Hungry for a Little More WIRED? Turn on Your TV
You can find WIRED a lot of places these days. There’s the magazine, of course (which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year!). There’s this website, which you might be reading on a laptop or tablet but are probably reading on your phone. There’s YouTube and Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and Snapchat and Glizznork,…
When Overtaxed Working Memory Knocks Your Brain Out of Sync
In 1956, the renowned cognitive psychologist George Miller published one of the field’s most widely cited papers, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two.” In it, he argued that although the brain can store a whole lifetime of knowledge in its trillions of connections, the number of items that humans can actively hold in…
Game of Thrones' Final Season Is Shaping Up to Be a Beautiful Mess
When it comes to Game of Thrones opinions, there's really only one I trust: WIRED alum Laura Hudson's. Back when we worked in the same office I used to secretly marvel at her dog-eared and tattered copies of George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books like they were the Dead Sea Scrolls. That's…
It’s Time for the Next Wave of Ocean Exploration and Protection
This week marks the 10th Annual World Oceans Day, a global confluence of ocean-awareness events intended to bring our oceans the level of public attention they deserve. As we both have had the opportunity to explore a fair amount of our globe’s seas, on this occasion we’d like to share our excitement and our vision…
Researchers Used This Genealogy Site to Build a 13 Million-Person Family Tree
In the last 20 years, genealogy websites have attracted more than 15 million customers by promising insights into your past. Maybe you’ll uncover a secret infidelity or be reunited with a long-lost cousin, like when Larry met Bernie on Finding Your Roots. It’s deeply personal, affecting stuff. But when your family tree contains thousands, millions,…
The Challenge of Making YouTube a Better Place
Susan Wojcicki has a difficult job. As CEO of YouTube, she leads one of Alphabet’s biggest money makers and most popular platforms. But the company she helms is very different than the YouTube that launched in 2005, when the mission was “Broadcast Yourself.” In recent years, and particularly since the 2016 election in the US,…
What's Inside Squishy, Tasty-Looking Tide Pods?
Armed only with social media and a good data plan, teenagers today can make just about anything go viral. Or, in the case of Tide Pods, go viral again. Jokes about eating the squishy, day-glo detergent packs have been racing around the internet since Procter & Gamble introduced the pods in 2012. I mean, come…
Ski Resorts Fight Climate Change With Snow Guns and Buses
After a wimpy winter, spring break has arrived, and skiers and snowboarders from Maine to Mammoth Lakes are stoked. More than 18 feet of snow has dropped at Squaw Valley, Calif., in March; Utah’s famed powder resorts have finally broken the 100-inch mark; and New England has been pummeled by four big storms pushing closing…
The 2018 Internet Moments That Made Being Online Worth It
The internet, as recent Senate reports have shown, can be an awful and confusing place. Hate speech, election meddling, PewDiePie—and we still can't get Twitter to let us edit posts. But every now and then, the garbage fire calms down just a bit and some joy creeps in. This post is for those moments, the…
The Year the Alt-Right Went Underground
I was at what should have been a farmers’ market in Berkeley, California, last year when a throng of black-clad antifascists tried to scrap it out with far-right ralliers in the middle of a park named after Martin Luther King Jr. I watched scrawny college students get pummeled by hulking, be-swastika-ed ex-soldiers and ex-law enforcement…