Fear the reaper

This week on The Vergecast, Dieter Bohn is joined by a rotating panel of guests, as well as Nicola Fumo in the hypeseat. Elmo Keep, the author of our massive feature on Transhumanism, will be on to discuss presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan with Vergecast rookie Michael Zelenko. We'll also have our car experts Chris Ziegler and Andrew Hawkins on to talk about cars, car sharing, and car feelings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Braintree. Braintree gives you a full stack payment solution, support for all payment types your customers might want. You can start accepting Android Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Bitcoin, Venmo, cards, and whatever the hell is coming next, all with a single integration across all platforms with superior fraud protection, customer service, and fast payouts. Check it out for yourself. Visit braintreepayments.com/vergecast.

• 0:31Speaker 00

  So I promised myself that since Neelai is out, that I would start the Vergecast right, and it would be really smooth and good, especially because we've got two rookies here for the Vergecast. And I think I'm pulling it off really well.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're doing a good job.

• 0:49Speaker 00

  All right. So on my left, if you're listening to the show, you can hear this, is Michael Zelenko.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  And you're our features editor.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  I'm the features editor.

• 0:55Speaker 00

  And my right is Emo Keep.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  And I don't, do you have a title?

• 1:00Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  Writer.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  Just, yeah.

• 1:01Speaker 00

  Very good writer. And Nicolas here. Hi. Hi. So we're doing The Vergecast a little bit differently. We are going to talk about the huge, massive, very impressive feature that Emo wrote and Michael worked on about transhumanism. And my involvement was basically nothing.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  You didn't do it.

• 1:22Speaker 00

  I came up with like, one headline that I liked that everybody hated.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  What was it?

• 1:27Speaker 02

  What was that?

• 1:28Speaker 00

  So, okay, well, so we had some arguments with the headline because, one, transhumanism, people might think we're actually talking about transgender issues, which of course we're not. But for the general audience, actually, we should start here.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  What is transhumanism? Let's define terms. Yeah.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Let's back up.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  This transhumanism is crazy. It's like crazy. And we could try to define transhumanism for the next four hours, right?

• 1:51Speaker 02

  But, so, okay, what's that concise? Well, okay, so it's a loosely affiliated movement where people are looking at technology, where it's medical technology or otherwise advances of, you know, computer science that are going to bring about a kind of post-human future. Like, we're going to become augmented. We're going to become way more powerful as humans. We're going to become post or transhuman. So there's kind of like a... Uh, ongoing disagreement among them themselves, which is like, are we post humans or are we trans humans? But the transhumanism kind of really did stick as a name when they kind of decided that that was maybe twenty, twenty five years ago or so, what it was really going to be be called. And so, yeah, did that answer it at all? Probably not.

• 2:35Speaker 00

  No, it answered it. But like the, like the, the, the thing is like, I get that as a concept, kind of like, okay, yeah, we're gonna augment our brains and we're gonna, I don't know, become cyborgs and

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, some of it is become cyborgs or some of it is not at all to do with machines. Like some of it is like, you know, uh, gene sequencing or trying to cure aging or, uh, you know, trying to get, you know, off planet. That's a big part of it. A big part of it is for us to become a dual planet species, like to be people, uh, to be a species that's not just stuck on earth. Like they feel like we're stuck here. We need to get into space.

• 3:09Speaker 00

  I feel like I'm stuck here. Yeah, for sure. So it's, so it's big and it's splintered.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  It's big and it's

• 3:15Speaker 00

  So there's not like a single thing.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Nope, no.

• 3:19Speaker 00

  No. Well, that makes it easy to talk about.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:21Speaker 00

  Right. Okay. So Zoltan, Zoltan Istvan, right?

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:26Speaker 00

  Is a transhumanist.

• 3:27Speaker 03

  He is a perfect name.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Right. Does he have an amazing name?

• 3:31Speaker 00

  Is that his given name?

• 3:32Speaker 01

  It's his real name.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, his last name is a shortening of his Hungarian name. So, uh, but yeah, Zolt, yeah, that is his, his, his real name.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. By the way, his friends call him Zolt.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. Wait, really?

• 3:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  I bet what they use emoji, the lightning bolt.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's like, which, which would, which really does suit his personality. I think he's a very energized person.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. Tell us about him.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Um, he's, uh, he's very charismatic and he's really fun to be around and he's really, he's just incredibly committed to this pursuit that he has dedicated himself to. And he strikes me as someone who should be working as a motivational speaker. Like, that's kind of like what you feel like he is when you meet him. Like

• 4:13Speaker 03

  That kind of makes sense. In the photos, he looks like, he does look like a politician, like the way he like strides, like

• 4:19Speaker 02

  I know. He's got, he's got the pose, like the gaze into the mid distance.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  And the wardrobing.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  And the, yeah, and the wardrobing. But I think, and I had a conversation with this, uh, about some, about this with someone on Dig today, that he reminds me of a golden retriever. Because

• 4:36Speaker 00

  In the best way.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  In the best way, exactly. And that was what the person who was moderating the dig dialogue today said, that's what I said when I saw the photo of him. I said, he smiles like a golden retriever. I'm like, he is one like that's what if he were a dog, that's what he would be.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  Blonde.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Just you're like totally happy to be alive. Like, yeah, like really there to do stuff like, what's my job? What's my job? I'm gonna do it now, you know? Yeah, I thought it was a compliment, but like, I guess maybe you could take that the wrong way. If someone said, you remind me of a dog. But it was really the highest compliment that I could think to pay it.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  Okay, so this dog like man who wants to become more than a man. He's he wants, he's he's doing, he's not out there like doing medical science. He's not doing like advanced AI research. He's running for president.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Yes, he's running for president. He's that's kind of, I guess, a little bit of a conceit to say that like he is more interested in using this platform to get the ideas of transhumanism to be mainstreamed more even than they are now.

• 5:37Speaker 00

  Right.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  You know, he's really about sort of trying to push this agenda. He doesn't have illusions of grandeur to the point where he knows he like, he doesn't, does not really think he's gonna get elected, obviously. But he does, I think, seriously entertain that it could possibly happen like to election cycles from now, like.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  That's what he says in the piece, right?

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:54Speaker 00

  Twenty twenty four.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, I know that.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  After Kanye.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Exactly. After Kanye, after Hillary, and you know, that'd be enough time, I think, for as far as Zoltan sees it, for people to accept that we could become cyborgs and for that to not be weird. So I think, you know, he's maybe a bit optimistic, but he's definitely committed to his vision.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Well, one of my things about my, one of my questions about Zoltan is, is how serious is he about these actual issues? And how much of it is actually just him having a great time? Because the entire time, I mean, if you guys read this piece, he is having a blast.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, actually, before, like, how does the, like, this piece, if you haven't read it, you absolutely should. But you basically went on a road trip with him, right? Like, what's, what's the arc of like, what actually happened here?

• 6:39Speaker 01

  So let's start. So you went out to San Diego.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, went out to San Diego to meet him. Yep, to join Zoltan and he's, you know, he's driving all the way across from, from San Diego to, to Washington in this absolutely. Not really at all wordworth- worthily bus that he has turned into a coffin. Um, and this is the way that he is getting his ideas about transhumanism out. And so I go meet him in, in San Diego and I'd stay with him for a week as we crossed the desert, like through southwest desert, getting into Arizona with a little detour to Mexico, because we ended up being like around on the border at Yumo in, and he's like, you know, it'd be fun. Why don't we just like go get some tacos and there's like, you know, booze down there is really cheap. So we could get that as well. And, uh, it would just be fun to go to Mexico.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  And I was like, hell yeah, it would be fun to go to Mexico. And like, he is so aware of, of like, a press tour is a, it's a total pseudo event. Like it's not a real event. It doesn't exist for any reason, other than for people like us to be there and write about it. So he knows how to create these kinds of moments. And so I hope that what came through in the piece was that we were also very aware of that being what was happening. So it kind of has this little meta narrative around it a little bit. And then through there, we ended up also going to some pretty crazy places. We went to the Alcohol Crayonics facility, uh, which is where people get, get decapitated to have their heads frozen, to be woken up in the future when they can be cured from being decapitated and dead.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Um, and then we also went to an immortality cult. Uh, I shouldn't say, well, yeah.

• 8:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I think.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  I don't know if it's a cult, but I think we could probably say that it's cultish. Um, and they preach, uh, they also preach eternal life through positive thinking. So if we would just think positively enough, and if everyone around you also thinks positively enough, then that's how we will not have to die.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  And also like donate some money, right?

• 8:29Speaker 02

  And also pay, please, to join in our parties.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  But also one of them died.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  One of the founders died.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  They, doesn't everybody?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Well, no, well, I mean, just because everyone has, doesn't mean that it's right, is the

• 8:43Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Kind of tagline of the, so.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  So yeah, it's true. One of their founders died. Very sad for everyone who loved that person, but also very obvious. And they have just sort of plowed on. And Zoltan went there to give a speech and to present his, you know, ideas of transhumanism.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  So he wasn't part of the cult? He was like?

• 9:04Speaker 02

  No, no, we just went to, yeah. So we went to their like, kind of revival church meeting kind of thing that they have a Friday night. And Zoltan was then like, one of the people who got up and gave a PowerPoint presentation. It's very, lot of slides.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  And there was like, kids at this event.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's little kids, there's little kids, there's babies, there's this very cute little girl who's like, two, who was just like, ambling around the front of the stage, being a child. Just one of these people behind her talking about how, if you just believe, you will, you don't have to die. Um, very strange. With a dancing symbol of youth. Yes, she, exactly. She's like, I'm certainly not even aware that I'm gonna die. I'm not really sentient yet. But, um, so that was a very funny contrast. Uh, and I mean, like, the desert is just a really intense place. I think the, you know, like, it's, it's harsh and arid and very difficult to live there. It's like, it is hot every single day. And I think that maybe makes people a little bit weird. And so it's become this kind of

• 10:04Speaker 02

  like, locus for strange ideas. Like, I don't know, it's trying to formulate. I was like, what is it about this place that has attracted these two things? Um,

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Arizona.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Arizona, so.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Arizona's like, the Florida of the West.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  That's true. That's what exactly what it felt like. It's so true.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  Uh, if you live in Arizona, you can tweet, uh, Michael Zelenko at MBZELENKS.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna take it back.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Okay. Oh my God, it's so beautiful out there.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  It's gorgeous.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  I would love to live there. Can I come? Yeah. It's beautiful there.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  It is.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  Okay, so, Zoltan is, he's a transhumanist, but he's not, like, the movement is so big, that he's not, there's like, what kind of transhumanist are there? Like, there, there's this cult of people who seem to genuinely, actually, truly believe down to their heart they're not gonna die. There's Zoltan, and I can't tell if he actually believes that or not.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Neither can I. Um.

• 10:51Speaker 00

  There's, uh, and what I'm leading you up to here is like, there's like, insane Silicon Valley stuff.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  Like, this is crazy to me.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, this stuff is really the weird stuff.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Um, I think. And like, these ideas were talked about, you know, the idea that you could cure aging, or the idea that you could create a

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Computer powerful enough to map a human brain to the point where it would then be able to be programmed to imitate a human brain and think like a person. Those ideas used to be like Futurama, but now there's like a super big amount of money going into making them real as far as is possible, but there's a huge amount of pushback to those things being even possible at all to do. So is the question, what kind of transhumanists are there?

• 11:38Speaker 00

  I guess.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, the different like the flavors.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  The different flavors. So there's the people who believe very firmly, and Zaltan's one of these people, that the singularity is a thing that will happen and that's going to come. That's going to come in the middle of this century. That's going to be unbelievably powerful computing power that we can't even imagine, like, super intelligent machines will come online as soon as the singularity passes. People like Elon Musk also believe this.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Uh, which, you know, go for it. And, uh, so this is, this is like a really important part of the, important part of transhumanism. Then there's people who believe that, uh, medicine will be able to eventually cure aging by figuring out whatever it is that causes our cells to age.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  And if we can reverse that process, then we won't have to die. Again, that's something that now has a ton of money going into it at a whole lot of different like institutes and, you know, labs and stuff in Silicon Valley. Um, there's people who believe that a future artificial intelligence will be able to figure out from your digital footprint that you're leaving now, who you were. And if you've died, that's okay. You'll be able to be reconstituted.

• 12:46Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  From these, from your, your digital profile.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  From your tweets.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, your tweets will be part of it. Every email you've sent will be part of it.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  Think about that. If my future transhumanist self is based on my tweets, I am gonna be an asshole.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  We're gonna make dad jokes.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  And dad jokes. I'll be a jerk who makes really bad jokes. That'll be my whole life.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  But everybody is.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Every, yeah.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  All of Twitter's assholes.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  So it's like, everybody's gonna be.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  It's a bad place to be.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  But I mean, this is just like when you, when you like interrogate this idea, this is just a ridiculous idea. Like, we're saying that about Twitter because Twitter exists now. Like people who like 10 years ago had an idea of what you will be reconstituted from in the future would be like GeoCities. So your GeoCities account will be who you are in the future. People are like, yeah, okay, let me give you hundreds of millions of dollars to make that real.

• 13:34Speaker 03

  But would you, would you like come back in the same human form? Like, okay, if you're hit by a truck and you die.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, very sad.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Not because your cells aged, but right?

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  Then, and they're like, okay, but we'll just take Nicola's cloud? Your own personality cloud? And like, put it in what? Like another meme?

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Well, this is a good question.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  Or like, where does it go into?

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Very good question. Well, potentially into some kind of server. Like, they're very, very thin on details about how this would actually happen. But it's like, yeah, make some kind of algorithm.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Or a robot.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  Or a robot.

• 14:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, the idea is like, at this stage of our, you know, evolution, the idea that you would even want to bother having a physical body would just be a choice that you make. And you might decide not to have one because it's cooler to hang out in the cloud.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, you'll be like a substrate. You'll be like a, an intelligence, a disembodied intelligence that exists in a, in a server, in, on the cloud, wherever it is. And it's like a, this like aggregated algorithm that's gone through all your photos. And like, then like, she used to really love playing basketball. Don't know if that's true, but she did. And so your disembodied self might often be at basketball games.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Cause she tweeted that one time.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  But how can I go there?

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Well.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  There's no there there.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  I think I'm inside of, I think.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  You're in some kind of virtual reality. That's right. So they think that, that that is a way for our consciousness to continue. So this kind of goes against like many centuries of philosophical thought, but yes.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  It sounds, you know, the worst part is it probably won't be able to detect sarcasm. So anything you tweet is like straight.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Everything is literal. Yeah.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Like, think about all the punctuation you're not using and how your future self is gonna read that? Like, you don't know.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  I mean, look.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  So we should be putting a lot of requests in right now because this will be part of our future digital selves.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  What if this starts a more earnest Twitter? What if, oh, the best thing that comes out of this is everyone becomes really earnest on Twitter?

• 15:30Speaker 02

  And really, really polite.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  I really believe in, I like this thing and I back it. I think you should like it as well. But you should like whatever you.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  It's gonna be really nice.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  I'm really good at basketball.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  It just becomes a place where everyone wishes their best self out loud.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Well, that's basically what this whole thing boils down to. It's a very, very big wish. Yeah.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  Well, and also like, I don't know, it, it's not very intelligent. Maybe somebody is thinking, was any, I don't know. You can tell me, is anybody thinking about like the actual like philosophy of like the self, like we don't need to talk about the soul, but like if it, when it comes down to it, you know, it, it, is there a self that could actually exist and like be a singular entity on a computer?

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Well, that's like an unanswerable question so far, but they don't ever really, like, I mean, that's like an ongoing debate that they have in all of these different, you know, AI research places, like the, you know, the, um, the existential risk place that Nick Bostrom runs. They continually are having these kinds of conversations of like, is it really me if it is a copy of myself? Or is it like, we can't answer that question because it's not possible to create that, but it has.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  The idea of a self is an illusion in the first place. It's just a thing that we make up. So it's like, is it really you?

• 16:44Speaker 01

  You need to take a drink. I need to take a drink.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  Don't you think that so much of it is just like that though? Like so much of it is like conversations you have when you were high at university, but they've like turned it into a profession. Like pay me to have these thought experiments all the time. Is it really me?

• 16:58Speaker 00

  Well, so that's the other thing is like, it seems like, I like Zoltan, maybe it's a part of this. He's like running for president because it's a crazy fun thing to do. But I get this, this real sense that everybody that is actually putting real money into this, it's like, it's the, it's the elites. It's the, the very, very rich people that are doing this. And like, if they actually manage to pull something off, they're the ones who are going to reap the benefits. And the rest of it will be like, oh, I guess we're going to die.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, just like everyone else.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  Right?

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Doesn't mean it's right though.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  But it doesn't, but not because it hasn't happened. I don't even know anymore.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Just because it's happened to everyone else doesn't mean that it's right. Or that it, yeah.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Well, one of the things that was really interesting to me is that like.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  And very, we should come back to that. Sorry.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Well, I was just gonna say that part of this is like, it's already being put into action with the cryogenics bit, right? Where it's like, oh, a lot of money going into that. And what is the purpose of that?

• 17:56Speaker 00

  We gotta talk about Alcor.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  What is the point?

• 17:59Speaker 00

  So, this is a facility that, assuming they can stay in business, you go there and they lop your head off, they pull out all of the fluid and replace it with antifreeze, and then freeze the thing in the hopes that in the future, somebody will be able to unfreeze it and reconstitute your.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  Body.

• 18:18Speaker 00

  Body and identity.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 18:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  And then also fix all of this cell damage of being frozen at minus one hundred and ninety six Fahrenheit. So you've been turned into a stone. Like, uh, and then, um, yeah, medical technology being advanced enough to be able to, well, what they think is gonna happen is that there's gonna be all of these millions of tiny, tiny, tiny nanobots. Like millions of like atomic scale machines will be able to get into your bloodstream and fix everything that went wrong just by replacing broken things with unbroken things inside your body. So, uh, this is, uh, not at all backed up by any current science or any, any known science.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  One scientist, scientist who's like, yeah, it turns out that a lot of your personality and sense of self and emotion is actually just the chemicals flowing through your brain, not the actual neurons.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Well, that, that, that interacts very importantly with the new, like, we don't even understand what exactly it is that makes cognition happen.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  Right.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  At all. So he's a neuroscientist dedicating his whole life to this, like, you know, works with hundreds of similar people. It's like, we don't know anything about this, but we could probably say that this soup of our brain with all of our proteins and all of our dopamine, all of the chemicals, all of the hormones that are in our brain is very, very, very important to how it functions. And so if you get rid of it, you've got a big, big problem to solve.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, you hear stories about people like hitting their head and suddenly they're like a completely different personality. They forget things. Like imagine not just hitting your head, but hitting it, cracking it open. Taking everything out, replacing with antifreeze and then pretending and then hoping to come back to be the person you were in the very beginning. It's like, that is, that is the most insane part to me.

• 19:58Speaker 00

  Well, what's, what, we're sitting here laughing about all this stuff, but there are people who take it deadly, deadly seriously. Well, not, that is the wrong word, I guess, right?

• 20:05Speaker 02

  I mean, the people, the people who are paying to do it, they're taking it very seriously. But there's no one in actual medicine who's entertaining it even vaguely as, as an idea. And it's something that they say about it is, it's like, no, this is going to be, I mean, it's so important to do this because we're going to save people's lives. People who were dead don't have to be dead anymore. And like, you know, morally, we should be able to do this.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Here's my thing. I think people who are dead should stay dead.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Does that sound cruel?

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Oh, like, would you go back and kill baby Hitler? Would you resurrect Hitler?

• 20:37Speaker 01

  No.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Exactly. Now, what's the point?

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Would you resurrect Gandhi? No, just keep him dead.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  No, what's to say that this AI of the future won't resurrect bad people? Oh, my God, so many existential risks that they haven't thought of.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  Well, no, but that's the other thing is like, there's, like, the, this weird line of like, we need to be worried about the singularity because the AI is going to kill us. But we want to chase the singularity because if we can manage to like, cross this very fine line where we're in charge of the AI, or we're, we become the AI, then we're cool.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it, it absolutely makes no sense. Like, a, a really favorite one of mine as well is like, Elon Musk is super worried that this is going to happen. He's like, very worried that AI is going to become bad and going to, going to kill everybody. So what he does is donate money to helping it come into being. It's like, I'm going to give $10 million to it to make sure that it's friendly.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Rather than be like, I'm going to give no money to it to make sure it never exists. It's like, I'm going to make sure that it comes across. Like, that's crazy. It's all crazy, but that's more crazy.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  But like, super evil AI hitting the singularity and like, and, you know, Terminator, Matrix style future, for some reason, that feels less ridiculous to me.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Than?

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Than, uh, I'm gonna like, upload my brain and it's going to be me and I'm going to like, have a continuity of identity from here to there. So how much of this is just like, I'm not in the right cultural space to take like things seriously? Am I dumb to think that like, like real AI that actually causes problems is a thing that could happen?

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Uh, I think it would be extremely unlikely because why would this, this, okay. So there's this underlying sort of thing that runs through transhumanism, which is that technology is like in some ways separate and somehow separate from people. And it's almost looked at as being this supernatural force. It's like technology is coming, technology wants what it wants. It's going to become what it becomes. It's going to get so powerful. It's like, how does that happen? At what point does it get out of the control of human beings? It never does. So I find it very difficult to take that idea seriously because machines are not these sentient, they're never going to become like the point at which we're, we lose control of technology. I don't think is a thing that would ever happen.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  I gotta read an ad, but I need a hype check of, I don't know.

• 22:45Speaker 03

  Death?

• 22:45Speaker 00

  Death.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  I'm pro death.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Keep the dead dead.

• 22:50Speaker 03

  I love knowing that there's an ending.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:52Speaker 03

  I hate the idea of it never ending. I love life for now.

• 22:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:58Speaker 03

  I've checked death, that's what I think.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  I love life for now. Such a good slogan.

• 23:06Speaker 00

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• 23:50Speaker 00

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• 24:36Speaker 00

  Alright, here's my headline.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 24:38Speaker 00

  You ready?

• 24:38Speaker 01

  We had a lot of headlines.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  There were two that got rejected. The one that we were going with until like the 11th hour, and I think you heard this one, was Choose Life.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  Which I loved, but it-

• 24:49Speaker 01

  It was sensitive.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  It had some-

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  It's a sensitive-

• 24:51Speaker 00

  Mine was Fear the Reaper.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Fear the Reaper is very good. It's not that good, but it's pretty good.

• 25:00Speaker 00

  It was good enough where I could troll people by saying, "No, it has to be this", even though nobody could tell if I was being sincere or not, much like the proponents of transhumanism.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  I see what you did there. It had a lot of layers.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  What did we have? We had so many heads, and all of them were so, so bad.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  Super bad. We ended up, we got to a point where we were reading White Zombie lyrics to each other for like a half an hour.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Oh, more human than human.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  Well, there's a lot of stuff in there.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, he's like a, you know, in that whole kind of cyber goth space. I think there's probably a little crossover there.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  What about Live and Let Live?

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Nobody liked that one?

• 25:41Speaker 02

  No.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Never Say Die.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Never Say Die.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  They got knocked back.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  They got knocked back.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm the Astro Creep, Phantom in a Box, Shadow in Your Head.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Like.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is definitely straight up about the singularity.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. I'm a jigsaw man. An electric head.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  I'm a jigsaw man?

• 26:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  That's terrifying.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Electric head. This is very Futurama.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  That's AI.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Right there.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  This is crazy. All right. I am the Nexus One.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  See, it really is. It's a total like cyber goth anthem.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  I want more life.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  I want more life. Oh, my God.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Cause I mean, that's like, well, to go back to saying it would be terrible to live forever, which is true. That's like the whole idea of what purgatory is in religious thinking. You never die or go anywhere.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  Why would you create that on earth as this horrific, you know? So that was like my number one question in my mind so much through this story would be, okay, if we could achieve this, if this were possible, at what point would be like, okay, I need the true death now because I'm a zombie.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  And then you have to choose to die.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  You have to choose to die. You have to do the thing that they fear most, which is end your life. So.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  And think about all those kids.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  But that did not really appeal. Like this did not sort of cut through to the point where it was like, oh, but I still want to live forever. I'm like, it's not going to actually ever be forever.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  No, but it would be like, if you're like, you know what? I'm done. I choose to die. And then a month later, your best friend's like, you know, I really miss so and so and hits the button that recreates you from your tweets and your back and like, oh, damn it.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Really? Exactly. I've written this kind of like.

• 27:14Speaker 03

  Grandma can't ever, she's like, I know it's the holidays, but like, come on.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  Exactly. Cause I wrote this kind of like extropians horror film sort of treatment. And that was like, exactly what it was. It was like the future came to pass and then that they couldn't ever get out of it. And so people maliciously kept bringing them back and trying to kill the person who kept bringing them back didn't work either. So they were just like trapped in this perpetual hell. It's quite, anyone who wants to option that, I'm ready to go.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  That's like if you left a job and they just kept being like, they kept calling you and being like, okay, what about this one email? This one time? But I don't work there anymore. I don't want to.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  I know. Like never being able to get off a dinner call list. Like you're just like, you're just like always getting solicited. It's just, everything about it is just like a horrible nightmare vision.

• 27:57Speaker 03

  Why are you putting me back on the list?

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Well, because I'm not done with you yet, so come on back.

• 28:03Speaker 03

  Great offer for you.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  You have to say, send a, send a blank email to unsubscribe from life.

• 28:11Speaker 03

  No reply at life.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Just one email away.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  So yeah, being made into a zombie would be terrible. And then Zoltan was like, yeah, you know, it would be really terrible, especially if you had become like enslaved in this system. That would be really bad. And I've been like, yeah, that would be super bad. Like you wouldn't actually be able to kill yourself then you'd be stuck in it forever. He's like, yeah. I guess you would be trapped in a hell forever. Anyway, I'm just gonna go get another, he's just like walking, waiting to get another beer. He's like telling me this.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  So if you achieve this dream of we, we live forever in our physical bodies, the environment's toast. And the, the things, the, the entities that enable us to live forever. Right now, the, the dream is that all those entities are corporations. It's not like, it's not like the government or some, you know, communist utopia. It's companies. So we are, we are, their perfect world is a blasted environment where everything is destroyed. And the only way to have anything that's good is to be in a computer. And the things that enable you to persist are companies. Is that a fair assessment?

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:15Speaker 00

  That's, that's the utopia?

• 29:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Isn't it beautiful?

• 29:17Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  I really can't wait.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Sounds pretty good.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  The Google, Facebook, Twitter, whatever.

• 29:23Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  Compute Global.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  Is this why Facebook is interested in virtual reality?

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:27Speaker 00

  This is it?

• 29:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  You have to be recreated from what you've posted on Facebook for the duration that you've had a Facebook.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  You're gonna be like virtually poked for the rest of your life.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Well, I think that a lot of these Zuckerbucks are gonna go towards curing aging. That's one of his big things.

• 29:40Speaker 00

  Right.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  He really feels like that's how we can reach.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  Curing aging.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's how he feels like we could reach our human potential best. One of the best things to do that, you know, best ways to do that would be to never die. So I'm really glad that they've incorporated that trust to invest in important things like that.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  You had like a long day and you wake up the next morning and you're like, I think I caught aging.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Like curing aging is like.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  Hang on. That definitely happened to me. When I was like thirty six, I woke up and I was like, oh, I've got it.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  I've come down with aging.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  No, it's like when you like when you're in your like early twenties and like you do you have your first like real hangover, like mid twenties.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Never forget.

• 30:20Speaker 00

  Wait a minute.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  It's a chronic disease.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  This happens to people?

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:24Speaker 00

  Oh, you can never go back.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  I know.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  Only one are affected with aging.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Truly bad.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  It's a point in their life.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  It's like the first truly bad hangover you ever have. It's like, oh, my God, I really am going to die someday.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  Like it's directly connected to your mortality, I think. It's like, yeah.

• 30:39Speaker 00

  Okay, so what's next for Zoltan?

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Uh, Zoltan?

• 30:42Speaker 00

  Zolt.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Zolt.

• 30:43Speaker 00

  I can't call him Zolt. I haven't met him.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  It's easier to go Zolt.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Z.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Z, the golden retriever is that he he's on.

• 30:49Speaker 00

  Z, the golden retriever.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  Golden Zolt.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  He's on his last leg of this tour. The bus is probably on its last legs as well. And yeah, he's he's on the way to Washington to deliver his bill of rights and hopefully maybe I could go there and see how he see how that actually unfolds for him.

• 31:08Speaker 00

  What's his bill of rights?

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Uh, so it's the transhumanist bill of rights. It's what that everyone is everyone's entitled to eternal life. Everyone is entitled to be able to do whatever they want to do to their body. Government should be putting a lot more money into things like curing aging.

• 31:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  But he's got a bunch of other stuff, which we sort of talk about in our sit down halfway through the story, where he wants there to be like a a universal living wage. And, you know, that's a whole.

• 31:30Speaker 00

  That sounds okay.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  It I know. It's like, there are a lot of parts of this. It's like, hey, actually, that's sensible. But then you also get the part where it's like, and I'm going to be in distant body consciousness in a server who lives for millions of years. I'm like, I.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  With a great wage.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  I can't. With like this perpetual government that like somehow has perpetual money and yeah. So, yep, Zolt's gonna just keep going and um realize his his goal of getting to Washington. And then I think he'll think about what he wants to do after that.

• 32:00Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Which is probably go surfing in Baja.

• 32:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  That sounds great.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were gonna do that as well.

• 32:05Speaker 00

  It seems like a forever.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Forever.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  I mean, that's gotta be a pretty sweet wave.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  He's that, he's that good.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  The eternal wave.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  He's had a lot of time in practice.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  That was not one of his dreams.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Eternal wave.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  The eternal wave. Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna bring that up.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Just on the server.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  I'm gonna ask him about that. I can bring that up.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:24Speaker 00

  Anything else you wanna, wanna say about transhumanism and how amazing and terrible it is?

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a terrible set of ideas. That I think people really should be very skeptical about. Is what I think. And particularly what you raised earlier, it's like all this stuff's being driven by private money in corporations and that's really not great for democracy. So ironically, this person's running for president.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, but isn't this weird that we're terrified of, like, it's really terrible if they achieve their goal. But we are laughing at the goal all the way along. So shouldn't we be happy that they're like wasting their money on this instead of something worse?

• 33:02Speaker 02

  No, that's even worse.

• 33:03Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Give, give me the money.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Give somebody the money.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Give, yeah.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Maybe not me, but somebody better than me.

• 33:12Speaker 00

  All right.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Put, put that, put that, put that money into doing something to actually, you know, affect change like now in ways that we need, maybe not trying to make a few billionaires immortal.

• 33:22Speaker 00

  Just had to get serious, didn't you? All right. Uh, well, I'm gonna read another ad and you guys are gonna head out. Before you do, uh, how can people find you?

• 33:30Speaker 02

  They can't.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  I hope.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  Are you on Twitter?

• 33:34Speaker 02

  No, you're on Twitter.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  Which is Elmo underscore keep, K E double E P. You'll find me.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  And Michael, you are also on Twitter?

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm on Twitter. M V's a links.

• 33:45Speaker 00

  Just all one, that's it?

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  With a K?

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, K S.

• 33:48Speaker 00

  Not a Q.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Uh, no, M V's a links. You'll find me. If you really wanna find me, you know where I am.

• 33:53Speaker 00

  Right.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  The machines will always find us.

• 33:59Speaker 00

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• 34:13Speaker 00

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• 34:38Speaker 00

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• 35:21Speaker 00

  That was a deeply, deeply nerdy ad read with an amazing glass shatter in the middle, which was totally fine. Don't be sorry. It was amazing.

• 35:28Speaker 03

  That was really great. This is the best Bizarro Vergecast ever.

• 35:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, and now we have two new people here. Chris Ziegler, who many of you have met before, and a new Vergecast rookie, Andrew Hawkins.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  Are you on Twitter?

• 35:44Speaker 04

  I am.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:45Speaker 04

  Aren't we all?

• 35:46Speaker 00

  How do you feel about Twitter?

• 35:47Speaker 04

  Uh, it rules my life.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:49Speaker 04

  In all the worst ways possible.

• 35:51Speaker 03

  We're gonna make it a better place based on what's happened.

• 35:52Speaker 04

  I hear about this. I hear that there's an effort underway to improve Twitter.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  No, twice in the past two days. Like, basically every day now, I've tried to say something nice to somebody on Twitter, and they just assumed I was being sarcastic.

• 36:04Speaker 03

  See, now you know how I feel. With my earnest, my earnest curiosity that comes off as condescending. Every time I'm like, "Well, tell me about it. Tell me about Universal Remotes Dieter." And you're like, "Shh, what?" And I'm like, "No, really, tell me about them."

• 36:18Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 36:19Speaker 04

  Can never win.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  I really can't. So, you guys are here to talk about the L.A. Auto Show, and Uber, and just car stuff. And also, you haven't been on the Vergecast before.

• 36:27Speaker 04

  I have not.

• 36:27Speaker 00

  How does it feel?

• 36:29Speaker 04

  Tingly.

• 36:30Speaker 00

  Tingly?

• 36:30Speaker 05

  Tingly. That's not the adjective.

• 36:33Speaker 04

  There's glasses breaking everywhere. You know, there might be a small fire somewhere in the corner.

• 36:38Speaker 05

  You never know.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  The good news is, nobody's gonna talk about how you did here, because all they're talking about, apparently, is Nicholas Hare on the YouTube comments.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  I know, I'm really enjoying it. It's super fun.

• 36:46Speaker 00

  Are you watching YouTube Live comments during the Vergecast?

• 36:50Speaker 04

  She's commenting now.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, if you wanna come hang out on youtube.com/watch? V?

• 36:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 04

  Uh, wow. I could not handle reading live YouTube comments.

• 37:04Speaker 03

  It's fun. They really want to know where Neelai is.

• 37:07Speaker 04

  Neelai is away.

• 37:09Speaker 03

  Immortal.

• 37:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like the movie Transcendence where he turns into a computer and now he's just among us.

• 37:17Speaker 04

  Do I have to watch that movie?

• 37:18Speaker 05

  You haven't seen it?

• 37:19Speaker 04

  Oh, it's so bad, dude.

• 37:21Speaker 05

  It is, it is.

• 37:22Speaker 04

  That's the Johnny Depp one? Why would I want to watch a so bad movie?

• 37:25Speaker 05

  So, look, the first 80% of it is actually not bad, and then it gets really bad really fast.

• 37:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:31Speaker 05

  Uh, which, you know.

• 37:33Speaker 04

  Okay. I'm the guy that will defend Johnny Mnemonic.

• 37:37Speaker 00

  That's a good one. I like Johnny Mnemonic.

• 37:39Speaker 05

  Isn't, isn't the book better?

• 37:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I don't know how to read, so.

• 37:44Speaker 05

  Wow, that's, that's an admission.

• 37:48Speaker 05

  It's turning into a Maury Povich kind of situation.

• 37:51Speaker 04

  I have no idea how to transition this to Uber. I like, I just have no idea.

• 37:56Speaker 04

  So now we're just gonna, I'm just gonna do it.

• 37:58Speaker 00

  Tell me about Uber. What's, what's going on with Uber these days?

• 38:00Speaker 04

  Uber is a company.

• 38:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:03Speaker 04

  That did a lot of things.

• 38:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:04Speaker 04

  Uh, and is doing a lot of things. Uh, I guess the big news today was that they are, uh, eyeing a, or seeking another round of funding because money is of no object. Uh, they're looking for about $2.5 billion from their investors, uh, which would up their valuation to about $62.5 billion.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  Why does Uber need $2.5 billion?

• 38:26Speaker 04

  Um, so that they can continue to.

• 38:29Speaker 05

  Make it rain on them politicians, yo.

• 38:31Speaker 04

  Right, that's right.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:33Speaker 04

  That's one, one explanation.

• 38:36Speaker 04

  But no, because I think the, the assumption is that they're, uh, you know, uh, steadily moving towards an IPO. Uh, that's been sort of the, the word on the street, although the CEO has, uh, declined to discuss any details about that at all. It's, it's, you know, he says that, I think he said something at, at this conference a little while ago, uh, that, you know, he, they're like the new girl at the prom.

• 38:59Speaker 00

  Right.

• 38:59Speaker 04

  Why would we go home with, you know, anybody when we can just sort of be at the prom?

• 39:04Speaker 03

  Whoa, you can't say stuff like that these days.

• 39:07Speaker 00

  Well, this guy says a lot of crazy stuff.

• 39:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:12Speaker 05

  Travis Klenick says a lot of insane stuff.

• 39:14Speaker 04

  We just got finished talking about like crazy people funding transhumanism. So let's, let's talk about Travis just a little bit. Like, are you familiar with how insane the CEO of Uber is?

• 39:23Speaker 00

  Oh, Kalanick.

• 39:25Speaker 03

  I mean, like in a abstract way, but not in like the way that like, no, not as much.

• 39:31Speaker 04

  I mean, he, he, he, he's a deeply committed, uh, Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand, Ayn?

• 39:37Speaker 05

  Randian.

• 39:38Speaker 04

  Randian, he's a Randian. So he, he hates him some, some leechers, some, um, poachers?

• 39:44Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  Moochers, moochers? What's, what's the phrase that she uses?

• 39:47Speaker 05

  Takers?

• 39:48Speaker 04

  I'm, I'm shrugging like Atlas right now. I don't know. Right, yeah, yeah, right. I've never read the book.

• 39:52Speaker 05

  His, his Twitter avatar was Alexander Hamilton for a while, and then it was the, I think the cover of Atlas shrugged or something.

• 39:59Speaker 04

  It was, yeah. And, uh, yeah, no, he's, yeah, he's, he's very much into self-determination and making it for yourself. I mean,

• 40:07Speaker 05

  And having amazing hair. The dude has an amazing head of hair. Let's be honest.

• 40:10Speaker 03

  Really?

• 40:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:11Speaker 04

  For someone who looks like he's perpetually 12 years old, that's not a bad, not a bad hairdo.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 40:19Speaker 04

  Right?

• 40:20Speaker 05

  It's not bad, right?

• 40:21Speaker 04

  He's not bad. So, yeah, so, yeah, they're, they're raising a ton of money and they're, you know, crushing the competition. And I think the, the, another story that I wrote today, uh, that sort of reflects this is that you've got Lyft and all of Uber's Asian competitors banding together like the super friends so that they can defeat the Uber menace.

• 40:40Speaker 05

  Isn't one of the super friends Heart? Or no, no, I'm thinking of Captain Planet.

• 40:46Speaker 04

  Pretty sure Heart is a band from the eighties.

• 40:49Speaker 05

  In, in Captain Planet, one of the rings is definitely Heart. You're like, oh man, like every other kid has like, Yeah, every other kid has like a real power.

• 40:57Speaker 04

  Like wind, water, fire.

• 40:58Speaker 05

  Right.

• 40:59Speaker 04

  Heart?

• 41:01Speaker 04

  No, the super friends are Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Batman. Uh, but no, yeah. So Lyft is getting together with Didi Kaudie, which is, uh, uh, China's big, uh, ride hail company and as well as Ola, which is based in India and Grab Taxi. And they're sort of getting together and they're gonna, uh, share technology, share mapping technology. Uh, people who use Lyft can go to these other countries and hail these other services using their Lyft app, I guess. Uh, so it really sort of extend, expands Lyft's reach across the world. Whether or not that's going to have any sort of effect on this competition with Uber. It's it's remains to be seen.

• 41:40Speaker 05

  I wonder if there's an antitrust concern here because they a lot of those companies operate in the same markets. Right. And now they're just all sharing everything with one another.

• 41:49Speaker 04

  That's a good point. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there was there's been massive deregulation in the transportation areas since like the seventies.

• 41:57Speaker 05

  Right.

• 41:57Speaker 04

  So I I doubt that there's, I don't know.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  I mean, here's here's a real question as a um, uh, I don't know, bleeding heart liberal. Do I need to feel really bad whenever I use Uber? Like, that's it. That's the question.

• 42:12Speaker 03

  No, I know. I like I'm like I use Uber all the time. I'll probably spend two and a half billion dollars on it next year. So they'll be good.

• 42:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:19Speaker 03

  But.

• 42:20Speaker 04

  That was something I didn't mention that they're raising all of their money from Nikola.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  Me trying to get the fuck home sometimes, but no, I like mentioned I was in um, Seattle and like mentioned my friend and I were like, oh, we're gonna take Uber or whatever. And then our like, one of our like punk friends was just like went off on us. And Uber was something that we just like didn't talk about for a while after that.

• 42:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, my anarchist friends like are all over me.

• 42:46Speaker 00

  How many anarchist friends do you have?

• 42:48Speaker 04

  I actually have like two. And they happen to be dating each other. So it's it's very.

• 42:54Speaker 00

  I actually have like two.

• 42:56Speaker 04

  No, they're but they are all over my case all the time about Uber sending me links to dubious websites. Saying, you know, this and this and that. But no, I think, you know, you look at some of the the legal challenges that Uber is facing over the next few months, next year. Uh, I think a lot of this stuff's going to come to head, how they treat their workers, how they they classify their drivers. Uh, it's it's really gonna uh be something that they're gonna have to contend with.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  But you still have to answer my question.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  I think you can continue to use it in good faith.

• 43:25Speaker 00

  Really? And not not feel like I'm I'm a horrible person?

• 43:27Speaker 05

  I think, well, you should for other reasons.

• 43:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 43:31Speaker 05

  Exactly. Yeah, you should. You should definitely use it and feel terrible about yourself.

• 43:34Speaker 04

  Right. Okay. But just because of your health choices.

• 43:37Speaker 05

  I don't know. Why not?

• 43:40Speaker 00

  They they could treat their drivers better. Uh, they're uh, the question of whether or not you can make a living wage on Uber. Uh, without like making it more than a full time job is up for debate, especially depending on what city you're in.

• 43:54Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  Man, I went to Washington DC this time last year with my parents and they discovered Uber there and like grilled every driver about.

• 44:04Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 44:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I heard more like I would never ask someone like, so how much do you make? Like, what do you like about this? What do you, you know what I mean? Like, that was just like impolite conversation, but like parent, oh, man. No, they're not gonna listen to this. The other one will, but the one that did it won't. Um, sorry, I got distracted.

• 44:23Speaker 05

  Shout out Nicholas.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  Holidays, family, what's coming next? But yeah, they asked like every driver about it. And a lot of them, this was in like DC area, a lot of them lived like elsewhere in Virginia.

• 44:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:33Speaker 03

  Were like retired guys who are just like, you know, I'm kind of bored at home. Why don't I like go make some money? And then they're pulling in like thousands of dollars a month per their stories.

• 44:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  But I don't know, I don't know in New York if it's, I don't know. I feel like anytime I bring up like the job, they're pretty, they seem pretty into it.

• 44:54Speaker 05

  It definitely depends on the market because like LA, I always think about, I go to LA and you, you go like 40 miles in an Uber X and you spend like eight dollars.

• 45:02Speaker 03

  Yes, I was just there and it's like free.

• 45:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's basically free. Yeah.

• 45:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, that's the question. How long can they sustain this business model? How long can they continue to try to undercut, you know, traditional taxi businesses by offering such cheap fares?

• 45:14Speaker 05

  And that's part of where the funding comes from, right? It's like they're, they're plowing money into undercutting all the traditional.

• 45:19Speaker 04

  They're basically burning large piles of cash on these extremely discounted fares that they offer.

• 45:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:25Speaker 00

  Which is why they need 2.5 billion dollars more, apparently.

• 45:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 45:30Speaker 00

  So the other thing that happened is Amma wrote a piece about the, a bunch of Uber drivers in France that screw it. And they like banded together and created their own app, basically.

• 45:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, I thought that was pretty amazing. It's an amazing story. I think I'm surprised that that hasn't, when I read that, I was like, this is not a terrible idea.

• 45:45Speaker 05

  Right.

• 45:45Speaker 04

  I mean, it's not, it's not, probably not going to work, but I'm surprised it hasn't happened in like the United States.

• 45:51Speaker 05

  Right. So like, like.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  When I think of Uber, I think of a company that fundamentally like their technology is fine, but it's not like this huge moat. Like what they have over everybody is they are

• 46:02Speaker 04

  Scale.

• 46:03Speaker 00

  Scale, they're everywhere. And now, honestly, they have like the infrastructure to get to fight the cities to like make their app legal there.

• 46:13Speaker 04

  Right.

• 46:13Speaker 00

  And so the question is, are they, when they, if they do that-

• 46:16Speaker 04

  They cared about that to begin with.

• 46:18Speaker 00

  I mean, nothing to care about that to begin with, but now they have to do it.

• 46:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 46:20Speaker 00

  And so if I were Uber, I would actually want to create some like gray zone kind of license that they would get so that, you know, there, there can't be some other like, you know, I made a communism joke about there, there's a specter haunting Uber and it's the specter of a crowdsourced French ride sharing app. Right? Like it's the means of production. I'm serious. It's the means of production. The means of production for ride sharing is the ability to use a smartphone to connect to the customer who wants a ride.

• 46:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  And right now that's what Uber provides. But Uber doesn't like that thing could just be made. And it's just what it needs is scale, the network effect and legality. And right now Uber, Google, Uber has-

• 47:02Speaker 04

  Which is invested in Uber.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  All three of those things. But if like, the question is, are all three of those things, does that basically mean that Uber wins? Like Lyft is done, all the, this consortium of other companies trying to get together are done. Like is, is that's, it seems to be that's why they need the money. They need the money to make sure that whatever lead they have never gets encroached on.

• 47:20Speaker 04

  I mean, that's the question. And I think that's what Lyft is definitely trying to staunch the bleeding.

• 47:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 47:25Speaker 04

  Cause they, you know, enjoying forces with these other companies. And I think, you know, Uber's making a big push in China too. So there's clearly, there's a threat there to, you know, sort of these Asian companies as well. So whether or not that that can be sustained, or whether or not just Uber is going to become the default taxi service for the world, I think is, is obviously the, the, the question that will be, will be answered over the next year or so. I mean, this was the year that they basically consolidated America. They're, they're still kind of on the ropes, I feel, in Europe. They've got a lot of legal challenges.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:58Speaker 04

  Because the labor protections are so much stronger in Europe than they are here. You get a lot more pushback from-

• 48:03Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:04Speaker 04

  People in France.

• 48:05Speaker 00

  No, I, I used them in Amsterdam and I was getting dirty looks on the street. Like people like, what are you doing? Wow, that's interesting.

• 48:11Speaker 05

  They're like, why aren't you on your bicycle?

• 48:12Speaker 00

  No, why, like, no, because they're still fighting the taxi industry there. And so like that, that, that hasn't resolved itself yet there. And so like, I mean, yes, I wasn't riding a bike. So of course they didn't like being answered that. But like genuinely, like there was like, people like, like looked at me like, they made a.

• 48:29Speaker 04

  But it's like, what are we, what are we bemoaning? We, we bemoan about the drive, the way they treat their drivers, but also like, are we bemoaning the, the poor taxi millionaires that are going out of business now? Yeah. That Uber's coming in to replace, I mean, nobody really, I don't think we, it's hard to muster up some sympathy for medallion owners in the New York City area or taxi companies in Las Vegas who are all in by the mob.

• 48:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:49Speaker 04

  Right.

• 48:50Speaker 00

  I mean, I will, I will say that, I don't know, that this is an old fight between Chris and I that fundamentally, I, I don't like the idea of cars or driverless cars because I feel like mass transit is better. And there's, the, the, the dream of the, the personal driverless car doesn't seem to be designed for people that want to pay two bucks to get somewhere in the city. It's designed for people that want to pay 10,000 bucks or 15,000 bucks for a car.

• 49:16Speaker 05

  Right.

• 49:16Speaker 00

  Or car sharing, like the, the, the level of income you need. God, I sound like such a communist.

• 49:22Speaker 04

  I'm ranting.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  Where's your beret, man? Where's your little beret?

• 49:25Speaker 04

  It's crazy.

• 49:27Speaker 00

  But yeah, like, uh, you know, getting a taxi before Uber sucked and it sucked for really bad reasons. Right?

• 49:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:35Speaker 00

  And they're fixing that, which seems great.

• 49:36Speaker 04

  Well, it was racist. It was, it was dirty.

• 49:39Speaker 05

  It still is racist.

• 49:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. It was, sometimes it was dangerous, you know? Yeah. And they, and Uber sort of took all of that kind of out of the, the equation and was like, hey, it can be clean and seamless and your driver can be nice to you and.

• 49:52Speaker 05

  I will say the one time where I still consistently use a taxi in New York is when it's raining because you open Uber and it's, it's, you know, 2.5 or a 3.0 surge, but you can always find a taxi if you just wait for five minutes.

• 50:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  But not always.

• 50:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, yeah, not always. Yeah, but sometimes you get lucky.

• 50:10Speaker 03

  I took a taxi in September because my phone died and whatever. And I forgot how expensive it is compared. Like I got, it took me like, I think it was forty five dollars for me to get home from the west side of Manhattan. And I was, and it's something that I would have expected to pay like maybe thirty dollars for.

• 50:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:28Speaker 03

  And I like, by the time I got to my place, and it was weird, like it was so bumpy, like the car, because it's like those, cars are different, it's all bumpy, you're like,

• 50:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:37Speaker 03

  It's unpleasant. And I was like, oh, this is so weird.

• 50:40Speaker 05

  Well, some taxis still use Crown Vics, which are like basically ancient tanks.

• 50:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, like they've been around, the fundamental cars has been unchanged for thirty five years. Um, and they just stopped producing them like five years ago, but the taxi industry is still using them, so.

• 50:55Speaker 00

  My, uh, my best friend in high school, uh, had like an eighty seven Crown Vic. God, I love that car.

• 51:00Speaker 05

  It's a big car. It's a big car.

• 51:02Speaker 00

  It had, it had like the, the three hundred Mustang.

• 51:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:06Speaker 00

  Just, just, just massive, massive.

• 51:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, you can crash into anything, won't feel it.

• 51:12Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 51:15Speaker 00

  And like you could turn the steering wheel like forty five degrees before it started moving.

• 51:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, you can go like this and the car just sort of rocks back and forth without turning.

• 51:25Speaker 00

  Uh, all right, what else?

• 51:26Speaker 05

  Spot.

• 51:26Speaker 00

  What's happening in cars?

• 51:27Speaker 05

  Uber Spot.

• 51:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:28Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, Spot was, so they, they're, it was a kind of an under the radar thing, but they are rolling out this new feature just in Seattle to start out with that was, that's meant to address the problem. You hail an Uber, you're waiting on the street, you get into the wrong person's car because you think it's their, it's your Uber car.

• 51:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 51:44Speaker 04

  Which apparently happens.

• 51:45Speaker 05

  They're all Camrys and Highlanders.

• 51:47Speaker 00

  No, whenever I get into Uber, they're like, is your name Dietrich? Dietrich?

• 51:52Speaker 04

  Right.

• 51:52Speaker 00

  Are you Dietrichich?

• 51:53Speaker 03

  I'm Nicole. Always Nicole. Never Nicole.

• 51:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, so they, they, their new solution to that problem is they're going to be starting handing out these like LED lights to, for the drivers to put into their windows and a, and the rider can then select the color that the light will light up as using their app, so.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  You just gotta look at the last three digits of the license plate, duh.

• 52:15Speaker 00

  Why doesn't the Uber app tell me the color of the car that's coming?

• 52:19Speaker 05

  Yes, that's a good question.

• 52:20Speaker 00

  Why is that hard?

• 52:21Speaker 05

  Lyft does, I think.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  They can tell me the make, they can tell me the license plate, they can tell me who the drivers.

• 52:25Speaker 05

  They show the person's face?

• 52:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, and they can't just tell me it's gonna be black, yo.

• 52:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:29Speaker 04

  That's a good question. Apparently, they decided that they didn't want to go that step and instead wanted to invest in some sort of new

• 52:36Speaker 03

  Lights.

• 52:37Speaker 04

  Light-based, you know, Close Encounters of the Third Kind era.

• 52:41Speaker 05

  It's good, though, if like, you know, you're in front of a really popular restaurant or something in Manhattan and there are eight Priuses pulling up and you need to know which one's yours.

• 52:50Speaker 04

  And you've had a few.

• 52:51Speaker 05

  You've had a few.

• 52:52Speaker 04

  You've had a few.

• 52:52Speaker 03

  This is Fashion Week.

• 52:53Speaker 04

  You're deep in your cups.

• 52:54Speaker 03

  This is Fashion Week.

• 52:55Speaker 00

  Wait, what?

• 52:56Speaker 03

  Like, this problem is, this is all of Fashion Week. It's like, you get out-

• 53:00Speaker 00

  Is this my Uber? No, it's yours. Are you sure it's mine?

• 53:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, because there's 8,000 people leaving the same thing, all hailing the same service, and all the cars look the same.

• 53:06Speaker 04

  Right. I did like a casual search on Twitter to be like Uber and random and it was like full of people that were like, "Got into some random guy's car, thought it was my Uber, turned out it was, you know, somebody else, but he gave me a ride anyways." I was like, "Who does that happen to?" But apparently, a lot of people.

• 53:22Speaker 05

  Was it, was it, was the person even a professional driver or just some dude?

• 53:27Speaker 04

  I, I, I would have to go deeper into the story than I want to, to find out.

• 53:32Speaker 00

  You freaked me out when you said this is Fashion Week, because I thought you meant it was Fashion Week right now.

• 53:36Speaker 03

  No.

• 53:36Speaker 00

  I was like, "Oh, wow. That's, we need to talk about that."

• 53:40Speaker 05

  Well, you know, if, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Fashion Week, at least in the city of New York, is sponsored by Mercedes-Benz, which is a good segue into-

• 53:47Speaker 00

  Oh, snap. We've been talking about cars for the past 20 minutes.

• 53:51Speaker 03

  I thought they pulled out.

• 53:53Speaker 05

  Oh, they did.

• 53:54Speaker 03

  But they did just host, they did just host, um, this runway show in Dubai with public school.

• 54:02Speaker 05

  Okay, Mercedes?

• 54:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:04Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 54:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is kind of like interesting and weird for many reasons.

• 54:10Speaker 03

  I can't even like get into it. I'm gonna get emotional.

• 54:14Speaker 04

  Please do. Let's see what the YouTube comments say.

• 54:17Speaker 05

  Can the cameras, right now, and-

• 54:19Speaker 04

  She's crying.

• 54:19Speaker 05

  A tear rolls down.

• 54:21Speaker 00

  That would be a Verge cast first, I think, right? Somebody crying?

• 54:24Speaker 03

  Well, it used to be weird because yeah, you would walk into-

• 54:26Speaker 05

  No.

• 54:27Speaker 00

  There's been many, many, many tears cast on the Verge cast.

• 54:30Speaker 03

  You would walk into Fashion Week, like the main sponsor, whatever, and there'd be a car parked in the middle with like ropes around it and like people would like take selfies with the car, but you couldn't like touch it. It was really weird.

• 54:43Speaker 05

  Even I don't take selfies with cars.

• 54:45Speaker 03

  No, because you're so used to them. You're like, cool guy around. It's like, I don't need you.

• 54:48Speaker 00

  Is it a thing that you're not supposed, like touching the out, the, the paint of a car is bad? Like the oils from your hand are bad?

• 54:55Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, you'd want to polish it off. Yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 00

  Like right away?

• 54:59Speaker 05

  Relatively quick. You wouldn't want to leave it like that. That's why at, at auto shows-

• 55:03Speaker 00

  When you drive a car, you, you actually don't touch, you don't touch a car. You like-

• 55:06Speaker 05

  No.

• 55:06Speaker 00

  You wear gloves.

• 55:08Speaker 05

  But you also keep it waxed and buffed and all that stuff. But that's why at an auto show, like literally all the time, you see the guys with the rags going over the cars all day long because they want to keep the, the fingerprints off the cars.

• 55:21Speaker 00

  Because the fingerprints literally corrode the car because our, our-

• 55:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, if you, if you go more than like 15 minutes, the car just starts to rust and fall apart into the floor.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  Right.

• 55:31Speaker 00

  These luxury items. We haven't talked about the LA Auto Show at all on the Verge cast.

• 55:34Speaker 05

  No, we, we have not.

• 55:35Speaker 00

  So what happened there?

• 55:37Speaker 05

  Uh, so it was-

• 55:38Speaker 00

  Speaking of car shows where people are buffing things constantly.

• 55:40Speaker 05

  It was, it was a weird show. Um, we expected it to be bigger than it was, but the announcements that were made were still pretty bizarre. Um, there was a convertible SUV, which doesn't happen every day.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  What?

• 55:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is the, uh, the Land Rover Evoque convertible.

• 55:56Speaker 03

  Wait, I think we talked about this on the last Verge cast.

• 55:58Speaker 00

  Did we talk about this?

• 55:59Speaker 05

  Oh, did we?

• 56:00Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:00Speaker 00

  The one that, it was in the snow.

• 56:02Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, the, the royal we.

• 56:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:05Speaker 05

  Uh, but yeah, it's, it's a convertible SUV. Um-

• 56:08Speaker 03

  Which is like maybe the most pimp thing in the whole world or the worst thing in the whole world.

• 56:12Speaker 05

  Maybe both.

• 56:13Speaker 00

  I mean, it's a pretty large range. Do you get this because it actually has a utility or do you get it because it's the most pimp thing in the world?

• 56:20Speaker 05

  Well, you, you get it because, you get it because you want to project to the world-

• 56:24Speaker 00

  It's the worst already like included in the idea of being a pimp thing?

• 56:26Speaker 03

  Yes, true, true, true. It's wrapped up in itself.

• 56:28Speaker 05

  You, you get it because you want to project to the world around you that you have infinity money and you have run out of things to spend it on.

• 56:35Speaker 00

  Uh-huh.

• 56:36Speaker 05

  So that's why you would get this. Um, but you know, LA is traditionally a show where they show a lot of convertibles because it is a convertible town.

• 56:42Speaker 00

  Right.

• 56:43Speaker 05

  Um, so that's why the car debut there, it's obviously a very limited run vehicle. They're not going to be selling a million of these things. So that happened. The, the, the press shots, by the way, if you haven't seen our post on this car, please check out the press shots for it because they are the most hilarious press shots I've ever seen for a car. There's one where it's driving through a lake with the top down. There's one where they're dashing through the snow with the top down. There's one where they're going over dunes in the Middle East with the top down. It's just a very bizarre set of press photos. Um, that happened. Then, uh, the Fiat 124 happened.

• 57:16Speaker 03

  I'm looking at them.

• 57:17Speaker 05

  They're insane, right? They're completely insane. The, the one at the top with the dude in the button down and he's just like casually driving through the lake.

• 57:24Speaker 03

  Low, like low water.

• 57:25Speaker 05

  Yeah. It's a, what are you doing?

• 57:29Speaker 00

  The world's first aqua car.

• 57:30Speaker 05

  It is.

• 57:31Speaker 00

  No, no, no. The world's first aqua car was a Lotus Esprit from James Bond.

• 57:36Speaker 05

  From Octopussy?

• 57:37Speaker 00

  No, it was live and let, God damn it.

• 57:43Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 57:43Speaker 04

  It was Octopussy.

• 57:44Speaker 05

  Yeah. Um, so anyway, Fiat 124, which is, uh, a, wait, you love the Fiat 124?

• 57:51Speaker 00

  No, I love the, the Lotus Esprit.

• 57:53Speaker 05

  So does Elon Musk. Keep out it.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. Spy love me. What's up?

• 57:57Speaker 05

  Spy love me. Okay. Yeah. Well, you were wrong too. Don't give me that.

• 58:00Speaker 00

  Well, I knew it wasn't Octopussy.

• 58:03Speaker 05

  Anyway, Fiat 124 debuted, uh, which is, um, a Fiat version of the new Mazda Miata.

• 58:10Speaker 00

  Right. And this is the car that everybody with taste loves and everybody.

• 58:15Speaker 05

  No, no, that is not accurate. It's, it is the opposite of the LG Urbane, uh, in that it, it looks bad.

• 58:26Speaker 00

  Our senior reporter Tamara describes it as the most polarizing car in LA.

• 58:30Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, no, so she was writing it up and I, and I, I texted her, I text messaged her. I'm like, Tamara, you need to call it polarizing because that's what it is. Um, yeah, no, I, on the floor, um, you know, just overhearing conversations with different journalists, like people were getting like emotional about this car, describing whether they loved it or hated it because it, to me, it looks like you took a Miata and bolted on a bunch of crappy aftermarket parts.

• 58:53Speaker 00

  Oh, it's like the, it's like the, what's the Pontiac equivalent of Camaro? Firebird?

• 58:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:58Speaker 00

  It's the, it's the Pontiac Firebird of the Miata.

• 59:01Speaker 05

  Kind of, except the Firebird was a genuinely badass car.

• 59:05Speaker 00

  That is not true.

• 59:06Speaker 05

  Have you, wow.

• 59:08Speaker 03

  Oh, I like that.

• 59:09Speaker 00

  In the eighties and nineties, the Firebird was a dumpster fire.

• 59:12Speaker 05

  With the giant like bird, flaming bird on the hood?

• 59:15Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 59:16Speaker 05

  It's awesome.

• 59:17Speaker 00

  Come on.

• 59:18Speaker 04

  The Micro Machine version of it was awesome.

• 59:22Speaker 05

  I believe that.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  I launched that thing off so many ramps.

• 59:27Speaker 05

  With a fast talking Micro Machine guy? Oh, man. He was the best.

• 59:31Speaker 00

  I, man, I loved him.

• 59:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 59:33Speaker 00

  Is he alive? I wanted to be him when I grew up.

• 59:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, we all wanted to be him.

• 59:39Speaker 00

  I bet there's some story there.

• 59:40Speaker 05

  The commercials made no sense. It was like 15 seconds long. It was just this dude talking fast and then you could understand. And then that was the end of the commercial.

• 59:45Speaker 04

  John Moschita Jr.

• 59:48Speaker 00

  John Moschita Jr.

• 59:49Speaker 04

  He lives.

• 59:50Speaker 05

  He lives.

• 59:50Speaker 04

  He lives.

• 59:51Speaker 05

  Can we get him on the Vergecast?

• 59:52Speaker 00

  Is he doing anything cool?

• 59:53Speaker 04

  He lives in New York?

• 59:54Speaker 05

  Oh, my God.

• 59:55Speaker 04

  Or at least he's from New York.

• 59:56Speaker 00

  If you know John Moschita Jr., ask him to come on the Vergecast.

• 59:59Speaker 04

  It would be the quickest interview.

• 1:00:03Speaker 00

  It'd be so fast.

• 1:00:05Speaker 05

  Sophia124, that happened. Then we had a wrap up at the end with Jason Harper, Tamara and myself, who were all there. Graciously BMW, BMW, who had a two, a two level booth, gave us their second floor to sort of mini podcast from. If you have a two level booth at an auto show, you're a baller, which BMW apparently is. So that was fun. Yeah, that was LA. And then coming up, of course, we have CES, which is, as I've been saying for three years now, an auto show. It's going to be again this year. And then Detroit the week after that, so.

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  And we're going to see the Fair Day.

• 1:00:45Speaker 05

  We're going, well, Faraday Future is exhibiting there. We don't know what they're showing.

• 1:00:49Speaker 00

  Backup. Faraday Future is what?

• 1:00:52Speaker 05

  Faraday Future. So this was, this story that we put up, this sort of mini future written by Tamara, it was not part of the LA auto show scene per se, but they are an LA company. They are headquartered in Nissan's old R and D facility outside LA. They are a California company that has been very quietly poaching Tesla, BMW, Mercedes and Apple engineers for the past two years.

• 1:01:20Speaker 00

  The only electric car stories I see anymore are Apple poached from Tesla, Tesla poached from Apple, Faraday poached from these other people. They're just like 50 people that know how to make electric cars and they just all get stolen from each other.

• 1:01:32Speaker 05

  That's pretty much the scene. And Google, Google just poached someone from Tesla last week. Yeah.

• 1:01:38Speaker 04

  Very incestuous scene, it seems like.

• 1:01:40Speaker 05

  Well, and it's very California specific. There's not a lot of poaching from Detroit, right?

• 1:01:45Speaker 00

  Well, cause I mean.

• 1:01:47Speaker 05

  But, but all the, all the, all the Detroit companies have opened labs in the valley in the past two years. So they're in that scene now too.

• 1:01:55Speaker 04

  How much longer is Detroit going to be Detroit in terms of cars?

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  No, in terms of existing.

• 1:02:02Speaker 05

  Well, it's like, well, yes.

• 1:02:03Speaker 00

  That's not fair.

• 1:02:04Speaker 05

  So how do I put this?

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  Detroit is like a whole box to open.

• 1:02:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like. That is a podcast unto itself.

• 1:02:14Speaker 04

  Well, maybe if we have a transportation podcast.

• 1:02:16Speaker 05

  Maybe if we have a transportation podcast.

• 1:02:19Speaker 00

  That's incredible. Oh my, oh my.

• 1:02:21Speaker 05

  That's a great idea.

• 1:02:22Speaker 00

  Wait a minute.

• 1:02:23Speaker 04

  I'm sorry. I didn't mean to.

• 1:02:24Speaker 05

  You're just opening a Pandora's box, my friend.

• 1:02:27Speaker 04

  I did.

• 1:02:28Speaker 05

  No, it's a good.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  You're going to Fiat, Fiat, whatever that car was called's box.

• 1:02:31Speaker 05

  You don't even know, you claim that it was a great looking car. You don't even know what it's called.

• 1:02:34Speaker 00

  You just opened a Miata box.

• 1:02:37Speaker 05

  So anyway, Faraday Future, they're in stealth mode still. They've raised tons of money from unknown sources that are, we think are Chinese, and they won't even name their CEO. They won't tell us who their CEO is.

• 1:02:49Speaker 04

  That's crazy.

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  They're the, they're the Manchurian electric car company.

• 1:02:53Speaker 05

  Yes, yes, they are.

• 1:02:56Speaker 00

  Right? Also racist, so I take that.

• 1:02:58Speaker 04

  A little bit.

• 1:02:59Speaker 05

  So, so one thing that they're doing that's interesting, they'll only talk about what they're doing in sort of riddles and rhymes, but they, they want to launch their first vehicle in 2017. I don't believe that's actually going to happen, but that's their plan. And they want to launch in a subscription model. So instead of buying a car, you would subscribe to a service where you can select different self-driving cars for you. So like one day you might have a cargo self-driving car for going to Home Depot and picking up like furniture or Ikea or whatever.

• 1:03:27Speaker 00

  Would the car like drive itself to you?

• 1:03:29Speaker 05

  Yes, that's the idea. So like, first of all, they have huge regulatory challenges to overcome. Secondly, the technology isn't fleshed out. Three, they don't have a car yet. They have many, many problems, but they also have infinity money allegedly. So we'll see.

• 1:03:42Speaker 00

  Well, it's kind of, it also sort of dovetails with the Uber ethos, which is to end private car ownership and have everyone just share cars, share rides.

• 1:03:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:51Speaker 00

  It sounds like it's sort of like.

• 1:03:53Speaker 05

  There are a lot of companies betting that this is what people want, and that hasn't been proven yet.

• 1:03:59Speaker 00

  I mean, I don't want, okay, I want to own a car, but like when I'm really honest with myself, I don't.

• 1:04:05Speaker 03

  No, I don't either.

• 1:04:06Speaker 05

  But, but we all live in New York City. If you live.

• 1:04:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, but like, even like when I go to other cities, I don't want to rent one. I like want to be taken places, but I don't want the responsibility of a car like at all.

• 1:04:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, what I want is for a car to be there two minutes after. I'm like, I need a car. That's what I want.

• 1:04:20Speaker 05

  Faraday Future is your friend. Faraday Future is your friend. If they can actually pull it off.

• 1:04:26Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:04:27Speaker 05

  So, but yeah, their, their lead designer is a superstar from BMW. He designed the I3 and I8. And Tamara saw sort of a profile of the car, which she was sworn she wouldn't discuss in our piece.

• 1:04:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:40Speaker 05

  But if you look at our video.

• 1:04:43Speaker 00

  You can like see it.

• 1:04:44Speaker 05

  It's, it's right behind her. So you can judge for yourself.

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  I really was waiting when I was watching a video of her just be like, you know what? Yoink. And like just pull the tarp off. And it would have been a bunch of like Oompa Loompas in there. Like sticks to like make the form of the car.

• 1:04:59Speaker 05

  Like, like the, from Bojack Horseman, the three kids.

• 1:05:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:05:04Speaker 05

  Wait, what?

• 1:05:06Speaker 00

  What are you talking about?

• 1:05:07Speaker 04

  The Netflix show.

• 1:05:08Speaker 00

  Bojack Horseman.

• 1:05:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:10Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:05:12Speaker 05

  Have you not seen Bojack?

• 1:05:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course I have.

• 1:05:14Speaker 04

  He's playing along with the joke.

• 1:05:16Speaker 05

  Oh, you're playing the role of.

• 1:05:20Speaker 05

  You're playing the role of, what's her name? The, the agent.

• 1:05:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:25Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:05:25Speaker 04

  Amy Sedaris's character.

• 1:05:26Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:05:27Speaker 00

  Whose name none of us can remember.

• 1:05:28Speaker 04

  Shout out Bojack Horseman. Good show.

• 1:05:30Speaker 05

  But it is a good show.

• 1:05:32Speaker 00

  Best show about depression?

• 1:05:34Speaker 04

  I think so, too.

• 1:05:34Speaker 05

  I haven't seen the Christmas special yet, which apparently came out last year and I didn't know existed till like last week. So I'm gonna watch it. Anyway, that was LA Auto Show.

• 1:05:45Speaker 05

  Then this week, we put up a really cool piece on the McLaren 675LT.

• 1:05:51Speaker 04

  Which is bonkers as fire.

• 1:05:53Speaker 05

  Which is an insane vehicle. I had the 650S, which is sort of the low key version of the 695LT for a week. And it was, it terrified me in so many ways. I was driving in Long Island with it. And when you put the accelerator all the way to the floor, you feel like your entire face is going to be ripped off and there will just be be bones and like tendons underneath and it's gonna be really disgusting and then you'll die.

• 1:06:23Speaker 04

  Like the Travolta Nick Cage.

• 1:06:25Speaker 05

  Right. Yeah, face off situation, except there's no replacement face. So you just have a, you know, a bone situation.

• 1:06:31Speaker 04

  That sucks.

• 1:06:32Speaker 05

  It does suck. But no, it was a fantastic car. This thing is like the super hardcore version of it. So more horsepower,

• 1:06:41Speaker 05

  more bolstered seats. It's basically intended for track use. It's limited to 500 units. So Jason Harper, our columnist, had this thing for a day at a track upstate and was, if you watch the video of it, there's a moment where he is literally at a loss for words. Like he is unable to like evoke any verbalization of what he's experiencing. And that's how you know that it's a good car because he's driven everything on the planet. Check that out. Um, and we have 72 wallpapers.

• 1:07:09Speaker 00

  Seventy-two wallpapers of.

• 1:07:11Speaker 05

  High resolution wallpapers of the six ninety-five LT on our site.

• 1:07:15Speaker 03

  For the back of your computer?

• 1:07:17Speaker 05

  Well, you know, for like, for the front of your computer.

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  For a desktop.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Speaker 00

  No, for your bedroom. I mean. Hang on, like wallpaper for your bed.

• 1:07:26Speaker 04

  Who had a Lamborghini car poster?

• 1:07:29Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:29Speaker 00

  Countach.

• 1:07:29Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 1:07:30Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:07:31Speaker 04

  Nah.

• 1:07:32Speaker 05

  What did you have? What kind of, what kind of posters did you have?

• 1:07:34Speaker 04

  Uh, movie posters, comic book posters.

• 1:07:37Speaker 00

  Man.

• 1:07:38Speaker 04

  Terminator two.

• 1:07:39Speaker 03

  Ninety-eight degrees.

• 1:07:40Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 1:07:41Speaker 00

  Wow. My brother had the, who's the, the eighties artist, like the, the, the black and white women, like the full on eighties thing with like one.

• 1:07:48Speaker 04

  Oh, like the Duran Duran?

• 1:07:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. He had a bunch of those. I forgot who that artist was, whatever.

• 1:07:54Speaker 05

  I had the, um, I had this, the poster everyone did. They still make this. You can still find this online, the justification for higher education poster. Where it's like, it's a mansion with a garage in the front of it with like six garages with like a Lamborghini or two Ferraris and a Porsche.

• 1:08:08Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:09Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Cause when you go to college, you get that.

• 1:08:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's exactly.

• 1:08:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:13Speaker 05

  That's what we all get. As soon as you graduate, you get your diploma and your.

• 1:08:15Speaker 04

  Six car garage.

• 1:08:16Speaker 05

  Your cars.

• 1:08:18Speaker 00

  I got.

• 1:08:19Speaker 04

  And not massive debt.

• 1:08:20Speaker 00

  Loan debt.

• 1:08:22Speaker 03

  You didn't pick yours up like when you were leaving?

• 1:08:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:08:24Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  And I guess that, Dieter, dude, I know.

• 1:08:29Speaker 00

  It's really annoying.

• 1:08:31Speaker 05

  Should, there should be a little ticket you turn in. Um, so, uh, so that happened. Um, and, uh, oh, and then one final thing.

• 1:08:39Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:08:39Speaker 05

  So, uh, I, I've had these feels in my heart for a long time and I wanted to put them on the website.

• 1:08:46Speaker 00

  Oh, we can't get into this. We do not have time to get into this. Just do you get one sentence? And then we're gonna be out.

• 1:08:54Speaker 05

  Jeremy Clarkson, not a great guy.

• 1:08:57Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:08:58Speaker 04

  That wasn't even a sentence.

• 1:08:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, it was.

• 1:09:00Speaker 04

  That was like a sentence fragment.

• 1:09:01Speaker 05

  Jeremy Clarkson, colon, not a great guy.

• 1:09:03Speaker 00

  Not a great guy. Also, Amazon, colon, what are you thinking?

• 1:09:08Speaker 05

  That's but that's another sentence. You said I had one.

• 1:09:10Speaker 00

  I said, you got I I I I got as many sentences.

• 1:09:12Speaker 03

  Wait, what's Amazon thinking right now?

• 1:09:14Speaker 00

  Amazon has a guy who had to leave the BBC was like quasi fired, basically fired. Maybe he resigned, who knows, for saying racist and misogynist things and assaulting his coworkers.

• 1:09:28Speaker 05

  Punched his producer in the face because he didn't get dinner.

• 1:09:33Speaker 04

  Which is ironic because he looks like he's been punched in the face.

• 1:09:35Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 1:09:38Speaker 05

  So so Amazon.

• 1:09:41Speaker 05

  Amazon. Picked him up almost immediately. Well, not almost immediately. There was a protracted negotiation period, but I ended up picking him up along with his two co hosts at a 10 times raise what he was making at the BBC. So BBC was making about a million pounds a year. Now he's making 10 million pounds a year, 30 million pounds over three seasons, which works out to about 45 million dollars. So and look, he's an amazing entertainer. Top Gear is arguably the best automotive program ever put on television, but he's not a great guy.

• 1:10:15Speaker 00

  Dukes of Hazzard? No, Top Gear is better.

• 1:10:17Speaker 05

  Well, but Dukes of Hazzard is a sitcom. I'm talking about like, I'm talking about a straight up like.

• 1:10:21Speaker 00

  Kirby.

• 1:10:23Speaker 05

  You're you're going in the wrong direction, my friend.

• 1:10:27Speaker 05

  The Love Bug is not a good.

• 1:10:28Speaker 00

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, Knight Rider.

• 1:10:31Speaker 05

  Oh, that's a tough one.

• 1:10:33Speaker 00

  Is Knight Rider the best car show ever?

• 1:10:34Speaker 04

  Are we getting up to? That's my question. Are we getting to a moment when when self driving cars will be like Kit from Knight Rider, where they will talk to us in a sinuous voice?

• 1:10:44Speaker 05

  They'll talk to you. What's what's that actor's name who did the the voice of? I can't remember. He remember he played John Adams?

• 1:10:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, to to the Hoff?

• 1:10:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:10:54Speaker 00

  He played to the Hoff?

• 1:10:54Speaker 05

  He played John Adams in 1776, the greatest historical film ever made.

• 1:11:00Speaker 05

  Uh, anyway, uh, yeah, I hope that that he talks to us.

• 1:11:04Speaker 00

  I always assumed the voice of Knight Rider was Magnum P.I.'s butler or friend or whoever that guy was.

• 1:11:10Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:11:11Speaker 04

  William Daniels.

• 1:11:12Speaker 00

  Those are the same person.

• 1:11:14Speaker 05

  No, no.

• 1:11:15Speaker 03

  I know these words.

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  And then, and then, fun fact, Val Kilmer in the 2008 reboot.

• 1:11:20Speaker 05

  What?

• 1:11:21Speaker 00

  Oh, God.

• 1:11:22Speaker 05

  What?

• 1:11:23Speaker 04

  Was not aware existed.

• 1:11:25Speaker 05

  No, I, I, I was, um, that, that was with a Mustang, right? Instead of a, a Firebird.

• 1:11:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:11:32Speaker 05

  Which is insane on multiple levels. So funny story about that show, that reboot.

• 1:11:36Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:11:36Speaker 05

  Um, uh, Neela and I were working at Engadget at the time, uh, which is an AOL property, Autoblog, also an AOL property. Um, AOL decided, or excuse me, Autoblog decided that they were going to live blog every episode of the, the Knight Rider reboot. And whoever was live blogging, I can't remember who, unfortunately, what, the live blogs were hilarious. They were so well done and Neela was so jealous because it was a Mustang. And of course he's a huge Mustang fan, but he's like, I need to be involved with this live blog. So he started talking to the Autoblog people, please let me get in on these live blogs. Never happened. And I think to this day, it's one of his greatest regrets is that he couldn't live blog.

• 1:12:13Speaker 04

  And he's not here to defend himself.

• 1:12:15Speaker 05

  No, he's not.

• 1:12:17Speaker 05

  He is not, but maybe.

• 1:12:18Speaker 00

  He's not here for, to counter us talking about how the Packers are terrible.

• 1:12:23Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 1:12:24Speaker 00

  How many times have you heard us do the, uh, the socials at the end of the podcast?

• 1:12:28Speaker 03

  Um, I think this is my sixth, seventh appearance.

• 1:12:33Speaker 00

  It's gotta be like your dozenth.

• 1:12:34Speaker 03

  No, no, no, it's not been that many.

• 1:12:35Speaker 00

  You want to try it?

• 1:12:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:12:37Speaker 00

  All right.

• 1:12:37Speaker 03

  Where's the words?

• 1:12:38Speaker 00

  Oh, man.

• 1:12:39Speaker 03

  You should follow, no, I'm going to mess it up. It's just, it's, I always forget on Twitter, it's just Verge, at Verge.

• 1:12:48Speaker 00

  On Twitter, at Verge.

• 1:12:49Speaker 03

  Dieter's at Backlong.

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

  I am.

• 1:12:51Speaker 03

  I'm at Nicola underscore Fumo.

• 1:12:55Speaker 03

  Y'all?

• 1:12:57Speaker 04

  At Andy Jayhawk, J A Y H A W K.

• 1:13:00Speaker 05

  And Zed Power.

• 1:13:02Speaker 04

  One word.

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  Z E D Power?

• 1:13:04Speaker 05

  No, no, pretend I'm Canadian. Zed Power. Z Power.

• 1:13:09Speaker 00

  You can also find us on iTunes. We are there at, just search for Vergecast on iTunes, really. But if you go to iTunes.com slash The Verge, you'll find us. And you'll also find other things like Verge ESP, What's Tech, and Control, Alt, Delete. And when you're there at iTunes, you might as well rate us five stars and tell us why, why you want to live forever, I think.

• 1:13:31Speaker 03

  Pull up in Snapchat, The Real Verge.

• 1:13:34Speaker 05

  Oh, what's up?

• 1:13:35Speaker 03

  On Snapchat.

• 1:13:36Speaker 00

  Did you guys talk about the Easter egg on that? On that? Oh, it just, if you go to the Transcendence in Peace and type in Zoltan, you'll have a party.

• 1:13:44Speaker 03

  Oh, I didn't even know this.

• 1:13:45Speaker 05

  I rocked out to that.

• 1:13:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, you'll have a party.

• 1:13:47Speaker 05

  That was a jam. That was a jam.

• 1:13:48Speaker 00

  Hey, thanks to Braintree for sponsoring today's episode of The Vergecast. Braintree gives you a full stack payment solution. They support all kinds of payment types for your customers that they might want to want. Like Android Pay, or Apple Pay, or PayPal, or Bitcoin, or Venmo, and cards, and whatever's coming next. It all works with a single integration. It works across all platforms and it has superior fraud protection, customer service, and fast payouts. You can check it out for yourself at braintreepayments.com/vergecast. Thank you so much, everybody, for watching. We will be back next week, presumably with Neelai and maybe somebody else. Can't confirm. Or deny, or finish this podcast.

• 1:14:27Speaker 03

  That ends.

• 1:14:28Speaker 00

  Bye, everybody. Thank you.

• 1:14:29Speaker 03

  Bye.

• 1:14:29Speaker 05

  Bye.

• 1:14:30Speaker 04

  Bye.