Facist papa color

This week on The Vergecast, Dieter Bohn is joined by Emily Yoshida, Nicola Fumo, and Sean O'Kane as the panel checks in for the first time since CES 2016. The topics of discussion include the 2016 Detroit Auto Show, Oscar nominations, and bad tech fashion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Greetings, mobile accomplishers.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Greetings, mobile accomplishers. Welcome to the Vergecast. Today is January 14th, 2016. I am Dieter Bone. Neelai is away doing something very special and secret, but I am joined by people that are way more interesting than him.

• 0:20Speaker 02

  Aww.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  To my left is Emily Yoshida.

• 0:22Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  I also have Sean O'Kane.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  And Nicola is in the hype seat.

• 0:26Speaker 00

  Hello.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  You just survived your first CES.

• 0:28Speaker 00

  I did.

• 0:29Speaker 02

  Accorretalations.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  You need to hype check CES.

• 0:32Speaker 00

  Holy bah! It's the worst!

• 0:37Speaker 02

  It's the right response.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  Everyone was like, "Oh, we go to this thing in Vegas for two weeks. It totally sucks." And I was like, "No way. There's no way two weeks in Vegas could totally suck."

• 0:46Speaker 03

  No. Have you been to Vegas, like, outside of CES?

• 0:49Speaker 00

  Okay, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But I was like, "Nah, I can make it fun."

• 0:51Speaker 03

  Three days, max.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  I believe in myself so much. I'm like, "I can make it fun. I can make anything fun. That's my thing. I have fun."

• 0:55Speaker 01

  How'd you do?

• 0:56Speaker 00

  I didn't have fun.

• 0:57Speaker 03

  In the trailer. Did you stay in the Marriott?

• 1:00Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:01Speaker 03

  Okay, so it's not Vegas.

• 1:02Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  It's super far from Vegas.

• 1:05Speaker 00

  That's what I kept, people kept being like, "How's Vegas?" I'm like, "I'm not in Vegas."

• 1:09Speaker 03

  There's a great little snack bar.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  I had to get there super early because I didn't want to fly all the way back to New York before I went to Las Vegas. And since we're at this Marriott in the middle of nowhere, I'm like, "I want to have a drink," and there's nowhere to go. So I walked like 20 minutes, found a Walgreens bottle handle vodka, and like walked sadly back to my hotel.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  Did you get any zip? They sell, they sell wine in a jar.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  I had it. It's terrible.

• 1:34Speaker 03

  The stackable, like, oh, yeah.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  It's also sitting in the fridge all day and all night.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  It's like, not great.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  I would say the best escapade, though, is when we, like, a dozen of us split into small groups and tried to break into the hot tub at the neighboring Marriott residence.

• 1:49Speaker 03

  Oh, my god.

• 1:50Speaker 00

  And then all, like, lost each other in a very, like, like, a very, like, it was like a horror film that we did wind up.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Got real summer campy.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:58Speaker 03

  Sort of having, like, doing a found footage video for it.

• 2:00Speaker 00

  We should have.

• 2:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Next year.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02Speaker 03

  Next year.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  That was the appropriate response to your first CES, by the way.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  Breaking into a hot tub?

• 2:07Speaker 03

  No. Oh, my god, it sucks.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  And freaking out.

• 2:09Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, no, it sucks.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Whatever. I love it. It's the best.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  Yay, for you.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  You guys are terrible. But we're not gonna talk about CES anymore because it's over and painful. And we have like four podcasts in the, in the podcast stream in the field that you can listen to. I know that some of them were downloads are broken for a while, but it should all be fixed. Apologies for that. But we do have news today, which I should be excited about. Oscar nominations.

• 2:36Speaker 03

  You should have opinions about it, which I guess is sort of the same thing as being excited about something.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  I have a few opinions. So I don't know. Do you want to, do you want to tell us about the Oscar nominations? Do you want me to start listing off movies?

• 2:48Speaker 03

  Oscars nominations, Revenant got 12 nominations. Revenant, yay, it's the best movie. Leonardo DiCaprio is gonna win his Oscar? I don't know. It's a big question. Oscar fever. Whiteness.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. That's a lot to take in.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  No, it's not really. It's like, there's one movie and then there's some other ones and, and, and a bunch of white people.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Is Revenant really that good that it deserves this much?

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was gonna say, you seem to be obfuscating your real feelings about this movie, because you definitely know.

• 3:18Speaker 03

  It's not good. Have you seen it?

• 3:19Speaker 02

  No, I have not.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  It's, um, you know, I wasn't a big fan of Birdman. And it's weirdly very similar. The way that I don't like it is very similar to the way I don't like Birdman.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Birdman?

• 3:31Speaker 03

  There's no point to Birdman, other than like a man's struggle. And like, it's very specific. It's not, there's nothing very universal about it.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  I'm gonna spoil Birdman. Birdman was great until the last scene. I was like, oh, this is garbage. I was like, oh, my God, I totally, this is gonna be dark and it's gonna be great.

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  And everything's gonna fall apart. And then, uh huh, magical realism.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  It's open to interpretation.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  No, it's not.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  No, I know, but that's what they hang it on. It's like.

• 3:54Speaker 03

  There's something very similar that happens in the last scene of Revenant, where it's like,

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Leonardo DiCaprio jumps out of hospital window.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Breaks into him and was like, just kidding, we're friends.

• 4:05Speaker 03

  Gotcha. No, it's, it's, there's, it, there isn't really a point up until then, but you're like, oh, it's gonna be a really satisfying revenge story at least.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  And then you don't even really get that.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  Spoilers.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Spoilers.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  Uh, I, I, I won't be specific about it because it's not really, I can't really spoil the ending, but it's still, it's just, it's not. I think that Emmanuel Lubezki for sure deserves an award for cinematography for it because it is a great looking movie. It looks fantastic and he's my favorite cinematographer, cinematographer, which is not a very, um, uh, difficult opinion to have. He just is the best. Um, but yeah, I, I don't know. There's not a whole lot going on there.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  At least we won't have to deal with the same, the Martian one, best comedy.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Twitter.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Although I gotta say, Matt Damon getting a nod for best actor in The Martian, I don't know.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  He was for sure one of the weaker. I mean, he was, he was good, but like, uh, that, I came away from that movie. Really just like, okay, okay. That was like a fun, like feel good. I didn't, I thought there was gonna be way more drama in it. And maybe that's because it's supposed to be a comedy, but.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  No.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  It's not supposed to be a comedy.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  It's not.

• 5:14Speaker 03

  And it's, it was only, it was only nominated for political reasons. It was just so it could get an.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  And compared to the other sort of space movies that have come out in the last couple of years, um, like Gravity, it's, it just felt, there were no stakes at any time. Like they had this wonderful setup. They could have made it feel very nerve wracking.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  Right. There was no emotional.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  It should be, yeah, it should be like very claustrophobic, even though you're on a wide open planet and you're the only one there. Like they could play into that so easily and they never did. It was just kinda like, I'm a superhero.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  I like the end. I like where it shoots up and he's like not, he's in the unenclosed little rocket launching thingy.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Spoilers. There were some great touches. Different from the book.

• 5:50Speaker 03

  He, he gets off, he gets off of Mars.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  They bring him home.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, no, I didn't like that movie either. I um, I have to look through and see what actually.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  I liked it. Okay.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Well, we've got, well, let's look at the list.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Big Short.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, let's go through.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Haven't seen.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  And just bring up some highlights.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Big Short is for me is like the classic, I'll get it when I can stream it movie.

• 6:10Speaker 03

  Big Short is cool.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  But I.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  I liked it.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  That's where I'm at.

• 6:14Speaker 03

  It's um, it, so this, these are trends. I'm, I'm, I'm an observer of trends.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:20Speaker 03

  2015 was a great year for process oriented movies.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:24Speaker 03

  Spotlight, The Martian, and The Big Short are like the biggest examples of this, but just like ta- like trusting that an audience wants to know the nitty gritty details of every single step in doing a thing. Um, whether that's like planting potatoes out of feces or uh, or you know, bringing down the Catholic church.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  That was, those are both really weird moments in Mad Max Fury Road.

• 6:49Speaker 03

  Oh, man. Mad Max Fury Road too.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  That's my favorite Best Picture nomination.

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, it's fantastic. I mean, that's, that actually seems like a genuine, like critics were just unanimous in their praise of it and they actually got through in a way where it's like, nobody cares about the Danish girl or something. And that still manages to find its way into every single category. And I'm like, I'm saying this to somebody who saw The Danish Girl, it is not a good movie. It's not like I, I, it's, it's really kind of, as, as, as it gets further and further along the Oscar road, it seems more and more of like a nakedly political Oscar bid type thing.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  What, what, okay, so.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  Fill me in on what Bridges Spies was because that's.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  That was a Tom Hanks movie.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Oh, oh. I'm reading that title and I'm like.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Goes to East Berlin.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Wasn't that a movie that came out in like 2011? But now I remember.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I saw it on the plane and that's like.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  I did not see that.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Seeing that, seeing Bridges Spies on the plane is the best place to see, see it. It's like, well, I got this.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  It says a lot about an Oscar nominated movie.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  I mean, it's a fine movie, but it's like, whatever.

• 7:51Speaker 03

  Well, seeing it on a plane is very similar to seeing it in a theater, except it's like a little less voluntary.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  But you're stuck somewhere and you can't go anywhere else or like pick up your phone necessarily. Um, I mean, you could, but like, if you're sitting there in front of a screen, it's like right here.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Well, also, and this might just be me and I'm a, I'm a prude from Minnesota, but like Bridges Spies is a safe plane bet because you know, there's not going to be like a gratuitous sex scene.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  Oh, man, I will never forget the time I watched an episode of Girls on a plane.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  The episode of Girls that opens with a very specific sex act, like smash cut right into it. I was like, sorry, everybody.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Oh, that one. Wow.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  I went to Amsterdam a few months ago and on the plane there, it's like 10 o'clock at night, completely full plane. It's an international flight and so everybody gets free movies, apparently. And everybody's watching complete uncensored 50 Shades of Grey.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Everybody.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  That's like a.

• 8:50Speaker 03

  That's like the one that everybody's like, well, I'll get around to this someday.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Talk about a shared experience. I mean, I can't imagine what like waiting for the line for the bathroom after that is where everybody's just kind of like.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  So what did you think about?

• 9:02Speaker 03

  Oh, it's not sexy, though. It's like really, really weirdly clinical. I don't know. Especially for people from Amsterdam, they're gonna be like, oh, what is this? American, you know, cheesecake? I don't know.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Do you? Do you have something that you hope wins best picture? Because the two big ones are best picture and best director, the two biggest.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I want George Miller to win everything.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  For everything.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  My other favorite of these nominees is Spotlight. I love Spotlight.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  It was a really fun movie.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Is Spotlight a movie I should commit to going in the theater? That's one of the classic, like, I can, I could see it when it's available to screen.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  It's not something you need to see on the big screen, but it's, it's, I think there is something that's effective about being in a theater with a big screen, having that concentrated thing because it is so detailed that you want to just like hunker down and focus solely on it.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  There are a lot of really great performances in Spotlight.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  And just getting them in that format, like Mark Ruffalo, I remember for the first like five minutes, I was just like, man, this is, he's really going after this role and playing it up. And by the end of it, I was so glad that I saw it.

• 10:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  In that format.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. I also saw, so I saw Spotlight and Room in the same day.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Tell me about Room. I know nothing about Room.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  Room is based on a book that a lot of people read. I did not read it, so I wasn't like as prepared for what it was.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Oh, this movie.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's got Brie Larson in it, who's probably gonna win.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  It should probably actually explain what it's about rather than just be saying, oh, yeah, I remember this one. Oh, I'm looking at Google results.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  Um, she

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Follow along with me.

• 10:31Speaker 03

  Brie Larson won for best actress for the Golden Globes. She'll probably win it for this. She's really good in it. Um, it's a movie where it's like so specific, the situation that like, it didn't really get me when I was watching it because it's like, this is such a specific problem to have. I'm really trying hard to like feel this, but then

• 10:51Speaker 02

  We should tell people what the specific problem is.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  Right. She gets abducted when she's 16. I think it's supposed to be and is like in a confined room by this, her captor who like, she has a kid. Um, and uh, that his, her captor's son, and then eventually they break out. Um, and then she has to return to the world and it's, it's, it's a really, um, like I said, it was specific, but uh,

• 11:15Speaker 02

  It sounds very Law and Order-y, like ripped from the recent headlines of the last couple of years.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  I mean, the, the most interesting thing is everything that happens after they get out and like how the two characters deal with it differently. Um,

• 11:27Speaker 02

  It's like a dark Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  It totally is. Well, that's a, that's a like a knock on Kimmy Schmidt that a lot of people have. It's like, this is actually a really traumatic thing, but that, that show is actually pretty honest about how horrible the situation is. But, um, but yeah, I actually thought a lot about that movie though, for the next like week after I saw it. And the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. It's not my favorite by any means of anything that came out this year, but I, I still, I think it's good. I think it's worth seeing.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  As someone who, who looks at, I mean, we were talking, we mentioned really quickly earlier about sort of the politics of this. And there is also some controversy that came out with these nominations today. As someone who has come around on award shows in the last like couple of years, like four or five years, really thinking of like, oh, it's just politics. Like, why would I ever want to care about them? And you know, I still watch like sort of, and I don't have cable anymore. So it's like, I watched the Twitter reaction to it and I kind of follow along to that on the night of, but like, why should I care about the Oscars? And or like, how should I view them?

• 12:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a very good question. We talked about it, um, on my podcast with Liz Lepato, Verge SP, which is coming back this week, uh, every week, every week. Um, but we talked about this a little bit, um, because It does seem like one of these things where it's like, how can you not just not watch this out of complete cynicism? I, I, okay, I have a different answer this time because the first time I was like, well, it kind of influences what gets made and what gets seen is important. It's like a bellwether for like, what did we think was important at the movies this year? Like whether or not that's actually reflective of anything real. It's, uh, it's interesting to see what like the Hollywood establishment thinks was important that year. Like not important in terms of money necessarily, but important in terms of like issues and like hot filmmakers or whatever.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  This time I'm gonna say, because in light of these nominees, I'm gonna say the Oscar nominations are just like a giant wall of, of establishment to just chip at from like all angles. Because it's crazy. I tweeted this morning. I was like, oh, the Academy isn't reading our essays. What? Like, cause I mean, I think everybody's like, wait, like people are writing so much, everybody like in our profession and you know, in other professions as well. Are constantly commenting on the lack of diversity within Hollywood and it feels like we're a broken record. And like, okay, eventually thi- this year they'll get it. They'll, they'll, they'll hear us and it doesn't matter yet, but hopefully it will someday.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  It just seems insane, like especially because we just have seen like the most successful movie in America all time now is Star Wars, which is led by three non-white actors.

• 14:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  And like so far so that like it's become like that, everybody kind of grabbed a hold of that idea. And now a couple of weeks later, it's already turned into like the meme that I see the most on Facebook, which is like, oh, you know, Hollywood never thought we could lead a movie with a, a woman and a non-white person. And it's like the picture of Finn.

• 14:24Speaker 03

  Do non-white people.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's like, but like that one picture of Finn in red. And it's like, it's really funny that, not funny, it's terrible that like that could reach such a critical level. And then something like this could happen today. Cause you're like, oh man.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  Well, this is the thing that's fascinating is it's like, you, like now actually blockbuster movies, like, like what we think of as being like, you know, the biggest movies, uh, whether that's Star Wars and like, you know, a, a lot of. Marvel stuff is getting pretty good at this. It's still not great, but it's getting there. It's inching there. And still this prestige part of Hollywood is really, really behind the times. And I like, I don't know. There's, I've talked about Danish Girl before. I feel like on in some other capacity, but it's the crash of like the trans moment of 2015. It's so, it's so,

• 15:19Speaker 03

  it's so dull. It's so just hitting all the right notes. So it's like, we did an important movie, you guys, which is like really unfortunate. Because there was such a better, if you wanted to pick, if you had to pick a trans movie to make it like a topical, cool, Oscars this year, we had Tangerine, which was like an incredible film.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  That was this year only?

• 15:39Speaker 03

  It was last year. Yeah. So it was all, and they campaigned.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  They should, okay. So they're robbed. Who else is robbed?

• 15:47Speaker 03

  Oh, Creed was, Michael B. Jordan. And Ryan Coogler were both shut out. What else? Julie was robbed.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Charlize Theron didn't get it for Mad Max or Best Actress. That's garbage.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's, there's a few. I don't know. My computer is locked again. Oh, because I have a caps lock on. There are a few that didn't. Well, I mean, Carol got all these, all these award nominations and then didn't get Best Picture.

• 16:15Speaker 03

  Which, you know, I'm not terribly passionate about that film, but it's very, very good. And I don't know that it's like, I don't know that The Revenant or Bridge of Spies is better than it. Like, you know, I don't know. There's, you can pick almost anything to complain about within the Oscars and it'll all be there for you. There's just, I, I, I just, I feel like Tangerine is the biggest one where it was like, oh, they're actually doing a campaign. Like, like their, their distributor is actually like paying for money to put the seed in people's heads that like, maybe

• 16:53Speaker 03

  the two leads from it should have, should have been nominated for supporting or for Best Actress and

• 17:00Speaker 03

  no, no.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Nicola.

• 17:02Speaker 00

  Hi.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  How's it going?

• 17:03Speaker 00

  I didn't see any movies this year.

• 17:07Speaker 03

  A lot of these are Netflix movies.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Well, did you watch the, did you watch the Golden Globes?

• 17:12Speaker 00

  No, I was on an airplane.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  Oh, man, I was gonna have you hype check the Golden Globes.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  They were terrible.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  I heard it was.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was rough.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  I was still checking in.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  It was no fun.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  I had, I had Wi-Fi, so like I was on Twitter and I was like in the rec lounge, like while we were doing our coverage, but I couldn't actually see it.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  I mean, that's how I watch award shows now, if I do watch them.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  I know.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Just like following the reaction and having fun with that. I'm, I realized this last week.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  They always get so late.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I can't remember what news broke, but there's just something about, oh, it was the El Chapo thing, the whole Sean Penn, El Chapo thing. Like, I don't even care what the specifics are, but reaction Twitter, like that first five to maybe 25 minutes is like, it's like the best drug that's available right now. Like, watching people, yeah, watching people try to come up and I'm, I play part in it too. Everybody does mostly, but that whole dynamic is just so much fun.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Who can make the best joke?

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, or like just even sussing it out. Like, the El Chapo thing was funny because New York Times was immediate with their sort of like, here's what's important from this crazy article from Rolling Stone. And it was being passed around so much in that first five minutes that it was almost hard to tell who actually had the Sean Penn interview. Because I was like, oh, New York Times hired Sean Penn to interview El Chapo? What? That, that like mayhem was so much fun.

• 18:30Speaker 00

  My version of that was Kanye Real Friends, where my personal Twitter feed just exploded with pictures of Kanye next to anything that he's ever been next to with the caption, "Real Friends," which is perfect. It is perfect.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  It's like the, the, the best part of the echo chamber that we create for ourselves on Twitter.

• 18:48Speaker 03

  Jokes, it's all about riffing. It's all about the riff.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  People are getting creative and being themselves.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  Um.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  We have to address the Leonardo thing, don't we? It's like old and tired. It's been old and tired for like five years.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  It's like a self-perpetuating. Machine of a story at this point. I just, I don't think he's a good actor. I think he's bad in most things that he's ever been in, except for Romeo and Juliet.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Well, hang on, what about Shutter Island?

• 19:17Speaker 03

  Uh, he's such a joke in that movie. The accent, oh my god. I, um, no, I, I was thinking about this because I was like, you know, sometimes when I have very strong opinions anti a person or especially somebody who doesn't think creative, if they're an artist of some sort, I really don't like Leonardo DiCaprio. I was like, would I have, if I met him, say I was like at a bar and somebody's like, oh, Emily, you gotta meet Leonardo DiCaprio. Like, oh yeah, he's like, you know, going for his Oscar this year. Like, tell him good luck or whatever. Like, would I have the guts to say like, oh yeah, I don't like, think you're that great. And I, I wouldn't, but I was thinking, I would tell him, it looked like you had fun in The Revenant. That would be, I, I thought about this this morning. If I had to have a conversation with him, I was like, I would be like, that looked like fun.

• 20:02Speaker 03

  Because it did, it just looked like, like going to extreme summer camp or something, winter camp. But, um, I don't know. I mean, he's really just like, that's the ultimate, that's like the male version of like, get the ugly makeup on and, and gain weight and stuff. Like, go do something extreme in the outdoors.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  It's monster.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. It's, it's totally the, the male version of monster. And he doesn't even have to get that ugly. He just has to get like, have his, all this gunk all over his lips.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  I thought it was really funny that, I, I still haven't seen The Revenant, but it took until a couple of weeks into it being released that they really pulled the focus back from him. I really thought this was going to be something like The Road or like even Grizzly Man where it was like, because you heard so much about him and the bear and surviving in the woods. And so I was like, oh, it's this story of like this guy who like gets lost and like needs to find his way home or something. There's like a lot of like-

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Other people in the movie?

• 20:53Speaker 02

  Set pieces, yeah. There are other people, like they totally focused the marketing just on him.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Which like, obviously, but I had no, it like distorted the idea of what the picture was gonna be.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Uh, just through the marketing.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  No, it's, it's, I, I think that the biggest achievement of that movie is, is the setting and the cinematography. And there's like a really amazing battle scene, like really early on, that's just incredibly well shot. And that's, that's stuff that's actually genuinely cool in it. I was just thinking that the people who got nominated, because Revenant got nominated for best makeup, people who did best makeup should win for best actor if Leonardo DiCaprio wins.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  That would be great.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  He did a lot of like, yeah, there's a lot of goo.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Bizarro Oscars, like.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  I'm getting yelled at on Twitter. I'm not saying that the movie The Martian is better than the book. I'm just saying the ending of The Martian is better than the book's ending. That's all I'm saying.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  I heard the book was really boring.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  No, you're Ted wrong. Also, you're mean. The book was written by a former WebOS engineer.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  I know. I know. I don't know. I don't know that I necessarily am like chomping at the bit to read a novel by a former WebOS engineer.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Wait, speaking of, speaking of WebOS, I know we said we weren't going to talk about CES, but Dieter got married at CES this year.

• 22:05Speaker 03

  Dieter got hella married.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  Wait, what?

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Oh, Emily didn't know this.

• 22:09Speaker 00

  Welcome to the best thing. What?

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:12Speaker 03

  Is that like made out of titanium? Was that made out of like a melted down MacBook?

• 22:16Speaker 01

  No, it was $10 on Amazon Prime.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Oh, there you go.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  It's, I think it's tungsten. Yeah, it's tungsten.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  So Dieter, Dieter is gonna get like actually married later this year with a big ceremony, but him and his wife.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  But that was the official?

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Surprise.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Well, that was that we needed papers because we're getting married out of the country and the paperwork would have been a hassle.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  It's the final day of CES and they all just like booked it from the hotel, dressed up nice. And I was like, boy, they're going out to an editor's dinner real early, aren't they? Like 3pm and next thing you know, an hour later, Dieter's got a picture on Instagram with a marriage license.

• 22:48Speaker 03

  Where did you go?

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Uh, the chapel of the bells.

• 22:52Speaker 03

  I don't know. I've never been married in Vegas, so I don't, I wouldn't know it.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  I've never heard of it.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  That you remember.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  The best part about getting married at a tiny chapel in Las Vegas is they won't let you take pictures inside. So they like literally tell people like, put your phones away. They, um, they shoot the video themselves and like, do you want a DVD of your, of your wedding?

• 23:12Speaker 03

  Oh, that's so nice.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  How much do they charge for it?

• 23:15Speaker 01

  It's just way too much money. And then they, they wanted.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  Like 30 or like a hundred?

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Uh, it was like a hundred.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  God.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  And then.

• 23:21Speaker 03

  That's cheaper than hiring a wedding photographer.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  They wouldn't let, then there was a photographer, which they wouldn't let anybody else take pictures and things. So then he, we were like, okay, take some pictures, whatever. And that was like, you know, $300 or something. I thought, I want those photos. And, but the photos come on one of those little mini CDs. Do you remember those?

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Wait, like a MiniDisc?

• 23:39Speaker 01

  No, like it's a CD, but it's half the width.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Oh, like GameCube?

• 23:43Speaker 01

  The kind that you're afraid to stick into your, you know, slot drive.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, because you think it'll get lost.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  By the way, I have to go to Amazon and buy a DVD player for my computer because I don't have anything that reads DVDs.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, that's a, that's a growing problem.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  I have to like rip the video, whatever.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  Anyway.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  I don't know where to go from that.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  So yeah, that was the big news to see.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  That's very, very cool.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  That was the biggest news to see, yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  Um, I want to know what Nicola thinks about the Oscars. Having not seen any of the movies, is there anything interesting to watch at the Oscars?

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, what do you, do you watch the Oscars?

• 24:18Speaker 00

  Um, I will for professional and spectacle reasons and also just to be a part of the now.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Wow, there you go.

• 24:27Speaker 03

  The now?

• 24:28Speaker 00

  I just want to belong.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Nicola just handed Vox Media a new slogan.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  Be a part of the now. Be a part of the now, oh, we hate that.

• 24:38Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah, no, I'll watch, I'll watch the red carpet for sure and I'll probably watch the beginning and then I'll get bored and tired and stop watching.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  So you find the red carpet to be more entertaining than the show itself?

• 24:50Speaker 00

  That's like, it's part of the, it's part of my job. I gotta know what the people are wearing, that the things, because it's influencing the other people and.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  What was the best of last year?

• 25:00Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  It was the PETA, right?

• 25:03Speaker 00

  I don't even remember. I'm not a big celebrity person. The red carpet is a chore. It's like a thing I have to do. It's not like a.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Do you watch it on mute? So you don't have to listen to what's her name?

• 25:13Speaker 00

  No, I usually, I, all of us racked girls get together, we watch it together and like tweet and stuff.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  The hardest thing about watching the Oscars when you have to work during it is like regulating your alcohol intake.

• 25:25Speaker 00

  Actually, last year we watched in the Verge area, like on a Sunday when the heat is turned off. And there was, it was just like three of us.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  It looked like the revenue.

• 25:33Speaker 03

  I had canned champagne.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, I had champagne. That's what I, I remember the Instagram we took. I don't really remember what happened.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  The best dress on the red carpet last year was you guys in the Verge room.

• 25:44Speaker 00

  Yes, popping bottles.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Well, this year, somewhere in, in Vox Media's office are a couple of slankits that got sent to us by like Slim Jim that I think we haven't thrown away yet. They like just sent us slankits.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  The weird thing about those slankits Slim Jim, or Slim Jim slankits is that I feel like they must be scented, like Slim Jim.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, they must be.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Like, that's a part of the product, which sounds horrible. Um, no, we're gonna have an Oscar party at the Verge office.

• 26:13Speaker 00

  Really?

• 26:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  Can I come?

• 26:15Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah.

• 26:16Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Everybody can come. Um, but you have to produce one piece of content.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  I can do that, but it probably has to also run on racks. We can figure it out.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  It's like bringing a canned food item.

• 26:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. It's a white elephant, it's a white elephant party, but with content.

• 26:33Speaker 00

  Everyone donate one piece of content.

• 26:35Speaker 03

  I'm trying to think of one other thing I can bring up about the Oscars that's important or that people should pay attention to. There's a lot, like, a lot of the documentaries, I feel like, you can watch online.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Which is cool. I feel like I always want to, like, support the smaller categories, short animated films, short, short films, documentaries. It's hard to see a lot of these things because there's like, you, like, they are at film festivals. Like, that's where you see them.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, this show, it's easy to forget that this show really does kind of make or break some of those.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I have a friend who I went to film school with, with Trey, who has a nominated documentary.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Oh, my god.

• 27:15Speaker 03

  Chow, Beyond the Lines, root for that. But, yeah, she, I mean, she's been working on that forever. And, and, you know, that's, it's like, five seconds out of most Oscar viewers' attention, but it's like a huge, life-changing thing for a filmmaker. So I always try to, you know, highlight those wherever we can. We have a great interview with Sanjay Patel, who did the Pixar short that's, that runs at the beginning of Inside Out, called Sanjay's Super Team, that's on the site. And people should read it.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  It was a really good interview.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's, he's, it was his first short, and now it's nominated. As, most Pixar films kind of go straight to the Oscar nomination, or the short films do, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's good. It's a, it's, it's different than a lot of, like, visually and subject-wise. So, yeah, that's, that's one cool thing that the Oscars do.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Sorry, Dennis Crowley just stepped down from running Foursquare.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Just shocked me.

• 28:14Speaker 03

  Also, Alan Rickman is no longer with us.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, we've started off 2016 with some pretty serious deaths as far as celebrity goes.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  The David Bowie thing was really weird because I had just gotten into Detroit, which maybe I guess that'll segue us, but the

• 28:30Speaker 01

  No, we're not using that segue.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  No, but I'd just gotten into Detroit for the Detroit Autotune from CES and I'm sitting there, you know, I like was trying to finish up some stuff before I went to bed. I woke back up because like good luck sleeping after CES.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  And I had woken back up like right as that was starting to spread on Twitter and I hopped into Slack to like help. Rich was the only one on, a reporter in Japan.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  So I'm just trying to help him like figure out that problem you have to figure out with every celebrity death, which is like, is this real?

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Did it actually happen?

• 28:57Speaker 03

  Cause it already, there was already a false alarm like a few years ago.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then people, even early, some even entertainment reporters were trying to do the like stand down. I've talked to his people. It's fine. And they were obviously wrong. So it was, it was a very strange way to just like start the week.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, it was, it was definitely a strange way to start the week. I was like in a legitimately bad mood for that, for, for like the past few days. I was gonna say for that day, but now I'm still in a bad mood. Um, yeah, no, it's, it's, it's, it's bad. I, I don't have anything else I really can say about it. It's just a very, very sad thing. Um, I feel like now it's really, I think it's sobering now as you start to get into like people that's like, oh, I actually like, this isn't somebody that was like my parents person, like even though Bowie was like, it's like, this is somebody that I cared about while I was like, you know, a teenager and in college and stuff like that. And, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's a weird thing to, to process.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Did you see that clip that, um, MTV posted of Bowie yelling at them in like 1982?

• 30:00Speaker 03

  Oh yeah. For not having an a black, black artist son. Yeah, that's amazing. And also him predicting the internet, uh, and like 2000 or like the effect, like the social web, basically, which is insane. I mean, he's, he's like, I, I, I, I want to hesitate from, a lot of people are like, oh, who's this amazing alien came down and landed and stayed with us for a while, which was like cute. And it's like a cute thing is really like, there was a movie and everything, but like, I mean, he was a human. He was a person. He was just very smart and good at being a person. Like that, that now we call that being an alien, but you should just be a good person. Um, that's, that's all I have to say about.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  I have to read an ad at some point in the near future.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  Do it. Yeah.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Thing.

• 30:38Speaker 03

  No.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  How do I transition from this to an ad?

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Do it.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Sorry, Squarespace.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  Cry. Cry while you listen to this ad.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, just... Because building a website can be tough, and even if you know.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  David Bowie would know if you read earlier this week.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  No, we are not. We are not.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  He helped the Yankees build their first website.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  Oh, my god.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Well, you can celebrate what somebody did.

• 31:08Speaker 00

  Should we have one buffer topic?

• 31:10Speaker 01

  We did a buffer topic.

• 31:11Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Bring it.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Well, let's... Or do you have something ready?

• 31:16Speaker 00

  I'm really trying.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  No, this... All right, let's talk about these Virgin Galactic space suits.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  Okay, let's talk about these. Yes, space suits. Perfect. That's perfect.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  They're not space suits. They're flight suits.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  I actually had a long, slack conversation with Michael this morning to figure out exactly what the hell was going on with this.

• 31:30Speaker 00

  Y3 is an ongoing collaboration between Adidas and Yomoto. It's like, very much like, it's very fanboy, like, big with like, the hypebeasts.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  And is known for like, all black, like, super minimal, I mean, like, cool, kind of avant-garde, whatever. So, yeah.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  So that's the missing link. That's why I look at it and I think that it's boring. You're like, oh, that's the Yamamoto look.

• 31:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is like, minimalism perfection.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  Also, these would go so well with a pair of Yeezys.

• 32:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, just throw them on. Put on the moon boots. They're not sold out.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  The news today was that they... That Virgin Galactic, which is... Was basically the first company promising people private space rides.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  On a space plane that... Well, they started promising those years ago. People ponied up $250,000 for tickets. And it's the... Sort of become the running joke in the space industry because they just sort of keep kicking the can down the road of like, "Oh, our first flight will be this year. Our first flight will be this year." And then during the test flight last year... Their spaceship had a really catastrophic accident. One of the pilots died. The other one was pretty badly hurt. They've been grounded for a year and a half. They're going to reveal the new look of their new plane, space plane, in February. So they're finally like getting back to the point where they want to get back flying again. The news today was that they

• 32:55Speaker 02

  had partnered with Y3 to make these, these new flight suits and boots. And they are apparently very fitting with Y3's stuff. They are fire resistant, like all the things you expect from a space, like flight suit.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  Fire resistant. They've got like extra tough soles. You know, they're all like brought over from other brands.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Extra tough soles?

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that you can like, you're not going to slip around when you're walking around in the space plane.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  And then, you know, like Adidas.

• 33:24Speaker 03

  Is that a thing?

• 33:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, there's a whole company that like.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  Oh, is it like the Velcro on the shoes in 2001?

• 33:30Speaker 02

  I guess, yeah, sort of.

• 33:31Speaker 03

  So it keeps you.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  And then Adidas has its own like weird sort of off its main business, its own like custom insoles thing. And so like, that's part of it. It's like this whole big, let's throw all this stuff into this one pot.

• 33:43Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, they have the three stripes on the boots.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. So they announced it today. I, I think they look kind of boring. Nico was really, really hyped about them.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Um.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Can, can.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  Are there crotch?

• 33:53Speaker 00

  Like, what would make them exciting? Like, what are you, what's an exciting space?

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Wait a minute, wait a minute.

• 33:57Speaker 03

  Is there a crotch, so?

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Is there a crotch?

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, seriously, you can't, you can't.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  I mean, you can, it zips all the way down basically to your belly button. So you could like lower that.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you know what's below your belly button? The things that you need to go to the bathroom with, like.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, so the whole idea with Virgin Galactic is that you're not going to be up there for a long time. It's a suborbital spacecraft.

• 34:13Speaker 00

  Like go before.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  I mean, I drink a lot of water, man.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  So, well, yeah, maybe it'll be like Las Vegas where like the taxis have a cleanup fee.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  Do they wear?

• 34:22Speaker 02

  You pay $250,000 to fly with Virgin Galactic and then like maybe an extra 200 if like you.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Need to.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  I mean, it is a scary flight, I'm assuming.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I'm, I'm big on a lot of private space companies, but Virgin Galactic is kind of, it seems like the ultimate example of Richard Branson saying like, let's make that a thing. And, you know, people just,

• 34:43Speaker 03

  Make it so.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, people just have to do it because he has a lot of money and like, that's how his companies work. And they've sort of taken the long road to getting there.

• 34:52Speaker 03

  But you know what they did? They got celebrities on board.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  They did.

• 34:55Speaker 03

  That's how you, that's how you make a brand.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  They didn't. Yeah, I mean, you could probably make the argument that if Virgin Galactic hadn't really spun up enough interest as it did in the early 2000s, that SpaceX probably wouldn't have been able to get into what it was doing.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  It would have been harder for Elon Musk to pitch people to invest in SpaceX.

• 35:11Speaker 00

  I mean, the fact that they made, they made a press hit out of the fact that this is what the clothing that their

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:19Speaker 00

  astronauts will be wearing is like, it's, I mean, it's so Virgin of them to do this.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:24Speaker 00

  And it's like, why, it's like, that brand is strong and this is how you do that.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  How long until I get to buy one of these jumpsuits myself?

• 35:31Speaker 02

  Well, the most, to me, the most interesting thing was that they are also making a, I love this, a jacket celebrating the collaboration.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  That will, they will give to the people who are paying to get up.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  Celebrating.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, to get, the, the, oh, my God, the press release itself.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  They announced, they announced the inclusion of a jacket in a swag bag.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  You basically.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  But so is the jacket itself a collaboration or is the jacket just like something they ordered off of like American Apparel?

• 36:01Speaker 02

  It might be the latter. They didn't show it, though. I was like, oh, that is the most attainable part of this.

• 36:06Speaker 00

  But the fact that they did a component that the average person can like buy into is like, again, just like Virgin cleaning it up.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  They need, they need a really strong logo. What is their logo?

• 36:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is kind of weird.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  That's the only thing is that I, I like the design of it. It's, it's kind of like, it's a little, like, it's a little fascist, but it's like, okay. But.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  It's a little fascist. It's okay.

• 36:28Speaker 03

  But it needs, it needs a good pop of color somewhere. And it can be a very minimal.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Just one of its.

• 36:35Speaker 03

  One shape.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Oh, pop of color. I'm like, pop of color. What color is pop?

• 36:39Speaker 02

  It needs like the red.

• 36:40Speaker 03

  It needs a fascist pop of color.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  The red or the purple.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Show title, by the way. Fascist pop of color.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, the red, I mean, the red and the purple, they, yeah, I, uh, do you think they'll have lighting in the cabin like they do on Virgin America flights? Cause that's the best part of Virgin America.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Building a website can be tough, and even if you know your way around coding, making something that looks good and actually works is, takes a lot of time. Whether you're making a business site, a portfolio, a restaurant site, or whatever else, right now, you're gonna need a website. So, lucky for you, and for all of us, really, Squarespace makes it really easy to build beautiful websites without breaking a sweat. Even if you're wearing one of those jumpsuits, it'll just get wicked away, but you wouldn't break one of the first, I'm not making this joke. It provides simple, powerful, and beautiful websites that look professionally designed, regardless of your skill level, and you don't need to learn how to code, do it. Not only do you get intuitive and easy to use tools to create said website, they also have state of the art technology at Squarespace. It powers your site and ensures security and stability,

• 37:44Speaker 01

  and you can trust Squarespace for your website. You know you can, because there are millions of people and some of the most respected brands in the world using Squarespace right now. So, truthfully, seriously, deeply, from the bottom of my heart, you cannot beat the ease and simplicity of Squarespace. It gives you 24/7 online support and a beautiful website. I don't know what you're waiting for. It seems stupid to wait any longer. You can start a trial with no credit card required and start building your website today, right now, this very second. When you decide to sign up for Squarespace, make sure you use our offer code, VERGE. You should type it in all caps, because it's more exciting. You get 10% off your first purchase, and it shows your support of this here, the Vergecast.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  We want to thank Squarespace for their support of this here, the Vergecast. Squarespace, you should.

• 38:36Speaker 03

  Too many websites.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Just gonna put that out there.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Out there, we should just go back to GeoCities.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  I felt that, yeah, I was gonna say, I felt that when it was like Angel Fire days.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. It's like, is there really that much room for all of these Star Wars fan pages?

• 38:50Speaker 02

  I came so close, a couple of weeks ago, to finding, I used to run a DBZ, Dragon Ball Z fan page on Angel Fire. So close to finding it. And then I also in looking for that, discovered that I also had a Pokemon one that I made. And I found someone's.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Is your real name attached to these things?

• 39:07Speaker 02

  I, I, no, but I found my screen name from then. I found.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Which is?

• 39:13Speaker 02

  I'll tell you this, I found someone's Angel Fire page that is still around today that links to, because remember like that was the thing. It was like, oh, I have a link section. Here's 900 links of other people who told me to link to their site that linked to my Pokemon page. But that I used a URL shortener back then, but is a service that doesn't exist anymore. So I found the link, but it goes through the pass through link and that thing is dead. So now I can't find it. I was so close.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  Um, GeoCities might have done us all a huge favor by having that four digit number. And like, you know how you built your site and it was like, you had the section of it and then you had the subsection.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:49Speaker 03

  So it was like, I don't know. I think I was on some like Hollywood of something or other neighborhood. And then a four digit number that was like your address. I will never remember that.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:00Speaker 03

  Nobody will ever find it. Yeah.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  Angel Fire is like.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  You can download like a GeoCities archive.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  And go trolling through it to find stuff.

• 40:10Speaker 03

  My God. Yeah. I don't, I don't even want to really, I mean, I, I, I was very prolific. I was prolific on GeoCities and Tripod.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  Those are my two.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Too many websites.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  Too many websites.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  There was a website which I will not name, which in the, in like the late nineties, early two thousands, you could just like send them a short story and they would like, have three editors edit it for you and give you feedback. And then they like, you'd get to edit it. They would just publish it. It was great. I like.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  You should go speak those.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  A bunch of writing.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  You should just go say those same words in Silicon Valley and someone will just throw a billion dollars at you. What a, what a great idea.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  All right, cars.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Cars.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Cars. What's the best thing from the Detroit Auto Show?

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Man, you know what? I was really excited to go this year. It was a fun show, but compared to last year where, last year, Chris Ziegler went alone, which amazes me. It was not as crazy as CES is, but like for him to be there the year where they announced the prototype of the Chevy Bolt, which is one of the most important cars ever made. The Ford GT and then Acura NSX, which are two like legacy supercars that both of those companies resurrected. This year felt a little down, but only because there weren't those like, you know, AAA blockbuster announcements. Probably the coolest thing weirdly was from Buick. Buick announced this concept car. I know, right? And that's what everybody, it was the thing that was definitely the most talked about at the show. He's like walking around the show floor.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  You just hear people talking about like, man, I can't believe Buick made something that looked like that.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  They were totally right.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Everybody made like big ass coupes, right?

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. So everything, there were so many two door cars and they were either like executive class. There were two big trends. Yeah. Performance coupes or executive class coupes and sedans. And so like, if you, if you really like futuristic looking two door cars, it was definitely a show for you. And if you are a CEO of some sort of company, big or small, it was also probably the show for you. Because you're going to be driven around in one of the cars announced at this show this year.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  The armrest on the Lincoln Continental. Oh my God. It has like the entire dashboard in the backseat.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, that's, that's

• 42:17Speaker 01

  It's incredible.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  Pretty standard on these executive class sedans is like adding in all the features.

• 42:21Speaker 03

  Is that for the music or the

• 42:22Speaker 01

  The music, the heat, the whole thing.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  It has everything except for a screen because, which is weird because a lot of other rear seats in these kinds of sedans have that.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  You know, the Hyundai, so Hyundai's been making these cars under the name Genesis for the last like seven years, like the Hyundai Genesis, whatever. And they're like, they're really nice sort of Mercedes competitors. And they spun that off into its own brand at this show and their first car as just Genesis is basically like their version of a Lincoln Continental. And it's got, it looks really kind of chintzy. It's like trapped, strapped to the back of the headrest almost. Looks like it was bungee'd on, but they've got like an infotainment system in the backseats for people that are sitting there. And then you see that same sort of trend in like the back of a Maybach or all these other like luxury kind of cars. And so, but the coolest thing was this Buick, this Buick Avista is what it's called. It's a concept car, two doors.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  And it really is just, it almost kind of looks like a smaller version of Porsche's been making that sort of hatchbacky car. So like the front end of a Porsche, but the Back end kind of rounds out. It looks like a much smaller version of that. And you should, you should just check out the photos on our site to get an idea of it. But it's super concepty inside. It's got these like things that will eventually be touchscreen displays, but they're not just screens. They're like projecting the animations like through like a piece of glass. It's super weird. The headrests are really crazy looking. It's definitely like a concept car, whether or not GM ever makes it.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  They'll make a boring version of it, right?

• 43:56Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  That's what they do.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  The, the problem-

• 43:57Speaker 01

  It's based on the Camaro, right?

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is based on like the Alpha platform. It's like a weird hand me down of a car, but it was, if not the prettiest, then one of the prettiest things at the show. The other was Acura made a concept that was another two door, or excuse me, I keep calling it a tour. It's suicide doors. It's got four doors. But it's this really crazy, you know, super angular concept car. That was really cool. And then Lexus made another coupe and Lexus is, looks like a concept, but it's an actual car that people will be able to buy. Which is probably the craziest thing that happened at the show, just because a lot of other car companies came with these concepts. And Lexus came with one that was pretty much a lot like the concept it had shown a couple of years ago.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  And now they're selling it. So it's really kind of, kind of funny. But yeah, then there's, there are all these, the Lincoln Continental was probably the funniest event just because here's this, this sub-brand of Ford, basically that, you know, Ford CEO came up and was introducing the Continental. It's the first time they've made one in over a decade and they're trying to bring back this idea of, you know, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley all used to drive Lincoln Continentals.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Cause they're awesome.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, but like, I don't know what celebrity buys. It's, it's a nice looking new car, but I don't know who buys it as over any other like Mercedes or anything else.

• 45:18Speaker 03

  People buy Lincoln navigators.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:20Speaker 03

  So thing.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, that could help, but they had like a jazz band play. I mean, they did this, they like really did the whole thing up to try and like play up this, this brand new Lincoln Continental. It has, actually the weirdest thing, you mentioned the backseats. The weirdest thing is in the front seat, which has individual thigh adjustments and it's, I swear to God, it's like, that's like happened in your seat adjustments that started to become more and more of a trend in cars.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Wait, like up and down, forward and back?

• 45:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, so you've been able to adjust like in your seat, but this one actually splits them. So like the front of your seat in the front of the car is actually split down the middle and you can move it up or down.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Pipe check.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  Okay, wait, no, I can feel why you'd want this.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:00Speaker 00

  Cause sometimes, yeah, you want your driving leg to be like lower and more forward and you want your other leg to be like up.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  You got it.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  Cause you don't want it to get a dead leg.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  That's exactly what they said. Yeah.

• 46:10Speaker 03

  Do you think that that would mess with your posture?

• 46:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, over time, it would probably throw your spine off, right?

• 46:17Speaker 03

  You'd be like this all the time.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:19Speaker 00

  You'd have to just go sit in it for a while in the other direction.

• 46:21Speaker 03

  Uh, not the CEO, but one of the other Ford executives that spoke during that presentation

• 46:25Speaker 02

  was like, we want your, your Lincoln Continental to fit you like a suit, which is like the most, yeah.

• 46:31Speaker 00

  That's like the broiest line. Hell yeah. Brands be talking.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  So, so that was some of the craziest stuff, I guess.

• 46:41Speaker 03

  I feel like you want everything to fit you like a suit.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  What don't you want to fit you like?

• 46:45Speaker 02

  I mean, I guess the other really crazy thing was Mercedes. Mercedes showed up to the Detroit Auto Show this year, announced its new E-Class. Well, cause they, they wanted to announce their new E-Class. They announced their new E-Class sedan on like Saturday before the show even started, like just dropped the news and sort of sat back and was like, compete, like come at us and, and did nothing the rest of the show. It was amazing. And it's, the E-Class can, the craziest thing about the new E-Class is that it can drive itself, uh, up to 130 miles an hour. Like it can handle itself, uh, with just the autonomous stuff, which is insane. Like, I don't know. I mean, you don't really ever need that, but what is cool is like, you have to be able to know that it'll work at that level because that will trickle down to, you'll learn things at that speed that you would need to know.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  And might inform you being able to drive at like 70 or 75.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Also Audi made a Lunar Rover.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  We had an exclusive on that.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, yeah, you should definitely go look at that. They pulled, they packed that thing up and like pulled out the second day, which was kind of a bummer, but, uh, Audi is, so Google's been running this thing called the Lunar X-Prize competition for the last couple of years. And, uh, it's basically they, all they said was like, we'll give somebody $30 million if you can build a moon rover, land it on the moon, have it drive 500 meters and take, uh, HD video. Uh, and there might be like one other requirement, but it's like first person to do that, first team to do that wins $30 million.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  So Audi probably doesn't need $30 million?

• 48:06Speaker 02

  They don't. But what's really cool about it is that

• 48:08Speaker 01

  They need us to talk about Audi.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  Exactly. And well, and, and it helps Lunar X-Prize too, because up till now, there have been all these smaller private space companies that have been trying to do this. And they're having such a hard time making it happen that like they keep delaying. Okay, you can launch by 2016. Okay, you can launch by 2017. And so they keep pushing it and pushing it. And Audi getting in the game is definitely the first, it'll be the first company that anybody actually talks about. And they did it, right? They brought Eugene Cernan, who is the last man to walk on the moon to the event. And like, he was there. I got him on our Snapchat channel. That was really crazy.

• 48:43Speaker 02

  So they know what they're doing. And oh, man, the guy who is running this program at Audi looks just like he could be, I mean, he looks like he'd be your brother. It was very, very bizarre. Yeah. But, um, but yeah, it's really cool that they're entering this thing because no one really talks about X-Prize and like, no one really knows that there is a legitimate competition to go to the moon right now. And this maybe helps elevate that a bit. So, and it's cool looking. It's a nice little

• 49:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, let's, let's talk about the looks of this thing.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  It's just a big, flat solar panel with a head sticking out of it.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Basically.

• 49:15Speaker 03

  It's got a cute little head.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:17Speaker 03

  It's sort of, it's sort of a companion. It's got a little tail too, which is nice, doesn't it? Yeah, it's got a little tail.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:24Speaker 03

  A little thingy.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  He's gonna, I mean,

• 49:27Speaker 02

  What's cool about this is that they don't want to just fill those requirements for X-Prize. They want to go like, you know, two or three times further than that and accomplish some other things. So they want to help analyze a big thing about going back to the moon someday and using it either as sort of a hopping point to get to Mars or just for setting up a base is knowing how much hydrogen is in the soil so that you can use it as basically fuel. So they want to help do that. And then the, probably the coolest thing is they want to go find when they, when the astronauts left the moon for the last time, they left the lunar roving vehicle there, which is like that big four wheeled thing that you've seen video of. And that's just been sitting there, getting bombarded by radiation and dust and all this stuff. So they want to go,

• 50:09Speaker 02

  oh, the best we can do is train like telescopes and stuff at it. They want to drive this Audi moon rover to that and examine it up close. Is really funny about that is that NASA is working with them to come up with a course that zigzags to the old rover. Because if something breaks on this Audi Rover and it just keeps driving and they can't control it anymore, it would just crash right into.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  So like, as much as I don't want that to happen for them, like, how funny would it be? It's like.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Fender on the moon.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, the first like interplanetary car crash.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  Definitely not a good look for Audi. So they're happily working with NASA on that. So. I'm excited. I mean, I'm excited for that, but it was weird that that was one of the bigger stories at this auto show because there wasn't really like a big blockbuster announcement. Tesla wasn't there because they don't really love car shows. It was really cool seeing the Chevy Bolt up close because that's now a real production car. It's not available yet, but you know, here's this car, all electric car that can go over 200 miles an hour on a single charge. And that's going to change a lot for some people. It's going to cost around $30,000 depending on your tax breaks.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  That was our best to CES.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was our best to CES because Chris Ziegler actually got to drive it there. So, yeah, it was cool.

• 51:18Speaker 03

  I have a question about car shows, which is like for the for the electric cars, for stuff that's a little like solar cars, all the stuff that's very far future, more like conceptual and stuff. How much does that stuff and the enthusiasm for that stuff jibe with the kind of more old school car culture stuff going on there?

• 51:38Speaker 02

  I think a show like this, which is really big and full of a lot of executives, it's that animosity is kind of hidden. If you go to like any other like car show, car show, or any of the smaller ones that mix that sort of car fans and executives are here. It's definitely a lot more easy to spot.

• 51:55Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, there is. What's going to be really interesting to see over the next couple of years is you have companies like Porsche that are taking the lead from Tesla and saying, we're going to build an electric car that can go 300 miles as well. Some of them even have concepts out or Porsche is even already actually starting production on theirs. So it's going to be interesting to see how people react to, there are a lot of people that are going to hold out to the end and be like, I don't want my car not to have an internal combustion engine. But like the car companies are finally starting to go after that and that's going to be. That's there. There are just going to be people holding on to this for no reason anymore.

• 52:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  But there is, there's still a really weird divide. And then especially as you get more towards like the performance car side of things, like people who are racing fans and stuff. It's like, it's very like, get off my lawn.

• 52:40Speaker 03

  It's like very, very ideologically divided.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they're, they're quick to point out like, oh, there's not enough charging stations. And it's like, that's not going to be the case forever.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  We could build them. So, but like, but what, what kind of charging plug does the Bolt use? We're going to talk about plugs now.

• 52:56Speaker 03

  Go for it.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Plug. Cause they all use different plugs, right?

• 52:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm pretty, I mean, I think that one works off of like, you, you have to pull off the side of the road and it'll work off like the standard charging.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Right. So it's just Tesla that's like standing alone right now with its supercharger.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's been opening up other cars to that platform. Like you can get on the Tesla's supercharger platform if you want. The problem with that is that there are even fewer of those for each charging station. Yeah. But that is, to make electric cars happen, that has to be adopted. Like faster charging has to be adopted. Like a stop on the side of the road has to be 20 minutes or less, for sure.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  20 minutes is a long time.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  I, if you think about.

• 53:35Speaker 03

  Go in and get bites to eat.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Get a Slurpee. Get a Icy.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Here's, I mean, here's the thing.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  You have to build premium restaurants next to these things.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  Well, so there's an opportunity.

• 53:44Speaker 00

  For these premium consumers.

• 53:45Speaker 03

  Like imagine the DeKalb Oasis outside of Chicago with like charging stations.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 53:51Speaker 03

  TGI Fridays and.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Man, I've heard of that's DeKalb station.

• 53:54Speaker 03

  Oh, I've had a lot of like major like.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Life events?

• 53:57Speaker 03

  Life events at the DeKalb Oasis.

• 54:00Speaker 02

  Or if you want to bring it back to the first Vergecast we did at CES last week, uh, just like maybe your car is semi-autonomous and you have infotainment in there to like watch, you know, your favorite CBS show.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you've already been, if it's autonomous, you've already been sitting in there watching it for the past two hours anyway.

• 54:18Speaker 02

  So you need a break.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  So you need to get out.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  I, I.

• 54:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, stretch.

• 54:21Speaker 03

  I asked about the culture clash at the car show because I did a very interesting thing for me

• 54:28Speaker 03

  over Christmas, which is I went to the, um, what's it called? America's Car Museum, which is in Tacoma, Washington, where my mom lives. Shout out to my mom and. Um, uh, it's apparently the biggest car museum in America, which I would kind of believe having been in it. It's enormous. It's like some guy's privately owned car collection, like all these amazing classic cars and muscle cars and stuff like that. And like, I was surprised because I feel like, like, I'll watch a Fast and Furious movie. I like, I, I, I lived in LA. Like, I enjoy, I enjoy driving. I enjoy watching people in movies drive, drive. I enjoy watching car crashes in movies, in movies. Um, and like, that kind of side of things. And I was in this museum, I was like, oh, this is like a history

• 55:11Speaker 03

  of how we destroyed our planet. Like, this is all this is. Like, I could not get it out of my head. And then, and so it's like, obviously, like, there's a certain demographic that goes to the car museum. And then they have one hall that's like all of these sort of historical, um, electric cars and more amazingly steam-powered cars from like the nineteen twelve, like nineteen twelve and stuff.

• 55:31Speaker 02

  Those are the three options back then.

• 55:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was incredible. Um, and it was empty. Like, all the other halls are like full of people like, oh, yeah, I love this car. Like, oh, let me touch it.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  No, because that's what, I mean, that's what it is. When you really boil it down, it's your, it's a fetishization of explosions, you know? Like, internal combustion engines are just very controlled and very many explosions happening all at the same time.

• 55:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, so many explosions.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, we did a what's tech, Chris Plant and I did a what's tech about Tesla that kind of dives a lot into that. And if you want to go real deep, uh, this guy runs a website called Wait But Why, did a super deep thing about Tesla that really is just like the history of cars. And like, gets eventually, you know, twenty-five thousand words later, gets to

• 56:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  Uh, the electric car or in Tesla. And it's, it's a really fascinating way to think about like, why, because there was a split. We got to like nineteen, the early nineteen hundreds, and we had these three options. We had steam, we had gas, and we had electric. And there's a reason that we went towards gas. And it's, it's crazy to think that it could have gone like either of the other two directions.

• 56:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  But it is really strange.

• 56:34Speaker 03

  I was not aware I of, I, I, I think I'd seen some of those old, old electric cars. I'd not seen the steam ones. It was wild.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  Part of the reason why no one wants to let that go too, is like, if you think about why a lot of those, like, really, you know, people who call themselves gearheads is because they really love to get in and tinker with the car and like, change just this thing or tweak just that thing. When you're talking about an electric car, you have, instead of hundreds of parts, you're on, talking about like twelve, fifteen. I mean, the, the number is way, way lower. And so it gives you a lot less control over that car. And so then all of a sudden, You don't have control over something and that's scary for some people.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  Nicola.

• 57:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  I promise we could talk about smartwatches.

• 57:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's do that. Cause you wrote a really good piece.

• 57:15Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, I um. Ah, where do we start?

• 57:22Speaker 02

  Cause this you.

• 57:23Speaker 03

  Is this the the women's smartwatch?

• 57:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, just go suggest.

• 57:26Speaker 00

  I wrote about a why women aren't buying smartwatches. Um, which I mean, this all begins, I don't know, it doesn't run or all begins. But that's kind of what I was doing at CES was sort of digging into like what's happening in wearables. Um, which is kind of the most obvious marriage of fashion and technology, which is why I'm here and you're listening to me in your free time. Uh, so I found an amazing statistic that I was able to start this off with, which is that of the wearables market, fifty-four percent of fitness tracker owners are women. So women are like digging fitness trackers, going great, watching steps, et cetera. But of smartwatches, only seventy, no seventy-one percent of smartwatch owners are men, which is a crazy, crazy split.

• 58:12Speaker 00

  Um, so then I basically broke down like what I perceive to be the problems and like what some of these issues are, which obviously begin with design and the fact that they're just like, there aren't a lot of good options to choose from and like, why aren't there good options to choose from? They don't fit right. They look weird. The common like idea of like shrink it and pink it is still in effect here where like this is.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  I've heard pink it, shrink it and pink it.

• 58:35Speaker 00

  Shrink it and pink it is like, wow, amazing. That used to be the old like activewear adage before we got this like whole new world of activewear. But it was basically like, oh, a women's football jersey, make it smaller, make it pink, now they'll buy it. And it's just like, no, it doesn't work like that. Like, modern girls don't want pink sparkly things. Why do you keep making pink sparkly things? It's nothing but just like, it's just insulting. It's truly insulting.

• 59:00Speaker 02

  And yet last week at CES, we saw companies announcing smartwatches for women.

• 59:04Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  Had nothing but just, they just like, like glued rhinestones on them.

• 59:07Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, yes. You can watch me on the Facebook Live on a The Verge Facebook, just like ranting. Like executive, not executive, but like a rep next to me, just like staring me down. Furious, but yeah, it's just so, so yeah, that's what I wrote about. I got, I got so much amazing, amazing feedback from people like women emailing me being like, you just said all the things, women I don't know, be like, you just said all the things I've been thinking about for a year and like awesome stuff like that. So it was really, it was great.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  I, first of all, I don't think most people should buy a smart watch right now. Men or women, second of all, do women want smart watches? Like,

• 59:45Speaker 03

  I, I would, I would like, I would, no, no, no, no, no, no.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  It's like you go out there and you look and you're like, oh, this all sucks. Or is you go out there and you're like,

• 59:51Speaker 03

  So, so I think before you answer that question, you need to figure out like, why do men want a smart, watch? Because like, what is it?

• 59:59Speaker 01

  I just said something incredibly reductively. What do women want?

• 1:00:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I know. And that was a hard thing in writing this is like, I don't, I hate to gender things like this. Women like these things and men like those things. That's awful. And that's dated. And I, I address that in here. Like talking about that stuff is dated. But I think part of it is like, the activity tracker promises something very specific and it also promises like a better self. And I think a lot of purchasing is hinged on this is me, but better. Like if I buy this thing, it's going to be me. It's, yeah. And I'm going to have this vision of myself. And I don't think smart watches offer a thing besides knowing everything instantly.

• 1:00:36Speaker 03

  It's conspicuous consumption.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  The third thing is smart watches, the third thing fitness trackers do is work. Like smart watches.

• 1:00:46Speaker 03

  Liz doesn't even think they work though. She, we were talking about.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Well, there's that.

• 1:00:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's like a lot of, yeah, a lot of like problems, the heart rate monitors and stuff, countering off and stuff like that.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  Good to be skeptical about that.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, I will say heart rate monitors are garbage. If you're using it for actual medical stuff, you should stop right now. But like, and as a general, like, did I move around more this week than I did last week? It's actually like, it, in that very broad wildly inaccurate sense, that's what I use.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  It's like, there's that out. It's like, it helps you get off the couch. But it's really about all it's going to do.

• 1:01:16Speaker 03

  Have you looked at all into like the history of the wristwatch? Because wasn't the wristwatch? Was wasn't that the women's watch first? I'm I might be misremembering because there's a pocket watch, pocket watch predates.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:01:29Speaker 03

  The wristwatch.

• 1:01:30Speaker 00

  I can't tell you that I'm.

• 1:01:31Speaker 03

  Modern development and I feel like it was for women.

• 1:01:35Speaker 00

  Okay, I don't know.

• 1:01:36Speaker 03

  Don't remember specifically.

• 1:01:38Speaker 00

  I've also had a long running like theory that.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  Sorry, go ahead.

• 1:01:43Speaker 00

  Most men like have their smartphone in their pocket, like on their body attached to them at most times. Women, a lot of times have their phone in their purse or like on the table and not physically attached to them. And I think there might be a little bit of a mental block going on of the idea of having the computer with the screen on your body.

• 1:02:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  Well, it's. The the common wisdom, by the way, is that the wristwatch was invented of people strapping pocket watches to the wrists around the time of World War One, so that they wouldn't have to pull it out when they were in the trenches.

• 1:02:13Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah. For soldiers.

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  Well, that's where, I mean, it's like a really long line to draw, but like that's where I get value out of wearing a smartwatch is like when I'm.

• 1:02:24Speaker 00

  When I'm in the field.

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, when I'm in the metaphorical trenches.

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  When you can't, can't, you need, you have a choice, you can either put on.

• 1:02:31Speaker 03

  When you're saving America.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  Or you can look, pull the watch out of your pocket, you gotta pick one.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  I didn't bring this up in my interview two years ago, but I assassinated the Archduke.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  That was you.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  And then I hopped in a time machine with James Franco and I came to the future.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  To stop JFK from dying.

• 1:02:46Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  That movie looks terrible.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  A part mini series, right?

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  All right. I'm, I can't say I'm not gonna watch it because I'm definitely gonna watch it.

• 1:02:55Speaker 03

  I thought we were gonna get to see it at Sundance, but we're leaving before it premieres.

• 1:02:58Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  I don't, I'm not that bummed, but. Um, yeah, no, I, I, I'm, I'm interested in, in, in the role, yeah, the like what, what, what women tend to want to hold versus have on their body, like, yeah, I don't know. You think of, of accessories, like an average woman is probably wearing on average, I'm not talking about every woman, more accessories on their body than.

• 1:03:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it should be the perfect thing, it's an accessory, like it should work and it's clearly like failing.

• 1:03:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know. Smart, smart earrings, is that how we shank it up? It's super, super tiny.

• 1:03:33Speaker 00

  I don't know, I'm not curious to see what happens, I feel like the next year will like be a quick tell of like, this thing succeeds or we just like let it go.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  I always imagined that I imagined there being wearables in like, I don't know, when I was like working on some story or something. I imagined something that was like this, though, not here, like something that you had to

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  Like Leela from Futurama?

• 1:03:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Like something you had to turn your arm over for that still feels outside of your body because it's not so close to your

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Well, there's a bunch of smart fabric stuff coming out. So Google's working on stuff where you can do like touch sensitive clothing.

• 1:04:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  Uh, there's a, there's a smart bra that made a big splash at CES.

• 1:04:15Speaker 03

  Wait, did you see this?

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  Okay, I, this is like the thing I'm the maddest about myself with. I rescheduled my appointment with him like three times and then I skipped it and I'm so sorry.

• 1:04:24Speaker 03

  You didn't see the smart bra?

• 1:04:26Speaker 00

  And I know, and I was just like, ah, like it seemed gimmicky to me. I was like, oh, it's whatever. And then it's gotten so much play sense and I did not try it on. And I roomed with Lauren Good and she had one in our room and I didn't try it on there and I should have.

• 1:04:38Speaker 03

  What did it do?

• 1:04:39Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 1:04:42Speaker 03

  You're the one person to ask, clearly.

• 1:04:43Speaker 00

  I know, I know. This was like a really like big mistake. This is one of the mistakes I made at CES.

• 1:04:49Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  CES is the land for mistakes.

• 1:04:53Speaker 03

  God.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  All right. Anything else? I'm gonna wrap.

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  You did. I will say, we were, we were pimping out your smart watch piece you also took to the show floor with Lauren Good.

• 1:05:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  And looked at some of the wearables that were announced.

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  For seven, seven minutes of Lauren Good and I, seven minutes in heaven of Lauren Good. That's what I wanted to tweet, but I didn't, so I said it now, of us walking around and talking about this, about, about these wrist strap devices. It was amazing. Like she and I, like, obviously attacked this from different places. And like, I just think that I learned so much from her and like she, not to like put words in her mouth, but I think that she got a lot out of me as well. So it was great. It was really great. And it's documented on the internet.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  TheInternet.com.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  If you want to watch that video, or any number of videos, you should subscribe to us on YouTube. It's YouTube.com/TheVerge. It's also on our Facebook page and all our videos there. Facebook.com/verge. You can follow us on Twitter or Snapchat. In both places, our name is just Verge. It's great. We also have a bunch of podcasts. They are on iTunes, where you should review us. Give us five stars. Tell us, I don't know, what would it take to make you buy a smart watch? But the other podcasts that are there are also great. There's What's Tech, which is going to have an episode about what Tumblr is, with Caitlin Tiffany, which will be super fun.

• 1:06:14Speaker 03

  I'm gonna be on it next week.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  You're gonna be on it next week. You're gonna talk about...

• 1:06:18Speaker 03

  Film festivals.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  Film festivals.

• 1:06:19Speaker 03

  What's a film festival?

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  What is it? Don't answer.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  Save it for the podcast.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  Of course, there's Control, All Delete with Walt Mossberg, and you'll have a tell every week. And Verge ESP is coming back.

• 1:06:29Speaker 03

  Verge ESP, back, back, season two.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  By the time you listen to this...

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  Renewed.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  Should be back weekly.

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, weekly, every week. Me and Liz Lapato.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  It's gonna be awesome. In the meantime, I am on Twitter. I'm at Becklan. Sean is S O K A N E one.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  The numeral one.

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  Until Twitter changes it someday.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  All right. You're Emily Oshida.

• 1:06:50Speaker 03

  I'm Emily Oshida.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  You're Nikla underscore.

• 1:06:52Speaker 03

  Underscore Fimo.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  Thanks for watching, everybody. Rock and roll.

• 1:06:56Speaker 03

  Bye.