Congress is in the process of passing a non-partisan bill to increase support for enforcement against illegal pirate radio operations: Fines can now go as high as $2 million, and the FCC will fund “enforcement sweeps” in major radio markets. Does this target well-intentioned community radio, designed to speak to immigrant communities? Episode three of The Verge's Pirate Radio mini-series featuring Bijan Stephen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Verge Extras

Pirate Radio » The PIRATE Act

How the Hmong diaspora uses the world's most boring technology to make something weird and wonderful. Episode two of The Verge's Pirate Radio mini-series featuring Mia Sato. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pirate Radio » Dial Up!

When the US entered Afghanistan, local DJs were hired to help with the war effort. And when the American military pulled out, they abandoned those voices, leaving many of them for dead. Episode 1 of The Verge's Pirate Radio mini-series featuring Chris Harland-Dunaway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pirate Radio » Outside the wire

Welcome to Better Worlds, The Verge's new series of short fiction, audio, and animation that explores how technology can shape our society and environment in better, more equitable ways. "Machine Of Loving Grace" is the fifth and final installment of the Better Worlds audio adaptations that will appear in Verge Extras. Katherine Cross' story features an AI designed to moderate video games that goes rouge. For more videos, audio adaptations, and written stories from Better Worlds, go to theverge.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Machine Of Loving Grace | Better Worlds Pt. 5

Welcome to Better Worlds, The Verge's new series of short fiction, audio, and animation that explores how technology can shape our society and environment in better, more equitable ways. "Skin City" is part four of five audio adaptations of Better Worlds that will appear in Verge Extras. In Kelly Robson's story, a street performer gets into trouble after falling for a radical privacy devotee. For more videos, audio adaptations, and written stories from Better Worlds, go to theverge.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Skin City | Better Worlds Pt. 4

Welcome to Better Worlds, The Verge's new series of short fiction, audio, and animation that explores how technology can shape our society and environment in better, more equitable ways. "The Burn" is part three of five audio adaptations of Better Worlds that will appear in Verge Extras. In Peter Tieryas' story, “The Burn,” people around the world fall victim to a mysterious illness called the Burn. Eventually, AR researchers begin to suspect a pattern. For more videos, audio adaptations, and written stories from Better Worlds, go to theverge.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Burn | Better Worlds Pt. 3

Welcome to Better Worlds, The Verge's new series of short fiction, audio, and animation that explores how technology can shape our society and environment in better, more equitable ways. "Monsters Come Howling In Their Season" is part two of five audio adaptations of Better Worlds that will appear in Verge Extras. In Cadwell Turnbull’s story, “Monsters Come Howling In Their Season,” a journalist travels to St. Thomas in the aftermath of a massive hurricane and sees firsthand how the island’s residents are coping with the help of a community-based AI system called Common. For more videos, audio adaptations, and written stories from Better Worlds, go to theverge.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Monsters Come Howling in Their Season | Better Worlds Pt. 2

Welcome to Better Worlds, The Verge's new series of short fiction, audio, and animation that explores how technology can shape our society and environment in better, more equitable ways. "Online Reunion" is part one of five audio adaptations of Better Worlds that will appear in Verge Extras. In “Online Reunion,” author Leigh Alexander imagines a world in which a young journalist is struggling with a compulsive “time sickness,” so she sets out to write a tearjerker about a widow reconnecting with her dead husband’s e-pet — but she finds something very different waiting for her in the internet ether. For more videos, audio adaptations, and written stories from Better Worlds, go to theverge.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Online Reunion | Better Worlds Pt. 1

Welcome to Better Worlds, The Verge's new series of short fiction, audio, and animation that explores how technology can shape our society and environment in better, more equitable ways. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing Better Worlds

Last month, Dril published Dril Official “Mr. Ten Years” Anniversary Collection, a 420-page collection of his best tweets of the last decade. And it works because during that same stretch of time, Dril has defined so much of what it’s meant to be online. Please enjoy a reading of his best work, presented by The Verge’s creative director and resident englishman James Bareham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

@dril tweets: a reading of his best work

Jaron Lanier is one of virtual reality’s most recognizable figures. He’s credited with popularizing the term itself, and he co-founded VPL, a short-lived but groundbreaking company that built some of the first commercial VR headsets. Since then, Lanier has been better known for his writing on digital ownership and internet ecosystems, with the books You Are Not A Gadget and Who Owns the Future? But his most recent work revisits the world of ‘80s and ‘90s VR, as well as the rest of Lanier’s life — including his early years on the Texas-Mexico border, his childhood living in a self-designed geodesic dome, and the tumultuous process of founding VPL. Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality debuted last month, and we met up with Lanier to talk about how first-wave VR intersects with present-day reality, why empathy is a double-edged sword, and whether we’ll have to burn down the internet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

VR pioneer Jaron Lanier on dystopia, empathy, and the future of the internet

About a month ago my colleague Dan Seifert admitted on Twitter to, basically, not understanding me as a person: "i will never understand the fascination with watching other people play video games" Instead of lashing out in his mentions, I sat on that information until the other day when I finally connected with Dan over Skype to hash it all out. Now you can enjoy our conversation in podcast form, thanks to the Verge Extras feed, which you should definitely subscribe to if you haven't already. For reference, here are a few of the Twitch streamers I mention in our conversation: Kripparian, Seagull, Bacon Donut, Giant Waffle, Bjergsen. Also, if you want to watch USA defeat New Zealand in the Overwatch World cup, that’s over on YouTube, or you can dig through the Twitch archives for the rest of the matches. -Paul Miller Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why watch people play video games?

theverge.com/2017/6/13/15794060/vox-media-bees-swarm-manhattan-offices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What to do when 20,000 bees unexpectedly swarm your Manhattan skyscraper

Samantha Cristoforetti is an Italian astronaut with the European Space Agency. She currently holds a few spaceflight records — including being the first person ever to brew an espresso in space. In 2014 and 2015, Cristoforetti spent 199 days aboard the International Space Station, where she performed a variety of scientific experiments. She studied generations of fruit flies to chart gene changes in relation to disease; she looked after Caenorhabditis elegans worms used in a Japanese-led experiment; and she tended to plants to study how they grow in microgravity. Cristoforetti was supposed to return to Earth in May 2015, but her stay on the ISS was extended to June after a cargo ship flying on a Russian Soyuz rocket failed to reach the space station. The delay extended Cristoforetti’s stay to 199 days, allowing her to collect the record for the longest single spaceflight by any female astronaut. (NASA astronaut Sunita Williams had previously held the record, at 195 days.) Cristoforetti’s record won’t last for long, though. NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who’s currently on the ISS, will soon surpass her. One of her records, however, will stay forever. Shortly before retuning to Earth, Cristoforetti used a coffee machine called ISSpresso to brew the first ever espresso in space. She then put on a Star Trek uniform top and used a special zero-gravity cup to sip it. Cristoforetti is not scheduled for another flight to the ISS for now, but she keeps working at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany. Here, she works on new technologies that could one day be used for a future mission to the Moon. She’s “definitely” looking forward to going to space again though. “Hopefully it’ll be my turn again eventually,” she says. In the meantime, The Verge spoke with Cristoforetti about how she became an astronaut, what scientific experiments she performed on the ISS, and what happened to that famous space espresso machine. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti on tweeting from space and brewing the first zero-G espresso

Last year in Los Angeles, a mysterious cult began recruiting people through emails, phone calls, and one-on-one consultations. For nine months individuals were drawn into the group’s web of intrigue, discovering that a young woman from Ohio had been taken in and brainwashed. In September, the cult finally opened its doors, and people had the chance to walk its halls and try to find the young woman inside — or die trying. The only thing was, none of it was real. The Tension Experience represented a key moment in the evolution of immersive entertainment. Combining alternate reality gaming, haunted house techniques, and a two-hour immersive theater show, it created what essentially amounted to a mini-Westworld: a persistent, fictional universe where the participant’s choices determined what happened next, and the line between reality and fantasy became so blurred it barely even existed at all. At this year’s SXSW conference, I moderated a panel with the show’s creators: director Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II-IV), writer Clint Sears, producer Gordon Bijelonic, and actress Sabrina Kern. During Horror’s Immersive Future: The Tension Experience, we discussed the evolution of the show, the ramifications for experiential storytelling, and how mediums like immersive theater and virtual reality can impact audiences emotionally in ways that film and television simply can’t. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a show that put hoods over people’s heads, kidnapped them, and asked them to kill other characters on-screen. -Bryan Bishop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to build your own personal Westworld

Special events, discussions, interviews, and one-off shows from The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Verge Extras

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