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 ExplainsThe Hollywood Strike Will Affect Way More Than Movies and TVWe’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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. 

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.

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.

Radio Motherboard talks to Caleb Madison and Marley Randazzo about Solve the Internet, Motherboard's new internet-themed weekly crossword puzzle.

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.

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.

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.

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.