The Vergecast Vergecast, 2026 edition

21:41David Pierce:All right. And just one follow up question from David Pierce at The Verge, which is, Helen, square all of this with The Verge is increasingly a subscription business and we're putting more energy into bigger media reporting and we want to make a thing that people log into and pay for. The media industry has done a lot of chasing distribution to its own peril over the years. Why try and do both of these things simultaneously? I think if you look at, David, like the economic model of The Verge 10 years ago or any web business, like the old economic model of the open web is dead. How that economic model worked is Google and at points in time Facebook sent a firehose of traffic to different web pages.

22:27people served kind of advertising on those pages and for a period of time that scale was so big and that advertising product was like good enough although people didn't love it that it was able to support big newsrooms big businesses this hasn't just hit the journalism industry so now the scale is going away and also what advertisers are interested in and learning about what performs in the advertising space is changing. And so the reality is, you know, as a purely advertising business, advertising is very cyclical, it's volatile. Verge has a great advertising business that is still most of our revenue.

23:06But as we look to the future of where we need to be, we need to have a direct audience relationship. And to some extent, you know, to make good content and enable good journalists to do the work you want, you have to pay now. That is just the reality of the web. Where our business is more insulated than others is, you know, we weren't just selling on scale, right? We have a real brand. People love being around it. We have a very valuable audience. So the way we sell advertising, the kind of ads we serve that are very premium, that are typically directly sold, you can like only reach the verge that way.

23:38That has insulated us from some of this like big scale collapse problem of the web. But when I look at where does The Verge need to go, for this really great journalism to exist, we have come to a point where free advertising and free experiences on the web just can't support it. So where I would like The Verge to go is that subscriptions, direct reader support, more or less subsidizes most of our day-to-day operations. We should still have an advertising business. That is part of how we get scale. But in terms of what should be paid, what should be free, I think, David, that gets into the how do you entice people in?

24:14How do you attract your new people? What are people doing with a hypothetical Verge app? If maybe they either can't or aren't ready to pay, I think we should have free experiences that people can access on the Verge. I think that's part of where feeds fit in. And so it is a tricky inflection point to navigate, which is, you know, people got the verge for free for a long time. I know it's hard when we're saying, OK, I'm sorry, it's time to pay now. But the web has changed. The business of the web has changed. What advertisers want has changed. Like that old economy is dead. And so we are entering a place where we are now balancing these two things of subscriptions kind of powering the core of the business and then advertising helping us grow.

25:01David Pierce:Okay. I just want to say for people counting, that is now either one and a half or two mentions of a Verge app. Just throwing that out there. Our next question comes from Jupiter and they ask, y 'all have mentioned a few times that you have a young audience and I'm curious about a few things regarding that. When you say young, what do you mean? Are we talking 20s, college age, or even younger? How dramatic is that skew in demographic towards the younger audience? Basically a bunch of questions about who The Verge audience is. Helen, I know you did some work to answer this question. What do you have for us?

25:33Okay, I have pulled some data on what The Verge looks like this year. So it's very current. The really interesting thing, just to say right off the bat, David, is that we pulled website data and we also looked at YouTube and it's actually the same, which I think is fascinating about the demographics of both YouTube and The Verge, where our split on age is identical on our own website as it is on YouTube. Okay, our biggest readership is ages 25 to 34, people who more or less came out of college about 10 years ago. The next biggest group, millennials-ish, 35 to 44. And then we have about the same amount of readers who are 18 to 24 and 45 to 54.

26:12And then much fewer over age of 55. We don't collect data on the website of people 17 and younger, so I can't speak to that. But that does say, you know, a lot of our audience is actually pretty young. I think, why is that the case? I think you can look at several factors. So the tech industry has been booming for a long time, but I think as you look at like the move of people into STEM majors to enter what, at least until recently, was a stable career path in the technology industry, you can see that. That's not the whole story, though. You know, last time I looked at Comscore, I think The Verge's audience skewed about like 10 years younger than CNET's.

26:48So some of it's also been in our approach to coverage how we surface content. So, for example, a big part of the Verge newsroom is leaning into individual personalities, making videos, videos that reach people on social platforms. We care a lot about design. And so I think within the tech cohort, we've managed to skew younger because we have voicey personalities who access feeds off platform in ways that young users are used to.

27:18David Pierce:We're talking about Neil and me who are both 23 and extremely youthful. We're both 23, but the more we clip you, the more ubiquitous you are on TikTok, David. That's true. I will say this explains a lot why the most common piece of information, Neelan, I get from people we meet in the world is like, oh, it's so great to meet you. I've been reading The Verge since high school. And Neelan, I both just sort of crumble into dust every time someone says this to us. I love to hear it. And also, we are hundreds of years sold. It's especially bad when it's like a mid-30s person who is now a product manager at Google.

27:51And I'm just like, well. Yeah, I'm like, oh, we covered the thing that you made last week. Yeah, exactly. And you were a literal child when we started doing this. By the way, the secret to this is not some business juice. We just hire cool people. That's the whole secret. You hire cool people and let them have a good time at work. And especially in a creative industry, you're going to attract an audience of people who are looking for cool new things. Like I said, we don't do that much analytics in our nation. That's the first time I've heard those numbers in ages too. And our strategy insofar as we have a strategy is we hired a bunch of cool people.

28:27The last thing I'll call out here is I am thinking about how this fits in with our subscription. Something I would love to do is have like a super highly discounted subscription for students. Because I think, you know, to keep the Verge relevant long term to reach the right people, to bring new people in. We keep reaching young people and training up the next set of Verge supporters. And so that is on my wish list. And I think that's where discounts are very important. But also making sure the thing that we make for free is really good is also very important to me. And the new design is actually going to help us get there and like pull the experiences apart.

29:10But it's all a swirl in my head is what's the thing that you start checking in in college between classes that you also start checking in between meetings at work. We can we can build something for that. That's really good, I think.

29:22David Pierce:Yeah. All right. Let's take a quick break and then we're going to come back and we're going to do a few more money questions before we get into some other stuff. We'll be right back.

29:31Nilay Patel:Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise grade, no-code website builder used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Miro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust CMS with everything you need for great SEO, not to mention advanced analytics that include integrated A-B testing, your designers and marketers are empowered to build and maximize your.com from day one. So whether you want to launch a new site, test a few landing pages, or migrate your full.com, Framer has programs for startups, scale-ups, and large enterprises to make going from idea to live site as easy and fast as possible.

30:13Nilay Patel:Learn how you can get more out of your.com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com slash verge for 30 % off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com slash verge for 30 % off. Framer.com slash verge. Rules and restrictions may apply. Support for the show comes from Grammarly. You don't need reminding that the world moves fast. But work today requires clear communication. And when every message counts, sounding rushed or generic can mean getting lost in the shuffle. Grammarly gives you one place to think, write, and finish your work where you already write, while giving you access to agents that help you sound natural and engaging.

31:02Nilay Patel:No matter what kind of writing you're doing, Grammarly helps you get ideas done faster and move from draft to done with less friction. You can use Grammarly's AI chat to brainstorm ideas, outline a solid draft, then refine it with context-aware suggestions that fit what you're working on. See why 90 % of professionals say Grammarly has saved them time writing and editing their work. In a world of generic AI, you don't have to sound like everyone else. With Grammarly, you never will. Download Grammarly for free at Grammarly.com. That's Grammarly.com.

31:42Nilay Patel:Support for this show comes from Whatnot. Whether you're selling online or out of a storefront, you already know the challenge. You're simply hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk in. But Whatnot flips that. They say they're the live shopping marketplace where you can shop, sell, and connect around the things you love. On Whatnot, you go live and sell directly to people in real time. They see what you've got, ask questions, and buy. And they keep coming back. Whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury fashion, and yes, even cookies, sellers are building real thriving businesses.

32:24Nilay Patel:And for a limited time, WhatNot says they'll match your first$150 sold in the first month. You can visit whatnot.com slash sell to start selling. That's W-H-A-T-N-O-T dot com slash sell. Whatnot.com slash sell.

32:56All right, we're back.

32:57David Pierce:Let's play some voicemails that we got. This first one, actually the next couple in a row are just straightforward money questions. So let's talk money. Here we go. Here's the first one.

33:09Nilay Patel:Hey guys, this is Gordon from Washington, D.C. What have you guys had in terms of perspective about circling around business models that might work, venture capital, etc.? But we always end up at advertising. This is true of written content, video content. It seems like now with all the streamers. do we really only have ads or how many outlets, how much room is there for organizations like The Verge to build sustainable subscription models? Thanks.

33:44David Pierce:Do we really only have ads is such a perfect question about the internet. Helen, I'm curious for your take on this first. I think my answer is subscriptions are emerging as one very viable business model, especially for the news business. Often a subscriptions business can be smaller than an ad-supported business, but that's not necessarily the case, right? You can have a big subscription-supported business. And so I do think subscriptions could be a huge part of The Verge. We have given you all, Vergecast listeners, ad-free experience here on the podcast if you subscribe to us, for example. And so we are, as I mentioned earlier, looking at, okay, how do subscriptions become a bigger and bigger part of our business, while also saying, you know, advertising should be part of this mix, can be part of this mix.

34:31So it's not to say I want to break up with advertising. Advertising can be a really good business. It can be a volatile business. What products advertisers want to buy, what is working, you have to keep experimenting and changing. You can't just set it, forget it, say the ads we were selling 10 years ago we can sell today. But I think the future of The Verge is to have very thriving subscriptions and ad revenue that helps us be a big and great newsroom. Yeah, you know, my paranoia the whole time we've been trying to make the verge is that everything goes away. And so we've always just tried to be as diversified and direct as we can.

35:08Right. We want to have lots of different businesses that are coming and going. We want to have lots of different traffic sources that are coming and going. They all go away in the end. But we want to be as direct with our audience as we can, because if we can keep that alive, like everything else can come and go and we can build along the way. So that's that mix. I would actually just challenge like not everything is advertising. It's just internet stuff tends to advertising. Like there are no ad-supported plumbing companies. I wish there were. You know, like someone start one. I will do a decoder with you all day and all night about your ad-supported plumbing company.

35:40And then even in the context of streaming, not all streaming is the same. It's video streaming. Hollywood streaming is all kind of converging on one model. But Spotify isn't adding ads to its premium tier. And I think people would frankly revolt if they did. But their free tier is where all their customers come from. And that's a really important dynamic for Spotify. If you ask them, where does the next premium customer come from? Statistically, it is out of the free customer pool. And I look at that model and say, oh, there's something there that we can model, right? Like we want to build a big free ad-supported business that looks like a cool news utility or a cool community thing that you can check that doesn't make you feel horrible.

36:23and at some point you're going to see a story and you're going to say, okay, that's worth paying for. And that's all I'm trying to get to is I don't want to fight it out click for click on social media to get subscribers. I want to be like, we're useful the whole time. Again, I'm saying all this, we have a long way to go. We got a lot of stuff to build to do it. I just see the glimmers of like, oh, this is how that kind of business could finally work in a way that, you know, it was hard to even make the case when we would wake up in the morning and like Facebook had sent us 5 million visitors or like Google had sent a flood of traffic.

36:54Like all that's gone now. And so the idea that we have to make a case for a different kind of business is like, one, if you listen to the media, see it as a common decoder. They're like, what should we do? You know, and our ability to say, okay, this is a thing we've been thinking about for ages and it's crisp and it's clear has been a real benefit. Yeah, and something about the Spotify model. Spotify makes significantly more money in subscriptions than advertising. But as Nilay is pointing out, that is a big part of their funnel into the paid subscription.

37:24David Pierce:Helen, one last thing on this. The very last part of this question is essentially about subscription fatigue. We've been at this subscription thing for about a year and a half now. And I think we talked about subscription fatigue and whether it was a problem before we even launched this stuff. What's your sense of sort of people's appetites for internet subscriptions at this moment in time? Is that a real thing we're fighting as a business? I think our subscription is growing at a really healthy clip. I think when I think of subscription fatigue, it's often in the context of there's a bunch of fragmented things that do the same job for you.

37:58And now they're all asking you for money. Right. So TV and movie streaming, I think, is a great example of it's kind of a nightmare now to navigate like where to watch even a sports game. Right. Like how many different subscriptions do you need to do that single job? I think where we want The Verge to play and what will insulate us, I hope, a little bit from subscription fatigue is The Verge is a core utility in which there are not a lot of direct competitors. And a lot of our subscribers, you know, they're here for the utility, but they're also here because they love our journalists and they want to support the journalism.

38:31And so as of right now, I'm not seeing that as a huge immediate problem for us. Now, do we need to do a good job? Do we need to be worth the money? do I know people's wallets are under more pressure than ever? And so if I can have intro offers that help people get in the door at a cheaper price, I will be trying all of that. But I think we have a slightly different value proposition than someone who's saying, well, I just happen to own these five little pieces of the IP you want. So you'll subscribe for a month and then churn when the show's over.

39:01David Pierce:Okay. Yeah. I mean, that is a really interesting way to frame actually a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about, right? That if we are up against a bunch of sub stacks that you subscribe to and you have to debate between us and that, that's actually, we're in trouble, right? The Verge has to go be a different thing than that in order to be worth it. Ideally, what we are is a community for people. And I don't mean that in like the parasocial creator way, although I would love that. I have a book coming out next year. And so if you could all buy that, that would be great. I mean that in a sense that our audience is a community.

39:34Like we can see it in the comments on our site. We can see it on the comments on our YouTube. We can, we're starting to see it in the comments on our TikTok. Like these are folks who interact with each other, who have a shared set of values, who are willing to disagree with each other politely, right? Like that is very important. And I want the virtue to support that and nurture that. And I think landing great journalism in a community that is excited about it is like a really important flywheel dynamic. but if you're paying us, you should feel like you're part of something, not that we're just selling you links.

40:07And I think you can really, we have a lot of big competitors that are effectively selling you links. Yeah. I think community is a big part of it. That's a big part of what makes people come back and really engage deeply. I think the other part is, David, what you're also getting at is like, what makes the web bad today? What makes it harder to use and less fun than it used to be. And a big part of that is fragmentation. There's fewer big institutions that have everything in one place. There's fewer social networks that feel good to participate in and have everyone you want in one place, right?

40:41Like of the good tech journalists, some are still on X, some have decamped to blue sky, some are on threats. So what is the experience of accessing all of that? I think where the Verge also has an opportunity, as we talked about Federation earlier is to help solve the fragmentation issue for people and be this great daily utility that helps you navigate all of this in one place and have, you know, all of the content and experiences you want to have in one place so you don't have to go follow five different sub stacks. Remember whether the people you like are on threads or blue sky or X and you just get it all in one place.

41:20David Pierce:All right. This is a good segue to our next question, which I love all my children. equally but this is my favorite question of all the ones we have for the show let me play it for

41:27Nilay Patel:you hey uh just listened to the podcast and i love actually the hype desk thing um but just noticing a trend in you guys trying to monetize more which i think is fine and fair but is there i guess at some point could you guys just talk about is there a reason other than money why you're trying to capitalize on some of these things i mean money's fine but like are you trying to do more things? Are you guys running out of money? I just, I love you guys. And I don't want you to stop making the podcast. But I also don't want this to become clarity and stuff. So, yeah, I don't know. At some point, if you could just kind of talk through why you've done some things that are more money-focused.

42:13Nilay Patel:Thanks. Bye.

42:16David Pierce:You can see why I love this question. It's a good question. It's a great question. Yeah, and I think it comes from my favorite place for this question to come from, which is like, I get why you want to make money. Please don't let money ruin this thing that I like, which we think about all the time. All the time. And I'll just start and then I'll let Helen take it because Helen is the money. She's the business. We just spend money. That's all we do over here. So here is the problem. And I'll just say it's a problem because we make journalism and we are very precious and very prickly about the fact that we make journalism.

42:52There is money we won't make. It is, and I know it drives the business side of our company crazy, that in particular, there's money I won't make. I won't read the ads, right? And because of that, we have to try other things because you have to sell what people are buying. And the advertisers have all moved to buying a kind of thing that we won't make because we make journalism. And so I think you're seeing all these new things. From my perspective, you're seeing us try all these new things, not because we need to like monetize more in like a gross, like endless growth capitalism way, but because we have to make products that people want to buy.

43:34And the one product that people want to buy the most, we will not make. And maybe one day that'll be over and I will read the ads from my yacht, But that day is not today. So that's my perspective on it. I'll let Helen actually answer the question. Yeah. I love the premise of this question, which is like, maybe there's so much money right now and we're going and getting so much more money that it's just going to Neelai's yacht. I hate to disabuse you of this notion, but the digital media business, if you look around, is not minting an infinite flow of cash. look at what's happened to BuzzFeed News, look at what's happened to Vice.

44:11It is a tough business and you should not take for granted that the publications and the people you follow and the things you love continue to exist. This industry is changing really fast and we have to keep changing in order to just pay for these things you love. To pay the journalists, to pay for the podcasts. Like we just have to make enough money to do that. As Nilay talks about what is changing in the advertising business, we talked about this a little bit earlier of the kind of like old school display where you just have tons of scale from Facebook and Google. You throw up a random display ad.

44:49It maybe doesn't perform that well and it's running on like a random third party website. But it kind of all works out. That kind of model is increasingly going away. The Verge has a big direct brand, which means advertisers want to work with us directly. But advertisers are also, to Nilay's point, used to working with creators and platforms now. And they're looking for integrations. They're looking for people to try their products. They're looking for better ad products that are more relevant to audiences and perform better. Because they're inventing better ad products out on TikTok, right? You get a bunch of people to endorse your product, maybe disclosing it, maybe not.

45:26That performs really well. And so our challenge is, how do we satisfy our customers on the advertising side while also protecting the firewall of the journalism? them. And so Hypedest came from that point where we were saying, okay, if Nilay and David can't go try the new product and tell you it's great without compromising the newsroom, then how can we do that in a fun way where we have the really fun ad product that performs better, that is better to listen to or watch for Vergecast listeners or YouTube viewers or whoever? And so we tried this Hypedest thing, which is to say, okay, we've got former journalists who are in the commercial space now.

46:07They're really fun. They're experts. But they can take the money and play with the product and make a good ad product that performs well while also protecting our newsroom. And so Hypedesk is one of our experiments in inventing new ad formats. We've talked about QuickPost ads as another place we are trying to invent ad products that perform better. And so the reality is we need to keep improving the ad products we make as that industry changes, as the opportunity changes. And yeah, that's... I wish we were buying Nilay yachts every year. So does Nilay.

46:41David Pierce:I can tell you for sure. Nilay wishes that too. I've been working on that boat for 15 years, you guys. It's a paddle boat right now, but we have ideas. You're just going to slowly build your paddle boat into a yacht? Is that the idea here? Just one Lego piece at a time? And at the bottom is still me just paddling away. Helen, this is probably a useful moment to update on the episode we did 18 months ago. And basically just answer the question, how does The Verge make money? And you can answer that as broadly or specifically as you would like to. But I think we get versions of this question a lot.

47:14David Pierce:So we might as well just answer the how does The Verge make money question. The Verge makes most of our money in advertising today. We have a growing subscription business that is increasingly a significant revenue line for us. But subscription businesses take a long time to build. And so the inflection point at which subscription will overtake advertising is still some ways away. So we are primarily an advertising business. Is that like display advertising on posts on our website? Increasingly, our ad mix, and this was kind of always the case there. So if we're going to get really nerdy about display advertising, even if you look at display advertising, there's two kinds of ways you can get to display advertising.

47:53There's stuff you sell directly and there's programmatic. Programmatic is like you let Google serve whatever. There's a bidding marketplace. Things show up across any website. That is a lower that pays out at lower rates.

48:08David Pierce:But that was the Google promise, right? Like if you if you rewind to like 12 years ago, it was there's going to be so much traffic that even at tiny bits per page view, you can make it up in giant scale. And that's the scale everybody chased for a decade that has essentially mostly disappeared? That was the Google ads business that propped up like SEO farms, right? The Verge's display ad business has always been more skewed towards big direct buys. So an advertiser knows that they need to be on the verge because that is where their client base is, their customer base. So they are working with Vox Media directly in order to access the Verge and do premium things.

48:46Vox Media has a whole other side of the company where we make ad tech. We make fancier, nicer, better performing banner ads that aren't this programmatic fill. And so that has been a strength of our business and continues to be a strength for our business. But if you look at what kinds of things advertisers are buying, I would say writ large, people are buying fewer things that are like a homepage takeover. And they're buying more things that are like integrated into a hype desk on the Vergecast or quick post ads or branded content or, you know, events we do together. And so you see the kind of kinds of advertising mix writ large, like moving off display into more integrated deals.

49:31I can't believe I have to do this because we never have to do this disclosure, but I have to do it. Our business, Vox Media, is suing Google for antitrust. violations because we ran that ad tech business and Google was found guilty of being an ad tech monopoly. There's your disclosure. I never think about it. That might be the first time we've ever

49:50David Pierce:had to do that on the show. It never comes up, but there it is. It's pretty good. Disclosure is our brand. All right. I think we have one more sort of business slash editorial question before Helen, we're going to boot you out of here and Neil and I are going to do some other stuff. And this is specifically about podcasts and audio and video. You'll see why this is a good transition for a bunch of stuff here. Let me just play this for you. I love your audio podcast. I love audio podcasts in general. I don't think they're as talkative about it, but most of the folks I know prefer it in the audio format.

50:27David Pierce:It's the space for us that's just kind of necessary.

50:31Nilay Patel:And you can pop in a headphone, listen to it at work. If you're working in a warehouse for road trips, it fills a slot that I think probably radio filled for the older generations. And I mean, I don't think everything has to be video. I'm sure there's ways to monetize it that you can't do with audio clips, but there's just something special about it.

50:54David Pierce:And it's important. Not everything needs to be watched. Basically, I think this is very much sort of equally an editorial and a business question. But I do think we've gotten a lot of versions of the question of this question about, like, how do podcasts make money? Is the recent push to video fundamentally a push about how to make more money from podcasts? And Helen, I'm curious on your perspective on this first. And then Neela and I are going to get deep in the weeds about our feelings about how to make video podcasts. But I want to know your thoughts on sort of how you're looking at podcasts as a business and especially how video changes or adds to or subtracts from that.

51:33Yeah. So I will say personally, I prefer audio podcasts too. They fit better into my life. That's how I like to listen to things. And an audio podcast, I think there is something very intimate about the form of listening to someone, which also means the kinds of advertising you serve in an audio podcast are pretty high performing. And so that kind of advertising of a big, loyal audience who trusts the feed, who's highly engaged, it's really integrated into your daily life. That is a really good business. And that is currently the core of the podcast business, as more of the revenue today is in audio.

52:08Now, what does audio not do very well? No one has really cracked discovery of new listeners in audio in a really compelling way. I think we've done a good job of, you know, when we launched Version History, it started in this show. We worked really hard to bring people over to a new feed, and that's been successful. But no one solved the podcast discovery problem. And it is true that while the audio listeners have the thing they want and love, there is a new kind of listener that is, you know, consuming podcasts as video products. If you look at YouTube is now the biggest podcast player in the world.

52:44There is a lot of new people who like listening to or watching podcasts in a new form. And so to reach those people, we have to have video versions of our podcasts and good products that work on those platforms. So I would say it is more about accessing new audience, bringing new people into our shows and getting them familiar with our talent. The monetization is frankly not there yet on the video side. So it is more about future opportunity, getting new people in on the shows than it is about, you know, an immediate like swarm video. It's where all the money is. I do think it is where the opportunity to reach new people is, the opportunity to grow scale is, because it is hard to grow audio only feeds.

53:26Because I think because it is such an intimate, powerful form and it's so personal how you listen to the people you care about.

53:33David Pierce:Another version of this question we got from Angel, I believe it is, was asking essentially about this in the context of even companies like Netflix getting into podcasts and getting into advertising. At some point, I think the assumption from a lot of these players is that podcasts are a relatively inexpensive way to make lots and lots and lots of content that you can sell ads against. right like is if you just sort of look at the pivot to podcasts in general is it as simple as that like it's pretty cheap to make most podcasts compared to like even a sort of Stephen Colbert sized late night television show you just put mics on a table and people are comfortable with that and you can sell ads against it like is that do you see that happening broadly here I mean I think what's old is new it's it is not just about the money it is also about the users and what users want to do, right?

54:28You look at what is winning on YouTube right now. It's like YouTube's either going super long or it's going super short. Like the day, the heydays of like mid form on YouTube, not just for news organizations, but you look at the creators and how they're doing it. It's like videos are either getting really long or they're getting really short. The distinction between a podcast and a video show is becoming almost meaningless. Everything is just a show now. And so, David, you're right that I think some of it is, okay, here is content that is engaging and we want to play there and that should be part of our business.

55:00It's also just what do the users want? And I think increasingly, if things are overproduced, you're seeing like a new aesthetic of what podcasts work on YouTube, which is actually like they are not overproduced. They feel like they are filmed in someone's garage. And that actually, I think, is part of the audience connection is like a more casual, authentic aesthetic on these long video shows. So I think it's both about what are the users doing and where is the money going to go? The money follows the users.

55:31David Pierce:Yeah, that makes sense. All right. We have actually, Neil, I have more video questions for you, but let's get to those in a minute. Let's take one more break. Helen, we're going to release you back to go, you know, do more things to make us money. Go make money. Thank you so much for having me. I obviously love The Verge. I guess, David, I will ask myself the question, how can the listeners of this podcast most support The Verge if we are not going to take our continued existence for granted? This is actually a question we get a lot from people who are like, am I costing you money by listening to the ad-free version?

56:06David Pierce:If I want to help The Verge in the most ways that I can, what can I do? First of all, know that we love you, everyone who asked this question. And also, Helen, this is a good question. What is the answer? The single most important way you can support us is to pay and subscribe to The Verge. I know that is not possible for everyone. Other ways you can support us, you can use The Verge a lot, listen to our products, love our products. If you are paying to subscribe, you are allowed to listen to the ad-free podcast feed. We love you. It's cool. The thing that we sell you, you can use it. It's allowed, yeah.

56:38Yes. I give you moral permission to use the ad-free podcasts that are part of your subscription. That's a real thing, though.

56:43David Pierce:Like we used to get people who would ask if they should feel bad watching the podcast on YouTube when with YouTube premium one isn't wasn't showing ads. Like, should I be listening? Yeah. Like, but I'll give you spend time with us. That's the I'll give you two more things you can do to support the verge. One is, you know, we've talked a lot about on on this episode about discovery, how you find new people. So I don't know. Share the verge. Tell people you love it. Share the content you love from here. Bring new people into the verge. That is a really fantastic way to support us. And then as Neil and I said, when we did the new homepage design, we're talking to people directly about what they want to see from us.

57:19So give us your feedback. What do you want to hear from us? What do you want to see from us? What's working? What's not? We actually pay a lot of attention to direct feedback from all of you. So subscribe to The Verge. If you can't subscribe to The Verge, it is okay. But tell your friends, send us your feedback.

57:36David Pierce:Love it. All right, Helen, thank you. We're going to take a break. And then, Eli, I got some more stuff for you. We'll be right back.

58:09Nilay Patel:ready and built for the AI era. Say goodbye to bottlenecks and legacy code. Start innovating with MongoDB. There's a reason it's trusted by so many of the Fortune 500. And that's because it's a platform built by developers for developers. MongoDB. It's a great freaking database. Start building at mongodb.com slash build.

58:36Nilay Patel:Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings.

59:15Nilay Patel:Its updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language. Nearly 60 % of hirers find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focus shortlist that actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. Whoa. Okay. This one says you get a free phone if you switch. Hey, this one also says you get a free phone if you switch.

59:58Yeah. Yeah, they all do one.

1:00:01Nilay Patel:Wait, wait, wait, wait. The T-Mobile one says families saved over$3 ,700 versus the other big guys in the past five years.

1:00:09David Pierce:And their experience plans have Netflix included, plus a year of Dash Pass by DoorDash.

1:00:14Nilay Patel:Hang on, let me see that. And a five-year price guarantee? Oh yeah, we're switching.

1:00:19David Pierce:That's what I'm talking about.

1:00:20Nilay Patel:Do we clap now or? I'm thinking high five. At T-Mobile, get savings that keep stacking up. That's value you can feel every day. Switch now at T-Mobile. Savings based on Harris X billing snapshots from Q3 2021 to Q4 2025 among accounts with three plus voice lines compared to AT &T and Verizon. Excluding discounts, credits and optional charges. See Harris X dot com slash T-Mobile. Price guarantee on talk, text and data. Exclusions like taxes and fees apply. See T-Mobile dot com.

1:00:54David Pierce:All right, we're back. So, Neelai, while we're on the subject of video, I have a voicemail I want to play you that I think is representative of a question you and I have both been getting for a very long time. So let's hear that.

1:01:07Nilay Patel:Hey there, David and the VergeCast team. Long time listener here, and I'm calling from Austria, Europe, and asking regarding the whole Verge episode about what's happening regarding Verge and the history of the Verge and stuff like this. and uh to be honest i wanted to know um back in the day that was on the verge like with the old verge crew and this was a little bit more produced will that ever be coming back such a highly produced um youtube show basically and yeah would be nice i think um getting something like this back now that everything is moving back to video again. And yeah, love the show.

1:01:59Nilay Patel:Love to be a subscriber and supporting what you do and keep up the good work. Thank you. Bye.

1:02:05David Pierce:Okay. I both want you to answer this specific question directly about On the Verge, which is a show a lot of people liked and have feelings about. But also there is a sort of style of old Verge video that we get asked about a lot um that we just don't do as much anymore and people consistently want to know why not are we going to are we going to bring that back what happens to kind of uh that era of early verge video curious sure uh one we should definitely bring josh back to host a talk show he was he was very good at it he was really good it was very fun to make that show um that That show was both possible because all of us were young and most of us didn't have children.

1:02:48And so we ran the whole website and then also produced the show underneath it. And no one slept. And the nights after On the Verge when we would all go to, we always went to the same French restaurant and we would just like sit and drink and shoot the shit. Some of the most fun maybe in the entire history of The Verge that anyone has ever had. I think we're all older now and none of us can do that. And this is all leading me up to say the cost structure of making that video in a time when there isn't just venture capital money sloshing around digital media to subsidize everything. When YouTube had signed a deal with Fox Media back then to subsidize a bunch of video.

1:03:28All that stuff is expensive to make. That's all I'm getting at. You have to hire really talented people. You're basically doing tiny little documentary productions, even for things like fancy review videos. We just had a lot of people working on them all the time. And not to just keep harping on this, the monetization of the video platforms in general has moved to direct brand integrations. So unless we are going to be a little ad agency and make the ads for the brands and then give the brands approval over the videos, I don't think there's a way to make the money at the scale to support that work.

1:04:06We're trying to invent some stuff. This is why Helen is talking about hype desk. We're trying to go address that market and get those dollars and maybe it'll work and maybe it won't. I hope it does. But I look at the creator landscape and it's only the big players that can afford to do that work because they're doing massive brand deals. And like I just keep saying, there's just money we won't make. Right.

1:04:29David Pierce:And I actually think like that may be the most direct version of that thing. Right. Like to do the kind of stuff we want to do. And I think outside of all of this stuff, like you and I both share the ambition to do that kind of stuff. I loved that stuff. I loved making it. I loved watching it. There is really only one way to make money from that on the Internet and is to do the kind of brand deals we're not willing to do. Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, that's as blunt. I tried not to just say. I mean, it's just true. But because again, I, and I just want to, I tried not to say it as bluntly as that. I know it's true.

1:05:05David Pierce:It's not to say there aren't other possible ways, but as it stands right now, it feels like the only way. Yeah, you can't do it. And I just never try to throw shade at the creators. Like we're friends with a lot of them. I think they all do a lot of really good work. There's a thing that they do that we won't do. That's fine. And it's so hard to run that business. Yeah. I have nothing but sympathy for those folks because I know how hard it is. Yeah. Don't begrudge anybody their work there. Yeah. And that's just a compromise we're not willing to make because of the kind of product we make and the ethics policy and all this other stuff.

1:05:38And, like, more power to them. Go figure it out. Yeah. But I don't think you can support that work on the platforms as they are constructed today without compromising our ethics policy. And that is bad. Like, I think that's bad. I don't think that's the creator economy's fault. I think that is the platform's fault. Yep. We come at it sideways a lot, but I'll just say it clearly. Like, it is criminal that YouTube cannot pay high enough rates to support actual journalism that does not have integrated brand deals. And something is wrong there. It's criminal for TikTok and Instagram, too. But they know that there's an army of teenagers who will work for free.

1:06:16And they don't have to do it because if you get mad and leave, you will be replaced. and that's you know the whole thing where you know the whole conversation went out with helen about wanting to be diversified and direct like that is the thing that i'm always the most paranoid about i do not want to be tied to distribution that can that has that much leverage over me and especially because we cover these companies but anyway that's the story like we were flush with vc cash and dumb advertising money uh like the brands that were showing up at that time all had these things called experimental budgets because they didn't know how to advertise the internet and they're like Ford showed up and was like, Josh, you can give away a car.

1:06:51Like that was a real thing that happened on The Verge. Those experimental budgets are long gone. Everything is tracked to an inch of performance. It's just not how it's going anymore. I hope maybe those days will come back. In the meantime, I think it is better for us to make sustainable journalism.

1:07:07David Pierce:Yeah. Yeah. And I think, again, it is important to say we loved doing that thing. It was so much fun. It was so fun. And we continue to look for every available opportunity to do it even when it is not the most financially sound decision we've ever made and i think like the we we did a thing last summer uh with with will poor where they did this big journey on the the hydrogen highway in california that was like big and expensive and we had to get really creative about where we put it and all the stuff that we made and like my my hope is to continue to do more of that stuff and find ways to do big expensive weird things uh but that's all related to like why are you trying to monetize so much stuff you need something that throws off a lot of cash that is like very profitable so you can do the things that are not quite so profitable um it's like you know the hollywood actors are like one for the studios and one for me like that's we we need that dynamic across our newsroom and hopefully we'll get back there totally um all right actually on that front um we got a question about some verge alumni so let let me play that

1:08:10Nilay Patel:for you hey my name is stefan i'm calling about the upcoming episode about the verge cast so it sounds like through listening to you guys for a very long time that you guys have a pretty good relationship with your alumni a lot of them you're proud of them when they move on to do other things but the verge cast is different in that people are in your ear and they become i don't know they feel like friends and then they leave and it's weird and it feels bad and then you don't know what happens to them. Can you or will you ever talk about how your relationships with alumni are? What are they doing?

1:08:51Nilay Patel:You know, I don't want to know what happened. I'm sure you guys don't talk about that. But like Alex, Paul, Dieter, what's it like? Do you talk to them? Are they happy? Is it good? I don't know. I just want to know about how these people are doing that, you know, used to be in my ear every week and I miss them. Anyways, thanks. Bye.

1:09:10David Pierce:This question made me so happy. Sweet. I talked to Dieter for a while last night, actually. Did you? Yeah, Dieter and I, you know, Dieter works at Google. We do not talk about work. And that took us a while to figure because we only talked about work for a long time. We had to like learn how to not talk about work. Yeah, we just like chatted about family. It was great. Dieter's great. He's very available on the internet. You can find Dieter. Ask him on Android. He'll be fine. Alex is, I think, writing for Giz. Paul, you know, as Paul's want to do, left the internet. The last time I saw Paul was on the street of Austin, Texas at South by Southwest.

1:09:47Yeah. I gave him a big hug. I hope all these people are happy. I am very proud of our alumni. I think, as you all know, I always make the Hotel California joke. Like, you can check out, you never leave. We don't even call them alumni. We call them expats. Like, they come back, they're on our shows. Maybe we don't promote them as much. but like they participate we love to support their work out in the world but not everyone can work at every job forever you know I'll use Casey Newton as an example Platformer is amazing like he has built a good business that does meaningful coverage for the community he serves he's you know hard fork has built been built into a new kind of thing that I think is really important we were probably just a cap on Casey's ambition when he had all those ideas And I don't ever want to be a cap on anybody's ambition.

1:10:35So I'm happy that it's better to not be Casey's boss, is what I will say. It's much more fun to just be Casey's friend. So that's how I see it. It's like we should give people room to have the biggest ideas they can. The Verge is a pretty creative place. There's a lot of creative freedom here. And then when they reach the limit, when they feel like we're getting in their way, all we should do is support them on whatever thing they do next. Yeah.

1:11:02David Pierce:I mean, I think from the very beginning, it was like a verge policy to like be happy for people who leave the verge to go do other cool things. We have occasionally tried to talk people out of leaving to go do less cool things. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I think in general, like my I mean, as someone who left and came back, right, like my ongoing career advice to most people is like everybody should have lots of jobs. and and with that comes like don't don't hold on to anything too tightly and on the flip side like don't hold on to anyone too tightly right like there are seasons it makes sense and seasons it doesn't and i think the fact that like there are a hundred people who used to work here that i can just call and be like hey come on the verge cast and talk to me about this thing and they're like psyched to come back uh like i think about the sean o 'cane came on the first season of version history he was like the first non-staffer we had on version history sean o 'cane i hired as an intern 400 years ago because he loved his pebble watch.

1:12:01David Pierce:Like that was the thing that got Sean the job. Uh, and he's gone into great stuff. He's, he's now at TechCrunch doing really interesting, important reporting. And he came back and had this like cool moment being back in the office and then left and went back to his job at TechCrunch. And I was like, this is awesome. Like, it's great that we all get to be friends like this. This industry is so small. There's only 50 of us. There's like, there's just, there's just not that many people who do this and we all know each other. And it is like more fun that we're all friends. And I think people generally don't realize how fun it is that we're all friends.

1:12:28I can't say this enough. I do not aspire to be everyone's boss forever. If I could be no one's boss, I think I would be happiest. Yes, there are people that you probably miss. We can only be so big, right? We can only have so many people. We can only pay so many people. Some people, like when they graduate and they move on, that makes space for other new people. And, you know, it's funny, like people make the list of folks. And it's like, it always starts with Dieter and Becca. And it's like, well, those, they overlapped, but also they spent quite a lot of time. Like when Dieter left, there was space for Becca to fill on our channel.

1:13:05Right. And like, that's important. And I, you know, Becca's got her channel now. She's doing great. She's taking tech outside. That's a tech line. I love watching on camera videos. They're great. Her stuff's great.

1:13:14David Pierce:Yeah. So I just, I hope people see that dynamic too. Like we try to make space for, for our new folks, because that's also important that we are a place where people develop into the kind of personalities and develop the kinds of audience that let them go do whatever next thing they want to do. Totally. All right. We have a few more here that we're just going to, we're going to burn through them fast. We have to do a Brendan Carr question. So here's our Brendan Carr question.

1:13:38Nilay Patel:Hi, my name is Chris. I'm calling from an Ikea. I'm hoping you can't hear the background music too loud. I wanted to ask, why is the segment called Brendan Carr as a dummy? I know you have talked about, you chose the word dummy very specifically, but I would love to hear you justify it because there are many other words I can imagine using, and that seems like a pretty innocuous one to land on ultimately. Yeah, let me know what you think. Thanks.

1:13:59David Pierce:He's such a dummy, Eli. I have a lot of thoughts about this. Why is he a dummy? Well, he is a dummy. I think it is important not to let bad actors feel like they have outsmarted everyone. And Brendan thinks he is very smart. And if you listen to the segment, America's Favorite Podcast in a podcast, you will understand that actually he is quite stupid. And I just think there's something defanging and important about calling stupid people stupid. That's it. That's the whole thing. So you think like giving him some sort of more malicious nickname almost gives him too much credit? Yeah, he's an idiot.

1:14:36David Pierce:Yeah. Like Brendan Carr is an evil genius is not actually the vibe. Brendan Carr has once again stumbled into a First Amendment disaster is more the vibe. Yeah. Okay, I buy it. Look, we get this feedback a lot, But the reason it's a dummy is so that he understands that I think he's stupid. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Next question. This comes from Rufo. The question is, how many jackets does Neelai have? And does he ever get hot wearing them while recording? I went to the experts for this one, David. Hey, Beck. How many jackets do you think I have?

1:15:08Nilay Patel:About 137, but only three look different than the others. It's brutal.

1:15:13David Pierce:It's brutal. so 137 but also four becky is like you know like a like a cleaner you know she's like throw this stuff away we so we have effectively three closets in our house right okay uh there's like our closet then there's the like the front closet and there's like a back coat zone and all of them are just full of black jackets and she's like what are these like get rid of them and then i look at them like but these are all slightly different denim jackets and she's like no they're not and And we probably had that conversation. I'm just lucky she didn't make a video where she just toured the closets from the identical jackets.

1:15:51My argument is I'm on camera all the time and I need to be wearing different clothes. But only very slightly different. This is why I got shamed into wearing this jacket on this show because I went and recorded that with her. And I was like, crap.

1:16:04David Pierce:Love it. All right. Two more and then we're going to get out of here. Here is one about social media, which is just a, you know, we're going to do this really fast. It's going to be great. Here we go.

1:16:14Nilay Patel:Hi, Verge Cats friends. This is Cody from Oklahoma. I went to school for journalism, but I'm kind of curious what it's like now in 2026, because I have actually never worked in it. When you're using social media as members of the show, do you feel like a need to not block people? how do you handle social media as content creators in 2026?

1:16:40David Pierce:Like I said, super small picture question. Not a lot of things to feel about this one. The last question? We're like 90 minutes in. Uh-huh. I do think the question of how, this is a thing you and I talk about a lot. So I'm curious how you're thinking about it right now, which is what do you feel like you are sort of required to be on social media as a journalist in 2026? Which I think is what this person is asking. Not how do you use it, but like who do you have to be on these platforms? Yeah, I don't know. And it's actually, not to continually talk about the book that I am putting out next year, but - How to Get What You Want by Nelai Patel.

1:17:15Tell people the name, man, come on. I'm trying not to make it too, we got to save all the promo juice when there's actually something you can buy. The pre-order is named in Live David, but we've announced the book. It's a book about, it's just decoder stuff. It'll be fun. You know, when you go to sell a book, they look at your social following. It's almost like a formula. If you have enough Twitter followers, you can get a book deal. That's a thing you can do. And I showed up and I had this pitch about, I've talked to all these CEOs and I think there's a lot to learn about structure and blah, blah, blah.

1:17:44And they're like, how many Twitter followers? It was just like one of those things that you put in the proposal. It's like, oh, this is a business plan. This isn't just a book proposal. And part of the business plan is how big is your social following so that you can distribute to an audience of people that might want to actually see this book. And I totally understand it. and it is totally rational. And it's also like, oh boy, these platforms are marketing platforms. That's what they are. That's how everybody perceives them except for the handful of us that came up with them a different way. So I'm maybe just in the middle of a full existential crisis about that.

1:18:15I also think it is important to play the games the platforms are designed to make you play. Right? Like being stubbornly anti-algorithmic media when you're trying to grow an Instagram following is just, you're just going to waste your time. So I'm trying to find the balance in between all of these things. I also think it's important that we reach our audiences there and like tell them about The Verge and like that it's a good product that they should try. I don't know. Where are you at?

1:18:41David Pierce:I've had a slightly different run, which is that I almost entirely stopped sort of actively posting on social media for a while. And like I was still around. I read tweets. I looked at threads, whatever. but like I didn't post very much for a long time because it just felt bad. And it was like, I'm just not having a good time here. I will keep looking for, you know, reporting reasons to make sure I sort of understand what's going on, but have tried to engage more recently and have mostly enjoyed it, I would say. But I think one thing I do feel very responsible for is like you and I always joke that we are the customer service line for The Verge.

1:19:18David Pierce:and that's actually a thing I take really seriously and is a thing we do on social a lot is like I think The Verge is a big brand that is fundamentally just like a bunch of doofuses in Slack trying to make things together and I think it matters to me to be real people representing this thing that like everyone should remember that we are just like a bunch of people trying our hardest and that is what we do all day and so I think I spend a lot of time like answering people's tweets about why a webpage is broken. And I think like, to me, that's actually the great use of social media is to just sort of respond to people as they engage with the stuff that I and we make.

1:19:59David Pierce:Uh, and email is one version of that that works. And I get a lot of emails and I try to respond to as many of them as I can. Um, I have been worse at email recently as I've gotten better at social media recently, but like being out there and engaging both sort of as me and also like on behalf of this bigger thing that we make, I think is very important and broadly very useful. I will say I do not at all feel bad blocking people. Like if you are an ass on the internet, you do not get to engage with me. And I think like I spend a lot of time both as a reporter and just as a person, like I will engage with almost anyone who is operating in good faith about almost anything.

1:20:41David Pierce:You can say the cruelest, most cutting thing to me. And if you are earnest and in good faith, I will take you seriously. And if you are just in bad faith, I don't have time for you. And neither should anybody else. You've done a very good job of curating that audience. I will actually, I will reveal to the listeners that our first little federation experiment is going to be to federate David's. Oh, yeah, that's right. Quick post feed. We're going to like work on that and figure that out. And one of the reasons we're like, it should just, we'll just start with David, like a very controlled experiment.

1:21:10and it's because David's audience is well-behaved. That will just be a group of happy people who are like, look at this fun experiment as opposed to like me, which is like, let's fight. And that's just like a very different vibe.

1:21:24David Pierce:I do think you are slightly easier to trigger to saying cutting things on the internet than I am. And it has probably served me well over time. I like to fight and it's a real problem and I'm working on it every day. I don't, I have just fully leaned into like kill them with kindness or block them and move on. Right. Like those are those are the only two moves that I have found that make me feel good. And that's it. And I will I will keep doing that. And everyone no one should feel one second of guilt blocking some of the Internet. You just shouldn't like. No, I don't either. Yeah. But I'm much more open to what's disagree more loudly.

1:21:59You know, you can just see I'm working on it, everybody. It's good.

1:22:04David Pierce:I like this for you. All right. We have one last question. And this is specifically designed to make you, Neelai Patel, both think very hard and feel very old. Here we go.

1:22:14Nilay Patel:Hi, I'm Jonathan, and I'm a huge fan of the show. And I heard that you are doing the Vergecast questions. And here's a question for Neelai. So, Neelai, you've been gadget blogging since the beginning of gadget blogging. How do you think both the gadgets and how we write and talk about those gadgets has changed over the years? Thanks so much.

1:22:46David Pierce:Neil, I just crumbled into dust, everyone. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. I love it. I'm trying not to die. As your local Gandalf. That's a really good question. I actually really appreciate that question. I won't overdo it, but here's my grand unified theory of gadgets. Before the iPhone, the whole industry was chasing this concept called convergence, where you would just make everything a computer. And Bill Gates would show up at CS every year and talk every year. He would talk about putting a PC in your living room because the holy grail of convergence was making your TV a computer, in particular a Windows computer.

1:23:27and that's like why the Xbox exists. And like you just saw everyone was trying to make everything into a computer and it didn't quite work. And so you just had this like huge ecosystem explosion of gadgets because everything needed to do a different job. And the idea of convergence was that you could get one thing to do every job. And seriously, the industry just chased the stream for ages upon ages upon ages. but before the phone that it never worked like bill gates was never successful at putting a pc under your tv they are trying to this day and they can't get it done uh and so there was just this like massive explosion of gadgets and then the iphone came out and then everything became an app and then everything became software and the idea that you needed a different piece of hardware to do a different job just utterly fell by the wayside and everything became a little accessory to an iPhone.

1:24:22And that is coming and going. It comes and goes. And I'm always like, gadgets are back. And sometimes they are. And then everything turns into iPhone apps again. And a big consumer base is in apps. And so all of the people with all the ideas about how to solve one little problem that 15 years ago would have been a gadget are now making apps. And often subscription apps. And you just see like, oh, that's not as much fun as it used to be. I do think there are interesting gadgets I think like I think a couple weeks ago I mentioned we bought my daughter a cricket cutting machine for her birthday like that is the most fun gadget we've bought in ages in this house and she we have made so many stickers do not buy a cricket for your 8 year old daughter unless you are ready for just thousands upon thousands of stickers to be manufactured in your kitchen but you know that stuff exists it's just not the way it was before and now because these companies have all gotten so big and so powerful, it's impossible to just talk about gadgets without also talking about money and power and politics.

1:25:27And I understand why that is really tiresome for a lot of people. But it is also true that you cannot talk about the next iPhone without talking about the price of RAM, which means you're talking about war, which means you're talking about tariffs. And I think we try to draw the line, but that is the big new change, at least from my perspective is these companies used to be small they were not the most powerful companies in the world not everything was converged into smartphones and so the way we talked about it was a lot lighter it was enthusiasts doing enthusiast stuff i sent david a like a 1988 copy of mac world the other day like a pdf of an old mac world the other day uh and you look at the ads of that issue of mac world and it's like carrying cases disc drives optical disc drives carrying cases for your disk drives.

1:26:16Like everything around a computer was a piece of hardware or an accessory or like none of it had like landed in this perfect form factor of the smartphone. I would love to get some of the ecosystem back. I suspect we won't get it back, but finding the things that are small and interesting and fun, that's like, I think that's what everyone is missing. I think that it's kind of like, it sounds like you're very young. Like it sounds like you're curious about that vibe in a way that like being curious about the past is like really fun. Finding the next version of that, I think is, it's on my mind.

1:26:49That's why I want to feed the gadgets, you know? Because I understand what that felt like and I miss it too. Yeah, I agree.

1:26:56David Pierce:All right. I think that's a perfect place to end. Neelai, thank you for hanging out. Thank you to everybody who sent us questions. As always, if you have more questions about The Verge and The Verge Cast and how we make money, send them along. We'll do some of them on the show. We can just answer them however we can. come at me on social media, but only in a nice way. Otherwise I'll block you and I won't feel bad about it at all. Neil, I think you're doing this with me. This was really fun. That was really fun. Helen was great. We should just let Helen host the show. That's honestly, it'd be great.

1:27:22David Pierce:I'm into it. All right. Thanks, buddy. All right. That's it for the show. Thank you to Neil, I and Helen for doing this with me. And thank you as always for watching and listening. And thank you for sending questions. It's very fun to get, to get sort of inside baseball in this way. This is like the stuff we talk about at work all the time. It's fun to get to do it kind of in this more public setting. So thank you to everybody who called and emailed and sent me notes on Signal. Keep it all coming. The hotline, as always, 866-VERGE11. The email, vergecast at theverge.com. Send us all of your thoughts and feelings and questions about absolutely everything.

1:27:54David Pierce:This show is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This episode was produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. I will be back with Nilay on Friday to talk about the news. There's a lot of developer season stuff starting to heat up. There's a lot of AI chaos because there is always AI chaos and presumably Brendan Carr will be up to stuff too. We'll see you then. Fuck and roll.