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Paul Sutter walks us through the future of climate change—things aren’t great

Produced and directed by Corey Eisenstein. Transcript coming soon. (video link) Our previous episode of Edge of Knowledge peeped back in time a few billion years to explore the particular origins of life on Earth , but now we aim our lens in a different direction. Rather than looking at the distant past to see […]

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Paul Sutter explores the origins of life, and DNA versus RNA

Produced and directed by Corey Eisenstein. Click here for transcript. (video link) After spending three episodes looking to the heavens—first at dark matter, then Mars, then black holes—our intrepid host Paul Sutter now turns his gaze to a more terrestrial topic: Why are we here? And I don’t mean in a Nietzschean sense (and if […]

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Exploring the counterintuitive mysteries of black holes with Paul Sutter

Produced and directed by Corey Eisenstein. Click here for transcript. (video link) Of all the amazing and varied phenomena in the cosmological zoo, black holes are among the most mysterious. They are zombies—the all-devouring corpses of dead stars, made of trillions of tons of stellar ash compressed into an infinitely dense point called a “singularity.” […]

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Ars takes a closer look at Volkswagen’s ID Buzz electric van

Produced and directed by Sean Dacanay. Click here for transcript . (video link) On Wednesday, Volkswagen used the South by Southwest festival to formally unveil the ID Buzz, the company’s forthcoming electric van. In the lead-up to that debut in Texas, VW gave Ars an hour with the gold-and-white show car to have a poke […]

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VW unveils adorable electric ID. Buzz, US sales begin in 2024

Enlarge / Volkswagen’s ID. Buzz will have the electric minivan market to itself when it arrives in 2024. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin) Volkswagen provided a night in a hotel and a flight from Washington, DC, to Los Angeles and back so we could have some time with the ID. Buzz. Ars does not accept paid editorial […]

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Watch Sam Machkovech go hands-on with Valve’s Steam Deck

Produced by Sean Dacanay. Click here for transcript. (video link) Valve’s portable Steam Deck has been released, and if you put in your preorder early enough, you might have one of the devices in your hot little hands this very minute. For the rest of us, though, we’re stuck waiting until inventory catches up to […]

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Mars is both closer and farther away than it seems—Dr. Paul Sutter explains

Produced and directed by Corey Eisenstein. Click here for transcript. (video link) Welcome to the second episode of “Edge of Knowledge,” our science explainer series starring astrophysicist Paul Sutter. In part one, Paul took us on a journey to the edges of our galaxy and talked about dark matter, the strange stuff that appears to […]

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Missing mass? Not on our watch—Dr. Paul Sutter explains dark matter

Produced and directed by Corey Eisenstein. Click here for transcript. (video link) Greetings, Arsians! We have something special for you today: the premiere of a new science series we’re creating, called Edge of Knowledge. We’ve recruited physicist and author Dr. Paul Sutter (Google Scholar link) to be our host and guide on an eight-episode romp […]

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War Stories: How Deus Ex was almost too complex for its own good

Directed by James Herron, edited by Sean Dacanay. Click here for transcript . (video link) Coming in under the wire here is our last video for 2021—and we tried to make it a fun one. If you play games, chances are you’ve played something that Warren Spector was involved in creating—with stints at Origin, Ion […]

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War Stories: How Crash Bandicoot hacked the original PlayStation

Shot by Sean Dacanay, edited by Jeremy Smolik. Click here for transcript . When you hear the name Crash Bandicoot , you probably think of it as Sony’s platformy, mascoty answer to Mario and Sonic. Before getting the full Sony marketing treatment, though, the game was developer Naughty Dog’s first attempt at programming a 3D […]