Version History is reside — right here’s methods to discover it

We’ve been engaged on a brand new present for the previous few months, referred to as Version History, and the primary episode is now reside! It’s referred to as “Hoverboards: so hot right now,” and it’s an hour-long tour of the largest rideable gadget of the 2010s. Hidden contained in the historical past of this bizarre two-wheeled scooter is a vital inflection level in Chinese tech manufacturing, some massively influential social media stars, a referendum on self-driving vehicles, and a lot extra. This episode is hosted by David Pierce, Andy Hawkins, and Sean O’Kane. We had a blast making it, and we expect you’ll take pleasure in it too.

Now that the present is reside, there are just a few methods you could find Version History when episodes drop each Sunday:

We tried laborious to make a present that works in each audio and video varieties, however truthfully, the most effective expertise of Version History might be on video. We introduced all of the previous devices into the studio and acquired to play with them with new perspective, and there’s one thing pleasant about attending to see all of them come alive once more. However you wish to get your Version History, although, we expect it’ll work nice!

We like to think about Version History as a rewatch podcast for expertise. We all love podcasts like The Always Sunny Podcast or Office Ladies — any time a TV present’s creators or stars return via the present, episode by episode, to each talk about the present’s content material and inform tales about its making, we’ll be there. We additionally love issues like What Went Wrong and The Rewatchables, which inform tales and litigate the legacies of tradition. And, in fact, we love historical past present, whether or not it’s The Rest is History or Stuff You Missed in History Class or Revolutions. Somewhere within the mash of all these reveals and The Verge, you’ll hopefully discover Version History.

Our purpose, in each episode, is to inform one thing near a product’s full story. Cover tech lengthy sufficient, and also you be taught that the factor that finally lands on cabinets or in app shops is just one small a part of the journey. Every product is definitely the results of a bunch of executives preventing for his or her priorities; a number of sophisticated questions in regards to the state of expertise, tradition, and politics; and finally the style of a surprisingly small variety of folks. Nothing in tech is ever inevitable, it doesn’t matter what some advertising departments need you to assume. Our purpose is to determine why tech seems the best way it does, and what it means for all of us.

Also? We simply actually like speaking about tech. The great things, the dangerous stuff, the stuff that hardly missed, the stuff that by no means had an opportunity. There are so many desirable inflection factors in tech historical past, the place one thing hit or didn’t and seemingly modified the course of our lives because of this. We’ve had a good time going again to the issues we lined years in the past, to the issues we grew up with, to the issues that predate us by a long time, and speaking about how all of them formed the tech we use now.

We’ve already recorded eight episodes of the present, and over the following seven weeks we’re diving deep into the whole lot from BBM to the Zune to LimeWire. We’re already getting began on the following set of reveals, too, however we’d love to listen to from you: what merchandise deserve their very own episode? What ought to we add to or substitute within the Version History Questions? Can you work out what the Version History Hall of Fame standards ought to be (as a result of we definitely can’t)? Nothing in regards to the present is about in stone, and we wish to have extra of your enter in there on a regular basis.

As for this episode, there’s an terrible lot to cowl about hoverboards. But if you wish to dive in for your self, listed here are just a few hyperlinks to get you began: