 Hey and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of March 10th, 2014. I'm Josh Dabulski. I'm TC Sotic and this is my third week in captivity. Please help. And I'm Katie. Yeah, Katie. Good old TC and Katie. My two favorite people to do the Vergecast with. I look like there's an oil spill on my head with this hair, with my hair. It's getting really long. It is getting long. Here's the question. How long will it get? Pigtails long. I'm thinking mini pony. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like Jared Leto. Yeah. I want to have like a Jared Leto style hair situation. His hair is very long. I'll never be as beautiful as Jared Leto, but I can have long hair like him. I want to be like, he looks like a beautiful horse running through the fields of... No, like a tiny little pony. Like a pony. Who loves his mom. Like a beautiful pony. Yeah. I think we, oh, we're drinking. Yeah. Cheers. Look at him. He's a beautiful man with a beautiful head of hair. I need to get some highlights like that though. He has really nice bone structure. He looks like Gaius Baltar from Battlestar. He really does. With long hair. He really does. Let's have a little clink of the old... Cheers. Cheers. What do they say in Canada when you cheers? Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, our glasses touched. Sorry. Sorry. This is such an aggressive action. I didn't mean to... Please forgive this intrusion on your personal space. Someone asked me to wear this hat today. Who's someone? Who's that? Someone I've ever... A fan. A special fan. A special lady in your life. A special fan. Someone in your life. Special lady maybe. Special dude. Special bro-ham. I'm not judging. I'm cool with whatever. I'm not judging. Can I call you a fan, man? He just tweeted, ugh. So glad you're a cowboy. I'm an urban cowboy. Oh yeah, check it out, guys. Should have worn my boots today. Tried to bring my bolo tie, but I couldn't. Anyhow, this is the Verge cast. This is the Verge cast, man. That's it. What did you guys wanna talk about today? Well, there's a lot to talk about, I think, right? Yeah. We were talking about just before we started rolling. I was talking about how I wanted to murder TC. And I was saying... He was like, please kill me. I mean, he wasn't like, and I don't think he was joking. It was like, I'm ready to be done with life. I've had it. Why? And then, and I was saying how amazing it would be if I killed him live for real on the Verge cast. Like that would be one, that'd be a podcast you'd never forget. We have a spear in the office. That would be really easy to convict too. We have a giant spear. Unless it could be, there was some, that's like on the Good Wife, you know, do you watch the Good Wife? I just, season two, episode 20. There would be a scene, there's like, he killed him on the Verge cast, and there's like, there was video, 20,000 people, a million people watch it. Or it's 20,000 by the way, don't worry, it's not a million. But it would be like the Wedge cast or something. Something like that, right. And then be like live, but then like the Good Wife be like, wait a second, that knife wasn't even his. And like his hand is like, look, it's been edited or something. And then she'd make out with her, with Will. Hey, spoiler alert, okay? Maybe. No, they make out, they do. Oh, I haven't seen that episode yet. They get hot and heavy. I haven't seen it yet. They do everything. Spoiler. And they show it on CBS, which I thought was shocking. I need to catch up, I'm still watching Scandal. Full frontal nudity. Really? What are we looking at here? What is this? A clip, just a random clip from a trailer for The Good Wife. John showed the nudity. It's such a good show though. If you haven't seen it, it's incredible. It's unbelievable it's on CBS, a network known for several horrible, horrible programs. I hear it's better than House of Cards. I actually think, look, House of Cards is very good. I think some of it strays into a level of incredulous, you know, nests. That is pretty. I find it a little bit sort of meandering. Meandering is, I think, well, that's not my main issue. When he kills the president, it just goes way over the top. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. But that's the thing about House of Cards, that could happen on that show. And they'd be like, yeah, that's a totally reasonable plot point. Frank Underwood puts ricin in his Stevie. It's kind of like Homeland. Multiple shows. Spoiler alert. I hope, by the way, I hope you're not watching this Virgcast for any information about anything or any real conversation. Important opinions, though. So Katie, we were talking about your haircut. You said you get your haircut by a woman named Letitia. Yes, in Brooklyn Heights. And I was like, oh, you're wearing a Brooklyn, you're like showing off your Brooklyn street cred. Yeah. Brooklyn Nets. I went to one game a year and a half ago. How was it? It was okay. I love the Nets. Yeah, me too. I'm a big fan. I have their t-shirt. Did you see Jay-Z? No, Jay-Z was not there. He's at every game. It was for Carl's birthday. Does he like the Nets? No, we just decided together that we were gonna like the Nets. And so we both bought t-shirts. Well, they're awesome. They have all black uniforms. They're in Brooklyn. They just seem really cool. They all listen to, I'm trying to, Deer Huff or whatever. I don't know what. Excuse me? I'm trying to think of a band. They're all really into Interpol. I don't know, what's a cool? Interpol? I don't know, my references are all off. I don't know. I have not been sleeping a lot. What's a cool band now that everybody's like, it's like indie, but they're cool? The National? No doubt. Now, The National's really popular. Yeah, they're too popular. I think they played at the Barclay. Oh, they did, but I didn't go, because I was like, I'm not gonna see them at fucking Barclay. I gotta say something about The National. I really have a new. Well, it's too big a venue. I agree, not intimate enough for, because you're into that intimate indie vibe. So here's what I wanna say about The National. Uh-oh. I didn't realize this. Number one, they're from Cincinnati. Oh, I didn't know that. Which is a tough place for anybody to be from. And I think people in Cincinnati will back me up on this. They've been at this for a long time. 99 is when they formed. Wow. So just nothing but respect for The National. Also, the lead singer, if you saw him on Saturday Night Live, they were just on with Lena Dunham, he is a dead ringer for Randy Quaid in Independence Day. A particular Randy Quaid in Independence Day. Here he is. Can we get a close up on him? I mean, he looks so much like Randy Quaid from Independence Day. Oh my God. Can we get a shot of Randy? Yes! Side by side. Wow, just get in there. Can we get a side by side of Randy Quaid from Independence Day, please? I'm just gonna wait. They're like live. I love that they're doing this live. Aliens! I like, I like. So you're Randy Quaid in Persons. Yeah, I don't even remember what he sounds like. That's what he sounds like, exactly. I'm supposed to be the person keeping us on topic today and I'm just gonna let everyone know I'm not gonna do my job. Let's do it, what's the first topic? What's the topic? We're supposed to talk about... Worst Verge Casting ever, am I right, guys? This stuff that happened. No way, this is awesome. Down in Austin, Texas. They're so... South by Southwest. South, otherwise known as Brand Hellworld. Brand Hellworld. Where's my side by side? This is nonsense. What's worse, watching this or listening to it? Being in it. Wow, oh John, you don't like, I'm sorry, John, in the control booth, I was just told being in that room is the worst. You know what, you don't have to be in there. The free wine's okay. The perpetual bondage. No one's forcing you, I mean it is your job, but... You're getting paid right now to drink wine and just like talk about whatever you want. Yeah, it's amazing. But you guys don't see what happens off camera. Somebody just asked have I completely, have we completely given up on the illusion of discussing tech on the Verge Cast? You guys want to discuss some tech? As long as I'm on it, yes. Let's discuss some tech. I think, I think... You want to talk about tech? I think that I'm like not going to talk about a smartphone for... Don't talk to me about it. Like it's gotta be a really interesting development in smartphones to talk about it. Yeah, I don't know, I'm just not interested in talking. I mean, certain technology, like, I would talk about the, well, I mean, it's not really a tech story, but I would talk about what Casey wrote at South by Southwest, which is about how... Yes, everyone should talk about that all the time. Which is about how South by Southwest Interactive, which is supposed to be this place where like, beautiful, amazing new ideas about like the future of our world are born, is actually, has actually become this like really weird brand. Like he, you know, it's like called an orgy. Yeah. And... A rollicking corporate brand orgy. Yeah, which I think is like totally valid. Who is this guy? Dan Boyd, who's a little old, wants us to talk about tech. Doesn't use capitalization when spelling his name. Who is he, Dan Boyd? Yeah, here we go. Look at this, unbelievable. Oh man. No, that's not it at all. That's not a good picture. Were you drinking on Saturday? No, I'm telling you, he looks like him. You just, it's the wrong angle. Yeah. I'm a little disappointed. Can we get him in a plane or something, flying into the alien ship? I got what you need, John. Suppose you got the right image. I got it. He really does look like him. Anyhow. So what were we talking about? Oh, South by Southwest. So yeah, the thing is, I mean, it's not a surprise. I think this has been this way for a long time, but it's just like a, it's just like a brand, it's just a cluster fuck of brands, and it's all really nasty, lame shit. It's like, this guy's Shingy from AOL. Do you know this dude, this digital prophet? This guy's like my least favorite. And by the way, I'm sure he's a really nice guy, and I feel bad saying this, because I'm sure he's a lovely man, but he calls himself a digital prophet, or that's what AOL calls him or something. Can we get a picture of Shingy up on the screen, view screen here? Can we just get Shingy, just do a Google search for Shingy. It's really great if you could just get an image of him up. I'm not gonna talk till there's an image of Shingy on the screen. I don't like to put people on blast, but he kind of looks like what Sonic the Hedgehog would look like if he was a human being, I imagine. He looks super excited about everything. I feel like, well, he's profiting off of the digital, fourth-gubby digital. Wow. Here's Shingy speaking. It's a better image of Shingy. This is too dark. I need to see Shingy up close. Wow, there he is. Can we get audio on this? Is this him profiting, right, being a prophet? Profiteering. Look at those nails. You can be called what your brand in the middle of those, or even deliver one of those experiences. Is he a- The first largest contributor to stress today is media overload. What? We know that there's a challenge in terms of attention, but if you do get it right, mindshare equals market share, and that's where consumers are going to pass your brand on. Nice. Whoa, here he is thinking. Mindshare equals- It's Catherine Hepburn, and this is it. What? If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun. I think what we need to do is get into a fast experimentation mode. The platforms allow us to do that because you fundamentally have between six seconds and 13 hours to tell your brand story today. You're not limited- That's a big window. To 30s and 60s across the day. How are you telling your brand story? You have these different brand expressions today, these different engines to tell your story. Yeah. So I would love to see you embrace- This is really long. We need to- All right, that's enough. That's enough of Shingy. I can't do it. Wait, just to clarify, he is employed by- He's employed by AOL, as far as I know. That's amazing. His title is Digital Profit. Of course it is. And he's talking about how you can get your brand, just jam on your brand, get it jammed up into somebody's area. Jammed up. Anyhow, but that's South by Southwest. Here's the most striking image, actually, Valleywag. Sam Biddle, I think, posted this. It was a picture of Shingy on Mashable's wrecking ball. There it is. That's what South by Southwest is. It's like a sandwich of garbage. I'm sorry, Shingy. I'm sorry. I know you're a nice guy, but you're a human being and I don't want to diss you. I'm sure you're a lovely man to hang out with, but your stuff that you say sounds really horrible. To each his own, your look is your look, whatever. But being called a digital profit and saying shit like brand message or whatever is the worst. So, I mean, is that tech? Is that a tech conversation? I don't know. Hey, wait a second, buddy. Hold on, huh? Don't forget Shingy Jr. over here. I'm changing my title too. New trend will be befriending unfollowing. Shingy. Anyhow, so that may be a tech story. I think that's the kind of tech story I'm interested in is how South by Southwest went from a really cool, interesting group of people telling each other very interesting stories and sharing knowledge to an Oreo, 3D printed Oreo like marketing machine. And Casey Newton, one of our writers, wrote a really cool story about, by the way, I'm not like bitter. This sounds like I'm bitter or whatever. Like that's just one. No, but that's just like one small part of like what's going on in the world. That to me is, and I think some of like, you know why I don't want to talk about like the new smartphone or like, I don't want to talk about like iOS eight leaks, except I will say there's this like Mark Gurman from 9to5Mac had these iOS eight leaks and they're like, they're gonna have like text edit or something, or it's, you know, some really sad stuff. They're gonna- Walking public transit directions. Yeah, public transit directions and maps. Like it's just the saddest update you can think of because all this stuff is incremental. And that's why like you don't hear us talking a lot on the Vergecast anymore about these like weird little incremental, like, hey, there's a new 6.5 inch smartphone. Like we're very, you know, I'm sure there's a set of people who's interested. We'll cover those when appropriate. We review them when appropriate. But like, when it comes to the Vergecast, like, you know, I don't want to sit here and talk about a 6.5 inch screen on a smartphone unless there's like a really good reason to talk about it. I kind of do. Look, and you know what? This is the sleepless mind of a baby daddy. What is happening? Anyhow, so are we talking about tech Mark Little? No, we should- Where appropriate, my man. We should talk about Cosmos. Although wait, Mark Little also points out that he came up with drum roll as a replacement for Vergecast. It's pretty good. Which I thought was pretty fucking good. Mark Little, I thought you were not on our side, but now you maybe are on our side. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. Anyhow, but so what's in the news? What do we have on our list? Tech is dead. Is tech dead? Is tech dead? There's no more technology. It's all been done. I don't think that's true. There we go. There we go. Yes. That's more like it. I still feel like you got the wrong image on the right now. Look, he looks like Randy Quaid, okay? He looks good there. Okay, Katie, that's enough. Maybe you gotta back off that wine a little bit. We don't want anything embarrassing to happen here. Like the entire thing. We wouldn't want that to happen. Okay, so what's on our list? Yeah, she's in the F word pretty early today. She's in repeatedly. Okay, so Neil, hey, you know what? No, Cosmos. Cosmos, I was gonna say, Katie did an amazing interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson. He came to our office, our studio, and sat down with us. And obviously, he's a super fascinating guy. Brilliant dude. We interviewed him, I interviewed him a couple years ago on The Verge, the first season of On The Verge. And he was so, were you there? Yeah, I was there. Yeah, he was like so engrossing. I don't know if he did this with you, because I don't know the whole thing. But he would like, and I was like, oh, we gotta wrap up. It's like 45 minutes. I was like, we gotta wrap up. He's like, no. And we talked for like another 15 or 20 minutes because he just wanted to say more stuff. He's so smart and interesting that it just makes you feel like, it made me feel like the dumbest guy in the world. Oh, I didn't feel dumb. Okay, okay. Well, you know. I guess you're smarter. I feel like talking to a peer. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. That's the thing about him though. He's like super in your face. What an ego. What an ego. But it's an awesome kind of like super in your face. Like he. Yeah, yeah, no, it's like you want him in your face. Yeah. Some people you're like, dude, get out, just stop. Yeah, he's like an evangelical scientist. He's extremely intelligent, but I also find him extremely kind and thoughtful. No, he's, yes, yeah, totally. And like very easy to talk to. Like I was nervous. This was the first one-on-one like sit down video interview I've ever done. And I was very nervous, but we made eye contact the whole time. It was. That's good. We drank wine. You did have wine with him. Yeah, yeah. Which just proves my theory that you have a drinking problem. No, I mean, so. I'll drink to that. All right. Cheers. We don't have to do this every time. Yes, we do. Sorry. Why shouldn't we do it every time? Let's talk about more tech. No, but so Neil. Okay, here we go. Dr. Tyson. Oh, all of a sudden, Neil. Actually. Doctor. Is a huge wine buff, which I found out when I interviewed him for the Verge 50. And he hated, he hated your wine. He did hate the wine. Just think about the kind of wine he's drinking. Cause let me tell you something. No, I know, right. So I said. He has the money to buy good wine. He has a wine cellar at his house. Oh God. I'm so envious. And so I said to the guys buying the wine, I was like, get something nice. They got a $32 bottle of wine. I'm like, okay, fair. Like that's a nice bottle of wine by my standards. And he took one sip and was like, yeah, this could use another eight years. Another eight years. And he would know. And he would know. You can tell he's somewhat disgusted by the wine he's drinking. But he drank a full glass. He drank a full glass and I did not because I was trying to like. And it was like one in the afternoon. Be a professional. Yeah, that's so great. Well, I was gonna, my week would be shot. Dude, I mean, he's gonna get in. He gets into some sick limo and just goes to his next awesome event. And I saw him outside leaving and he got into a big, like a, not a Hummer, but like a. Like a Suburban. Yeah. At New Orleans. He's a total player. I mean, I mean, that's, I only, like Suburban is apparently like, that's the car. Like I now get Uber once in a while, I'll get an Uber black car. And a lot of times they send, cause they have like Uber T, Uber X, Uber black car and then Uber, whatever's above that. It's like something. A jet? It's like Uber. Uber ultimate. I don't know. It's like a Bentley. Anyhow, but they send Suburbans all the time. That's nice. Which are like huge. Maybe he got an Uber. I don't know. Anyhow, he was getting into a car. Yeah. And then what? He was with People Magazine. Probably a very different interview. I bet. Right? But he talked a lot about wine. That was probably most of the interview off camera. Gave us lots of good wine advice. But you know, and also said some really interesting stuff. I wish I could use some of that advice today with this bottle of wine that we're drinking. God knows. I don't have a wine to go, but I can tell you this is crap. I like it. Shout out to Justin. Yeah. Thanks Justin. The wine brand. By the way, Borough man just said he would, he's gonna fight somebody. I know it's good. But wait, Atlas Hamburger, is he trolling us on Twitter? Yeah. This is the worst broadcast ever. Can I just say? It is kind of bad. Can I just say before we started, we were having like a really great, exciting conversation. And then something happened during the intro that just threw us off. It was TZ's stupid hat. Yeah, probably. Anyhow. No, let's talk about Odyssey though. Space Time Odyssey. Cosmo? Yeah, let's. Okay. Have you seen it? We all watched it, right? I only started watching it. I didn't, I have a baby. All right, well I'm gonna talk to you now. Do you understand? You understand, right? Yeah, go ahead. You guys talk. What did you think? I'm gonna join my wine. I thought it was fantastic. I thought it was really great too. I was surprised at how closely he stuck with the Carl Sagan. Like, I mean, like the cosmic calendar. Yeah. The spaceship of the imagination. It was all like, I'm not gonna say ripped off. He used the word borrowed, sort of like as an homage. It was a reboot in like a very literal sense. Yeah, he said it's a continuation. It's like the second season of Cosmos, but it's 30 years later. Which I did not know was what they were gonna do. I think the most controversial part of that first episode though was the religion segment. I mean, he's clearly a hardcore atheist. Definitely, and he's made very strong statements to that effect before. And he's unabashed in his sort of, you know, science as religion viewpoint. And I mean, I don't think religion in the sense of like worship it, but just. You know, I really appreciate the fact that they included that thread though, because I think one, and it was very clear at the end when he talked about Sagan and what Sagan's mission was and how this is a very practical thing. It's not just like, oh, look at these cool NASA photos. It's like science is a real fucking thing that improves our lives. F-bomb. Yeah, it's a real thing. Yeah, it's real. It's absolutely necessary. Not only to improve our lives, but from a nationalistic standpoint, like, you know. And no, that's one of his huge trips and one of the things he talked about when he was on the verge. And I know that he speaks about often is this concept of the love and appreciation and need for science as like an underlying driver of like in America, who we are and what we do and what we'll build and how like we will, you know, it's not about just about like, hey, it's like cool to experiment and find something out. It's like, hey, this stuff actually leads to legitimate new areas of exploration of business, of intellect. And it's not, and that drives like a nation or a world, you know, forward. And I think that's true. You know, I think science underlies, it's, you know, so many of the advances of civilization. You know, I think about like longevity and I mean, health in general, just full stop, like anything related to health is like, that is science in action. That is, you know, that is like really insane progress. We've expanded and extended like the human lifespan by 40 years or something in the last 100 years, or, you know, 250 years or whatever it is, just because like we know we've learned things about how stuff works. And like, you know, learning about how things work and taking that apart and utilizing it is, there's, you can't put a price on it. You know, it's the most valuable thing. I'm really glad they, you know, opened with the cosmic calendar concept, cause it's like one of, you know, just putting the historical perspective in there is so important. You know, just the idea that in 500 years, we went from like inventing the first telescope to putting someone on the moon is absolutely insane. No, it's crazy. I mean, it's crazy. The things that, that even in the last hundred, the things that have occurred in terms of discovery are, um, astounding. Well, and also that when put in, in perspective, that that's what it was, what, like five minutes at the end of an hour. Right. Or something. Like all of meaningful modern history was like six seconds or something in the final minute, in the final hour. Right. It's just, it really is a, I mean, I hope, I don't know if it's happening or not. I do hope things like this spark a new appreciation for, I feel like we went through a period and I'll just say it, like the Bush era was the, was the, you know, pinnacle of just utter ignorance and stupidity amongst like the populace of America, where it was like just denial of facts, you know, and like our, up from there, from our government down to like just ended the average citizen. We were like denying truth and facts in replacing it with, I don't know what greed or, you know, like just forced ignorance, if purposeful ignorance. I don't really understand it because to me, you know, like it's the most disturbing thing in the world to imagine that like the president of the United States lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to like spark a war, which we know basically happened for real, like definitely happened. And you know, I think that if I were a part of the populace that voted for that guy and like was like, yeah, creationism and all this other stuff that was happening during that time, I would feel like this wine is definitely having an effect. I just want to say, cause I'm way down a rabbit hole in this one. But I think that we, but I think that we're like, progress is not inevitable. No, it is, it is real. It is real. And we're, and we're still coming out of this like period of just like, like sustained in unbelievable ignorance that like, it's like either you're not paying attention or you don't care, or like you're, you're just doing it to be an asshole. Like you're being ignorant to be an asshole. Like I think that we're still coming out of that. And I really hope that things like Cosmos start to help to shake more people out of this weird trance they've been in about, you know, and I think the internet is like one of those tools where it's so easy to convince yourself of that you're right. And that the things you believe are true because there's a bunch of people on the internet who are like, yeah, you're right. Those things you believe are true and finding truth and finding real answers to real problems is like the basis of science, you know? And I think it's so important that we actually put value in that, like consider that to be a highly valued thing. I mean, I don't know. What the solution to that problem is. I mean, a TV show, like it's a great show. I enjoyed it a lot from what I've read. The ratings had not been what they were expected to be, which is disappointing. But I don't know how you solve that problem, right? Like NASA's budget this year is flat again. It's the same shit. Pop culture is a huge deal. Especially like a network like Fox, like that's one of the things that I was most excited about. Right. Fox is far and away the biggest launch of any television show in history. Yeah, it's weird. Like Fox puts so much money. It's so weird that's on Fox. Yeah, it's really weird. It's like they have to pay back all the damage they've done. Yeah, a network that's known for American Idol and Family Guy. And also for Fox News. It's known for like the most destructive force in journalism since, I don't know, like Hitler controlled newspapers in Germany. Other than the daily RIP. Other than Fox News, but it's all the same. Oh, except for the daily. The daily RIP. Which was an amazing beacon of light in an otherwise gloomy place. Yeah. But you know, RIP. Yeah, RIP daily. RIP daily. It was a good year. But yeah, no, Fox definitely has to pay it back. And that's what they're doing now. I just think it's so crazy to me that we have this almost like a real, I don't know if this is true in other countries. I can't speak, I don't want to speak for other countries. I live in America. And I grew up in America. But it does seem like, and I don't know if this happened during the Reagan years, and then it sort of got solidified in the Bush years. But this appreciation for, it's like a willful ignorance that is almost like it's not cool to be smart. It's not cool to know things. It sucks. Like you're a terrible person if you read books. And I think that really has cemented itself in some part of the firmament. Some part of the layers of dirt that we stand on. I don't know what I'm talking about right now. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't think, I honestly don't think it's a modern phenomenon. No. I mean, probably not. I mean, knowledge is scary. The thing about atheism and religion is that it's, speaking as an atheist, it's scary to go like, oh, yeah, there are no easy answers. There isn't a simple, like, God's got it. Why do you think I have a drinking problem? No, tell me about it. I know, sure. Because you recognize the absurdity of life. Well, but you still believe in the heaven that exists above the planet. Where there's lots of Philadelphia cream cheese. Fully spreadable cream cheese, just so soft, ready to go on any bagel that you choose, no matter what type of bagel. I couldn't even eat bread. I have a gluten intolerance. That was racist. You know, an everything bagel, onion bagel, raisin bagel, you want to put cream cheese on that? No one's going to stop you. Anyhow. Continue. Bagel up in your bagel heaven. What was I talking about? Atheism versus. Yeah, it's just scary to go like, hey, God doesn't have it, because he doesn't exist. Because that's a made up idea. Because, anyhow, right now I'm getting so many death threats and hate mail. I can't even keep up with it. But here's what I'll say about it. I'm talking about atheism, and I'm sure people will be up in arms. But the most controversial thing that I've ever said in public is about being a vegetarian. That's like far and away. Like right now, if I was like, meat eaters are terrible, way more controversial than like, God is dead or whatever. I mean, I'm on certain audiences, I'm sure. Here it is. Is this a real thing? What is this? Is this bagel heaven? That's heaven. This is real? That's how I learned what heaven was as a child. My parents put me in front of the TV, and I watched those ads. This is an ad? Is it a print ad? What is that? It's an ad. This is fucking insane. Well, here's the thing. I'm probably within this group as an agnostic atheist, but I'm not every. I'm writer than you are. What was I saying? I don't know. I don't know. We should have started drinking this wine so early. I was saying, not everybody that believes in God completely disavows science. That's a completely idiotic connection. It's just that the Bible contradicts all scientific discovery. Well, yeah, but not everybody believes the Bible literally. No one will know, but then what is religion? I'm sorry. I have to ask that question. If you don't believe the, OK, literally, what is the Bible's purpose? But if you believe in it. There's praxis and community involved and all kinds of other things that are unrelated to the scientific method. No, I mean, there's good rules for living, but you know not to murder people without the Bible, right? It's called morality. You don't need the Bible to tell you not to steal from people. I do. Maybe you do. Oh, boy. I should not be going down this path. Where's Paul Miller when you need him? This would be a great conversation for him to join in on. Is this the commercial? This is real? That's my lady. What? That's my lady. Did you have this in mind when you were talking about cream cheese heaven? It looks like Sandra Bernhardt's sibling. Disturbing. I grew up watching these ads. And there's this beefcake, this beautiful beefcake there, kind of watching her. Only Philadelphia cream cheese. Like growing up, that's actually what I thought heaven was. The first cast brought to you by the Philadelphia cream cheese. Yeah. It's creamy. Is that their tagline? It's heavenly. What's Philadelphia cream cheese's tagline? I need to know right now. A little taste of heaven. I'm pissing so many people off right now. No, that's actually what their tagline is. I'm sorry. I'm just seeing tweets from people who are like, I've offended. Listen, I just want to say, if I offended you at all, that was not my intention. If you are a Christian and you believe in science, that's wonderful. I think that's great. I do think at some point you get to a, what is religion? If you are a believer in science. Well, you're not. Here's the thing. There's a difference between the Christian who is on board with science. It's a safety net. Totally comforting. I agree. I wish I could be comforted by religion the way that other people are. Me too. I mean, I'm sure that, look, when I feel bad turbulence on a plane, I get really religious really fast. Because you're like, well, you never know. I'm going, the plane's going down. So I better just be like, hey, God. This is why I need Xanax to get on my plane. The only time I'm religious, the only time I feel even the slightest hint of religion is the plane, terrible turbulence on the plane. It's like white knuckle turbulence. And I'm like, all right, God, I know you don't exist. But if you do, I don't want to die. You're like the worst kind of atheist. I am. Terrible. I can't believe I admitted that to the world. Who knows atheists and foxholes? I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means. It means when you're on an airplane that's going down, you're not an atheist. Yeah, you're like, God, help me out. Because you'll just grasp it. You're like, I'll take anything. Somebody threw me a parachute. I'd be like, cool, I'm out of here. I mean, I'd be calm. And by the way, the idea of jumping out of a plane. Plenty of cream cheese coming. You're like, I would welcome death because I want it so badly. The idea of jumping out of a plane is terrifying to me. But I would happily take a parachute if I felt my plane was going down. Yeah. Think about that shit. Let that stew for a minute. I try not to fly. Are you finishing? Oh, it's the worst. OK, fine. I hate it. Yeah. All right, can we talk about something that isn't atheism or religion? This one's, this is the worst. I mean, when I say it's the worst. I think this is great. We come back. We're going to come back to this every week. Let's talk about tech. What's going on with tech? Tech. I have no idea. Are there any cool? What kind of smartphone do you think God would use? A huge one. He could use one. A huge one. He wouldn't have to. He doesn't have to worry about the size of the hand. He probably needs a much bigger than a 6.3 screen. Yeah. Curved, though. Curved. Keep the glare of heaven out. You just want to see cream cheese reflections while he's checking his Google Calendar. On the eighth day, God created it. Oh, yeah, by the way, God uses an Android phone. Did I mention that? OK, there we go. Jay Wayne. I finally found it. Mayher Jr. wants us to move on. What about we could do, speaking of airplanes, we could do the Malaysian tragedy. Jay Wayne does not like this conversation. Not surprised. I am so sorry. By the way, this is not the worst. I'll say, this is not the worst Virgcast has ever happened. I've been on worse. I think this is great. I'm having a great time. Whatever. It doesn't matter. It matters to me. So there's this airplane that was in the sky, and then it didn't land. Oh, the Malaysian Airlines. I mean, this story is fascinating. Let's talk about this. This actually is a bit of a tech story. I mean, here's the thing about tech. Let me just say this so I can just get it out in the open. The way The Verge thinks about technology is that it is deeply connected, intrinsically connected, to so much of what is going on in our world that this isn't about tech. It's like, hey, there's this gadget over here. This stuff is all strewn in together. It's all connected. And so this Malaysia Airlines story is really interesting because there is a news aspect to it. Like, oh my god, this plane's missing, and did it go down, and what happened? But the actual story is like, how did it go missing? Where did it go? What do we know about it? How do we track it? How do you track planes? You know, it's really sad, but it actually reminds me of the movie Contact, where Jodie Foster is falling at the end, falling through that ball. Spoiler alert. And they're like, yeah, spoiler alert for a movie from the 90s. It's a good movie. It's a great movie. Yeah, they're like, oh, you were only falling through the air for 15 seconds. And then they were like, oh, wait. The in-ball recorder had like 24 hours of time. It's chilling. It actually reminded me of Scandal. OK, spoiler alert on Scandal because I've never seen a single episode. And I know Carl's like, Scandal's the best. It's terrible. That's how Carl talks about it. That's his voice. Is it terrible? It looks terrible. It's amazing. It looks like the worst. If you like the Good Wife, like, game over. You'll love Scandal. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. All right. I'll watch it. Don't listen to Katie. Seriously, you think it's bad? I think it's terrible. Shut up. Sorry, I just caught this headline on our site. Can we talk about this for a second? Disney has released an EDM album with remixes from Mavici and Cascade. Sorry, who? Disney. Disney. The Walt Disney Company. Disney. The Walt Disney Corporation. I know them. If you like The Little Mermaid, you'll like Skrillex. Wow, wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Hey, what's the name of the crab in The Little Mermaid? Sebastian. Sebastian. It's like the Sebastian, like, snippy-snap remix. It's like samples of Sebastian. And it's like, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Well, I guess Disney did Tron. Well, they funded and released Tron. Yeah. Yeah. God, this is the, come on. Let's talk about something. Malaysia Airlines. Yeah. So. Where the fuck's that plane? Wow. Where is the plane? So we were talking to Chris Ziegler about this. He's actually, Chris is like an airplane buff. He is. He's an airplane nerd. Like, he knows stuff about airplanes that you can't even begin to imagine. It's true. That's past experience. He's actually working on something right now, like a story about something about what's, there's a new discovery that this, there are electronics that we're transmitting on this plane or from this plane for five hours after it kind of dropped off of radar. Interesting fact, like, it drops off a radar 100 miles outside of Malaysia. Right. I had no idea that. Yeah. When they're over the ocean, they're flying blind. Which is terrifying. Like, hey, just check it out. I mean, I assume that they can see other planes. But in terms of. I'm never leaving the continent. Yeah. You don't want to do that. You don't want to fly over the ocean. That's insane. But so the story's got a little bit more interesting because there's this now they're saying, like, hey, the plane, it was like, hey, the plane went into the ocean. It dropped from radar and it probably crashed. And they just can't find it. Right. Now they're saying, well, there's five hours of transmitting data past the point where it dropped off a radar. And what Chris was saying to me, which I find fascinating, is that it might have landed somewhere. They're like, what are you doing? What's happening? Can you stop that? We're on now we're on a national international broadcast right now. She's whispering trash talk. Are you trash talking to him? This is outrageous, Katie. What did you say? He's just like threatening me. He's threatening. Are you threatening her? This is the worst. This is the worst thing I've ever done. Did you threaten her? Be honest. Absolutely not. It's the same accusation she leveled last week. She's a black. Listen, people's lives are at stake here. And we're having a petty feud. They're not at stake, I'm pretty sure. All right. We don't know. What I was saying is Chris was like, we don't know what happened to this plane. It's possible it could have landed somewhere. Yeah, that's weird. And it just is, yeah, it's on the lost island because that doesn't exist. Wow. This feels really insane. You know why? Because it was from a TV show. Yeah. I mean, I didn't watch the show. On ABC. It was interrupted by commercials. There's a golden retriever. So like this whole thing from the stolen passports to now, wasn't anyone else just like, how the hell? Yeah, apparently that happens all the time though. People stealing passports. Oh, yeah, now you're going to edit yourself on a hell? How the heck? How the heck do you? Hey, I'm going to cream cheese heaven. Keep it clean, Katie. That's great. I'm going to cream cheese heaven. OK. How? Yeah, keep your language nice and clean on this Verge cast. We want you to say anything that was off color. Go on. I was just really taken aback by the fact that you can steal a passport and then fly, take an international flight somewhere. Well, I mean, it's probably not that simple. But apparently it happens all the time. No, I don't know. You have to. You have to. Somebody just tweeted that somebody was standing behind me. You just, that was a made you look moment. No, somebody was like, who's the person? Here's what they said. You just got trolled. Why has that same guy been standing behind the glass near Josh the entire podcast? Oh, that's a creepy. Tired of seeing his ass, literally. Oh, it's Evan. Is it Evan? He's got a nice ass, though. Yeah, he does. It's pretty good. That's technically a violation of some type. You know how you said you were going to murder me earlier? We have this ass comment on record for HR now. Wow. Believe me. You just self-doxed yourself. Believe me, there's plenty of bad stuff on record for me. Who is doing this? This woman, Tricia Nieder, is doing drawings of members of the Verge. Have you seen these on Twitter? Oh, this is the creepiest thing I've ever seen. So she just did one. Can we get this up? Can somebody just look at who just tweeted at me in this image? First off, it's a great drawing. It's disturbing. It's upsetting. But I like it. There it is. Can we zoom in on that? Is that you? I don't know. You tell me. Yeah, that's definitely me. Is it me, or is it Randy Quaid? I think that's you. Or the lead singer of the national? No, that's definitely you. We got to do this one with Dieter. That's very well done. Dieter. It's at the top. What did Dieter do? It's at the top here. Would you just tweet it? John. No. You dropped it. It's coming up. It's coming up. OK. Great. Dieter Bone. Bone Zone. He was almost on this. What is this? Arielle is, hold on. Do I follow her, by the way? I need to. I can't believe I wasn't. So Arielle, our new writer, just dissed me on Twitter. She did. Josh's lack of cream cheese ad knowledge makes me wonder if the quote, cream cheese taught me about heaven thing is Canadian specific. I think it might be. Dude, Arielle like, yeah, cream cheese heaven. It sounds like it. You probably didn't run this ad in America. You know why? Probably not. Because we know what real heaven's like. We don't call macaroni and cheese Kraft Dinner. You ride on a gold bus. Do you remember this article that was written in like, the Atlanta Journal? Hey, guys. Hey, you know what? You saw that. You saw that. You saw that. I did see that in his upsetting, Katie. Don't do an F bomb to him quietly on the Verge cast. That's not right. Who taught you it's Canadian manners, I guess, is what we're seeing here. I don't think she's a real Canadian. Really? Please elaborate on that. She doesn't say sorry enough. I say sorry constantly. Why don't you say like, sorry? You say sorry less when you say the F bomb. Sorry. You say the F bomb a lot. That's not very. Sorry, dad, that you have to watch this. He's not watching. Is he watching this? He watches every week. Oh, he's like, well, Josh, he talks a lot. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry. You know what? I'm the host. And that TC is really abusive. Traditionally, I am the host of the Verge cast. Well, you're very talkative. I am talkative. It's probably because I'm Jewish. I thought you were an atheist. Well, I was raised Jewish. Socially, culturally Jewish, religiously atheist, which means I'm just very nervous. Right? Yeah. So apologies to your dad if you're watching. Hi, Katie's dad. I guess I'll let Katie talk more. Your daughter's normally very nice. Katie, why don't you run the rest of this thing? OK, great. Thank God. Take a break. Drinks with a Fina. I'm all right. Cheers. Cheers. Bilateral cheers. Do we want to talk about gas leaks? Oh my god. Yeah, I'm terrified. I'm super freaked out. So I was listening to NPR today. And NPR, it's funny. WNYC, which is the NPR. Of course, I was listening to NPR, right? So I was just stereotyped. But that's cliche. New Yorker. Jewish New Yorker listens to NPR. OK. They had a show on a couple of days ago. It was about the failing infrastructure of New York. And today, they're like, yeah, this could be evidence of the failing infrastructure of New York. I live in a house that was built in 1860. You do? Yeah, for real. I live in a very, very old. Yeah, for real. It's super duper old. And now, every day, my family is going to blow up. 1860. That's like Civil War era. Yeah, it's really old. Are you kidding me? That's when it was built. We have records. Yeah. It's actually, what's interesting about my house is that Thomas Ricker, who lives in Amsterdam, has a very similar tiny house. I have a very tiny house. And Thomas Ricker's, that's so upsetting. Can we get that on screen, please? The Dieter image. Totally unrelated to my house and to explosions. Please get the Dieter graphic on screen. Immediately, I won't say another word until it happens. There we go. There we go. That was the longest moment of silence ever in the history of the Verge cast. In the history of Josh. In the history of me. Actually, yeah, my uncle used to pay me money to be quiet. He'd be like, how long can you be quiet? I'll give you a dollar if you can be quiet. I was, I'm not a terrible kid, terrible doll. What are you going to do? Anyhow, so yeah, so there was this terrible huge explosion in Harlem, East Harlem. Apparently a gas leak, leveled two buildings, seven people are dead. I mean, just look at this. I mean, just, it is breathtaking that something like this could happen. It's not, it wasn't, it didn't happen on purpose. It wasn't planned. There were no explosives in this building as far as we know at this point. And I think probably for real. Ariel, our new writer, did a great piece about how this happens and why this happens, which is really interesting. But it just made me feel just utter and constant fear now about my house exploding. Yeah. What's especially insane is that apparently they have been like reporting the smell of gas or a gas leak for like two weeks before this happened. So what I read, which was very, very sad, was a woman talking to the New York Times and her husband was unaccounted for and they lived in one of these buildings. So super sad. But she said to them something along the lines of, we thought we smelled gas before we went to bed, then it went away. So we just went to bed and then the next morning there was this explosion. And I think in terms of Ariel's piece, what was most disturbing to me was I think it was something like 35 or 38% of gas mains in Manhattan are made of chrome. What is the makeup? Whatever the material is that makes them more vulnerable to these cracks and predate 1960. In other words, they're outdated and they are vulnerable to cracks. That's terrifying. No, it's- That's terrifying. No, I mean, on NPR they were saying that the average age of the mains in New York is 56 years old, which is really old. And that they're made of this, what is it? Cast iron. Cast iron, that's what it is, not chrome. No, not chrome. I'm thinking about- Chrome is what you put on your wheels. Chrome is what you- I wouldn't know. Is a browser. Yeah, it's an internet thing. It's weird that my reference point was about wheels and yours was about a browser. Just shows how out of touch you are. Tech, tech, tech talk, tech talk right there. But so anyhow, it's just terrifying. And since my house is a super duper old, I'm just imagining everything in it is ready to explode at any given moment. And today we had our heat on and it's making some weird screeching noise. It's hot water heat, it's not gas or anything, but it's making some weird high pitch screeching noise and it's like, oh, this is it, here we go. We're going to blow up. So it's a terrible tragedy and a shocking story. And also I think not to get all political on you yet again, but is a demonstration of the need for us to be concerned about the infrastructure in America. Not just this is a privately owned company that is responsible for these gas lines, but they're responsible to the citizens of this city. It's a public utility though. It is a public utility, but I mean, like ConEdison has the privilege of being National Grid. National Grid. I think. No, it's ConEd. ConEd doesn't do gas. Yeah, they do. Do they? They're my gas. They do gas? I thought they only do electricity. Very confused. At any rate, also I've been drinking. At any rate, this wine is really affecting me. I have to say it's just in high in alcohol content. I don't think so. I just didn't have lunch. I'm just messing me up. The point is, infrastructure is a real issue. I mean, there have been, Frontline Act I think actually did a great piece on infrastructure, if I'm not mistaken, a couple of years ago. I could be totally making that up, but there's definitely our roadways, bridges. Bridges. They're collapsing. Bridges are a big thing. America is like falling apart. It's like, think about how much money the federal government spent on public projects in the last hundred years. National park building, international. There's a great chart of the spending, our budget in the US. Look at the budget for defense spending versus the kind of spending we're doing on things like infrastructure. It's depressing. It's insane. It's insane. Yeah. Look, so far, I don't know. I'm not going to get into terrorism and stuff, but we've had 9-11 is awful. It's just such an obvious- But this is awful too, and a hundred of these is even worse. If the infrastructure doesn't get... If we don't care about it, we don't think about it, a hundred of these is what's in store. But it should be such an obvious and uncontroversial point that this public stuff that we spend money on as a society enables us to do things privately. The interstate highway system. That wasn't a bunch... That wasn't a company like Google or Microsoft saying, oh, we need to build some roads. It was all of us together doing it. This gets to the... This kind of leads back to net neutrality and talking about what we value here and how we manage it. I think net neutrality is a great... The internet is a great example of the next infrastructure crisis in America where it's massively needed utility for all citizens of this country and of all countries. We have the ability and the opportunity to make it a widespread, easily accessible, open thing. The direction we're headed is the FCC in cahoots with private companies is managing it into a private, expensive service, which will be controlled by people who have interests outside of what the citizens of this country need. They're controlled by monetary interests and in the interest of making money and getting paid for everything. It's one of these things. We can't keep up the infrastructure we have that is shared. We can't build new infrastructure where we need things like an open and free internet. What is the future of America if we don't do something about it? Also, no one gives a shit about science. This is why the space program is being taken up by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Because NASA gets $17 billion a year. I'm not saying they don't want profits from that stuff, but at least that will drive them to do something. In America, we can't even see... The government can't even see the reason why we would want to work on a space program. They can't see the value in it. It's a long-term thing and profit-seeking companies are absolutely essential for innovation and driving the economy and everything else, but they're also beholden to shareholders in a way that makes them focus on quarterly results. We have big problems that require really long-term investment. Most companies aren't Apple in the sense that Verizon's not Apple. Verizon is happy to be relatively complacent with what they have. If they weren't, the widespread Fios would be happening right now and it's not. Comcast and Time Warner, this disgusting merger that's probably going to happen where it's going to create this insane conglomerate. Their motivation for innovation doesn't exist. It sounds at a very basic level like, oh, that's some nerdy... What does that matter? I need cable. That's not important. But it'll matter when you can't get the things you need on the internet because they have decided that it's more profitable to charge you for them. It's really a disturbing situation we have in this country. Well, what are we supposed to do about it? A violent revolution. I said this a couple of Vergecasts ago. The only answer ultimately is a violent overthrow of a corrupt government. That's a joke around a little bit, but also somewhat... Look at other countries. What's happening is violent overthrow of a corrupt government. Our government is... We have a great way of demonstrating that we like to act like we're not corrupt and it seems like we're not corrupt. We have a tremendously corrupt, diseased government in America, which is poisoned by private interests and people who want to hoard money. It damages the populace of this country in ways that we can't even begin to understand. And yet, this fucking wine. And yet- Cheers. And yet, we're not... Occupy Wall Street was the closest thing we had to violent revolution. It was a whiff of... It was a babies... By the way, as a new father, I'm aware of what babies can do. Not very much. It was a babies version of a real revolutionary movement. And I think that... I'm not saying we need to overthrow the government. That would be the worst thing that could ever happen. Let me just say this clearly. Do not overthrow the government. That would be a bad idea. But I do think we need a stronger reaction to this stuff. You guys... Net neutrality sucks. We'll black out our website for a day or something like that. That can work in small doses. No, but we can't overthrow the government every two and four years. No, but yeah. Like literally overthrowing- Yeah, but- Yeah, but- But it's like you're trading one... You're trading one evil for another. Unless you're a two evils. Exactly. Right. Yeah. I don't feel like I'm overthrowing the government when I vote every four years. But I think it requires a fear and knowledge and understanding of what is going on at a level that will make you do something far more meaningful. And that's not- You're saying we should vote for Rand Paul. No, don't vote for Rand Paul. Don't do that. Rand Paul 2016. But I do think people getting involved... Stop. I think people getting legitimately involved in what is going on in their local governments and trying to find ways to effect real change by displacing, by removing people who are cancerous is a serious component of it. I'm really on a roll here. My God. I'll probably get shot leaving the building. Don't say that. By me. Oh my God. I'm like, T.C. just behind me, just clips me and that's it. Anyhow, I just think, look, we have... I don't know. What do you do? We're not going to have a revolution in America until it gets really bad. But I will say this, we have a growing disparity between the haves and have nots. Everybody knows that. And at some point that begins to really rot. And when it rots, I don't know. You don't know. I mean, shit gets bad. Shit gets funky. I'm so glad to be a Canadian citizen right now. Oh yeah, you think you can run up to Canada? Yeah, I'm a dual citizen. Guess what? Nuclear conflagration, that wave of nuclear waste will just flow right up to Canada, right? What are you talking about? Judgment Day is what I'm talking about. Universal healthcare. You're basically in America's anyway. How's that universal? Most Canadians live within 100 miles of the US. How's that universal healthcare going to help you when a wave of nuclear waste from our- What nuclear waste? Judgment Day. Judgment Day. What are you talking about? Have you never seen Terminator? Terminator 2 or Terminator 3? No. What about Terminator 4? No. You've never seen any of the Terminator movies? No. Are you kidding me? No. There's a door. Please leave. No. Just get out of here. No. How have you never seen a Terminator movie? I don't know. I watched a lot of like Melrose Place. This is disturbing. I had two older sisters. We watched Beverly Hills. You gotta admit, this is the worst Verge cast ever. I think it's great. You do, really? I've been talking about violent revolution and overthrow. I'm going to be arrested as soon as I leave. That's your problem, man. People have been tweeting me. They want me to talk about vox.com, the new news. Oh, let's talk about that. That's exciting. The new news vertical that is being launched by Vox Media, our parent company. I would love to talk about that if we're allowed. I mean, we could talk about it. All I can say is it's an exciting and interesting new venture for our company. It is going to be very different than what we do. Very different than... Here's a little bit of their... They have a wonderful video, actually. Ezra Klein may be a bigger nerd than anybody at the Verge. Ezra Klein is a big, big nerd. I really like him. I have to say- He seems like a super nice dude. He's not only super nice, but he's super smart. Everybody who's... Did you say he's not super nice? I said he's not only super nice, but he's super smart. I think you skipped a word there. No, he's not super nice, but he is super smart. He's nice and smart, but that whole team, they're very smart people that have very good ideas about how to cover a broader, more general news scope in a new way. It'll be different than the Verge. If you read the Verge, you'll find it's a very different publication, but I'm excited about it. I can't really reveal- They're hiring incredible people. I can't reveal much because I know a lot. I'm not going to tell you guys what's going on. What I will say is that the thinking that's going into what they're doing and the stuff that our product team is building with them is really exciting, and I'm very excited about it. What's going on with you guys? Are you threatening each other again? Are you? I have to say... Someone wants to be there. Oh, J. Wayne Mayer wants us to talk. I don't know how you pronounce your last name. Mayer? Marr? Marr? Bill Marr? Like Bill Marr. So Ariel is finally got my back here. I'm going to have to go to the bathroom. I'm going to have to go to the bathroom. I'm going to have to go to the bathroom. I'm going to have to go to the bathroom. I'm going to have to go to the bathroom. Yo, wait a second. Since when do you need to go to the bathroom? What's going on right now, Tobin? You guys think we need to... Wait, so the way that we've been on radar is constantly looking at the vendor, not just watching them致 What's going on, Tobin? So as part of the Say what's going on with our sales meeting? So I think we need to take really serious partnerships right now in terms of声 Really is gone with the way the generational thing is Lawrence of Arabia is is is Ben Hur is Citizen Kane is Do you just sit at home and watch Turner classic movies with penny all day? Yeah, I'd stop That guy that's been behind This is the control is the control booth going crazy what's going on with those guys they look to be under control When do we start this? Seems like we should be ending pretty soon. Can we not? Should we talk about need for speed? Can we not broadcast? Is there a way that we can just this will be the live one? You'll ever see this Are you serious John You're not serious about what about what he just said to me So you're just kidding is what you're saying what you just said to me. Okay, nothing is about a conversation John and I had earlier. Yeah I have nothing to say about I didn't see the movie Chris did not like Okay, let's talk about Aaron Paul yeah, he's just I want to hear what Katie I say about Aaron Paul very good-looking Human you have a thing for like boy Carl is watching this I don't know Carl. No, no Carl looks Carl looks a lot like Aaron Paul. I disagree strongly disagree. Well, you're wrong Aaron Paul has like a boyish kind of like blonde no No, he's not yeah Aaron Paul has blonde hair brown hair dirty blonde it's like brown He's got a blonde face and you know it a blonde You know what else you were saying Brian Bonsall you were really into and I think he's got kind of this blondish boyish thing going on I'm worried about you and also Carl Carl does not look anything like Aaron Paul You need glasses Are you wearing contacts right now? Yeah, they're not working. Yes, they are new ones that function. I've talked to my sisters about this We all agree. Well, your sister's just humoring you I think no, no, no way. Do they look alike? Facial hair No TC please back me up on this I'm not gonna get involved. Oh, really now you're not gonna get involved. Here's your chance looks nothing like it. That's right Thank you. I mean, I look more like Aaron Paul than Carl does No, you do not. I don't look anything like him. That's my point. I don't look anything like him That's what I'm saying. I look like Zach Galifianakis a little bit a little bit Yeah, so anyway, this was moving to France. Oh, we get Can you tell us about it a little bit There were there was Aaron Paul. Oh Jesus and It was basically Jesse Pinkman driving cars. I don't understand. This is not part of the Fast and Furious franchise Is it it's just like no, it was a video game. There's a video game that EA made. Okay, and we Know it was unbelievable. We got into the theater and the EA logo Splashed up on the screen as if you were playing a video game and everybody just started cracking. Wait, what happened? You're in the theater. You know how like it shows all the studios No science bitch That's it that was the week of March 10th From our family to yours don't use natural gas. No You're not ending this You don't get to say when it ends You see you got a cowboy hat on you're in control. You're not in control. Do you feel in control? No, you're not That's the Verge Castro this week Mm-hmm. I'd like to thank Katie and TC for being on it. It's great always a great time I'm sorry guys. You know what? It's I guess want to talk about gonorrhea real quick I Think we're upsetting Billy and John our producers. Oh, yeah, they thought this was such hot shit before we started They're like, it's so great. We love the verge cast. What do you think about the verge cast now guys? How you feeling about it, huh? That's what I thought. Can we talk about see you in hell? Can we talk about hat technology? No, we gotta wrap up That's the first cast for this week. Very sorry, by the way, very sorry about about sorry. Sorry I'm not drunk. I'm just tired and I am a little maybe a little buzzed That's the verge cast for this week. We're very sorry about what it seemed like to you I assure you that there is some audience for this you just weren't it probably If you want to reach out to us and send us a message about how much you disliked what we did today You can email us at verge cat. Sorry at verge cast at the verge calm you can You can leave a comment on the post when it goes up or the one that has gone up You can drop something into the into the forum into the forums on the verge Please don't don't do this you're doing this. I hope you don't have lice. That's all I have to say And It's so sweaty in here, this is so disgusting And yet I do actually think this is kind of a good that's the best you've ever looked. It's kind of a fresh look I've known you for three years. That's the best you've ever looked. I'm not gonna lie to you But this may become my thing. I'll be like the guy. Oh, they're like Oh Josh Dupolsky the guy who wears the cowboy hat like yep, that's me Any other by the way solves my hair problem completely. I Guess like bald dudes are super into hats right there like hey check it out. I got a thing going on up here It's not hair, but it's a thing That's the verge cast. You can email us at verge cast at the verge calm you can Leave a comment. You can throw something into forums You can send us a message. I hope you don't have lice. That's all I have to say So you can find us on Twitter the verge is at verge. I'm Josh with the Polsky TC is laughing stoic. Don't say it. Totally garbage garbage Twitter name Katie drumming is Katie drum with two M's because she doesn't know how to spell drum properly because she can't spell drum Yeah in Canada, that's how they spell it with two M's and and That's it that's it for this verge cast and Could be it for every verge cast ever frankly Somebody just said best verge cast ever So we just tweeted that it'd be it was probably my dad. It wasn't oh really is your dad named Henrik Jansen no Well, then I guess it wasn't your dad Let's anyhow, that's that's it for this verge cast and really we're not gonna talk about gonorrhea Okay, what would you like to say next week? We'll talk about it because by then there will be so Trisha nieder just did a new image. Can we get can we get this image up? I don't know how she's turning these around so quickly Can we just get the new image that she did for us up? It's of me It's very good. Very good stuff. It looks a lot like what you're looking at right now. You guys are too slow Yeah, look at my feed. There it is It's like a fedora though people really are liking the hat All right. Hey, that's the verge cast this week. We'll be back soon with so much more and Until that happens I have to warn you Something bad is coming for you and your family and I can't stop it May God be with you
 Hey and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of March 10th, 2014.
 I'm Josh Dabulski.
 I'm TC Sotic and this is my third week in captivity.
 Please help.
 And I'm Katie.
 Yeah, Katie.
 Good old TC and Katie.
 My two favorite people to do the Vergecast with.
 I look like there's an oil spill on my head with this hair, with my hair.
 It's getting really long.
 It is getting long.
 Here's the question.
 How long will it get?
 Pigtails long.
 I'm thinking mini pony.
 Yeah.
 You know what I'm saying?
 Like Jared Leto.
 Yeah.
 I want to have like a Jared Leto style hair situation.
 His hair is very long.
 I'll never be as beautiful as Jared Leto, but I can have long hair like him.
 I want to be like, he looks like a beautiful horse running through the fields of...
 No, like a tiny little pony.
 Like a pony.
 Who loves his mom.
 Like a beautiful pony.
 Yeah.
 I think we, oh, we're drinking.
 Yeah.
 Cheers.
 Look at him.
 He's a beautiful man with a beautiful head of hair.
 I need to get some highlights like that though.
 He has really nice bone structure.
 He looks like Gaius Baltar from Battlestar.
 He really does.
 With long hair.
 He really does.
 Let's have a little clink of the old...
 Cheers.
 Cheers.
 What do they say in Canada when you cheers?
 Sorry.
 Sorry.
 Sorry.
 Sorry, our glasses touched.
 Sorry.
 Sorry.
 This is such an aggressive action.
 I didn't mean to...
 Please forgive this intrusion on your personal space.
 Someone asked me to wear this hat today.
 Who's someone?
 Who's that?
 Someone I've ever...
 A fan.
 A special fan.
 A special lady in your life.
 A special fan.
 Someone in your life.
 Special lady maybe.
 Special dude.
 Special bro-ham.
 I'm not judging.
 I'm cool with whatever.
 I'm not judging.
 Can I call you a fan, man?
 He just tweeted, ugh.
 So glad you're a cowboy.
 I'm an urban cowboy.
 Oh yeah, check it out, guys.
 Should have worn my boots today.
 Tried to bring my bolo tie, but I couldn't.
 Anyhow, this is the Verge cast.
 This is the Verge cast, man.
 That's it.
 What did you guys wanna talk about today?
 Well, there's a lot to talk about, I think, right?
 Yeah.
 We were talking about just before we started rolling.
 I was talking about how I wanted to murder TC.
 And I was saying...
 He was like, please kill me.
 I mean, he wasn't like, and I don't think he was joking.
 It was like, I'm ready to be done with life.
 I've had it.
 Why?
 And then, and I was saying how amazing it would be
 if I killed him live for real on the Verge cast.
 Like that would be one, that'd be a podcast
 you'd never forget.
 We have a spear in the office.
 That would be really easy to convict too.
 We have a giant spear.
 Unless it could be, there was some,
 that's like on the Good Wife, you know,
 do you watch the Good Wife?
 I just, season two, episode 20.
 There would be a scene, there's like,
 he killed him on the Verge cast,
 and there's like, there was video,
 20,000 people, a million people watch it.
 Or it's 20,000 by the way, don't worry, it's not a million.
 But it would be like the Wedge cast or something.
 Something like that, right.
 And then be like live, but then like the Good Wife
 be like, wait a second, that knife wasn't even his.
 And like his hand is like, look,
 it's been edited or something.
 And then she'd make out with her, with Will.
 Hey, spoiler alert, okay?
 Maybe.
 No, they make out, they do.
 Oh, I haven't seen that episode yet.
 They get hot and heavy.
 I haven't seen it yet.
 They do everything.
 Spoiler.
 And they show it on CBS, which I thought was shocking.
 I need to catch up, I'm still watching Scandal.
 Full frontal nudity.
 Really?
 What are we looking at here?
 What is this?
 A clip, just a random clip from a trailer for The Good Wife.
 John showed the nudity.
 It's such a good show though.
 If you haven't seen it, it's incredible.
 It's unbelievable it's on CBS,
 a network known for several horrible, horrible programs.
 I hear it's better than House of Cards.
 I actually think, look, House of Cards is very good.
 I think some of it strays into a level of incredulous,
 you know, nests.
 That is pretty.
 I find it a little bit sort of meandering.
 Meandering is, I think, well, that's not my main issue.
 When he kills the president, it just goes way over the top.
 Spoiler alert.
 Spoiler alert.
 But that's the thing about House of Cards,
 that could happen on that show.
 And they'd be like, yeah,
 that's a totally reasonable plot point.
 Frank Underwood puts ricin in his Stevie.
 It's kind of like Homeland.
 Multiple shows.
 Spoiler alert.
 I hope, by the way, I hope you're not watching this
 Virgcast for any information about anything
 or any real conversation.
 Important opinions, though.
 So Katie, we were talking about your haircut.
 You said you get your haircut by a woman named Letitia.
 Yes, in Brooklyn Heights.
 And I was like, oh, you're wearing a Brooklyn,
 you're like showing off your Brooklyn street cred.
 Yeah.
 Brooklyn Nets.
 I went to one game a year and a half ago.
 How was it?
 It was okay.
 I love the Nets.
 Yeah, me too.
 I'm a big fan.
 I have their t-shirt.
 Did you see Jay-Z?
 No, Jay-Z was not there.
 He's at every game.
 It was for Carl's birthday.
 Does he like the Nets?
 No, we just decided together
 that we were gonna like the Nets.
 And so we both bought t-shirts.
 Well, they're awesome.
 They have all black uniforms.
 They're in Brooklyn.
 They just seem really cool.
 They all listen to, I'm trying to, Deer Huff or whatever.
 I don't know what.
 Excuse me?
 I'm trying to think of a band.
 They're all really into Interpol.
 I don't know, what's a cool?
 Interpol?
 I don't know, my references are all off.
 I don't know.
 I have not been sleeping a lot.
 What's a cool band now that everybody's like,
 it's like indie, but they're cool?
 The National?
 No doubt.
 Now, The National's really popular.
 Yeah, they're too popular.
 I think they played at the Barclay.
 Oh, they did, but I didn't go,
 because I was like, I'm not gonna see them
 at fucking Barclay.
 I gotta say something about The National.
 I really have a new.
 Well, it's too big a venue.
 I agree, not intimate enough for,
 because you're into that intimate indie vibe.
 So here's what I wanna say about The National.
 Uh-oh.
 I didn't realize this.
 Number one, they're from Cincinnati.
 Oh, I didn't know that.
 Which is a tough place for anybody to be from.
 And I think people in Cincinnati will back me up on this.
 They've been at this for a long time.
 99 is when they formed.
 Wow.
 So just nothing but respect for The National.
 Also, the lead singer,
 if you saw him on Saturday Night Live,
 they were just on with Lena Dunham,
 he is a dead ringer for Randy Quaid in Independence Day.
 A particular Randy Quaid in Independence Day.
 Here he is.
 Can we get a close up on him?
 I mean, he looks so much like Randy Quaid
 from Independence Day.
 Oh my God.
 Can we get a shot of Randy?
 Yes!
 Side by side.
 Wow, just get in there.
 Can we get a side by side of Randy Quaid
 from Independence Day, please?
 I'm just gonna wait.
 They're like live.
 I love that they're doing this live.
 Aliens!
 I like, I like.
 So you're Randy Quaid in Persons.
 Yeah, I don't even remember what he sounds like.
 That's what he sounds like, exactly.
 I'm supposed to be the person keeping us on topic today
 and I'm just gonna let everyone know
 I'm not gonna do my job.
 Let's do it, what's the first topic?
 What's the topic?
 We're supposed to talk about...
 Worst Verge Casting ever, am I right, guys?
 This stuff that happened.
 No way, this is awesome.
 Down in Austin, Texas.
 They're so...
 South by Southwest.
 South, otherwise known as Brand Hellworld.
 Brand Hellworld.
 Where's my side by side?
 This is nonsense.
 What's worse, watching this or listening to it?
 Being in it.
 Wow, oh John, you don't like, I'm sorry,
 John, in the control booth, I was just told
 being in that room is the worst.
 You know what, you don't have to be in there.
 The free wine's okay.
 The perpetual bondage.
 No one's forcing you, I mean it is your job, but...
 You're getting paid right now to drink wine
 and just like talk about whatever you want.
 Yeah, it's amazing.
 But you guys don't see what happens off camera.
 Somebody just asked have I completely,
 have we completely given up on the illusion
 of discussing tech on the Verge Cast?
 You guys want to discuss some tech?
 As long as I'm on it, yes.
 Let's discuss some tech.
 I think, I think...
 You want to talk about tech?
 I think that I'm like not going to talk
 about a smartphone for...
 Don't talk to me about it.
 Like it's gotta be a really interesting development
 in smartphones to talk about it.
 Yeah, I don't know, I'm just not interested in talking.
 I mean, certain technology, like,
 I would talk about the, well, I mean,
 it's not really a tech story,
 but I would talk about what Casey wrote
 at South by Southwest, which is about how...
 Yes, everyone should talk about that all the time.
 Which is about how South by Southwest Interactive,
 which is supposed to be this place where like,
 beautiful, amazing new ideas about like the future
 of our world are born, is actually,
 has actually become this like really weird brand.
 Like he, you know, it's like called an orgy.
 Yeah.
 And...
 A rollicking corporate brand orgy.
 Yeah, which I think is like totally valid.
 Who is this guy?
 Dan Boyd, who's a little old, wants us to talk about tech.
 Doesn't use capitalization when spelling his name.
 Who is he, Dan Boyd?
 Yeah, here we go.
 Look at this, unbelievable.
 Oh man.
 No, that's not it at all.
 That's not a good picture.
 Were you drinking on Saturday?
 No, I'm telling you, he looks like him.
 You just, it's the wrong angle.
 Yeah.
 I'm a little disappointed.
 Can we get him in a plane or something,
 flying into the alien ship?
 I got what you need, John.
 Suppose you got the right image.
 I got it.
 He really does look like him.
 Anyhow.
 So what were we talking about?
 Oh, South by Southwest.
 So yeah, the thing is,
 I mean, it's not a surprise.
 I think this has been this way for a long time,
 but it's just like a,
 it's just like a brand,
 it's just a cluster fuck of brands,
 and it's all really nasty, lame shit.
 It's like, this guy's Shingy from AOL.
 Do you know this dude, this digital prophet?
 This guy's like my least favorite.
 And by the way, I'm sure he's a really nice guy,
 and I feel bad saying this,
 because I'm sure he's a lovely man,
 but he calls himself a digital prophet,
 or that's what AOL calls him or something.
 Can we get a picture of Shingy up on the screen,
 view screen here?
 Can we just get Shingy,
 just do a Google search for Shingy.
 It's really great if you could just get an image of him up.
 I'm not gonna talk till there's an image
 of Shingy on the screen.
 I don't like to put people on blast,
 but he kind of looks like what Sonic the Hedgehog
 would look like if he was a human being, I imagine.
 He looks super excited about everything.
 I feel like, well, he's profiting off of the digital,
 fourth-gubby digital.
 Wow. Here's Shingy speaking.
 It's a better image of Shingy.
 This is too dark.
 I need to see Shingy up close.
 Wow, there he is.
 Can we get audio on this?
 Is this him profiting, right, being a prophet?
 Profiteering.
 Look at those nails.
 You can be called what your brand in the middle of those,
 or even deliver one of those experiences.
 Is he a-
 The first largest contributor to stress today
 is media overload.
 What?
 We know that there's a challenge in terms of attention,
 but if you do get it right, mindshare equals market share,
 and that's where consumers are going to pass your brand on.
 Nice. Whoa, here he is thinking.
 Mindshare equals-
 It's Catherine Hepburn, and this is it.
 What?
 If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.
 I think what we need to do
 is get into a fast experimentation mode.
 The platforms allow us to do that
 because you fundamentally have between six seconds
 and 13 hours to tell your brand story today.
 You're not limited-
 That's a big window.
 To 30s and 60s across the day.
 How are you telling your brand story?
 You have these different brand expressions today,
 these different engines to tell your story.
 Yeah.
 So I would love to see you embrace-
 This is really long.
 We need to-
 All right, that's enough.
 That's enough of Shingy.
 I can't do it.
 Wait, just to clarify, he is employed by-
 He's employed by AOL, as far as I know.
 That's amazing.
 His title is Digital Profit.
 Of course it is.
 And he's talking about how you can get your brand,
 just jam on your brand, get it jammed up into somebody's area.
 Jammed up.
 Anyhow, but that's South by Southwest.
 Here's the most striking image, actually, Valleywag.
 Sam Biddle, I think, posted this.
 It was a picture of Shingy on Mashable's wrecking ball.
 There it is.
 That's what South by Southwest is.
 It's like a sandwich of garbage.
 I'm sorry, Shingy.
 I'm sorry.
 I know you're a nice guy,
 but you're a human being and I don't want to diss you.
 I'm sure you're a lovely man to hang out with,
 but your stuff that you say sounds really horrible.
 To each his own, your look is your look, whatever.
 But being called a digital profit and saying shit
 like brand message or whatever is the worst.
 So, I mean, is that tech?
 Is that a tech conversation?
 I don't know.
 Hey, wait a second, buddy.
 Hold on, huh?
 Don't forget Shingy Jr. over here.
 I'm changing my title too.
 New trend will be befriending unfollowing.
 Shingy.
 Anyhow, so that may be a tech story.
 I think that's the kind of tech story I'm interested in
 is how South by Southwest went
 from a really cool, interesting group of people
 telling each other very interesting stories
 and sharing knowledge to an Oreo, 3D printed Oreo
 like marketing machine.
 And Casey Newton, one of our writers,
 wrote a really cool story about,
 by the way, I'm not like bitter.
 This sounds like I'm bitter or whatever.
 Like that's just one.
 No, but that's just like one small part
 of like what's going on in the world.
 That to me is, and I think some of like,
 you know why I don't want to talk about
 like the new smartphone or like,
 I don't want to talk about like iOS eight leaks,
 except I will say there's this like Mark Gurman
 from 9to5Mac had these iOS eight leaks
 and they're like, they're gonna have like text edit
 or something, or it's, you know, some really sad stuff.
 They're gonna-
 Walking public transit directions.
 Yeah, public transit directions and maps.
 Like it's just the saddest update you can think of
 because all this stuff is incremental.
 And that's why like you don't hear us talking
 a lot on the Vergecast anymore
 about these like weird little incremental,
 like, hey, there's a new 6.5 inch smartphone.
 Like we're very, you know, I'm sure there's a set
 of people who's interested.
 We'll cover those when appropriate.
 We review them when appropriate.
 But like, when it comes to the Vergecast,
 like, you know, I don't want to sit here
 and talk about a 6.5 inch screen on a smartphone
 unless there's like a really good reason to talk about it.
 I kind of do.
 Look, and you know what?
 This is the sleepless mind of a baby daddy.
 What is happening?
 Anyhow, so are we talking about tech Mark Little?
 No, we should-
 Where appropriate, my man.
 We should talk about Cosmos.
 Although wait, Mark Little also points out
 that he came up with drum roll
 as a replacement for Vergecast.
 It's pretty good.
 Which I thought was pretty fucking good.
 Mark Little, I thought you were not on our side,
 but now you maybe are on our side.
 Yeah, that's pretty awesome.
 Anyhow, but so what's in the news?
 What do we have on our list?
 Tech is dead.
 Is tech dead?
 Is tech dead?
 There's no more technology.
 It's all been done.
 I don't think that's true.
 There we go.
 There we go.
 Yes.
 That's more like it.
 I still feel like you got the wrong image on the right now.
 Look, he looks like Randy Quaid, okay?
 He looks good there.
 Okay, Katie, that's enough.
 Maybe you gotta back off that wine a little bit.
 We don't want anything embarrassing to happen here.
 Like the entire thing.
 We wouldn't want that to happen.
 Okay, so what's on our list?
 Yeah, she's in the F word pretty early today.
 She's in repeatedly.
 Okay, so Neil, hey, you know what?
 No, Cosmos.
 Cosmos, I was gonna say,
 Katie did an amazing interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
 He came to our office, our studio, and sat down with us.
 And obviously, he's a super fascinating guy.
 Brilliant dude.
 We interviewed him, I interviewed him a couple years ago
 on The Verge, the first season of On The Verge.
 And he was so, were you there?
 Yeah, I was there.
 Yeah, he was like so engrossing.
 I don't know if he did this with you,
 because I don't know the whole thing.
 But he would like, and I was like, oh, we gotta wrap up.
 It's like 45 minutes.
 I was like, we gotta wrap up.
 He's like, no.
 And we talked for like another 15 or 20 minutes
 because he just wanted to say more stuff.
 He's so smart and interesting that it just makes you feel
 like, it made me feel like the dumbest guy in the world.
 Oh, I didn't feel dumb.
 Okay, okay.
 Well, you know.
 I guess you're smarter.
 I feel like talking to a peer.
 Yeah.
 No, no, no, no, no.
 That's the thing about him though.
 He's like super in your face.
 What an ego.
 What an ego.
 But it's an awesome kind of like super in your face.
 Like he.
 Yeah, yeah, no, it's like you want him in your face.
 Yeah.
 Some people you're like, dude, get out, just stop.
 Yeah, he's like an evangelical scientist.
 He's extremely intelligent,
 but I also find him extremely kind and thoughtful.
 No, he's, yes, yeah, totally.
 And like very easy to talk to.
 Like I was nervous.
 This was the first one-on-one like sit down video interview
 I've ever done.
 And I was very nervous,
 but we made eye contact the whole time.
 It was.
 That's good.
 We drank wine.
 You did have wine with him.
 Yeah, yeah.
 Which just proves my theory that you have a drinking problem.
 No, I mean, so.
 I'll drink to that.
 All right.
 Cheers.
 We don't have to do this every time.
 Yes, we do.
 Sorry.
 Why shouldn't we do it every time?
 Let's talk about more tech.
 No, but so Neil.
 Okay, here we go.
 Dr. Tyson.
 Oh, all of a sudden, Neil.
 Actually. Doctor.
 Is a huge wine buff,
 which I found out when I interviewed him for the Verge 50.
 And he hated, he hated your wine.
 He did hate the wine.
 Just think about the kind of wine he's drinking.
 Cause let me tell you something.
 No, I know, right.
 So I said.
 He has the money to buy good wine.
 He has a wine cellar at his house.
 Oh God.
 I'm so envious.
 And so I said to the guys buying the wine,
 I was like, get something nice.
 They got a $32 bottle of wine.
 I'm like, okay, fair.
 Like that's a nice bottle of wine by my standards.
 And he took one sip and was like,
 yeah, this could use another eight years.
 Another eight years.
 And he would know.
 And he would know.
 You can tell he's somewhat disgusted by the wine he's drinking.
 But he drank a full glass.
 He drank a full glass and I did not
 because I was trying to like.
 And it was like one in the afternoon.
 Be a professional.
 Yeah, that's so great.
 Well, I was gonna, my week would be shot.
 Dude, I mean, he's gonna get in.
 He gets into some sick limo
 and just goes to his next awesome event.
 And I saw him outside leaving
 and he got into a big, like a, not a Hummer, but like a.
 Like a Suburban.
 Yeah.
 At New Orleans.
 He's a total player.
 I mean, I mean, that's, I only,
 like Suburban is apparently like, that's the car.
 Like I now get Uber once in a while,
 I'll get an Uber black car.
 And a lot of times they send,
 cause they have like Uber T, Uber X, Uber black car
 and then Uber, whatever's above that.
 It's like something.
 A jet?
 It's like Uber.
 Uber ultimate.
 I don't know.
 It's like a Bentley.
 Anyhow, but they send Suburbans all the time.
 That's nice.
 Which are like huge.
 Maybe he got an Uber.
 I don't know.
 Anyhow, he was getting into a car.
 Yeah.
 And then what?
 He was with People Magazine.
 Probably a very different interview.
 I bet.
 Right?
 But he talked a lot about wine.
 That was probably most of the interview off camera.
 Gave us lots of good wine advice.
 But you know, and also said some really interesting stuff.
 I wish I could use some of that advice today
 with this bottle of wine that we're drinking.
 God knows.
 I don't have a wine to go,
 but I can tell you this is crap.
 I like it.
 Shout out to Justin.
 Yeah.
 Thanks Justin.
 The wine brand.
 By the way, Borough man just said he would,
 he's gonna fight somebody.
 I know it's good.
 But wait, Atlas Hamburger, is he trolling us on Twitter?
 Yeah.
 This is the worst broadcast ever.
 Can I just say?
 It is kind of bad.
 Can I just say before we started,
 we were having like a really great, exciting conversation.
 And then something happened during the intro
 that just threw us off.
 It was TZ's stupid hat.
 Yeah, probably.
 Anyhow.
 No, let's talk about Odyssey though.
 Space Time Odyssey.
 Cosmo?
 Yeah, let's.
 Okay.
 Have you seen it?
 We all watched it, right?
 I only started watching it.
 I didn't, I have a baby.
 All right, well I'm gonna talk to you now.
 Do you understand?
 You understand, right?
 Yeah, go ahead.
 You guys talk.
 What did you think?
 I'm gonna join my wine.
 I thought it was fantastic.
 I thought it was really great too.
 I was surprised at how closely he stuck with the Carl Sagan.
 Like, I mean, like the cosmic calendar.
 Yeah.
 The spaceship of the imagination.
 It was all like, I'm not gonna say ripped off.
 He used the word borrowed, sort of like as an homage.
 It was a reboot in like a very literal sense.
 Yeah, he said it's a continuation.
 It's like the second season of Cosmos,
 but it's 30 years later.
 Which I did not know was what they were gonna do.
 I think the most controversial part of that first episode
 though was the religion segment.
 I mean, he's clearly a hardcore atheist.
 Definitely, and he's made very strong statements
 to that effect before.
 And he's unabashed in his sort of,
 you know, science as religion viewpoint.
 And I mean, I don't think religion
 in the sense of like worship it, but just.
 You know, I really appreciate the fact
 that they included that thread though,
 because I think one, and it was very clear at the end
 when he talked about Sagan and what Sagan's mission was
 and how this is a very practical thing.
 It's not just like, oh, look at these cool NASA photos.
 It's like science is a real fucking thing
 that improves our lives.
 F-bomb.
 Yeah, it's a real thing.
 Yeah, it's real.
 It's absolutely necessary.
 Not only to improve our lives,
 but from a nationalistic standpoint, like, you know.
 And no, that's one of his huge trips
 and one of the things he talked about
 when he was on the verge.
 And I know that he speaks about often
 is this concept of the love and appreciation
 and need for science as like an underlying driver
 of like in America, who we are and what we do
 and what we'll build and how like we will, you know,
 it's not about just about like, hey,
 it's like cool to experiment and find something out.
 It's like, hey, this stuff actually leads to legitimate
 new areas of exploration of business, of intellect.
 And it's not, and that drives like a nation
 or a world, you know, forward.
 And I think that's true.
 You know, I think science underlies,
 it's, you know, so many of the advances of civilization.
 You know, I think about like longevity and I mean,
 health in general, just full stop,
 like anything related to health is like,
 that is science in action.
 That is, you know, that is like really insane progress.
 We've expanded and extended like the human lifespan
 by 40 years or something in the last 100 years,
 or, you know, 250 years or whatever it is,
 just because like we know we've learned things
 about how stuff works.
 And like, you know, learning about how things work
 and taking that apart and utilizing it is,
 there's, you can't put a price on it.
 You know, it's the most valuable thing.
 I'm really glad they, you know,
 opened with the cosmic calendar concept,
 cause it's like one of, you know,
 just putting the historical perspective in there
 is so important.
 You know, just the idea that in 500 years,
 we went from like inventing the first telescope
 to putting someone on the moon is absolutely insane.
 No, it's crazy.
 I mean, it's crazy.
 The things that, that even in the last hundred,
 the things that have occurred in terms of discovery are, um,
 astounding.
 Well, and also that when put in, in perspective,
 that that's what it was, what, like five minutes
 at the end of an hour.
 Right.
 Or something.
 Like all of meaningful modern history
 was like six seconds or something in the final minute,
 in the final hour.
 Right.
 It's just, it really is a, I mean, I hope,
 I don't know if it's happening or not.
 I do hope things like this spark a new appreciation for,
 I feel like we went through a period and I'll just say it,
 like the Bush era was the, was the, you know,
 pinnacle of just utter ignorance and stupidity amongst like
 the populace of America,
 where it was like just denial of facts, you know,
 and like our, up from there, from our government down to
 like just ended the average citizen.
 We were like denying truth and facts in replacing it with,
 I don't know what greed or, you know,
 like just forced ignorance, if purposeful ignorance.
 I don't really understand it because to me, you know,
 like it's the most disturbing thing in the world to imagine
 that like the president of the United States lied about
 weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to like spark a war,
 which we know basically happened for real,
 like definitely happened.
 And you know, I think that if I were a part of the populace
 that voted for that guy and like was like, yeah,
 creationism and all this other stuff that was happening
 during that time, I would feel like this wine is definitely
 having an effect.
 I just want to say, cause I'm way down a rabbit hole
 in this one.
 But I think that we, but I think that we're like,
 progress is not inevitable.
 No, it is, it is real.
 It is real.
 And we're, and we're still coming out of this like period
 of just like, like sustained in unbelievable ignorance
 that like, it's like either you're not paying attention
 or you don't care, or like you're, you're just doing it
 to be an asshole.
 Like you're being ignorant to be an asshole.
 Like I think that we're still coming out of that.
 And I really hope that things like Cosmos start to help
 to shake more people out of this weird trance they've been
 in about, you know, and I think the internet is like one
 of those tools where it's so easy to convince yourself
 of that you're right.
 And that the things you believe are true because there's a
 bunch of people on the internet who are like, yeah,
 you're right.
 Those things you believe are true and finding truth
 and finding real answers to real problems is like the basis
 of science, you know?
 And I think it's so important that we actually put value
 in that, like consider that to be a highly valued thing.
 I mean, I don't know.
 What the solution to that problem is.
 I mean, a TV show, like it's a great show.
 I enjoyed it a lot from what I've read.
 The ratings had not been what they were expected to be,
 which is disappointing.
 But I don't know how you solve that problem, right?
 Like NASA's budget this year is flat again.
 It's the same shit.
 Pop culture is a huge deal.
 Especially like a network like Fox, like that's one
 of the things that I was most excited about.
 Right.
 Fox is far and away the biggest launch of any television
 show in history.
 Yeah, it's weird.
 Like Fox puts so much money.
 It's so weird that's on Fox.
 Yeah, it's really weird.
 It's like they have to pay back all the damage they've done.
 Yeah, a network that's known for American Idol
 and Family Guy.
 And also for Fox News.
 It's known for like the most destructive force
 in journalism since, I don't know,
 like Hitler controlled newspapers in Germany.
 Other than the daily RIP.
 Other than Fox News, but it's all the same.
 Oh, except for the daily.
 The daily RIP.
 Which was an amazing beacon of light
 in an otherwise gloomy place.
 Yeah.
 But you know, RIP.
 Yeah, RIP daily.
 RIP daily.
 It was a good year.
 But yeah, no, Fox definitely has to pay it back.
 And that's what they're doing now.
 I just think it's so crazy to me that we have this almost
 like a real, I don't know if this
 is true in other countries.
 I can't speak, I don't want to speak for other countries.
 I live in America.
 And I grew up in America.
 But it does seem like, and I don't know if this happened
 during the Reagan years, and then it sort of got solidified
 in the Bush years.
 But this appreciation for, it's like a willful ignorance
 that is almost like it's not cool to be smart.
 It's not cool to know things.
 It sucks.
 Like you're a terrible person if you read books.
 And I think that really has cemented itself
 in some part of the firmament.
 Some part of the layers of dirt that we stand on.
 I don't know what I'm talking about right now.
 Yeah, I don't know.
 I mean, I don't think, I honestly
 don't think it's a modern phenomenon.
 No.
 I mean, probably not.
 I mean, knowledge is scary.
 The thing about atheism and religion is that it's,
 speaking as an atheist, it's scary to go like, oh, yeah,
 there are no easy answers.
 There isn't a simple, like, God's got it.
 Why do you think I have a drinking problem?
 No, tell me about it.
 I know, sure.
 Because you recognize the absurdity of life.
 Well, but you still believe in the heaven that exists
 above the planet.
 Where there's lots of Philadelphia cream cheese.
 Fully spreadable cream cheese, just so soft,
 ready to go on any bagel that you choose,
 no matter what type of bagel.
 I couldn't even eat bread.
 I have a gluten intolerance.
 That was racist.
 You know, an everything bagel, onion bagel, raisin bagel,
 you want to put cream cheese on that?
 No one's going to stop you.
 Anyhow.
 Continue.
 Bagel up in your bagel heaven.
 What was I talking about?
 Atheism versus.
 Yeah, it's just scary to go like, hey, God doesn't have it,
 because he doesn't exist.
 Because that's a made up idea.
 Because, anyhow, right now I'm getting so many death threats
 and hate mail.
 I can't even keep up with it.
 But here's what I'll say about it.
 I'm talking about atheism, and I'm
 sure people will be up in arms.
 But the most controversial thing that I've ever said in public
 is about being a vegetarian.
 That's like far and away.
 Like right now, if I was like, meat eaters are terrible,
 way more controversial than like, God is dead or whatever.
 I mean, I'm on certain audiences, I'm sure.
 Here it is.
 Is this a real thing?
 What is this?
 Is this bagel heaven?
 That's heaven.
 This is real?
 That's how I learned what heaven was as a child.
 My parents put me in front of the TV, and I watched those ads.
 This is an ad?
 Is it a print ad?
 What is that?
 It's an ad.
 This is fucking insane.
 Well, here's the thing.
 I'm probably within this group as an agnostic atheist,
 but I'm not every.
 I'm writer than you are.
 What was I saying?
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 We should have started drinking this wine so early.
 I was saying, not everybody that believes in God
 completely disavows science.
 That's a completely idiotic connection.
 It's just that the Bible contradicts
 all scientific discovery.
 Well, yeah, but not everybody believes the Bible literally.
 No one will know, but then what is religion?
 I'm sorry.
 I have to ask that question.
 If you don't believe the, OK, literally,
 what is the Bible's purpose?
 But if you believe in it.
 There's praxis and community involved
 and all kinds of other things that
 are unrelated to the scientific method.
 No, I mean, there's good rules for living,
 but you know not to murder people without the Bible,
 right?
 It's called morality.
 You don't need the Bible to tell you not to steal from people.
 I do.
 Maybe you do.
 Oh, boy.
 I should not be going down this path.
 Where's Paul Miller when you need him?
 This would be a great conversation
 for him to join in on.
 Is this the commercial?
 This is real?
 That's my lady.
 What?
 That's my lady.
 Did you have this in mind when you were talking
 about cream cheese heaven?
 It looks like Sandra Bernhardt's sibling.
 Disturbing.
 I grew up watching these ads.
 And there's this beefcake, this beautiful beefcake there,
 kind of watching her.
 Only Philadelphia cream cheese.
 Like growing up, that's actually what I thought heaven was.
 The first cast brought to you by the Philadelphia cream cheese.
 Yeah.
 It's creamy.
 Is that their tagline?
 It's heavenly.
 What's Philadelphia cream cheese's tagline?
 I need to know right now.
 A little taste of heaven.
 I'm pissing so many people off right now.
 No, that's actually what their tagline is.
 I'm sorry.
 I'm just seeing tweets from people who are like, I've
 offended.
 Listen, I just want to say, if I offended you at all,
 that was not my intention.
 If you are a Christian and you believe in science,
 that's wonderful.
 I think that's great.
 I do think at some point you get to a, what is religion?
 If you are a believer in science.
 Well, you're not.
 Here's the thing.
 There's a difference between the Christian who is on board
 with science.
 It's a safety net.
 Totally comforting.
 I agree.
 I wish I could be comforted by religion the way
 that other people are.
 Me too.
 I mean, I'm sure that, look, when
 I feel bad turbulence on a plane,
 I get really religious really fast.
 Because you're like, well, you never know.
 I'm going, the plane's going down.
 So I better just be like, hey, God.
 This is why I need Xanax to get on my plane.
 The only time I'm religious, the only time
 I feel even the slightest hint of religion
 is the plane, terrible turbulence on the plane.
 It's like white knuckle turbulence.
 And I'm like, all right, God, I know you don't exist.
 But if you do, I don't want to die.
 You're like the worst kind of atheist.
 I am.
 Terrible.
 I can't believe I admitted that to the world.
 Who knows atheists and foxholes?
 I don't know what that means.
 I don't know what that means.
 It means when you're on an airplane that's going down,
 you're not an atheist.
 Yeah, you're like, God, help me out.
 Because you'll just grasp it.
 You're like, I'll take anything.
 Somebody threw me a parachute.
 I'd be like, cool, I'm out of here.
 I mean, I'd be calm.
 And by the way, the idea of jumping out of a plane.
 Plenty of cream cheese coming.
 You're like, I would welcome death because I want it so badly.
 The idea of jumping out of a plane is terrifying to me.
 But I would happily take a parachute if I felt
 my plane was going down.
 Yeah.
 Think about that shit.
 Let that stew for a minute.
 I try not to fly.
 Are you finishing?
 Oh, it's the worst.
 OK, fine.
 I hate it.
 Yeah.
 All right, can we talk about something that
 isn't atheism or religion?
 This one's, this is the worst.
 I mean, when I say it's the worst.
 I think this is great.
 We come back.
 We're going to come back to this every week.
 Let's talk about tech.
 What's going on with tech?
 Tech.
 I have no idea.
 Are there any cool?
 What kind of smartphone do you think God would use?
 A huge one.
 He could use one.
 A huge one.
 He wouldn't have to.
 He doesn't have to worry about the size of the hand.
 He probably needs a much bigger than a 6.3 screen.
 Yeah.
 Curved, though.
 Curved.
 Keep the glare of heaven out.
 You just want to see cream cheese reflections while he's
 checking his Google Calendar.
 On the eighth day, God created it.
 Oh, yeah, by the way, God uses an Android phone.
 Did I mention that?
 OK, there we go.
 Jay Wayne.
 I finally found it.
 Mayher Jr. wants us to move on.
 What about we could do, speaking of airplanes,
 we could do the Malaysian tragedy.
 Jay Wayne does not like this conversation.
 Not surprised.
 I am so sorry.
 By the way, this is not the worst.
 I'll say, this is not the worst Virgcast has ever happened.
 I've been on worse.
 I think this is great.
 I'm having a great time.
 Whatever.
 It doesn't matter.
 It matters to me.
 So there's this airplane that was in the sky,
 and then it didn't land.
 Oh, the Malaysian Airlines.
 I mean, this story is fascinating.
 Let's talk about this.
 This actually is a bit of a tech story.
 I mean, here's the thing about tech.
 Let me just say this so I can just get it out in the open.
 The way The Verge thinks about technology
 is that it is deeply connected, intrinsically connected,
 to so much of what is going on in our world
 that this isn't about tech.
 It's like, hey, there's this gadget over here.
 This stuff is all strewn in together.
 It's all connected.
 And so this Malaysia Airlines story
 is really interesting because there is a news aspect to it.
 Like, oh my god, this plane's missing,
 and did it go down, and what happened?
 But the actual story is like, how did it go missing?
 Where did it go?
 What do we know about it?
 How do we track it?
 How do you track planes?
 You know, it's really sad, but it actually
 reminds me of the movie Contact, where
 Jodie Foster is falling at the end,
 falling through that ball.
 Spoiler alert.
 And they're like, yeah, spoiler alert
 for a movie from the 90s.
 It's a good movie.
 It's a great movie.
 Yeah, they're like, oh, you were only falling through the air
 for 15 seconds.
 And then they were like, oh, wait.
 The in-ball recorder had like 24 hours of time.
 It's chilling.
 It actually reminded me of Scandal.
 OK, spoiler alert on Scandal because I've never
 seen a single episode.
 And I know Carl's like, Scandal's the best.
 It's terrible.
 That's how Carl talks about it.
 That's his voice.
 Is it terrible?
 It looks terrible.
 It's amazing.
 It looks like the worst.
 If you like the Good Wife, like, game over.
 You'll love Scandal.
 Yeah.
 Oh, really?
 Yeah.
 All right.
 I'll watch it.
 Don't listen to Katie.
 Seriously, you think it's bad?
 I think it's terrible.
 Shut up.
 Sorry, I just caught this headline on our site.
 Can we talk about this for a second?
 Disney has released an EDM album with remixes
 from Mavici and Cascade.
 Sorry, who?
 Disney.
 Disney.
 The Walt Disney Company.
 Disney.
 The Walt Disney Corporation.
 I know them.
 If you like The Little Mermaid, you'll like Skrillex.
 Wow, wow.
 Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.
 Hey, what's the name of the crab in The Little Mermaid?
 Sebastian.
 Sebastian.
 It's like the Sebastian, like, snippy-snap remix.
 It's like samples of Sebastian.
 And it's like, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.
 Well, I guess Disney did Tron.
 Well, they funded and released Tron.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 God, this is the, come on.
 Let's talk about something.
 Malaysia Airlines.
 Yeah.
 So.
 Where the fuck's that plane?
 Wow.
 Where is the plane?
 So we were talking to Chris Ziegler about this.
 He's actually, Chris is like an airplane buff.
 He is.
 He's an airplane nerd.
 Like, he knows stuff about airplanes that you
 can't even begin to imagine.
 It's true.
 That's past experience.
 He's actually working on something right now,
 like a story about something about what's,
 there's a new discovery that this,
 there are electronics that we're transmitting on this plane
 or from this plane for five hours after it kind of dropped
 off of radar.
 Interesting fact, like, it drops off a radar 100 miles
 outside of Malaysia.
 Right.
 I had no idea that.
 Yeah.
 When they're over the ocean, they're flying blind.
 Which is terrifying.
 Like, hey, just check it out.
 I mean, I assume that they can see other planes.
 But in terms of.
 I'm never leaving the continent.
 Yeah.
 You don't want to do that.
 You don't want to fly over the ocean.
 That's insane.
 But so the story's got a little bit more interesting
 because there's this now they're saying, like, hey,
 the plane, it was like, hey, the plane went into the ocean.
 It dropped from radar and it probably crashed.
 And they just can't find it.
 Right.
 Now they're saying, well, there's
 five hours of transmitting data past the point
 where it dropped off a radar.
 And what Chris was saying to me, which I find fascinating,
 is that it might have landed somewhere.
 They're like, what are you doing?
 What's happening?
 Can you stop that?
 We're on now we're on a national international broadcast
 right now.
 She's whispering trash talk.
 Are you trash talking to him?
 This is outrageous, Katie.
 What did you say?
 He's just like threatening me.
 He's threatening.
 Are you threatening her?
 This is the worst.
 This is the worst thing I've ever done.
 Did you threaten her?
 Be honest.
 Absolutely not.
 It's the same accusation she leveled last week.
 She's a black.
 Listen, people's lives are at stake here.
 And we're having a petty feud.
 They're not at stake, I'm pretty sure.
 All right.
 We don't know.
 What I was saying is Chris was like,
 we don't know what happened to this plane.
 It's possible it could have landed somewhere.
 Yeah, that's weird.
 And it just is, yeah, it's on the lost island because that
 doesn't exist.
 Wow.
 This feels really insane.
 You know why?
 Because it was from a TV show.
 Yeah.
 I mean, I didn't watch the show.
 On ABC.
 It was interrupted by commercials.
 There's a golden retriever.
 So like this whole thing from the stolen passports to now,
 wasn't anyone else just like, how the hell?
 Yeah, apparently that happens all the time though.
 People stealing passports.
 Oh, yeah, now you're going to edit yourself on a hell?
 How the heck?
 How the heck do you?
 Hey, I'm going to cream cheese heaven.
 Keep it clean, Katie.
 That's great.
 I'm going to cream cheese heaven.
 OK.
 How?
 Yeah, keep your language nice and clean on this Verge cast.
 We want you to say anything that was off color.
 Go on.
 I was just really taken aback by the fact
 that you can steal a passport and then fly,
 take an international flight somewhere.
 Well, I mean, it's probably not that simple.
 But apparently it happens all the time.
 No, I don't know.
 You have to.
 You have to.
 Somebody just tweeted that somebody
 was standing behind me.
 You just, that was a made you look moment.
 No, somebody was like, who's the person?
 Here's what they said.
 You just got trolled.
 Why has that same guy been standing
 behind the glass near Josh the entire podcast?
 Oh, that's a creepy.
 Tired of seeing his ass, literally.
 Oh, it's Evan.
 Is it Evan?
 He's got a nice ass, though.
 Yeah, he does.
 It's pretty good.
 That's technically a violation of some type.
 You know how you said you were going to murder me earlier?
 We have this ass comment on record for HR now.
 Wow.
 Believe me.
 You just self-doxed yourself.
 Believe me, there's plenty of bad stuff on record for me.
 Who is doing this?
 This woman, Tricia Nieder, is doing drawings of members
 of the Verge.
 Have you seen these on Twitter?
 Oh, this is the creepiest thing I've ever seen.
 So she just did one.
 Can we get this up?
 Can somebody just look at who just
 tweeted at me in this image?
 First off, it's a great drawing.
 It's disturbing.
 It's upsetting.
 But I like it.
 There it is.
 Can we zoom in on that?
 Is that you?
 I don't know.
 You tell me.
 Yeah, that's definitely me.
 Is it me, or is it Randy Quaid?
 I think that's you.
 Or the lead singer of the national?
 No, that's definitely you.
 We got to do this one with Dieter.
 That's very well done.
 Dieter.
 It's at the top.
 What did Dieter do?
 It's at the top here.
 Would you just tweet it?
 John.
 No.
 You dropped it.
 It's coming up.
 It's coming up.
 OK.
 Great.
 Dieter Bone.
 Bone Zone.
 He was almost on this.
 What is this?
 Arielle is, hold on.
 Do I follow her, by the way?
 I need to.
 I can't believe I wasn't.
 So Arielle, our new writer, just dissed me on Twitter.
 She did.
 Josh's lack of cream cheese ad knowledge
 makes me wonder if the quote, cream cheese
 taught me about heaven thing is Canadian specific.
 I think it might be.
 Dude, Arielle like, yeah, cream cheese heaven.
 It sounds like it.
 You probably didn't run this ad in America.
 You know why?
 Probably not.
 Because we know what real heaven's like.
 We don't call macaroni and cheese Kraft Dinner.
 You ride on a gold bus.
 Do you remember this article that was written in like,
 the Atlanta Journal?
 Hey, guys.
 Hey, you know what?
 You saw that.
 You saw that.
 You saw that.
 I did see that in his upsetting, Katie.
 Don't do an F bomb to him quietly on the Verge cast.
 That's not right.
 Who taught you it's Canadian manners, I guess,
 is what we're seeing here.
 I don't think she's a real Canadian.
 Really?
 Please elaborate on that.
 She doesn't say sorry enough.
 I say sorry constantly.
 Why don't you say like, sorry?
 You say sorry less when you say the F bomb.
 Sorry.
 You say the F bomb a lot.
 That's not very.
 Sorry, dad, that you have to watch this.
 He's not watching.
 Is he watching this?
 He watches every week.
 Oh, he's like, well, Josh, he talks a lot.
 Yeah.
 Well, I'm sorry.
 You know what?
 I'm the host.
 And that TC is really abusive.
 Traditionally, I am the host of the Verge cast.
 Well, you're very talkative.
 I am talkative.
 It's probably because I'm Jewish.
 I thought you were an atheist.
 Well, I was raised Jewish.
 Socially, culturally Jewish, religiously atheist,
 which means I'm just very nervous.
 Right?
 Yeah.
 So apologies to your dad if you're watching.
 Hi, Katie's dad.
 I guess I'll let Katie talk more.
 Your daughter's normally very nice.
 Katie, why don't you run the rest of this thing?
 OK, great.
 Thank God.
 Take a break.
 Drinks with a Fina.
 I'm all right.
 Cheers.
 Cheers.
 Bilateral cheers.
 Do we want to talk about gas leaks?
 Oh my god.
 Yeah, I'm terrified.
 I'm super freaked out.
 So I was listening to NPR today.
 And NPR, it's funny.
 WNYC, which is the NPR.
 Of course, I was listening to NPR, right?
 So I was just stereotyped.
 But that's cliche.
 New Yorker.
 Jewish New Yorker listens to NPR.
 OK.
 They had a show on a couple of days ago.
 It was about the failing infrastructure of New York.
 And today, they're like, yeah, this
 could be evidence of the failing infrastructure of New York.
 I live in a house that was built in 1860.
 You do?
 Yeah, for real.
 I live in a very, very old.
 Yeah, for real.
 It's super duper old.
 And now, every day, my family is going to blow up.
 1860.
 That's like Civil War era.
 Yeah, it's really old.
 Are you kidding me?
 That's when it was built. We have records.
 Yeah.
 It's actually, what's interesting about my house
 is that Thomas Ricker, who lives in Amsterdam,
 has a very similar tiny house.
 I have a very tiny house.
 And Thomas Ricker's, that's so upsetting.
 Can we get that on screen, please?
 The Dieter image.
 Totally unrelated to my house and to explosions.
 Please get the Dieter graphic on screen.
 Immediately, I won't say another word until it happens.
 There we go. There we go. That was the longest moment of silence ever in the history of
 the Verge cast.
 In the history of Josh.
 In the history of me.
 Actually, yeah, my uncle used to pay me money to be quiet.
 He'd be like, how long can you be quiet?
 I'll give you a dollar if you can be quiet.
 I was, I'm not a terrible kid, terrible doll.
 What are you going to do?
 Anyhow, so yeah, so there was this terrible huge explosion in Harlem, East Harlem.
 Apparently a gas leak, leveled two buildings, seven people are dead.
 I mean, just look at this.
 I mean, just, it is breathtaking that something like this could happen.
 It's not, it wasn't, it didn't happen on purpose.
 It wasn't planned.
 There were no explosives in this building as far as we know at this point.
 And I think probably for real.
 Ariel, our new writer, did a great piece about how this happens and why this happens, which
 is really interesting.
 But it just made me feel just utter and constant fear now about my house exploding.
 Yeah.
 What's especially insane is that apparently they have been like reporting the smell of
 gas or a gas leak for like two weeks before this happened.
 So what I read, which was very, very sad, was a woman talking to the New York Times
 and her husband was unaccounted for and they lived in one of these buildings.
 So super sad.
 But she said to them something along the lines of, we thought we smelled gas before we went
 to bed, then it went away.
 So we just went to bed and then the next morning there was this explosion.
 And I think in terms of Ariel's piece, what was most disturbing to me was I think it was
 something like 35 or 38% of gas mains in Manhattan are made of chrome.
 What is the makeup?
 Whatever the material is that makes them more vulnerable to these cracks and predate 1960.
 In other words, they're outdated and they are vulnerable to cracks.
 That's terrifying.
 No, it's- That's terrifying.
 No, I mean, on NPR they were saying that the average age of the mains in New York is 56
 years old, which is really old.
 And that they're made of this, what is it?
 Cast iron.
 Cast iron, that's what it is, not chrome.
 No, not chrome.
 I'm thinking about- Chrome is what you put on your wheels.
 Chrome is what you- I wouldn't know.
 Is a browser.
 Yeah, it's an internet thing.
 It's weird that my reference point was about wheels and yours was about a browser.
 Just shows how out of touch you are.
 Tech, tech, tech talk, tech talk right there.
 But so anyhow, it's just terrifying.
 And since my house is a super duper old, I'm just imagining everything in it is ready to
 explode at any given moment.
 And today we had our heat on and it's making some weird screeching noise.
 It's hot water heat, it's not gas or anything, but it's making some weird high pitch screeching
 noise and it's like, oh, this is it, here we go.
 We're going to blow up.
 So it's a terrible tragedy and a shocking story.
 And also I think not to get all political on you yet again, but is a demonstration of
 the need for us to be concerned about the infrastructure in America.
 Not just this is a privately owned company that is responsible for these gas lines, but
 they're responsible to the citizens of this city.
 It's a public utility though.
 It is a public utility, but I mean, like ConEdison has the privilege of being National Grid.
 National Grid.
 I think.
 No, it's ConEd.
 ConEd doesn't do gas.
 Yeah, they do.
 Do they?
 They're my gas.
 They do gas?
 I thought they only do electricity.
 Very confused.
 At any rate, also I've been drinking.
 At any rate, this wine is really affecting me.
 I have to say it's just in high in alcohol content.
 I don't think so.
 I just didn't have lunch.
 I'm just messing me up.
 The point is, infrastructure is a real issue.
 I mean, there have been, Frontline Act I think actually did a great piece on infrastructure,
 if I'm not mistaken, a couple of years ago.
 I could be totally making that up, but there's definitely our roadways, bridges.
 Bridges.
 They're collapsing.
 Bridges are a big thing.
 America is like falling apart.
 It's like, think about how much money the federal government spent on public projects
 in the last hundred years.
 National park building, international.
 There's a great chart of the spending, our budget in the US.
 Look at the budget for defense spending versus the kind of spending we're doing on things
 like infrastructure.
 It's depressing.
 It's insane.
 It's insane.
 Yeah.
 Look, so far, I don't know.
 I'm not going to get into terrorism and stuff, but we've had 9-11 is awful.
 It's just such an obvious-
 But this is awful too, and a hundred of these is even worse.
 If the infrastructure doesn't get... If we don't care about it, we don't think about
 it, a hundred of these is what's in store.
 But it should be such an obvious and uncontroversial point that this public stuff that we spend
 money on as a society enables us to do things privately.
 The interstate highway system.
 That wasn't a bunch... That wasn't a company like Google or Microsoft saying, oh, we need
 to build some roads.
 It was all of us together doing it.
 This gets to the... This kind of leads back to net neutrality and talking about what we
 value here and how we manage it.
 I think net neutrality is a great... The internet is a great example of the next infrastructure
 crisis in America where it's massively needed utility for all citizens of this country and
 of all countries.
 We have the ability and the opportunity to make it a widespread, easily accessible, open
 thing.
 The direction we're headed is the FCC in cahoots with private companies is managing it into
 a private, expensive service, which will be controlled by people who have interests outside
 of what the citizens of this country need.
 They're controlled by monetary interests and in the interest of making money and getting
 paid for everything.
 It's one of these things.
 We can't keep up the infrastructure we have that is shared.
 We can't build new infrastructure where we need things like an open and free internet.
 What is the future of America if we don't do something about it?
 Also, no one gives a shit about science.
 This is why the space program is being taken up by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
 Because NASA gets $17 billion a year.
 I'm not saying they don't want profits from that stuff, but at least that will drive them
 to do something.
 In America, we can't even see... The government can't even see the reason why we would want
 to work on a space program.
 They can't see the value in it.
 It's a long-term thing and profit-seeking companies are absolutely essential for innovation
 and driving the economy and everything else, but they're also beholden to shareholders
 in a way that makes them focus on quarterly results.
 We have big problems that require really long-term investment.
 Most companies aren't Apple in the sense that Verizon's not Apple.
 Verizon is happy to be relatively complacent with what they have.
 If they weren't, the widespread Fios would be happening right now and it's not.
 Comcast and Time Warner, this disgusting merger that's probably going to happen where it's
 going to create this insane conglomerate.
 Their motivation for innovation doesn't exist.
 It sounds at a very basic level like, oh, that's some nerdy... What does that matter?
 I need cable.
 That's not important.
 But it'll matter when you can't get the things you need on the internet because they have
 decided that it's more profitable to charge you for them.
 It's really a disturbing situation we have in this country.
 Well, what are we supposed to do about it?
 A violent revolution.
 I said this a couple of Vergecasts ago.
 The only answer ultimately is a violent overthrow of a corrupt government.
 That's a joke around a little bit, but also somewhat... Look at other countries.
 What's happening is violent overthrow of a corrupt government.
 Our government is... We have a great way of demonstrating that we like to act like
 we're not corrupt and it seems like we're not corrupt.
 We have a tremendously corrupt, diseased government in America, which is poisoned by private interests
 and people who want to hoard money.
 It damages the populace of this country in ways that we can't even begin to understand.
 And yet, this fucking wine.
 And yet- Cheers.
 And yet, we're not... Occupy Wall Street was the closest thing we had to violent revolution.
 It was a whiff of... It was a babies... By the way, as a new father, I'm aware of what
 babies can do.
 Not very much.
 It was a babies version of a real revolutionary movement.
 And I think that... I'm not saying we need to overthrow the government.
 That would be the worst thing that could ever happen.
 Let me just say this clearly.
 Do not overthrow the government.
 That would be a bad idea.
 But I do think we need a stronger reaction to this stuff.
 You guys... Net neutrality sucks.
 We'll black out our website for a day or something like that.
 That can work in small doses.
 No, but we can't overthrow the government every two and four years.
 No, but yeah.
 Like literally overthrowing- Yeah, but-
 Yeah, but- But it's like you're trading one... You're
 trading one evil for another.
 Unless you're a two evils.
 Exactly.
 Right.
 Yeah.
 I don't feel like I'm overthrowing the government when I vote every four years.
 But I think it requires a fear and knowledge and understanding of what is going on at a
 level that will make you do something far more meaningful.
 And that's not- You're saying we should vote for Rand Paul.
 No, don't vote for Rand Paul.
 Don't do that.
 Rand Paul 2016.
 But I do think people getting involved... Stop.
 I think people getting legitimately involved in what is going on in their local governments
 and trying to find ways to effect real change by displacing, by removing people who are cancerous
 is a serious component of it.
 I'm really on a roll here.
 My God.
 I'll probably get shot leaving the building.
 Don't say that.
 By me.
 Oh my God.
 I'm like, T.C. just behind me, just clips me and that's it.
 Anyhow, I just think, look, we have... I don't know.
 What do you do?
 We're not going to have a revolution in America until it gets really bad.
 But I will say this, we have a growing disparity between the haves and have nots.
 Everybody knows that.
 And at some point that begins to really rot.
 And when it rots, I don't know.
 You don't know.
 I mean, shit gets bad.
 Shit gets funky.
 I'm so glad to be a Canadian citizen right now.
 Oh yeah, you think you can run up to Canada?
 Yeah, I'm a dual citizen.
 Guess what?
 Nuclear conflagration, that wave of nuclear waste will just flow right up to Canada, right?
 What are you talking about?
 Judgment Day is what I'm talking about.
 Universal healthcare.
 You're basically in America's anyway.
 How's that universal?
 Most Canadians live within 100 miles of the US.
 How's that universal healthcare going to help you when a wave of nuclear waste from our-
 What nuclear waste?
 Judgment Day.
 Judgment Day.
 What are you talking about?
 Have you never seen Terminator?
 Terminator 2 or Terminator 3?
 No.
 What about Terminator 4?
 No.
 You've never seen any of the Terminator movies?
 No.
 Are you kidding me?
 No.
 There's a door.
 Please leave.
 No.
 Just get out of here.
 No.
 How have you never seen a Terminator movie?
 I don't know.
 I watched a lot of like Melrose Place.
 This is disturbing.
 I had two older sisters.
 We watched Beverly Hills.
 You gotta admit, this is the worst Verge cast ever.
 I think it's great.
 You do, really?
 I've been talking about violent revolution and overthrow.
 I'm going to be arrested as soon as I leave.
 That's your problem, man.
 People have been tweeting me.
 They want me to talk about vox.com, the new news.
 Oh, let's talk about that.
 That's exciting.
 The new news vertical that is being launched by Vox Media, our parent company.
 I would love to talk about that if we're allowed.
 I mean, we could talk about it.
 All I can say is it's an exciting and interesting new venture for our company.
 It is going to be very different than what we do.
 Very different than...
 Here's a little bit of their...
 They have a wonderful video, actually.
 Ezra Klein may be a bigger nerd than anybody at the Verge.
 Ezra Klein is a big, big nerd.
 I really like him.
 I have to say-
 He seems like a super nice dude.
 He's not only super nice, but he's super smart.
 Everybody who's...
 Did you say he's not super nice?
 I said he's not only super nice, but he's super smart.
 I think you skipped a word there.
 No, he's not super nice, but he is super smart.
 He's nice and smart, but that whole team, they're very smart people that have very good
 ideas about how to cover a broader, more general news scope in a new way.
 It'll be different than the Verge.
 If you read the Verge, you'll find it's a very different publication, but I'm excited
 about it.
 I can't really reveal-
 They're hiring incredible people.
 I can't reveal much because I know a lot.
 I'm not going to tell you guys what's going on.
 What I will say is that the thinking that's going into what they're doing and the stuff
 that our product team is building with them is really exciting, and I'm very excited about
 it.
 What's going on with you guys?
 Are you threatening each other again?
 Are you?
 I have to say...
 Someone wants to be there.
 Oh, J. Wayne Mayer wants us to talk.
 I don't know how you pronounce your last name.
 Mayer?
 Marr?
 Marr?
 Bill Marr?
 Like Bill Marr.
 So Ariel is finally got my back here.
 I'm going to have to go to the bathroom.
 I'm going to have to go to the bathroom.
 I'm going to have to go to the bathroom.
 I'm going to have to go to the bathroom.
 I'm going to have to go to the bathroom.
 Yo, wait a second.
 Since when do you need to go to the bathroom?
 What's going on right now, Tobin?
 You guys think we need to...
 Wait, so the way that we've been on radar is constantly looking at the vendor, not just
 watching them致
 What's going on, Tobin?
 So as part of the
 Say what's going on with our sales meeting?
 So I think we need to take really serious partnerships right now in terms of声
 Really is gone with the way the generational thing is Lawrence of Arabia is is is Ben Hur is Citizen Kane is
 Do you just sit at home and watch Turner classic movies with penny all day? Yeah, I'd stop
 That guy that's been behind
 This is the control is the control booth going crazy what's going on with those guys they look to be under control
 When do we start this?
 Seems like we should be ending pretty soon. Can we not?
 Should we talk about need for speed? Can we not broadcast? Is there a way that we can just this will be the live one?
 You'll ever see this
 Are you serious John
 You're not serious about what about what he just said to me
 So you're just kidding is what you're saying what you just said to me. Okay, nothing is about a conversation John and I had earlier. Yeah
 I have nothing to say about I didn't see the movie Chris did not like
 Okay, let's talk about Aaron Paul yeah, he's just I want to hear what Katie I say about Aaron Paul very good-looking
 Human you have a thing for like boy Carl is watching this
 I don't know Carl. No, no Carl looks Carl looks a lot like Aaron Paul. I disagree strongly disagree. Well, you're wrong Aaron Paul has like a boyish kind of like blonde no
 No, he's not yeah Aaron Paul has blonde hair brown hair dirty blonde it's like brown
 He's got a blonde face and you know it a blonde
 You know what else you were saying Brian Bonsall you were really into and I think he's got kind of this blondish boyish thing going on
 I'm worried about you and also Carl Carl does not look anything like Aaron Paul
 You need glasses
 Are you wearing contacts right now? Yeah, they're not working. Yes, they are new ones that function. I've talked to my sisters about this
 We all agree. Well, your sister's just humoring you I think no, no, no way. Do they look alike?
 Facial hair
 No
 TC please back me up on this
 I'm not gonna get involved. Oh, really now you're not gonna get involved. Here's your chance looks nothing like it. That's right
 Thank you. I mean, I look more like Aaron Paul than Carl does
 No, you do not. I don't look anything like him. That's my point. I don't look anything like him
 That's what I'm saying. I look like Zach Galifianakis a little bit a little bit
 Yeah, so anyway, this was moving to France. Oh, we get
 Can you tell us about it a little bit
 There were there was Aaron Paul. Oh Jesus and
 It was basically Jesse Pinkman driving cars. I don't understand. This is not part of the Fast and Furious franchise
 Is it it's just like no, it was a video game. There's a video game that EA made. Okay, and we
 Know it was unbelievable. We got into the theater and the EA logo
 Splashed up on the screen as if you were playing a video game and everybody just started cracking. Wait, what happened?
 You're in the theater. You know how like it shows all the studios
 No science bitch
 That's it that was the week of March 10th
 From our family to yours don't use natural gas. No
 You're not ending this
 You don't get to say when it ends
 You see you got a cowboy hat on you're in control. You're not in control. Do you feel in control?
 No, you're not
 That's the Verge Castro this week
 Mm-hmm. I'd like to thank Katie and TC for being on it. It's great always a great time
 I'm sorry guys. You know what? It's I guess want to talk about gonorrhea real quick
 I
 Think we're upsetting Billy and John our producers. Oh, yeah, they thought this was such hot shit before we started
 They're like, it's so great. We love the verge cast. What do you think about the verge cast now guys?
 How you feeling about it, huh?
 That's what I thought. Can we talk about see you in hell? Can we talk about hat technology? No, we gotta wrap up
 That's the first cast for this week. Very sorry, by the way, very sorry about about sorry. Sorry
 I'm not drunk. I'm just tired and I am a little maybe a little buzzed
 That's the verge cast for this week. We're very sorry about what it seemed like to you
 I assure you that there is some audience for this you just weren't it probably
 If you want to reach out to us and send us a message about how much you disliked what we did today
 You can email us at verge cat. Sorry at verge cast at the verge calm you can
 You can leave a comment on the post when it goes up or the one that has gone up
 You can drop something into the into the forum into the forums on the verge
 Please don't don't do this you're doing this. I hope you don't have lice. That's all I have to say
 And
 It's so sweaty in here, this is so disgusting
 And yet I do actually think this is kind of a good that's the best you've ever looked. It's kind of a fresh look
 I've known you for three years. That's the best you've ever looked. I'm not gonna lie to you
 But this may become my thing. I'll be like the guy. Oh, they're like
 Oh Josh Dupolsky the guy who wears the cowboy hat like yep, that's me
 Any other by the way solves my hair problem completely. I
 Guess like bald dudes are super into hats right there like hey check it out. I got a thing going on up here
 It's not hair, but it's a thing
 That's the verge cast. You can email us at verge cast at the verge calm you can
 Leave a comment. You can throw something into forums
 You can send us a message. I hope you don't have lice. That's all I have to say
 So you can find us on Twitter the verge is at verge. I'm Josh with the Polsky
 TC is laughing stoic. Don't say it. Totally garbage garbage Twitter name
 Katie drumming is Katie drum with two M's because she doesn't know how to spell drum properly because she can't spell drum
 Yeah in Canada, that's how they spell it with two M's
 and and
 That's it
 that's it for this verge cast and
 Could be it for every verge cast ever frankly
 Somebody just said best verge cast ever
 So we just tweeted that it'd be it was probably my dad. It wasn't oh really is your dad named Henrik
 Jansen no
 Well, then I guess it wasn't your dad
 Let's anyhow, that's that's it for this verge cast and really we're not gonna talk about gonorrhea
 Okay, what would you like to say next week?
 We'll talk about it because by then there will be so Trisha nieder just did a new image. Can we get can we get this image up?
 I don't know how she's turning these around so quickly
 Can we just get the new image that she did for us up? It's of me
 It's very good. Very good stuff. It looks a lot like what you're looking at right now. You guys are too slow
 Yeah, look at my feed. There it is
 It's like a fedora though people really are liking the hat
 All right. Hey, that's the verge cast this week. We'll be back soon with so much more and
 Until that happens I have to warn you
 Something bad is coming for you and your family and I can't stop it
 May God be with you