The life-changing magic of touching stuff

0:02David Pierce:Hello and welcome to The Verge Cast, the flagship podcast of Friction Maxing. I'm your friend David Pierce and today on the show we're talking about the small stuff. I'm talking to Ian Bogost who is a writer at The Atlantic and a professor at Washington University about a book he just wrote called The Small Stuff. And this book, which you don't have to have read to enjoy this conversation, I promise, the book essentially argues that we as people have lost sensory contact with the world. And that one important way to go about being happier, and to use Ian's word, which you'll hear a bunch in this conversation, gratified, is to get back in touch with the world around us.

0:37David Pierce:Let me just read you a short section of it, which I think explains what he's talking about fairly well. This is from early in the book. He says, we once had to, we once got to, take direct control over all sorts of objects. We had to engage physically with the apparatuses of ordinary life to get things done. Those devices were varied in nature, offering diverse encounters, and of course, people also had greater and more sundry contact with the natural world and the built environment. Half the book is basically about how we lost that and how everything from the way that we open doors to the way that we use faucets to what we do on our phones has changed the way that we engage with the world.

1:09David Pierce:And then a big part of the book is how we can go about getting some of that stuff back. I wanted to have Eon to talk about what we've lost and particularly how technology has played a role in taking some of that stuff away from us, and whether technology has a role in giving some of it back. He makes some surprising arguments about the fact that we can get that kind of sensory contact from digital devices. This is not fundamentally a book about throwing your phone into the ocean and going and living in the woods. There's a little bit of that, but there's not a lot of that. And so Ian and I are going to talk through how to bring back your materialization in the world without having to get rid of your phone, which frankly seems like the best of both worlds.

1:48David Pierce:That's coming up in just a sec, but first, here's everything else happening on The Verge today. This is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Tuesday, July 7th, 2026. Microsoft announced yesterday that it's laying off 4 ,800 employees, and more than 30 % of those are in the Xbox division. Microsoft is also spinning off four of its game studios, and there are apparently even more cuts still to come. At the same time as making all of these huge cuts, Xbox's CEO Asha Sharma is also trying to argue that the Xbox's brightest days are still coming. She wrote that I want Xbox to be one of the few companies that entertains more than a billion people each day and gives everyone the opportunity to create and connect.

2:24David Pierce:That is vague. And it's the sort of vague that led Xbox into a lot of this trouble. Now this suddenly much smaller team has some big, vague work ahead of it. Meanwhile, Nothing released a new set of earbuds called the Nothing Ear 3A, which are interesting, frankly, for a few reasons. One, Nothing's headphones have historically been pretty good, especially for$99. Two, these come in pink and they look awesome. And three, they have a feature called Audio Snapshot that lets you record what you're listening to on the buds themselves, then sync it back to your phone. I think of it as kind of like taking a screenshot, but of audio.

3:00David Pierce:And I think this is the kind of AI feature you're going to start to see on headphones everywhere. And finally, the FCC is going to vote later this month to make it easier for broadband providers to hide the fees that they charge you. And going forward, the ISPs might not even have to show you the so-called nutrition labels for pricing. They can just link to them. Because, you know, who really wants to know what you're actually paying on your internet bill? You can read more about all of this at TheVerge.com. That is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Tuesday, July 7th. Heat up your 4th of July at the Home Depot with our wide variety of grills under$300 and make every gathering one to remember.

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4:14David Pierce:Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. Ian Bogus, welcome to The Vergecast. Thanks so much for having me. I was looking for sort of what is the perfect example that I think kind of lays out all of the complicated things you try to get into. And I think for me, it's tickets. I think the cleanest, what have we lost by losing physical objects is tickets. And in a fun way, I think, what have we gained by losing physical objects is also tickets. So just sort of real quick, give me the story of tickets a little bit and why it fits into the way that you're thinking about the world.

4:55So imagine you're going to a show, you're going to the theater, you're going to a concert, something where you have to go, you spent like maybe a couple hundred bucks on Ticketmaster and you paid all the fees and you got these physical tickets, or at least you used to get the physical tickets. You'd go to like Will Call and you'd pick them up and then you'd have the tickets. And you'd be like, oh my gosh, I can't lose these tickets. I spent a bunch of money on it. I'm really looking forward to the show. And you had these physical tickets and maybe you like taped them to the back of the kitchen cabinet so you wouldn't lose them.

5:24Or, you know, you put them in an envelope and then you forgot where it was and you had to look for the envelope and rummage through the drawer. And then on the day of the show, you remember where the tickets are. They're on the back of the cabinet. And they have like a sort of give to them. They're like made of cardboard, but they're still weaker than it feels like they should be to be so valuable. And you kind of hold them and you feel them moving between one another. You know, there's like a kind of friction between them and you put them in your jacket pocket or you put them in your purse. And then you go out to the car and then you're like, wait, do I have the tickets?

5:54And you check your pocket or your purse. Yes, I've got the tickets. and then you do that like 50 times before you actually get to the theater or the venue. And then you hand over the tickets and they get punched or they get scanned or whatever it is that happens to them and they give them back to you and it says where you were supposed to sit. And now there's something different. There's something you don't mind if you lose, but you kind of don't want to because they're a token of having gone to the show. And maybe you keep them and pin them up on your wall or you put them in a scrapbook or you just store them in your wallet and you remember them later.

6:22So all of that kind of like sensory texture that you experience with the tickets you don't really need that anymore. Now what you get is a QR code on your smartphone. And it's, as you said, now you don't have to worry about losing your tickets, but you don't get all the rest of that. And you go to the show and you kind of hold up your phone and it's always kind of weird to hold up your phone when you feel like you should be doing something different. They shouldn't be looking at your phone and they scan it and it's on the wrong screen or something like that. And then you don't remember what the seat was and you have to pull it up and you don't have all that, you know, kind of like memento of the show anymore to take with you.

6:55So that's like one example of this phenomenon that I call dematerialization, where like the physical world that we used to inhabit without thinking about it at all just kind of went away. And on the whole, it's like definitely more convenient. But then there was a loss associated with that convenience.

7:11David Pierce:And I think to me, one of the most interesting parts of reading the book was kind of watching you try to articulate what that loss is. Because I think it is really hard to explain, right? that not only is it about the fact that, yes, having things that exist outside of my phone is helpful because I can like know where they are and I don't have to open my phone to go to them. And we talk a lot about sort of the advantages of like using a digital camera instead of using your phone. But your argument is kind of finer than that, right? That it's like there's actually something about the feeling of holding the tickets in your hand and moving them in your fingers that is important.

7:50David Pierce:And I think it's very hard to articulate why it's important, but that it is important. The thing that people might think of first with the tickets is that idea of a memory that they can hold and store. And that's valuable. And you don't have that anymore. Totally. But I am talking about that plus other things. And for me, that sense of like you have two tickets because you're going with your spouse or your kid or whatever it is, and just feeling them move between one another, holding two pieces of cardstock and kind of feeling their texture against one another as you kind of rub them together in your hand.

8:21First of all, it just kind of gives you something to do with your hand while you're waiting in line. But it's delightful to do that. But I just started to realize as I thought more and more about this phenomenon of dematerialization and that sense of delight, which I call gratification, I felt like, wow, what if that is actually much more important than we've given it credit for? And the fact that it feels so small is both the reason that we haven't given it credit for feeling good, but also the power of it. These like, Like this collection of little tiny sensory experiences that you've accrued or you used to accrue more over your day that were contributing to your overall sense of contentment.

9:01And then as they fell away, you didn't feel like you were missing anything. Like who cares about not having a paper ticket? But then that happened everywhere. Like everywhere to everything. And then it was like, oh, wow, I don't feel like I'm a real human being in the world anymore.

9:14David Pierce:Yeah, I feel like you used the word commune a few times, particularly at the beginning of the book. And I feel like that was the word that really stuck in my head throughout the whole thing. And it's a thing I've been thinking a lot about ever since really this idea that what we're doing is right now it's so sort of disconnected. We're disconnected from each other. We're disconnected from our surroundings. We're disconnected from literally the place that we are, which I also want to talk about. But your point is, it seems like overarchingly just that like the best thing you can do is just like get back in touch with your senses and the things around you.

9:47David Pierce:And like this idea that you are constantly communing with the world around you and that we don't do that anymore strikes me as like, I don't know, I've just been I've been thinking about that word a lot. I'm glad you picked up on that because there's a moment in the book toward the end when I encourage the reader to think of their sensory life, the objects of their senses, as friends, as characters. And I really mean it, that it's like having a relationship with everything that you encounter in the world. And we're used to thinking, like, you can't have a relationship with an inanimate object.

10:24You can't have a relationship with it. And if you have a relationship with like a natural object, maybe that's sort of reasonable because it's alive or at least potentially alive, like an oak tree. But who has a relationship with the garbage truck or the tickets in their pocket? Like a human-style relationship. But I think that's a really useful way of thinking about both the loss and the continued opportunity because this happens all the time. Even though we've lost the tickets, there's other things that take its place. and that sense of just having like respect and interest and curiosity and and most of all acceptance of of just accepting that you are in the world with other things other people too other entities and that that's an enormous miracle that is something that's available to us no matter how much we've lost because we're still surrounded by so many sensory encounters all the time.

11:14David Pierce:Yeah. You don't quite go all the way to the end of the, how did we become disconnected from this world? And again, to use your word dematerialized, you don't get all the way to the end of the road and say it's the iPhone's fault, which I think is what a lot of people. It is what a lot of people think. Do you, do you think that's the truth? Like is, if, is the iPhone kind of problem number one or smartphones in general, obviously kind of problem number one here? I think we've mistaken smartphones for a bigger problem than maybe they are. And it's certainly a problem. Like the reason that you can get the QR code ticket is because of the smartphone and the app ecosystem.

11:53But think about what you're doing in line with your phone instead of with your tickets. You're still touching it. It's got a smooth glass front. Mine has one of those like textured cases that I like to rub and touch. Even if the phone is off, it's still a delightful sensory object that's gratifying to engage with. I have a pop socket on mine that I just spin around in my hand. Oh, you got the spinner. Like hours and hours and hours a day. Exactly, yeah. The heft of it in my pocket is both bothersome and comforting. The idea that you can pull it out isn't just about being like lured into the info system or whatever.

12:25It's also about rummaging for it or trying to find it again or is it still there in the same way that you're asking if the ticket's still there. And if you look at the forces of dematerialization, I give a lot of examples of them that are not just the iPhone or just computers. This has been going on for a long time, long before the smartphone. One of the other common examples that people relate to really well is the public restroom with all the sensors. And instead of turning on the faucet, you wave your hands under it and hope it works. And then you do that with the soap and the toilet and the towel dispenser and maybe the door or two.

13:02And that's, I mean, those are like systems that have digital components in them, but they're not computers or smartphones. Another example I talk about is just economic. It's about the incentives to own things and the fact that if you're able to own a home or even an automobile, that you have incentives and inspiration and rationales to connect with it physically. And that's not really about the phone either. So I tried really hard in the book to be honest about where I think the problems lie. And they are partly computational and they're partly related to the whole internet thing. But yeah, I think we've overestimated the degree to which smartphones have ruined our lives.

13:45David Pierce:Okay. I find that sort of hopeful in a weird way. Well, you know, as I've been living this whole like life of trying to make sense of this thing that I call gratification, and I like truly and earnestly believe in this, I started realizing that that sense of like addiction or compulsion or whatever you want to call it. I mean, I'm just as guilty of it as anyone. I'm drawn to the phone and the apps, but that it was kind of just like my, my attention system or the things in my life I was accepting as interesting were narrower than they could be. And once I was like, you know, like my water bottle though, right.

14:21With it's like rubber base that sits down against the counter. That's kind That's super interesting. You know, the feel of my desk in front of me, the gravel on the street, on the neighboring street, when I walk down it, it crunches underfoot. It's kind of as interesting as my iPhone in a certain way. And they're much more plentiful. So I started missing my phone a lot less. I didn't have to, like, lock it up.

14:46David Pierce:I asked this question in the nicest possible way. Do you feel sort of insane explaining this thing that you've gone through? Just being like, I don't need my phone that much because of the rubber on the bottom of my water bottle. It's like beautiful and sort of insane. And I try to address this in the book too, that that feeling of oddity, of like embarrassment, of strangeness, that's both something to overcome, to learn to overcome, but it's also a tell. It's like when you start feeling, is it kind of weird to like be so delighted in this rubber bumper on my water bottle? You're like, ah, I'm living in gratification land here.

15:23Like that's a sign that you're on the right track. One of the things that I've discovered about it is that when you talk about these experiences with other people, they're usually like right there with you very quickly. And it's sort of like you go first kind of a thing that we've been in. There's an example I talk about where my wife and I are peeling off a plastic protective film from the name label on a new knife block we bought. And if you bring that example up of the plastic protective film with, like, anyone on Earth who's ever encountered it, they'll be like, oh, I'm so delightful to do that.

15:57I can't. Sometimes I just leave it on for a year so I have something to do later. They're right there with you. But they wouldn't maybe bring it up on their own, you know? And so you're right. There is a folly. It feels unimportant. Like, I called the book The Small Stuff because The Small Stuff feels unimportant, and it isn't. It's super important. So part of the exercise, and I think it's an easy exercise, is just learning that it is. And when it feels good, admitting that it feels good and not worrying so much that someone's going to look at you funny when you do it.

16:29David Pierce:Yeah. So talk me through that exercise actually a little bit because it feels like there were parts of the book where it felt like your argument was going to turn into essentially, do you know this concept of friction maxing? I do. It felt a little like you were pushing towards that, right? The like resist convenience at all costs, resist taking the easy and quick and low touch way out of everything. Like go do things the hard way because it is worth doing the hard way. I don't actually think that's what you're advocating for. I'm really glad that you said that because it's not what I'm saying.

17:03David Pierce:Parse those two things apart for me a little bit. So I think what happened is when you're like very smartphone kind of internet focused, everything is so I mean everything has been made so easy for us our lives are incredible and there's a lot of kind of frictionless smooth efficient experiences that we now have instead of going to the store like this weekend I was working on a project I really needed a part from like a home improvement store and I didn't have to get in my car and go to the store I could just use one of the delivery apps to get like how easy is that but now I'm not going to the store I'm not in my car and I'm not like rummaging through the shelves I'm missing out Our lives are a lot easier.

17:41And so because of that sense of smoothness or efficiency that we encounter all the time, it's easy to mistake the solution for difficulty. I need to make my life more difficult now. I need to introduce friction. But that's not actually what you want. That's actually kind of a bananas thing to think. What if I made my life harder? I'll stick it to technology by making my life harder again. I think in some ways it's useful as a provocation. If you're like, well, what would it be like? to do this the hard way so I can remind myself of the gap between easy and hard. But you're probably not going to do that long term.

18:17It's not really going to help you live differently. And I don't think you have to live differently anyway. Like, I'm not saying change your life. I'm actually saying, like, you can live the life you're already living. So, yeah, I mean, it's ironic in a way that my book's coming out, right, at kind of like peak friction-maxing discourse, because I think it does feel like it's the same. But to me, they're just like polar opposites from one another. Instead of like make your life harder, I'm saying do what you're already doing, but more so.

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