Verge Extras

Verge Extras works less like a series than a shelf, holding Verge audio projects that each set their own format. Its recent episodes cover three very different kinds of work. One is personal and physical. In 'How to future-proof a 30-year-old computer', a narrator gets the family's 1991 Apple Mac Classic, a beige all-in-one with a nine-inch black and white screen, out of the parents' attic and finds that it still works. The memories come first: third grade homework, hours of drawing, and games like Brickles, Lode Runner and Dark Castle. Then the work starts. Jason points out corroded solder and a diagonal line of residue creeping across a chip, then shows how to snip out the leaking capacitors and clean the board. The episode settles on a modest plan, swapping the hard drive for an SD card and otherwise leaving the machine alone, and ends on an image of replacing planks on a ship for a few more voyages. The Pirate Radio episodes are reported journalism, and they are open about their mischief: the credits thank Nilay Patel, Verge EIC, for letting the team hijack Vergecast. Kevin Nguyen, who introduces himself as a features editor at The Verge, and Andrew Marino are credited on each of them, joined by collaborators including Bijan Steven, Mia Sato and Chris Harlan Dunaway. 'Pirate Radio » The PIRATE Act' starts on the Brooklyn dial, where stations in Haitian Creole play music the big commercial stations rarely touch. It sets those community voices against David Donovan, president of the New York State Broadcasters Association, heard warning Congress's Commerce Committee about illegal stations on rooftops and balconies. In 'Pirate Radio » Dial Up!', Mia Sato reports on Hmong communities that use conference call lines to stay in touch, and roots the story in the Secret War, when U.S. forces recruited Hmong in Laos in the 1960s. 'Pirate Radio » Outside the wire' follows Wafa, who read the nightly news in Afghanistan in 2009 and whose SIV visa case needs proof of work he did for PSYOPs with U.S. Special Forces. The detail is bureaucratic and exact: a supervisor's letter missing dates and contact information, and a Defense Department locator tool that a refugee-assistance director said had worked once. Better Worlds, which calls itself The Verge's science fiction project about hope, supplies the fiction. Catherine Cross's 'Machine Of Loving Grace | Better Worlds Pt. 5' imagines an AI built to moderate video games, whose permanent ban of a rude World of Warcraft player sets off a corporate argument about a robot policing free speech. Kelly Robson's 'Skin City | Better Worlds Pt. 4' follows Cass, a street performer who gets into trouble after falling for a radical privacy devotee, in a Toronto that survived under a dome. That adaptation carries a large voice cast, with original music and sound design by Gautam Shrikashen. What ties the feed together is its attention to the people around a technology: a family's old Mac, a rooftop transmitter, a phone line, an AI moderator.