Pod Insights The Vergecast A buggy Sonos mystery About this episode The Verge's Will Poor recently came home from vacation and discovered he had an insect problem. More specifically, his Sonos speaker had an insect problem. Will brings us the story of what really happened there, and what he discovered about how the animal kingdom — and the electronics world — works. After that, The Verge's Andru Marino tells us about his research on all things AI podcasts. He tells us why people are so hooked on NotebookLM's Audio Overviews, where these generated shows fall short, and what all us human podcasters could learn from the bots. Finally, The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy helps us answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email [email protected] !) all about smart lights. Which get complicated faster than you think.
Further reading:
Oh no, Google is turning everything into a podcast
Google’s NotebookLM AI podcasts add ‘interactive’ mode for some Q-and-A
Steven Johnson on Google, NotebookLM, and AI research
A guide to getting started with smart lighting: When to use smart switches and smart bulbs
Inovelli smart switches
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Transcript 15,622 words · 18 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:03 David Pierce? Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of a very specific kind of pest control. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am sitting here doing a project I've been putting off for years, which is going through my surprisingly enormous collection of sports cards to see if any of them are worth anything. They've just been sitting in a box. I really loved collecting them as a kid, and now I just have binders and binders full of them sitting around. I don't know if any of them are worth anything, but I found this app, thank you, technology, that lets you just scan the front of the card, and it'll immediately identify it and tell you if it's worth anything. The app's called Ludex, and I have no idea if it's legit, but so far it's told me all of the cards I have are essentially worthless.
0:47 David Pierce? We'll see. I got a lot of them to go through. All you need is one, right? Anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about. We are going to do two things on the show today. First, I'm going to talk to Will Poor about a very strange adventure he had after getting home from vacation and discovering what was going on inside of his Sonos. Then I'm going to talk to Andru Marino about an adventure he's been on, trying to figure out whether all of these AI-generated podcasts are actually up to something. Lots of fun stuff. We have a hotline question about smart lights. Lots to do, lots to get to. All that is coming up in just a sec. But first, I've decided I'm going to scan these cards until I find one that is worth $20. That doesn't seem like too much to ask. $20. We're going for it. This is The Vergecast. We'll be right back.
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3:03 David Pierce? All right, we're back. Will Por is here. Hi, Will.
3:05 Speaker 05 Hello, I'm back back.
3:07 David Pierce? It's been a minute.
3:08 Speaker 05 It has.
3:08 David Pierce? I know you're back back. You were on parental leave for the last few months.
3:12 Speaker 05 I was.
3:13 David Pierce? How are things? Things are good?
3:14 Speaker 05 Things are good. Yeah, we're sort of settling back into all of the normal life things and I'm figuring out how to be a podcast producer again. So we'll see if this is coherent in any way, but it's like riding a bike.
3:28 David Pierce? Well, so one of the things we've been looking forward to in you coming back is you are a person with like lots of ideas and thoughts about stuff we should do. And you and I, you and I overlap in some ways and also think really differently in some ways. So it's like, it's very fun to get to work with you on stuff. You came back just like a house on fire. I have to talk about ants and so on. So with, I just, I don't even want to wind this up for anybody. Like, let's just, you literally came in and you're like, I have a story about ants and Sonos.
3:57 Speaker 05 Well, yeah, I came back and I was like, a thing happened to me.
4:02 David Pierce? Yeah.
4:02 Speaker 05 And I need to tell you about it. And the more I think about it, I think I need to tell the world about it.
4:07 David Pierce? This is what we're here for.
4:08 Speaker 05 Uh, so, so here we are.
4:09 David Pierce? Yeah, I love it.
4:10 Speaker 05 That's, that's basically the setup. Um, I do have a story about ants and my Sonos speaker. I should say, I've told a few people the story and they've been beyond grossed out about it. So if you are a person who doesn't like bugs, who is squicked out about that kind of thing, this is maybe not the story for you.
4:31 Speaker 05 I don't know. How does that disclaimer hit you personally, David?
4:34 David Pierce? I think that's good. I would say I'm like, as long as it's not about spiders that can jump, I'm cool.
4:41 Speaker 05 Crawling is fine.
4:42 David Pierce? Crawling is fine. As long as, as long as they are floor bound. But if they, if something can leap, we have a problem.
4:49 Speaker 05 I think this might be borderline for you, but we're gonna see how it goes.
4:52 David Pierce? All right. Well, see, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go with you as far as I can, but I may suddenly disappear from this episode.
4:57 Speaker 05 Yeah, I'll just take it from there.
4:58 David Pierce? All right, sounds good.
4:59 Speaker 05 Okay, so the, the story in brief is that, uh, before my leave ended, we, we took a trip with the whole family for a week. So we were gone from the house for about a week and the day we got back, we walk in the front door and there's this little line of ants marching across our living room. This in of itself, not an unusual thing. We're dealing with ants all the time. I recognize these particular ants specifically. They're, they're like an eighth of an inch. They're really small. They come up through our floorboards. They find snacks in the kitchen. We have to keep the house super clean because they're always, we're always kind of playing whack a mole with them. So we're like, eh, the ants are back. And I could see that they were headed to some dog kibble that we had left in the front closet.
5:43 David Pierce? Yeah, I feel like you, you have pets and you have kids. And so like ants are just sort of a fact of life.
5:47 Speaker 05 Yeah, this is like, we are the, the best house on the block for the ants, like bar none. So none of this was shocking until I followed the little ant trail. Usually it just disappears into a crack in the molding or something. But this time it went across the living room and up onto this bench where we have these three big houseplants. So I was like, eh, they found the houseplants. I guess they, maybe they're like nesting in the dirt. This is, this could be worse than I thought. But then I kept following the trail and it didn't go into any of the house plants. It went underneath our Sono speaker, which is sitting right between two of the house plants. And I was like, why is it disappearing into the speaker?
6:27 Speaker 05 And I walk over and I lift up the speaker and just ant explosion. Oh, no. Just hundreds, thousands. I don't know how to judge when all of a sudden, like every, every surface is moving with ants. Too many. Too many eggs, the whole nine yards. I pick up the speaker and start running around with it like I'm holding something that's on fire. Uh, I don't want to set it down because there will just be ants wherever I put it. But at the same time, I can feel ants like crawling up my arms as I run around with this thing. My wife is freaking out. My four month old baby is starting to fuss. My three year old is like playing with trains or whatever. He doesn't care, but it's, it's bedlam.
7:12 Speaker 05 So the closest thing I could think of to do is just sprint out the back door with it. So I go outside, I put it outside, I brush myself off, I walk in. We finish coming back from our vacation a little scarred. I would just, I would dispute the idea that this is like problem solved. No, this is problem deferred. Yeah, this is very much like, let's put pause on this and deal with the kids. Uh, my wife, incidentally, is, is one of the people who is unbelievably grossed out by any ants. So this is like a very traumatic moment for her. Fair. Anyway, that all happened. I came back a day later. Blood pressure was down. I had the wherewithal to attach a microphone to myself this time.
7:55 Speaker 05 And I brought the speaker into my garage to try to take it apart and see what was going on.
8:01 Speaker 05 Okay. So now the screen, oh, should just slide right up. Ah, oh God, there's more. Oh God, oh God, there's eggs, there's.
8:15 Speaker 05 Okay, going outside, going outside, going outside, going outside, going outside. Oh.
8:23 Speaker 05 God damn it.
8:27 Speaker 05 Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Okay. I'm opening it up. Underneath the case, there are still...
8:38 Speaker 05 Oh, there are so many ants. That's tough, there were still a lot of ants. It was not great. Many, many more ants. Many, many more eggs. It was still, it was still just a whole ecosystem. So I left it outside for another week. I just extended the problem and forgot about it.
8:56 David Pierce? Did it not occur to you to just throw this thing in the trash?
8:59 Speaker 05 I was still like, there was still a part of me that was like, I can save this speaker. I don't want to let go of the speaker, I like this speaker.
9:06 David Pierce? So no stuff is expensive, I get it.
9:07 Speaker 05 Yeah, and it's, yeah, we've got two of them in the living room, it's the whole thing. So I, I came back to it a week later and I like, fully took it apart because I couldn't just assume that it was ant-free. I probably broke it in the course of taking it apart. I haven't tried to put it back together, but I may have lost the Sonos after all. But the ants are gone. So that is at least the end of that story and that speaker, probably.
9:36 David Pierce? Sure.
9:37 Speaker 05 Yeah. So I, that happened, time passed, but I couldn't get it out of my head. I, I needed to know what the heck was going on. In my head, the weird thing, not being an ant, was that the speaker was sitting next to all of these lovely houseplants. It just seemed like, ants like nature, look at all this nature. Why did they choose the Sonos out of all of these places to nest?
10:03 David Pierce? Well, and it sounds like, from the sound of the way you're describing it, it's not just like, I had a bunch of ants in my speakers. It's like, the ants of the neighborhood decided to move into my speakers.
10:13 Speaker 05 Yes.
10:14 David Pierce? Which feels different, right? Because if you were just like, I had some ants, I have questions, I'd be like, why? Ants are everywhere. But this is like, the ants, as a group, like, got together and decided to be in your speaker.
10:25 Speaker 05 It was a different thing. It was different from the like, ah, the ants are back, that we've experienced before.
10:30 David Pierce? Yeah, like, there was a meeting about it, in which the ants picked your speaker.
10:33 Speaker 05 And we're like, this is the place.
10:34 David Pierce? Yeah, okay.
10:35 Speaker 05 Yeah, absolutely. So I got curious, and I just Googled ants in Sonos. And I've, it's the internet. I found stuff. Good reporting tactic. I found a lot of stuff. There are all these forum posts on the Sonos website with people with the exact same problem. And in many times, by exact model, the Sonos Play One, like there are many Sonos Play One customers with ant problems over the past few years. Weird. Other stuff on Reddit, like it's a thing. And all of these forum posters are just sitting on these sites, trading theories about what is going on. Some people thought there might be a glue in the electronics that they like. They thought the electronics could generate heat and maybe the ants like that.
11:21 Speaker 05 There's this theory bouncing around that ants might be attracted to magnetic fields for some reason. Like it was going places. Everyone was also trading a lot of theories about how to get rid of them because they, you know, someone suggested they just put the Sonos in a freezer for a while, but people also don't want a speaker full of dead ants. Right. Like, that's not a great solution either. If you want to get rid of the ants and also destroy your speaker, like that's, that's an easier problem to solve. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So there's, there's a lot of talk about how to maybe bully the ants out of the speakers with, with an air conditioner or a heater or a fan. Yell offensive things at them through the speaker.
12:03 Speaker 05 Play, playing Ed Sheeran through the speaker was one suggestion that got some traction.
12:09 Speaker 05 The zaniest one was for some reason, people thought that maybe if you suspend the speakers over a bucket of water, but provide a bridge away from the speaker, there's something about that setup that ants might not like. It's, it's people just doing their best. Yeah. With not a ton of information and a speaker full of ants. So I set out to answer this question for myself, for the people on the internet. The two questions I had, one was just kind of how specific is this problem? Like if you Google around, you can find lots of examples of ants getting into electronics. So my question is, is this a problem with electronics and bugs? Is this a problem with ants and speakers?
12:52 Speaker 05 Or is this a problem with this kind of ant and this kind of speaker? Like what scale of problem are we dealing with here? I'm trying to imagine where you even start on this because I like, I like that the place you go is like, am I the only person this has ever happened to? And you determine no.
13:07 David Pierce? But I can't imagine there's like a copious body of scientific research on the ant qualities of, and I can't imagine like Sonos has thought about this particularly, like where do you start?
13:17 Speaker 05 No, Sonos did respond to a couple of the forum posts with basically just like, "Try your home warranty?" Like this, this, this cannot be a Sonos problem. Like we've refused to make this a Sonos problem.
13:30 Speaker 05 So I, I also just really wanted to know what to do about it. Like this was such an escalation from the ant situations that I've dealt with in my house. I all of a sudden start looking around at my like Roku box on the TV, the TV itself. I just felt like nothing was safe anymore.
13:49 David Pierce? Yeah. You're like every, everything closed is like crawling with ants inside.
13:53 Speaker 05 Right. And if there is something specific to electronics, then like, yeah, this, this could go a lot of bad places.
13:58 David Pierce? Uh, this officially just became my least favorite segment we've ever done. Um, like now I'm thinking about all the things.
14:03 Speaker 05 You're still here, but yeah, I can feel your mouse sort of like hovering over the exit box.
14:08 David Pierce? All right. We're coming back. I'm ready. I'm back in.
14:10 Speaker 05 All right. So we're gonna, we're gonna learn some things. It's gonna be fun.
14:13 David Pierce? All right.
14:13 Speaker 05 The, the place that I started, which turned out to be really fruitful, was entomologists. I, I live in the Seattle area, so I, I reached out to the entomology department at Washington State University. I figured someone regional might have a good sense of local ant populations. So I emailed the department.
14:35 David Pierce? What does that cold email say?
14:37 Speaker 05 I mean, it was really straightforward. This is the, the best thing about doing my job is I can just send insane emails as if they're completely normal as, "Hi, I'm a technology journalist and I have a bunch of ants in my speakers and I was wondering if an entomologist could give me some tips about that?" And true to form, they were like, "Absolutely." They put me in touch with a master student that had just graduated named Sam Dilday. She specializes in, in what they call eusocial insects. These are insects like bees and ants that have queens and casts and colonies and that kind of social structure. She was super into the question. She had some experience with this kind of thing.
15:21 Speaker 05 And her first step with me was identifying the species of ant. It was like, let's figure out what kind of ant this is. And that'll tell us a bunch about why they went and did this thing to you. How does one identify a species of ant? Well, a bunch of different ways. She had some suspicions just based on where I live and the story that I told, basically their behavior. She also asked for a close up photo, so I got as macro a photo as I could of a dead one and sent them along to her. And then she suggested that I crush some of them up and smell them.
15:58 Speaker 05 My god, speaking of bullying the ants. I found a bunch of dead ones. I just shook the speaker out onto a piece of paper. Collected a bunch of dead ones. The trouble is, I have a condition called anosmia. I basically have no sense of smell. This is a fun fact about me. So I was out of the running to perform this particular experiment. So the next best person was my already traumatized wife, Caroline, who was a real champ when I got a bunch of ant carcasses, and asked her to smell them. Okay, I'm just gonna crush them with the back of the spoon and then you're gonna take a big sniff and tell me if you smell anything.
16:40 Speaker 05 Okay, ready?
16:42 Speaker 06 Oh, it's not a bad smell, but I do smell a thing.
16:49 Speaker 05 What does it smell like?
16:50 Speaker 06 I will need a second sniff. It's kind of lemony?
16:57 Speaker 05 Oh.
16:57 Speaker 06 Is that?
16:59 Speaker 05 I don't know. I don't know what they're supposed to smell like.
17:03 Speaker 06 Oh god, did I get an ant on my nose?
17:07 David Pierce? Your poor wife.
17:08 Speaker 05 My poor wife.
17:09 David Pierce? Caroline, thank you. We're all grateful.
17:11 Speaker 05 Of all the debuts to the Verge Cats. For the science.
17:16 David Pierce? Okay, so we have some evidence, though. We have a lemony smell.
17:19 Speaker 05 We have a lemony smell, we have a photo, we have behavior, we have a lot. So I sort of collated all of that and finally called Sam up on the phone to talk about it. She got like a citrusy, lemony smell. Does that track with your experience?
17:36 Speaker 07 You know, everyone smells something different. The smell that people reference a lot is rotten coconut or blue cheese.
17:47 Speaker 05 Okay, that's different than lemons.
17:50 Speaker 07 Yeah, that is very different than lemons. I think it almost smells like turpentine.
17:56 Speaker 05 So, based on the story, the behavior, the description, the photo, the fact that there was a smell, even if it wasn't the most expected one, all of this made Sam really confident that we were dealing with something called the odorous house ant, or OHA.
18:12 David Pierce? Okay. Is that like, when I think of an ant, is that the ant I'm thinking of? Do you know what I mean? It's like, everybody has like, the ant in their house. Is this that ant?
18:19 Speaker 05 I think it depends. I think there's a really good chance that if it's a really small ant that is constantly annoying you in your house, there's a good chance that it's an OHA. Because they're native to North America, they're found all over the continent, they're very common. There are other ants that get confused with OHA's, but this is a really common one. They live, like I said, they're these social creatures. They live in really big colonies with a few queens and thousands and thousands of workers that run all over the place and do cooperative colony things. They're super, super common in homes, hence the name. And they're really interesting to entomologists right now because in North America, they're undergoing this kind of mysterious shift.
19:05 Speaker 07 Odorous house ants, and they're natural. Environment, which is in wooded areas, they usually will only have one, maybe a handful of queens, very small colonies. And what we've seen in the last 10 or 15 years is that in urban environments, the odorous house ant starts kind of changing how it reacts. So our nests are now made up of hundreds of thousands of queens and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of workers in these urban environments. So that's part of what makes them so difficult to treat is just the size of them. And it's not just one single nest
19:50 Speaker 07 that they're staying in. It's multiple interconnected super colonies that are forming in your backyard, in your neighbor's backyard, in your neighbor's neighbor's backyard.
20:00 Speaker 05 Yeah.
20:00 Speaker 07 Pretty much just entrenching a whole area in a cooperative nest, which is crazy. Very interesting.
20:09 Speaker 05 So that's all kind of a mystery. What we do know is that they just have a lot of reasons to like suburban or urban areas. There's human food and pet food all over the place, toddler crumbs, nice heated homes, and then homes have all these nice little nooks and crannies inside to live.
20:28 Speaker 07 If you can think of a house and your basement and your kitchen and your bathrooms, those are ideal spots for our odorous house ant. They want to live there just as much as we do. They find it just as nice.
20:43 Speaker 05 So knowing what Sam knows about ohas, she was not remotely surprised about this story that I told her.
20:50 Speaker 07 I mean, this is the calling card of odorous house ants, is that they seem to just appear one day. And it's because they are so transient. About every two weeks, they are constantly moving their nests. And unlike other ants that will find the food source, take bits of it, bring it back to the nest for distributing, ohas don't do that. They don't take the Food to the brood, they take the brood to the food. The speaker is situated in a perfect place that they can easily get to the dog food in your, in your closet, scraps in the kitchen.
21:32 Speaker 07 So they just really found this one place and were like, this is perfect. And you say that it took you about a week for them to move and that's on brand. I don't know if it rained before or during that time when you were gone, but rain is, is definitely one of those that elicits them wanting to, to move around. And Seattle being one of the wettest places out there.
21:56 David Pierce? All the time. Yeah. So there, that might be constantly sort of scrambling them.
22:01 Speaker 07 Exactly. So weather, food, resources, um, and also just, um, the seasons as well. March is when they, everything is coming to life. It's when we're getting out and stretching our legs and it's the same with our aunts. There, those little ladies are, are trying to find new homes and, um, they're trying to expand their numbers while the weather's nice and the resources are available.
22:28 David Pierce? So I feel like this explains why they're around, like sort of why they'd show up at all. But have we answered yet why they would pick a speaker? Or I guess more specifically a Sonos Play One? I really hope this mystery ends with some Play One specific stuff. But it does feel like, I, I get it, but do we know the speaker bit yet?
22:49 Speaker 05 We, we have not gotten to the speaker bit yet, but
22:52 David Pierce? Okay.
22:52 Speaker 05 Here we go. Here's the speaker bit.
22:54 Speaker 07 I did see a bunch of people having the same problem with that exact speaker.
23:00 David Pierce? Really?
23:01 Speaker 07 And yes, and you know, if I put on my, my aunt glasses and look at things as if I were a worker.
23:09 David Pierce? Please, this is exactly what I need.
23:11 Speaker 07 That is the perfect housing is that speaker.
23:15 David Pierce? What? Tell me everything. What? Like you, the aunt, why is this seventh heaven for you? When you like discover a Sonos Play One?
23:23 Speaker 07 Well, as I'm looking at it, and when you were pulling it apart, it has a lot of crevices in it. It had a lot of little spaces where, as an ant, I would be happy to place a bunch of brood in there, make sure it's nice and moist in there for them. It's easy to climate control. It's a dark color, so if the sun is hitting it, it's going to warm it up inside there, make it nice and like tropical for me. That's perfect. That's seventh heaven to me.
23:51 Speaker 05 The thing that I realized after learning all this is, I think the reason the Sonos made no sense for me as a human, for an ant colony, was because I pictured ants digging tunnels and building nests. Like, I think I was thinking about ant farm ants. Same. And that's just not Ohaz. That's just not their behavior. They don't build their own extensive nests. They look for spaces that just work for them. They look for confined, protected spots, and they just go to town. So, the inside of a speaker is great for them. They also, in your house, love the voids between walls. They love the little spaces inside power outlets. They like little crevices around water pipes.
24:33 Speaker 07 I've heard stories of people coming back from the weekend and finding odorosal ant colonies underneath their calculator at work.
24:42 Speaker 05 There was another thing, though, that Sam really zeroed in on about this specific Sonos speaker and others that are like it.
24:51 Speaker 07 I noticed that there's some speakers that have, like, the fabric that's over the speaker head. This one doesn't. This one has those tiny little holes.
25:02 Speaker 05 It's got a little metal grill, yeah.
25:04 Speaker 07 Those are perfect size for me. That is an entrance to the lobby. You know, that was made for me to enter. So, those ants are seeing this tiny crevice, and they're seeing the warmth in there and the electricity.
25:20 Speaker 05 So the electricity is part, I honestly, like of all the crackpot theories you described at the top, this sounded like the most crackpot of the crackpot theories. And you're telling me the electricity is real? Same. I, I was completely skeptical that there was something like about the magnetic fields and insects. It just seemed like totally out of left field. But Sam had thoughts on that.
25:44 Speaker 07 It hasn't been looked at specifically in ohas, but it has been looked at in other ant species where they are actually attracted to magnetic fields or the voltage. There's a couple of different trains of thought when it comes to that. One, with the electricity, there's a slight heat increase. So some ants might be perceiving it as a slightly warmer environment. There's also some evidence that suggests when ants get into electronics, they're more likely to get shocked. And when they get shocked, they've released a pheromone. And that pheromone is then attracting more ants.
26:27 Speaker 07 Those ants are more likely going to get shocked and they're going to release the pheromone that's going to attract even more ants. And it's a vicious cycle. And so it's this pheromone that's being released that's making this behavior to say, come here, come here. But it's an interesting thing and it's only been looked at in a couple of studies about what is it? And they did see an increase in attractiveness as the voltage increased.
26:55 Speaker 05 Gotcha. So they're noticing an attraction to electricity and the, the, the possible reasons for that are the heat, the, the, the shockings.
27:06 Speaker 07 Mm hmm. Or a third thing, like I, they're, they could be picking up on a magnetic field that is eliciting some kind of response that we don't understand.
27:17 Speaker 07 You know, I'm, I'm not an ant. I'm an ant person, but I can't necessarily think exactly like an ant. So there could be some third reason behind this.
27:27 David Pierce? I wonder if Sam frequently has to remind herself that she's not an ant. It seems like the kind of thing that as an entomologist, you every once in a while have to be like, "It is true, I'm not an ant." Like, she says that, sort of reminding you, but also sort of reminding herself. You know what I mean?
27:41 Speaker 05 Yeah, well, she kind of went back and forth between, "Well, I'm not an ant, but if I were an ant," in a way that you really felt like she was inhabiting this position.
27:50 David Pierce? Yeah. So, is this satisfying to you? Like, do you feel like this is sort of the complete answer? It feels like, I understand now why they might pick your speaker in particular. But, does it feel like you've gotten all the way to the end of the answer?
28:07 Speaker 05 It kind of did, yeah. I honestly wasn't expecting to get quite this far. But, after talking to Sam, it felt like, yes, it is these specific ants that are doing this. And, this specific speaker definitely has some traits that they love. So, I don't, to me, it really does explain all of those forum posts on the Sonos website. Like, it's not just this speaker. There's all kinds of electronics that have grills and little cubbies and are, you know, have magnetic fields. But, this speaker of mine definitely ticks all of these different boxes for the ants.
28:45 David Pierce? Yeah, it's kind of the, it's like the perfect storm for ant attraction.
28:49 Speaker 05 Absolutely.
28:50 David Pierce? Lots of electronics do sort of one or two of the things you just described, but the play one is sort of the perfect center of the Venn diagram of all the things that those ants like to live in.
29:00 Speaker 05 Exactly. And so, that's the thing that just completely flipped my thinking 108 degrees. From like, "Of all the places, why the Sonos?" to like, "Oh yeah, no, it would be the Sonos."
29:11 David Pierce? So, you destroyed your play one, we think. I'm very curious to know, when you put it back together, how it goes.
29:17 Speaker 05 Yeah, I'll follow up with that, but I don't have high hopes. It was done sort of in a fit of mania.
29:22 David Pierce? Yeah, but knowing what you know now, outside of full panic, heaved the thing into the yard, what would you do? What, like, for all the people who are on these forums trying to figure it out, what is the right answer? How do you get the ants out?
29:35 Speaker 05 So, it turns out, in my own panic, I was kind of on the right track. Well, so let's talk about getting them out. I think I might have lucked into a solution. But if someone came to you and said, "My speaker is full of ants," what would you tell them to do?
29:51 Speaker 07 I think you did the right thing. You got them out of your house and gave them time to move all their brood out. You just have made it an environment that's not what they want anymore.
30:05 Speaker 05 So, I mean, basically, the advice is leverage that fact that we learned that they move around pretty regularly anyway. Just move the nest outside and wait for them to just wander off. If you can't move the nest, then you're in kind of ant trap territory or calling in a professional or something like that.
30:24 Speaker 05 As for all of those other ideas in the forum, Sam said that trying to bully them out with heat and cold is kind of tricky because they're just so resilient. Like, she told me the story about how the thermostat in her lab went haywire one weekend and just cooked her whole lab at like 100-plus degrees a weekend. And she came back and all of her ant colonies were dead, except for the ohas, which were just chugging along. So you might have a hard time with extreme temperatures with them specifically.
30:54 David Pierce? Fair enough.
30:55 Speaker 05 And she did not know what to make of the bucket of water trick. That is just going to be the last enduring mystery of this story.
31:01 David Pierce? So the electricity theorists are going to be unbearable on these forums now, is what I'm hearing.
31:06 Speaker 05 Yeah, we just added a lot of fuel to that.
31:08 David Pierce? What about, can you just play really loud music? Like, my immediate instinct was just like, put on something bassy, turn it up to 100, and see if you can just like bounce them out of the speaker. Did you ask Sam about this?
31:19 Speaker 05 I did, and the answer is maybe. Like, just walk it outside and leave it alone is the easiest thing to do. But she got really curious about all these options, and she thought that that might bother them because it turns out that these ants communicate via sound themselves. They rub little parts of their ant bodies together to talk to each other. And so a whole bunch of vibrations from the speaker might interfere with that, and it might piss them off enough that they would just give up and leave. So that's a real possibility, too. She got really into the idea of further testing of speakers and ants. So I really think I might have accidentally inspired like a PhD thesis in her.
31:59 David Pierce? Which genre of music most repels ants is a thing I very much look forward to reading.
32:04 Speaker 05 Mm hmm. So that was sort of the rundown of all of the theories. She also just gave me a bunch of ant 101 kind of tips to keep ants from getting into my house in the first place, so that I'm not playing whack a mole with the colonies once they're in there, just basic prevention.
32:23 David Pierce? Probably the best strategy.
32:25 Speaker 05 Yeah.
32:26 David Pierce? But, okay, do you know what I keep thinking about here this whole time is as soon as you said the the the cubbies and the grill and the mesh of the Play One, I just keep sitting here being like, there's going to be some Sonos designer who is sitting there listening to this being like, oh, my God, do I have to add ant colony habitability to my like, design checklist the next time I make a speaker? Like, do you have advice? Did Sam have advice for Sonos on how to solve this clearly very real problem?
32:53 Speaker 05 Well, I wanted to ask Sonos these questions. Like, my first stop was going to be Sonos because I had to know, I don't know, they there's a lot of people that keep their speakers outside on patios and things like that. And after this happened to me, I was like, is there a designer at Sonos somewhere that is asking ant infestation questions about the design of these speakers? So I got in touch with them. They were very polite. They said no very firmly two times about participating. I was still very curious, so I emailed a bunch of other speaker companies because I figured a lot of them would be dealing with a similar question. All no's were non-responses from them. I think I'm just creating small panics on comms teams around the speaker industry.
33:38 David Pierce? I can guarantee you that somewhere there has been a meeting about the ant infestations over the last week. And if that's not impact journalism, I don't know what is.
33:47 Speaker 05 I just, I want to be to be an ant on the wall in one of those meetings. I just, I just want to know, but we may never know.
33:55 Speaker 05 But like I said, I think I really inspired Sam to look into this more.
34:00 Speaker 07 I would love to do an experiment where I had a bunch of these speakers and I could have them in different environments and have some that are plugged in and some aren't to see if it's the magnetism. So I'd love to do an experiment like this.
34:16 Speaker 05 Well, I guess my last question is, any advice for Sonos on making speakers that ants might not be as attracted to?
34:24 Speaker 07 I think that they should switch businesses and start making ant homes. They're really good at that.
34:33 Speaker 05 They're accidentally really, really good at this.
34:35 Speaker 07 They're accidentally really good.
34:38 David Pierce? Look, I'm just saying, Sonos tried headphones that didn't really work. They were going to do set top boxes. They canceled that. There might be a straighter line from speakers to ant homes than from speakers to any of that other stuff. They've done all the hard work already.
34:53 Speaker 05 They've got this.
34:54 David Pierce? Just start selling it at PetSmart. You're good to go.
34:56 Speaker 05 Ask the ants. Dozens of colonies of ants in speakers can't be wrong. They're on to something.
35:02 David Pierce? I love it. So this story for you started in the best possible way, which is just like a reporter staring at a mystery, trying to figure it out. I feel like you 100%ed this mystery. You solved it.
35:14 Speaker 05 I'm giving myself, yeah, I'm giving myself full points. I feel good. I don't feel good about my Sonos, but I feel good about everything else.
35:21 David Pierce? This was going to be the last question I asked you. Has it changed how you think about speakers? Like, are you looking at your speaker placement in your house differently now, knowing what you know?
35:31 Speaker 05 I am looking at all of my electronics differently. I will say that because it did completely invert my thinking around what ants want. And we're still going to be dealing with these ants seasonally forever. And it's a little ominous. It's a little bit of a burden of knowledge situation. Because like you said, I look at my Roku now and all I can think of are the tiny little cubbies inside of it. And that's a weird thing to think about when you're looking at your Roku. But here I am.
36:03 David Pierce? Yeah, if you're, if you're watching or listening to this, my advice is just, just forget all of this. Just, it's, it, don't look. Ignorance is bliss. Everything's probably fine.
36:13 Speaker 05 You all shouldn't have listened to this, is basically the takeaway.
36:17 David Pierce? Yeah, but if you, if you find a bunch of ants, now you know what to do. And if you don't see them, don't go looking and everything will probably be fine.
36:26 Speaker 05 And join the Sonos user forums. It's a, it's a fun time. I'm gonna go post a few things.
36:31 David Pierce? Yeah, you've got, you've got answers for people.
36:33 Speaker 05 Yeah, I need to like go back and be the conquering hero. Exactly. It's time that the people knew.
36:38 David Pierce? Yeah. All right, we gotta take a break and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about podcasts, specifically AI-generated podcasts. We'll be right back.
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38:09 David Pierce? All right, we're back. Andrew Moreno is here. Hi, Andrew.
38:11 Speaker 09 Hi, David.
38:12 David Pierce? You have been making podcasts for a very long time. And then recently decided to make a very weird and slightly unnerving kind of podcast.
38:22 Speaker 09 Yes, with artificial intelligence.
38:25 David Pierce? Yeah, so this one, I'm actually curious to hear the backstory of for you because I think this is the sort of thing that a lot of people who have made podcasts professionally get really kind of squirrely and itchy about. But you were just like, I'm going all in. I'm going to get weird with AI podcasts. Why did you get into this in the first place?
38:43 Speaker 09 Yeah, the real draw to me was you can upload any kind of document to it and it will take it and turn it into two robots talking to each other. So like my immediate thought about this was what if I upload stereo instructions? That's kind of like a funny gag, but also like thinking of stuff I wouldn't want to read. And maybe an easier way to understand something. It's such a novelty that I think that's initially where I was going. But yeah, there's actually some interesting use cases for it.
39:19 David Pierce? Yeah, talk me through that a little bit. And I'm curious how you think about this as somebody who has been making podcasts for a long time. I think because the sort of obvious step one is like stereo instructions is a good example, right? I have this giant document that is full of technical information that I don't want to read, right? And for years, the step was just have something read the document to you, right? And there are just lots of people who learn better that way, who rather than reading something, you hear something and that is a better learning tool for lots of people. That's very straightforward, right? This is something different. The idea of like, we're gonna, we're gonna not read the thing to you, but we're gonna talk about the thing. Is both sort of in that same line, but also just a very different proposition for like,
40:04 David Pierce? how to learn information?
40:06 Speaker 09 Yes. So I have realized from listening to a bunch of these, how much easier it is to understand something when it's a lot more casual and there's a lot more space between sentences and kind of breathing a little bit between topics. I just want to play a clip and you can kind of understand what this is sounding like and what it's trying to mimic. That's okay?
40:32 David Pierce? Yeah.
40:33 Speaker 10 Okay, get this. Imagine a world where like every website you go to starts charging robots to access it.
40:40 Speaker 11 Oh, wow.
40:41 Speaker 10 And, and smart homes still can't even make us a decent cup of coffee.
40:45 Speaker 11 Yeah, okay.
40:48 Speaker 09 So there, there's like space between each phrase and there's, the other host is like commenting back. And you kind of like take a second to digest what that last sentence was versus sometimes when I read a person reading straight text, you kind of forget what the last paragraph was about, or you weren't paying attention closely. I realized that podcasts actually is great for listening in the background because it does move really slowly and helps you still grasp what they're talking about without paying super close attention.
41:26 David Pierce? So as you listen to something like that, what do you like, I always think about the training data with something like this. Like what's, what are these being trained to sound like, do you think?
41:35 Speaker 09 Yeah. So I talked to the director of product, Simon Tokamine at Notebook LM. And he was saying that like, a lot of this was, they got two people whose voices you're hearing in those Notebook LM pieces to just riff in a studio for a long period of time.
41:54 David Pierce? Oh, interesting.
41:55 Speaker 09 He said, one of the things they did was just give them a picture and just like describe to each other what's in the picture. So you can hear a lot of stuff within these generative podcasts that were probably picked up over time in these recordings.
42:11 David Pierce? That's fascinating. Like, how do you mimic a podcast without making a podcast? Is such a mind bending exercise? That's very fun to think about.
42:20 Speaker 09 Yeah, yeah. There's moments where I've listened to these audio overviews where they toss to a break.
42:26 Speaker 11 As we navigate this crazy, ever-evolving tech landscape.
42:31 Speaker 10 Couldn't have said it better myself.
42:33 Speaker 11 Right, so let's take a quick break and then we'll be back to explore some of the other
42:36 Speaker 10 Okay.
42:36 Speaker 11 intriguing details from the Verge's review.
42:39 Speaker 10 Sounds good.
42:40 Speaker 11 Stay tuned.
42:44 Speaker 09 And it's just, there's no need for that at all, but that was, you know, probably over time, that's what this tool was gathering. And also, there's probably a lot of other like podcasts that Gemini was, had been trained on, which, you know, obviously this uses Google's Gemini as well.
43:01 David Pierce? Hmm, okay. So take me through your research process a little bit. I think part of what I'm curious about on this one is like what you even decide to upload to test how something like this can be used. What did you, what did you feed into the audio overview system?
43:16 Speaker 09 Yeah, so there's different things you can feed in, like you can link your Google Drive right up to it. So any document that's in your Google Drive is pretty easy to add. Any text, audio, any link for like a website and YouTube. So YouTube, it will just grab the transcript basically from the video and turn that into a summarization. So what I was trying to do was figure out what you can actually get from adding a bunch of different sources together. So like a YouTube video, just putting one YouTube video, I don't think is a great way of using this. But if like a YouTube video and some notes that you took
43:57 Speaker 09 and recording of a meeting and like a PDF of something, like combining all that stuff together and then turning it into an overview, or just whatever you want to do with a notebook, like take notes and ask it questions and all that, that was the most useful. And I thought that was like a, just a great way of researching and studying for something.
44:20 David Pierce? Yeah, I think that's, I mean, that's kind of the Notebook LM pitch in general, and I think it makes a lot of sense. I am curious though about the, if you just feed it one YouTube link, what do you get back? Like a podcast about a YouTube video, do they just describe the YouTube video?
44:34 Speaker 09 Yes, so I uploaded the Verge's iPhone 16 Pro review.
44:40 David Pierce? Okay.
44:40 Speaker 09 And it kind of just went through all the points of the video. So the video was 22 minutes and it made it into a 20-minute podcast. So it's not really something that like you could have just listened to the YouTube video, you know? So it doesn't really translate that well, but if you upload maybe a bunch of iPhone 16 Pro reviews and you kind of get a summarization of all these different takes on the phone.
45:07 David Pierce? Right.
45:08 Speaker 09 Maybe that's more useful.
45:09 David Pierce? But so, okay, so walk me through, let's start on the good side. What have you, what did you try that sort of worked for you that you were like, okay, this is a, this is a real useful or interesting thing that is coming out of this whole process?
45:22 Speaker 09 Yeah, like I said, instruction manuals, like the, the stereo receiver. I recently came across an iBO, original iBO dog robot.
45:32 David Pierce? Yeah.
45:32 Speaker 09 There's a pretty long instruction manual and I just uploaded that PDF to kind of just, I can listen to on my commute or something to understand how that works.
45:42 Speaker 10 A robot with moods, that's pretty wild for the early 2000s.
45:46 Speaker 11 It really was ambitious and you could still interact, pad its head sensor, show with the ball, or maybe colors it had learned to like.
45:53 Speaker 09 That thing worked pretty well. The other one is I'm trying to get my drone pilot's license. So Notebook LM has this tool called Discover where you can just type into it, I want, you know, drone license tutorial and it will pull up a bunch of stuff from the internet that is related to that. And you can check off boxes of which source you want to use to put into the notebook. So you can really use it as Google and then input those links into your notebook and turn that into a podcast or whatever. So like, I wanted to read all these different tutorials about how to get my drone pilot's
46:34 Speaker 09 license and I put all that, all those different sources, a YouTube video, a PDF, a website, and that kind of took all the stuff, maybe that they're all, there's some stuff that they're all saying similarly. And then some stuff you grab from different sources that might help better than others.
46:53 David Pierce? Give me a sense of what that sounds like. I'm, I'm, I'm just trying to figure out, cause you know, again, you don't want it to read you the instructions for the robot or your stereo or whatever. But I also feel like them talking about instructions without giving me the instructions is not quite the right answer either. So like, what, what, what does this actually sort of come out sounding like when you feed something like this in?
47:14 Speaker 09 Yeah, I'll share what the stereo instructions sound like, which is like pretty useful here.
47:19 Speaker 11 Phono inputs and a ground screw.
47:22 Speaker 10 For your turntable.
47:23 Speaker 11 Yeah.
47:23 Speaker 10 But only if your turntable doesn't have its own built in phono preamp.
47:26 Speaker 11 Right. If it does, use a regular analog input instead.
47:29 Speaker 10 Correct. And don't forget that MMMC switch we mentioned earlier needs to match your turntable's cartridge type.
47:36 Speaker 09 So like out of context, this is kind of silly and you don't really know what they're talking about. But when you're listening to the whole thing, like they do go into each thing. And it's not just they're talking about, so this is a PDF of the stereo manual and like gives through a bunch of these different options. Like this is probably actually better if you just want to know, how do I do this on the stereo? And you just type to it. Or you can ask the podcast a question.
48:02 David Pierce? Well, you can ask the podcast a que- like, like it's like a call in show, like you can, you can actually stop the hosts and tell them you have questions.
48:11 Speaker 09 Yes, within the Notebook LM interface, there is a interactive mode, which you can basically join the discussion, like while they're talking, you can, they'll be like, oh, hey, what's up?
48:25 David Pierce? So you've just like barged into the studio while they're recording and you're like, I have something to say.
48:29 Speaker 09 Yes, totally.
48:31 Speaker 10 Is it to move production back?
48:33 Speaker 11 Good point. Apple's preemptive shipment of that volume. Yep, go on. Can we skip to the lightning round on AI?
48:42 Speaker 10 You know what? Absolutely.
48:43 Speaker 11 Sounds like you're eager to dive into the world of artificial intelligence.
48:46 Speaker 10 Let's do it. We were just about to wrap up our initial look at the tariffs anyway.
48:50 Speaker 11 Exactly. So without further ado.
48:52 Speaker 10 Let's jump right into that AI lightning round.
48:54 Speaker 11 First up, we saw that Meta was apparently caught doing some interesting things.
49:00 Speaker 09 And then we'll get back to the rest of the show and be like, anyways.
49:02 David Pierce? Okay. So you can't, you can't sort of right turn the whole thing. But you can just, you can kind of pop your head in and be like, oh, but what about, and then they'll get back to work.
49:09 Speaker 09 Yes, there are like prompts you can kind of do when you generate to be like, focus on this topic or make this topic shorter or, you know, I only want this amount of time to listen to this.
49:21 David Pierce? Got it. Okay. One thing I know you tried that I'm, I'm very curious about is recipes. Because I think this is one thing, audio recipes to me, strike me as potentially a very good idea.
49:33 Speaker 09 Okay.
49:33 David Pierce? You know, in a way that is weird, right? Cause it's like, I use, I use an app that I'm like checking on my phone a hundred thousand times while I'm cooking. And the idea of like, just somebody in my ear, sort of talking me through the process as I'm cooking seems very cool. Complicated, right? Like you can't make a 20 minute podcast that like perfectly matches everything that I'm doing. But it does seem like there's something to like you could make a fun cooking show recipe by recipe that is actually kind of instructional if this really works. So I think I went from thinking this is a totally silly version of it to thinking, maybe there's something here. What did you find?
50:06 Speaker 09 Yeah, I was real someone on the team suggested we upload some recipes to it to see how it would do. And I didn't feel like it was something I could follow along with while cooking. And also like in podcast fashion, it took like way too long to get to the point of the conversation. Let me play you a clip I got from this honey lemon chicken recipe.
50:31 Speaker 11 But the thing is, we're not just gonna like read out the ingredients and call it a day, right? We're gonna try to figure out why this particular approach, and it's got like a 4.7 star rating, by the way.
50:42 David Pierce? Why?
50:42 Speaker 11 Yeah, pretty solid, right? So we're gonna figure out why this approach is so popular, and what we can learn from it, even if we're not, you know, planning on cooking anytime soon.
50:51 David Pierce? Absolutely.
50:53 David Pierce? I love so much that they're like, no, no, no, we're not gonna tell you about the recipe. You uploaded a recipe? We're not gonna tell you about the recipe. We're gonna talk about other stuff.
50:59 Speaker 09 Right. So eventually it does get to like what you do, what the ingredients are. But it was like, let's speak to the power of why this honey lemon chicken is so popular. And it's like, I don't really want to know that. I just want to get to the point. There may be a world in the future where it's like, all right, now you're going to do this. Let me know when you're done, and I'll get to the next thing.
51:20 David Pierce? This does sort of neatly map to everything wrong with recipe sites on the internet, right? That's the thing where you you open a recipe webpage, and you're like, I would just like to see the recipe. And they're like, first, how about 2000 words about my life and all of my thoughts about honey chicken and everything that's happening to me right now. And then way down the page, after some ads and videos, we'll get to the recipe. It's like, they're just making the podcast version of that.
51:43 Speaker 09 Oh, my gosh. And what I mentioned about how they toss to a break, like, there is a world where maybe like they want to start monetizing these. And when you you generate a honey lemon chicken recipe, there's like, all right, let's get to a break before we get into the ingredients. And it just plays an ad or something like that.
51:59 David Pierce? Yeah, that's, that's, that's super interesting. Did you test this with podcasts? Like, I know you did YouTube videos, but like, can you put a podcast in here and it'll make a podcast about the podcast?
52:11 Speaker 09 Yes, someone suggested putting like a four hour Joe Rogan podcast into it.
52:15 David Pierce? Sure.
52:15 Speaker 09 To generate, you know, a 20 minute summary.
52:19 David Pierce? It's basically like, it's like a meta podcast. Like, I'm gonna make a podcast about your podcast.
52:23 Speaker 09 Yes, we did try a scenario where we uploaded pre-production documents from our own podcasts and made them into a podcast and compared to how we made them.
52:36 David Pierce? Oh, interesting.
52:37 Speaker 09 So Decoder with Neelai Patel, they have like a nice pre-production document with questions, topics, guest bios and a lot of relevant links and all that stuff. So I uploaded that to Notebook LM and it generated a podcast of that discussion. I made one with, from an episode about EVs that Neelai and Andy Hawkins from The Verge talked about.
53:04 David Pierce? But it didn't have, it didn't, you didn't upload the actual finished podcast, just the pre-production documents.
53:09 Speaker 09 Yeah, yeah, I wanted to see how it worked compared to how we end up making the show. Obviously, you don't get enough of it because you don't have Neelai, you don't have Andy. But it like, did a pretty, it did a pretty impressive job of like, taking all these points and like, going through them all. But it was more just like, how you would do it if you just wanted to get the information for a research paper or something like that.
53:36 David Pierce? Okay.
53:36 Speaker 09 It wasn't like going to break down these topics and what they mean and like, what are these questions that unfold because of these news things? Much like The Vergecast, we uploaded a rundown from The Vergecast, which is just a lot of links to stuff on The Verge.
53:54 David Pierce? That's really interesting because that's like, the Decoder rundown you described is full of like, information and clues and hints about what's interesting and has some real structure. The Friday Vergecast rundown is just, I mean, it's just like 100 links in a Google Doc. And that's, that's the entirety of the prep doc.
54:12 Speaker 09 Yes, so when you listen to that audio overview of a Vergecast rundown, you quickly learn that it cannot open hyperlinks and that it is just reading the headlines and making some...
54:27 Speaker 09 Kind of generic takes about what that means.
54:30 David Pierce? So it's it's experiencing the world like the way people who just scroll really fast through like their Facebook feed do.
54:36 Speaker 09 Yeah, yeah. Here's a clip from it about the Framework Laptop.
54:41 Speaker 10 And then there's Framework, the laptop company.
54:43 Speaker 11 Ah, the modular laptop folks.
54:45 Speaker 10 Them. They actually had to stop selling some of their more affordable laptops, experienced order delays.
54:50 Speaker 11 Because of the tariffs.
54:51 Speaker 10 Yeah, and even briefly raised and then lowered their prices because of the tariffs. It just sounds incredibly volatile for them.
54:58 Speaker 11 That really underscores the immediate disruption, the instability that tariffs can inject into supply chains and pricing strategies.
55:05 Speaker 10 Total chaos, seems like.
55:06 Speaker 11 The fact that they had to make such rapid adjustments reflects the real time pressures businesses are under.
55:13 Speaker 09 So you can tell like all it's doing is just seeing that headline in adding it to context of the world, which it does have from Gemini a little bit. There was another one where I asked about a Sony Bravia TV from a headline. I actually asked it like, what is the model of that TV? And it didn't know because it wasn't in the headline.
55:32 David Pierce? Okay, yeah, that's interesting. Like I can even hear they're mentioning in there, you know, that they raised and then lowered the the the prices very quickly. And literally, the headline we had in that document is Framework raised prices and then unraised them an hour later because of Trump. Like, yep, it's just it. It said all those words in a slightly different order again. But again, like that, that was all right. I don't know that that was like good or thoughtful, but it was it was right. You sent me a big chunk of one of these and my my memory of listening to it was that there are a bunch of things it got sort of flatly wrong, all for sort of understandable reasons, which I thought was interesting.
56:13 David Pierce? Like, at least there is absolutely, we should say, potential for these things to just completely make things up out of absolutely nowhere. And I'm curious if you had that experience, but at least in the one that I heard, there were a bunch of things that it just kind of whiffed on making connections between or made connections that are wrong. And like misread a headline or something, but in every single case, I could figure out where it was getting the wrong information from, which I thought was really interesting. And it's like, okay, this thing is making a lot of mistakes, but I can trace the mistakes. Most people wouldn't, right? Which is like why this is dangerous. I like I had. I had also made this podcast that it was trying to make. So like I knew the stuff it was talking about.
56:53 David Pierce? But so that but it does just very confidently get things wrong without telling you anything about sort of where it's coming from.
57:02 Speaker 09 Yes, so I uploaded some notes from a podcast I was working on and it's had some of the people I talked to in the document, but not any quotes or anything. And when I put it in Notebook LM, the audio overview is just kind of made up quotes that the people said.
57:18 David Pierce? Like attributed to these people?
57:20 Speaker 09 Yes.
57:20 David Pierce? Oh, my gosh.
57:22 Speaker 09 So that is just made up.
57:24 David Pierce? That's really bad.
57:25 Speaker 09 Yeah.
57:26 David Pierce? That's really bad.
57:27 Speaker 09 Yeah, luckily, it was only about salad dressing, but like you can imagine this could be serious.
57:32 David Pierce? Yeah, I mean, and this is like, that's the thing with all of this stuff, right? And so many of these tools are like, it's the it's the glue on pizza in Google, right? Some of this stuff, you can see where it comes from. Some of it is just being purely hallucinated by these tools that have been taught to have answers even when no answers are available. Like, this is the thing a lot of these have been through, right? Where they they will go and they will, they are asked for information that they don't have, and so they will fabricate it. And that is the wrong outcome. But with something like this, where like it would be a bad version of an audio overview for it to just 10 times in 20 minutes be like, we don't really know anything about that, so let's move on. And so that that tension
58:13 David Pierce? feels so, so real to me in a way that even Notebook LM in general has done a good job of citing its sources pretty aggressively and it'll point you to the thing it's talking about in all of the different documents and it is pretty thoughtful in that way. You can't do that with audio. You just can't like you. If you are constantly like referencing the name of your source for every single thing that you say, that's bad podcast and it's a problem.
58:37 Speaker 09 Yeah, and also in the interactive mode, you can try to correct the podcast host and maybe it will learn that and put it in some bank or something. But no, it doesn't work like that. The iPhone 16 review, it kept referring to Neelai as Nellie and calling him her and she.
58:55 Speaker 11 Okay, so Nellie Patel from The Verge reviewed this, so.
58:57 Speaker 10 Exactly. And she brings a really interesting perspective, doesn't she?
59:00 Speaker 11 Oh, yeah, uh huh.
59:01 Speaker 09 The host is Neelai Patel and his pronouns are he/him.
59:06 Speaker 10 Oh, that's an interesting question.
59:07 Speaker 11 You know, it's easy to make assumptions.
59:09 Speaker 10 Based on what we've seen and heard?
59:11 Speaker 11 But actually, Nellie Patel uses she/her pronouns.
59:14 Speaker 10 Thanks for pointing that out. It's good to be accurate.
59:15 Speaker 11 Absolutely. Thanks for keeping us on our toes.
59:17 Speaker 10 So getting back to Neelie's review.
59:23 Speaker 09 She wrote her view, so.
59:24 David Pierce? Poor Neelai. Neelai, I have, I've known Neelai a long time and that man has had his name mispronounced every way you possibly could.
59:32 David Pierce? But Nelly, she/her is, is a tough beat for, for Neelai Patel. So what, what does that make you think as a consumer of this stuff? I mean, I think you've now done the research to know that like, there is, there is something that works about this kind of thing for certain kinds of information. But is there that thing in your brain that's like, okay, this is giving me stereo instructions even, or like information about a recipe and I don't know if I should completely trust it? And by the time I have to pull out my phone to fact check this podcast, what am I doing here?
1:00:00 Speaker 09 Yeah, yeah. I think it's like low stake stuff. I, I think like really if you want to get the most of Notebook Alham, I think it's more useful to just be typing to it and asking it questions about the sources. The audio reviews is interesting, like maybe it's just some people just like that's the way they can learn and that's the way they want to do it. And I know they're going to have more voices. If you get tired of those voices, there's going to be more personas, they call it. So I think in the future it's going to get better. It's going to be hard to see like how much it is actually improving as far as accuracy goes.
1:00:35 David Pierce? Yeah. Yeah, I think the, the way I have always thought about AI is like, I, I treat it like I treat Wikipedia in a certain sense. And I, I actually, I would argue Wikipedia is in many ways a more trustworthy source. But in the same sense that like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't take anything I read on Wikipedia and then like submit it as professional work or swear to it under oath or like bet my life on anything that I read on Wikipedia. Do you know what I mean? But it's like, in terms of going from, I don't know something about this to, I now kind of know something about this. It tends to work. And, and as long as the requirement is not that I be an expert with a hundred percent correct knowledge, fine, right?
1:01:18 David Pierce? But I'm like, I was, I was looking it up this morning. We were watching Mulan because my son is home from daycare this week and we have watched Mulan 250 times. And it was like, who is that that's singing this song? That voice sounds kind of familiar. That is information that both AI and Wikipedia are well equipped to have and find and give to me. And also if it's wrong. The world will not end. And so for the stuff at the bottom of that pyramid, I'm like, go nuts. Listen to the audio podcast about the Mulan singer and enjoy the next 20 minutes of your life. Anything above that, I think like real skepticism becomes very important.
1:01:56 Speaker 09 Yeah.
1:01:57 David Pierce? But it's so hard because these are like, the thing that has amazed me, and I'm curious if this has been your experience too, is how quickly I came to listen to these hosts as if they were people. Like, I've made a lot of podcasts, and so I'm like editing their podcast in my mind as I'm going, which makes me realize I'm producing this thing like I'm producing people. And that was sort of alarming.
1:02:19 Speaker 09 Yeah. After a while, I do get sick of the hosts, to be honest.
1:02:22 David Pierce? Yeah.
1:02:23 Speaker 09 I just like, I don't, I'm sick of these people. I don't want to listen to them anymore. They make too many puns. There's too many metaphors.
1:02:29 David Pierce? They do. What have you learned about like podcast tropes? Cause I feel like this would teach you every, all the bad habits that every podcaster has are like boiled into this. What have you learned about being a podcast producer?
1:02:40 Speaker 09 Yeah, like I said, like the ums actually might do something, might help. But yeah, no, the tropes of like, let's unpack this. It really speaks to the power of that kind of stuff is like, oh my gosh, I can't, I'm, I'm never using those phrases.
1:02:56 David Pierce? They start like every episode by being like, let's do a deep dive. And I just now, deep dive is like on the list of corporate jargon that I'm just like, I can't hear it without wanting to leap out of a window anymore.
1:03:05 Speaker 09 Yeah. Simon Tocumine from Notebook LM mentioned that he heard some other podcasts saying stuff that he noticed in Notebook LM first, like, oh, that's the million dollar question. I don't know. I don't know. I think that's just, that's just a podcast he phrased.
1:03:23 David Pierce? I don't think he gets credit for million dollar question. I think, I think that one's been around.
1:03:27 Speaker 09 But like, you can see like, now you're already like, they're sounding the same, right?
1:03:32 David Pierce? Totally.
1:03:33 Speaker 09 Yeah.
1:03:33 David Pierce? And I'm, I'm going to be deep in my head about not sounding like Notebook LM. It's like, there was that thing going around, not that long ago, where everybody was talking about the, the M dash in ChatGPT is like the, the, the how you know it's ChatGPT is when there's M dashes. I'm like, no, I love M dashes. I write with M dashes all the time. I write with fewer M dashes now.
1:03:53 Speaker 09 Yeah, yeah, right.
1:03:54 David Pierce? Consciously, I'm like, I don't want to sound like ChatGPT. I have to not use M dashes.
1:03:58 Speaker 09 Totally. The more we see of all this artificial stuff online is like, the more you appreciate stuff humans make. And the more like, maybe we are making better stuff now because we see like how boring or uncreative AI can be. And like, maybe that's like, we always talk about competition on the Vergecast. Like, what if humans are now competing with AI and now humans are just gonna be better because of what AI is?
1:04:23 David Pierce? I'll, I'll take it. That's, that's an okay outcome. I think the, the last question I keep thinking about with this is, I, I can see it as a tool for learning things, right? Like it in a sort of deliberate, I need to acquire this information kind of way. And I think the, the feedback we've gotten so far in the video suggests that there are people who are using it that way. That are like, this is just a way that I absorb information better and that's great. Um, but another thing podcasts are for a lot of people is just pure entertainment. It's just, it's like a fun and interesting and, and valuable way to spend your time hanging out with people.
1:04:59 David Pierce? Do you see any of this ever getting there? Like, can these hosts ever be so fun to listen to that you don't even really care what they're talking about?
1:05:06 Speaker 09 I think the only thing is the interactive mode that really takes it another level. Cause you can't call into the Vergecast whenever you're listening to it and ask the host a question. Like, you can do that with this. Um, you're not getting like, I don't think people are gonna have a parasocial relationship with these two AI hosts. Um, so you, you don't get a lot of that.
1:05:28 David Pierce? The history of AI suggests the baseline.
1:05:30 Speaker 09 We don't know. But there is something to that where like, I know that, uh, Notebook Alma is developing an app or they're gonna release an app and that is like, if I'm on my phone and I have the app and I'm just listening to the podcast. I think it's just be like, oh, hey, can you take that again? Or what, what is that? Uh, can you explain more about this thing? That, that's actually like, pretty useful.
1:05:54 David Pierce? Yeah, it makes sense. And I think, I, like, I wanna see the version of this that is just like. Two dudes shooting the shit about sports, which is like a lot of the podcasts I listen to just to sort of zone out while I'm walking the dog or whatever. And in a way, that kind of stuff is sort of replicable. We have a lot of data of it. In a certain way, it's like, it doesn't require all that much like true information. It's just kind of a hang.
1:06:21 Speaker 09 Yeah.
1:06:22 David Pierce? And people are talking to the voice modes of these assistants that way. Like, it both seems totally implausible to me that it might just be fun to listen to this for an hour, but also seems like maybe we're closer to that than I'm giving it credit for. I don't know.
1:06:37 Speaker 09 Maybe, yeah. I was given an example that someone who really likes one of the Real Housewives shows did not have anyone to talk to about it and just wanted to listen to some two people talking about it on the podcast. And like, I think there's a lot of examples of like sports and stuff that just like thousands of podcasts that do this, but maybe something like super niche, like maybe it's like high school football team of your hometown or something like that. And you're just feeding all that information to it. And like, no one's gonna be doing a podcast about that. That could be useful.
1:07:12 David Pierce? Yeah, I like that idea. Super niche podcasts is a thing I would like to see more of in the world in general.
1:07:17 Speaker 09 Yes, yes, yeah. Particularly, I would prefer it more from people, but yeah.
1:07:23 David Pierce? Yeah, I'll take what I can get. All right, Andrew, this was very fun. Thank you for doing this. All right, we gotta take a break and then we're gonna do a question from the first guest hotline. Andrew, thanks, buddy.
1:07:32 Speaker 09 Thank you.
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1:08:56 David Pierce? All right, we're back. Let's get to a question from the Vergecast hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11. You can email [email protected] . Send us all of your thoughts and feelings and questions and pictures of party speakers. Statistically speaking, all of you care deeply about smart home things. And as always, we have smart home questions. Today is about lighting, and I bet you can guess who is here with me to answer it. But before we get to that, here's the question.
1:09:23 Speaker 12 Hello, Vergecast hotline. This is Sean in Berkeley, California. Longtime listener, first time caller. Today, I'm calling about smart home lighting. We are about to embark on a garage remodel project, converting it to a finished room, and all the opportunity to start from the ground up on wiring and lighting. We are an iOS HomeKit household, and have primarily Philips Hue lighting, though recently we did add a couple of Lutron Casita smart wall switches. The garage room we use as a guest room, workout space, teenager hangout. So I would like a decent white light option, but also fun color changing stuff would be cool, too. Also, regular old wall switches are required because my parents will be visiting and ask them to use an app to turn on lights is a no-go.
1:10:08 Speaker 12 So I wanted to check in about where we are in the state of lighting. Who has the best ecosystem? Who plays nicely with Apple HomeKit? I see all these influencers on socials with amazing lighting setups and I get a little jealous. Thanks in advance. Keep up the great work. P.S. David, I went and bought a pair of $19 USB-C Apple EarPods just to record this voicemail on your recommendation. Your efforts have not been in vain. Take care.
1:10:34 David Pierce? First of all, Sean gets it. Great job, Sean. Second of all, Jen Tu is here. Hi Jen.
1:10:38 Speaker 13 Hello, hello. Happy to be here.
1:10:40 David Pierce? The first time I heard this question, I was like, oh, this is simple and there are lots of options and we can go through a bunch of them. And then listening to that again, I'm actually like, this is kind of a complex thing to try and do.
1:10:52 Speaker 13 Sadly, it is. You know what made it tricky? Color changing. As soon as he said that is when it got complicated.
1:11:01 David Pierce? Okay, interesting. So if you didn't want color changing.
1:11:04 Speaker 13 It would be so much easier.
1:11:05 David Pierce? Really? Oh, okay.
1:11:06 Speaker 13 Yes.
1:11:07 David Pierce? Well, so, all right. Well, so let's, let's start there because I think the sort of bones of what he's describing, I think, is actually a question a lot of people go through. And then the color changing is a wrinkle. But so let's, let's start without the wrinkle.
1:11:17 Speaker 13 Okay.
1:11:18 David Pierce? What would you, where, where's a good place to start for that?
1:11:20 Speaker 13 So, well, I, whenever anyone asks me a question about existing smart home setups and how, and expanding, I would always start with what they have and build on that. So he said, I have Hue and Caseta. And Luctron Caseta is, I assume, what he's referring to, and those are smart switches. Number one rule about smart lighting is that smart light switches do not work with smart bulbs. And this is complicated. And I do have an article explaining this, which we can link to. But there are some exceptions, which I'll get into. But if you, you cannot put a Philips Hue light bulb in a socket controlled by a Caseta smart switch. If it's just on and off, you might be okay.
1:12:02 Speaker 13 But if you have Philips Hue bulbs, you want dimming and dimming, they go crazy. I've done it and I burnt light switches and I've blown bulbs doing it. So it's not good. And this is the problem. So if he didn't want color lighting, I would just say, get some decent quality, dumb, I hate that word, but LED light bulbs or light fixtures and Caseta smart switches because they're rock solid, reliable. They work with Apple Home. You can use fixtures as opposed to just bulbs. So you can have something nice in your guest room slash. But that room has got a lot of purposes and that also makes it slightly complicated.
1:12:42 David Pierce? Yeah.
1:12:42 Speaker 13 So yeah, a nice fixture that you can control with light switches. Casitas, great, love them. But when you throw in color changing and you already have Philips Hue, then I would definitely consider Philips Hue. Then you need to deal with a different switch scenario because you cannot use Caseta. You mentioned wanting a physical switch because you can't, don't want to have to use an app. I'm guessing that means that in-laws probably aren't going to use voice control either because that would be another option.
1:13:12 David Pierce? I will say for this particular setup, like you're describing a room with lots of different people and lots of different uses. I think requiring physical switches feels like the right call. Like this is just not, everyone who comes into your house should not have to download an app to use your lights.
1:13:27 Speaker 13 You should always have physical switches, I agree. And, and you're wiring it from the ground up. See, this is the other, this is the fun part for me. If I was building a brand new house right now, I would not hardwire switches into my house. Because all smart bulbs can be controlled by wireless switches, which give you placement options. So you can move them around if you just don't like where your light switches. But that could make resale tricky. Cause it's not expected. But for Philips Hue, that's an option. So they do have their own wireless switches that you can use. Their smart button, wall mounted dimmer switches, and then their Hue tap dial switch would all control every light in the home, in the room.
1:14:08 Speaker 13 Plus Hue has a great selection of light fixtures if you don't want to just use bulbs. Because you know, especially in more modern homes, just having light bulbs isn't the way people are going there. Looking for nice light fixtures that add to the aesthetic of the home. And a lot of those are going to be LED, so they're permanently sealed, so you're not replacing bulbs. So that's, that's one option and you wouldn't actually need wires for that. But in terms of code or resale value, you know, you'd probably want to wire them up, the switches. And then you could just put the Philips Hue. Option whether you use the dimmer switch, the smart button or the tap switch over the wall plate. So in future, you could go back to wires if you wanted.
1:14:48 David Pierce? Sure. I feel like I'm even seeing more and more people just have the existing switches for existing lights and then just stick the the hue switch or whatever, just on the wall right next to it, as if it's another switch. It's not like a perfect strategy, but it that seems simple enough.
1:15:04 Speaker 13 It is, it is. And that that would be the most straightforward. You stay in one ecosystem with hue or Caseta. But there is good news, and this is something that's changed.
1:15:15 David Pierce? Jen, if you're about to say Matter, I'm gonna hang up on you.
1:15:17 Speaker 13 No.
1:15:21 Speaker 13 There is, the Matter does play a part in this answer. But no, this is that there are now smart switches with something called smart bulb mode. So you can now buy smart switches that work with smart bulbs. And basically, the problem here is if you wire up any switch to a smart bulb, there is going to be a point when you flip the switch off and it's designed to cut the power to the bulb, and then your smart bulb doesn't work. Also, there can be power levels with dimming, because the whole point of dimming, what dimming actually does is just reduce the power to the bulb. And that's where you get into issues with Caseta, because it starts flickering. That's what happened to my bulbs. So your smart bulbs will start flickering, and that's not fun. Anyway, so these new bulbs sort of
1:16:06 Speaker 13 trick the energy flow, and they always keep the bulb with a minimum amount of power. And there's a couple people that make these. One is a company called Innovelley. They're really lovely smart switches. This is the other thing. You want, probably want ones that look nice, because there are some cheaper ones out there. But if you want, you know, if you're building a new room, you're gonna want some nice looking switches. They have them in different colors. They're really nice. They work with Matter. They have thread over Matter. And hopefully, you're gonna have good Wi-Fi out in your garage. But this could help if that's gonna be a problem. But they're $70 each, which is also about how much the Caseta switches are. So smart switches are expensive. That is the big downside.
1:16:49 Speaker 13 And the other downside with Innovelley is that they always seem to be out of stock. So they may not work in this scenario. But you, this way, you could have Philips Hue bulbs and physical switches in your garage. So I think that could work. Pretty well for you if you can get if you can get these ones in stock. Yeah, I think they're sold primarily through Inovelli's website. Full disclosure, I have not tested any of Inovelli's smart switches myself, but I've always heard good things about them. They have a whole line. They also have Zigbee ones, Z-Wave ones. So if you have Zigbee or Z-Wave in your smart home, you could go with that option too. There are a couple of other choices though, but this would lock you into an ecosystem, which, you know, you've already got two ecosystems in your home.
1:17:34 Speaker 13 You've got Quesada and Hue, although they all work with Apple Home. But Acura has now really expanded its smart lighting options. And they have a smart switch with smart bulb mode, but they only work with Acura products. So you'd have to buy Acura light bulbs, Acura light strips. They also have the Acura ceiling light and they're much less expensive. We're talking like 20 or 30 dollars instead of 70. So that that would be one other option. There are obviously lots of great options in smart lighting. You mentioned YouTubers with wonderful backgrounds. I'm going to guess a lot of those are going to be using NanoLeaf,
1:18:11 Speaker 01 I was gonna say.
1:18:11 Speaker 13 Which would be an option here too. Works with Apple Home, works with Matter. They just came out with a new wireless switch, their Wireless Sense switch, which I've been testing recently. And it's it's really interesting. It has a lot of great features, but I hesitate for you to throw another brand in the mix. Right now, I think Hue is probably your best bet if you're going to go with wireless switches. But that is an option if you were thinking like, I want to move away from Hue. You could could look at NanoLeaf. Lifex is another one. They don't have any good switch solutions though. It's it's so odd that it's taken really long time for us to get a good solution to the smart bulb, smart switch conundrum. Because whilst the white lighting with smart lighting is great,
1:18:56 Speaker 13 especially when you have tunable white lighting. So you can sort of change the tone throughout the day. But it is fun to be able to throw in colored lighting, especially in a room that's going to maybe be used for fun teenage activities or maybe doing some spin classes and you want some pulsing lights to go along with the music. If you if it's going to be, I think you said it was going to be a workout room, Shaun. But yeah, I'd like to see more solutions here and we're beginning to. But they all tend to stay within the same ecosystem. And this is where Matter might help.
1:19:27 David Pierce? Yeah, in theory, it is. It is actually, this is a perfect reason for Matter to exist.
1:19:33 Speaker 13 Something I have been looking for since Matter came. Like, how can I make, because I have a Frankenstein selection of smart lights and switches in my home, and I cannot, it's been a struggle to get them all to work together. And that's where I, you know, sort of, to me, the ultimate Matter actually has worked moment will be when every light in my home can all work in one app. We're not there yet.
1:19:57 David Pierce? It's a dream. How many apps is it right now?
1:19:59 Speaker 13 I don't know that I could actually count.
1:20:04 David Pierce? That's too many.
1:20:04 Speaker 13 There's a lot of good solutions, but for this case, I would say probably skip Caseta, go to Philips Hue and use the Philips Hue smart button or wall mounted dimmer switches, or these Innovali smart bulb mode switches. I would say go with Caseta if they had supported Matter, but they don't. Lutron has not gotten the Matter bandwagon. They're great, rock solid, as I said, but again, you know, for future proofing, I think I would, I would definitely stick with products that work with Matter. That's, I'm definitely at that stage now.
1:20:39 David Pierce? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the right call. And I like, that's, like, the Hue solution is a little less elegant, but probably a lot simpler to actually put in your house. And the Innovali one is like, going to be more work to get right. But then is the thing that gives you kind of the most seamless version of the experience you're looking for. So I think one of those two things is probably right. That makes sense.
1:21:02 Speaker 13 Yeah. And there are the run less wire switches too, if you've come across those, which are like kinetic switches that work with Hue bulbs. Again, I've not used them myself, but I feel like if you're going to go with a wireless solution, go with Hue's wireless solution, because the Hue system just really works well together. But if you do want wired, I think Innovali could be a good option. You just may have to wait. I'm not sure when they're going to be back in stock. But yeah. And if you do get this all set up, I would love to hear a report on what it looks like and send us some pictures and tell us how it all went.
1:21:36 David Pierce? Yeah, Sean, whenever, whenever you do decide, hit us back. We want to hear it. We'll play it on the show and we'll, we'll judge all of your decisions. And I very much look forward to it. All right, Sean, I hope that helps. Jen, thank you as always.
1:21:48 Speaker 13 You're welcome.
1:21:52 David Pierce? All right, that is it for the show. Thank you to everyone who was on this episode, and thank you, as always, for listening. As ever, if there are questions you have, or thoughts, or feelings, or you just want to yell at us about the fact that we just did an entire segment about creepy crawly things inside of your gadgets, trust me, I understand, and also, we deserve it. Email [email protected] , call the hotline 866-VERGE11 with all of your thoughts and questions and feelings. We love hearing all of them. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Will Poor. Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Me and Lina will be back on Friday to talk about all of the news that's going on. The antitrust stuff continues, lots of fun new gadgets, we're getting into developer
1:22:34 David Pierce? conference season, and there is just a lot of interesting tech news happening right now, and we're going to get into all of it. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.
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