Detours

Welcome to episode one of Detours, The Verge's new weekly show where we visit four American cities — Kansas City, Detroit, New Orleans, and Pittsburgh — to chronicle their technological resurgence. Join us for a talk with Nait Jones, the CEO and founder of a company called AgLocal, who discusses the challenges of building a business around responsible farming, and how Kansas City turned to be exactly the right place to do it.

When was the last time you got a paper card in the mail? It's been a long time for us here at The Verge. We wanted to find out what the world's largest greeting card company, Hallmark, was doing to stay competitive with smartphones and the internet, so we headed to its headquarters in Kansas City to find out.

In 2012, Google came to Kansas City promising a new era of connectivity with its ultra-high-speed broadband internet. About one year later, The Verge looks at the whether Google Fiber has lived up to its promise, and how another new network is helping provide connectivity to local, low-income communities

Shinola was once a household name, famous for its iconic brand of shoe polish before its demise in 1960. Now the name is back, engraved on watches hand-assembled in Detroit. As the Motor City stages its latest attempt at a comeback, Shinola is betting big on the city — and on its people.

"Wouldn't it be really cool to have a mind-controlled flamethrower?" Matt Oehrlein is a maker — he designs machines not only for a large company, but for himself. After finding himself at a new job in unfamiliar Michigan, he decides to join a "makerspace" called i3 Detroit where he and other local residents come together to build whatever machines they can imagine.

Limited budgets and crumbling infrastructure have left Highland Park's fire department stretched thin. Abandoned buildings are burning with families inside. To find out more, read the full report at the link above.

In the Disney Research Lab at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University, Ivan Poupyrev built "Botanicus Interacticus," a technology designed to create interactive musical instruments out of plants — both living and artificial. Poupyrev's projects are typically top secret, but he opened Disney's doors to The Verge. We invited our friends from the band Cloud Nothings to see just how interactive his plants could be.

Steel helped transform Pittsburgh into a powerhouse in the 20th century, but once the industry collapsed, it left behind a city forever changed. The dense soot cloud that hovered overhead for decades is finally breaking up, but some of the nation's worst levels of air pollution still remain.

A century of steel production in Pittsburgh has mostly gone away, leaving in its wake industries based on academic research and robots. When it comes to robots, the goal is more focused on building a framework for the future rather than an infrastructure from the past. And for that reason, Pittsburgh has become a place where far flung ambitions are supported and encouraged, even if the end goal is a long way off.

A 25-acre pit won't stop growing — and it's threatening a Louisiana town The sleepy Louisiana fishing town community of Bayou Corne was torn apart when an underground salt mine collapsed, causing a massive, tree-gobbling sinkhole to open up at the surface. That was a year ago, and the 25-acre sinkhole keeps growing with no end in sight.

A small group of researchers in New Orleans are cloning endangered wildcats and pushing the boundaries of feline science.

The struggling New Orleans police department is increasingly relying on video to help solve crimes. A group of residents is trying to help by installing security cameras to blanket the streets.