February 19, 2026

The speech police came for Colbert

1 hour 30 minutes

Once again, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr and his bad ideas about free speech have rankled a late night host. And once again, Nilay and David talk through what the equal-time rule actually means, why organizations keep caving, and why it's apparently up to people like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel to fight back. After that, the hosts discuss the facial recognition feature Meta hopes to launch for its smart glasses, plus the gadgets we're likely to see Apple launch in the couple of weeks. In the lightning round, we get some bleak news on Tesla's self-driving skills, a robovac security disaster, and the future of Warner Bros.

Further reading:

Why CBS Didn't Broadcast Stephen Colbert's Interview With James Talarico

Stephen Colbert says CBS banned him from airing this James Talarico interview

Why Everyone's Talking About Stephen Colbert, CBS, The FCC And James Talarico

Meta reportedly wants to add face recognition to smart glasses while privacy advocates are distracted

From the NYT: Meta Plans to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Its Smart Glasses

Apple’s doing something on March 4th

Apple is reportedly planning to launch AI-powered glasses, a pendant, and AirPods

Apple starts testing end-to-end encrypted RCS messages on iPhone

Apple’s Podcasts app will let you ‘seamlessly’ switch between audio and video shows

Looks like we can expect more AI from the Galaxy S26 camera. | The Verge

Google announces dates for I/O 2026

Western Digital says it’s “pretty much soldout” for 2026.

Valve’s Steam Deck OLED will be ‘intermittently’ out of stock because of the RAM crisis

Switch 2 pricing and next PlayStation release could be impacted by memory shortage

Tesla’s robotaxis have crashed 14 times in 9 months.

Tesla won’t use the term ‘Autopilot’ in California anymore

Why are Epstein’s emails full of equals signs?

4chan’s creator says ‘Epstein had nothing to do’ with creating infamous far-right board /pol/

DJI’s first robovac is an autonomous cleaning drone you can’t trust

The DJI Romo robovac had security so poor, this man remotely accessed thousands of them

DJI says yes, it will fix its other Romo robovac security hole within weeks

Samsung ad confirms rumors of a useful S26 ‘privacy display’

Warner Bros. Discovery gives Paramount one week to present its ‘best and final’ offer

WordPress’ new AI assistant will let users edit their sites with prompts

Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

...more