Verge ESP

Final girls

Fri, 09 Sep 2016 14:07:00 -0000

The end of headphones - 0:35 Horror movies — final girl trope - 3:21 Narrative psychology — how storytelling shapes our understanding of events - 21:44

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Let’s talk finance: drug prices and the money behind online streaming services

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 17:25:00 -0000

0:24 - Wilderness Week 4:22 - Epi-Pen/drug costs 18:11 - Frank Ocean and album releases 32:02 - Halt and Catch Fire

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Ryan Lochte, diversity in film, and the microbes among us featuring interview with science writer Ed Yong

Fri, 19 Aug 2016 04:00:00 -0000

0:18 - Ryan Lochte 3:54 - Arrival film 8:57 -Nate Park + Birth of a Nation 23:09 - Interview with Ed Yong

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Stranger Things, a scientist hit list, and more strange things

Fri, 12 Aug 2016 20:47:43 -0000

0:41 - Liz sees Suicide Squad 6:35 - Scientist hit list 10:14 - Flossing revisited 12:52 - Smithsonian misconduct 31:08 - Stranger Things

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Ghostbusters, Suicide Squad, and nature documentaries

Fri, 05 Aug 2016 18:11:15 -0000

0:33 - Ghostbusters 8:15 - Flossing 13:07 - Nature documentaries 23:21 - Suicide Squad

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Gotta catch ‘em all!

Fri, 15 Jul 2016 18:48:10 -0000

03:43 - biodiversity 07:32 - Pokémon GO 24:50 - Ohlala

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A Violent Purge

Fri, 08 Jul 2016 17:33:18 -0000

Liz and Emily discuss a disheartening week in national news, The Purge and violence in entertainment, and Beyonce’s very awesome headphones.

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The Season of the Shark: The Shallows, Game of Thrones, and Jupiter

Fri, 01 Jul 2016 17:47:26 -0000

The Season of the Shark: The Shallows, Game of Thrones, and Jupiter by The Verge

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Alternative weight loss, alternative music, and the best YouTube account ever

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 18:10:18 -0000

Alternative weight loss, alternative music, and the best YouTube account ever by The Verge

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Damaged cases: Former astronauts, Studio Ghibli, and Lemmy

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 16:49:24 -0000

Taylor Swift: 00:50 Space news: 05:06 Astronaut health care: 09:48 Audible: 17:26 Yoshiaki Nishimura: 19:38 Lemmy: 32:24 Recommendations: 38:41

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Mars needs Musk

Fri, 03 Jun 2016 18:02:23 -0000

05:23 - Prince 07:50 - Elon Musk 23:19 - X-Men Apocalypse

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Game Of Thrones, algorithms, and Neighbors 2

Fri, 27 May 2016 18:56:44 -0000

14:02- Game of Thrones discussion 24:58 - algorithms 35:11 - Neighbors 2

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Ghostbusters Twitter, Brazil, and other failed states

Fri, 20 May 2016 14:34:23 -0000

Ghostbusters Twitter, Brazil, and other failed states by The Verge

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Captain America Civil War, the genetics of education, and other disappointments

Fri, 13 May 2016 17:01:29 -0000

Captain America Civil War, the genetics of education, and other disappointments by The Verge

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Microbiomes, Biggest Losers, and other gut-related tragedies/interview with Arielle Duhaime-Ross

Fri, 06 May 2016 19:42:23 -0000

Microbiomes, Biggest Losers, and other gut-related tragedies/interview with Arielle Duhaime-Ross by The Verge

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Quantum Break, band reunions, and other forms of time travel

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 18:13:58 -0000

Quantum Break, band reunions, and other forms of time travel by The Verge

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Genomes, Game of Thrones and Gawker

Fri, 25 Mar 2016 18:14:53 -0000

Time passes and the internet evolves — as everything does, really. ocial norms, minimal genomes, and the changing nature of celebrity

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The neuroscience of why music feels good with Valorie Salimpoor

Fri, 18 Mar 2016 17:14:43 -0000

Liz and Emily discuss SXSW, genetic testing, and getting the chills from songs.

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Jonathan Gold on getting to know a city through its food

Fri, 11 Mar 2016 15:58:26 -0000

Share on Facebook Tweet Share Pin This week on Verge ESP: Emily chats with food critic Jonathan Gold about the forthcoming documentary City of Gold, a movie about his approach to LA's food. In fact, we discuss a glut of movies this week, including the genre-benders The Witch, 10 Cloverfield Lane, and Midnight Special. Liz and Emily revisit the topic of spoilers — are there some cases where a lack of expectation is to be encouraged? Also: Sunday is the start of Daylight Saving Time in the US, a stupid practice Liz feels ought to be discouraged. Not only does it interrupt her morning schedule — the sun's only just started rising when she gets up and she'd like that to continue — it also leads to sleep deprivation. And everyone is worse when they don't get enough sleep! Meanwhile, Maria Sharapova, the most highly-paid female athlete in the world, was taking performance-enhancing drugs and still couldn't beat Venus Williams. What's even weirder is the history of those drugs: they were originally meant for Soviet super-soldiers. Anyway the moral of this story is that Venus Williams is an incredible athlete, and we all ought to admire her. (In fact, both Williams sisters are remarkable athletes — Sharapova lost to Serena Williams the same day Sharapova tested positive for PEDs.)

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Mermaids, Fad Diets, and #FreeKesha

Fri, 26 Feb 2016 17:30:23 -0000

Mermaids, Fad Diets, and #FreeKesha by The Verge

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Buy the ticket, take the ride featuring interview with Juan Thompson

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 17:33:02 -0000

It's sort of a shame Kanye didn't name his album Waves after all — the same week that The Life of Pablo dropped, the LIGO group said they found gravitational waves. (Waves would also be thematically appropriate for Tidal, which is the only place where TLOP is legally available.) Today, Liz and Emily discuss them both, and bring on special guest Juan Thompson, to talk about Hunter Thompson, writing, and too much fun. First up, the ladies discuss gravitational waves, their significance for Einstein's general relativity, and what promise they may hold for astronomy. As a special bonus: Liz also explains this isn't the first time someone's claimed to find gravitational waves — but every previous time, the "discoverers" have been wrong. Turns out, contrary to what your textbooks teach you, a great deal of science is about being wrong. Then, Emily talks about Kanye, and what it's like to see an album process from the point-of-view of the artist in real-time. If the streaming copy is all that's available, she points out, Kanye can continue editing songs to his heart's content — indefinitely. Then special guest Juan Thompson — son of Hunter S. Thompson, one of Liz's personal writing heroes — joins the show to talk about his new book, Stories I Tell Myself. (For anyone who has the misfortune of knowing Hunter Thompson only by reputation, here are two gems: "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved" and "He Was a Crook," the Nixon obit.) The younger Thompson's book, out now, isn't just about celebrity parents — it's about alcoholism, love, and fatherhood. Juan talks about Hunter's devotion to writing, and how painful it was in Hunter's later years when the drug use and alcoholism slowed and then halted his typewriter.

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Badly behaved record execs, badly behaved scientists

Fri, 12 Feb 2016 15:40:41 -0000

We rarely go into this thing with a theme in mind, but an unfortunate (and all too common) one just fell in our laps this week: men doing bad things — and getting away with it. First we talk about the repeated reports of sexual harassment coming out of the science community, and why universities and organizations like the National Science Foundation aren't incentivized to do much about it. We also talk in a larger way about how important it is to recognize the fallibility of our heroes — whether they're scientists or football players — and how keeping abusive people around discourages other people (i.e. women) from the community. Conveniently HBO's about to launch their latest men-being-despicable drama, the Martin Scorsese-Mick Jagger coproduction Vinyl. You can read Emily's review here; on the pod we talk a little more about why our narratives are about the businessmen and executives at the top, rather than artists and strivers coming up from the bottom. These things tend to go in cycles, but for the past few years — especially within Scorsese's oeuvre — it seems like we're siding with The Man. Finally, Liz talks with Kate Clancy, a professor at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana who studies harassment in field research. They talk about the steps being taken to protect researchers and student — ideally before they drop out of the field altogether — and just how much funding clouds the issue.

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The 90s are coming!

Fri, 05 Feb 2016 15:50:15 -0000

Liz and Emily are back on their proper coasts — finally — and from this perspective, it becomes clear the 90s are back. Like, in a very serious way. Is it just part and parcel for the 20-year rehash cycle? Can it be attributed to the fact that all the #content is made by people who were young in the 90s and want to recapture their lost youth and innocence? Is Emily excited about the new Full House? How is the X-Files going? Why are all the children wearing crop tops? Will we ever see JNCOs again? Meanwhile, Liz is wondering why the CDC treats host vehicles for fetuses women as though their own health, self-determination, and decision-making revolves around their parasites babies. The CDC has made the absolutely bonkers recommendation that women of child-bearing age who are not on birth control shouldn't drink. (This makes sense for women who are actually trying to conceive but that is absolutely not how the recommendation was worded; special emphasis was placed on the possibility of unintended pregnancies, and how young women shouldn't drink juuuust in case they're accidentally knocked up. Y'all know abortion exists and is legal in this country, CDC, right?) First: not all women of childbearing age are fertile! Second, not all sexually active women are interested in men! Third: why does the baby's health get all the hype — when there's a whole human being who already exists and probably needs to be healthy for her own sake? (Alcohol is a leading cause of preventable injury and death.)

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Oscars, Sundance, and the Zika virus

Fri, 29 Jan 2016 19:18:40 -0000

Oscars, Sundance, and the Zika virus by The Verge

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I love sitting on the sidelines of a scientist fight

Fri, 22 Jan 2016 19:02:59 -0000

Liz has a cold, and Emily is in a cabin somewhere in the mountains of Utah, but the Verge ESP podcast must go on! This week, we're chatting about the return of The X Files to Fox — a show near to Liz's heart and dear to Emily's. Liz has seen the first episode of the miniseries reboot (you can read her spoiler-free review here) and more than anything else, it made us think about why the show was such a perfect mirror for the paranoid '90s. How that gets translated for 2016 is a whole other story. We also talk about a scuffle currently happening in the scientific community about the origins of war — and Liz's general delight anytime she hears the words "scientist fight." Humans' predilection for violence and conflict goes back a long time, but could have it gone all the way back to the supposedly chill hunter-gatherer times? There's still lots of work to be done and lots of smack to be spoken before we know for sure. Finally, Emily chats with Dilcia Barrera, a programmer at the Sundance Film Festival and at LACMA in Los Angeles. She talks about the changes she's seen in festivals over the past 10 years, how technology has changed the nature of the festival and the films it screens, and what she looks for when screening the thousands of submissions she and her team get every year.

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Sound & Vision & Personal Fitness Trackers

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 16:17:49 -0000

Hello and welcome to the first Verge ESP episode of 2016! First of all, some good news: we're gonna be weekly this year. Second of all, some bad news: both Lemmy (of Motörhead fame) and David Bowie died. (Can someone please check on the rest of the iconic UK musicians?) We'll talk a little about how we were affected by their lives and careers — but that's hardly all. Did you notice all those health gizmos at CES this year? It's part of a weird trend, where tech companies can dodge FDA scrutiny by branding themselves as "wellness devices." As long as they aren't making health claims like "promotes weight loss," they can sell their fitness trackers without any external verification. Which is why they're body-shaming you as a marketing gimmick. Are gadgets the new diet books — meant to be bought but not seriously used? And why are people adapting serious technology, like EEG, to specious purposes? Liz continues her party-pooping streak. It's award show season, may God help us all. Emily had some feelings regarding The Revenant, the Golden Globes, the Oscars, and the general apparatus of Hollywood appreciation. Why do we even care about this stuff? What's worth getting worked up about? And why are so many prestige films so bad? (Is it possible to even make a prestige film without sticking Leonardo DiCaprio in it somewhere?)

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Drake memes, Space memes, and guest author Ann Leckie

Wed, 28 Oct 2015 22:06:08 -0000

Memes were everywhere this week, from Drake to a "drunk" comet spewing booze across our solar system. Emily and Liz tackle the plusses and minuses of space giving up clickbait. Emily talks about HBO's Project Greenlight and the vastly different standards men and women (especially women of color) are held to in the film industry. And Liz welcomes award-winning science fiction author Ann Leckie, who just published the conclusion of her Imperial Radch trilogy.

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Martian madness, Song Machines, and The Knick

Wed, 14 Oct 2015 17:19:27 -0000

Emily and Liz follow up on their experiences watching The Martian, talk about Elon Musk's bizarre cult of personality (and his dastardly plans for Mars), try to make sense of some questionable, high-tech psychosis pills currently being tested, and try not to faint while talking about how graphic the second season of The Knick is. Emily also interviews New Yorker music writer John Seabrook on his new book The Song Machine, where he delves into the intricate craft of the modern pop song and its place in our contemporary music industry.

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Water on Mars, Matt Damon on Mars, and why Liz is so mad

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 15:45:58 -0000

Liz and Emily go to Mars on the ESP spaceship as they talk about NASA’s findings this week and the upcoming movie The Martian. And speaking of sustaining life, the British Medical Journal published an investigation on food that is seriously in error– Liz explains why, and checks the BMJ’s work.

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Ghostbusting Gals, #Brands, NASA, and a History of Autism

Wed, 16 Sep 2015 13:48:06 -0000

Liz and Emily chat about the up-coming Ghostbusters movie, brand activation and personality, NASA logos, and Pluto and its moon Nix. Then, journalist and author Steve Silberman joins the show and talks about autism’s tale of two scientists, which is featured in Silberman’s most recent book NeuroTribes.What does space have to do with the autism community? Tune in to find out.

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Oliver Sacks, Lana Del Rey, and Altered States

Wed, 02 Sep 2015 20:18:29 -0000

This week, Liz and Emily talk about the VMAs, Mr. Robot, Lana Del Rey, and Oliver Sacks. What do all these things have in common? Drugs.

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Health, HEALTH, and space whiskey

Wed, 05 Aug 2015 17:29:05 -0000

This week on VergeESP: Emily wants to know why California has so many weird colors, Liz loved the new HEALTH album, and Suntory is sending whiskey to space, and both ladies would like to drink it when it comes back to Earth (yo, Suntory! hit us up!) Plus: what’s going on with GMOs and why is the Senate involved? And what promise does Oculus hold for narrative film?

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The psychology of spoilers

Wed, 22 Jul 2015 17:09:24 -0000

This week, on Verge ESP: SPOILER ALERT! Liz will spoil the Pluto flyby (it totally worked!); Emily has feelings about Pixels and the videogamification of movies. Plus, social psychologist — and spoiler expert — Nicholas Christenfeld drops by to tell Emily what he’s found in his research on spoilers. And at the very end of the show — spoiler — Liz and Emily spoil two major works of art.

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Neuroscientist Jeffrey Zacks

Wed, 08 Jul 2015 17:00:49 -0000

This week on Verge ESP: Find out about Magic Mike, space telescopes, and why your brain can understand film edits. How long does it take to plan a space telescope? Why is Magic Mike more girl-friendly than Pitch Perfect 2? How is it possible that Liz and Emily both went to the same bars as kids? (Spoiler alert: Iowa) All this plus special guest neurologist Jeffrey Zacks on this week’s episode.

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Filmmaker Jennifer Phang

Wed, 24 Jun 2015 17:06:55 -0000

This week on Verge ESP: Emily tells you everything you need to know about "Tom's Diner," as well as the real meaning of Taylor Swift v Apple. Liz, meanwhile, has two things on her mind: rockets and sex, exactly in that order. Plus Emily interviews Jennifer Phang, the filmmaker behind Advantageous.

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Author Kim Stanley Robinson

Wed, 10 Jun 2015 21:06:37 -0000

This week on Verge ESP: Liz and Emily talk about scientific fraud, Game of Thrones's fixation with abusing young women, what to expect from Apple Music (and why the service strengthens the position of record labels) and why you shouldn't trust studies that link creativity with mental illness. Plus, Liz interviews science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson about his new book Aurora and how to write science fiction while getting the science part right. This episode's stories: http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/9/8749841/science-frauds-potti-lacour http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/10/8760081/game-of-thrones-recap-season-5-episode-9-the-dance-of-dragons http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/9/8748699/apple-music-beats-radio-spotify-streaming-files-ownership http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/9/8749841/science-frauds-potti-lacour

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Halt and Catch Fire creators Chris Cantwell and Chris Rogers

Wed, 27 May 2015 20:13:25 -0000

Oil, bionic limbs, and hackers — today we discuss Mad Max, the Santa Barbara oil spill, brain-controlled robot arms, and interview Chris Cantwell and Chris Rogers of Halt and Catch Fire. Find out how to drink beer using a brain-controlled robot, why Mad Max's explosions and chase scenes rule so hard, the catastrophic consequences of fossil fuels, and the creative choices behind Halt and Catch Fire.

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