interview

This month we had a chat with author Walter Isaacson about his work on humanizing several of histories most influential geniuses. Isaacson is the author of Steve Jobs' most famous biography - you might remember him from this 60 Minutes interview given after Jobs' death. In 2007 he released the book "Einstein: His Life and Universe", and in 2017, National Geographic began releasing the episodic TV series "Genius" using Isaacson's biography.

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Cadillac's Super Cruise may be a practically invisible change on the 2018 CT6, but the semi-autonomous driving system is actually one of the biggest announcements at the New York International Auto Show. It's intended to take control of the luxury sedan on the roads where drivers get most bored, highways and freeways, and though it may only be Level 2 autonomy, it wraps up a number of hands-off technologies that could give drivers the confidence that rival systems lack. I caught up with Barry Walkup, Super Cruise Chief engineer at Cadillac, to find out why.

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Zero Motorcycles may not be the first electric vehicle company that comes to mind when you think of California transportation start-ups, but there's more to the firm than just Tesla on two wheels. Founded back in 2006 in Santa Cruz, CA, the trajectory from passion project to internationally respected bike company has been a rapid one. With a new CEO at the handlebars, and more attention than ever on EVs and the future of transportation, I stopped by to take a tour of the production line and find out more.

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Cuba probably isn't the first place you'd expect to find a million-dollar monster truck, but that only served as encouragement for professional racer BJ Baldwin. For "Recoil 4", the latest in the off-road driver's stunt videos, he took his 6,000 pound truck on a high-speed run around the country, thundering through tight city streets and achieving a record-setting 191 foot residential jump, among other stunts. With "Recoil 4" now released online, I caught up with Baldwin to find out why Cuba, what went wrong, and whether he broke anything other than records along the way.

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Until now, the only way one car could communicate with another was if the driver leaned on the horn or made imaginative hand-signals to their fellow motorists. With the arrival of the 2017 Cadillac CTS, though, all of a sudden the vehicle itself gets chatty. Making V2V, or Vehicle-to-Vehicle, communication a standard feature, it promises not only an increase in on-road safety but to pave the way to new semi-autonomous and self-driving features. The big question is, with Vehicle-to... well, anything still in its infancy, why is Cadillac making the jump now?

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Toyota's Concept-i autonomous car winks at you, remembers the minutiae of your interests, and suggests detours to hang out with your friends: all in the name of getting you to trust its self-driving talents. Revealed at CES 2017 in Las Vegas, CA. this week, on the one hand it's a striking design study intended to explore the new possibilities unlocked when you're liberated from the tyranny of everyday driving. At the same time, though, it addresses a more fundamental issue, around trust in technology and the fear of the expert. I caught up with Ian Cartabiano, lead designer at the Toyota CALTY studio, and William Chergosky, interior lead designer, to find out why Concept-i is so important.

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Ford's seven-strong electrified vehicle announcement at CES 2017 this morning is the Detroit automaker's biggest commitment to EVs to-date, and there are no half-measures. On the cards - and, indeed, on the roads within the next few years - will be hybrid versions of some of the blue oval's biggest nameplates. It's a strategy that's markedly different from that taken by many of Ford's rivals, which have focused on a few halo hybrid and EV products amid the rest of their mainstream range. I caught up with Hau Thai-Tang, Ford group vice president of Purchasing and the automaker's "executive electrified vehicle champion" to find out more.

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Gently I stroke the top of the robot's head and, with a delighted bloop, he comes alive, eyes smiling as he looks up at me. I may be a cynical British tech journalist but I still catch myself grinning in response, and anyway, I can't blame myself too much for anthropomorphizing the latest attempt at a robotic family companion to grace CES. Kuri's creators, Mayfield Robotics, have put personality front and center in their efforts to crack a surprisingly stubborn segment.

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If logging your runs is the current peak of the quantified self, then sleep is the next big frontier, and Hello is pitching its new sleep tracker as the centerpiece of that. Sense with Voice builds on the original no-wearable design with new voice controls, smart home integration, and a growing amount of behind-the-scenes data courtesy of the company's new Chief Scientist, Professor Matthew Walker, who I caught up with ahead of today's launch. Turns out, there's more to bad sleep than just nightmares.

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It's a fact of life that, as smartphones have got bigger, slimmer, and more slippery, you're increasingly likely to drop them while playing Pokemon GO and smash the display. Corning can't stop you from getting over-excited at the sight of a wild Pikachu, but it does have a new version of its toughened glass, Gorilla Glass 5, which promises even greater resilience to being dropped on the next generation of smartphones and other devices.

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Independence Day director Roland Emmerich had the idea for the original ID4 film when fielding a question about his belief in the existence of alien life in 1994. Back then he was promoting Stargate, and the idea that alien invasion films generally focused on a race of alien beings that traveled long distances to Earth only to remain mysterious and hidden once they arrive. Here in 2016 at the premiere of Independence Day Resurgence, we thought it pertinent to ask Emmerich again whether or not his beliefs had changed in the past couple of decades.

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Speaking with three of the main actors in The Angry Birds Movie this past week, we happened upon a realization of sorts. This movie is packed with well-known actors of all sorts - most of whom have done both live-action acting and animation (voice) work as well. This is a film where an actor would be forgiven for forgetting the entire cast list of fellow actors - especially if they had no scenes with them in the same studio. In fact with so few lines in the film, it's not out of the question to assume that Sean Penn didn't spend nearly as much time in the recording booth as the rest of the cast. As such, it's easy to forget he was there at all.

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