The speech police came for Colbert

On The Vergecast: the FCC’s chilling effect, Apple’s AI gadgets, and Tesla’s robotaxi record.

by David Pierce

Feb 19, 2026, 3:08 PM UTC

David Pierce is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.

Generally speaking, arcane and mostly unenforced FCC rules are not the province of late night talk shows. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr seems intent on changing that, though; not long after causing a ruckus that briefly took Jimmy Kimmel off the air, his vague threats appear to have been enough to convince CBS to tell Stephen Colbert not to air an interview. Which, of course, became a whole thing.

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On this episode of The Vergecast (which we recorded and published a day early both because of the news and because Nilay has a vacation to go on), David and Nilay open the show with an extra-large installment of Brendan Carr is a Dummy. We talk through the timeline of the Colbert / CBS back-and-forth, once again attempt to explain how the equal time rule actually works, and wonder exactly how far Carr’s chilling effect will be allowed to go.

After that, we turn to some gadgets. Nilay has always wanted exactly the facial-recognition feature Meta appears to be getting ready to launch for its smart glasses, but we’re not sure it should exist. And it appears Meta knows that. Apple is also gearing up for potentially a series of launches in early March, which could include new iPads, new Macs, and more. It almost certainly won’t include any of the AI gadgets Apple is reportedly working on, but we talk about those anyway.

Finally, in the lightning round, we discuss Tesla’s rough self-driving record, Samsung’s next phones, an astonishing robovac security problem, and more.