Smart sleep is worth the cost

25:47They can be great if you sleep alone, don't have pets, don't have a bed partner. That can be cool, I guess. But, you know, there's an option. It's there. I've tested the Withing Sleep, which is like a little mattress that you stick under your mattress. So it's like a little pad that you stick under your mattress. Oh, right. It looks like a little heating pad kind of deal, right? Yeah. Okay. Super affordable. I think that's a really great budget option if you want to track your sleep, but you are like, these people are crazy. I am not spending thousands of dollars on this mattress that does all of these things, which is totally valid.

26:25I think you are probably fiscally very responsible if that's your reaction. But every morning you wake up feeling a little smug about your decisions. I feel so good waking up on this mattress. Let me tell you, I hate that. Nobody hates this more than me. I hate this the most for me personally. I think this goes on the list of like never try the really expensive thing because once you know. You can't go back. It's like it's the recommendation I always give with headphones. Like if you don't want to buy a really nice pair of headphones, don't ever try a really nice pair of headphones because it will ruin everything else for you.

26:57And I feel like this is the same thing. You can't miss what you don't know. 100%. That's 100 % it. There's. Yeah. So there are cheaper versions of those things. I actually think the smart home is really great if you want to just hack it and have stuff that is multifunctional. Because the other problem with a lot of the stuff is that it's very one-dimensional, one-function. It does one thing. Smart lights, you can program them. So you can wake up naturally that way. That's great. It can really help with you setting a routine. Smart thermostat is not going to stop your marital problems and fights over what temperature the thermostat is, but you can schedule it.

27:40So, you know, that can help create a much more inviting sleep environment for you. So those are all much more affordable hacks that have multifunctional purposes that I personally have used and found to be good. Does it beat this expensive bed? No, no, it does not. But at the same time, it is really about what is it worth to you and how good do you want to feel after your night of sleep and you know i i have sleep problems so it means a lot to me uh but if you're someone who sleeps like the dead on the crappiest ikea mattress you don't need this stuff you're good you're gucci like so it is i i definitely understand the criticism and i'm just sitting there alongside you, nodding my head and going, yes, yes, you are.

28:34You are completely correct. I agree with you 100 percent. At the same time, though, if you're listening to this and you are desperately looking for a reason to buy this. Here it is. This is not like buying a really fancy pair of running shoes you might never have or like over investing in workout equipment that you're never going to use. This will work. This is like you just put this on your bed and it will start doing things in the same way that sleep has that it's it's happening anyway like adding something like this into the repertoire just helps it's just it's just gonna help this is why like the i want the version of this that is like 60 is good and 20 of the price because it's like that's the one that it's like just give me the magic pillow and everything will be fine you know what i mean like that's the dream oh speaking of magic pillows many many many years ago i tested a smart pillow which was the most insane thing because it had a speaker inside of the pillow so it would track your sleeping and your snoring because there's a microphone in there and then it would wake you up to your music inside the pillow it was one of the most ridiculous pieces of sleep tech i've ever tested um but yeah uh another thing i tested was the oslo sleep buds oh yeah which is the bose sleep buds resurrected they had a lot of a lot of people who are fans of those um And it's really great if you have a noisy environment, because that's the one thing that this bed can't solve, right?

30:03It can't solve if you live in a city and your neighbor upstairs loves to practice salsa at 3 a.m. in the morning, or in my case, if Hackensack loves to send garbage trucks outside of your house at exactly 5 a.m. and you're just like, oh, I'm awake now. having these buds in your ear, it can muffle a lot of the noise. So I used to be a religious user of that. My spouse is a religious user of not the Bose ones, because those, once again, very expensive, or the Oslo ones are expensive. But he has the cheaper Anchor Soundcore, which allows them to play their true crime podcast, which why you want to go to bed listening to murder is a thing I don't necessarily understand, but it works for them.

30:52So they do that. They love it. It falls out of their ear, which we don't love, but the Bose design is very good for side sleepers. I don't feel discomfort. They don't fall out of my ear. Pretty great. Those will apparently come with sleep tracking sometime in 2025. So yeah, we're out here. We're sleep maxing. We're just sleep maxing and just trying to figure it out. the earbuds are one that I have always felt like could be more than they are. So I'm actually encouraged to hear that they're going to do some sleep tracking stuff with it. Because like one thing you and I have heard a lot of over the years is people saying like the the ears are a really interesting place to do wearables stuff.

31:31And especially if you're going to start to think about like, how do I, you know, gently help you go to sleep and gently help you wake up? Like that's a thing you can do with a thing in your ears. Like, I don't know if it can help you not snore or fix the temperature. Probably not. But there's like little things that if you're just doing like a tracker, you probably can't do. But if you have this device that is just going to sit in your ears all night, it feels like there's more you could do. So maybe there's maybe there is a roadmap of interesting stuff to come there. Especially for like helping you fall asleep, because I think that's something that a lot of people have issues with is just falling asleep, figuring out ways to fall asleep.

32:09So staying asleep, it's a valuable thing because I have tried the smart alarm clocks. I've tried the Hatch Restore. That TikTok made me try it. It's on my nightstand. And that, you know, just having a sleep partner doesn't really work out well for me. Like the light, great. Love that waking up. How does it feel to know that you and my one-year-old son have the same alarm clock? Is that good? Is that cool? He loves it. Works great for him. He sleeps like a baby. So honestly, honestly, I'm trying to live that life. So it makes me feel great. That's good. All right. Before I let you go, any other sleep gadgets on your mind?

32:53Anything else you've been looking at or trying or hoping to try? Honestly, I'm just going to reiterate one last time that you should invest in your sleep in whatever way and don't cheap out on it. sometimes the right decision is to buy a$5 ,000 mattress cover. Sometimes that is the right decision. This is where we were going to land, because The Verge's editorial policies dictate that you don't get to keep this thing. At some point, this beautiful device that has changed your life is going to leave your house. What happens then? Can you go back? I'm going to buy it. But it's either going to be a long-term sleep testing control device so that I can test it for sleep trackers, Right.

33:39For journalism, everyone. For journalism purposes. For journalism purposes. Or, you know, you just have to buy the thing because I can't go back. And, you know, like, if it was just a simple matter of also returning it and knowing that that's what it was going to be, that'd be cool. But because this has my biological material on it, they will not necessarily return it. They will destroy it. And then that just feels like e-waste. So I'll figure out a way. I'll figure out financing. I will do long-term test tracking. But this is one of the things where, yeah, I'm just going to have to buy it, honestly, if it comes down to it.

34:22And that's just, it has a huge impact on my life. My sleep quality is so much better. You can think I'm crazy all you like. I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. My husband does not agree with me, but I'll figure it out. That's their problem, not yours. That's their problem, not mine. I will be figuring this out, and I will be paying an absurd subscription. That's how they get you. Don't test it unless you're willing to buy it, people. I'm not proud of my life choices, but they are mine. These are the things we do for our audience, V. We spend outrageous amounts of money on beautiful nights of sleep.

34:57You know, I'm winning. So there you go. All right, V, thank you as always. Thanks for having me. All right, we got to take a break and then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about music. We'll be right back

35:36Do that with Acrobat. Now you can do that. Do that with the all-new Acrobat. It's time to do your best work with the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio. All right, we're back. If you use Spotify, I'm sure you know the DJ feature. You click on it, it has this AI-generated voice that greets you, and then it plays you music. And that's the idea. It is supposed to be a sort of constantly updated, AI-curated playlist of music. that you'd like. I love this feature. I listen to it all the time. I think the voice bit is kind of weird, but I think the idea that I can just sit down and essentially press play and have something play music for me that I'm going to like is very powerful.

36:22Alison Johnson on our team feels slightly differently. She has also been testing AI DJ stuff, has a lot of thoughts, and I figured we just need to hash this out. I'm also working on a big story about what the best music app is because I'm sort of over Spotify and trying to find something else and finding something else is a challenge. So I'm hoping Allison can help me talk through this one piece of it and try to make sense of things. Let's just get into it. Allison, hello. Hello. I should tell everybody that I'm interrupting a day off for you to do this. So I and everyone listening owe you a great debt of gratitude.

36:59I'm happy to be here. I get to talk to another adult for a little bit before I go to the children's museum. I'm happy to do it. So real quick, I want to talk about AIDJs. But first, I want to know kind of your theory of the case about Spotify's AIDJ in particular. This is very clearly a thing you've been thinking about a lot. And there's a lot of interesting context. But you've come to a conclusion about these things. And I want to know what that is. Yeah. So Spotify, like every other tech company with an app, has been shoving AI into everything over the past year. And the one that caught my eye recently is this AI DJ, which is not actually new.

37:45It's been around like a year, but it just kind of popped up in my feed. And I was like, sure, I'll try this weird thing. And right out of the gate, it's just so strange because it it talks to you it goes hey allison blah blah they kind of launch into uh like dj spiel about what they're gonna play um and then you know it gets into the music and not surprisingly in any way it's all stuff that i really like because what company has more data about what music i like to listen to than Spotify. I was just kind of like, what is this? And I tried, I listened to it. I like kept with it for a day and like off and on throughout a week just to be like, what is going on here?

38:35But you don't like that. You just described such a good thing. And this is why I think this is so interesting and why I want to talk about it. What you just said, I'm just going to say it back to you, is you clicked on a thing that greeted you by name and then played a bunch of music in a row that you really like and this feels like a problem terrible yeah no so here here's the thing um kind of the the flip side is that we have a local radio station in seattle um kxp that i've i've listened to forever since before i moved to seattle um and it's just kind of like a daily habit it's on in the background all the time it's on in the car and i don't know if it's a Seattle thing or a me thing or what it is, but the osmosis of like you, you get, you have these like parasocial relationships with the DJs that kind of start, you like have your favorite DJs.

39:31And then the weird thing in Seattle is like, I'll be out on the bike path and I'll see Kevin Cole going the other direction after his show. I'm like, oh, they're, they're real humans. They're out here just like we are. And I feel like in Seattle, like a very musicy town that counts as like an actual celebrity setting like that's that's legit sure yeah the whole rest of my bike ride I was like oh my god Kevin Cole was coming on the way um so that's that's kind of like the background where I maybe I bring a little more skepticism to it where I'm like you know I to me and a radio DJ is like a real person and I have favorite radio DJs and And yeah, hearing this, which is just an imitation of that, just like maybe I was just not going to like it right out of the gate.

40:23But that's my bias I brought to it, I guess. So this is part of why I wanted to talk about this, because I think trying to figure out what feels wrong about the A.I. DJ actually feels like a really useful sort of metaphor for all of A.I. And I think this is a lot of what you were getting at in this piece. And I think why it struck me, too. There's this question of, OK, is it a bad thing that it is pretty much exclusively playing music? I definitely for sure am going to like like for me, I was listening to my DJ all morning. And I mean, it is just down the middle David bait. Right. One of it was like there was this guy I found who was doing like punk rock covers of old songs on TikTok.

41:07And then I listened to a bunch of his stuff on Spotify. And it was just like, what if we just played nine of his songs in a row? I was like, great. I'm in. Let's do it. Yeah, let's go. And then there was a bunch of like synthy 80s pop music, which Spotify, like you said, has immense knowledge of the fact that that is music I am always going to like. And so it was like a no skips playlist for an hour and a half. And I got to the end and I was like, did I did I get anything out of any of that? Like, could I tell you what songs it played? It was just sort of music. So there's the question, like, is that the right thing?

41:38And then there's the question of like, is this is this product even a good idea? And that goes back to the like, it's a it's a person, quote unquote, talking to you, quote unquote, as it goes. And there is this thing about this. This thing is obviously trying to seem like a person. And I think one of the things we're seeing about AI a lot is AI that is trying to seem like a person. And I think in some ways, this is just the most sort of nakedly straightforward version of that. And it rubs me the wrong way, too. And I can't figure out if it's just because it's not very good or if it's because it's the wrong idea.

42:17Yeah. And it's I mean, it's pretty convincing. Like it just sounds like a person talking to you. And I think like I to me, it just feels like this is not somewhere I need AI. Like, I'm good with Spotify putting together a playlist for me. You know, I use the playlist feature, the AI playlist feature, quite a bit where I'm like, I want to hear upbeat jazz. There can't be any lyrics because I'm writing a blog, you know, and like it spits out a playlist and it's great. Which is also AI, by the way. Yeah, yeah. It's a different flavor of it. That is still very much AI. And I'm totally good with that.

43:01I'm like, do not try to insert a human into this interaction. You know, it's a very like transactional, like, this is fine. So that's where I think I'm just weirded out by the DJs. Like, we have human DJs. We have people. If you want to listen to the radio, you can do that. Like, who is asking for this? I put it in the box of who was asking for this. No, I think that's totally right. And I think I made a lot of fun of Apple Music when Apple Music came out and they had, you know, Beats 1 and all of these celebrity driven radio stations, essentially. And my theory then was like, who wants this? Right.

43:46Like, I have a library full of infinite music. Why am I going to spend two hours a week listening to like whatever John Mayer feels like playing? I was wrong about that for I think exactly the reason you're describing that there is a lot of time that I just want what I want. Right. Which is like a giant library full of music. And I'm going to go in and I'm going to be like, I would like to listen to the Wicked soundtrack, please. Yeah. Go listen to the Wicked soundtrack. Great. That is better than the radio. And then there's all the way on the other side. There is the like, just expand my brain a little bit.

44:26And I think that AI is not doing successfully at all. And this goes back to the like, is it right to just play me songs that I like a bunch of times in a row? I think that that is such an easy win if your goal is to just get people to keep listening. But it doesn't feel good. Like in a way that like you talked about, you know, some of the stuff you've gotten from KEXP as like meaningful stuff and you like remember the experience and it feels cool and you feel like part of community. I don't think it's possible to get any of that from this AI stuff. Yeah, that's exactly it. And the metaphor I landed on is like listening to KEXP is sort of like a well-rounded meal.

45:08Like there's stuff I really like. There's stuff I'm sort of into. There's stuff I just straight up do not like. But it feels like a balanced experience. And the AIDJ is just straight up feeding me, like, all this stuff I like. I'm like, I love M &Ms. I don't want to eat M &Ms all day long, you know? Like, you get a stomachache eventually. And that's just kind of how it feels to me. And there is, like, yeah, it just hits different. There's like, I hear Tears for Fears come on in the grocery store and I'm like, well, they know that a woman in her late 30s is probably shopping is going to love this.

45:53And they're right. But then my, you know, favorite DJ plays it on KXP because she really loves it. I'm like, oh, this is, it just, it's more meaningful, I think. yeah the one part of it i have trouble with is the is it good to play me stuff that i hate side of things right because i think and you made this case a little bit in your piece and i think it's been a thing for you of like the the percentage of things that i hear from these djs or whatever that i actively don't like is good and important and yeah there's part of me that sort of intellectually understands that but then part of me that's like well a that's the time when I turn off the radio, right?

46:36Or B, what if it just only played things that I liked? And then I'm back to the AIDJ thing that it's like, again, you can see how you get there, right? Where it's like, if we just keep playing songs that you like, you won't turn the thing off. And so what responsibility does it have to just inject randomness into your life even on the grand likelihood that you're going to hate it? And in a weird way, I feel like this is something we're not dealing with at all in the rest of AI. But it's the kind of question we're going to have to have all the time when we get to things like all of these sort of information retrieval services and the way that we think about generating images and text.

47:17Like, should it write you a bad email one out of 10 times just to, like, keep you on your toes? Just to feel more real. Yeah. Yeah. There's a weird, like, personalization echo chamber, I think, that you can get into. and it's, I don't know, maybe like there's times when I'm like, yeah, I want to be in the echo chamber of music I like. I don't feel like, you know, eating my vegetables today. I just want to hear the stuff I like. But I think it's like, that's probably different for every person. And I think there's a different limit of like, when do I feel like, okay, I should probably listen to something else and like get get something else mixed in here.

48:02And then I don't know, then when I go back to listening to Washed Out or whatever I'm doing, it's like, it sounds great. I'm like, yeah, I love this. Yeah, I like the M &M's analogy a lot, right? It's like it's good to have comfort food. Yeah. Comfort food is comfort food because you don't eat it all the time. That is kind of the point. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Do you think that's something AI can get better at? Like, is there someone at Spotify who can tweak that algorithm to make that work? I think it, I mean, it probably could, but someone commented on the article and it really resonated with me that when a human plays something that you don't like, they like it.

48:47Like they have a reason for playing it and you kind of like weigh it differently in your head And you kind of give it a chance maybe more than than if this robot like I'm I'm like more offended when the robot plays something I don't like. I'm like, excuse me, where did you come up with this? That's so true. Yeah. And there's a sense of like you, the robot should know. Yeah. Yeah. Like you, you dumb ass Spotify DJ. Yeah. You know everything about what I like. Why are you playing me? Get out of here with this. It tried to do that. I turned it on the other day and it was like, here are some songs that are shaping rock music right now.

49:27And I was like, absolutely not. I'm good. Just play the stuff I want to hear. Yeah. I don't know. Again, I keep coming back to this question of like, can better AI get closer to these things? I think I'm just so stuck on this question of like, what is necessary for humans to do? And I think that the point our commenter is making about having someone say that they like this to you is really powerful. I mean, we talk to people all the time about like recommendation systems and like we think about this with like buying guides and all this stuff, right? Like someone you trust liking something is an incredibly good predictor of whether you're going to like that thing because you're more likely to like that thing because you like the person who recommended it.

50:15Like there is some wild human nature thing inside of that that I think you just can't replicate with a computer. And it's true of like the Netflix algorithm and everything else. Right. Even if it puts the perfect thing at the top, I'm still probably more likely to like the thing that you told me to watch than the thing that Netflix told me to watch, even if statistically Netflix is right. You know what I mean? And so I wonder, to some extent, if it's a matter of Spotify and everyone else doing this kind of thing, just totally barking up the wrong tree. Or if it's like, maybe if the voice was 10 % more convincing, I wouldn't even know.

50:53And it would start to feel like a person. I feel like there's a, you feel the intention behind it a little bit. Like when I hear something on the radio, it's maybe something I don't like, like there's a person playing it. It's their job to curate music and they like it. the intention behind the Spotify AI DJ is a little murkier where it's like, I think you just want me to keep using Spotify, you know? Or it's like, I just can't shake that feeling of like, this is a robot. It's a convincing robot. You are basically like the voice of, I don't know, a corporate entity? Like, that's not at the front of my mind when I'm listening to it.

51:42But I think it's somewhere in the back where I'm sort of like, I don't quite trust the intentions. Like when it's trying to introduce me to whatever's coming next in rock music, I'm like, well, are these sponsored or are they just like, did a human pick these? Like, I just don't know where it's coming from. It feels, yeah, it feels murkier, I think. Yeah. And then ironically, I think there are probably similar questions worth asking about a lot of radio DJs. True. But it feels different even when it's not right. And I think that that thing is really important. And like for Spotify, I think if you rewind a bunch of years, Spotify and everybody else always talked about we need the sort of human computer combo to do this stuff really well.

52:30And I think my experience, at least, was there was a long time where Spotify's curated playlists were where I did the vast majority of my listening. Oh, yeah. And it was a mix of like, you know, Rap Caviar was like the biggest playlist on planet Earth. And it was a person. They had a ton of machine help. They get all kinds of listening data. They get all kinds of like, you know, quantitative and qualitative data about the songs themselves. But ultimately, they're putting the thing together. And I feel like Spotify probably most of all, but to some extent, kind of all of these media services of any kind have just leaned further and further and further into the machine.

53:10And maybe the right answer is just like a human face on the machine. Like the cynical answer is they hire a DJ to just say the words to you instead of a machine saying the words to you. But it does feel like that combination is being lost. And I think part of the reason I wanted to talk to you about this is I'm curious about your own music habits because I was thinking about my own after reading your story. And I spend a shocking amount of my time in the daily mixes that Spotify does. It has six of them. One of mine is always country. One of mine is always movie soundtracks, which is awesome because that's why I don't do great work all day.

53:50It rips. It's great. But I spend a lot of time in those. And that's AI. There's no person involved in that. That is the computer curating music for me. But that's not—I get to the end of those playlists and I couldn't tell you anything about them. they're just kind of the noise I have on during the day yeah and reading your article I was like oh I need to go back to listening to the radio in the car just as like a new kind of sensory experience for music because I know all all music is background noise to me now in a way that I kind of hate and I think Spotify has done that to me yeah yeah that's it's funny because like I feel like that's a big reason why we all signed up for Spotify was like whoa the algorithm is really good and you're going to find stuff that you actually like.

54:36And that was kind of a groundbreaking concept at the time. And I do find a lot of music I like through recommended stuff on Spotify. But yeah, it is a different, like, you do get into the too many M &Ms situation, or at least I do pretty quickly, because I will just happily keep listening to my, yeah, 80s-inspired synth pop bands. And then, yeah, it feels good to like, there's a couple of DJs I like a lot on KXP. I think one of the things they do is play the songs that I didn't realize I wanted to hear, and they feel kind of out of left field. And there's like, love the Spotify algorithm for what it does.

55:34But then I do want, it's like gratifying when I hear something. I'm like, I had no idea that I needed to hear Stevie Wonder like as much as I did. And you hear it on the radio. It's like, that was perfect. I feel like it just comes down to feeling like there is something there with AI and Spotify's had a lot of success with it. I think they're kind of leaning into that is getting to a point of like, well, yeah, the AI was good, but I didn't want to like talk to the AI. Like it wasn't the AI that I was here for. I was here because the AI was helping me get to good music that I like. It's not the entity I want to be interacting with.

56:22And it's like such a cringy moment right now where everybody's like, you know, you log into Instagram. It's like, do you want to interact with AI? And I'm like, no. I want to see what my friends are doing. I know. I have come to the point where I'm like, I think we need to get to the point where we think of AI like we think of, you know, TCPIP. Like crucial infrastructure to how all of this works. And if it works correctly, you should never, ever for one second have to think about it. Right? Yeah. I don't spend time thinking about packet loss on the internet anymore because it works now. But that's not the point of any of it.

57:01All of it enables other stuff. And I think right now we are at a moment where AI is like the main character and what it should be is like the camera. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. I don't know. It's a bad metaphor, but I'm totally with you. So now that you've been messing with this way of music consumption, what do you feel like is the right answer? How are you going to do your own music to make sure you're getting the right kind of diet? I feel like I have a pretty, I mean, our use case is kind of weird in that, like, I can't listen to songs with lyrics during the day. Fair. And when I'm writing, so.

57:36Movie soundtracks. It's the only way. Movie soundtracks is good. I like that. The Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack for like five years was all I wrote to. Oh my gosh. If everything I start writing sounds like super epic and like, you'll know I've been putting on the Pirates of the Caribbean. Cannot recommend it enough. Yeah. Yeah. So I have like kind of my genre for when I'm writing and working during the day. I think probably in there, there's even a little room to experiment. Like I've listened to the same like coffee table jazz playlist probably a hundred times. But then, yeah, it's like when the working day is over, I kind of like I like having KXP on while I'm doing the dishes and while I'm in the car picking up my kid.

58:19And yeah, it doesn't feel as like I don't need everything to be a banger. I don't know. Like maybe in different situations, I'm a little more like, OK, I want to listen to whatever it is right now. But sort of feels like a nice way to unplug from the day and hear a person, hear some probably a lot of songs I'll like. Yeah, I think there's something to the kind of unoptimizedness of that that is really, I don't know, encouraging and compelling in a way that listening to a playlist of things that are sort of ruthlessly constructed for your oral pleasure is like, eh. You get to the point where you're like, okay, these are great songs and I'm kind of over it.

59:08But then the peaks and valleys of like, oh my God, I love that song versus what is this trash that they're playing for me for the next three minutes. It is. It's just so hard to replicate. And I think we're going to see a lot of companies and products try to emulate that. I'm not sure it's possible. I just don't know if you can do that with computers in a way that people doing people things is going to keep working like that. So should everyone listen to KEXP? Like, is the move here, find your own local radio station or just get into KEXP and it'll solve all your problems? I think it is. KXP is streaming worldwide online.

59:47I am not a paid spokesperson for KXP. I just don't really like it. But yeah, no, that was the really amazing thing about this, comments on this article are people chiming in like, yeah, I have this station and, you know, shout out to the station in Milwaukee or wherever you are. And they're out there. It was really gratifying to hear that people have their favorite indie radio stations in our super optimized, super Spotify time. So that was great to hear. Yeah. I will say the one other thing I would add in terms of places to go for this kind of thing is YouTube is a surprisingly rich place for people basically just doing radio.

1:00:33Yeah. I think a lot of people know Lo-Fi Girl and stuff like that, which is a thing I really like for sort of the right vibe with new music. I use it sort of as a mood setting thing, which I'm very happy to outsource. I don't need to know what the songs are called. I trust them to sort of make me feel the way that I'm looking for. But there are also lots of people out there doing really interesting mixes of like different kinds of genres and doing all kinds of really long radio DJ sets, essentially. And there's tons of great radio to do there. But I also would encourage people to go poke around on the sort of endlessly streaming YouTube stations.

1:01:14Yeah. Because there's some very cool stuff out there. Yeah. Awesome. I think we all need a little more of the like weird random discovery in our lives. It's good. Eat your vegetables. Don't eat M &Ms all day. As much as I hate to say it, John Mayer's Apple Music Radio Station is very good. It's very good. It's like I like John Mayer a lot against my will. But here we are. This is just what happened. He's a good musician. He's like undeniable. However you feel about him. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. This is where I've landed. All right. Give us a music recommendation. Then I'm going to let you leave. While we're telling people to listen, what should everybody go listen to?

1:01:51Oh, gosh. um i just heard oh sudan archives i saw her at a festival i hear her on kxb all the time she's a cincinnati girl like i am um check her out i i love everything she's doing love that uh i have been listening to casey musgraves non-stop for like two weeks so it's probably good for me to go and branch yeah this will be good let's switch it up allison go have fun at at the Children's Museum. Thank you, as always. Thanks. All right, we got to take one more break, and then we're going to come back and take a question from the VergeCast hotline. We'll be right back.

1:02:32Morning, Zoe. Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage? I want to be in a T-Mobile commercial like you. Teach me, Sildana. I couldn't possibly. At T-Mobile, get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system. Impressive. Let me try. At T-Mobile, you can save up to 20 % versus the other big guys. You heard them. T-Mobile is the best place to get the new iPhone 17 Pro on us with eligible trade-in in any condition. Check them out to see how much you can save versus the other big guys at T-Mobile.com slash switch.

1:03:07All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE11. The email is vergecast at theverge.com. We love all of your questions, and we try to answer at least one on the show every week. Thank you to everybody who has reached out with thoughts about how we should be covering politics and the next Trump administration and just the next four years of life in America. We have a lot to think about. It's been really great to hear your thoughts on what you do and don't want us to talk about and do and don't care about yourselves and how we as The Verge can make this stuff make sense both kind of in our world but in a broader world.

1:03:43Thank you to everybody who's reached out. But this week, we do not have a question about that. We have a question about one of the true central tenants of the Vergecast, and that is the Frame TV. Let's hear it. It is Pete from North Carolina. I need some advice on the Frame TV. I'm probably not a normal TV buyer in that I'm almost 40 and I've never bought a TV. The only reason I'm in the market now is that we had some inclement weather out here recently, and our old TV that was going on like 20 years old got a piece of a window through it. So what I'm looking at is the only place in our house for a TV is the main room up on the mantel place.

1:04:20It's pretty central, and I hate the idea of having a big, empty black void staring at the room, especially with our little kids because they're just going to demand that some sort of cartoon is played on it. It's also, well, it used to be next to a big window that is getting repaired, and so it gets a lot of light. and between that it kind of seemed like the frame tv or something like it would be a good fit uh so it's not getting too much glare and when it's off it's not just begging for something to be turned on um so that being said i see 50 55 inch tvs on best buy uh for like 200 to 300 dollars while the frame TV is over a thousand.

1:05:06Can I justify paying that much for something that hopefully will look nice? Is that a good trade-off? Is the frame TV actually what I want in the middle of my main room that I'm gonna be looking at all the time? I would love any advice you can give me. Thanks, bye. When someone asks the question, is the frame TV actually what I want? There is only one person to bring in and it's Nila Patel. Hi, Nila. I'm just gonna answer that question. with a statement, which is that Hollywood is doomed. Embedded in that question, if you listen to it carefully, is the complete destruction of the film and TV industry as we know it.

1:05:46Say more. Pete, you don't want a TV. You're 40 years old. You've gone your entire life without purchasing a TV. And yours got broken. And you're like, I should have a TV in this space because you think you need a TV. And maybe you watch it sometimes. And you don't want your kids to watch cartoons on the TV. So you're going to buy something else out of obligation to cultural norms. And you're actively looking to spend money on a TV whose picture quality sucks to prioritize how it looks when it's turned off. It is just a little it's a little hop from there to not having a TV. I don't know how more clearly I can say this.

1:06:28Hollywood is doomed. People don't want to watch the TVs. They want to watch TikTok. I mean, it is true in a way that I had never really thought about until you said that, that you are just assumed to have a television. Like, we watch a lot of HGTV in our house. And one of the things that drives me the most crazy is whenever they stage the houses at the end, they're always beautiful and perfect and well set up. And you always sit there and go, well, where's the TV going to go? They're going to have to flip all this around because they're going to have to have a TV. Because you have to have a TV.

1:07:00the fact that people will spend money i will answer the actual question with the frame tv but i'm just embedded in this question in this thought process is the end of the assumption that everyone's going to watch tv and once you break that assumption everything goes to hell the description is kind of i have a space on a wall where i'm supposed to put a tv not i want a tv that is kind of the premise of this question you're right yeah put a hang up a picture. But what if you bought a thousand dollar TV that let you hang up all the pictures? Right. Can I see that? Maybe that's what you want. And you should spend the money on that.

1:07:36Right. But if what you want is to sometimes watch TV, you should spend$200 on a 55 inch TV and put it on a roller stand and roll it into the garage and then roll it back out when you want to watch TV. And you will quickly find that maybe you never wanted to watch TV at all. and I just as a person who has giant expensive TVs and wants to watch movies on them I every single day think boy this TV is off most of the time like we don't have it on all the time I have friends and family that keep their TVs on 24 7 fine that's another way to go but it doesn't sound like that's what Pete wants to do no the reason I'm always ranting and raving about the frame TV is that the TV of it is pretty compromised, right?

1:08:26It's a very old panel. It doesn't have local dimming, backlight. It's not Samsung's latest LCD tech. It doesn't have Dolby Vision, which is a Samsung choice. It runs Tizen. Like, I'm just sorry. Yeah. Right? Like, it's all this stuff. But it has the matte finish, and it has the art store, and you can put a frame on it, and you can hang it on the wall, and people prioritize how it looks way over the... the picture quality or how the TV of it works. And that's fine. I'm just saying it's just a short hop to the next thing. So, Pete, what I'd recommend is you really feel like you need to have a matte finish TV showing a picture.

1:09:04There are now much cheaper riffs on a frame TV from a bunch of companies. TCL has one. Hisense has one. Everyone knows this is the market, and I think the prices will come down. The frame TV itself is whatever. like the art store Samhain has done a great job with the art store they have spent a lot of time and energy making the deals and getting the licenses and da da da da but are you going to pay $50 a month for the art store if you're not then you should just get another matte finish TV that can be framed of which now there are several and put up a picture of your family or something yeah ironically Pete I think is coming into this thinking he's kind of like really trying to decide which is the best TV to buy which like would make him Neelai people he's actually my people he's like I don't I don't care about my TV.

1:09:50I just need to have one, right? Like, I think if you're starting from a 20-year-old TV, frankly, the frame TV is probably going to look great. The 20-year-old panel you had on your wall, it's probably a big upgrade to even the frame TV. But I do think you're right that clearly the goal is not, I want the best television, is it the frame TV? Like, I don't think anyone is arguing that it's that. And that's not what Pete wants either. Yeah, if you want to spend$1 ,000 on a TV that's not great, you should buy a 55-inch OLED. Right. But I think if the question is like, how do I solve this specific problem that I have?

1:10:22It seems like the cheapest riff on the frame TV is probably what you're after. Or get Samsung's Easel TV. These are all expensive. Get that LG suitcase TV. I'm not kidding. That might be the solve. Buy the TV that goes in a suitcase and put it on the kitchen table once a month when you want to watch a movie. Like, yeah, there are just many, many more ways to solve the problem of sometimes we all want to sit around the screen, get a projector and pick up a bed sheet. I had the projector thought, but I think the place it sits in Pete's house where it's like a space that gets a lot of light and is kind of screwy, that might be that might undo the projector.

1:11:02But but I think the the TV you can put away theory here in some way is actually maybe the solution. Yeah, I looked it up. I'd forgotten what it's called. It's the LG Stand By Me Go.

1:11:15It's a 27-inch TV. It's one of those James Bond metal briefcases. It's expensive. It lists it over$1 ,000. I bet on Black Friday it gets really cheap. buy a smart monitor i have a 40 inch samsung smart monitor that i bought for 300 throw that in the closet like i'm just saying there are many many more ways to solve this problem or buy a frame tv but i i just every time i get this question out i hear from people who are like i want a tv that looks good when it's off and i'm constantly coming back to it is just a tiny jump to I don't need this at all. Right. Yeah, I mean, it makes you think, do you remember that CES a few years ago where LG had that rollable TV that you like pulled up out of a case?

1:12:04Like that's the kind of thing we all need. It's like, I just, I want to be able to hide that behind a bunch of books and then pull it out, unroll it and watch a movie and then put it away. And I think like that's the sort of thing that would be great. And I think the thing about Pete's question I keep thinking about is, is if I put this TV here, my kids will want something on it. and like i'm sure you feel that but like oh god do i feel that i would love to be able to i hide the remote now because if he can't find the remote i'm like oh sorry i can't find the remote but he goes he just points at the tv which is at his eye level and is like put it on and it would be it's like there is more and more appeal to putting the tv away than ever for me it's all it's all fun and games until they get iPads.

1:12:49That problem instantly resolves the second the iPad or the Chromebook is delivered, right? For better and for worse. Even things that I've tried to turn into like, this is a TV thing, the Aeros tour. We're going to watch this on the TV. She instantly figured out how to get it on Disney+. Right? Like everything moved. Yesterday I walked into our kitchen and she was listening to music on her iPad speakers in a house where she is surrounded by speakers can just speak into the void to ask a music service to start playing and knows how to use AirPlay. I've taught my six-year-old how to use AirPlay.

1:13:22Still listening to music on our iPad speakers. What are we going to do about this? I bought a whole Sonos system and my wife listens to podcasts out of the speaker on her phone and it will never, ever stop making me crazy. Mine as well. I'm just saying, Pete, buy what you want, buy what fits your budget. But most people just prioritize size. All TVs are bright. I'm going to call out Casey Newton here. Casey asked me what TV to buy. And I told him. And then he bought a frame TV. And I said, how's the picture? And he was like, it's so bright. And that was the end of that conversation. Yeah. And that's fine.

1:13:58Casey is also my people when it comes to TVs. We're talking about this in early November. So we're just a few days away from Black Friday. So the frame TV will go on huge sale. Always does. Last year's frame TV, which is fine. Samsung spends no money developing these. It's the same TV every year, and they just collect huge margins on them. Last year's frame TV will go on an even deeper sale. And then you've got the new class of competitors, right? You've got the Hisense Canvas TV, the TCL NXT Frame TV, the Next Frame TV. Amazon has the Fire TV Omni, which has adaptive brightness and art. there's just a lot of these and they're all going to go on sale on Black Friday.

1:14:40And it's worth just looking at them and thinking, will this solve my problem of it's there? That's the problem you're trying to solve. Yeah, I just looked it up, by the way. The 55-inch Omni TV, currently on sale for$369. Like, this is a cheaper problem to solve than$1 ,000 for MTV. However you choose to solve it, you can do it for less than$1 ,000 for MTV. I feel pretty good about that. And I'm 100 % confident that they'll be even cheaper on Black Friday. Yeah, there we go. That's just the way it goes. Awesome. All right, I hope this helps. Pete, let us know what you end up doing and send us pictures of your setup.

1:15:15I'm very curious. Neal, I thank you as always. You're dead to me. All right, that is it for The Verge Cast today. Thank you to everyone who came on the show and thank you as always for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about at TheVerge.com. V's review of the eight sleep thing is great. Allison's story about AI DJs, all of our many, many, too many, frankly, stories about frame TVs, all of it on the website. I'll put some links in the show notes, but as always, read theverge.com. It's a good website. I like it. And as always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or other televisions that you'd like to spend too much money on, you can always email us at vergecast at theverge.com.

1:15:55Or like I said, call the hotline 866-VERGE-11. We love hearing from you. The Slack room that all the questions get pumped into is bumping, my friends. It's great times in there. Thank you to everybody who calls and thank you to everybody who emails. This show is produced by Liam James, Will Poore, and Eric Gomez. VergeCast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neal and I will be back on Friday to talk about all the AI news, some more Mac stuff, just a whole lot going on right now. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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