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Radio Motherboard Live: What Is the iPhone?

Listen to the Motherboard crew discuss the inner workings of the iPhone on this week's podcast.
Louise Mastakis, Brian Merchant, Jason Koebler and Nicholas Deleon discuss the iPhone. Image: Motherboard

Motherboard staff is exploring the cultural, political, and social influence of the iPhone for the 10th anniversary of its release. Follow along .

This week is the tenth anniversary of the iPhone—the ubiquitous device that has changed the way we live. Radio Motherboard recorded a live episode at Kickstarter's office in Brooklyn and discussed everything you didn't know about the device.

Editor-in-chief Jason Koebler, assistant editor Louise Matsakis, and technology editor Nicholas DeLeon interviewed Brian Merchant about his new book, The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone, and told their own stories about the iPhone's impact on them as reporters and people.

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In this episode, we learn about the literal city that is the Foxconn iPhone factory, the intense, secretive measures in Apple to maintain Apple's narrative of the iPhone, and the jailbreakers that made the iPhone what it is today.

Jason and Brian also talk about when they got robbed twice between dinner and breakfast, while reporting about the mining of materials for smartphones in South America. Louise discusses Apple's Tribecca "cult" house for hosting reporters, which she experienced firsthand. And Nicholas talks about interviewing those people who used to wait on line for days to buy iPhones.

It's easy to forget that just 10 years ago we didn't have the device that has now become an appendage, but it's the perfect time to explore, and reevaluate, what kind of technology we want to shape our daily lives.

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