Air Bud 6

Nilay Patel is fired up about media aquisions, Dieter Bohn is delirious, Sam Sheffer is hyped beyond belief, Russell Brandom is on the Facebook beat, and Josh Dzieza is on hand to report on the rat takeover. What a time to be alive. Join us, won't you? This week's Vergecast is sponsored by: Highfive Igloo Tripcase Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Hi5. How many times have you had a meeting where you waste the first 15 minutes? It's usually because somebody has trouble joining the call, or you can't share your screen, or somebody else can't be heard, or they don't have the right PIN code, or Dieter's in charge of your meeting. It's nothing but problems. The people at Hi5 want to give you back the first 15 minutes of their meeting. That's why they built easy-to-use video and web conferencing that you can actually love. So, go to hi5.com/verge and request a free trial of Hi5. That's H-I-G-H-F-I-V-E dot com slash verge and get a free trial today.

• 0:41Nilay Patel?

  What just happened there? Fine.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  It kicked in.

• 0:44Nilay Patel?

  It's May 10th. It's... That was our mic drop. You know, uh, mic dropping in the future is actually just pressing a button early. That's what it looks like. Hey, everybody, welcome to The Vergecast, uh, the podcast of The Verge.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  For the week of.

• 1:00Nilay Patel?

  Well, so we're recording this on May 14th, but it is the week of another time, May 11th. But you are probably listening to it on May 15th.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Unless you start the week on Sunday like a buster, in which case it's the week of May 10th.

• 1:16Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, Sunday's, the week start thing is crazy. You know what Sunday is for? Sunday is for sadness. So, Sunday is the saddest day of the week.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  You want to know something funny? Sunday was my birthday.

• 1:26Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. Ah, Dieter. Sunday is for happiness tinged by sadness.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Perfect, yeah, exactly.

• 1:33Nilay Patel?

  What, what? Bittersweet Dieter's birthday. That's how I think of Sunday. And Sunday is like the last day of senior year, every day, every week. What? So, I will say this, it's whatever day it is for you, for me, for the world. This is The Vergecast. Dieter is sitting to my right. He has just come back from a trip.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:56Nilay Patel?

  He was on the red eye last night.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  I did not sleep well on the red eye.

• 1:58Nilay Patel?

  Dieter will be crazy today. To my left is Russell Brandom, which is very exciting.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm crazy every day.

• 2:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Russell is a maniac. He's, Russell's illegal in four states. I don't know if you know this.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, can't go back there.

• 2:12Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Sam?

• 2:14Speaker 03

  Shalom.

• 2:15Nilay Patel?

  I don't even know. Wow. That Sam is always a member of our crew.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  The hype squad.

• 2:20Nilay Patel?

  The hype squad. Sam has a new, we just hired a new.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  A junior social person.

• 2:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and Sam, her name is Caitlin. You might see her around on The Verge. She's great.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  Really smart.

• 2:32Nilay Patel?

  Yes, that is true. We're very excited to have her, but you, you see her, she's sitting next, she sits next to Sam and Sam is tasked with teaching her everything she knows, or that he knows. And you see her just like absorbing the information. And then there's gonna be two of them.

• 2:48Nilay Patel?

  I don't know how that's gonna go for us, but it's gonna be awesome.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  Are you guys gonna get like matching haircuts?

• 2:53Speaker 03

  I mean, we kind of already have similar haircuts, but she's, she has.

• 2:55Nilay Patel?

  Oh, burn, dude!

• 2:56Speaker 03

  What do you mean?

• 2:57Nilay Patel?

  I, I mean, let's, let's be clear. I think Caitlin has better hair than you.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  She has a really nice red tint of hair. It's, it's natural too.

• 3:08Speaker 03

  What?

• 3:08Nilay Patel?

  I love you, buddy. No, it's a good tint of hair. That's how we talk about hair colors. Here in 2015. No, it's great. The saturation of your hair is perfect. Love the chroma. I'm just saying iPhone words. Yeah, these are, this is literally what I've.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  This is Visco Cam. You've been hanging out too much with the Visco kids.

• 3:24Nilay Patel?

  No, you look great with a Hudson filter on your hair. Uh, and then later on in the show, I don't, if you have been reading The Verge this week, which I hope you have, published a great feature about, uh, killing rats. Which is crazy and high tech, and Josh Jezza, our reports editor, is gonna join us a little bit later and we're gonna talk about that. So, an action-packed show.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 3:43Nilay Patel?

  That we will now not begin.

• 3:46Nilay Patel?

  For some time.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Can I, can I tell you, so on, on my trip, I was with, uh, Rondo, one of our video directors.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  A frightening man.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  He, um, he proposed, and I agree, that we are gonna start a new band.

• 3:58Nilay Patel?

  Oh my.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Called Champers and the Bezels.

• 4:01Nilay Patel?

  That's, that's pretty good.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  Very clever.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Who gets to be Champers then?

• 4:04Speaker 02

  I think he does.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Who ends it, and you're just gonna be one of the Bezels?

• 4:07Speaker 02

  I'll be one of the Bezels, yeah.

• 4:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, my friends had a band in college called Pixel and the Chronic Network. It's very strange.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:15Nilay Patel?

  Uh, the whole band was, uh, uh, they made, they made one record. It was about a robot. I can't believe, my friend Gabe and my friend John are gonna freak out, but I don't tell that story. Um, it was, the whole band was about a robot named Pixel who lived in the future. And he discovered, uh, like a previous time. He discovered the past.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:37Nilay Patel?

  Through like artifacts and like-

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Which is our present.

• 4:39Nilay Patel?

  Which is our present.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 4:40Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and he, using the power of rock music, traveled back in time.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Like Deltron 3030.

• 4:47Nilay Patel?

  Kind of, but like, different.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, no.

• 4:49Nilay Patel?

  Like, you know, Deltron's like very future. This is like a robot who wanted to be in the past. He wanted to find his like human side.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Well, it's also like Rush, where in 2012, he discovers the guitar and then he freezes people.

• 5:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Because of that. I think, it's been a while since I really dug in.

• 5:05Nilay Patel?

  We need to like call Michael Shane.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, there's like an archaeological thing and he discovers the guitar and then there's like a huge solo.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Which one of us is gonna try and bring this back to Verizon? How's that gonna work?

• 5:17Nilay Patel?

  We're not going to. I'm just saying here's-

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Well, so Verizon AOL is the guitar and Verizon is the-

• 5:22Nilay Patel?

  Verizon discovered the past, which is AOL.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 5:25Nilay Patel?

  I'm just gonna, but, but Pixel, their, their hit song was called Rock Music Time Machine, which I still-

• 5:30Speaker 02

  Oh, it's a good name for a song.

• 5:31Nilay Patel?

  It's like old friends of mine. Yeah. No, you don't, nobody knows the song, because it was like, three people in Chicago made the song. But they, to, to release this record, they rented out a full parking structure at our university. And we had a party, like, on the roof of this park. It was crazy.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 5:45Nilay Patel?

  It was fun. Um, this was like before, um, any sort of media, so all I have is like physical prints. There's, there's like no digital record of this occurring.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:55Nilay Patel?

  Which is a weird thing.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  If you, the only time that happens now for an event, it's like Jay-Z's wedding or something. And he has to like, it like requires immense resources to-

• 6:06Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, to rediscover that past or whatever, if you wanna connect it.

• 6:10Nilay Patel?

  The story that I've heard is that like, he rented all the helicopters in the Hamptons to like, so that paparazzi couldn't- This is like a story that I don't know. I have no idea if it's true. It's just like a wonderful.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:21Nilay Patel?

  Like, A, it's wonderful that you have the resources to do it, but B, I think it's more wonderful that like in a meeting somewhere where it's like, ah, Jay, we're gonna have to rent all the helicopters. Like, just to, just to be clear, like, someone like had made a decision and then some intern had to call every helicopter service.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Just rent it.

• 6:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and she's like, um, I don't know, do you, how many helicopters do you have? We would like them.

• 6:45Nilay Patel?

  That would be, that would be wonderful. Um, let's talk, we should talk about this Verizon AOL situation.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:51Nilay Patel?

  It is in many ways the biggest news of the week. It is in many ways the most boring news of the week. End of the century. It's boring.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Boring. They're buying a wireless company, you know, like a broad, like, oh, first of all, like, the difference between Verizon and wireless is always like, super annoying to me. Like, I, like, they don't consider them separate, but they do, and who knows, and whatever. They're buying AOL for, like,

• 7:14Speaker 03

  4.4.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  4.4. I was trying to come up with a metaphor.

• 7:17Nilay Patel?

  Hype check my attempt to come up with a metaphor. They're buying AOL for an amount of money that is far lower than AOL.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Hype check 4.4 billion dollars.

• 7:26Nilay Patel?

  General.

• 7:27Speaker 03

  And this hype of a bubble, that's, that's like, that's,

• 7:30Nilay Patel?

  Not a sentence.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  No, it's, it's peanuts.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  They bought it for,

• 7:33Nilay Patel?

  That's true.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  They bought it for one,

• 7:35Speaker 03

  100.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  1/20, 1/4 of WhatsApp.

• 7:40Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so let's, we, let's start way at the, the back. When I, what, way at the back.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. I was born in the year.

• 7:49Nilay Patel?

  So my friends had a band. The band was called AOL Time Warner. Then the band broke up. Then Time Warner continued releasing albums by itself, but nobody listened to them.

• 7:59Speaker 03

  It's a good metaphor.

• 8:00Nilay Patel?

  Like, actually true.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  Remember the stores? They had those, like, physical stores, the Time Warner stores? There was one in my local mall, along with the Zap Comics.

• 8:10Nilay Patel?

  You know what I saw yesterday? I was in DC yesterday. Um, and I was, I flew to DC yesterday because of the train thing, which is crazy and sad. You know, there are people, like, Vox Media people who were gonna be in that train. This is all.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 8:23Nilay Patel?

  This goes, I had a whole little thing planned about how everything should be self-driving, but whatever.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  I'm with you.

• 8:28Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, but I was in, I had to fly in and out of DC yesterday. It was like a super decadent day because I had meetings there. And there's a CNBC store in the DC airport.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:37Nilay Patel?

  What, what is, what, what?

• 8:38Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 8:38Nilay Patel?

  And it was just like, what do you?

• 8:41Nilay Patel?

  What happens here?

• 8:42Speaker 02

  CNBC baseball cap?

• 8:43Nilay Patel?

  No, it's just like, it's called like the CNBC outpost.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  And they just have like magazines.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  I think Fox News stores.

• 8:49Nilay Patel?

  That's like very confusing.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  There's a Mets store across the park. I mean, I suppose people are fans of the Mets.

• 8:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but like who's like, yo, like if you have to choose between a Hudson News and a CNBC store, what about you is like, I bet they have better mints. Like, I'm gonna go.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Oh, they they just sold like airport crap. They didn't sell like CNBC swag.

• 9:09Nilay Patel?

  No, there was a little bit of CNBC swag in there, but like.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  But at a certain point, you reach negative brand equity. And I don't say this is a knock on CNBC, but like, I think in general, like, it's so present that it's hard to really be like, yes, I want more of this 24 hour cable channel. I want to experience it in more aspects of my life.

• 9:29Nilay Patel?

  CNBC gets super weird at night. It's not actually 24 hours, right? Because it's tied to the market.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Oh, so it's like weird like.

• 9:35Nilay Patel?

  Right. So like when I go on CNBC, they're like, they start at 5 a.m. And then it runs until like, seven or eight, and then it's just like crazy things happen on CNBC. Like infomercials and garbage and like, you could probably just buy a show to run on CNBC at like 11 p.m. We should just do that.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  That's a great idea.

• 9:51Nilay Patel?

  We should just start running Verge videos on CNBC.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  We'll just run the Verge cast on CNBC.

• 9:56Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna look into this. I'm making a note right now. Anyway, so Verizon, uh, these rumors have been around for some time.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Have they?

• 10:03Nilay Patel?

  They have.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Well, credit to Bloomberg. I mean, people thought, people, they came out and they, you know, in January, right?

• 10:11Nilay Patel?

  So the deal was happening at Sun Valley, so around that time.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  And so they they denied it. And there was this moment where you were like, so was this guy right? Was this guy making this up? Did he get burned? Like, and that moment, it turned out to have lasted for four months.

• 10:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  And now we know, like, oh, no, he totally had it. But that's a long time to wait to find out.

• 10:33Nilay Patel?

  Well, so in the background, so the, you know, their little TikTok of the deal is that there's this Allen and Co., the investment bank runs a conference called Sun Valley, and the deal was agreed on there. So this dude at Bloomberg, somebody probably told him like, hey, like Lowell McAdam and Tim Armstrong were like drinking beers at the bar at Sun Valley. You know?

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Dude, what about my company?

• 10:52Nilay Patel?

  At Pre ski.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I bet Armstrong was like, yeah, you know, fuck it.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Tim Armstrong doesn't say fuck it. He says like, the synergistic qualities of optionality require me to fuckin' eat it. Yeah, that's what Tim Armstrong says.

• 11:11Nilay Patel?

  As a man who has worked for Tim Armstrong, I can confirm that this is true.

• 11:15Nilay Patel?

  So back with full disclosure, and most people listening to the show, I'm sure are somewhat aware of this. The Verge was started by a bunch of people who left Engadget.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Which was a part of AOL, which it still is.

• 11:25Nilay Patel?

  Which is continues to be a part of AOL.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  For now, and maybe forever.

• 11:30Nilay Patel?

  Well, we'll get into that.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  We'll get there.

• 11:31Nilay Patel?

  AOL, Engadget is now, of course, one of our competitors, but I feel a great affinity for Engadget. It's a thing that I'm.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  We're friends with people that work there and like them.

• 11:39Nilay Patel?

  Yes, although they're currently somewhat mad at us. Sam started, Sam emerged onto the scene as an intern at Engadget.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Out of, out of an egg.

• 11:48Nilay Patel?

  He hatched and he was 16 years old.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  19.

• 11:51Nilay Patel?

  19.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  19.

• 11:53Nilay Patel?

  But anyways, many of our founders, many of our coworkers, the CEO of our company used to work at AOL, the president of our company used to work at AOL.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  I never worked at AOL.

• 11:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Dieter's like the only one of, no, of our founders. I think you might be the only one. Yeah. So just down the line, Vlad, Sean, Thomas Ricker, like many people from The Verge used to work at Engadget and many people at Vox Media used to work at AOL. So there, obviously we have many ideas about, right? We have many thoughts and feelings about AOL as a company. But it is true that Verizon purchased AOL for $4.4 billion. It is true that they now own Engadget and TechCrunch, who are both enormously influential technology sites.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  And the Huffington Post as well.

• 12:33Nilay Patel?

  And the Huffington Post, but Engadget and TechCrunch in particular, right? Cover Verizon, cover mobile, cover all this stuff. Huffington Post is like.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  They cover whatever and everything all the time.

• 12:43Nilay Patel?

  Alec Baldwin just like logs into the Huffington Post and is like, here's some words I thought, you know?

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Well, no, they did. I mean, they do good political stuff, but especially that's the thing. I mean, I think it's, uh, it's interesting. I mean, how much?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  It's weird that this happened after Title II came down, right? Like, I mean, not that I'm suggesting anything, but just like in terms of the urgency of it. Because that would be, that was like the story that all of these publications were covering that involved.

• 13:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Like, the carriers, and you had to really be like, okay, like, is Verizon acting in a way that bears on this large issue that people care about? Whereas now, like, I don't know, it feels less urgent because there's no, there's, I don't know what they would do that would be super interesting to me as a reader, like.

• 13:29Nilay Patel?

  Well, to you, but when I, and when Dieter was at Smartphone Expert and I was at Engadget.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:36Nilay Patel?

  And even now, Verizon is the worst of the carriers.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, they play, they play high jinks with plans lately, but that's like gotten better because of competition, but they used to play, they used to block Bluetooth. They used to block GPS. They used to block Wi-Fi. They used to prevent Google from putting apps on Android on their network.

• 13:56Nilay Patel?

  Right, they just got hit with FTC settlement because they crammed charges on the bills.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, everybody did that.

• 14:02Nilay Patel?

  Well, yeah, but like Verizon has a super cookie that tracks all of your data across their network on every device that you use.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  And that in particular is relevant to this AOL deal because the super cookie has been basically shut down.

• 14:15Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, they, they, they, there's an app that.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  It's, yeah, right.

• 14:18Nilay Patel?

  But I'll ask you this, Russell, currently, there's like a draw, like, I just see some chatter on Twitter about HTTP getting phased out in favor of HTTPS, right?

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:29Nilay Patel?

  So, give me the one sentence background there.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Um, okay, so basically HTTPS is good because.

• 14:36Nilay Patel?

  That's encrypted, right?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's encrypted using SSL. You'll see it, it's by default on like, if you use Gmail or banking or anything sensitive, you'll see the little lock on the screen. And basically that means I can't be like sitting at the router and seeing your bank account balance, right? Because it's sent encrypted. So if you do that, so why would you want to log on to HTTPS verge? Because you might be worried about people at the network level sort of screwing with what's being sent.

• 15:05Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so in response to that, what, I have seen an argument, it was, I think it was in Motherboard today, it was a really good argument.

• 15:14Nilay Patel?

  That, man, it sucks that we're walking away from HTTP, which is the Open Transparent Foundation of the Web, right? Like deprecating, that's a symbolic moment, right?

• 15:24Speaker 01

  I mean, deprecating, it's like...

• 15:26Nilay Patel?

  People are trying to move away from it.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:28Nilay Patel?

  But one of the reasons that you would do that is because we have this universe of network providers who are sniffing your traffic to track you.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:35Nilay Patel?

  And the top of that list is Verizon.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  I know it wasn't Verizon's idea, it was the NSA's idea, right? Like, that's why it's...

• 15:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but you can say NSA stopped doing that, and Verizon's still gonna like sniff all of your packets to figure out your location and your activity to sell it to advertisers.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Well, and so this gets to... So, people talk about how like, okay, Google's an advertising company, but the hot, I mean, the, I don't want to say the hot take, but like the smart analysis, I mean, we had a piece about this, was that this was really an ad deal.

• 16:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Ben wrote that.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And the, you know, Verizon is an ad company, right? Like, that's sort of what this is, is that this helps Verizon be a better ad company. And Verizon, like, the carrier business is the carrier business, it's not going anywhere. But as an ad company, they can keep growing and growing and growing really well and returning shareholder value, right?

• 16:29Nilay Patel?

  Well, so nobody thinks about ad tech, right? And I think, it's like a blind spot for the industry, for at least consumer tech coverage. Like, we don't run a lot of ad tech stories on The Verge, it just doesn't occur. But here's a thing I knew about AOL, and again, just laying out my preconceptions about AOL. AOL owned our content brands, that the group I was in, AOL bought the Huffington Post, which is precipitated sort of us leaving to start The Verge. And they kind of never had any idea how to manage any of this stuff. And the rumor right now is that they're gonna spin off the Huffington Post.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Right, but keep the rest.

• 17:05Nilay Patel?

  But keep and gadget tech around sort of this other content group that they purchased. That's fine. And I, you know, I can tell you many hilarious stories about AOL mismanaging media brands. That's a, you know, anybody listening to this, you know, come, come to New York, buy me a couple of drinks and we can get into it. But what is fascinating to me is that Tim Armstrong used to work at Google. He was the head of ad sales at Google and what he has been doing at AOL and AOL, I think in Yahoo are very interesting parallels.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:35Nilay Patel?

  At AOL, Tim Armstrong has been buying ad tech startup after ad tech startup after ad tech startup. And he has built this monster of like, of, you know, valuable software that can do things that are important for the internet. So they can track you, they can, you know, you can find your audience, right? You will really want to put your, um, I don't know, your energy drink in front of 18 to 35 year old males. Like they will find you and they will put that ad in front of you. Right? You know, it's like Amazon, you, you look for stuff on Amazon and it's. It's that, but like it higher and higher levels of sophistication.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:10Nilay Patel?

  And then you look at Yahoo and Marissa Meyer was the head of consumer products at Google. And she'd bought consumer startup after consumer startup after consumer startup. And now she has nothing valuable at all. And it's like the, the two parallel universe, like these companies are mirror images of each other. And you just look at where they made the investments in terms of.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  People were, were agitating for AOL and Yahoo to merge.

• 18:30Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Up until like, I think like people finally.

• 18:33Nilay Patel?

  Until like 10 minutes ago.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:36Nilay Patel?

  But what is fascinating about that is if you think about what Verizon is now, it's just screens, right? If the future of all of our media and tech is like, kind of like re, turning everything back into like cable networks, which is kind of where we're headed. Verizon has like a billion screens connected to a broadband network. They have home internet users connected to their file service. They just have screens and connection points everywhere. And if they can build the layer that connects all of that to advertising, then it kind of doesn't matter if AOL's content brands are good or bad. So, but you can like just slough those right off and what you've got is. Um, you've got the technology layer that delivers advertising to all of these screens.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  But spin out for me, what precise method Verizon uses to give me these ads? Because in everybody's dream world for Verizon's role in the ecosystem is you're a dumb pipe. All you do is get me to the content that I want. And sure, those content providers are giving me ads. But is Verizon injecting ads like in the process of going there? Or are they selling it to the content?

• 19:40Nilay Patel?

  I think this is where the cable network metaphor comes into play, right? So if you are the ABC affiliate in New York City, you have some, and you're showing, I don't know, Dancing with the Stars, that ABC? You have some ads.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  There's some national ads or some local affiliate ads.

• 19:56Nilay Patel?

  There's some affiliate ads that you get to sell. There's some like ABC stole some ads and then your cable partner Verizon or Comcast, whoever sold some ads.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:05Nilay Patel?

  And all of those slots get filled and there's a huge stack of people and systems and processes that sell those ads and make that money. And it's obviously very valuable because television advertising is very valuable. But at the same time, money is moving away from TV towards the internet. So if your bet and if anybody, if anybody listening to the show follows media companies, like we all say the same things, right? I think Vox TV is very special. I love working here. The Burge is very special, but when we go out and talk about the company, we're like, we have a great proprietary technology solution enabled by data and we're investing in video. And like, you can walk over to BuzzFeed and they will say the same thing to you. And you walk over to Vice and they'll say the same thing to you. Because that's the future. It's like everybody sees it, right? You, you build a cool platform that enables great experiences. You put ads on it.

• 20:48Nilay Patel?

  You put a lot of data near it so that advertisers can get near the right people at the right time. So you can like do sponsored content and put that in front of the right people at the right time. And then you spend a bunch of money making videos because as people stop watching TV and start watching video on their phone, you want to capture all those old TV dollars.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:03Nilay Patel?

  And none of the infrastructure to do local advertising or national advertising, or like a big company makes a deal and we're going to put ads everywhere. That, all of that is the ad tech. It's replacing that old series of like four, you know, when the Sony leak came out? And like half of the documents were like sad people being like, well, we traded. You know, NBC some free airtime for an old bad Sony movie because they gave us free ad spots for a new like.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 21:30Nilay Patel?

  That's on paper, right? Like, that's just people on paper being like, we called the we called the NBC affiliate in Wichita and we gave them Air Bud 4 for free so that when we put out Spider-Man, they'll give us some free airtime next to whatever, right? Like, that used to be done on paper and now we're gonna do it with computers. That's ad tech.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  But see, so this is what's interesting and this is.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  But, but.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:54Nilay Patel?

  By the way, I have no idea if Air Bud 4 is a Sony movie. I'm sure someone's gonna tweet.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  What's interesting, though, is that.

• 21:58Nilay Patel?

  I don't even know if there was an Air Bud 4.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  If you think about Verizon as a provider of a bandwidth of a service of the internet, there's no inherent reason that they need that they ought to be involved in that business other than it's like incredibly lucrative and they might have a couple of extra levers to pull in terms of tracking its customers.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Well, that's the thing. They have the data, right?

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  And that's like where the super cookie comes in and all that, all those.

• 22:25Nilay Patel?

  Right. Verizon knows where you are. They know what you're looking at. They can, with the super cookie, they can literally sniff you on a packet level.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:32Nilay Patel?

  They have your billing information. They have your social security address. They know who's on your family plan.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  I mean, and this is like the two-year-old Verge piece now, but like where you are isn't just where you your address is, right?

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  It's like physically your location at all times.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Because you're going to a cell tower and I mean, and that's not absolutely perfect, but they're already using that as a sort of boutique marketing thing where if you say, okay, we wanna, you know, we wanna market to these people in this location, they will, they will sort of.

• 23:03Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, wait. Air Bud 4, John just told me, Air Bud 4 was entitled Air Bud's Seventh Inning.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  What? The Seventh Inning Stretch?

• 23:12Nilay Patel?

  If a seventh inning fetch.

• 23:16Nilay Patel?

  Just to be clear, Air Bud 4 was titled Air Bud 7th inning fetch. I do not know if it was, it was made by Walt Disney, not by Sony. I apologize for the error here on the verge cast.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Probably sounds straight to video to me.

• 23:28Nilay Patel?

  Straight to video. I mean, I hear it. Josh is off to his first year of college and Buddy has stayed behind with Josh's little sister Andrea and the rest of the family. Andrea, this is, this is our ad. Instead of doing a real ad, I'm just gonna read the plot of Air Bud 4.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Air Bud 6, um, what's, what's the pun for him?

• 23:45Nilay Patel?

  Andrea attempting to fit in with her junior high classmates decides to join the baseball team and along the way discovers that Buddy also has the uncanny ability to play baseball.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  I mean, that does make sense.

• 23:59Nilay Patel?

  It turns out the kidnappers are researchers kidnapping puppies because they thought they had a special gene that would enable them to play sports.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Wait kidnappers?

• 24:07Nilay Patel?

  Buddy must find them and make it to the major league as he goes to bat for the Anaheim Angels.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Wait, is it a different dog in each movie?

• 24:14Speaker 02

  The, the.

• 24:15Nilay Patel?

  I have no idea.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  The Anaheim Angels, that all they do is move bad movie commercial tie-ins, right?

• 24:20Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  They're not an actual baseball team.

• 24:22Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, if you're worried about the future of media and Verizon buying these, you know, tech companies or tech brands and shutting them down. Just know that something happened in the world where Air Bud 4 was worth it.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Well, no, this is the classic. You were like, here's the dystopian vision of media, but don't worry about it. Air Bud 4.

• 24:40Nilay Patel?

  The classic.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 24:41Nilay Patel?

  But don't worry, Air Bud 4 is here.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Um, well, I mean, okay, so this is.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Hang on, hang on, hang on. There's actually technically an Air Bud 5.

• 24:49Nilay Patel?

  Is it?

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Air Bud spikes back.

• 24:52Nilay Patel?

  Oh my God, we're done with this. Is that a volleyball movie?

• 24:54Speaker 02

  It's a volleyball.

• 24:54Nilay Patel?

  We're super done with this.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  John, John's giving us the details.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  I don't believe the.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  It's basketball, football.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Golden receiver.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Soccer, baseball, volleyball.

• 25:05Nilay Patel?

  See, it's like, you know, like media was broken before. That's all I'm saying.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  The next sport that he will tackle is.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  I think they did a spinoff. There's a chimp that played hockey.

• 25:15Nilay Patel?

  No. Anyway, my point to bring this all, there's a chimp that plays hockey?

• 25:19Speaker 01

  I'm saying that was in a separate film. So that was why they didn't do hockey. If you were wondering why there wasn't an Air Bud hockey movie.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  It doesn't involve balls. All the rest of it involves sports balls.

• 25:28Nilay Patel?

  He's gotta play tennis on the next, right?

• 25:30Speaker 01

  This is scattered.

• 25:31Nilay Patel?

  And then he plays hockey ball. There's a real Espy Nation crossover here.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  And then he plays shuffleboard because he's retired.

• 25:36Nilay Patel?

  Sam, hype check Air Bud.

• 25:39Nilay Patel?

  Sam's just shaking his head.

• 25:41Speaker 03

  What are we talking about here?

• 25:43Speaker 02

  We're talking about Verizon buying AOL.

• 25:44Nilay Patel?

  And how it's changed the whole media industry forever.

• 25:46Speaker 03

  Is there a world where, is there a world where you turn on your television, you're watching the Engadget channel on your Verizon Files cable box?

• 25:52Nilay Patel?

  Yes, there could be that world.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  Is there a world where you buy a Verizon phone?

• 25:54Nilay Patel?

  But I don't think that's not why they, but that's not why they bought.

• 25:57Speaker 03

  Right, it's for the tech.

• 25:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they bought it for the ad tech. No, like, think about, like, you know Comcast is a really valuable big company, right? Um, other cable networks are really valuable big companies.

• 26:09Nilay Patel?

  Internet is a, like, right, it's a

• 26:11Speaker 03

  Valuable.

• 26:11Nilay Patel?

  It's valuable, right? That service is valuable. Verizon is basically saying, okay, now we have wireless connections to all these devices. We're gonna do for the internet what TV companies, how they've made money, which is figuring out how to put ads everywhere. Like, all these little spots on these stacks.

• 26:27Speaker 03

  That sucks.

• 26:29Nilay Patel?

  Well.

• 26:29Speaker 03

  For the consumer. Ads are everywhere.

• 26:31Nilay Patel?

  But it's weird because that's the core of, like, AOL's business now.

• 26:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:35Nilay Patel?

  Engadget and TechCrunch and Huffington Post are not the core of that business. And it's also funny because AOL still runs like a $2 billion dial-up service.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:42Nilay Patel?

  And now, now the phone company owns the dial-up service.

• 26:46Speaker 03

  Kara Swisher had a really good tweet. I don't know if you guys saw it. Did you, did any of you see it? Her tweet about the

• 26:50Speaker 02

  I've seen lots of tweets.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  Uh, Kara Swisher is about, um, the, the AOL dude. She was like, I feel like anytime AOL gets bought, that's the burst of the bubble.

• 26:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:01Speaker 03

  Such a smart thing to say.

• 27:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, I just, I, I think, you know, your point about Title II net neutrality, like, I, I am very concerned. You know, AOL, uh, or Verizon launched a blog earlier.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Sugar String.

• 27:12Nilay Patel?

  Sugar String, in December, uh, December 2014.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  It lasted all of like, three days?

• 27:16Nilay Patel?

  Right, so the, the editor of Sugar String, which is Verizon's blog, was like recruiting for writers. And his letter is, like, emails to people included lines like, "The only restrictions are we can't write about spying or net neutrality." And it's like, I know how this goes. Like, I've worked at AOL, I've, I was the managing editor of Engadget. Like, the pressure, I never felt any editorial pressure, and I'm sure those teams over there, they're of the highest integrity.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, there have been some really great disclaimers.

• 27:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they, they, I mean, they're, they're like in full rebellion mode, and that's great for them, and I love them for doing it. But the pressure comes not all at once. It comes in a steady drip of people being somewhat angry with you. And it comes with Verizon owning you and not knowing that the value of a publication comes from its credibility, not from its, like, ability to, like, toe the line. And that That lesson is hard for companies that haven't been media companies before. And it was, it was hard at AOL because AOL is going from a providing, like AOL, Time Warner and AOL merged because Time Warner was the media company and AOL was the access company.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  Right?

• 28:21Nilay Patel?

  Right. And it was hard for AOL to learn that lesson and they split up. And now Verizon is merging with AOL because Verizon is the network company, the access company. And AOL is the media company and it's just incredible reversal. And so I'm hoping for all those themes that like Verizon doesn't do what Verizon is almost certainly going to do, which is want to control everything. And it's going to be rough for them. When the Samsung Galaxy, Galaxy S7 comes out and it's loaded with a VZ Navigator and like you push the wrong button and charges you $5 because that's what Verizon does. They're going to have to just like attack their paycheck.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:54Nilay Patel?

  That's the way that works now and it's going to be, I think, very difficult. I don't know, that's, that's the, the truly dystopian.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. But you don't have any, uh, nobody, nobody seems to think that like the FCC is going to stop this or the FTC.

• 29:08Nilay Patel?

  No, I don't think so. They're radically different businesses.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:10Nilay Patel?

  But it's like when I worked at AOL, this is, here's a true story. When I worked at AOL, um, I was at Engadget, was the first time we started covering net neutrality.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:18Nilay Patel?

  And there was going to be a set of hearings in Congress. I don't remember if it was the House or Senate. And I was like, we should submit for me to go and talk. I would love to go and like testify in front of Congress about what consumers are saying to us in our comments and what we cover and like how this industry actually works. And I was shut down by AOL's lawyers. Because they were like, you will, you're going there not to speak for Engadget and consumers and you're going to speak for AOL and we run an access business.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:45Nilay Patel?

  Hmm. And we don't want you to screw with that.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 29:48Nilay Patel?

  And that was like, it was like a moment. I was like, wow, I am outgunned in this conversation. Like I didn't even fight it. I mean, that's like a very small story, but like that's the, it's going to be rough. Like it's going to be super rough when, um, you know, there's a court decision and it cites an Engadget piece that I wrote about net neutrality against Verizon. Right? Like that's true. That exists. It's on the site.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:13Nilay Patel?

  They, figuring that out is going to be very difficult.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  So we shouldn't, I mean, look, it doesn't really matter because the person that decides what news stories we see or don't see is Mark Zuckerberg.

• 30:23Nilay Patel?

  That's true.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 30:24Nilay Patel?

  I gotta read the ad and then we'll do this.

• 30:28Nilay Patel?

  Anyone that has worked in a corporate environment knows how painful intranets can be. The content is stale, the interface is ugly, and you can't access it on your phone. Igloo is an intranet that you'll actually like because it's designed for the user. That's you. It gives you the flexibility to get your work done how you want, where you want, and on whatever device you want. Igloo is truly building a product meant for 2015, not 1997. Like Sam. I like that I fill the ads with burns against all the people on the show. Igloo is built with easy to use apps like file sharing, calendars, social news feed, and task management. Everything can be social with comments, like buttons. Anyone can add content based on their permissions with drag and drop widgets. There's a WYSIWYG editor.

• 31:10Nilay Patel?

  Igloo makes use of responsive web design, so it looks fantastic on all of your devices. You can sign up right now. igloosoftware.com/vergecast for a free trial and you can get started today.

• 31:24Nilay Patel?

  End money. End the money zone.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  End money.

• 31:28Nilay Patel?

  What we need, and I know this is primarily an audio show, but on the video, we need like, we need like an endless loop of a tunnel that like starts while we read the ad and when we're done with the ad, we like exit the tunnel into the sunshine.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Money tunnel.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Money tunnel. Facebook is the money tunnel.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  All right. All right. So the story with Facebook is that they have made instant articles where publishers can put, okay, so first of all, we've been calling them publishers, but it's like, once you're putting your stuff into Facebook, you're not really a publisher anymore.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Facebook's the publisher.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  No, publishing implies like you make the thing that gets distributed. The actual thing that is distributed. You make the website, you make the thing. The act of publishing is, I made a thing, here's the thing.

• 32:14Nilay Patel?

  I disagree.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 32:16Nilay Patel?

  What is our publisher? Marty Mo is the publisher for the Verge. He does none of that.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, but he like, the website is the thing that we make.

• 32:25Nilay Patel?

  But he doesn't make that either.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  Well, like the classic role.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  He says, here's the thing.

• 32:30Nilay Patel?

  I'm saying, I'm saying, right. He gestures to it grandly. I'm saying that the word is bad. We need to let the word go. We need a new word for publisher. We need, you know, you know what we are? Yeah.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Platters.

• 32:40Nilay Patel?

  I'm wearing a kill.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  What?

• 32:43Nilay Patel?

  If you were hoping for an episode of the Vergecast in which I murdered everyone. That moment has come.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  It's a platform publisher.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Platform publisher, platisher.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  But the beauty of the word is it makes it's the word is just ugly as the concept.

• 32:57Nilay Patel?

  He's just sitting in the corner mocking us for having this conversation.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  Quartz has announced that they're an API company now, that they don't publish, they make a journalism API.

• 33:07Nilay Patel?

  Seriously, like, what if I lived in a world in which everyone else was dead?

• 33:12Speaker 02

  I'd be alive with you.

• 33:12Nilay Patel?

  Would people stop saying the word platisher?

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Platishers have given their content to Facebook to publish directly inside the Facebook app so you don't load their website. Because Facebook claims that eight seconds, which is the number that they keep on touting, which is crazy. Have we timed that? Yeah.

• 33:26Nilay Patel?

  We should start timing them.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Is too long and they want the stuff directly in there.

• 33:29Nilay Patel?

  So who are the partners?

• 33:30Speaker 02

  If you sell ads.

• 33:31Nilay Patel?

  Sounds like get to work.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  As a platisher, if you sell ads, you get to keep 100%. If Facebook sells them, you get to keep 70%. And everybody in the media industry has so many feelings about this. Because we're already, like, Facebook's already directing just fire hoses of traffic.

• 33:51Nilay Patel?

  Right. So for some sites, Facebook is like more than 50% of their traffic.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:55Nilay Patel?

  And that is like people post it, stuff in the newsfeed and you click on it and it opens a mobile web view.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:00Nilay Patel?

  It takes eight seconds to load. How's that Apple Watch going, man?

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Aw, man.

• 34:05Nilay Patel?

  You know what's really great is when you're talking to someone and then somebody just like.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  You were talking to Russell.

• 34:10Nilay Patel?

  Glances at your watch and starts mocking with it.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 34:13Nilay Patel?

  It's the best. It's real.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:15Nilay Patel?

  And then they start doing, because it, with the Apple Watch, it has the crown. It's like a very like, on the side.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  So here's the problem.

• 34:22Nilay Patel?

  It's not like tapping a screen. It's like, it's this other move. It's like this long, like stroke.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  If, if this were an Android Wear device, it would have been a much shorter interaction.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Cool story. Wow, shots fired.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  It would have bothered you less.

• 34:39Nilay Patel?

  I'm trying to have emotions about that. I just don't.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  I'm just saying.

• 34:43Nilay Patel?

  If this was a different smartwatch, it would have been annoying in a different way, but for less time.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it would have been less intrusive.

• 34:48Nilay Patel?

  Anyway.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 34:49Nilay Patel?

  So Facebook Instant.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:51Nilay Patel?

  Right now you do this, but instead they're going to preload the articles into Facebook. I think.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  And they've added little giga's and widgets and you can tilt the phone and.

• 34:59Nilay Patel?

  I think it's all from the paper app that they made.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:02Nilay Patel?

  You can see why they made that for this.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:04Nilay Patel?

  I feel like this is like a totally.

• 35:08Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. Media story, inside baseball, crazy media.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Well, the main thing is like, it was, the, the thing that was really catnip for media was there were, I forget how many, there were a bunch of publications that were in the alpha and it was like, who's on the list? And everyone was kind of looking around, it's like, oh, well, the times, you know, of course it's the times, Der Spiegel was on there.

• 35:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I didn't realize.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Wait, what?

• 35:29Nilay Patel?

  Bill is on.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Oh, Bill. I was, I was like, yeah, no, uh, yeah. And the Guardian and everything, it was just like, and everyone sort of, it, it's like, how do you get media people to go crazy? Is you draw a line around some publications and not others. And you're like, everyone's like, oh my God, this is the worst thing. I mean, there are like horrifying aspects of it.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  Who, who are the publishers, just for the people listening to this podcast?

• 35:51Nilay Patel?

  The New York Times, BuzzFeed, National Geographic, Der Spiegel, Build. I think there's some highlights. The Atlantic.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Which I was like, hmm. Um, but I mean, good for them. Yeah.

• 36:00Nilay Patel?

  Good for them.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  No, I mean, great. Uh, and well, and I think like National Geographic does incredible science stuff. And like, I do think it, it's sort of like, I was like, okay, yeah, these are all like, these are all legit.

• 36:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I, I don't know. I kind of want Facebook to precache the stuff.

• 36:15Speaker 03

  It's, it loads instantly. It's a much better experience than hitting like the full URL.

• 36:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 36:20Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's like, we put our videos, we spend an enormous amount of time and money making videos and we put them on Facebook. Yeah. On Facebook and on, uh, YouTube.

• 36:28Speaker 03

  What are?

• 36:29Nilay Patel?

  Uh, there's, there's just no difference for me. Like the inside baseball media stuff for me is like, we don't get 50% of our traffic from Facebook.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 36:38Nilay Patel?

  We, we have, I mean, I'll tell you, I'll tell you the numbers.

• 36:41Speaker 03

  Sources, yeah.

• 36:42Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like 21% of our traffic is just people coming to the Verge.com.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:46Nilay Patel?

  Very few other publications have that traffic.

• 36:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, strong home page traffic.

• 36:50Nilay Patel?

  30% of our traffic is people just searching iVerge.

• 36:54Nilay Patel?

  It's just that. 30% of our traffic is just Reddit typing iVerge into a comment box and then mailing us knives. It's crazy. I don't, it's weird. I don't know what to do with it.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  But I think what's interesting about it culturally is you do get the sense that people think this is like, kind of a beginning of a new era of like, what websites are going to feel like?

• 37:14Speaker 03

  I agree with that.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  That like, we had the, everyone's freaking out about Google era.

• 37:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  And then.

• 37:20Nilay Patel?

  Which by the way, I never cared about that era. I never felt threatened or nervous about Google News. I always thought that that fear was based in like, um, like a fundamental misunderstanding of what Google was doing and.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Maybe it could have gone that way, but it was like, it never seemed like it was going to to me.

• 37:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  Whereas this time around, like, Facebook has this incredible, when they talk about it publicly, they're like, "Yeah, we just want to make yous happy, and I don't know what you're so worried about. It seems fine."

• 37:51Speaker 03

  That sounds like a character from South Park.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, seriously.

• 37:54Nilay Patel?

  But that character in South Park is like a noted child molester.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Right. They play dumb about media concerns about Facebook taking over the media business on the web.

• 38:03Nilay Patel?

  I just.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  Constantly.

• 38:05Speaker 03

  What are the implications of Facebook Instant in the next calendar year? Will, will people, so the way you see articles on Facebook now is you, you like that page and Facebook knows to surface articles that you would think are interesting.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Well, they look at a million signals. They look at what you click on, what you stop on.

• 38:23Speaker 03

  The point I want to make is, will Facebook's partners, i.e. BuzzFeed and New York Times, will these articles now begin showing up for people who don't follow those pages at all? And this is Facebook transitioning. How do you know?

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Because they said so. They're not, they're, Facebook for now, they could change their mind. Facebook for now is not changing the algorithm of what you see in the newsfeed. They're just making certain things that you see in the newsfeed faster.

• 38:46Speaker 03

  I think there's a, there's a future and.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  But they may change it later, but even if they don't, the fact that these things load faster is likely to get people to like click the like button more often. So they're not changing the algorithm, but they're like, oh, like, you know, it's a meritocracy, whatever.

• 39:01Nilay Patel?

  It's funny, we just talked about AOL. I wrote the thing, it's, yes, Facebook is the new AOL.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:07Nilay Patel?

  Facebook is becoming like a walled guard. It's like a place that you can go to on your phone.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:12Nilay Patel?

  And then everything will be in that place.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:14Nilay Patel?

  And it doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't. You know why? Because like, maybe all the traffic from Facebook will go to this handful of chosen websites.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  No, but it's, are they even getting, is that registering as traffic for them?

• 39:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, of course it is.

• 39:26Speaker 03

  Oh. No, yes, maybe?

• 39:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, of course it is. Oh, that's right. They're including Comcast. Like, Comcast and Comscore and Google Analytics and BuzzFeed was like, "We got to put our own internal tool in there."

• 39:37Speaker 03

  Like, okay, so it's not, it's not stripping.

• 39:39Nilay Patel?

  Their early partners are stupid, right?

• 39:41Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:42Nilay Patel?

  Almost all like

• 39:44Speaker 01

  They were like

• 39:46Nilay Patel?

  The CEO of the Atlantic was like, we're going into this with eyes open and like The director of platforms at BuzzFeed is like, we're going into this with eyes open and it's like, did you all have a meeting?

• 39:55Speaker 03

  Here's the play. I just, I, is it a desperation?

• 39:59Nilay Patel?

  No. I mean, I don't have any control over these partnerships, but if we could put our stuff and make it load faster in Facebook, I'd like do it in a heartbeat.

• 40:07Speaker 03

  You know what? You're giving, you're giving kids so much control.

• 40:11Nilay Patel?

  They already have it. Like, it's their platform, right? Like, we might as well like, share some money with them and, and, and And have a better experience for people. It's like, think about all of the people and you're out there. If you're listening to this, I guarantee you've done this. You've tried to watch a video on The Verge.

• 40:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:25Nilay Patel?

  You've gotten mad at a player. And you've, and you've left a comment that's like, you should, why YouTube? Why angry words? I verge, I hate you, right?

• 40:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:32Nilay Patel?

  That's our commenters. That's my Russian organ. Well, and so we like, put the stuff on YouTube. We know it's a better experience for people.

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:40Nilay Patel?

  And there are some revenue reasons that we need to have on our player on our site. Because we sell ads, pre-roll, and YouTube doesn't let us put pre-roll.

• 40:47Speaker 03

  Look, I, I think, I, I agree with you in the sense-

• 40:50Nilay Patel?

  We know that we would rather have people go watch it on YouTube.

• 40:53Speaker 03

  It's a better experience and I agree that it's-

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Why are we talking about YouTube?

• 40:56Speaker 03

  It's, it's, it's a parallel. Yeah. It's a direct parallel.

• 40:59Nilay Patel?

  How do you pronounce the word "parallel"?

• 41:00Speaker 03

  Parallel?

• 41:02Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  Parallel?

• 41:03Nilay Patel?

  Parallel.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  Hey guys, I'm from Chicago. Parallel.

• 41:06Nilay Patel?

  What does that mean?

• 41:08Speaker 03

  Parallel.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  The burner is from the burn.

• 41:11Nilay Patel?

  Chicago?

• 41:12Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 41:12Nilay Patel?

  Because of the way that you mispronounce the word "parallel"?

• 41:15Speaker 03

  Parallel?

• 41:16Nilay Patel?

  No!

• 41:17Speaker 03

  Like, parallel's desktop.

• 41:19Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  So, whatever. We're not talking about this anymore.

• 41:22Nilay Patel?

  Okay, okay. That's how you pronounce the word if you're gonna end it with parallelogram. Right?

• 41:27Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  What are we talking about here, guys?

• 41:29Nilay Patel?

  Your mispronunciation. Parallel.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  I have a hot take, Facebook takes.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  I just, I'm afraid, I'm afraid that we'll move toward a world where, I mean, Facebook, Eli, right? So, the experience of Facebook Instant is a, is better than the eight second loading time. I agree with you on that. It's better to watch YouTube videos than using some jank built-in player. I agree with that too. I'm just afraid of a world where- Facebook has complete control over the news stories its users see.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Hey Sam, can you, can you just really quickly apologize to me for the thousands of times you've poo-pooed me when I've talked about the open web and why it matters? Just really quick.

• 42:12Nilay Patel?

  Finally. Yeah, this is happening.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  Wait, how many, how many, when have I poo-pooed you about the open web? No way.

• 42:18Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's going on, I'm RL team, we're live on the Verge chat. That's the, I don't know where we've gotten.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  But, okay, so this goes to my hot take, which is like, when everything...

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Your hot, your hot poo-poo take?

• 42:32Speaker 01

  My hot Facebook take about why open standards are important.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  So like, when everyone, time was...

• 42:43Speaker 02

  No, no, go ahead.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  You could have, you could build a successful personal blog.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  By having a lot of RSS followers.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Right?

• 42:53Speaker 02

  We did that, that's us.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  That's, that's, well, and I mean, and I think one of the things that's, so I mean, people are talking about like the nightmare scenario of this thing. And I don't think it's that like, your favorite professional publication is suddenly wiped off the map by like, Facebook decides, you know, they don't like The Verge anymore and no one sees a Verge article on Facebook ever again, that's not gonna happen. But, at the same time, a lot of like, people who just sort of, I think of them as old web bloggers because it's just like a guy in a room blogging and a lot of people read what he writes. But Jason Kocci had a post a while ago where he was like, yeah, you know, since Google Reader shut down, like, actually, you know, that was kind of a big hit for me. I think that's how a lot of people were reading it. I think a lot of people sort of turned away from this model of web consumption after that shutdown.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  And like, yeah, like, I'm kind of, I mean, he wasn't like, making any announcements where you sort of like, yeah, like, this whole thing is becoming less appealing to me. Like, I think the thing that he does is not something that travels really well on Facebook. Like, I read Kocci every day, but like, I don't think, and I mean, I think that's...

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Well, I read it by RSS.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, exactly, that's what I do too.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  But then, he started, well, around that time, he started putting stuff not on RSS.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:04Speaker 02

  And I mean, I wrote the defense of RSS when Google Reader went down. It's like, it should be an essential part of like, the plumbing of the internet.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  But...

• 44:13Speaker 03

  Normals don't use RSS, and that's a problem.

• 44:15Nilay Patel?

  Do you use RSS at all?

• 44:16Speaker 03

  I use it, no.

• 44:17Nilay Patel?

  I check RSS.

• 44:20Speaker 03

  It should be at like, an eight or a nine because it's probably the best way to consume... Things on the web in an organized way, but it's like on a four right now, maybe a three.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Well, no, but I mean, but so that's the like, what's, what's sad about it to me is basically, we had this era of I'm gonna start a WordPress blog, or I'm going to host my own blog. And that enabled like a certain kind of publication. And it's becoming clear that that era is kind of, I mean, that over, that era has been in decline for a little while.

• 44:52Nilay Patel?

  So I have a theory about this.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:56Nilay Patel?

  Like, and I think it, it goes to your point about sort of generations.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:01Nilay Patel?

  I think there's a lot of people who, a lot of great writers who started their own sites, who did their own plumbing, who like built their own house.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you had to.

• 45:10Nilay Patel?

  Because you had to.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  If you were going to be one of the first generation bloggers, you had to.

• 45:13Nilay Patel?

  You had to. And now they're very prominent. We know who they are and we care about them and their opinions are really valuable. And all of them have an enormous blind spot, which is Tumblr. Because that next generation of bloggers is all happening on Tumblr.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Can I tell you, I, I like the internet generally.

• 45:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  But like of social media platforms, Tumblr is the only one that I can go to that actually makes me feel good.

• 45:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Like I use Twitter a lot.

• 45:38Nilay Patel?

  Tumblr feels more like the old internet to me than anything else.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Cause it's just teens whining about One Direction and Supernatural.

• 45:45Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, I mean, like we, I won't say names, but like we're about to make a few hires to continue growing The Verge. And several of them, like basically their reference check was another one of our writers being like, I read them on Tumblr and they're great.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:00Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Brittany Holloway Brown, a great designer, um, who's on, uh,

• 46:04Nilay Patel?

  Ract.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Ract, right. I was like, which of the, yeah. Um, and she's amazing and has done amazing work on Ract. But I had been following her on Tumblr before and as soon as we hired her, I was like, oh my God, she's amazing on Tumblr. Like, that's so wonderful.

• 46:16Nilay Patel?

  Right. And so I just think there's this blind spot where.

• 46:20Nilay Patel?

  If you're, but I don't consume Tumblr as much as anything, right? Like, it's just there, it's in the periphery of my world.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:28Nilay Patel?

  But there are like, there's an entire universe of activity on Tumblr that mirrors the universe activity of old blogs where you'd set up a WordPress and do like pingbacks to your movable type.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:39Nilay Patel?

  And you would all link around in a circle to each other.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Don't talk to me about pingbacks, I miss that stuff so bad.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  What is a pingback?

• 46:47Nilay Patel?

  It's like a reblog.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  It's like a trackback, trackback. So if you put up a blog post and I link to your blog post, your blog post knows that I linked to it. This is part of the original spec, what they wanted to do for the web.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Ted Nelson, right?

• 46:59Speaker 02

  Right. And so you on your post could have, if you wanted, you could list all your trackbacks or linkbacks at the bottom, and so you would know that I linked to you, and then I, like, I would link to you. So like, I could read your post, and then I could read all the websites, all the other blog posts that had links to the clever thing you wrote, and then just like go around and find other people.

• 47:18Nilay Patel?

  Right, so it's like, um...

• 47:20Speaker 02

  But it turned into a vector for both the most hellacious spam you could imagine.

• 47:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  And it just got hard to...

• 47:26Speaker 01

  You know that this is Jaren Lanyer's plan for how we get to like full communism.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  He's like, pingbacks are gonna save the middle class. This is, I kid you not, like, a year and a half ago, an idea a lot of people took really seriously.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  And I was just like, I don't understand what's happening.

• 47:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  I will say that, um...

• 47:47Nilay Patel?

  I mean, people saying crazy shit about the internet is my favorite. Like, maybe we should shut down The Verge and just publish those every day.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  There are, okay, like, for real, there are things about pingbacks that like are legitimately cool.

• 47:57Nilay Patel?

  Here we go.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  That have enabled legitimately cool things on the web that are now gone.

• 48:00Nilay Patel?

  Ah!

• 48:01Speaker 02

  That's all I'm saying.

• 48:02Nilay Patel?

  Grandpa Bones.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  Goddamn it!

• 48:04Speaker 03

  Somebody order a pizza.

• 48:05Nilay Patel?

  Alright, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read the next ad. Russell, we're gonna switch you out for Josh, and we're gonna do...

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:10Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna do some time on rats. Thank you, Russell, for being here.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Thank you, thank you.

• 48:13Nilay Patel?

  Are we clapping?

• 48:13Speaker 03

  I clap for Russell.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Thank you, Sam.

• 48:15Nilay Patel?

  I'm clapping for money.

• 48:18Nilay Patel?

  Today's episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Tripcase. Tripcase helps brilliant people take over 30 million trips last year by collecting their flight, hotel, and other trip items into a single app on your phone or tablet. You also get free flight notifications if you get delayed or a gate changes. And with support for Pebble on Android Wear, you'll always be up to date. Too bad you have the wrong watch, Dieter.

• 48:37Speaker 03

  Racked.

• 48:37Nilay Patel?

  To get started, go to tripcase.com/vergecast to sign up. And if you are still not convinced, here is why Tripcase is a place where trips live. There's Ubering in creation, fills in your pickup and drop off locations based on your trip, shows you Uber rates right in the app. You just click, you get a ride, you're in a car, you're on your way home. There's free flight alerts, Tripcase will automatically alert you if any changes to your trip, like a flight delay or a gate change via email or notification on your phone, tablet, or smartwatch. You can share your trip, you can remember this place, you can easily save restaurants you find in trips, you can always remember the next time you're in town. You can get weather at your destination with just a click. There are seat maps, because when you're on a plane, the seat you're in is an indicator of status and class. This is true, that's why they're called first class. And you can look at those maps and pick the right seat.

• 49:19Nilay Patel?

  Go to tripcase.com/vergecast to check it out today.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  There's a dude who took off his pants in the background while you were reading that ad.

• 49:29Nilay Patel?

  That just straight up happened. You know, I was, I had lunch with Helen Trey today. Helen's our engagement editor, Trey's our video producer, and Michael Zlenko. And Helen was telling us a story. She used to work for ad agencies, and agencies are notoriously crazy. And apparently, there's a profile of an ad agency, we were talking about creative directors and Shingy and AWOL and all these crazy people who work in these agencies. And there's a profile of an agency in New York where the guy was like, "Yeah, you know, when I want to get really creative in meetings, I just take off all my clothes." And we were like, "We don't, we don't have any of this chaos."

• 50:01Speaker 02

  No.

• 50:01Nilay Patel?

  And then I, then we spent kind of a while threatening to come back in the office and take off our clothes, that was our joke. And then it just happened.

• 50:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:08Nilay Patel?

  Good story, Neil. Josh Jezza is here.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  Welcome. Is this your first Vergecast or can't be?

• 50:12Speaker 03

  It is, yeah.

• 50:13Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Ladies and gentlemen, Josh Jezza.

• 50:17Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 50:18Speaker 04

  The Vergecast debut.

• 50:19Nilay Patel?

  The listener of the Vergecast probably doesn't know Josh. Josh is our reports editor. He edits almost all of the stuff that goes on the site during the day. This is true. So, most of our reporters and writers work through Josh all the time. But Josh is also, it must be said, a tremendous reporter in his own regard, and tremendous writer. And you just published, I was gonna say a killer feature. But it's actually what it's about. So, you wanna give us sort of the quick run through of that?

• 50:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, puns were sort of hard to avoid with this piece. It's about rats and rat control. And we looked at a couple of different, successful or ambitious projects to get control of rats around the world. The central one being Alberta, which is rat-free. One of the only places in the world that's rat-free.

• 51:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, part of Josh's pitch for this story was like, there's a map, and it shows you all the places in the world where there's rats. And like, literally, North America is red. Everything is red.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Except for the shape of Alberta.

• 51:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  And Alberta's not a tiny place.

• 51:21Speaker 04

  No, it's huge, yeah. Like, 200,000 square miles or something. But the one of the last places that rats invaded. So, they just acted quickly and decided to set up a rat patrol. And they patrol the border twice a year, kill any rats that show up.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  And everybody I tell the story to, they're like, but how? But how?

• 51:43Speaker 04

  Well.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  I don't, like, I'm like, well, if they see a rat, they kill it. And like, that's not enough.

• 51:50Speaker 04

  You understand it a little better once you go there and realize how sparsely populated.

• 51:53Nilay Patel?

  So, you went on a rat patrol. So, what was this like?

• 51:56Speaker 04

  We drove for many hours to the border, and it's just like endless farmland, fields and fields of wheat and barley. And then these are just super small towns. So, they're just looking at like... The winter's so harsh there, the rats can only live in these buildings.

• 52:11Nilay Patel?

  Oh, okay.

• 52:12Speaker 04

  So it's fairly easy. Like, it's not, it's not, it's not New York. I mean, it's, it's, they're very organized about it, but like, it's not a normal situation.

• 52:21Nilay Patel?

  Right. But there's a scene in your story where they actually picked up a whole thing.

• 52:24Speaker 04

  So that happened the year before. This was something he was telling me about. They found these rats. There were like maybe 100 living under a granary. They poisoned it. And then sometimes for morale, they'll hold a rat shoot and they'll lift up the building and shoot them with shotguns.

• 52:40Nilay Patel?

  Wouldn't say for morale.

• 52:41Speaker 04

  They're like, it gets kind of boring, like checking on buildings and not finding any rats. So like, when you, when you get a good infestation, you want to throw a party.

• 52:50Nilay Patel?

  You just shoot all the rats.

• 52:51Speaker 04

  Party. Right.

• 52:52Nilay Patel?

  So you were saying, but there's like a really high tech aspect to this. Like, what's the, what's the tech piece of this?

• 52:57Speaker 04

  So that's more with these island eradications where rats have invaded all these islands. They eat all the birds, they eat the tortoises, they just eat everything. So environmentalists are trying to kill the rats before the rats kill all the birds.

• 53:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you had a quote from a guy that's like, I, well, look, I either kill all the rats or they're going to kill all the things. I have to play God either way.

• 53:20Speaker 04

  Right. He's very existential about it. He's like, it's not a decision about whether we kill something or don't kill something. We just have to decide what we want to die and we have to kill the rats.

• 53:29Nilay Patel?

  We have to dis- right.

• 53:31Speaker 04

  So they do it, they breed so quickly that if like, if you're going to kill them, you have to kill all of them. So they drop hundreds of tons of poison from helicopters. And just like run a grid, like hitting poison every square meter and just blanket the island and it kills all the rats.

• 53:49Nilay Patel?

  So how do the rats come back?

• 53:52Speaker 04

  They're, that's like a total eradication. So they kill every last one. And like, it's, it's only successful if they kill like every single rat on the island. Cause if they're two, they breed so insanely fast that they'll repopulate it in like a year.

• 54:03Nilay Patel?

  What? Yeah.

• 54:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, they have a, a three week gestation period.

• 54:08Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 54:08Speaker 04

  So they, it's just like exponential growth. So that's the super high tech one and they're experimenting or talking about using things like drones to drop bait or they have these automatic traps that are like CO2 powered. So if a rat runs up it, it'll like shoot a piston into its brain and it can just like keep killing rats and you don't have to reset it.

• 54:30Nilay Patel?

  Oh my God. Where do the, where do the dead rats go?

• 54:32Speaker 04

  They just fall down. Yeah. They like put it on a wall or a tree.

• 54:36Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 54:37Speaker 04

  And then genetic engineering, like making, making it so they only have male rat offspring and that those, their offspring is also all male so that it would theoretically wipe out the population after a couple of generations.

• 54:50Nilay Patel?

  What? I mean, that's like, that's like the lysine deficiency in Jurassic Park. That's what that is.

• 54:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:56Nilay Patel?

  But that like didn't work because they figured out.

• 54:58Speaker 04

  Of, of any animal, I feel like the rat is the one where you can say like life will find a way.

• 55:04Nilay Patel?

  I mean, how many Jurassic Park jokes did he make during the reporting of this story? Cause that feels like that is exactly, these are all the strategies there.

• 55:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. Containment and control.

• 55:14Nilay Patel?

  So you've been reporting this for months, right? And then all of a sudden, a couple of weeks ago, something happened in New York?

• 55:20Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, all these plans sort of coalesced around the same time. The, the major island eradication, this Arctic island, uh, finished late March and then last week, New York announced a new plan to try to deal with, uh, our rats, which are much more entrenched than, than other places. Um, basically what they're going to try to do is track rats to the places that they live in huge numbers, like old sewers or parks or things like that and poison them a bunch, seal up holes in the foundation, uh, figure out waste management plans and to sort of, uh, take a multi-disciplinary focused approach to these places rather than the sort of more haphazard thing they were doing before.

• 56:05Nilay Patel?

  Right. But I mean, on a scale of one to 10, how doomed are these efforts that actually like, I don't, I don't expect that they think they're going to eradicate rats.

• 56:12Speaker 04

  Definitely not. Yeah. They, in the pilot program, they were really successful. Like rat sightings were dropped by 80% or so, but like you kind of have to keep doing it. Like, like if, if you just move on and don't fix like the core problems, like the huge amount of garbage that sits around on the curb or anything like that, like they'll be back right away.

• 56:30Nilay Patel?

  I mean, New York is an astonishing city. Because it like New Yorkers just exist with the trash.

• 56:36Speaker 03

  Right. There's like the summer smell.

• 56:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's coming. It's coming right now.

• 56:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:41Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's why, when I lived in Chicago, which is like a huge city.

• 56:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:44Nilay Patel?

  And like, there's not trash on the streets. Yeah, well, same, same with like, I don't know, Minneapolis isn't a huge city, but it's pretty big and no trash.

• 56:50Speaker 03

  I have a, I have a theory that's.

• 56:52Nilay Patel?

  San Francisco has trash all over the streets.

• 56:53Speaker 03

  The trash comes from people outside of the city.

• 56:57Nilay Patel?

  No, like there's trash on the curb every day.

• 56:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's the inconsiderate idiots that don't use the trash.

• 57:02Nilay Patel?

  No, I don't, I don't either. The other. Actual garbage bags full of trash from buildings.

• 57:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, if you're not, don't you live here? Yeah. You're not aware of the trash on the streets.

• 57:11Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, they, they, people leave their trash on the streets and then the garbage men take them, right?

• 57:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but they sit there for hours. Have you ever lived in another, have you ever been to another city? Yeah, and every other city on the planet.

• 57:21Speaker 03

  No, I was, I was born right here in the city.

• 57:24Nilay Patel?

  Hype check, never leaving New York City.

• 57:27Speaker 03

  No, I mean, I was born in like the suburbs of Jersey.

• 57:30Nilay Patel?

  Right. So your trash like stayed in your garage.

• 57:33Speaker 03

  Or like, yeah, and then you bring it to the end of the street in the big.

• 57:36Nilay Patel?

  In it, but in a trash can and then, but like on a day, right?

• 57:39Speaker 03

  I see. Yeah, like you're walking outside of New York.

• 57:41Nilay Patel?

  So if you're not from New York, like this is like a weird part of our city. Like when people move here, they immediately notice it. Like you walk around at night and there's just piles of garbage.

• 57:50Speaker 03

  No, but I mean, like people, people that get like dollar slices and they just will throw the plate, the paper plate on the gar, the ground. Are you talking about like garbage bags garbage?

• 57:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the huge piles of garbage bags everywhere. It's, it's super weird. Right. It's like in a city like Chicago, there's like alleys and the garbage goes in the alley and it's not just like along the side of the street.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. I mean, where I live in the East Village, like right outside my apartment door will just be trash, pile of trash bags like every Thursday. That's what you're talking about. Yeah. But also like New York is.

• 58:18Nilay Patel?

  That should strike you as weird. It should, you should be like, what is going on?

• 58:22Speaker 03

  What is the other process? How do you?

• 58:25Nilay Patel?

  Well, the city's just not designed for like trash, right? Like.

• 58:28Speaker 03

  You don't have a space for like a garbage can. So it's just like.

• 58:31Nilay Patel?

  Like the city is not designed actually for anything.

• 58:33Speaker 03

  But also at the same time, New York is, is dirty. Like I frequent out at night and see raging drunken morons just knocking over these garbage cans.

• 58:44Nilay Patel?

  And that man's name is Dieter Bow.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  No, but right, like, I think, I think there's

• 58:49Nilay Patel?

  I just, I think, like, of all of the people I know that can be described as like, a drunken party bro, just like, out there raging, the idea that it would be you is like, the funniest.

• 58:58Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 58:59Nilay Patel?

  Cause that's like, the hardest juxtaposition. But if I was like, and that was, and that was Chris Ziegler, he'd be like, yeah.

• 59:06Nilay Patel?

  Chris loves to rage.

• 59:06Speaker 03

  Look, my point is, is that I think there's a bit of a difference between like, the tra- actual garbage, pieces of garbage on the streets versus like, contained trash bags.

• 59:15Nilay Patel?

  I think you maybe are, you're splitting hairs, and rats love everything.

• 59:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, rats can just go right through the bag.

• 59:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:21Speaker 04

  That was

• 59:21Speaker 02

  They can chew through brick, I read.

• 59:23Speaker 03

  What?

• 59:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:25Speaker 03

  That is disgusting.

• 59:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, uh, they can chew through pretty much anything.

• 59:30Speaker 03

  Including human?

• 59:32Nilay Patel?

  Wait, so how do you, how do you, how do you, how do you, what are like, strategies and like, like, tech to like, solve rats in New York City?

• 59:40Speaker 04

  They're like, tracking them and mapping, just, just like, making hotspot maps and finding out where they, where they are, but like, it's pretty much just a, a strategy more than a technology. They're like, we're gonna try really hard to kill them in these areas where they're entrenched.

• 59:54Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 59:54Speaker 04

  Um, and like, seal up the foundations and stuff like that. The one piece of technology they mentioned was vacuum sealed trash compactors. That, these things you can, so you can like, suck all the oxygen out, it won't smell, and just leave them on the curb, and maybe the rats will leave them alone, but.

• 1:00:09Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 1:00:10Speaker 04

  Other than that, yeah, it's like, new garbage cans.

• 1:00:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:12Speaker 04

  There's not, not, not a whole lot you can do, other than just like, be a little more organized about killing them.

• 1:00:17Nilay Patel?

  There's definitely like, a line, or a piece in your story where you go on the rat hunt, you notice the trails, these trails coming out of everything in New York.

• 1:00:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:26Nilay Patel?

  And now I look, so like, the rats get wet, is that what happens?

• 1:00:29Speaker 04

  They like, they're just oily, naturally, they like, excrete oil, and, so like, exterminators call them runways, because they like, have regular commutes, where they pop out of the storm drain and run to the garbage, as always on the curb, and so you get these lines, called runways, just going everywhere.

• 1:00:44Nilay Patel?

  And that, and once, I looked for them today, and that was the worst thing I've ever done.

• 1:00:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're everywhere, once you start looking for them.

• 1:00:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Speaker 04

  And that was one of the things, like, when I met up this, with the, the rodentologist, uh, Poppy Corrigan, he was just standing in the middle of the street, and then people were walking around, and he was looking at the storm drain, which you would never really look at, and you could see like, just watch rats pop out, and like, run to the bag, and run back, it was like, six o'clock.

• 1:01:08Nilay Patel?

  Huh. This makes me want to die.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  I'm gonna go buy some boots, like some big tall boots.

• 1:01:15Nilay Patel?

  So what was your big, what was your big, we, we, we're running a little bit over here, so we should wrap up. What was your big takeaway? Like, what's the, what's like for in Alberta, it's just like kill all the rats, right?

• 1:01:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:01:23Nilay Patel?

  But you can't do that anywhere else. And they're like disease vectors and right? Like, what's the, what's the solution?

• 1:01:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, the one, the one thing all these products had in common was sort of like a general civic awareness. Everyone's like, everyone's got to do their part to fight the rats. And this is why Alberta was successful and what New York is trying to do where they're like, take community leaders around and be like, these rats are living in the interstitial spaces of the neighborhoods and like shared space and things. And everyone has to pitch in or the city.

• 1:01:49Nilay Patel?

  Well, the propaganda in Alberta is like crazy.

• 1:01:51Speaker 04

  Right. Yeah. Like these World War II posters being like, defend the province. The horse is coming.

• 1:01:58Nilay Patel?

  I feel like you just can't get away with that in New York.

• 1:02:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:02:00Nilay Patel?

  Like it wouldn't, it just wouldn't go over. They'd be like, I don't, nah.

• 1:02:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Nilay Patel?

  I got like, I have a thing.

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  You gotta get the hot yoga or spin class.

• 1:02:09Nilay Patel?

  Well, rats in New York. I mean, it's a great feature. You should definitely 100% read it. It went up on the website yesterday.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  Headline, incredible pun.

• 1:02:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, tell us, what were the other puns?

• 1:02:20Speaker 04

  Oh, that, that was the main thing. I mean,

• 1:02:22Nilay Patel?

  Enemy of the greats, by the way.

• 1:02:23Speaker 04

  Enemy of the greats with a picture of rats popping out of a grate was the great one. By Zalanco.

• 1:02:30Speaker 04

  We had, I'm trying to remember what the other ones were. The standing one was rat tails.

• 1:02:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. I don't know. I have to look at the list. We had a long one.

• 1:02:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, but it'd be great. And like I said, Josh, you should actually read everything Josh put on the verge. It's all tremendous. Some of, some of our best work. Anyway, but we're out of time sadly. Thank you, everybody listening. Sam.

• 1:02:52Speaker 04

  Hype it up.

• 1:02:52Nilay Patel?

  Hype, hype town.

• 1:02:53Speaker 04

  Hype it up.

• 1:02:54Nilay Patel?

  Wait, hype check rats.

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  Oh, God. In the negatives.

• 1:03:00Speaker 03

  We don't talk about rats in Vergecast anymore.

• 1:03:04Speaker 03

  Engagement time.

• 1:03:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Speaker 03

  You should follow The Verge on Periscope.

• 1:03:09Nilay Patel?

  Whoa.

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  That's a new one. We're just @verge on Periscope.

• 1:03:15Speaker 03

  You should follow us there because we do live things there and it's cool. I'm not going to give too much away because we have plans that are cool. So follow us on Periscope. You should also follow us on Snapchat. We are TheRealVerge on Snapchat. That speaks for itself at this point, I think. If you haven't found us on Snapchat yet, you will like what you see there.

• 1:03:34Nilay Patel?

  If you do it while we're recording right now, you'll still have a chance to see Sean O'Kane

• 1:03:39Speaker 03

  No, that's gone.

• 1:03:40Nilay Patel?

  in an Indy car. Oh, it's gone?

• 1:03:41Speaker 03

  It's gone.

• 1:03:41Nilay Patel?

  We missed it?

• 1:03:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I made a Snapchat story about the secret room in the office today.

• 1:03:45Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:03:46Speaker 03

  So you can look at the secret room in the office. Back to you.

• 1:03:49Nilay Patel?

  That's it.

• 1:03:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:51Nilay Patel?

  No. Two for Sam. Two for Sam. All right. Well, you can also follow Sam on Twitter. He's @samcheffer. Dieter is @baklon. Josh is @joshjeza. You gotta spell.

• 1:04:04Speaker 03

  D Z I E Z A.

• 1:04:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you got it. Follow Josh. Very entertaining. I'm @reckless. You can also just follow us on many other platforms, but Sam won't tell you what they are. And go to iTunes, rate us, review us. I'm supposed to point out that Eater, our sister publication, has a new podcast called Eater Up Sell, which is super great.

• 1:04:24Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 1:04:25Nilay Patel?

  You should look for that on iTunes. It's pretty funny. We also have What's Tech with Chris Plant. You should look at that. I would, like I said, we're cruising our way towards 1,000 five-star reviews on iTunes, so help us out there. Give me, you know what I want to know this week? How do you get The Verge? Do you do it on RSS? Do you get it on social? What's like, leave a review. Tell us how you read The Verge. That'd be really great. Five stars is always my favorite amount of stars. Six, I think, overdoing it. Four, clearly not enough.

• 1:04:53Nilay Patel?

  iTunes.com/verge, that's us. Thank you to Igloo for being our sponsor. Sign up at igloosoftware.com/vergecast for a free trial. You can get started right away. And thank you to Tripcase. You can go to tripcase.com/vergecast and that is wonderful. And a very special thank you to High Five. Take back the first 15 minutes of every meeting and get started today. Go to highfive.com/verge, request a free trial of Hi5. That's H-I-G-H-F-I-V-E dot com forward slash verge. Request your free trial. Start meeting face to face with Hi5. That is it. That is our verge cast. We will be back next week at this time, which is a time on demand because you're listening to a podcast, unless you're listening to it live, which is at this time. That is it. Goodbye, rock and roll.