Cut the night

Another week of Vergecast and we have SO much to talk about so we extended the episode to 90 minutes…and then some. Mobile World Congress just wrapped up so Nilay, Dieter, and news editor Jake Kastrenakes are here to analyze the coverage. Also, the Oscars are this Sunday so our entertainment section is taking over Vergecast during halftime! Entertainment editor Emily Yoshida leads the discussion with entertainment editor Jamieson Cox, and senior reporter Bryan Bishop. Nicola Fumo commands the hype matrix once again for this show-within-a-show episode of Vergecast! 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.

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  So hi, welcome to Vergecast. It's today, or for many people tomorrow. I'm Nilay Patel. I'm here with you, in your heart. I'm joined by Dieter Bohn.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 0:15Nilay Patel?

  Who I've missed terribly. Jay Kastenakis is here.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:19Nilay Patel?

  Fumo's here. Sup, girl?

• 0:20Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 0:21Nilay Patel?

  Uh, here's the thing that's gonna happen on the show. This is a special 90-minute extended Vergecast remix.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:26Nilay Patel?

  Halfway through. So the first half, we're gonna talk about MWC, technology, Apple versus the FBI.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  The plan was to, was like, not talk about Apple, but they decided to file a massive legal brief.

• 0:36Nilay Patel?

  They filed a massive, and-

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Minutes for airtime.

• 0:37Nilay Patel?

  And my heart exploded with joy. I don't know about you guys. It did. That was completely sincere. And then halfway through, we're gonna, everyone's gonna leave. Oh, Brian Bishop's on the phone.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Brian.

• 0:50Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Hey!

• 0:52Nilay Patel?

  Brian Bishop, Skyping in from LA.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:55Nilay Patel?

  Uh, halfway through-

• 0:55Speaker 03

  Congratulations, Dieter.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 0:57Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Dieter and Jake are gonna leave.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Goodbye.

• 0:59Nilay Patel?

  Emily, Yoshida, and Jamieson Cox are gonna come sit down. And we're gonna talk about some movies and the Oscars that are happening on Sunday. So, uh, and Brian is our glue. Because Brian was OG Verge, started with us at the very beginning, hardcore tech reporter. Now, senior editor, senior reporter on the, editor, reporter, whatever. Brian's a senior dude on, uh, on the entertainment beat at The Verge. So like, you see the continuity, you see the-

• 1:26Speaker 02

  The intersection of technology and pop culture.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Yes. Is embodied in the person of Brian.

• 1:31Nilay Patel?

  In Brian Bishop.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  It's like, technology is on this side, and then culture's on this side, and then it's a door you walk through. And Brian is the arch.

• 1:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  He's holding both the doors open in the middle.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Bishop.

• 1:44Nilay Patel?

  Brian's actually a triangle that holds all the weight between the arch.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50Nilay Patel?

  Is that a bishop? Is that called a bishop?

• 1:51Speaker 01

  That's a keystone.

• 1:52Nilay Patel?

  That's a keystone. Brian, change your last name to keystone.

• 1:54Speaker 03

  I'm not changing my name to keystone.

• 1:55Nilay Patel?

  Brian Keystone. Brian Keystone is a great name.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Not not a porn name.

• 2:04Nilay Patel?

  That's a good name. It's like a, it's like a cop who didn't succeed. Ah, Keystone's on the case.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  I got it.

• 2:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Brian Keast, anyway. Anyway, Jake, to answer your question. So Dieter got married two weeks ago.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:20Nilay Patel?

  He, he, he and his now wife Lisa requested we fly the, the rings down with a drone. So that we.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  DGI Phantom 3?

• 2:29Nilay Patel?

  Phantom 3 Professional. Great, great product.

• 2:31Speaker 04

  How much drone practice did you have before this?

• 2:34Nilay Patel?

  I would say, well, so I had a lot.

• 2:37Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:37Nilay Patel?

  Of like, I watched like a day of YouTube videos.

• 2:40Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, that easily qualifies you.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Neil, I flew down to the Caribbean like a week early so he could practice the drone.

• 2:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, basically.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  He was like, it was like for a vacation, but really it was so he could practice.

• 2:48Nilay Patel?

  I had this whole moment where I realized I'd, I'd spent like an afternoon in my house watching YouTube videos. And I was like, I don't know, this is, seems, and then I was like, this is a bunch of like drunk 12 year olds on a boat. Who are flying drones, like, like with like, you know, it's like, there's a lot of those videos where it's like Phantom first flight. And it's like a guy in a speedboat and he's like bright red and he's like, ah, and it's like, I can, I can do this. Like if that guy can do it, I can do this. And then I was like, but what if we made it even more complicated? And ruined one of my best friend's wedding while flying this drone. But so we had the one part that was scary. Was we, I bought a T strainer to put the rings in. So like a little round thing and it was all tied and like decorated.

• 3:32Nilay Patel?

  And like Lisa had like some flowers. And Dieter's like, oh, that looks great. And then he like held it up and started jingling it and the thing immediately popped up. So that, that, that we had to like wrap it and, but it worked.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it worked great. It was stupendous.

• 3:46Nilay Patel?

  It was something. I haven't yet posted the video because I didn't want to like turn your wedding into content.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  No, go ahead.

• 3:53Nilay Patel?

  All right. I'll write a post. Anyway.

• 3:56Nilay Patel?

  So let's talk about what's going on. There's a lot going on. There's some news that just broke.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:01Nilay Patel?

  In the Apple case, uh, and then MWC happened. So let's, let's, let's do the Apple case quickly because I'm gonna write, I'll write a big thing tomorrow. Cause I love playing Bartley Go Breeze. So thus far in the Apple case. And this is, the FBI wants Apple to create a new version of iOS that bypasses the lock code and the lock code restrictions so that they can try to brute force enter a passcode on iPhone 5C that was owned by the San Bernardino terrorists. Everyone has this. If you're listening to this show and you don't know that information, I have no idea what you're doing. But, anyway. So thus far, the FBI filed a motion to compel in the court, and then it's been, Apple was not involved in that motion. They have not replied to that motion. And it has been a

• 4:45Nilay Patel?

  PR war, right? Basically, it's been a PR war. And like, literally, Tim Cook was on ABC last night and was like-

• 4:50Speaker 04

  He just answered the same question-

• 4:52Speaker 01

  For half an hour.

• 4:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but like, his line was like, "The government is trying to give the technology industry cancer." Like, it was that level of rhetoric from Tim Cook. And he's very firm on they're not gonna do this. But what's interesting to me is there hasn't been any legal battling. It's just been this PR, they're setting the stage. And the PR war has like, not broken in Apple's favor thus far. Although, it's kind of interesting. So we sent-

• 5:13Speaker 01

  It's lowly started to maybe turn, because there was one poll that said, majority of Americans wanted to do it, and then a later poll was like, "Well, actually, the majority is not so sure, doesn't want them to do it."

• 5:23Speaker 04

  I like slightly questioned that poll, though, because that was an online poll.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Both polls.

• 5:26Speaker 04

  Well, that's true. But I feel like that poll probably skews more toward people who-

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Nevertheless, Neelai is right. But it's like, unlock a phone is something that everybody assumes Apple can do pretty easily, and it's a terrorist's phone, and that's a really steep hill to climb.

• 5:43Nilay Patel?

  Right, it's about to be a fact. But then, we sent Kirsten out. There's a video on the site and on YouTube. We sent Kirsten out in Times Square, just like, do man on the street, talk to people. And what was really interesting was they all started saying, "Apple should unlock the phone." And then, as Kirsten sort of fed them more information about how that would work and what it would mean, almost all of them changed their mind.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Really?

• 6:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That video is crazy. Like, we were, I was watching-

• 6:09Speaker 01

  She just like, walked through, like, "So, you know what that means, right?" And then told them-

• 6:12Nilay Patel?

  Right. Like, if this key gets released, then anybody could unlock a phone. You're, they're finally making the phone more insecure. If they unlock one phone, then the government can ask them to unlock all kinds of other phones. And you just sort of watch people come to the inevitable conclusion that eventually the government will be able to do crazy things like request Apple turn on the microphone in their phone. Right? That is fundamentally, the capability the government is asking for is, we would like Apple to write us custom firmware targeted to single iOS devices.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 6:43Nilay Patel?

  And if Apple can do that with one phone, they can presumably do it to every phone. And then the government can say, okay, this guy, we have a search warrant for him, write a version for iOS that sends us every Siri command, or is constantly listening, or whatever the hell they want to do.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:00Nilay Patel?

  And that's, that's where they're, that's like, you're walking all the way up to there. And then everyone is like, no, we don't want, we would never want to do that. So it's like, really, so the PR wars, like furious back and forth, the more people learn, the more they change their mind. Donald Trump is, he's still tweeting from his iPhone even though he said he's banning Apple products. It's crazy. And then today, the thing that happened, which I think is the most notable moment thus far, is Apple filed its response motion to vacate this order and say this is bullshit. And you can see what their actual legal argument is instead of their PR argument. In the legal argument, I've only, we literally, Dieter and I were just like, reading it as fast as we could before it came on the air. Legal argument is not as strong as I want it to be.

• 7:42Speaker 04

  So what are the, what are the core arguments here?

• 7:45Nilay Patel?

  So it's structured, there's three core arguments. The first one, I gotta look up what the actual acronym stands for, it's, yeah, it's Kalia.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Oh, God. Mac, you know how Mac has these little previews and you hover your mouse over it, it gives you little arrows instead of just opening the damn thing on PDFs?

• 8:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  The worst.

• 8:06Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so there's this law called the Communications Assistant for Law Enforcement Act, Kalia, that's usually the acronym, passed in 94, and basically it says, if you run a telecommunications service, you have to help the government tap the community, like, that's it, right? Just, I'll read the first line of Wikipedia. So the United States Wiretapping Law, passed in 94, clears purpose, enhance the ability of law enforcement agencies to conduct electronic surveillance by requiring that carriers or manufacturers of equipment modify and design their equipment, facilities, and services to ensure they have surveillance capabilities. Right? It's, it's the wiretap law. It says if you run, if you're AT&T or Apple or whatever, you gotta do this stuff. And there, Apple's first argument is a very specific, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get real law professor on this show right now. It's a very specific...

• 8:50Nilay Patel?

  Line, they pulled out a subsection of the law that's that says the carriers have to wiretap and help intercept dialing information and the audio of the call. And they there's a subsection like section B of this says this does not authorize the government to require the design of services or equipment, which is specifically Apple's thing is you're requiring us to design iOS such that.

• 9:19Speaker 04

  I mean, that's that. Maybe that's why they've been using this language so clearly because they've, I mean, every single time they're saying they have to quote a new operating system.

• 9:27Nilay Patel?

  Right. So that is their first argument is Kalia is the United States wiretapping law. Kalia in this section says this subchapter does not authorize you does not authorize the government to require the design of a thing. That's great. The problem is that that is, and this is like the deep lawyer saying this subsection does not authorize something, doesn't mean that it's prohibited. Right? So if I say this law, this sub, this chapter, chapter 47 does not authorize me to like hit Jake and then chapter 48 is you are authorized to hit Jake. 47 doesn't prohibit, doesn't.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's it's a difference between you are not authorized to hit Jake and this chapter doesn't authorize you to hit Jake.

• 10:14Speaker 04

  I no longer feel safe.

• 10:15Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like it's like Jake is dead.

• 10:17Speaker 04

  Viewers, please stay on.

• 10:20Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be an hour. It's gonna be 90 minutes long because it's snuff film. It's just Jake slowly dying. No, but like Brian, you are a paralegal. Like you hear what I'm saying, right? Like it's this subchapter does not authorize this does not mean this law prohibits this. It just means you have to go find some other authority to do this outside of this thing. So that's their first argument. Does that make sense? Am I crazy? Is Brian still here?

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 10:48Nilay Patel?

  The government is like, I just want to make sure you're there. You know, like on Skype, you're all alone. I'd miss you.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  He's not alone.

• 10:55Nilay Patel?

  The other, the other thing you-

• 10:56Speaker 01

  He has people that love him.

• 10:57Nilay Patel?

  The other thing you should know about Brian is when Apple was suing Samsung, Brian and I were like, "The fucking strike team." Brian was in the courtroom, we had secret back-channel voice comms open, so I was like, listening in court and like blogging as fast as I could.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  I think we can't talk about that on the air.

• 11:14Nilay Patel?

  It's over now. What are you gonna do?

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Dude.

• 11:15Nilay Patel?

  It's over. That case is so over. Do you know what happened?

• 11:18Speaker 03

  That would've been really cool if we had done that.

• 11:21Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, no, it'd be great.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  That's so cool.

• 11:22Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I can't, whatever, man.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Man.

• 11:25Nilay Patel?

  The case is over.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 11:27Nilay Patel?

  I mean, we, Brian and I were deep. We were deep in the zone together. Anyway, um, so anytime there's an Apple legal case, I think about Brian. Um, fondly, as it is. Um, Jake, however-

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Is going to die.

• 11:39Nilay Patel?

  Um, anyhow, um, so that, that's their first argument, right? And I think that is a really weak argument. Just, I just, I just don't think it's great. Uh, I could be wrong.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  I will say that-

• 11:52Nilay Patel?

  I just don't think it's-

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Before they get to the actual legal arguments, like, the moral force of their rhetoric is very good. Like, the-

• 11:58Nilay Patel?

  Oh, the whole thing is designed to be quoted.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's designed to be quoted as a, as a layperson, it's like, "Oh yeah, oh, oh yeah, yeah, I'm with you. This is great. I totally am convinced."

• 12:09Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so we should get off this, cause there's, there's much more depth here, and I talked about another case where the government forced, um, uh, literally, it's a 1946 case where they forced a New York phone carrier to like, install a wiretapping device using this, and they're like, "This isn't the same." Um, I'll get into it, I'll, I'll write a whole thing tomorrow, but that's like, the big breaking news is like, Apple, they're making their legal argument now and not their PR argument, and I think that is really fascinating. And this is one, someone's gonna make a decision here. And, you know, it's Apple's like, doing the infomercial thing, where it's like, well, it's, everything's so hard. And you're like- They're like, "How could we possibly code a new iOS? I'll fall down." Like, you know, it's like, they're like, "You, but you, you're the richest company on earth."

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Well, the other thing that's happening is Microsoft has said it's gonna file a, a brief in support of Apple, and I think Google now is also saying they're gonna file a brief.

• 12:57Speaker 04

  Supposedly Facebook as well.

• 12:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah, makes sense. Anyhow, um, I mean, if, if, and if you're Facebook, the last thing you want is the government just like-

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Oh, and Verizon backs Apple?

• 13:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Of course.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Why? Why of course? They've, they've, they've been, they've given the government everything it's asked for.

• 13:13Nilay Patel?

  Cause the government, the government is, because the, if you're Verizon, you are already tightly regulated.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Oh, so they don't want-

• 13:22Nilay Patel?

  Verizon already has to give so much stuff to the government.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  They're afraid that, they're, they're afraid of, they're actually genuinely afraid of this slippery slope argument, that if the government can compel Apple to make new stuff to let the government spy on you, that they could also compel Verizon to expend resources to make new stuff.

• 13:37Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  To make the government spy on you.

• 13:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And so Verizon's argument is, there's already a complex regulatory scheme-

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:43Nilay Patel?

  -that provides the government with, that compels us to help the government in law enforcement activity. If you want to help, if you want us to help more, Congress should go pass a law saying we should help more.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:53Nilay Patel?

  The government can't just like, that, that would, that would be my guess in the argument. Anyway, story's going on, but, because it's an endless show, endless, and Jake's still alive, it's time for Jake to talk about NWC. So it's, Nicola, did they provide you with pictures of phones, as I requested?

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Um, Dieter sent me all of the links. Which one, which one?

• 14:12Nilay Patel?

  Let's, let's start with the S7. So Galaxy S7 is announced at NWC. Jake, you want to do the specs?

• 14:18Speaker 02

  That's in the Samsung tab.

• 14:20Speaker 04

  As soon as I open this window.

• 14:22Nilay Patel?

  By the way, Samsung tab, actual name of a Samsung product.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Aw, man.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Galaxy Tab.

• 14:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but come on, it's close to it.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Galaxy Tab S2.

• 14:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they do have one called the Galaxy Tab S2. I'm not kidding. Uh, S7?

• 14:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, so Snapdragon 820.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Uh, in the US, outside the US, it's something else.

• 14:39Nilay Patel?

  I feel like this is like the worst Samsung asterisk of all time. You can't say the processor of a Samsung phone, because someone in YouTube comments right now is like, "It's Samsung S, they're from the US, and the X-"

• 14:49Speaker 04

  Are they using their own processors outside the US?

• 14:51Nilay Patel?

  They always do.

• 14:52Speaker 04

  Okay, yeah. Um, 4GB of RAM, it's got a 5.1" quad HD-

• 14:57Speaker 01

  The S6 Edge has a 5.7?

• 15:00Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 15:01Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they're the same phones, right? They just, they spec bumped the S6 and they made them look nicer. Am I missing something?

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Well-

• 15:08Nilay Patel?

  And they don't have USB-C for some-

• 15:10Speaker 01

  No, they don't have USB-C so that they can connect to the gear. The big, big, big deal is they made the battery, uh, like, way bigger. It's 3,000 milliamps now. Uh, they also added SD card for expansion, and they also made it waterproof. So, basically, they took all the little things that people didn't really like about the S6, and they just fixed all of it.

• 15:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  So this is like the S6S, more than it is the S7.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  Okay, it's weird, this, in some ways, feels like the most, like, boring Samsung launch.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 15:37Speaker 04

  Exactly. It's like such a sleek-looking phone.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 04

  It's so well-rounded, I'm like, really impressed.

• 15:43Nilay Patel?

  Do you think the phone is so well-rounded?

• 15:45Speaker 02

  This is the one that I opened and I was like, I've already seen this.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Oh, no. But you see, that happens to the iPhone every other year.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  But as a person whose eyes are not attuned to these things, I'm like, I think someone already has this phone. I've seen it. But now that you're saying like, oh, it's because they fixed all the little things and didn't do anything.

• 16:00Nilay Patel?

  I mean, the big thing they fixed was on the, the, the edge, which is the curved one.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:05Nilay Patel?

  Literally, one of the notes was, we made the back slightly rounded, so it's easier to pick up.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  That, by the way, was a huge problem.

• 16:10Nilay Patel?

  But it's just like, super funny. It's like, they didn't notice it on the first one. Like, did no one ever put down the Galaxy S6 Edge on a table and try to pick it up before they released it? Did that, that not occur? And they're like, oh, shit, we blew it.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  I don't understand.

• 16:25Nilay Patel?

  Round the S7.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Oh, they also reduced the camera from 16 to 12 megapixels, so they could have bigger pixels.

• 16:32Nilay Patel?

  That's a thing.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  I don't understand why the edge has to be like an infinity pool. Like, why does it have to all fall off?

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Because it's awesome.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  I like a nice hard edge.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Well, then you should get the, not get that one.

• 16:41Nilay Patel?

  Do you know anybody with a curved phone?

• 16:44Nilay Patel?

  Do you know anybody with an Android phone?

• 16:46Speaker 04

  I see so many.

• 16:47Nilay Patel?

  You know Evan Rogers. You know at least one person who has like an Android phone running.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  He's living the iPhone lifestyle now.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, he, he i-messaged me once and I was like, what is this blue bubble?

• 17:00Speaker 02

  Cause I expected a green bubble, like we became friends. I was like, oh, I expected a green bubble.

• 17:04Nilay Patel?

  Friends?

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:05Nilay Patel?

  Wait, when you become friends with someone, do you, do you assign them a bubble color?

• 17:09Speaker 02

  No, but we became friends at your, at your birthday party.

• 17:11Nilay Patel?

  Which I don't remember.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  Uh, and, no, cause I just knew I was.

• 17:16Nilay Patel?

  I remember the friendship.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  We had talked about Android phones, so I expected a green bubble.

• 17:22Nilay Patel?

  I see.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  And I got a blue one.

• 17:24Nilay Patel?

  I think you should do a feature for us where you just categorize various celebrities as blue or green bubbles.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Okay, sure.

• 17:31Nilay Patel?

  That's a thing, right?

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I hate that.

• 17:34Nilay Patel?

  Who's a green bubble celebrity?

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Green bubbles are okay.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Um, hmm.

• 17:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. By the way, my new website, greenbubblescelebrity.com is now online.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  I'm trying to think of a young, I'm trying to think of a young person green bubble.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Like, only old people?

• 17:46Nilay Patel?

  Tom Selleck.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, Tom Selleck's a green bubble.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  He loves it.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Cause like, green bubble, it's my dad. Cause he just goes to Verizon and he's like, this is neat. Oh, it's in the plan. And he gets it.

• 17:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  I think that's how a lot of people shop for.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Do you think Marco Rubio is a blue bubble or a green bubble?

• 18:01Speaker 02

  Do you look like you're melting?

• 18:06Nilay Patel?

  All right, so the S7, the big news of the S7 is arguably not the S7.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  It's a Zuckerberg walked onstage and stole the show by talking about, you know, VR and they've got like a crack strike team of VR people working with Samsung apparently.

• 18:23Nilay Patel?

  Did you buy, oh, and they put out a 360 cam, the Gear 360.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is, everybody has a 360 cam. My mom has a 360 cam.

• 18:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but there's something, there's something, oh, I wrote a whole column that I spiked because it just made no sense by the end. It was about diagonal integration. You ready for this concept?

• 18:40Speaker 01

  My god.

• 18:41Nilay Patel?

  You ready? Ready?

• 18:44Nilay Patel?

  Samsung's whole 360 VR stuff is the only one out of that group of companies that would be successful. Like maybe Sony because they have PlayStation, Google because they're Google, but Samsung is poised because they're diagonally integrated with Facebook and Google.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:02Nilay Patel?

  Right, so Facebook has Oculus, they run on the Samsung hardware, Samsung tunes the hardware for Facebook.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:08Nilay Patel?

  To do all the Oculus stuff, they make the screens for Facebook, they're like tightly in the game.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 19:12Nilay Patel?

  And it all runs on Android.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 19:14Nilay Patel?

  And Google's, and so Facebook and Android, or Facebook and Google run huge video distribution platforms, they're both heavily bought into VR, and they're all going to deliver this stuff onto hardware that is being specifically tuned for at least one of those platforms.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Samsung's the only company that's getting content and like support from two sides of the VR battle.

• 19:33Nilay Patel?

  And they are the only company that's doing the hardware stack.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Everything except for diagonal integration is awesome in that idea.

• 19:39Nilay Patel?

  No, but it's, it's.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  No, it's dumb.

• 19:40Nilay Patel?

  Because they're not vertically integrated.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  No, it's like striped integration.

• 19:44Nilay Patel?

  They don't, no, they're not striped, that's horizontal. Stripes are horizontal.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  It's not integration at all.

• 19:49Speaker 03

  It's a really good idea, you guys.

• 19:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  It's a tartan, it's a tartan integration.

• 19:53Nilay Patel?

  I would like to point out that I just confidently said all stripes are horizontal and no one, no one even came close to checking the.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  The least ridiculous idea you put out there.

• 20:04Nilay Patel?

  All stripes are horizontal.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Where do horizontal stripes fit on the height matrix?

• 20:13Nilay Patel?

  Wait, actually, S7, where does it go on your matrix?

• 20:16Speaker 04

  Um, seems practical and a little bit elegant.

• 20:19Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  I'm a big fan. I am. I'm excited to try it.

• 20:22Nilay Patel?

  Uh, okay. So then LG did a bunch of stuff.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 20:25Nilay Patel?

  LG went crazy. Go ahead. Get into it.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  LG ham.

• 20:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  It's great. So G5, whatever, it's got the same specs. It's got specs. I don't care. It's high-end phone with specs.

• 20:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  It's got the, you know, the stuff. Um, but you can flick a little switch and pull the bottom off of the phone and the battery slides out. And then you yank the battery off of that thing and then you can stick it onto another thing and then stick that back in the phone. So you could do, like, one of the modules is a camera grip.

• 20:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  And another one is like-

• 20:56Nilay Patel?

  It's got a PC card slot.

• 20:56Speaker 04

  Okay. Wait, answer me this.

• 20:58Nilay Patel?

  That's what it is, right?

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Kinda.

• 20:59Speaker 04

  When are you ever going to put a camera grip on your phone?

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Never.

• 21:06Nilay Patel?

  No, I think they just didn't know what it was for.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Another one is for a DAC. So-

• 21:10Speaker 04

  Again, that's for like two people.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Uh, if they had one that had a big ass battery, the camera grip has a bigger battery on it. It's got an extended battery built into it.

• 21:18Speaker 04

  It also has a giant camera grip on it.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's like, it's like the bump on the phone. Well, what about a speaker, a loudspeaker that I could slide onto?

• 21:26Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Huh? Right? I mean-

• 21:31Nilay Patel?

  I mean, legitimately, what would be the thing?

• 21:33Speaker 01

  The thing that would make it cool is if they developed an ecosystem. The problem is all the ideas of what people have wanted to attach to a smartphone are all the ideas that they've all been attached and so we like, don't know what's next, right? But I believe in my heart that there is because I love the Handspring Visor so much.

• 21:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So talk, talk about the Handspring Visor. Give us a history lesson.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  So, uh, Palm, as it, as it often did, was really crappy in the 90s. And so one of its founders, Jeff Hawkins and, uh, Dubinsky and Calligan, they're like, screw this, we're bailing. We're going to start our own company that will make Palm handsets. We're going to do what we want. And what they wanted to do was make a PDA, but it would have a modular system. And it was literally a like- Use a PC MCA interface, use the same plug interface, it wasn't, didn't use those same commands. Anyway, and the idea was it was a PDA, but you could slap an MP3 player to it, you could slap a memory card expansion into it. You could slap a modem into it, you could slap, you know, other kinds of cartridges. And there was a whole list of stuff that you could get.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  And there was a pretty big ecosystem of, I don't know, a few hundred different modules you could get that to slap into this. And there was a DIY ecosystem, it was cool. But the real reason they did it was because they wanted to have one of the modules you'd slap into it be a phone, to turn the PDA into a phone.

• 22:53Nilay Patel?

  Think about that, think about how far we've come.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  They like.

• 22:56Nilay Patel?

  Cause one of the modules for a G5 is actually a Palm organizer. That'd be incredible, by the way, if one of the modules for the G5 was like a Palm 3. And what I'm, you turned your phone over.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Just let me, I'm sorry. Just want to say that the reason you have an iPhone today is because of that idea. Because there had been other smartphones, but they were like, hey, we'll try it as an experiment, they didn't really believe it. But Handspring like made a real concerted effort to make a broadly popular consumer device that would become a smartphone. They made the visor so they could test out the phone, so they could make the trio.

• 23:29Speaker 04

  But you're saying this ecosystem failed.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Well, it, no, it turned into the trio. So Palm, which at the time was like, bought Handspring, because Handspring bought a really expensive headquarters building and they couldn't afford it. Their mortgage bills, so Palm had to buy them.

• 23:44Nilay Patel?

  The entire Palm story is just classic mistakes.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  And then, but they, they also bought it because they were excited about one of the next versions of the trio that were coming out. And so then Palm made the trio for a while, and that was going great, until it wasn't.

• 23:56Nilay Patel?

  How often do we have a Vergecast that doesn't get into like deep Palmer web analysis?

• 24:01Speaker 02

  I love it, I learned so much.

• 24:02Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm just saying, it's, if there's one thing in the DNA of the Verge, it's like the PTSD of the Palm story.

• 24:10Speaker 04

  We have some of the best Palm reporting in 2016.

• 24:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  By the way, the, some exec from Alcoatel finally admitted that they're not going to do anything with the Palm brand.

• 24:22Nilay Patel?

  Oh, really?

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. But no, but so.

• 24:26Nilay Patel?

  G5.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  I don't know what else is going to get plugged into the G5, but I love, I love the idea that you could plug other stuff into it. The thing I'm most excited about from LG, though. Is the robot ball. Have you seen the robot ball, Nicola?

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Okay, what it?

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Wait, okay. Open your LG tab, which is not a product, but a tab on your computer. Does LG make a tab? Is there a G tab?

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Well, it's not.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  There's got to be a G tab.

• 24:47Speaker 04

  Easily.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  What is it? Wait, what is it called? Oh, Rolling Bot?

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  I'm reading the URLs, like guessing by URLs.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Wait, look at the G5 first.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  A drunken headless BB8. I've met BB8.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  Here.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  It's like BB8. Yes, right? Yeah, it's crazy.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  It's supposed to be a bunny?

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Well, you can like put a little bunny on. Yeah, so it's a, it's a.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Do they sell accessories to make it a bunny?

• 25:11Speaker 01

  You could, I, I, yeah.

• 25:12Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's round. Many, any accessories that fit a round thing, I believe, will fit on it.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  But are like people, is this a thing? Like, people are making?

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Well, it's not, not coming out till the summer.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, the opportunities.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  So it's a, it's a rolling ball, just like a, a Sverro or a BB8. You can control it with your phone, but it has a camera on it and a speaker on it and a laser pointer on it. And the idea is you're at the office and you want to screw around with your cat. You turn the ball on, you like wa- roll the thing around your house till you find the cat, and then you turn on the laser pointer and then start moving the laser pointer around. The cat goes chasing after it.

• 25:42Speaker 04

  You know what I mean?

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Could you spy?

• 25:44Speaker 01

  You can put it in auto cat troll mode, where you just hit the button and then it just rolls around the house, shooting a laser, pissing off the cat.

• 25:51Nilay Patel?

  I have a question for you. Is that LG's idea for the device or Dieter Bohn's idea for the device?

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Why else would you put a laser pointer on a rolling ball?

• 25:59Speaker 02

  Can you, wait?

• 26:00Speaker 01

  I mean, honestly.

• 26:01Nilay Patel?

  How much is the cat torture bot?

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Who cares? It's amazing.

• 26:06Nilay Patel?

  I'm into it. I mean, I, the whole, the whole G5 thing is like LG was like, you know what? Everything. What we're gonna make with our phone this year is every.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, but what?

• 26:16Nilay Patel?

  They put out a VR headset for no reason.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  That VR headset is such garbage.

• 26:20Nilay Patel?

  It looks real bad.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  It's like, it's actually, it looks really cool. It looks okay.

• 26:24Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's nicely colored. Do you have a picture of it? It, it's like, it's smaller than all the other ones. It has this like felt piece. It, like, it looks.

• 26:32Speaker 04

  Apparently it doesn't work?

• 26:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, James Vincent is like, this doesn't work very well.

• 26:37Speaker 04

  Minor oversight.

• 26:38Nilay Patel?

  But like compared to everyone else's VR headset, it's, it actually like looks the nicest.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  The quote, "Light leaks in and with it, reality."

• 26:47Nilay Patel?

  Wait.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Oh, no, I like how this looks.

• 26:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, put it on the matrix.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  Um, the people wearing it. It's very slim. Wow.

• 26:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's why low light leaks in along with reality.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Um.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  What if, what if you could buy accessories for it? They're like eye cups.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  This is drab ostentatious.

• 27:04Nilay Patel?

  Drab ostentatious.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Cause it's not like, I mean, it looks pretty good for like being the thing that it is, but it's like the dorkiest thing.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Oh, so I forgot that thing and all the other things you plug into the phone and this roly ball. Do you know what LG calls them?

• 27:17Speaker 02

  What?

• 27:18Nilay Patel?

  Friends.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 27:19Nilay Patel?

  They just went for it.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:21Nilay Patel?

  They just went for it.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  No, but the G5 as a phone, you know, it's like nerdy and awesome. And maybe there'll be cool modules for it, but almost surely not because there's no way LG is going to get support from a broad ecosystem of hardware developers to make stuff for it. But it is the first G5 in a while that doesn't like basically look at and go, oh, that's cheap and plastic.

• 27:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Which is a big deal.

• 27:41Nilay Patel?

  That's something. I just, I don't know. Listeners, tell me if I'm wrong. I just feel like LG is the perennial also ran in this entire game.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 27:49Nilay Patel?

  Like they're so big and they make so much money making screens for Apple that they're like, we'll make a phone too. And they just need to, what differentiates an LG?

• 27:58Speaker 04

  I feel like this is.

• 27:59Nilay Patel?

  The, I think the G4 had a good camera, right?

• 28:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, but, and now like this seems like the first year that they've got one that's just all around really nice, but they're also trying something kind of crazy. I mean, the G4, the G3, they were like kind of forgettable.

• 28:12Nilay Patel?

  They were bendy. You could like flex them.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  People like the G4. It had a decent camera.

• 28:17Speaker 04

  No, it had a cool camera.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  It had a decent camera and like just, but that was, the thing did not look and feel great. It was just like, and also their software.

• 28:25Nilay Patel?

  No, they got, isn't it?

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Got better on the G4.

• 28:27Nilay Patel?

  And the V10 had two screens for no reason.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:30Nilay Patel?

  That's a thing.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Both the, well, Samsung and LG have like always on screens now. The time and like your notifications are just on your screen all the time.

• 28:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:40Nilay Patel?

  Meh.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 28:41Nilay Patel?

  Meh.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 28:42Nilay Patel?

  What else happened at MBC? What do you, wait, what do you think of the G5?

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Um.

• 28:46Nilay Patel?

  Do you understand that when the G, LG puts out the G6, we will listen to like a G6 in 2017, unironically, it's a massive corporation, like just bumps that song at us. It's on, it's inescapable. It's coming. Everyone just be warned, today, know this. A year from now, we'll be on the show.

• 29:05Speaker 04

  I'm quitting next January.

• 29:07Nilay Patel?

  Listening to like a G6.

• 29:08Speaker 04

  Not allowing this.

• 29:09Nilay Patel?

  It will come for us.

• 29:11Speaker 04

  Um.

• 29:12Nilay Patel?

  Bottles in the club.

• 29:14Speaker 04

  G5, okay, do you think?

• 29:16Nilay Patel?

  Have I ever told you about Frasier Rocker? Wait, the Friends?

• 29:19Speaker 04

  Is that gonna be around next year? Is that even gonna last?

• 29:21Nilay Patel?

  What are the chances Friends last?

• 29:23Speaker 01

  No, there's no way. I'm just really excited about them.

• 29:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  As a gadget, it's cool. You don't have to, you don't have to like-

• 29:29Speaker 04

  No, it is cool, it is cool.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Thinking something is cool isn't a recommendation that anybody buy it.

• 29:33Speaker 04

  I'm just wondering like, what, in what world does this succeed? Like?

• 29:37Nilay Patel?

  Wait, excuse me. Dieter, I know. I just bought a VioP, man. I bought a, I bought a hot pink VioP. I spent $290.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:44Nilay Patel?

  I'm with you on the gadgets thing.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:46Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, I want LG to like, get a win.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, they're not gonna win.

• 29:51Speaker 04

  I want, I want Sony to get a win.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, so do I.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  But it's just not happening. And also, it's stuff at MWC, the new Xperia phones are like, bewildering. I don't know-

• 30:01Nilay Patel?

  Wait, why?

• 30:02Speaker 04

  They're, they just existed, this like weird mid-range points. No one's really sure where they fit.

• 30:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  That's the impression I'm getting.

• 30:11Nilay Patel?

  Also, I like that every Sony phone now has a qualifier in its name. It's like, this is the X7 something. Every single one.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Like what?

• 30:19Nilay Patel?

  Premium, compact, forgettable.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:22Nilay Patel?

  This is the X7 forgettable.

• 30:25Speaker 04

  One is called performance.

• 30:26Nilay Patel?

  Performance.

• 30:27Speaker 04

  Like, the others don't perform.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Oh, and Sony also made a bunch of random crap that goes with their phones. There's a, there's a Moto, there's like a, you know, uh, what's it, Her? What's the movie with the girl?

• 30:39Nilay Patel?

  Wireless headset.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Her, yeah. There's a, uh, Amazon Echo clone, and then there's like a thing, like a pedestal that like, displays stuff on the wall and does stuff. And like, who knows if they're actually gonna sell this stuff? Their Echo clone is called the Sony Xperia Agent.

• 31:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, just every they just can't name a product one name.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 31:06Nilay Patel?

  The Experian agent. That sounds great. That wasn't the name of the things in the matrix trying to kill you constantly.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  The thing about Sony and Experia is you remember the original Experia?

• 31:15Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  The original Experia was a horizontal slider that ran Windows Mobile five? And it was badass, right? Like before it came out, people were losing their minds over this thing.

• 31:28Nilay Patel?

  Really stretching.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  No, it was it was the first like smartphone hardware that had amazing like build quality and it had aluminum and it was like, whoa, this thing is gonna be amazing. And we started using it and it was hot garbage and the keyboard was terrible and like the buttons were bad and whatever. But I I probably spent like $900 on that thing. And here's what I want to.

• 31:49Nilay Patel?

  Just slide that one in. I sent $1,000 on this Windows Mobile phone.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, I imported it, you know, like you do.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  But after that thing didn't live up to expectations, maybe they should have stopped using the word Experian for everything they do.

• 32:07Speaker 04

  I don't know why they used it once. Yeah.

• 32:09Nilay Patel?

  What does the word Experian mean to you, Nicola?

• 32:11Speaker 02

  Experia?

• 32:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's Sony's smartphone brand name. It's X.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  It's like multiple experiences, I guess?

• 32:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I've had a number of experiences.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  A trip and we had Experia and tried new food.

• 32:24Nilay Patel?

  I mean.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  That's so awful.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  I went to Europe. I went to Europe.

• 32:31Nilay Patel?

  That is 100% what the worst girl at a boarding school says.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is the worst. That is the worst.

• 32:39Nilay Patel?

  Who's the worst mean girl at your your elite Connecticut boarding school? She's the one who's like, I've had Experia.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Look up, look up Sony Ericsson Experia X1 and tell me that doesn't look like the hottest shit you've ever seen.

• 32:52Nilay Patel?

  We covered the hell out of this.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  Oh, it's with an X, not an E X.

• 32:56Nilay Patel?

  I remember this thing. We cut. This was like an Engadget special. It was like a thing that we we got down.

• 33:01Speaker 04

  All right, this is kind of sweet.

• 33:02Nilay Patel?

  It had the curve.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. And then you used it. It was like, oh.

• 33:07Speaker 04

  I just like that the interface has like a million things.

• 33:09Nilay Patel?

  That was every Windows phone.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:10Nilay Patel?

  It continues to be every Windows phone.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Oh, man, you can buy one for $80. I'm buying I'm buying an Experia.

• 33:16Nilay Patel?

  What did we give? We reviewed this.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Of course you did.

• 33:18Nilay Patel?

  Engadget.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:20Nilay Patel?

  That's not, no.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  It's garbage.

• 33:21Nilay Patel?

  None of this is right. None of these things are the right thing. 2008.

• 33:27Nilay Patel?

  Darren reviewed it. What do you give it? What do you give it? What do you give it? Do we have scores back then?

• 33:34Speaker 01

  I don't think I covered the Xperia X1 at Windows. Well, when?

• 33:38Nilay Patel?

  Darren's review ends with, "If someone figures how to get Android on it, we wouldn't say wholehearted recommendation would be too far from the realm of feasibility." "We would recommend this if you stripped of it operating system and put a different one on."

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Yo, there's an Xperia X1 on eBay for $27.

• 33:56Nilay Patel?

  Hey, this is your ti- I just bought a V I O P, man. Here's what's gonna happen at the Verge.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Could I load that, the, uh, the Chrome OS?

• 34:04Nilay Patel?

  Chromebook thing, no. You need Intel processor.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Damn it.

• 34:07Nilay Patel?

  I think we should start a Sony hardware museum.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Well.

• 34:12Nilay Patel?

  Sony hardware, have we, has this ever happened here on the show?

• 34:14Speaker 01

  And then people would actually pay money to get Sony devices.

• 34:17Nilay Patel?

  Until recently, Sony made-

• 34:19Speaker 02

  Was that Dieter Shade?

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, it was like deep. I mean, Sony is like a, Sony's business is, is an insurance company in Japan, and then they have this like electronics business on the side.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Oh, they also make, uh, camera modules.

• 34:31Nilay Patel?

  They make camera modules for, for Apple.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:33Nilay Patel?

  Like, that's their business. They make the world's best camera modules, they make TVs that very few people buy, and they sell insurance to their own employees in Japan.

• 34:42Speaker 04

  And these amazing, stylish gadgets that no one buys.

• 34:45Nilay Patel?

  Right. Yeah, so like all through the late 90s, 2000s, and into the sort of mid 2000s, Sony made the craziest, best hardware. And it was funny, because I did that, that thread about what's the coolest old laptop, and the comments, to put Chrome OS on, what's the coolest old laptop with Chrome OS on?

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:02Nilay Patel?

  And the comments were, it was just people posting pictures of Sony computers, because they were all so cool, and they were all, Sony was such a bad software company that they were all garbage in different ways. So the idea of not putting Windows on there and putting just like Chrome as a browser actually is like a wonderful idea. So I, I've purchased a hot pink Sony laptop.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 35:22Nilay Patel?

  And I'm gonna put Chrome OS on it, and then it's gonna be my computer, and I'm gonna be the happiest boy on Earth. I like, I literally think about it every day. I've shown it to so many people, like-

• 35:30Speaker 04

  It looks awesome.

• 35:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's gonna be amazing.

• 35:32Speaker 04

  When's it arrive?

• 35:33Nilay Patel?

  I think it's next week. I mean, it has a 1.6 gigahertz atom processor. It's not gonna be great.

• 35:38Speaker 04

  It's Chrome, it's plenty, right? You can open like two tabs.

• 35:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I'll be able to take some notes in a meeting, uh-

• 35:45Speaker 04

  You might, you might not be able to load the Verge, but-

• 35:47Nilay Patel?

  I probably won't be able to load the Verge. I might be able, if I can get Gmail and like, any notes website, anything where I can type a note. That'd be great.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  If you're lucky, maybe Slack.

• 35:58Nilay Patel?

  Who cares? Cause I'll just be me, I mean, just type it away. I'll still have my phone.

• 36:05Nilay Patel?

  If I can just turn that thing into a Bluetooth key. Ooh, that's an idea.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Hey, we'll go on the screen.

• 36:11Nilay Patel?

  Who cares? I'll just be.

• 36:15Nilay Patel?

  Uh, that's a great idea.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  So let's have a B C. I mean, other stuff. The Xiaomi, um, we got a.

• 36:19Nilay Patel?

  Xiaomi released another iPhone?

• 36:21Speaker 01

  No, actually, this one.

• 36:22Speaker 04

  It looks pretty nice.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  This one looks like a Xiaomi phone. Looks like an iPhone. No, no, it doesn't. It looks like a, it looks like a Samsung phone, which looks like Xiaomi phones.

• 36:31Nilay Patel?

  Was it the Mi five?

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:32Nilay Patel?

  Six?

• 36:32Speaker 01

  It looks good.

• 36:33Speaker 04

  It has like a cool back or something.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:35Nilay Patel?

  That thing looks like an iPhone. Are you kidding me?

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Come on.

• 36:38Nilay Patel?

  I guess it's a little squared off on the sides. It's squared off and that's what they did. It looks like.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  It's not coming to the US.

• 36:44Nilay Patel?

  Of course not. You know why? Because both Apple and Samsung will sue this company. Yeah, it looks like the front of an iPhone with the back of an S six edge.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. But they kind of did that before the S six.

• 36:55Nilay Patel?

  Wait, what's the worst quadrant of your grid, Nicola?

• 36:58Speaker 02

  The worst?

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Probably drab.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  There's no bad quadrant.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, everything has its place.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:08Nilay Patel?

  Is there like drab util- the drab utilitarian is pretty good.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  Drab practical.

• 37:11Nilay Patel?

  Drab practical is great.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  But how is utilitarian and practical different?

• 37:14Speaker 02

  But drab and practical.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Wait, are utilitarian and practical on opposite ends of this?

• 37:17Speaker 02

  No, no, there's no utilitarian. It's drab elegant.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Practical ostentatious. Oh, you weren't here last week.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  That's right. I was not here.

• 37:25Nilay Patel?

  There is really no negative. Practical elegant. Drab practical is fine.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Drab practical is fine. That's why I put the computer mouse.

• 37:33Nilay Patel?

  Extension cord.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, an extension cord.

• 37:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  Is drab practical.

• 37:36Nilay Patel?

  Or like a really good ladder.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  How are you gonna make it elegant? Like, it doesn't need to be.

• 37:40Speaker 04

  So being in between.

• 37:42Nilay Patel?

  If somebody could send me a picture of an elegant extension cord, I'd be super into it. Think about it.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  I think the bad quadrant is elegant ostentatious.

• 37:51Nilay Patel?

  Is that possible?

• 37:52Speaker 02

  See now, now we're into like a matter of lifestyle, because I love elegant ostentatious, obviously.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  If you're ostentatious, you're by definition not elegant.

• 38:02Nilay Patel?

  This is real hard.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Ooh, that's one thing I've learned with you and your people. Everything gets so literal here. Last week, the debut of the thing, I mean, the follow up questions were insane. We're just having fun.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Okay, we don't need to, we don't need to, we don't need to litigate it again. I'm sorry. Um, that's all I have to say about M W C, I think, I think, I think, yes.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I quit looking for whatever song it is you're looking for.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Oh, worst.

• 38:39Nilay Patel?

  Can I tell you a story about that lyric?

• 38:40Speaker 01

  No.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Yes, please.

• 38:46Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I'm just saying, if LG blows this opportunity, I don't know what they're doing. Like, they have a phone right now called the G five. They should already be stealthily playing this song, like, in clubs, in the background of, like, LGTV commercials. It should just, they should be setting the stage for like a G six to come back huge.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Seating it to the right DJs.

• 39:09Speaker 04

  With a doubt.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Just mix it in.

• 39:11Speaker 04

  Next year, they're gonna go with, like, the G five X. They will screw this up.

• 39:18Nilay Patel?

  Like, how do you blow this up?

• 39:22Nilay Patel?

  Acting like they drunk.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  What year did this come out?

• 39:25Speaker 04

  This is, they've just been waiting years for this.

• 39:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they started, because the first one wasn't called the G one.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  By the way, our audio engineer is listening to how long the song has gone on, realize that it's beyond the amount that you're allowed to do for fair use.

• 39:37Nilay Patel?

  I want to talk about this lyric.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  And he's freaking out.

• 39:40Nilay Patel?

  So.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  He's sitting there, how am I gonna edit this? I gotta cut it. He's cutting it all, it's all getting cut. Cut, cut.

• 39:49Nilay Patel?

  And the phone spins in the ad, think about it.

• 39:51Speaker 04

  We're reporting on it, so it's fair use.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  I feel like they're gonna fuck it up and do some kind of, like, like, really absurd, like, there's gonna be beavers or some, you know what I mean? They're gonna, like, try to meme it, like, pre-meme, like, I hate these, these advertisements that are made to be memes.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  A pre-meme?

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically, like, all of the lazy Super Bowls, oh my god, it was so frustrating.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Um, so that, there is a lyric in there that she's like, I'm drinking scissor. But for years, my friends and I totally misheard it, and we thought she said she was drinking scissor.

• 40:20Nilay Patel?

  Which is, in my opinion, and if you're listening to this show, I want to talk directly to your heart now. If you're listening to the show and you maybe have too much money, you don't know how to spend it, you want to make an investment. I have a complete business plan for a vodka brand called Scissor Vodka.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Does it involve the song?

• 40:38Nilay Patel?

  It doesn't involve the song, although I think having a famous song in which people appear to be saying drinking scissor in the club is a good look.

• 40:46Nilay Patel?

  I just want to do an entire print billboard campaign, like, physical media campaign of like hot people. And they just, they're looking at you with their fingers like this, and it just says, "Cut through the night."

• 40:58Speaker 02

  This is a radio show. People are in the car. What are your fingers doing?

• 41:02Nilay Patel?

  They're making scissors, man. What do you think they're doing?

• 41:05Speaker 02

  I'm just giving it back to you, because you know, it's...

• 41:08Nilay Patel?

  If you're in the car right now, here's what I want you to do. I want you to look at the car next to you.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  He likes making a very sly scissor sign. It's sort of a peace sign. It's a peace sign.

• 41:14Nilay Patel?

  It's a little thing, right?

• 41:15Speaker 02

  It's a peace sign.

• 41:16Nilay Patel?

  Look at the person in the car next to you.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  No, you're alone.

• 41:19Nilay Patel?

  Put your... Why are you alone? You're on the road.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Because you're commuting places. People always drive their cars alone.

• 41:24Nilay Patel?

  No, but in the car, the other cars around you.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  In the traffic jam.

• 41:28Nilay Patel?

  In the traffic jam.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Make eyes at the stranger.

• 41:30Nilay Patel?

  Make eyes at the stranger.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Man, when there's self-driving cars, that's all we're gonna have to do, is like, look at each other in cars.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  It's gonna be aggressive meat cutes.

• 41:37Nilay Patel?

  And like, a slight scissor shape, and then just mouth the words, "Cut through the night." And that, people are gonna do that.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Cut through the night is good.

• 41:46Nilay Patel?

  For Scissor Vodka.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  I would.

• 41:48Nilay Patel?

  So, I'm, again, I'm seeking directly to your heart now.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  This is a beautiful ad.

• 41:51Nilay Patel?

  If you have more money than sense, and you would like to make this happen for me, I'm your friend. I love you, and I think you and I...

• 41:59Speaker 01

  That's the kind of pitch you would hear on, I mean, that's just the worst thing I've ever heard in my life.

• 42:04Nilay Patel?

  I have a second one for a trampoline vodka, which is just the word "bounce." It's just, it's endless TV ads of people leaving clubs.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  When does the Oscar segment begin?

• 42:17Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 42:17Nilay Patel?

  I'm telling you, man.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  This is like some eighties sitcom dad has a job and he has to go pitch the thing kind of like pitch.

• 42:23Nilay Patel?

  Cut through the night is great.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  Cut through the night is great.

• 42:25Nilay Patel?

  Cut through the night is great. Balance is awful. That's but that's like.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  Cut through the night is awful.

• 42:31Nilay Patel?

  Cut through the night is great.

• 42:32Speaker 04

  No, cut through the night is fantastic.

• 42:33Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 42:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:34Nilay Patel?

  And there's already a song that everybody's.

• 42:37Speaker 04

  I already want to cut through.

• 42:38Nilay Patel?

  You're drinking a scissor in the club.

• 42:41Nilay Patel?

  Now I'm feeling so fly. All right, we should just get Emily in here. Brian, Brian was.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, Brian, you didn't talk about phones at all.

• 42:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't. I'm sorry. I'm still recovering from bounce.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  Slogan do you prefer?

• 42:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:52Nilay Patel?

  Brian, Brian is slacking me.

• 42:54Speaker 03

  Better than bounce.

• 42:57Speaker 03

  Um, that's definitely true.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Where does cut through the night? Okay.

• 43:00Nilay Patel?

  No, cut through the night is great. It's just people. It's.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  No, it's better. I didn't say it was great.

• 43:05Nilay Patel?

  No, it's great.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Brian, say one thing about a phone and then I'll leave.

• 43:07Speaker 03

  Um, uh, friends is crazy. You're high for lacking. I don't understand at all.

• 43:13Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Just like that it exists.

• 43:15Nilay Patel?

  I need to read. I need to read some advertising, uh, which I need to find. By the way, if you're listening.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  It's at the bottom of the.

• 43:23Nilay Patel?

  I don't. I didn't open it because I'm a bad person.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  You're a terrible human.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  That's where all the links are.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  You want me to read the ad?

• 43:29Nilay Patel?

  I don't need the links, Nick.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Whoa. Check out today's ad.

• 43:35Nilay Patel?

  What's our ad for? Where is it?

• 43:37Speaker 02

  I know. I'm I'm using it right now.

• 43:39Speaker 03

  Is it for scissor vodka?

• 43:40Nilay Patel?

  It's for scissor. Can I read a fake ad for scissor? Are you alone in the club? Do you feel like you should go to a different club?

• 43:48Speaker 02

  No, I think this is for aging millennials like myself where it's like.

• 43:51Nilay Patel?

  Are you aging millennial?

• 43:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like it's being out getting hard. It's one o'clock when you want to leave. Cut through the night. Get amped on scissor vodka and I swear to God you can stay out till four.

• 44:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, it's more like you'll just wake up and it's four because you've cut through the night. You like took you like time warp.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Shortcut through the night.

• 44:11Nilay Patel?

  Are you already bored? Get daunted on scissor vodka.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Did you actually yawn?

• 44:19Nilay Patel?

  You'll wake up in a gutter. Cut through the night. Do you want to skip directly from sober to regret? Cut through the night with scissors. Okay. I'm gonna read this. There's probably a positive version of that ad. It's like people snaking through the front of the line.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:33Nilay Patel?

  You know, it's like, it's like the group of friends walks into the, the, the concert and there's like a big crowd. And they're like, ah, and then one of them like,

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Throws the sign.

• 44:42Nilay Patel?

  They see their friend way up to the front and they're like, they're already on stage with the rapper and they're like,

• 44:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, cut through the night.

• 44:46Nilay Patel?

  And they're like, cut through the night.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  And he walks right in.

• 44:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  The trouble comes when you cut too far.

• 44:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, to regret.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  Don't cut too deep.

• 44:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's it. Don't cut too deep. That's our anti-drinking and driving.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  I'm gonna invent a time machine. Go back in time five minutes and tell everybody on this show that they can skip ahead.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  No, that was free magic. That was free magic.

• 45:09Nilay Patel?

  Don't cut too deep as like, like, like it says, like, drink responsibly. Don't cut too deep.

• 45:18Nilay Patel?

  What is Slack? It's a messaging app for teams. It brings all of your communication at work into one place, integrating with the tools and services you use every day. Slack's mission is to make people's working lives simpler, more pleasant and more productive. So many teams transition to Slack from a siloed collection of tools they've cobbled together to build their own communication fabric. It's email, it's IM, it's Skype. You pull these disjointed conversations into a single, organized and searchable view that helps decisions get made faster. But it also radically increases transparency. Nearly 100 integrations work with Slack, including Dropbox, GitHub, Trello, MailChimp, Google Drive, Hangouts. Although I'm not clear why you'd use Hangouts and Slack. Oh, I get it. Cause of the video conferencing. Anyway.

• 46:01Nilay Patel?

  And there's lots and lots of customers of Slack. There's Airbnb, there's NASA, there's AOL, BuzzFeed, Dow Jones, eBay, Expedia, Intuit, Ticketmaster, MIT, Samsung, Spotify, Salesforce, Sappio, Wall Street Journal, Pinterest, SolarCity, I'll transparency, Box Media, Slack Organization. We use it. We love it. Slack has more than 1.25 million daily active users. It's a lot of people. And people who use Slack report a 32% productivity increase, a 48.6 reduction in internal MIMO, and 25% fewer meetings. So just do this thing that I want you to do. Go to slack.com/verge, create a new team, and you get a hundred dollars in credit so you can decide.

• 46:44Nilay Patel?

  If you like Slack, you can try it for free. And if you decide to upgrade to a paid plan, you can use that $100 credit and upgrade your lifestyle. Anyway, look, here's the thing. Box me to use a Slack. These people use Slack. Some of us like Slack. Some of us love Slack.

• 46:56Speaker 05

  I'm biting my tongue so hard now.

• 46:58Nilay Patel?

  Emily has her own feelings about Slack.

• 47:00Speaker 05

  Why?

• 47:00Nilay Patel?

  But if you're not using Slack, you are not using the right tool. And that is the end of the segment.

• 47:04Speaker 05

  That's true.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  What are you using, a competitor like?

• 47:08Nilay Patel?

  I don't think I can just bite competitors in the Slack app.

• 47:11Speaker 05

  No.

• 47:11Nilay Patel?

  You know, I just, I don't think we can do that. But Slack, Slack, it's the one.

• 47:17Speaker 05

  Is that really it?

• 47:17Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 47:18Nilay Patel?

  No, it's not the tagline.

• 47:20Speaker 03

  Cut through the conversation.

• 47:21Nilay Patel?

  I just don't know how to end the, Slack, cut through the night.

• 47:25Speaker 05

  Kind of.

• 47:26Nilay Patel?

  Wait, oh, you guys-

• 47:26Speaker 05

  Cut through your inbox.

• 47:27Speaker 06

  We're cutting, we're cutting through the podcast.

• 47:29Nilay Patel?

  We're back. The ad is clearly over.

• 47:31Speaker 05

  I didn't realize that by jumping into the middle of a podcast, which is like a very risky gambit.

• 47:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:35Speaker 05

  I would be missing so many inside jokes.

• 47:37Nilay Patel?

  Oh, God, it's already real bad. Like, real bad.

• 47:39Speaker 05

  I feel lost right now. And I'm, I'm supposed to be like, know what's going on for this segment. I'm supposed to be steering the ship. And yet I have no, like, I feel so left out.

• 47:48Speaker 06

  All I know is that we're literally cutting through the podcast right now.

• 47:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it happened. Well, let me ask, let me, okay. Brian-

• 47:55Speaker 05

  Cut it out.

• 47:55Nilay Patel?

  Nick, no. Come on, man. So let's talk about Fuller House for the next 45 minutes.

• 48:01Speaker 05

  Nope.

• 48:02Nilay Patel?

  I'm just gonna ask these two, because they're, they're fresh, fresh ears, fresh minds. If I were to start a vodka company called Scissor Vodka in honor of my misinterpretation of the lyrics of Like a G6.

• 48:16Speaker 05

  Which is my favorite song. One of my favorite songs.

• 48:19Nilay Patel?

  It is. I mean, we were, we were just, we can, I can just hit play. I mean, I can just push the spacebar to play.

• 48:24Speaker 05

  Oh, it's a fantastic song. One of my first articles on the vir- I, I talk very, very favorably about Like a G6.

• 48:30Nilay Patel?

  Well, so LG's, LG's phone this year is called the G5. And I've been saying, they're blowing it if they don't start seeding this song again, so that next year-

• 48:39Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:40Nilay Patel?

  Anyway.

• 48:40Speaker 05

  How many things have been named in a series of G something or other? Because we're Macs too for a while.

• 48:45Nilay Patel?

  There's a G4.

• 48:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:47Nilay Patel?

  And they got to G5, and they stopped. Oh, conspiracy theory.

• 48:51Speaker 05

  But the planes didn't stop. The planes kept going.

• 48:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's true. Poor, poor Far East movement.

• 48:57Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 48:58Nilay Patel?

  Uh, but anyway, so I have always mis- misheard the lyrics to like G6. Is drinking scissor in the club and not scissor. And I was saying, wouldn't a great tagline for a brand of vodka called Scissor Vodka be cut through the night? Just think, just, god damn it.

• 49:16Speaker 05

  It sounds really sinister to me.

• 49:18Nilay Patel?

  Yes, it should be sinister.

• 49:20Speaker 05

  It's, no, I don't, I don't think a vodka ad should be sinister.

• 49:24Nilay Patel?

  Yes, it should be like dangerous and sexy.

• 49:27Speaker 06

  I'm much too old to drink spirits, so I can't.

• 49:33Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 49:34Speaker 06

  I just.

• 49:34Nilay Patel?

  Old people drink spirits.

• 49:36Speaker 06

  But not me.

• 49:37Nilay Patel?

  You age into spirits.

• 49:38Speaker 06

  No, I aged out of them.

• 49:40Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 49:40Speaker 06

  When I was.

• 49:42Speaker 05

  I know what you're talking about. You're talking, you aged out of going hard.

• 49:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly. I go soft.

• 49:48Speaker 05

  Jameson, Jameson bought a six pack of what's it called? Not your father's root beer?

• 49:52Speaker 06

  I don't.

• 49:54Speaker 06

  I could take the remainder of the podcast to explain that debacle.

• 49:58Nilay Patel?

  Let me just time out for one second. So if for some reason you have decided to live through that transition through with us. Emily Oshida is here.

• 50:08Speaker 05

  Hi.

• 50:09Nilay Patel?

  And Jamieson Cox is here.

• 50:10Speaker 06

  Hey.

• 50:10Nilay Patel?

  Jameson, secretweaponoftheverge.com, in my opinion.

• 50:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:15Nilay Patel?

  Hidden away in Canada.

• 50:17Speaker 05

  But he decided to come down.

• 50:18Nilay Patel?

  Vlogging machine.

• 50:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, I came down for the Oscars.

• 50:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:21Speaker 06

  I came down to don my, uh, my formal wear.

• 50:26Speaker 05

  And we should say.

• 50:26Speaker 06

  And to blog.

• 50:27Speaker 05

  He came down to watch the Oscars on television with us.

• 50:30Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty great.

• 50:31Speaker 05

  Um, Brian, who is also still on the line, is going to be at the actual Oscars, so he gets the fun.

• 50:37Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty fun.

• 50:38Speaker 05

  But the rest of it are gonna be just like eating pizza and watching the TV and making.

• 50:43Nilay Patel?

  Are we all gonna dress up?

• 50:44Speaker 05

  Um, I, I know TC really wants us to dress up secretly.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Uh, or not so secretly.

• 50:51Nilay Patel?

  Are you coming to the Oscars thing in some way?

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Well, I have to do my own wrecked. I'm gonna be.

• 50:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  I'm gonna be on it.

• 50:55Nilay Patel?

  Are you coming?

• 50:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll be here. Are you guys gonna be here?

• 50:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're throwing a whole thing. They're making the whole staff.

• 50:59Speaker 05

  Guys, everybody come to the Vax Media New York headquarters for the like most banging, content making Oscars party ever.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Can I sidebar to my favorite TC clothing story? Just because like I think that the audience knows and likes him.

• 51:15Nilay Patel?

  All right, all right.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  So. TC and I have become friends on Twitter without really ever meeting in the office.

• 51:21Nilay Patel?

  You guys work 25 feet away from each other.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  It never really happened.

• 51:24Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  And then one day he walks by wearing a poncho and I slack him for the first time. Oh, there you go. I slack him for the first time and I'm like, tell me about this. And he just said, TLDR, man discovers Etsy.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  I just, I just, I.

• 51:41Speaker 06

  That to me is like one of those, you know, those four word short stories, like baby shoes never worn. TLDR, man discovers Etsy.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  It was so perfect. Oh, it's so perfect. I still think about it.

• 51:53Speaker 05

  That's amazing.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  Yes. Anyway, so if the man says formal wear, I'm with it.

• 51:58Speaker 05

  He really knows his way around a head. Like, that's incredible.

• 52:01Nilay Patel?

  I love it. Okay. So Emily, I'm gonna let you drive. This is your 45.

• 52:04Speaker 05

  Okay, well, I was just talking in the control room. We're, PS, I heard the whole background about like a G6. I knew where Sis or vodka came from. I'm totally with this podcast.

• 52:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, in the game.

• 52:14Speaker 05

  Um, I was just saying though, in there, um, I'm not really sure how, uh, to attack the Oscars. Um, I think at some point I would, I think it would be fun to go through and to say who we think is gonna win the major awards. But we should probably start by just talking about what a fun shit show this year the Oscars are gonna be. Cause that's why we're watching on television. We could, um, follow along on Twitter and just find out the, um, the results or, you know, watch a boring telecast. But it's gonna be an interesting one.

• 52:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:44Speaker 05

  There's a lot, um, you know, in the air. Obviously the whole Oscar so white controversy now, it's two years strong, um, has really reached a peak. A lot of people won't be there, a lot of, a lot of people that, um, you know, one would expect to be there are boycotting the, uh, the show itself. And, um, I feel like a lot of people are going to use their time at the podium to, uh, air some grievances with Hollywood. So it'll be fun. It'll be real fun. Um, lots of, yeah, lots to watch.

• 53:19Speaker 05

  And, and you know, I, I think it's funny, everybody's saying that the biggest, the biggest narrative is around Leonardo DiCaprio.

• 53:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:27Speaker 05

  Finally picking up his Oscar. I don't know. I feel like it's one of those things we're just gonna get it over with. I feel like it's, it's going to be the most anticlimactic part of the entire.

• 53:35Nilay Patel?

  Can you get an Oscar for a movie that a lot of people I know are just actively avoiding because it sounds like a brutal experience?

• 53:41Speaker 05

  Oh, I mean, it's not even that brutal.

• 53:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:45Speaker 05

  I mean, it's pretty. It's like pleasant to watch. There's like beautiful sunsets in it and bears.

• 53:54Speaker 05

  I, I just don't, the, the thing about this year's acting nominees, I think normally it would be another loss for Leo because he doesn't really do that much in this movie. But, and, and people are already mad at me. I've already spoiled The Revenant on this podcast before, so I feel like it's bear territory. I can do, I can think anything I want.

• 54:12Nilay Patel?

  It's getting broken again. The bear comes back.

• 54:16Speaker 05

  But, um, I mean, I think in any other year, it, it would be another Leo loss. I mean, we've continued having the Susan Lucci narrative around him, but this year, there, he's not really up against that much. Like, here are acting nominees, just as a refresher, if you haven't been like bathing in this stuff for the last month. We've got Bryan Cranston in Trumbo, which nobody saw. We've got Matt Damon in The Martian, which is like not really getting any traction in any awards at all. Like none of the pre-awards. And it's like, you know, I think that whole, I think the comedy thing with Golden Globes really hurt it. I think it's become such a punchline, like, oh, that comedy, that comic performance in The Martian, which to be fair, a lot of it is comic, but it's just not.

• 54:57Nilay Patel?

  Not a comedy.

• 54:58Speaker 05

  It's, yeah, it's not a comedy. And if it was a comedy, it wouldn't be that funny. And I don't know, I'm not a fan of that movie, but I, I just think it's like a weak entry for, a- a- as many interesting things are in that movie, I just don't think it's being taken very seriously for awards. Um, then we have, uh, Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs in Steve Jobs, um, another film that is having kind of a hard time breaking through, except for, um, Kate Winslet for the supporting, her supporting role in it. I again, like, this is probably the only one that has a chance of getting, of beating Leo. But again, very, very long shot. And then Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl, which he won last year for Theory of Everything. So it's very unlikely.

• 55:42Speaker 05

  If Eddie Redmayne wins two Oscars for Best Actor in a Row, something really weird has happened.

• 55:51Speaker 06

  Well, and especially for The Danish Girl, which is like the most transparent play for acting Oscars.

• 55:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:56Speaker 06

  This year.

• 55:57Speaker 05

  I feel like people have Eddie Redmayne's number at this point. Like he's taking, you know, he's first, he's going to be Stephen Hawking and then he's going to be a transgender woman.

• 56:04Speaker 06

  It was a tragedy that he wasn't nominated for Jupiter Ascending.

• 56:08Speaker 05

  I forgot that he was in Jupiter. Jupiter Ascending, wait. Brian has feelings about Eddie Redmayne in Jupiter Ascending.

• 56:17Speaker 03

  Well, the movie was a horrible piece of shit, but he was the one like entertaining spotlight. We were like, I'll watch that guy do that crazy shit anytime.

• 56:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it's not that I don't like him. I, I just think his agent has been a little aggro. That's all I'll say. I like the projects he's been picking are a little bit like a calm down, Eddie. Like, like you have your whole life ahead of you. You're still young. I think he might, I might be older than Eddie Redmayne. I feel like he's, he's kind of going, coming a little hot right now.

• 56:45Speaker 05

  So yeah, that's who Leo is going up against. Who, like, I don't know. Can anybody make a strong case for anybody other than Leo? I would love to hear it.

• 56:56Speaker 06

  Like that are actually nominated? No.

• 56:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 56:59Speaker 06

  I saw Trumbo previews for like five straight movies I went to see back.

• 57:03Nilay Patel?

  Closer.

• 57:03Speaker 06

  Closer. I can't figure out the distance thing. I really wasn't briefed.

• 57:07Speaker 05

  He's not been media trained yet.

• 57:10Speaker 06

  I'm, yeah. It makes me sound like I'm a puppy. Which to be fair, I am. Media puppy, Jamieson Cox. That's my official title, actually.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  That's your new Twitter bio.

• 57:20Speaker 06

  Yeah. Oh yeah. So Trumbo, like I went to go see five movies and there was a preview for Trumbo before every single one. And I was never really convinced that it was a real movie. It kind of reminded me of like the Tropic Thunder previews, like Trumbo followed by Satan's Alley.

• 57:36Speaker 05

  Oh my God. Wait, there were two, um, what was, there was another screenwriter. Show or not show a movie. I'm trying to think of what it was.

• 57:46Speaker 06

  Truman Capote in like recently or like 10 years ago?

• 57:51Speaker 05

  No, like this year, this past year. I don't know. Maybe I'm just thinking of it feels like Argo also. But Argo also won Best Picture. So who knows? I mean, let's, this is like.

• 58:03Speaker 03

  But Argo as a Best Picture winner to me always seemed like, did you, did everyone just pick the like the joke?

• 58:08Speaker 05

  I, I think, I don't, I think it was a weak year that year. I'm trying to think of what else came out that year. Do you, do you know off the top of your head, Brian?

• 58:16Speaker 03

  Off the top of my head, but it was a weird pick and it didn't, uh, it didn't win across like all the guild awards that you'd normally expect it to win. That feels like it may have been a thing that won because of like the, the tiered system of voting, you know what I mean? Where it's not just like everybody votes on one thing and that's the only thing that counts.

• 58:31Speaker 05

  Yeah. Wait, was that 2012? Um, no. Oh my God. You know, we've had a bad run here recently. The Artist won in 2012. I forgot. Remember the Artist, everybody? The best movie of 2012. Um, I mean, no, the, the Oscars are notoriously bad. Um.

• 58:53Speaker 03

  Wait, so why are they so important though? Like, why do we cover the hell out of them? Like, why do, why does everyone pay so much? Why is Brian writing a column every week about them? Like?

• 59:01Speaker 05

  It's the most visible way to track, I think, what, what Hollywood thinks is valuable. Not from a money standpoint, but from an artistic and intellectual standpoint. I mean, I, is anything, what, what do you think, Brian? Aside from that, I, I think the visibility is just a huge part of it.

• 59:20Speaker 03

  That's the thing. It's like the best way to think about, look at, see what Hollywood thinks about itself. But I think what's interesting about this year is it's also become a, a driving part of like several narratives that are about how Hollywood is actually out of touch with like the rest of the country and world in a really, really profound way. And it's made this year particularly interesting. There's been a lot more fun things to write about this year instead of like, oh, now like so and so looks like they're gonna win instead. And that's kinda me.

• 59:45Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of years, the Oscar conversation becomes a conversation about a specific genre of movie, like a very cloistered off genre of movie called the Oscar movie. And like the goings on and the dealings within that sphere. But now I think because that just became so insular and so. I don't know, like naval gazy that the convers- you know, I think people just had enough of that. They're like, this has nothing to do for the for the definitive award or honor that you can have in Hollywood for a film. It has nothing to do with anything that's going on in film. And and as Brian wrote about a few weeks ago, this has happened before, like this, there's a cycle, I think, and it'll probably happen again in like 30 years after after all the

• 1:00:30Speaker 05

  changes were made in the Academy. It'll, you know, things stagnate and then get remade.

• 1:00:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we're all slowly age and become irrelevant.

• 1:00:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:38Nilay Patel?

  And the youngs will get mad at us.

• 1:00:39Speaker 06

  And soon no one will drink spirits.

• 1:00:45Speaker 06

  I think too, like when we're talking about like the relative value of the Oscars, even if they're not particularly meaningful in a vacuum, they're still way more meaningful than the like big award shows in other areas of culture. Like compare them to the Grammys. I think the Oscars are way more reliable is like a year by year snapshot of what was important than the Grammys, which are like practically useless in that regard.

• 1:01:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Nilay Patel?

  I mean, we just did bring up the artist, right? Like.

• 1:01:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, but but there are other movies that were nominated. Like you can look at all of the nominees for Album of the Year in the Grammys some year, and none of them were particularly good or relevant like past that ceremony.

• 1:01:24Speaker 05

  I'm going to tell you what was up against Argo the year that it won in 2013, just for funsies.

• 1:01:29Nilay Patel?

  I'm into it.

• 1:01:30Speaker 05

  Um, okay, we had Amor, which was really sad and depressing, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Misérables, whoop, whoop, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, and Zero Dark Thirty. Now, this was a big year where Zero Dark Thirty got kind of slandered, not slandered, but it got it got kind of beaten through in the in the campaign.

• 1:01:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:58Speaker 05

  Uh, there was a lot of controversy surrounding it and its depiction of torture and stuff like that. And I think a lot of people would say that was one of, if not the best films of the year. And and Catherine Bigelow was one of the best directors of the year. But, you know, campaigns are brutal.

• 1:02:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, I mean, you could, but there's. In that list, you could make arguments for Zero Dark Thirty. You could make a sort of half-hearted argument for Silver Linings Playbook. Like, you know, like a fun one, like at a bar, like you have to. There's something else that you mentioned. Like, there's like three in there that you could make, well, two that you could make serious arguments for in Silver Linings Playbook, right?

• 1:02:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:40Nilay Patel?

  And Argo won, and it just felt like it won because it was like the biggest.

• 1:02:43Speaker 05

  It was fine. Everybody was like, it's fine.

• 1:02:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Speaker 05

  I don't, I don't hate it.

• 1:02:47Speaker 06

  Like, shout out to Les Mis for giving the Eddie Redmayne hype beast the boost that they needed. Cause he was flames in Les Mis.

• 1:02:54Speaker 05

  That was, that was the beginning of it. He was really good. You know who else was good in that? Aaron Tveit of Grease Live.

• 1:03:01Speaker 06

  Well, he can like, he can keep that one on his mantelpiece for life.

• 1:03:05Nilay Patel?

  Django, that's the one I was thinking of. You could have made a real.

• 1:03:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Speaker 06

  Yeah. Also Anne Hathaway, the queen. I'm, I'm like, I'm an Anne Hathaway stan on the low.

• 1:03:15Speaker 05

  Let's just talk about, can we just talk about Les Mis?

• 1:03:17Nilay Patel?

  Nicola is making a face on a face. Tell me what is happening to your face right now.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  I just like Jameson unfolding and like, I really like that being part of what the like 12 things I know about Jameson.

• 1:03:30Speaker 06

  And then I.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  Maybe last, maybe six.

• 1:03:32Speaker 06

  I went to go see the intern like on opening night.

• 1:03:35Speaker 05

  I actually believe that Jameson is more of an Anne Hathaway than a Jennifer Lawrence.

• 1:03:41Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 06

  If anyone, I really.

• 1:03:45Speaker 05

  And there's nothing wrong with that.

• 1:03:46Speaker 06

  I really empathize with Anne Hathaway.

• 1:03:48Speaker 05

  I think.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  Why? Please.

• 1:03:49Nilay Patel?

  Cause she's like a theater girl, like who like little.

• 1:03:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Nilay Patel?

  She's like, no one is ready for the nuclear theater girl explosion when it happens.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  Do you think she's like always like holding it in a little bit to like play it cool?

• 1:03:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm with Jameson. Like, I'm a, like.

• 1:04:03Speaker 06

  Oh, see, I think you're much more of a Jennifer Lawrence. Because like, I'm gonna be very real about myself right now. Like, I'm not cool. And that's fine. I can really like, I can work my way like into like a life not being cool. And Anne Hathaway is not cool, but Jennifer Lawrence is like, I love beers. I love making fun of reporters.

• 1:04:21Speaker 05

  Whoops, I tripped.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:04:24Speaker 06

  Oh, my God. Is that Robert De Niro? Oh. Like, and I'm like, that's not me. Like, I know, Emily and I had a Slack conversation once where I described myself as the.

• 1:04:33Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God, it's a Slack native ad.

• 1:04:36Speaker 06

  But we were talking about like The Hunger Games and at one point I was like, yeah, I wish that I was the Caesar Flickerman of The Verge, but really I'm the Peter Malarck. And that's very real.

• 1:04:53Speaker 05

  I forgot about this entire conversation, it's all coming back to me. We assigned characters for every single person at The Verge.

• 1:05:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, to wrap this up, I think that Josh Hutcherson should have been nominated for Best Actor.

• 1:05:10Speaker 05

  Oh my god, I do not regret having Jameson be on this podcast right now.

• 1:05:15Speaker 03

  This is the best Verge cast of all time, I'm just telling you right now.

• 1:05:18Speaker 05

  It's just flames.

• 1:05:19Nilay Patel?

  It is, something's happening.

• 1:05:20Speaker 05

  Um, well, by all means, let's continue to talk about 2013 nomination for Best Actress and winner.

• 1:05:28Nilay Patel?

  Brian, which Hunger Games character do you think I am?

• 1:05:36Speaker 05

  Isn't it obvious?

• 1:05:38Nilay Patel?

  Wait, it's terrible.

• 1:05:41Speaker 05

  I mean, wait, no, no. Neelai is obviously Caesar Flickerman, um, and Dieter is, um, Plutarch Evansby.

• 1:05:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:05:51Speaker 05

  Doi.

• 1:05:52Speaker 06

  It's not a coincidence that-

• 1:05:54Nilay Patel?

  Hold on, let me Google.

• 1:05:56Speaker 06

  Like, I'm just gonna say, it's not a coincidence that Neelai opened this podcast by going, "Ha! Emily Yoshida, the girl on fire."

• 1:06:03Speaker 05

  No, I didn't, I'd never wanna hear that again.

• 1:06:08Speaker 05

  Um, well, anyway, let's get back to talking about Jennifer Lawrence. Psych, um, I don't wanna talk about Jennifer Lawrence's, and, because I don't think, I mean, she's going, is she gonna win? I don't know. Let's talk, let's talk for real about the Best Actress race.

• 1:06:21Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:06:22Speaker 05

  Um, okay, we've got Cate Blanchett for Carol, Brie Larson for Room, Jennifer Lawrence for Joy, Charlotte Rampling for Forty Five Years, and Saoirse Ronan, I got her name right, I figured out how to say her name, for Brooklyn. Um, Brian?

• 1:06:37Speaker 03

  Brie Larson.

• 1:06:38Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, there's no-

• 1:06:39Speaker 03

  I mean, it's been that way for months, it seems like. Nobody's ever really challenged her. I mean, she's been the front runner since the beginning, and the performance is actually really, really amazing. I think the film's really, really strong.

• 1:06:48Speaker 05

  Have you guys seen Room?

• 1:06:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, I have. I liked it.

• 1:06:51Nilay Patel?

  There are so many characters in The Hunger Games.

• 1:06:54Speaker 06

  Okay, I'm not gonna let this derail me. Like a train speeding to the Capitol, I will not be derailed.

• 1:07:01Speaker 05

  Nilay's just trying to hide the fact that I don't think he's seen any of the nominated films.

• 1:07:06Speaker 06

  I think if I did-

• 1:07:07Speaker 03

  Hey Nilay, which Hunger Games character is Brie Larson?

• 1:07:12Speaker 05

  Brie Larson-

• 1:07:13Nilay Patel?

  Commander Pelor, played by Patina Miller, who first appears in my- I definitely have the Wikipedia page of her.

• 1:07:18Speaker 05

  Brie Larson is totally Jennifer Lawrence in-

• 1:07:22Nilay Patel?

  Wow, this is too bad. Alright, keep going.

• 1:07:24Speaker 06

  Okay, I just-

• 1:07:24Nilay Patel?

  Serious podcast.

• 1:07:25Speaker 06

  Okay, so I think, I'm gonna make a statement. I think that this is the strongest acting category by like a wide margin.

• 1:07:33Speaker 05

  Oh, you mean in this, in this-

• 1:07:34Speaker 06

  In terms of quality performances, yeah, like-

• 1:07:37Speaker 05

  For this year, or in, in gen- oh, you mean in general, like the best actress?

• 1:07:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, like the crop of nominees is way stronger than any of the other acting categories.

• 1:07:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, I would, I would, you know, supporting actor is pretty great.

• 1:07:55Speaker 05

  I would say, I don't know, I mean, I just feel strongly, I feel very strongly about like every actor in Spotlight. I was listening to another podcast recently, oh, and I'm, I'm gonna forget which one it was, but they were talking about how you could like tell a lot by your personality, by which Spotlight performance is your favorite. I don't know that I have a favorite, I think it might be Ruffalo, like I'm, I'm pretty happy with him getting that nomination, he's like very, very, he's like the most showy performance in it.

• 1:08:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:08:21Speaker 05

  But-

• 1:08:22Speaker 06

  If I had to pick my favorite Spotlight performance, I think I'd go Schreiber.

• 1:08:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, Schreiber's a great one, I mean, man, that, that movie is so good, I mean, if, if I had, had I my Druthers, I think Spotlight. Spotlight or Mad Max would be my favorite, or would be my pick for best picture, like I just, I don't know, I, I really love both of those films. But, um, but, but actress, leading role, um, yeah, I don't know, I didn't see Joy, I didn't see, I didn't see three of these, actually, so I'm not doing my job, but-

• 1:08:53Speaker 06

  I haven't seen, uh, Forty Five Years yet, but-

• 1:08:56Speaker 05

  I haven't seen Forty Five Years.

• 1:08:57Speaker 06

  I really like, um- I really like Weekend, which Andrew made before forty-five years. I really like complicated old people love stories. It's very specific.

• 1:09:07Speaker 05

  That was actually something, for real, Jameson talked about, I think in the interview process for this job. You talked about loving geriatric comedies.

• 1:09:15Speaker 06

  I'm very predictable.

• 1:09:17Nilay Patel?

  I mean, really, the unpacking of Jamieson Cox right now is real deep.

• 1:09:22Speaker 06

  Now, I'm trying to remember which geriatric comedies I...

• 1:09:25Speaker 05

  You know what? I think we were talking about that Netflix show.

• 1:09:28Speaker 06

  Grace and Frankie.

• 1:09:28Speaker 05

  Grace and Frankie. Yeah.

• 1:09:30Speaker 06

  Grace and Frankie.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  Was that good?

• 1:09:32Speaker 06

  Well...

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  It comes up a lot in my life. You should try.

• 1:09:36Speaker 06

  Like, okay, so qualitatively, bad? For me, delightful.

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  That's Jameson's type.

• 1:09:47Speaker 05

  I think it's just...

• 1:09:47Speaker 02

  I loved it.

• 1:09:48Speaker 05

  I think at this point, though, I think I know exactly what that means, like what that that evaluation means.

• 1:09:54Nilay Patel?

  I think once you know a person well enough, and they say that, you, it's like very personal.

• 1:09:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Nilay Patel?

  It's, but it's a sign of like true...

• 1:10:01Speaker 06

  Well, like, there's a real difference between best and favorite, right? And I think being, you know, part of being a good critic is being able to differentiate between the two.

• 1:10:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. Not let your emotions get in the way, like a...

• 1:10:13Speaker 06

  Yeah. So maybe that's my, what's, what's your matrix called, Nicola?

• 1:10:17Speaker 02

  Um, the height matrix?

• 1:10:19Speaker 06

  No, what are the axes?

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  Uh, drab to elegant.

• 1:10:22Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:10:23Speaker 02

  Practical to ostentatious.

• 1:10:25Speaker 06

  Right. So mine quite aren't as showy, but it would be like favorite to like hate or whatever. And then like good to bad. They're different.

• 1:10:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're, they're actually...

• 1:10:36Nilay Patel?

  By the way, Revenant, drab ostentatious.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:10:39Nilay Patel?

  Think about it.

• 1:10:40Speaker 05

  Drab ostentatious. Wait, what? I thought drab ostentatious was one of the axes.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  No, drab is on the left, elegant's on the right.

• 1:10:48Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  Practical's at the bottom, ostentatious at the top.

• 1:10:51Speaker 05

  Oh, no, it's elegant ostentatious. It, it, I mean, it's so...

• 1:10:54Speaker 06

  How could an Iniaritu movie be anything other than elegant?

• 1:10:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:10:58Nilay Patel?

  Ooh.

• 1:10:59Speaker 05

  I mean, or like, oh, I'm not gonna say cheapo. An Emmanuel Lubezki movie has to be just...

• 1:11:06Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I see, I see the argument.

• 1:11:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:11:08Nilay Patel?

  I think I was thinking of something else.

• 1:11:11Speaker 05

  Well, the fashion in it, the fashion in, in, in Revenant is, is on the drab end. A lot of pelts.

• 1:11:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like it's like a movie about drabiness.

• 1:11:19Speaker 06

  They're all wearing Yeezys, season three.

• 1:11:21Speaker 05

  I saw some...

• 1:11:28Speaker 05

  No, they're wearing Easy Season 3 in District 13.

• 1:11:35Speaker 05

  Which is actually true, I feel like. I'm pretty sure. I mean, when I was there at MSU for the listening event.

• 1:11:44Speaker 02

  I was there. We were both there.

• 1:11:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, we were both there separately. But when it was unveiled, I totally thought it looked like a sci-fi, like, set.

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know what you're getting at, yeah.

• 1:11:55Speaker 05

  But like, in a student way.

• 1:11:57Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:59Speaker 05

  Ooh, somebody's got some criticisms of...

• 1:12:02Nilay Patel?

  Nicola's just been waiting. I feel like Nicola's been waiting, and Brian has just been hidden on the digital. He's at the end of the tube over there.

• 1:12:10Speaker 05

  Oh, I wish Brian's face was up front and center the entire time, instead of mine.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  What are you guys looking at? I'm looking at a three-shot of you guys, so...

• 1:12:23Speaker 05

  Well, now we're looking at you.

• 1:12:24Nilay Patel?

  We're looking at our live shot.

• 1:12:25Speaker 05

  And we just got it fixed, so now we're talking directly to Brian all the time.

• 1:12:28Nilay Patel?

  But now the live shot is just Brian.

• 1:12:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's fine, that's fine, that's fine.

• 1:12:33Nilay Patel?

  That's cool by me.

• 1:12:33Speaker 05

  It's like you're right here. So, I will tell you what category I have the strongest feelings about, or the one single strongest opinion about, and it's so minor, but it's actress in a supporting role. I think Alicia Vikander's performance in The Danish Girl is terrible. It is bad. It is not just not up for, like, not award-worthy. I think it is actively obnoxious. And I think she's great in Ex Machina. I think she's the best part of Ex Machina. She holds it together. But that is such a textbook. It's like 10 years of people making fun of Manic Pixie Dreamgirls, like, never happened. And she's

• 1:13:17Speaker 05

  just like, "I'm gonna do this like the spunky wife who, like, decides to, like, do a little gender-vending, like, in the bedroom with my husband." And then it becomes so much more than I bargained for. It's like, very, very offensive to me. Um, I don't know, but that's I and I only say that the only reason I have strong feelings about this like so many things with the awards is that I'm pretty sure she's gonna win. So.

• 1:13:44Speaker 06

  Right. Well, I would like to just say that I think that Oscar Isaac's arms and shoulders carried Ex Machina, but that's fine. And I think that Rooney Mara should win this award.

• 1:13:55Speaker 05

  And facial hair.

• 1:13:56Speaker 06

  And facial hair.

• 1:13:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Speaker 06

  He's a really something.

• 1:14:01Speaker 06

  But yeah.

• 1:14:01Speaker 05

  I'll let him hold my gelatinous brain any day.

• 1:14:05Speaker 06

  I would too. Okay. But yeah, um, I mean, like, I think, uh, Rachel McAdams is really good, and I think Rooney Mara is even better. And I think neither of them have a chance of winning this award, which is too bad.

• 1:14:15Speaker 05

  I mean, yeah, the Rachel McAdams performance is so understated, and she really only has like a couple of scenes that are all her own, or like that she's just splitting with one other person. But it's so good. I mean, she has some of the most emotional stuff in the movie and and I just feel like you deserve some something to take home after a year where you were in True Detective season two. You just need a little something to make the year worth it. Cause oh, goddamn, that was, that was.

• 1:14:44Speaker 06

  Can you guys tell me about Kate Winslet and Fast Bender and how Steve J- how like there are great performances in a movie that nobody liked? Like critically, nobody liked and audience wise, nobody went to go see.

• 1:14:58Speaker 05

  I'm kind of mystified about the Kate Winslet thing because, um, yeah, because nobody saw it and because it's not like it's one of these legacy awards where like, oh, that person. Like deserves it at this point. She's won and been nominated a bunch of times. She's not like, this is not her first rodeo at the Oscars. So that one, I just feel like, I feel like with so many other supporting roles, I don't really get it politically. I don't know. But, um, but, uh, I get it more for Fast Bender. He hasn't, he hasn't won anything or he hasn't won an Oscar at least.

• 1:15:36Speaker 05

  And, you know, he's very respected. He's been in a bunch of stuff that's kind of been looked over. So now he's in this like showy, very high profile. Even if it wasn't seen that much, like it's a very demanding role to take on to be Steve Jobs. So I understand why that would be um in the running.

• 1:15:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, and plus I think there's a correlation between, you know, turning in a strong performance in a Sorkin movie, despite whatever our feelings about Sorkin may be, I think that gains a certain amount of credibility with people in the nominating actors. I'm just surprised that like it seems like Winslet is kind of poised to likely win or you know, and that surprises me because the movie does seem sort of blah.

• 1:16:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, I yeah.

• 1:16:13Speaker 03

  I feel like it turned Vicander, but I I feel like the candor vote would actually be for Ex Machina, even though, you know what I mean?

• 1:16:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:16:19Speaker 03

  Because she was fantastic in that.

• 1:16:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, and it continues, you know, Vicander won continues in the best supporting actress tradition of like anointing the next person upright.

• 1:16:27Speaker 05

  The ingenue.

• 1:16:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I think that's the best argument for her victory.

• 1:16:31Speaker 05

  They love to give the supporting role to an old grizzled veteran, a la Sylvester Stallone, and the supporting actress role to a new bright, shining, pretty star. And that could be very well the way, I mean, it's it's pretty likely that Stallone will win for Creed. Which is a great performance, it's good, it's it's obviously very, it's obviously very, you know, contested or or or controversial just because like he's the only person to get nominated for a great movie. Like, did that movie even get a cinematography nomination? It didn't, did it?

• 1:17:07Speaker 03

  I don't think so.

• 1:17:08Speaker 05

  No, it didn't. I mean, granted, there's a lot, you got Deacons and you've got like, yeah. I mean, this is a very, cinematography is a serious category this year. But I feel like there's a lot of really great stuff in Creed that should have been not, uh, given a nod at least.

• 1:17:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, speaking of cinematography, uh, other than The Revenant, which is likely going to win because it is like gorgeous. What do you think, what's your favorite film, shot film of the year, Emily?

• 1:17:38Speaker 05

  Mad Max.

• 1:17:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's so, I I don't know, I was, I actually watched it on cable again recently because it's on HBO now and they're showing it like all the time. So I watched like half of it. The, the, when it's night, like their their weird day for night shooting is so bizarre and memorable and like completely, it's like a hundred percent stylish. It doesn't resemble any kind of earthly atmosphere at all and it's so, it's so cool. I, I don't know, I mean. Yeah, but I feel like there's a lot of like using those muted tones and those very like tasteful. Yeah, like Deacon's work in Sicario, I mean, it's really, it's beautiful, but it's like, it's not 100% unexpected.

• 1:18:24Speaker 05

  And I feel like there's way more crazy stuff happening in Fury Road.

• 1:18:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I mean, I feel the same way. And that's the bummer about Revenant, because it is part of that. I feel like every film that those pair together, especially shoot, there's gotta be like a cinematography gimmick to it.

• 1:18:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:39Speaker 03

  And this is like all available light, and that's the only thing.

• 1:18:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:43Speaker 03

  And I think Fury Road is actually much more kind of like audacious in terms of like leaning back on older techniques and just, you know, people had not seen a movie that looked like that in like decades.

• 1:18:52Speaker 05

  Man, can we, can we talk for a second about just the overall campaign for the Revenant? Whether you're talking about Leo, or the movie itself, or the cinematography, like, why, like, Mad Max, I'm sure was very hard to film as well. They were in the desert for a really long time, shooting stuff with real cars, and like a bazillion cameras everywhere, and stunts, and a huge cast, like way bigger cast than Revenant. Why, like, why? They built the guitar truck. That guy was on the truck. That guy, that guy put the love of his life on that set because it was so hard. Yeah, no, I, I just don't, I, I don't know why, it's so frustrating me, this narrative of like, well, they worked so hard, so they deserved it.

• 1:19:38Speaker 05

  I am, oh my God, I'm gonna go down such a rabbit hole with this. Fall down the hole. Uh, Robert McKee, who wrote Story, the handbook, which is responsible for probably some of your least favorite screenwriting in the last 20 years. He has a blog, which I was made aware of last week, where he reviews movies and talks about whether or not they work on a script level, in like the most formulaic, predictable way you can imagine.

• 1:20:10Speaker 05

  And he loves the Revenant, obviously, and like, his reviews are little checkmarks for each like element that worked. And the last one isn't even an element that worked, he's just like, I'm just glad these guys could pull it off. It seemed like a real hard film to make. And like, meanwhile, he's trashing Carol and stuff. It's just, it's really incredible. But that narrative that is emerged around that film is just like very, I think it's effective on a certain kind of like old school. Um voter.

• 1:20:37Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it the at least from my very distant perspective, it feels like the entire narrative around the evidence is like, we almost killed Leonardo DiCaprio.

• 1:20:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:20:45Nilay Patel?

  And it's like, did you like, was that true? Like, was there any chance that he would have died in that movie? Like, percentage wise, is it 2% that Leo would have died? Because, because it feels like they're saying like, only Leonardo DiCaprio has the strength of spirit and the desire for young chicks to go back to LA after he almost died making this movie.

• 1:21:06Speaker 05

  Oh, no, that's the best thing is like when he's done filming, he goes straight to the club.

• 1:21:11Nilay Patel?

  I.

• 1:21:11Speaker 05

  Cut through the night.

• 1:21:14Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:21:15Speaker 06

  Say what you want. I think it's really inspiring that he kept a picture of the dance floor at One Oak in his glove. So when he was really feeling down, he could just like peek at it.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:21:24Speaker 06

  Peak, shut his.

• 1:21:25Nilay Patel?

  Peak Nicola face right there.

• 1:21:29Nilay Patel?

  You really want that to be true.

• 1:21:30Speaker 05

  One Oak of all the places.

• 1:21:32Speaker 06

  That's.

• 1:21:32Nilay Patel?

  No, One Oak is a totally, like, duh.

• 1:21:35Speaker 02

  I don't like of all, like, there's so many.

• 1:21:37Speaker 06

  I'm just saying, as someone who really closely follows all Leonardo DiCaprio plus model coverage, One Oak is a frequent appearance.

• 1:21:48Speaker 05

  I remember feeling like he, he revolutionized the thing of wearing a baseball cap, um, in like the mid-0s. Like, that sounds very, very boring, but like being out with your boo, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses because you're famous, like, which is like not, it was just not a stylish look, but that immediately became code for, I'm famous, leave me alone.

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  I have a baseball hat and whenever I wear it, more people look at me and I think it's because they think I'm.

• 1:22:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think it's totally.

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  But it's like, I'm on the J train. I'm not famous.

• 1:22:17Speaker 06

  What's?

• 1:22:18Speaker 05

  I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:22:19Speaker 06

  I'm sorry.

• 1:22:20Nilay Patel?

  Celebrities are just like us, man.

• 1:22:22Speaker 02

  On the J train.

• 1:22:23Speaker 06

  I live.

• 1:22:24Nilay Patel?

  Maybe they're gonna like.

• 1:22:24Speaker 06

  Not New York. Can someone explain to me?

• 1:22:26Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 1:22:27Speaker 06

  Is the J train not?

• 1:22:29Speaker 05

  It goes to Bushwick. The J train goes to Bushwick.

• 1:22:32Speaker 06

  But isn't that where like a lot of arty hipsters live?

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, but like, if you're a celebrity, you'd be in that Uber Black or something. Like, you wouldn't be on the subway. And definitely not.

• 1:22:42Speaker 06

  What if you're a celebrity who prides themselves on being a member of the common folk?

• 1:22:47Speaker 02

  I would be a stubborn celebrity.

• 1:22:48Speaker 06

  Like, don't.

• 1:22:49Speaker 05

  Like you're Mark Ruffalo and you.

• 1:22:50Speaker 02

  Actually, no, it would take zero minutes for me to be like, I get driven now.

• 1:22:54Speaker 06

  Can't you imagine? Can't you imagine Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde taking the J train? I can.

• 1:23:01Nilay Patel?

  No. No, absolutely not.

• 1:23:04Speaker 05

  Um, you know, I think that there are a lot of people where we overestimate how much money they actually make and whether or not it's actually practical to have a driver to take them anywhere in New York. I I'm just gonna put that out there.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  Jameson, if you're here for long enough, we can ride the J train and you can come to Bushwick.

• 1:23:21Nilay Patel?

  That mean that is Facebook video gold. Just Jameson, Jameson reacting to the J train happening.

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, it'd be great. I already have so many things we could do.

• 1:23:33Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if you wanted a BFF while you're in New York.

• 1:23:37Nilay Patel?

  I'm not sure if you're aware of the fact that Nicholas proposing a series of ongoing adventures with you.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  Like a crawl. I think I made a crawl.

• 1:23:45Nilay Patel?

  Cut through the night.

• 1:23:47Speaker 06

  Yeah. It's done.

• 1:23:49Speaker 02

  Bring cash.

• 1:23:50Speaker 05

  Uh, real, real quickly, I want to get back to talking about the Oscars.

• 1:23:54Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna keep trying.

• 1:23:55Speaker 05

  Real, real quick. Just, I promise it won't take long.

• 1:23:58Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:24:00Nilay Patel?

  So sorry.

• 1:24:02Speaker 05

  Um, I just want to know what, what movie got dicked over the most.

• 1:24:05Speaker 06

  Carol. It was Carol.

• 1:24:09Speaker 05

  That was not me, by the way. If you're listening to this on audio, that was not me.

• 1:24:12Speaker 06

  It was Jameson. And it was Carol. Carol, I'd like, here's the thing about Carol. Carol is not only like a piercing and like super touching love story, it's also super funny. Like, I've been quoting lines from Carol for the last month. Yeah, not even just the names that the people have, which are absurd. But everything anyone says is very funny, like. Okay, so I live in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and there's a scene in Carol where they're in a place called Waterloo and they say that it's awful and I just want.

• 1:24:43Speaker 05

  That's what that really hit home for you.

• 1:24:46Speaker 06

  Everyone in the theater, and it was a close to packed house, started laughing and it was a beautiful moment. Watching a beautiful movie.

• 1:24:54Speaker 05

  So if we were, if this was just up to, just up to the, the people, the voting contingent of Waterloo, Ontario.

• 1:25:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:25:02Speaker 05

  Carol would be a lock.

• 1:25:04Speaker 06

  I think so. People were, were very stoked upon leaving the theater. And there's something like, what does Kate Blanchett say? She's there when they're like having their first date, basically. And she's like, oh, what a funny girl. Fell out of space.

• 1:25:15Speaker 05

  Oh, fell out of space. Yes.

• 1:25:17Speaker 06

  I've been saying to people, oh, how funny. Fell out of space for the last month. So.

• 1:25:23Speaker 05

  They should say that when that astronaut gets back next week. What's his name?

• 1:25:28Speaker 03

  Scott Kelly?

• 1:25:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:25:29Speaker 06

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna say that to Lauren Grush. If she doesn't put fell out of space in her post, we're through.

• 1:25:35Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 1:25:36Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:25:37Speaker 05

  So really, I mean, it's a deep, it's a deep cut. I, I'm trying to think of what, what.

• 1:25:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. What you want in your space content is Carol gifs.

• 1:25:46Speaker 05

  Um, uh, I, you know, I don't, I can't think of something off the top of my head that I really, I'm like, and now I, I'm also having complete amnesia. This is one thing that the Oscars do that I think is one reason to, to care about them is they really do take over the conversation about what happened in film that year. Because right now I'm like, I know there were like five movies I saw last year that I liked way better than anything on this list that I can't remember because we've been talking about these movies for so long now. It feels like forever.

• 1:26:18Speaker 06

  I think we did mention a few of them, like over the course of the podcast, like Creed and Ex Machina are two movies that I also think could have, you know, why, why weren't both of those nominated for best picture? I think they could have been. And.

• 1:26:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:26:32Speaker 05

  Ex Machina was. Oh, go.

• 1:26:34Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, and after Sunday, I think that my, those are my two as well. And I think that opinion is gonna change to Mad Max on Sunday. Cause I feel like it's not gonna win anything. And that's.

• 1:26:42Speaker 05

  I think, you don't think it's gonna win anything? I think.

• 1:26:45Speaker 03

  I mean, it'll win a technical award. It'll win like editing, I think, but.

• 1:26:47Speaker 05

  I think there's a really strong chance that, uh, George, uh,

• 1:26:53Speaker 03

  Miller.

• 1:26:54Speaker 05

  Miller can, can win for best director. I think, I think that's possible.

• 1:26:58Speaker 06

  Pete, I agree. I think he's gonna.

• 1:26:59Speaker 03

  That would make me happy.

• 1:27:01Speaker 06

  I think, I thought he was gonna get the. Price when the revenant wins.

• 1:27:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's gonna split. I think it's gonna be either like I, I think it's a longer shot for it to win best picture. So I think revenue will win best picture, but then I think, I think, I don't think that Ina Ritu will win for director if, if revenue was for best picture. I think it'll go to somebody else, but that's also, I, I, I always find the Vegas odds amusing, which went out today. And they actually have pretty high odds on it. I mean, Ina Ritu is higher, but, but Miller is not far behind, so.

• 1:27:36Speaker 06

  Also, you know what? Okay. Maybe some of you are watching the Verge cast. You're meeting me for the first time.

• 1:27:42Nilay Patel?

  You should always be on the show. I'm just putting.

• 1:27:44Speaker 05

  I, I actually love Jameson's radio voice. I have to say it's really calm. It's so NPR.

• 1:27:50Nilay Patel?

  It's very good.

• 1:27:52Speaker 06

  This Canadian.

• 1:27:53Nilay Patel?

  That's like a real, there's some shade in saying somebody's voice is so NPR.

• 1:27:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, but my whole.

• 1:27:57Speaker 05

  We already established he's Anne Hathaway.

• 1:28:01Speaker 06

  Like my whole life is very NPR. That's okay.

• 1:28:06Speaker 02

  He's wearing New Balances.

• 1:28:07Nilay Patel?

  I just want to be there at the moment when Jameson was like, you know what? I'm never gonna be cool. And that's it. Like whatever.

• 1:28:13Speaker 06

  You should have been there on October 25th, 1992, when I was born.

• 1:28:17Speaker 05

  Stop it. Don't say that. Don't say 92.

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  Jameson, I'm October 24.

• 1:28:22Speaker 06

  Are you for real?

• 1:28:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:24Speaker 06

  That's Drake's birthday.

• 1:28:25Speaker 02

  Tila Tequila, the United Nations.

• 1:28:27Speaker 06

  I have.

• 1:28:28Speaker 05

  Tila Tequila.

• 1:28:28Speaker 06

  I have Ciara, Katy Perry. One of the bare naked ladies.

• 1:28:33Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 1:28:34Speaker 05

  This horoscope? These horoscopes?

• 1:28:37Speaker 06

  Yeah. Um, oh, sorry.

• 1:28:38Nilay Patel?

  I'm just still stuck at 92.

• 1:28:39Speaker 06

  I was, I'm so sorry. I'm gonna, I did have an actual point to make. So you know me, you've got a feel for me at this point. You know that I like old people comedies and romances and.

• 1:28:52Speaker 05

  Chill wave.

• 1:28:53Speaker 06

  Chill wave. Uh, yes. And so I'm gonna make an argument for Brooklyn, which is a movie that is delightful.

• 1:29:00Speaker 05

  Chill wave of movies.

• 1:29:01Speaker 06

  No, it's so good. So I went to see Brooklyn, the first half, so funny, made me laugh, made me wiggle in my seat as Saoirse Ronan gallivanting across the Atlantic Ocean.

• 1:29:14Speaker 05

  And then.

• 1:29:16Speaker 06

  Cause she's like, just prancing through Jessica Peres there in the department store. And she's just having a ball. And then the second half on pins and needles the whole time.

• 1:29:27Speaker 05

  Wait, what, what, isn't it just about like what boy she's gonna fall in love with? Cause like, it's like, it's a debate between her home and her new, her old home and her new home.

• 1:29:36Speaker 06

  Yes, that's exactly what happens. And that doesn't change my statement one bit. I was on pins and needles the whole time. I just thought Brooklyn was really well done. I think everyone is kinda like laughing at it or casting it aside because it's this very like lightweight. You know, romantic movie.

• 1:29:51Speaker 05

  It is the one that my mom was like, you should see this.

• 1:29:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I am the mom of The Verge.

• 1:29:57Speaker 05

  No, you're so many, you're so many more things than just the mom, but you are the mom.

• 1:30:01Speaker 02

  I thought Ross was the mom.

• 1:30:04Speaker 06

  Really?

• 1:30:05Nilay Patel?

  Ross?

• 1:30:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:07Speaker 05

  He's who I asked all the questions.

• 1:30:10Nilay Patel?

  Huh.

• 1:30:11Speaker 05

  What?

• 1:30:12Speaker 02

  You think you're the mom?

• 1:30:13Nilay Patel?

  No. I used to be.

• 1:30:16Speaker 05

  You're the wacky uncle.

• 1:30:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm the drunkel.

• 1:30:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, I didn't wanna say it, but that's what I meant. Wacky. That's what you tell the kids.

• 1:30:25Nilay Patel?

  It's your comic uncle. Don't talk to him so much.

• 1:30:29Speaker 05

  Brian, what, what, what category do you, well, okay, what's, what's a movie you think got dicked over one? And then what category do you have the strongest feelings about, either positively or negatively?

• 1:30:38Speaker 03

  Uh, Dick Dover, Ex Machina and Creed. Those are like the two movies for me where it just seemed like they were so strong, but it was like, uh, Creed, there's really no excuse, but Ex Machina was just so early in the year.

• 1:30:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:30:49Speaker 03

  And it was like that weird like cadence release. It came out in the UK last year, I wanna say.

• 1:30:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:30:53Speaker 03

  And like it trickled out this year. Um, and that's just a shame because there were so many strong points about that movie.

• 1:30:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:30:58Speaker 03

  Uh, and it did get some other awards recognition, but, um, as for now, not really so much. Um, and the other, uh, the category I feel most strongly about is actually, um, probably director. I am.

• 1:31:12Speaker 03

  Uh, I'm pro old Inari two and not so much new school.

• 1:31:16Speaker 05

  Really?

• 1:31:17Speaker 03

  So, yeah, so, um, but I fear in my soul, like I have a terror in my soul that he'll win for the second year in a row, um, even though it's like.

• 1:31:26Speaker 05

  That would be really unprecedented.

• 1:31:29Speaker 03

  I know, but he won DGA and that was the first time ever too, like it's been back to back. So it's like, it's possible. I have a feeling it will definitely split like best picture and best directors. It's a matter of which one it ends up getting.

• 1:31:40Speaker 05

  I just, I just, I mean, it would be another great, like just statistic to have the like Kubrick never won a best directing Oscar, but Inari two won twice in a row, like.

• 1:31:50Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:31:51Speaker 05

  Oscars, like, I don't know, um.

• 1:31:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's just such a showy movie. It's, you know, I mean, like you can see like the directing in every frame and I'm just not a fan of that so much where like it's, you know, Mad Max is, is flashy, but it's about creating a world where it doesn't seem so like self-conscious.

• 1:32:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's interesting that like it kind of creating a world or, or doing something that's more speculative or sci-fi works for Mad Max and it doesn't work for Ex Machina. Cause usually I would put like before, like last summer, I would have put both of their odds about the same for being in an Oscars conversation. And I think, I mean, yeah, Mad Max just has more direction on the screen and more stuff going on and it's got, um, you know, it's got, I don't know. I mean, I think, I think the performances are really subtle in that movie in a great way. Um, I don't know. I just, I, I guess it's just that there are cars, uh, power of cars. Um, uh, yeah, I mean.

• 1:32:51Speaker 03

  I also think there's something about George Miller in terms of making it more palatable, you know, white cup of nominations, him, you know, being an Oscar winner, coming back, you know, kind of rediscovering his mojo after decades for this kind of movie is a really appealing narrative to.

• 1:33:04Speaker 05

  Love a comeback story.

• 1:33:05Speaker 03

  Academy that's like average age 60, right? Like, you know, that conversation, I think that's a factor too.

• 1:33:09Speaker 05

  Yeah. And no, I, I think, I think the. You know, yeah, George Mueller's age and race might help and gender. Um, uh, yeah, I'm trying to think of what else that I feel like really got left out. You know, one thing that people have been talking about is like a snub, which I don't, I think it's like weird to call it a snub because I think it would have been a long shot. But I feel like Jada Pinkett Smith in Mad Max XXL was one of my favorite performances of the year.

• 1:33:33Speaker 06

  Everything about Magic Mike XXL is so good.

• 1:33:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, that movie was never gonna get anything, but it is one of the more special movies of last year, like on a pure.

• 1:33:43Nilay Patel?

  I definitely watched that movie for the first time last night.

• 1:33:44Speaker 06

  That whole, that whole sequence, that whole sequence in her nightclub, you want to talk about like shooting stuff too, is just like.

• 1:33:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:33:51Speaker 06

  Exquisite. It was mind blowing.

• 1:33:53Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. The, yeah, the cinematography. Yeah. Soderbergh, Soderbergh on the camera. Uh, yeah, it's really, it was really, really well done.

• 1:34:02Speaker 06

  My boyfriend watches Live with Kelly and Michael every morning, and let me tell you, never the same after you've seen Magic Mike XXL.

• 1:34:08Speaker 05

  Oh, I know.

• 1:34:09Speaker 06

  There's just like a subtle charge under the surface of every show.

• 1:34:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:14Nilay Patel?

  Wait, please unpack that for me.

• 1:34:16Speaker 05

  Is Michael Strahan in it?

• 1:34:17Speaker 06

  Is in Michael, no, hold on. See? Look, he's got me all flustered. Michael Strahan is in Magic Mike XXL and he lights the screen on fire.

• 1:34:28Speaker 05

  Doing what?

• 1:34:29Speaker 06

  Dancing.

• 1:34:30Speaker 05

  He dances. He does a whole strip treat.

• 1:34:32Nilay Patel?

  That's that dude?

• 1:34:32Speaker 05

  The first guy, like not Twitch, who, who does the mirror dance with him?

• 1:34:36Speaker 06

  And Justin also watches Alan every day.

• 1:34:38Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:34:39Speaker 06

  So it's just like two hours of like unbearable tension for me.

• 1:34:42Speaker 05

  Which is amazing. Also, both those castings are like incredible.

• 1:34:50Nilay Patel?

  I'm so far behind. But all, like what I've gotten from this so far is that you watch this movie and suddenly daytime television?

• 1:34:58Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:34:59Nilay Patel?

  This is like totally charged with actual tension.

• 1:35:02Speaker 05

  Because who watches daytime television? Moms.

• 1:35:07Speaker 06

  No, it's just, it's like.

• 1:35:08Speaker 05

  Man, Emily threading it.

• 1:35:10Speaker 06

  It's just like, think about it, imagine.

• 1:35:14Speaker 05

  Imagine, okay, so look at it, Neela, you like the Packers, right?

• 1:35:20Nilay Patel?

  Yes, I don't know where this is going.

• 1:35:22Speaker 06

  Imagine, imagine that Eddie Lacy breaks like an 80 yard touchdown run.

• 1:35:27Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:35:28Speaker 06

  And then every play where Eddie Lacy like runs three yards and falls down after, you're mad because you're like, I've seen what Eddie Lacy can do.

• 1:35:35Speaker 05

  Totally, yeah.

• 1:35:35Speaker 06

  He's broken an 80 yard touchdown run. I know he has that potential within him. When I see Twitch sit behind the desk at Ellen, or I watch Michael Strahan sip his coffee with Kelly Ripa, I know that there is like a latent sexuality. Just, it's just waiting underneath.

• 1:35:57Speaker 06

  And that's what it's like.

• 1:35:58Speaker 05

  I am absolutely losing my mind.

• 1:36:00Nilay Patel?

  We got there. It all came together in the end.

• 1:36:02Speaker 05

  I don't disagree with any of this.

• 1:36:04Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that was a magical performance, Jameson.

• 1:36:08Speaker 06

  And that's why I'm.

• 1:36:09Speaker 05

  I feel like this has just gotten meta, though, because I feel the same way now about, yeah.

• 1:36:14Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 1:36:15Speaker 05

  I can barely speak.

• 1:36:17Nilay Patel?

  I get it. I get what you're saying. It's just, Michael Strahan to me is like, real goofy motherfucker.

• 1:36:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, I know. He does like Metamucil ads, literally, but you just.

• 1:36:28Speaker 05

  It's sort of like, it's sort of like, no, the gap to.

• 1:36:30Nilay Patel?

  Have the same effect though now?

• 1:36:33Speaker 06

  I can't even go in that aisle in the grocery store. It's just way too much, which is too bad because so many of my favorite products are there.

• 1:36:42Speaker 05

  You're really aged. I'm done. I'm done. I'm tearing up.

• 1:36:45Nilay Patel?

  Out of spirits, through the root beer, and right into the fiber supplements.

• 1:36:54Speaker 05

  Oh my God.

• 1:36:57Speaker 05

  Um, well, uh, let's, let's, let's talk, let's get outside of the, uh, the, the. I know we've been sticking to the nominees really, really closely and just having a really rigorous conversation about them. But, but let's step outside the awards for just a second and talk about the show itself and, and what we're, what we're, um, looking forward to, um, predicting about the general goings on. Um, are you doing red carpet coverage, Nicole?

• 1:37:23Speaker 02

  I am. Yeah, I will be, I will be watching E and bringing you all the hot takes.

• 1:37:30Speaker 05

  Do you guys do like, do you guys talk about like what people say on the red carpet? I feel like, I feel like that's gonna be, it'll be an interesting red carpet to watch, because whatever the, it'll set the tone for the rest of the night as far as.

• 1:37:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have like fifteen different sets of eyeballs probably on this red carpet. No, not that many, but yeah, we're on it. It's gonna be, it'll, I don't know, it'll be interesting.

• 1:37:51Speaker 05

  Um, one thing that Jameson has predicted for this show, which I think will be interesting to see happen, especially now that, um, uh, Joe Biden is introducing Lady Gaga on, for her performance.

• 1:38:04Speaker 02

  The performance list is stacked, right?

• 1:38:07Speaker 05

  Is it, we can perform?

• 1:38:09Speaker 02

  Wait, let's look, hmm.

• 1:38:11Speaker 05

  Um, I don't know.

• 1:38:12Speaker 06

  Sam Smith will be around.

• 1:38:15Speaker 05

  Will be in, in the building, doing a really boring song from.

• 1:38:20Speaker 02

  The Brit Awards yesterday? I didn't really know what those were. It was the best thing.

• 1:38:27Speaker 05

  You've never watched, well, I've never watched them before, but I've always been aware of them. They're like the British Grammys.

• 1:38:32Speaker 02

  The best part was like, they cut to like the host sitting in the chair at a table. And he was like, we're with Coldplay, we got Coldplay, like, because they literally got everyone. And it was just like, we got them.

• 1:38:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, everybody does go to that.

• 1:38:47Speaker 02

  The Rihanna and Drake, oh my god, her pants, like.

• 1:38:49Speaker 06

  Okay, so the Brit Awards actually tie into my Oscar prediction, which I'm going to reveal now. So, I think.

• 1:38:56Speaker 05

  In advance of tomorrow.

• 1:38:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, this is a spoiler prediction. Okay, I think that Lady Gaga is going to shout out Kesha. During either her performance or her acceptance speech.

• 1:39:08Speaker 02

  Wait.

• 1:39:08Nilay Patel?

  It's almost definitely gonna happen.

• 1:39:09Speaker 02

  Can I admit, I don't know what's happening with Kesha.

• 1:39:12Speaker 06

  Okay, I can, let me give you the.

• 1:39:14Nilay Patel?

  Wow, this Oscars podcast just took a hard right turn.

• 1:39:17Speaker 06

  Kesha is currently involved in a contractual dispute with her producer, former producer, Dr. Luke, and her parent record label, Sony. And she is also alleging that, um, he abused her. And that is the root of the contractual dispute. And it's currently. It's a very complicated case, but that is the gist of it.

• 1:39:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:39:39Speaker 06

  And all.

• 1:39:40Speaker 05

  She's not suing for damages over the abuse either. She's just trying to get out of the contract.

• 1:39:46Speaker 06

  So last week, a motion that she had filed, I'm sorry, Neil, if I mess up any of these legal terms. A motion that she had filed was denied and it was to be allowed to record music somewhere other than with Sony and with Dr. Luke, because that's part of her contract. And then there was this huge swell of public support, both from fans and from other artists, which coalesced under this hashtag, #FreeKesha. And one of the most ardent celebrity supporters of Kesha has been Lady Gaga. On Twitter, in Instagram posts, and she is a survivor of abuse herself.

• 1:40:26Speaker 06

  And that's part of why she feels so passionately about it. And the song that she's nominated for, Till It Happens To You, was recorded for a documentary about sexual assault on college campuses called The Hunting Ground. So this mix of relevance and timeliness and the prominence of the Oscars, just to me, it's a natural fit that she's going to reference Kesha. And there's also an award show precedent set at the Brit Awards when Adele said, "I'd like to declare my support for Kesha."

• 1:40:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. Can I be real real about this also? Of course. That song is terrible.

• 1:41:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:41:01Speaker 05

  The song is really bad.

• 1:41:03Speaker 06

  And it's, I mean, I read somewhere that she, she really didn't have much of a hand in, in writing it. It's kind of a.

• 1:41:09Speaker 05

  It's just her.

• 1:41:10Speaker 06

  Yeah. What's the change a word, get a third? It's one of those.

• 1:41:14Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:41:14Speaker 06

  And Diane Warren wrote the bulk of it. Diane Warren, being the power ballad master of the last several decades. Yeah. So that should be interesting. That's my prediction.

• 1:41:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:41:24Nilay Patel?

  Well, all that stuff is, it's funny because the, the right outcome for Kesha is not to have a trial. Right? Like the thing that she lost was not, there wasn't like a trial and then she lost.

• 1:41:35Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:41:35Nilay Patel?

  Right? She, she actually asked for the big step of the preliminary injunction, which you almost never get, right? Like you get a preliminary injunction when like, to totally reduce this sort of abstraction when like. Someone's like, "I'm gonna, I have the right to cut down this tree in your yard." And you're like, "Court, stop them from cutting down the tree until this happens." "Until we have a trial and we decide if they have the right to do that." It's like, it's meant to like, hold things in place.

• 1:42:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:42:01Nilay Patel?

  Um, and that's like, not this moment for her. Like, I mean, the right outcome is all of this artist pressure and all this public pressure. Sonya will just say, "Fuck it, just leave."

• 1:42:11Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:42:12Nilay Patel?

  Which is like, I think that's the outcome. And I think that's, that's the moment that we're about to be in.

• 1:42:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, and she's, and she said as much, like, she wrote on Facebook the other day, kind of her first major public statement in the wake of all these new developments. And she said, "You know, I'm not doing this for attention," or, "Like Emily said, for damages," or anything like that. "I really just want to be free of my abuser." "That's, that's all I want, so."

• 1:42:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. Um, yeah, it's, uh, I feel like between that and between, um, the, the Oscar-so-white controversy, I mean, I just feel like it's going to be a very big sounding board on Sunday. Like, a lot of people are going to use the time that they have to speak their truth, um, whatever that truth may be. And, uh, yeah, I'm, uh, I, I know, the, the disappointing thing is that I do wish some of the people who are boycotting it were going and were presenting or something. Like, I wish Ava DuVernay was going to be there and like, I don't know, freestyle. But she's busy and, I don't know, she's going to Ryan Coole's thing. Ryan Coole isn't going, um, the director of Creed, who was not nominated.

• 1:43:18Speaker 05

  Um, so, yeah. Um, what else? What else about Oscars? Are we looking forward to?

• 1:43:25Speaker 06

  How, how long are we allowed to talk?

• 1:43:27Nilay Patel?

  We're way over.

• 1:43:28Speaker 06

  Forever?

• 1:43:28Nilay Patel?

  You, you guys have gone for an hour.

• 1:43:30Speaker 06

  Would you like me to summarize the entire plot of The Intern for you?

• 1:43:35Nilay Patel?

  Does anybody learn a heartwarming lesson about self-respect at the end?

• 1:43:38Speaker 06

  Everyone does.

• 1:43:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That's what I, that's what I always wanted out of a movie.

• 1:43:42Speaker 06

  And I don't know.

• 1:43:43Speaker 05

  And the Verge, yes.

• 1:43:44Nilay Patel?

  No one on this show, except for Jameson, who is more comfortable with who he is than any other single human being I've known in my life.

• 1:43:53Speaker 05

  Jason keeps us grounded.

• 1:43:54Nilay Patel?

  That's true.

• 1:43:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:43:55Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna end the show.

• 1:43:58Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:43:58Nilay Patel?

  Is that okay with everybody?

• 1:43:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:44:00Nilay Patel?

  We've done, we've done some, some solid work here.

• 1:44:03Speaker 05

  So.

• 1:44:03Nilay Patel?

  I think we've had a lot of hopes and dreams.

• 1:44:05Speaker 05

  Let's just plug everything real quick.

• 1:44:07Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:44:08Speaker 05

  You should read Brian, Brian's column nominating, which he's been doing for the past, what, eight weeks? And doing a, doing a bang up job of it, just getting real, getting deep on some of the, the more, some of the different weird murky corners of the Oscars, whether that be the nominees or the politics around campaigning, all that stuff. And you should check it out and get caught up for this week. His final column will be tomorrow. And then we're gonna be doing some predictions and stuff tomorrow, so check that out. And we'll also be covering the show live in some way or another on Sunday.

• 1:44:48Speaker 05

  So, so if you need to choose a media outlet to keep you up to date with the goings on at the Oscars, choose The Verge.

• 1:44:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, and let's be, if you've stuck here for like-

• 1:44:58Nilay Patel?

  Sorry, sorry Nicola, racked is out, cut.

• 1:45:01Speaker 06

  If you're here-

• 1:45:02Speaker 05

  And or racked.

• 1:45:02Speaker 06

  If you're here like-

• 1:45:04Speaker 05

  Racked for the beginning, once the show starts, switch over.

• 1:45:06Speaker 06

  Actually, I'm curious about this.

• 1:45:08Speaker 02

  I'm only doing the red carpet, I'm not watching anything.

• 1:45:09Speaker 06

  Nicola, who's gonna have the best dress?

• 1:45:12Speaker 02

  You know, we have on racked.com some dress predictions.

• 1:45:15Speaker 07

  I love that you have dress predictions.

• 1:45:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:17Speaker 07

  It's amazing.

• 1:45:18Speaker 02

  Um, I don't, I'm, I'm interested to see what Lady Gaga picks because she just went through this whole like, I'm regular, you guys moment, and now it feels like she's back to being a freak. And so I'm here for it.

• 1:45:31Speaker 06

  Lady Gaga's getting that from me, that I'm regular thing, still left for me. Anyway.

• 1:45:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm excited to cover the Oscars and thank you for having me on The Vergecast.

• 1:45:43Nilay Patel?

  Are you gonna die now? You'll be back. It'll be cool.

• 1:45:48Speaker 06

  Okay. Well, I'm.

• 1:45:49Nilay Patel?

  You're cooler than you are.

• 1:45:50Speaker 02

  I will tell you, the YouTube live comments are exploding for Jamison.

• 1:45:55Nilay Patel?

  This guy.

• 1:45:55Speaker 02

  The love is insane.

• 1:45:57Nilay Patel?

  I gotta say, the young superstars of The Verge, they're all over the place.

• 1:46:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, all these people are really young.

• 1:46:03Speaker 05

  Wait, where's the, where's the livestream? I never even watched.

• 1:46:05Speaker 02

  On YouTube, there's comments.

• 1:46:06Nilay Patel?

  So Emily and Liz have a show called Verge ESP that you should listen to every week. It's wonderful. One of my faves.

• 1:46:12Speaker 05

  We talked a little bit about the Oscars this week, but we also talked a lot about Kesha and Dr. Luke this week, and about me not drinking for a month.

• 1:46:21Nilay Patel?

  Hey.

• 1:46:23Speaker 02

  I'm sorry.

• 1:46:24Nilay Patel?

  It's like a dream that I have.

• 1:46:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:46:26Speaker 02

  I did it once for 18 days.

• 1:46:27Nilay Patel?

  I'm proud of you.

• 1:46:28Speaker 06

  You're the drunk old Neil.

• 1:46:29Nilay Patel?

  Walt and I have a show. Yeah, I've got to stay in character the whole time. Walt and I have a show called Control Alt Delete, which is really fun. This week, we did not talk about any of the things that Emily and Liz talked about. We talked about Wi-Fi routers for 45 minutes. It was really loopy because I'd come off a red eye flight and Walt was hopped up on cold medicine and it got weird. Uh, and we have What's Tech with Chris Plant, which can just consistently gets weird. Uh, and then our very good friend Lauren Good has a show on the Recode Radio side of things called Too Embarrassed to Ask. Kara Swisher has Recode Decode, and Peter Kafka has Recode Media.

• 1:47:01Speaker 06

  I don't have anything.

• 1:47:03Nilay Patel?

  I think it's very clear that you should have a show. It's just you telling the audience that they should be cool with themselves.

• 1:47:08Speaker 06

  I do have semi-regular periscope broadcasts from my living room, uh, but it's not quite the same.

• 1:47:15Nilay Patel?

  Get on the Facebook Live. Anyway, all that is available at iTunes. Jamison's Self-Affirmation Series. Sorry, just throwing the idea out there. Go.

• 1:47:21Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Like a, like a, um, uh, Jack Handy type thing. I feel like would be.

• 1:47:27Speaker 06

  I don't know who that is.

• 1:47:28Speaker 05

  Really, really well. Yeah, you were born in 1980.

• 1:47:31Nilay Patel?

  So we're, we're at Verge on Twitter. Uh, we're at, we're Verge on Snapchat. Uh, we're Verge on Instagram. We recently became the most popular tech and culture publication on the Instagram platform. There's a competitor we have that starts with a W that our friend Helen Havla crushed into a fine powder. So, screw you David Pierce. On YouTube, you can just search The Vergecast and find us. You can also find us on Twitter. Nicola is Nicola underscore Fumo. Jamison is Jamieson Cox.

• 1:48:00Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 1:48:01Nilay Patel?

  Emily is Emily Yoshida.

• 1:48:02Speaker 05

  It's pretty easy.

• 1:48:03Nilay Patel?

  Brian is BC Bishop.

• 1:48:06Nilay Patel?

  And I, true to my character, am reckless. Uh, is that it? Is there anything else that you should do? You should, I don't know, just find a social media platform of your choice, communicate with us. Uh, and continue listening to the show, week in, week out. That's it.

• 1:48:17Speaker 06

  Thanks, everyone. Have a nice weekend.

• 1:48:19Nilay Patel?

  Thanks, guys. I love you, Jamison.