The Vergecast

Meta's business is doing just fine. But Meta as a company, and Meta as a series of products? That is, uh, messier. David and Nilay discuss the company's ongoing desire to be relevant and cool, the unceasing importance of Instagram, and why it makes perfect sense that Facebook would clone Polymarket. After that, the hosts talk about Apple's huge price increases, and the ways in which RAMageddon mig...

Training data is the raw material of the AI industry. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and the rest are built on top of oceans of stuff. What is that stuff? Books. Blog posts. YouTube videos. Reddit comments. All of it and more, in virtually incomprehensible quantities. Alex Reisner, a staff writer at The Atlantic who has been investigating training data, explains how AI companies get all this data, why t...

Google is shipping its first smart speaker in six years, and we're starting to test it. The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy joins the show to explain why the Home Speaker matters, whether Google actually cares about the smart home, and more. Then, she helps answer a few questions from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about the power of Ikea and the future o...

A huge portion of the tech industry has decided that smart glasses are the next big thing. But why? Smart glasses are incredibly hard to make, hugely socially complicated, and require users to want to wear a gadget on their face. The Verge's Victoria Song helps us figure out which features, if any, will make smart glasses worth all the trouble. Further reading: All these smart glasses and nothing...

Valve has been trying to crack the living room for more than a decade, and the new Steam Machine is its best attempt yet. It's a little bit PC, a little bit console, and a lot pricy — starting at $1,049, it had a lot to live up to. The Verge’s Sean Hollister has been testing the device, and shares his findings on whether the Steam Machine can hang with PlayStation and Xbox. He also explains why, d...

The Harmony Universal Remote was supposed to be the only controller you needed for all the devices in your life. So what happened? David Pierce is joined by The Verge’s Nilay Patel and John Higgins, as well as Nest co-founder (and current Harmony user) Matt Rogers, to follow the Harmony's timeline from its origins as the "Easy Zapper," through Logitech's acquisition, all the way to its slow death...

The new smart glasses from Snap look like an impressive bit of technology, and some of the most advanced glasses we've seen. But Nilay and David start the show by wondering, does that matter if nobody wants to put them on? What would it take to overcome the ear-smashing? After that, they discuss the reasons for (and problems awaiting) Fox's acquisition of Roku, the latest updates from Matter, Face...

Your headphones' microphone matters. A lot. And yet we never know how we sound to others, or whether we're clear to our AI assistants! So from time to time, we like to grab a bunch of headphones and put their microphones through some tough real-world tests. This time, with the help of The Verge's John Higgins, we discover the best-sounding mic we've ever tested. And no, it's not on a pair of AirPo...

Anthropic and the US government are once again at odds, this time over the Claude Fable 5 model that either is, or is not, or might be, far too dangerous to release to the world. The Verge's Hayden Field explains what's going on with Fable, Mythos, and the whole idea of American AI exceptionalism, before also answering your questions about how WhatsApp and Siri might one day work together, and whe...

Markdown is a system for writing that makes it readable to both humans and computers. It's all about the symbols. You use - to make a list, * for emphasis, ** for even more emphasis. Brackets and parentheses turn into links. Once you know Markdown, you might begin to think in Markdown. Right now it is absolutely everywhere: people are maintaining their Claude. MD files for conversing with AI bots,...

We're all starting to test Apple's newest software post-WWDC, and the most surprising thing has happened: Siri actually seems to be pretty good now. Nilay and David discuss how that happened, and what it means for the AI industry, and all of us, that Apple's voice assistant is finally useful. Then, we have some news about Bluesky, Threads, and YouTube that adds up to a big change in social network...

Movies directed by YouTubers are suddenly blowing up at the box office. Backrooms and Obsession are both smash hits, and The Amazing Digital Circus had a big debut last week. Is this the moment YouTube truly takes over Hollywood? Julia Alexander, media correspondent at Puck, walks us through the much longer history of YouTube on the big screen, and helps us figure out where this all goes next. Is...

Now that we've had a couple of days to digest all the Siri AI updates, the new corner radii, and everything else Apple announced at its developer conference, we spend the episode answering all your most burning questions. What non-AI stuff are we excited about? How much catching up did Siri really do this week? And wait: what about the HomePod? Further reading: ⁠WWDC 2026: All the news from Apple’...

Long before Steve Jobs was the unstoppable force of nature atop Apple, shipping hit product after hit product, he was practically run out of the company after a series of bad product and management decisions. But as Geoffrey Cain argues in his new book, Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary, the 12 years Jobs spent outside of Apple turned him into...

Apple's annual developer conference keynote was a strange one this year. The company breezed by its normal slew of operating system upgrades, and talked instead about helping people manage their relationships with their devices, and AI. Lots and lots of AI. On this post-keynote livestream, David Pierce, Hayden Field, and Jake Kastrenakes give their first takes on Siri AI, the Apple Intelligence fe...

It's developer conference season, and one of the themes so far has been big swings at AI apps. We've seen Gemini Spark, Microsoft Scout, and so many other attempts to figure out what people, and companies, actually want their AI to do. Nilay and David discuss their experiences with the apps, before turning to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's vision for the AI-filled laptop of the future. Finally, in the...

Microsoft's commitment to AI is not news. Copilot has been everywhere for... a while now. But at this week's Build developer conference, the company made clear that it wants — and needs — to be a bigger player in the space. The Verge's Tom Warren joins David to talk about the new Scout AI assistant, the Solara operating system concept, and whether Microsoft can hang with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Goo...

How far can we push the limits of the human body? At the Enhanced Games in Las Vegas, a few dozen athletes tried to find out, and The Verge's Victoria Song was there to watch. She tells us the story of the swimmers, weightlifters, and other athletes who competed, the intense training and drug regimens they underwent, and the complicated mix of pseudo-science and actual science behind the event. Th...

Nvidia is betting that AI is going to change the way you use your computer — and with a new chip, the RTX Spark, it's hoping to ensure it powers that new-fangled AI machine. During a big week for the PC industry, with the Computex trade show and Microsoft's Build developer conference happening simultaneously, The Verge's Sean Hollister explains what's inside the Spark, why Nvidia is taking on Appl...

The Vergecast is officially a daily show! We kick things off with the return of 90 Seconds on The Verge, a peek at the top stories on theverge.com. Then, we turn to our old pal Casey Neistat for some advice. Casey vlogged every day for 800 days straight, and has some thoughts on the pros and cons of daily posting, the state of YouTube in 2026, and how to make things every day without losing your m...

The Ferrari Luce is here, and suffice to say it is not the electric Ferrari anyone expected. Nilay and David dig into the Jony Ive-designed car, from its marvelously appointed interior to its decidedly non-Ferrari-like exterior. (You might even call it... Nissan Leaf-like.) After that, the hosts discuss some of the latest backlash against AI, Google's ongoing AI-based changes to Search, and AI con...

It's now surprisingly easy to watch most of a movie without ever trying to, or to spend hours with a podcast without ever playing an episode. In the burgeoning clip economy, everything is being cut into bite-sized pieces and being blasted around the internet hoping to land in your feeds. The Verge's Mia Sato explains the machinery of how all this works, and wonders what it means for our social med...

Before we get into this week's tech news, we have some corporate news to discuss, and some very exciting Vergecast news to share. (If you have questions about either one, hit us up: vergecast@theverge.com or 866-VERGE11!) Then, Nilay and David get back into the weeds on all things Google I/O, and in particular the ways AI is changing the Google Search experience. When Gemini can find things for yo...

Google I/O was, predictably, all about AI this year. And if it actually works, a lot of this stuff could be pretty useful! Immediately after the two hour long keynote (that contained approximately 190 total mentions of the terms "AI" and "Gemini") The Verge’s senior AI reporter Hayden Field and executive editor Jake Kastrenakes went live on YouTube with their reactions. Further reading: The 13 big...

The Musk v. OpenAI trial continues, which means so do the allegations and leaks surrounding some of the most influential people in tech. Nilay and David recount the most interesting and entertaining moments from the courtroom this week, before digging into what we've learned about when Sam Altman was fired. After that, the hosts discuss OpenAI's apparent plans to build a phone, which seem utterly...