The Vergecast is the flagship podcast from The Verge about small gadgets, Big Tech, and everything in between. Every Friday, hosts Nilay Patel and David Pierce hang out and make sense of the week’s most important technology news. And every Tuesday, David leads a selection of The Verge’s expert staffers in an exploration of how gadgets and software affect our lives — and which ones you should bring into yours. Click here to subscribe.
They join The Vergecast to discuss Sonos’ new Era 300 and 100 speakers, the ins and outs of spatial audio, and why this is the time to get behind it.
And we’re back! It’s not MWC anymore, but we can still discuss old phones on The Vergecast’s most recent episode (shout out to Windows Phone 7, RIM, and Steven Sinofsky), as well as how Meta’s VR strategy is looking very 32X-ish.
Also, has anyone seen Elon’s Twitter Blue revenue sharing? Let me know if you have.
It must be MWC, because every old mobile grievance was revisited, even as we celebrated what is surely our phone of the future, Motorola’s rollable Rizr concept.
We also dug into Alex Heath’s big scoop exposing Meta’s hardware roadmap, TikTok’s unsettling new filter, and talked a little about Elon Musk. Not too much.
But before we talked about Marvel, Victoria Song came on to help me figure out just what’s going on with the rumors of an Apple Watch that can detect diabetes. Then Ariel Shapiro did a fantastic interview about podcast misinformation, and Charles Pulliam-Moore came on to dissect the latest episode of The Last of Us before we chatted about the backlash to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
On the latest episode (you can find the audio feeds here) TC, Nilay, and Alex broke down this week’s Supreme Court hearings that could significantly impact the internet.
After a break and a lineup change, we also dig into the new fraud charges filed against Sam Bankman-Fried, Spotify’s AI DJ (I don’t trust it), the Microsoft vs. Sony battle over Activision, and Tesla’s new California engineering HQ.
Okay, I also talked with Adi and Sean about their review of the PSVR 2 and we tried to figure out why it isn’t backwards compatible with games from the original PSVR headset. But then Chris Welch, Jen Tuohy, and Chris Person and I debated the best options for multiroom audio.
And then last night the company began telling people to move away from SMS-based 2FA or get willing to pay for Twitter Blue. While we didn’t know what would happen hours later, we did talk about Twitter’s finances, as well as the world’s continued obsession with Bing’s AI, Susan Wojcicki’s departure from YouTube, and more car news than you’d think.
As James Vincent has noted, people simply love Bing despite its tendency to just...make stuff up. Adi Robertson and James joined us to talk about everyone’s newfound affection for AI. We also spoke with Zoe Schiffer about the latest chaos at Twitter and we chatted about Susan Wojcicki’s departure from Youtube.
Bing has gotten smarter, Google had a not great announcement of its competitor, Bard, Elon’s Twitter reach is on the decline, and Bob Iger is restructuring Disney, again. It was a busy week and we covered it all on the Vergecast.
Nilay has access to Bing’s new AI powered search, so we took some of your prompts from Twitter on today’s show. The crew discuss whether this version of search will reshape the way we use the web, and whether or not this can beat Google.
Also on this episode: Disney layoffs, OnePlus announcements, and Elon’s Twitter reach is dropping.
We’re back in video form (audio feeds for your podcast app are here), and this time yes, I admit it — I was occasionally using Nvidia AI to enhance my eye contact with Nilay, Allison, and Monica.
Other than the Galaxy Unpacked news, we also discussed earnings results from Apple and Google as they were announced on Thursday and tried to get a handle on what’s happening to big tech companies.
Big show! Alex Cranz, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, Chris Welch, and Nilay Patel discuss The Verge’s review of Apple’s new second-gen HomePod. How much actually changed?
Later, Katharine Trendacosta and Alex Cranz discuss why and how faking your death has been a common practice on the internet (don’t do it).
Then in segment three, Sean Hollister enlightens us: is the Steam Deck finally ready to play? Listen to the full podcast here.
But besides spending time talking about this new way to watch the Vergecast, we talk about the new M2 Pro and Max devices from Apple, the many existential threats Google faced this week, and Elon’s latest appearance in court.
I sat down with Charles Pulliam-Moore to talk the first two episodes of The Last of Us, but if you want to skip possible spoilers jump straight to 22:05 where I’m joined by Margaret O’Mara, author of The Code, to talk about the unique relationship between noncompetes and Silicon Valley. Finally we wrap the episode up answering your questions—including where all the USB-C only hubs are.
Alex Heath joins the show’s first segment to talk us through the latest update on Elon’s first few months at Twitter, and then we turn to Apple’s eventless hardware announcement, HomePod and all.
We also dove into the revelations about CNET’s AI-written stories and discussed the recent spate of Big Tech layoffs, although we recorded the show (available in audio form here for your podcast apps) prior to Friday morning’s bombshell news from Google.
On the Vergecast we discuss the possibility of touchscreen Macs, and what it all really means for pressing confirmation buttons, zooming in on maps, or maybe using an iPad app or two.
With Nilay roaming the wilderness of upstate New York, I talked to Alex and Dan as we imagined the possibility of Macs with OLED screens that you can touch and tried to figure out what MicroLED would do for us.
We also previewed Samsung’s next Unpacked event and attempted to use unlicensed music with some help from Siri.
I can’t stop thinking about that TV at CES that is not only wireless but also has a whole vacuum suction system on the back of it for mounting on a wall.
Alex Cranz, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, Chris Welch, and Andrew Hawkins dedicate some time to talk about it, as well as some other favorites from CES on today’s show.
This podcast was recorded before Elon Musk’s Twitter ban extravaganza reached its peak, but we dug into the @ElonJets mess. From Apple, we’ll check out the report that it will allow outside app stores on iOS as well as the hole left by a missing M-series Mac Pro in its desktop lineup.
I tried to recap Sam Bankman-Fried’s transition from media tour to handcuffs, and then we talked more about the golden age of streaming and why David Zaslav’s biggest problem might be in his presentation.
So Nilay, Charles, and I gathered to consider who will survive the next streaming age and who will end up on the 90 side of the Go90 Scale of Doomed Streaming Services.
This week on the Vergecast James Vincent joins us to explain ChatGPT and ponder a future where AI writes a lot of the web. Then Nilay has strong feelings about the FTC suing Microsoft, Richard has feelings about Apple’s surprise privacy moves, and I only bring up E Ink once.
On today’s Vergecast we talk a LOT about E Ink, but also about babies? Okay, we talk about US broadband too. Anyways, this is a fun episode and one of David’s last for the next couple of months. Give it a listen.
I said Bruno Mars mixes every album in an old Cadillac Escalade; it is actually a 2010 Cadillac CTS. Per Rolling Stone:
There’s a decade-plus-old Cadillac CTS parked in an alley next to the studio. “I got it washed four days ago,” Mars says proudly. In a way, it’s become one of his closest musical confidants — he’s mixed every album he’s put out since 2010’s Doo-Wops & Hooligans by listening to it inside the Caddy, getting a sense for it in the sort of real-world scenario he deems optimal: A pimped-out American luxury sedan so old it has a CD player.
Now, does anyone know what Taylor Swift’s go-to headphones are?
Okay, those weren’t the only topics!
But Adi did join us to talk about her Meta Quest Pro review and just how bad this product and some of the software surrounding it is. Then Nilay relayed his adventures in buying Taylor Swift tickets, Twitter news broke live on the podcast, and we all agreed knobs are good.
We covered all that on the latest episode of The Vergecast, along with what Dall-E and other platforms will mean for copyright law, the difference between CMYK and RGB, and much more. AI art is coming, y’all!
It’s been a week, friends. Twitter is melting down before our eyes, Meta laid off 11,000 people, the crypto world is facing yet another scandal, and we couldn’t even record a whole podcast without a bunch of news breaking. Things are only getting wilder, too, so stick around.
Yeah, yeah, election day was yesterday. But it’s still Politics Season, right? So we spent an hour talking about how we get political news, the state and future of free speech in America, and all the ways the CHIPS and Science Act will change tech.
For $8 a month, Twitter will be... Twitter. Or it can be much worse for free! We debate whether the new Twitter Blue is worth the price, along with everything Elon Musk has done at the company, the official Matter launch, and much more.
Just kidding, nobody knows the future of Twitter, chaos reigns, buckle up everybody! But now that the deal is really done, we tried to figure out what’s happened already, what happens next, and what Elon’s Twitter might look like.
