Story

During last year’s XOXO, Will Smith announced he was leaving Tested, the enormously popular tech network he founded with Norm Chan and Mythbusters Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, to start something brand new — Foo VR and The Foo Show, an experimental virtual reality talk show. Will brings the first live Foo Show to XOXO, interviewing game designer Brendon Chung inside of his critically-acclaimed game, Quadrilateral Cowboy.

The Heart is an audio art project and podcast about intimacy and humanity, a radio show about the triumphs and the terrors of human intimacy, the bliss and banality of being in love and the wild diversity of the human heart. Host and creative director Kaitlin Prest joins us at XOXO for an intimate new performance.

Flash Forward is a podcast about the future, each episode taking on a different possible (or not so possible) future scenario. Join host Rose Eveleth for an interactive experience exploring one of those futures — where the audience will decide their fate in a world where every person can find their expiration date.

Reasonably Sound is a podcast about the science and culture of audio from Mike Rugnetta, writer/host of PBS Idea Channel and XOXO alumnus. An accomplished and prolific composer of experimental music, Mike joins us at XOXO for his first live podcast, celebrating the launch of his Patreon-funded second season.

Two years ago, co-dependent besties Allison Raskin and Gaby Dunn started Just Between Us, a dating advice show on YouTube, answering viewer mail and exposing their deepest neuroses for laughs. Today, they’re close to 700k subscribers with over 73M views, a dedicated fanbase loving every minute. Gaby and Allison join us from Los Angeles to bring JBU to the XOXO stage.

While working at HotWired in 1996, Derek Powazek launched Fray, a pioneering online community devoted to personal stories. Raw and emotional, the website soon expanded to live storytelling events and then to a series of independently-published books. For its 20th anniversary, we’re thrilled to invite Fray back to XOXO for a night of your true personal stories. Want to tell a story? Join #fraycafe in Slack. (Not in our Slack? Sign in to request an invite.)