Table of contents for July / August 2023 in WIRED UK

SPEEDING INTO THE FUTURE Jay Watson got a glimpse of the potential superbike future when WIRED sent him to shoot Damon Motors for our Desired special. “The most interesting part was learning about the proprietary monocoque battery case,” he says. “I could appreciate how it opens up wild new design options that aren’t available with a traditional motor.” WITH A LITTLE HELP … Jason Paige photographs Molly White, whose blog exposing crypto-scams has earned her some unwanted attention—but she can rely on her friends: “The shoot was in a garage by the docks in Maine, using strobes for lighting. Her friend was working nearby, saw the flashes, and just called in to check she was OK, which is very Maine.” JOEL KHALILI Khalili interviews crypto-activist Molly White, whose “Web3 Is…

Stratton Acoustics Elypsis1512 Described by Stratton as “unfeasibly heavy”, this 120kg, 90cm-tall speaker has a vast 250-liter cabinet made from fully braced 25mm and 18mm birch ply panels. The laser-cut-steel stand is optional, but if you like your floors, splash out the extra £5,000. Inside, three-way passive speakers are built around two 380mm bass drivers, a single 300mm midrange driver, and a 29mm soft dome tweeter. £64,000 (speaker only) strattonacoustics.com Loewe iconic.65 To mark its centenary, Loewe has gone suitably statuesque with 55in and 65in TVs made from Cyno-Stone, a durable and recyclable material similar to polished concrete. In either graphite gray or clay white, each has a 4K OLED screen and a hidden 360W, 3.1 soundbar with Dolby Atmos and Play-Fi compatibility. £7,999 loewe.tv Hi-Fi Rose RA180 Integrated Amplifier…

IN 2005, Dan Betts struck gold—literally—in the rainforests of Liberia. After the country emerged in 2003 from over a decade of civil war, its government saw commercial gold mining as a way to drive investment and economic development, so it asked entities including Betts Metals, a family-owned British refiner with 260 years of history, to help. Then a young executive (the company was run by his father), Betts headed to Liberia, where he and his team uncovered deposits that would lead to one of the most substantial recent gold discoveries in West Africa—4.5 million oz. of the precious metal. “Like it or not, this gold was going to get developed, says Betts. “The government of Liberia wanted the revenue. You could make a few quid and sell it on to…

I’m on a boat. The boat does not float. At least not in the traditional sense. The manufacturer says enthusiastically that “it flies.” In reality it hovers two feet above the water, propped up on stilts attached to two horizontal carbon-fiber fins—hydrofoils—that slice through the waves, raising the hull clean out of the sea. Underwater, a torpe-do-shaped, battery-powered propeller mounted along the rear foil thrusts all 1.6 metric tonnes of the C-8 forward. The all-electric C-8 is a luxury watercraft engineered by Swedish maritime manufacturer Candela, but the battery is made by the EV company Polestar—a subsidiary of Geely, the Chinese conglomerate that also owns Volvo. While Polestar has focused the bulk of its efforts on land vehicles, it has partnered with Candela to give the C-8 its juice box.…

IF you’ve ever been hit by a flying champagne cork, you will be painfully aware of the pressure in a bottle of fizz. And that pressure inside—and outside—the bottle has caught the imaginations of champagne innovators. “We conduct many trials every year to fine-tune the pressure to the vintage,” says Louis Roederer’s chef de cave Jean Baptiste Lécaillon. “We have a lower pressure—so smaller bubbles—[because] we want a seamless and soft mousse.” The pressure inside a bottle of champagne is typically around 6 bar (or 3x the pressure of a car tire). But Louis Roederer champagnes can range from 6 to 4.5 bar. “The more acidity you have in the wine, the more aggressive the feeling of the bubbles … this is also why we are on the low side,”…

Kate Ryder Founder and CEO, Maven Big Idea Virtual clinics can fix the gender health gap and improve outcomes In 2022, healthcare startup Maven became the first unicorn in the femtech sector after raising more than $250m from a star-studded roster of investors including Oprah Winfrey, Natalie Portman, and Reese Witherspoon. The company provides virtual clinic services for women and families across a range of areas such as fertility, maternity and newborn care, pediatrics, and menopause, as well as giving financial help and mental health support. Currently, it has more than 15 million members enlisted in over 175 countries. Maven is end-to-end. “You can have that continuity of care, no matter what your path,” says Kate Ryder, its CEO. “For example, we’re currently supporting a woman in London who enrolled…

Indra Joshi Director Health, Palantir Big Idea Data harmonization According to The Lancet, around 65 million people have been diagnosed with long Covid, a condition with a range of symptoms including chest pain, depression, recurrent fevers, and shortness of breath that’s still poorly understood. At the start of the pandemic, the US National Center for Advancing Translational Science launched the National Covid Cohort Collaborative (N3C), an initiative to better understand the disease, in partnership with Palantir—a data analytics company that has previously worked on controversial government projects. “When you’re challenged with a condition that you know very little about like long Covid, you need to understand how to bring the data in,” Indra Joshi, director of Health, Research and AI at Palantir, says. “Say I’ve ordered a ‘head CT’. Is…

Sir Harpal Kumar, President, GRAIL Europe Big Idea Population-wide cancer screening via blood test Almost all cancers that result in death are found at late stages,” says Harpal Kumar, president of the European arm of healthcare company GRAIL. “The vast majority of these cases are diagnosed when people present with symptoms, by which time the cancer is often very advanced. Up until then, it’s an invisible enemy.” National cancer-screening programs could mitigate the problem, however, these are often few and inefficient. In the UK, for instance, there are only three national screening programs covering breast, cervical and bowel cancers, which together are responsible for about 17 per cent of all deaths. “We’re not currently looking at more than four fifths of cancer deaths,” Kumar says. “In fact, because not everyone…

But, while approval of the ideals of the NHS is high—research suggests that nine out of ten people believe in the principles of the NHS—satisfaction is low. According to the King’s Fund, in 2022, positive sentiment towards the NHS fell to 29 per cent, the lowest since the survey began in 1983. There is talk of the service having gone backwards over the past decade, that it is wasteful and burdened by hopeless legacy IT systems and data silos. Staff are overwhelmed and underpaid. Conversations are fraught and politicized, there is much made of the stealth privatization of healthcare, hands are wrung about data sharing, healthcare workers share stories of broken trust with government and armies of middle managers adding to the challenges of a workforce blighted by Brexit. Strikes…

Cryptocurrencies rise and fall, but one number just keeps going up. Whenever somebody loses money to a crypto scam or hack, the Grift Counter on Molly White’s blog, Web3 Is Going Just Great, ticks higher—it recently passed $12 billion. White started the blog in December 2021 out of frustration with the main-stream coverage of crypto, which she says paid too much attention to rags to riches tales and not enough to its dark underbelly. A software engineer, White coded Web3 Is Going Just Great as a side project, to “entertain me and me alone,” she says. But within a few months, the blog was a hit. When she first learned about crypto at a conference in college in the early 2010s, White admired its pro-privacy and anti-censorship principles, and its…

Rémy Martin Louis XIII Infinity Wheel For 87 years, Rémy Martin’s Louis XIII cognac has come in a sumptuous Baccarat crystal decanter—but what to do with this objet once you’ve quaffed the last? Concerned drinkers can now refill their existing vessels via the Louis XIII Infinity Wheel. From July, Harrods in London will refurbish (stopper checked, imperfections sorted), refill, and apply an engraved medal to your decanter before it is sealed, boxed, and returned. The process takes 2 to 3 weeks, and somehow costs exactly the same as buying a new bottle of Louis XIII—but then you’d miss out on burnishing those gilt-edged eco-credentials. £3,200 louisxiii-cognac.com…

Anrealage A/W 2023-24 The Japanese brand has played with color-changing fabrics before, but this latest collection is its most successful, bringing dramatic shifts and instant patterns to faux fur, quilting, and tailored pieces. A hit of UV light turns the all-white garments neon for about 3 minutes; in sunlight, it’s more subtle. £TBC anrealage.com Canyon Speedmax CF SLX Frodissimo Call it a “blend” between Canyon and triathlete-turned-coffee-brand owner, Jan Frodeno (aka Frodissimo). This 9.4kg bike has Zipp 808 Firecrest carbon wheels, a Quarq power meter—and a paint job that has actual ground coffee in it. £9,499 canyon.com Faema E61 Celebrating the 61st anniversary of its E61 group head (for precise distribution of hot water over coffee grounds during brewing), Faema’s retro-styled mini counter-top machine has an automatic boiler fill, to…

4T2 Get Lost Jurian Elstgeest spent 25 years working in performance footwear at brands including Nike and Asics, before founding 4T2 (aka, the length of a marathon, in kilometers). These Get Lost shoes have a 6mm drop, Vibram outsoles, Sympatex fabrics, and Ortholite insoles. They’re also gender neutral—female runners should drop half a size—and the outsole can be replaced, extending the life of the shoe well past the trails. £160 4t2run.com…

Baroness Nicola Blackwood Chair, Genomics England Big Idea Whole-genome sequencing can accelerate diagnosis and treatment of rare diseases In 2016, Jessica Wright became one of the first children to be diagnosed by the 100,000 Genomes Project, a program launched in 2012 which provided whole-genome sequencing services for patients. She suffered from an unknown disease which caused epilepsy and affected her motor control. No treatment seemed to work. After years of numerous medical tests—from MRI scans to lumbar punctures—and failed treatments, her parents decided to enroll the four-year-old in the project. The researchers found that Jessica’s genome contained 67 rare genetic variants not present in her parents’ genome. This group of variants was checked against a knowledge database called PanelApp, a crowdsourcing tool for rare disease genetics, and a match was…

Rachel Clarke, NHS doctor, Hospice Ukraine founder Big Idea Storytelling is essential to humanized healthcare In October 2022, palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke traveled to Ukraine with neurosurgeon Henry Marsh to teach and train local doctors. Upon arriving in Kyiv by train, her mobile phone started flashing with alerts. “To my horror, we were entering the city at the exact time the Russians embarked on a massive missile bombardment,” she recalls. They were led immediately into an underground bomb shelter. “The missile strikes were very close. You didn’t just hear the missiles landing, you felt them. They reverberated in your chest. I was terrified. This is what they have endured for months.” Clarke was impressed by the stoicism of the Ukrainian people. One of the doctors they met, a neurosurgeon,…

Not too long ago, movie villains were easily identified by their facial scarring, malevolent laughs, and weirdly high collars—but in recent years, the shorthand has shifted significantly. Turtlenecks and hoodies are the hallmarks of today’s sinister supervillains, as the billionaire tech bro has become the antagonist of choice. Take Rian Johnson’s Oscar-nominated Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, which centers around the murderous, gray-Tshirted CEO, Miles Bron (Edward Norton). Bron is set to launch an alternative (and dangerous) hydrogen-based fuel before he is not-so-gradually revealed to be an idiot. Audiences have compared him to billionaire boy of the moment, Elon Musk. But that’s the obvious one. The more nefarious of these supervillains hide in plain sight. In Disney+ show The Santa Clauses, the serialized sequel to The Santa Clause film series that…

When the trailer for horror flick Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey hit the internet last year, it produced a mild viral hysteria. Angry fans accused director Rhys Frake-Waterfield of the creative equivalent of napalming 100 Aker Wood. When the film was released in theaters, critics mauled it, agreeing “this Pooh stinks.” Others—50 per cent of the audience on Rotten Tomatoes—appreciated its gruesome absurdity. Beneath the opprobrium lies an interesting legal question: How was a filmmaker whose previous movies included Croc!, Dinosaur Hotel, and Easter Bunny Massacre: The Bloody Trail able to twist one of Britain’s most beloved bears into a honey-dribbling serial killer? The simple answer is that some of the bear’s copyright protection had expired. A. A. Milne published the first Pooh book, Winnie-the-Pooh, in 1926. Disney began licensing…

Urwerk UR-102 Reloaded A brand not typically known for watch-shaped watches, Urwerk’s UR-102 Reloaded is a revamp of its first, comparatively restrained model from 1997. The 38mm size is uprated to 41mm, the “window” is wider, and the crown is cleverly merged into the case at 4 o’clock. Of course, the integrated “wandering hour” system lets you know this is still most assuredly an Urwerk. It’s also a two-fer, value-fans: Limited to 25 box sets, each contains both a titanium version with a white woven band, and this all-black edition. CHF 56,000 urwerk.com Patek Philippe Calatrava Reference 6007G The heirloom-status watchmaker has embraced its youthful side with the Reference 6007G. Yes, it’s still cased in white gold, but the sporty and colorful accents mean this piece can wear beyond the…

Tom Dixon Melt, Bell, and Stone portable lamps Exhibiting for the first time at Milan’s Euroluce lighting design fair this past April, British design icon Tom Dixon revealed a collection of three covetable, rechargeable battery-powered lamps. Designed to slot into the existing Melt, Bell (above) and Stone lighting collections, the dimmable LED lamps can provide cable-free lighting wherever you need it for up to 10 hours. The Melt and Bell models are available in the very TD shades of gold, silver, copper and black, while Stone comes in white marble with a gold-toned bulb. £230 - £360 tomdixon.net BOARD_ Fliteboard Ultra L hydrofoil surfboard Designed in Australia and assembled in Amsterdam, the world’s lightest hydrofoil surfboard weighs just 22.5kg, including the Flight Cell Nano battery, which provides up to 52…

Details on the DeLorean Alpha 5 remain elusive—but what we do know is that the all-wheel drive EV will be the first four-seater, gull-wing design with a projected top speed of 155 mph. We also know it will boast a bespoke audio system designed by British high-end hi-fi stalwarts Cambridge Audio. It’s Cambridge Audio’s first foray into the automotive space, but they join an ever-expanding list of brands. Apple has been working with Mercedes Benz and Dolby Atmos on a system; Bowers & Wilkins has teamed up with BMW; and Sonos is lending a hand at Audi. But why choose a niche British hi-fi brand with no auto-audio track record? “We’re like-minded brands that just got each other,” explains Cambridge Audio’s marketing director Charlie Henderson. “We both have a slightly…

Hannah Fry, Professor in the Mathematics of Cities, UCL Big Idea To make sense of a cancer diagnosis by using maths In January 2021, mathematician Hannah Fry was diagnosed with cervical cancer. When she received her diagnosis, the oncologist told her there was still uncertainty about whether the cancer was already at stage three and had spread to the lymph nodes. If it hadn’t, Fry’s chances of survival were 90 per cent. If it had already spread, however, those same odds were about 60 per cent. “It looked as though the cancer was in four of the nodes, but we weren’t totally sure,” she says. “The surgeons decided to do a very radical and aggressive surgery. They essentially took out about a third of my abdomen.” Even though Fry was…

Jennifer Garrison, Longevity researcher Big Idea The menopause could be the key to better understanding aging In the animal kingdom, only five species go through menopause, the stage at which the ovaries stop working. Four of them—killer whales, short-finned pilot whales, belugas and narwhals—live underwater. The fifth species is, of course, humans. “This tells me as a scientist that menopause is not a biological imperative,” Jennifer Garrison, a reproductive aging researcher at the Buck Institute in San Francisco, says. “It’s not necessary, so, from my perspective, we should get rid of it.” The menopause remains a scientific puzzle. For instance, while the male reproductive system ages at the same rate as the rest of the body, the female one does not, with the ovaries, on average, aging at about two…

Anil Seth, Neuroscientist Big Idea Stroboscopic light therapy can offer a way to understand and heal the brain Last summer, in various cities in the UK, more than 40,000 people visited the Dreamachine, a large space designed to induce hallucinatory experiences with white stroboscopic light and electronic music. “We had guardians there to guide and relax people at the beginning through breathing exercises,” says Anil Seth, a neuroscientist at the University of Sussex and a collaborator in the project, which includes a team of artists, engineers, designers and musicians. Twenty to thirty people were allowed into the room and asked to lay down and close their eyes. After the 30-minute session, participants would typically describe the experience with adjectives like “vivid,” “kaleidoscopic,” “powerful,” “passionate,” “magic.” “Seeing the responses of participants…

In early April 2020, shortly after Prime Minister Boris Johnson had announced the first pandemic lockdown in the United Kingdom, a urologist named Archie Fernando reached out to one of her colleagues, Nadine Hachach-Haram. The two doctors worked at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospital, one of the busiest in the country at a time when nearly a thousand people were dying of Covid-19 every week. Most surgeries were being deferred, except for life-or-limb cases or urgent cancer surgeries, and Hachach-Haram, who is a reconstructive plastic surgeon, recalls how useless she felt. “I would just walk into the wards and ask the nurses what I could do to help,” she says. “I started doing everything like portering and proning, turning patients over to make their breathing slightly better.” Hachach-Haram was also…