The Vergecast

Richard Lawler joins the show to chat about the Tyson / Paul fight, and more importantly the fact that Netflix didn't seem to be able to keep up. As live sports — and TV in general — move toward streaming, are even the biggest names in tech ready for what's coming? After that, Roland Allen, the author of The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, tells us about the history of the notebook, and why we've been writing things down about our lives for centuries. Even in a digital world, Allen argues, you just can't beat the notebook. Finally, a question from the Vergecast Hotline sends producer Will Poor down a TikTok Shop rabbit hole.

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For the third episode in our series about the future of music, we talk with Ge Wang. Ge is a professor at Stanford, a co-founder of Smule, the conductor of Stanford’s laptop orchestra, and has been at the center of technology and artistry for most of his life. We talk about how humans can use AI without giving in to it, what it means to truly play with technology, and the value of art and creativity and friction when it feels like all those things are being taken away.

Further reading:

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Nilay and David talk about the future of social, in light of Bluesky's recent surge in growth. Threads is huge, Bluesky is ascendent, Mastodon is... around, but can any of them become the next Twitter? Is that even the goal? After that, Kylie Robison joins the show and the gang discusses Apple's smart home device (which is just an iPad), the AI scaling slowdown, and a new twist in the delivery wars. In the lightning round, it's all about disclosures, wireless carriers, and the sad end of Freevee.

Further reading:

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On today's show: sleep gadgets, AI DJs, and sneaky TVs. Victoria Song joins the show to talk about her experiences with the Eight Sleep mattress pad, the Oura Ring 4, and other sleep gadgets. Can you really measure your way to a better night of sleep? After that, Allison Johnson gives us her take on Spotify's AI DJ, and we wonder exactly how an AI tool is supposed to help us find and listen to music. Finally, Nilay Patel comes on to answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline about the Samsung Frame TVs — and how to figure out whether you need a TV at all.

Further reading:

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For the second episode in our three-part miniseries about the future of music, Charlie Harding, a music journalist and co-host of the Switched on Pop podcast, joins the show to tell the story of Auto-Tune. He walks us through how a simple plugin became such a recognizable sound in music, why both artists and fans gravitated to the Auto-Tune sound, and why Auto-Tune has continued to grow even through backlash in the music business. Then we look ahead to AI, and try to figure out what — if any — lessons we might be able to learn about the sound and culture of the AI era to come.

Further reading:

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Nilay and David talk about the election, and how The Vergecast plans to cover and talk about the next four years of the Trump administration. But only for a minute. Then it's onto our reviews of the new Mac Mini and MacBook Pro, which reset Apple's desktop and laptop lineup in an excellent way. After that, Sean Hollister joins the show to discuss his review of the PlayStation 5 Pro, the news about backwards compatibility for the Nintendo Switch successor, and the state of Nintendo's fight against emulators. In the lightning round, we talk about really expensive domain names, oddly named smart home standards, and cloud gaming whales. Which apparently exist.

Further reading:

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November 6th marks 10 years to the day since Amazon surprise-launched a new, cylindrical device called the Echo. It introduced the world to smart speakers, and to the idea that you might be able to get stuff done just by shouting aloud in your living room. But a decade in, what has Alexa really accomplished? The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy joins the show to talk through the history of Alexa, Amazon's struggles to improve and extend its voice assistant, and the promise of a language model overhaul that might in theory make Alexa far more useful. There's a chance Alexa's second decade might be even more interesting than the first.

Further reading:

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For the first episode in our three-part miniseries on the future of music, we tell the story of Track Star, a music game show that has become a viral hit on TikTok and Instagram. Jack Coyne, the show's friendly host, tells us how Track Star came to be, why the format works so well, and why A-list celebrities like Olivia Rodrigo, Ed Sheeran, and Kamala Harris are all clamoring to be on the show. Coyne also tells us where Track Star might go next — and why the future of music content might look a lot like the past.

Further reading:

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Nilay and David discuss a big week in AI news, including the new web search features in ChatGPT and the reporting that Meta is working on something very similar. They also briefly talk about this quarter's tech earnings, and what they say about the ways AI is really being used. Then, Wall Street Journal columnist Joanna Stern joins the show to talk about Apple Intelligence, Apple's week of Mac launches, and why Siri still can't open her garage. Finally, in the lightning round, the hosts talk about Netflix's gentle push into social features, Tony Fadell's AI thoughts, and our endorsement of Kamala Harris.

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Kylie Robison joins the show to talk about the recent dueling AI blog posts from OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei. What do these CEOs think the future of AI looks like? Then, Will Poor tells us the story of ShakeAlert, an earthquake alert system that has huge potential and some surprising challenges. On The Vergecast Hotline, Allison Johnson joins Will to figure out whether the iPhone's new Camera Control is really as fast as advertised.

Further reading:

Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you.

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