Wired Storyboard Audio Podcast

Throw ethics out the window. What scientific experiments would you really want to see? This exact question led to Extreme Science, the August cover story on seven experiments that could teach us so much if they weren’t so wrong. Senior editor Bill Wasik and frequent contributor Erin Biba sat down with host Adam Rogers to talk deeper meanings behind the package, how scientists responded to the idea and finalizing the list of experiments.

You’ve seen them doing everything from Vegas headlining to Letterman, best selling books to television. Now hear Penn & Teller talk (well, that’s a lie – hear Penn Jillette talk and host Adam Rogers fill in for Teller on occasion). The masters of deception sat down with Wired to discuss deception as an art form, composition versus performance and their upcoming Discovery series, Penn & Teller: Tell A Lie.

Marti Noxon rose to fame as a writer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer where she eventually took a lead creative role in later seasons of the series. She wrote for Angel, Private Practice, Mad Men, Grey’s Anatomy and will soon even work on Glee. Noxon finds herself back in the supernatural genre with her latest project, a revamp of the ‘80s vampire film Fright Night. She talks vampires, Buffy, women in genre writing and the lure of Don Draper with host Adam Rogers. Keep the garlic cloves nearby just in case as you sink your teeth into this one.

In the July issue of Wired, host Adam Rogers has a Q&A with the main writer of the BBC scifi show Doctor Who. Here we bring you the full, uncut interview, Adam's silly jokes and all. Enjoy the magic - and the fantastic British accent.

Writer Judy Dutton was running out of room in her freezer. Extra breast milk crowded out family staples like hotdogs and hamburgers. So she did what many mothers are doing: she turned to the Internet to get rid of it. Dutton found a new crop of websites that cater to women in just her situation. But she didn’t stop at trying to sell her own milk. Instead, she began investigating the world of breast milk as a commodity, and discovered an emerging niche market with its own factions and controversies. Should women be paid for taking the trouble to pump? How much screening does milk need to be safe? It is ethical for companies to profit on a food that studies increasingly show is unique and important for babies’ development? Should insurance cover breast milk? Dutton takes on these questions and more in the June issue of Wired magazine. And today on the podcast, she gives the inside story to host Adam Rogers. Drink up.

When Wired senior editor Bill Wasik and his pal Adam Davidson (who just happens to be the cohost of NPR’s awesome economics series, Planet Money) decided to team up on a special report about the future of work, big things were bound to happen. Planet Money has a reputation for turning even the most arcane business concepts into gripping radio, and Wired’s designers are the best in the biz at eye-popping infographics. Still, neither of them expected to be pushing the boundaries of human knowledge about jobs in America. Today on the Storyboard podcast we add another angle to this multi-platform jobs extravaganza, as host Adam Rogers sits down with both Wasik and Davidson for the inside scoop on their report and how it happened. THIS is the future, people! Listen up!

The writer E. B. White famously remarked that “analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies.” Nevertheless, this week on the podcast writer Joel Warner and editor Chris Baker join host Adam Rogers to talk about one professor’s attempt to explain every joke ever. Tune in to go behind the scenes of “The Humor Code,” a story from the May special issue of Wired.

Think of a city – Chicago, Los Angeles, New York. What defines it? The climate? The people? The food? Maybe it’s buildings. That’s the idea John King, urban design critic at the San Francisco Chronicle, explores today on the podcast with host Adam Rogers. To help the non-locals navigate all the San Francisco talk, we’ve created an annotated Google map with all the local landmarks: http://wrdm.ag/sfcityscape

Ten years ago, letters laced with anthrax killed five people. The FBI says it traced the spores to a single US scientist. But could the Feds have gotten the wrong man? Writer Noah Shachtman and editor Rob Capps join Adam Rogers to discuss “The Strain,” a feature from the April issue of Wired. Update: At the request of the Ivins family, this podcast was edited on 4/21/11 to remove language that implied Bruce Ivins had a negative relationship with his children.

Disaster: It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when -- so you’d better get ready. That’s according to this week’s podcast guest, disaster-management guru Joseph Pred. “Being prepared is a civic duty,” he says. But it doesn’t have to be hard or cost a lot. In this special bonus episode, Pred sits down with regular host Adam Rogers to give you the straight scoop on what you’ll really want to have on hand when the next earthquake hits or the zombies attack.

The kitchen is the lab in everybody’s house. But with his new cookbook Modernist Cuisine, former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold has taken the science of food to a whole new level. At six volumes, $625, and 50 pounds, it may be the last cookbook you’ll ever need - if you can handle it. Wired special projects editor Mark McClusky got exclusive access to Myhrvold and his kitchen lab for the story “Mad Science” in the March issue of the magazine. Today on the podcast, McClusky dishes to regular host Adam Rogers about how to use science to bend food to your will. Listen in for a mouth-watering and mind-bending trip into the world of molecular gastronomy. Bon appetit!

Social media has been at the heart of popular uprisings sweeping across the Middle East, and one of the best sources for hearing what’s going on has been Al Jazeera English. Now the Qatar-based network is bringing the social media experience inside your TV with its new show “The Stream.” Scheduled to launch in May, the talk show will be like none other: no tape, no script, no satellite hookups. “It’s about people talking to each other,” says Shihab-Eldin, the show’s co-host. Today on the podcast, regular host Adam Rogers grabs an interview with Shihab-Eldin about the show and Al Jazeera English’s growing U.S. cred.

What makes a smart, well-educated mother of four go on a killing spree? That’s the question writer Amy Wallace set out to answer in her story “The Fury,” which appears in the March issue of Wired. The piece digs into the story of University of Alabama scientist Amy Bishop, who stands accused of shooting six of her colleagues last year. The tragic event, which left three professors dead, got lots of attention in the press, but Wallace wanted to take advantage of the magazine format to go deeper, to get inside Bishop’s mind. Wallace never got to interview Bishop, but she did manage to get her hands on three unpublished novels the scientist had written — more than 900 pages in all. In this episode of the Storyboard podcast, Wallace explains to Wired senior editor Nancy Miller how the novels gave her a glimpse into Bishop’s thoughts. She also delivers a master class on how to convince tricky sources to talk. Listen for the inside scoop on this chilling tale of murder and madness.

In some scratch lottery games, it’s not that hard to beat the odds. For our February Underworld issue, Jonah Lehrer unravels the tale of a statistician who cracked the code and picked winning tickets 90 percent of the time – before scratching them. Today on the podcast, host Adam Rogers gets the inside scoop on this lottery saga from Lehrer and Wired features editor Mark Robinson. Could we have uncovered a new way the Mob launders money? “There disturbing anomalies,” says Lehrer. Listen in for more on how Lehrer found the story and why he suspects this scheme reaches farther than just one guy. Special bonus content: writers going off beat, why Lehrer makes other journalists jealous, and the neuroscience of lotto glee. You can’t win if you don’t listen…

Stick a fork in it: in the long term, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is done for. That’s according to Gary Greenberg, a practicing psychotherapist and author of a feature in the January issue about the controversy surrounding the book’s future fifth edition. For decades, the DSM has been the definitive almanac of psychiatric disease. But the effort to update the book has highlighted the challenge of categorizing slippery, subjective mental states with the same certainty as say, high blood pressure. Today on the podcast, Greenberg and senior editor Bill Wasik join regular host Adam Rogers for a mind-bending conversation about the drama behind the DSM-V and the quest to name our pain.