Both writers and actors are picketing, trying to get a fair shake out of the studios and companies that bet big on streaming and used the shift to screw over the workers who keep us all entertained.With us today to talk about it is standup comedian and consummate host and presenter Adam Conover. If you’ve been following the strike at all you’ve probably seen some of his videos. If you’re a fan of great TV or podcasts, you may have seen his various TV shows or listened to his Factually! Podcast.Stories discussed in this episode:SAG Files Unfair Labor Practice Against Universal After It Trimmed Trees on Picket Line Without a PermitStriking Writers Are on the Front Line of a Battle Between AI and WorkersHow Long Will the Writers’ Strike Last? An Expert Explains

Motherboard has launched a new podcast, called CYBER. It's available on Apple Podcasts and on whatever app you listen to.Hacking. Hackers. Disinformation campaigns. Encryption. The Cyber. This stuff gets complicated really fast, but Motherboard spends its time embedded in the infosec world so you don't have to. Host Ben Makuch talks every week to Motherboard reporters Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai and Joseph Cox about the stories they're breaking and to the industry's most famous hackers and researchers about the biggest news in cybersecurity.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

NASA turns 60 this week. We're joined by Former NASA chief technologist Mason Peck joins us to discuss the agency’s history of spaceflight milestones, which include landing humans on the Moon (six times!), putting rovers on Mars, sending probes to interstellar space, and partnering on the International Space Station. Beyond these physical exploration achievements, NASA has also revolutionized the human view of Earth, the solar system, the Milky Way, and the deep swaths of space and time beyond our local group of galaxies. We also discuss NASA’s future, including its partnerships with the commercial space sector, megaprojects like the Space Launch System and the James Webb Space Telescope, and human exploration of the Moon and Mars.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

If you've been enjoying Radio Motherboard, we think you'll also love our newest VICE podcast, Queerly Beloved.Queerly Beloved ​is a new podcast series from Broadly. Co-hosted by Broadly editor Sarah Burke and Fran Tirado of the popular queer podcast Food 4 Thot, it’s a multifaceted portrait of LGBTQ chosen family—the people who help us figure out who we are and inspire us to live as our most authentic selves. In a world obsessed with significant others, Queerly Beloved focuses on the unconventional, seemingly insignificant relationships that actually end up shaping us most.Here's the first episode, "The Past Lovers." For the full season, sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Radio Motherboard talks to Caleb Madison and Marley Randazzo about Solve the Internet, Motherboard's new internet-themed weekly crossword puzzle.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Radio Motherboard talks to Liara Roux, a sex worker who was part of the first ever organized effort by her industry to lobby Congress. We talk about SESTA/FOSTA, a law that puts sex workers in danger and has fundamentally changed the internet.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Radio Motherboard breaks down the harassment that has been leveled against Twitch streamer Alinity and other women online, as well as the phenomenon of YouTube's "Twitch Fails" videos.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Radio Motherboard pulls a 2015 interview with Elon Musk's biographer Ashlee Vance, and talks about how perceptions about Musk and his companies have changed.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

After a white supremacist killed a protester in Charlottesville in 2017, Facebook pushed to re-educate its moderators about hate speech groups in the US, and spell out the distinction from nationalism and separatism, documents obtained by Motherboard show.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Whitney Phillips, the author of a new report called "The Oxygen of Amplification," talks about what she learned by talking to more than 50 journalists who covered the alt-right and white supremacists during the 2016 election cycle.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We went to Kaspersky Lab's SAS conference, where the controversial Russian anti-virus firm showcases its best research, wines and dines competitors and journalists, and burns American espionage operations.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Evan Greer has spent the last few months pushing the Senate to preserve net neutrality. She explains how Fight for the Future and millions of internet users convinced the Senate, and what's next in the uphill battle to save the internet.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The FTC just announced that Warranty Void if Removed stickers on video game consoles are illegal. This is a big win for consumers--and an indication that the walled gardens of electronic manufacturers are being breached.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A woman in cyberpunk body paint stands in the center of a ring of old laptops. It's a staged photo about e-waste, sure, but photographer Ben Von Wong hasn't just set up the photo to look cool. He wants it to go viral: "I create viral campaigns around boring topics," he said. Radio Motherboard spoke to Von Wong about the campaign, and about everything that goes into making sure people actually consume his content: "I gathered almost 1,000 people on an email newsletter who said within the first 24 hours of launch, 'I promise to like, comment, and share it in order to fuck with Facebook's algorithm.' Literally manufacturing popularity in content by making sure these people would see the content within the first certain amount of time that it launches to artificially make it more popular."  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We talk to Claire Evans (who last joined us on the first ever episode of Radio Motherboard!) about her new book BROAD BAND: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet. Claire joined Motherboard staff writer Kaleigh Rogers to talk about the internet past and present with Marisa Bowe, editor-in-chief of one of the first internet publications, and Stacy Horn, founder of EchoNYC, an early internet community that launched in the early 1990s and still exists today.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The FCC will vote later this week to repeal net neutrality protections. Radio Motherboard talks to BoingBoing co-founder and Electronic Frontier Foundation activist Cory Doctorow about what the next steps are to protect the open internet.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Kristel Jax, a performance artist, leads us through a drone therapy session, which uses drone music and cognitive behavioral therapy to try and treat anxiety and stress.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ankita gets her stress test results and sits down with Dr. Chiti Parikh at Weill Cornell's Integrative Health and Wellbeing program to talk about how to deal with the intense stress of 2017.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Motherboard's Ankita Rao went to an Army Corps of Engineers project in south Florida to see an Everglades restoration project firsthand. Read the story at motherboard.vice.com.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Staff writer Kaleigh Rogers sits down with renowned anthropologist and conservationist Dr. Jane Goodall and director Brett Morgen ahead of the release of "Jane," a new documentary about her life and work.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.