Listen to more of The Big Story here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://swap.fm/l/wi-bigstorypod-feeddrop

Maddie Kowalski is one of countless young women who’ve had their lives destroyed by the burnerverse, a loosely connected online community of sports fans. Now she’s fighting back.

Written by EJ Dickson. Originally published on September 14th, 2026.

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Microsoft spawned two billionaires. Paul Allen is the other one.

Written by Paulina Borsook. Originally published on August 1st, 1994.

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A cat wearing a short tie plays music on a cat-shaped keyboard (“Pancake Meowsic Video,” 185,459 views). A woman performs sun salutations with a cat on her back (“Cat Loves Yoga,” 1,539 views). A man slaps two cats on an ironing board to the beat of “Atmosphere” (“Cat Slap Joy Division,” 357,605 views).

Written by Gideon Lewis-Kraus. Originally published on August 31st, 2012.

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Soon, hundreds of new top-level domains, including .meow and .fart, could be added to the internet. WIRED goes inside the backroom shenanigans of ICANN, the organization at the helm.

Written by Pete Millspaugh. Originally published on October 6th, 2026.

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Right now, there are no rules to keep you from owning a bitchin’ corporate name as your own internet address.

Written by Joshua Quittner. Originally published on October 1st, 1994.

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Our most powerful 21st-century technologies—robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech—are threatening to make humans an endangered species.

Written by Bill Joy. Originally published on April 1st, 2000.

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Lost time. Lost jobs. Lost friends. Lost family.

Lost Lives.

How Israeli checkpoints suffocate Palestinian life in the occupied West Bank.

Written by Lama Rabah, Sabrina Slipchenko, Charles Boutaud, Firas Tawil and Elena DeBre. Originally published on September 30th 2026.

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Digging through manuals for security cameras, a group of gearheads found sinister details and ignited a new battle in the US-China tech war.

Written by Amos Zeeberg. Originally published on April 4th, 2023.

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Dispatches from the New American Holiday: Writer Bruce Sterling takes the kids to the Temporary Autonomous Zone, where survival is a personal choice.

Written by Bruce Sterling. Originally published in WIRED on November 1st, 1996.

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No IVF. No surrogacy. No polygenic tests. Emma Waters is leading a national fight against fertility tech—with her hot husband’s permission, of course.

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Donald Trump’s presidency will be unpredictable, but in our final show, we make some guesses about what’ll happen anyway. WIRED’s Tim Marchman sits down with reporters David Gilbert and Makena Kelly to talk about what could go wrong between Trump and Musk, if Christian nationalists will get their porn ban, the rise of human brain organoids and whether the new administration will finally declassify those UFO files. 

Tim Marchman is @timmarchman. David Gilbert is @DaithaiGilbert. Makena Kelly is @kellymakena. Be sure to subscribe to the WIRED Politics Lab newsletter here.

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