The Vergecast - A buggy Sonos mystery

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

The Verge's Will Poor recently came home from vacation and discovered he had an insect problem. More specifically, his Sonos speaker had an insect problem. Will brings us the story of what really happened there, and what he discovered about how the animal kingdom — and the electronics world — works. After that, The Verge's Andru Marino tells us about his research on all things AI podcasts. He tells us why people are so hooked on NotebookLM's Audio Overviews, where these generated shows fall short, and what all us human podcasters could learn from the bots. Finally, The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy helps us answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email [e-mail]!) all about smart lights. Which get complicated faster than you think. Further reading: Oh no, Google is turning everything into a podcast Google’s NotebookLM AI podcasts add ‘interactive’ mode for some Q-and-A Steven Johnson on Google, NotebookLM, and AI research A guide to getting started with smart lighting: When to use smart switches and smart bulbs Inovelli smart switches Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of a very specific kind of pest control. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am sitting here doing a project I've been putting off for years, which is going through my surprisingly enormous collection of sports cards to see if any of them are worth anything. They've just been sitting in a box. I really loved collecting them as a kid, and now I just have binders and binders full of them sitting around. I don't know if any of them are worth anything, but I found this app, thank you technology, that lets you just scan the front of the card and it'll immediately identify it

and tell you if it's worth anything. The app's called Ludex. I have no idea if it's legit, but so far it's told me all of the cards I have are essentially worthless. We'll see. I got a lot of them to go through.

All you need is one, right? Anyway, that's not we're here to talk about. We are going to do two things on the show today. First, I'm going to talk to Will Poor about a very strange adventure he had after getting home from vacation and discovering what was going on inside of his sonos. Then I'm going to talk to Andrew Marino about an adventure he's been on

trying to figure out whether all of these AI generated podcasts are actually up to something. Lots of fun stuff. We have a hotline question about smart lights, lots to do, lots to get to. All that is coming up in just a sec. But first, I've decided I'm going to scan these cards until I find one that is worth $20. That doesn't seem like too much to ask. $20. We're going for it. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct-taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together.

Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompts something like, Build Me a Revenue Dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it. On your company's data and your cloud with enterprise security built in.

Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skylar Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds.

Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Do you ever wonder what's in your lotion? If you look at the back of the bottle, it could contain more than a dozen ingredients. And they may not all be regulated. The threshold is so high that only 11 cosmetic ingredients have been restricted by the FDA since 1938.

This week on Explain It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. Will Poris here. Hi, Will. Hello, I'm back, back. It's been a minute. It has. I know you're back back. You were on parental leave for the last few months. I was. How are things? Things are good? Things are good. Yeah, we're sort of settling back into all of the normal life things. And I'm figuring out how to be a podcast producer again. So we'll see if this is coherent in any way. But it's like riding a bike. Well, so one of the things we've been looking forward to in you coming back is you are a person with like lots of. of ideas and thoughts about stuff we should do. And you and I, you and I overlap in some ways and also think really differently in some ways. So it's like, it's very fun to get to work with you on stuff. You came back just like a house on fire being like, I have to talk about ants and sonos.

So with, I just, I don't even want to wind this up for anybody. Like, let's just, you literally came in and you're like, I have a story about ants and so knows. Well, yeah, I came back and I was like, a thing happened to me. Yeah. And I need to tell you about it. And the more I think about it, I think I need to tell the world about it. This is what we're here for. So here we are. Yeah. I love that. That's basically the setup. I do have a story about ants and my sono speaker. I should say, I've told a few people the story and they've been beyond grossed out about it. So if you are a person who doesn't like bugs, who is squicked out about that kind of thing, this is maybe not the story for you. I don't know. How does that disclaimer hit you personally, David? I think that's good. I would say I'm like, as long as it's not about spiders that can jump, I'm cool.

Crawling is fine. Crawling is fine. As long as they are floorbound. But if something can leap, we have a problem. I think this might be borderline for you, but we're going to see how it goes. All right. We'll see. I'm going to go with you as far as I can, but I may suddenly disappear from this episode of the first.

Yeah, I'll just take it from there. All right. Sounds good. Okay. So the story in brief is that before my leave ended, we took a trip with the whole family for a week. So we were gone from the house for about a week. And the day we got back, we walked in the front door, and there's this little line of ants marching across our living room. This in of itself, not an unusual thing.

We're dealing with ants all the time. I recognize these particular ants specifically. They're like an eighth of an inch. They're really small. They come up through our floorboards. they find snacks in the kitchen. We have to keep the house super clean because we're always kind of playing

whack-a-mole with them. So we're like, eh, the ants are back. And I could see that they were headed to some dog kibble that we had left in the front closet. Yeah, I feel like you have pets and you have kids.

And so, like, ants are just sort of a fact of stuff. Yeah, this is, like, we are the best house on the block for the ants, like, bar none. So none of this was shocking. Until I followed the little ant trail, usually it just disappears into a house. a crack in the molding or something. But this time, it went across the living room and up onto this bench where we have these three big houseplants. So I was like, they found the houseplants. I guess

maybe they're like nesting in the dirt. This could be worse than I thought. But then I kept following the trail and it didn't go into any of the houseplants. It went underneath our Sono speaker, which is sitting right between two of the houseplants. And I was like, why is it disappearing into the speaker and I walk over and I lift up the speaker and just ant explosion. Oh no. Just hundreds, thousands. I don't know how to judge when all of a sudden like every, every surface is moving with ants. Too many. Too many. Eggs, the whole nine yards. I pick up the speaker and start running around with it like I'm holding something that's on fire. I don't want to set it down because there will just be ants wherever I put it,

but at the same time, I can feel ants like crawling up my arms as I run around with this thing. My wife is freaking out. My four-month-old baby is starting to fuss. My three-year-old is, like, playing with trains or whatever. He doesn't care. But it's bedlam. So the closest thing I could think of to do is just sprint out the back door with it.

So I go outside, I put it outside, I brush myself off, I walk in. We finish coming back from our vacation a little, scarred. I would just, I would dispute the idea that this is like problem solved. No, this is problem deferred. Yeah, this is very much like, let's put pause on this and deal with the kids. My wife, incidentally, is one of the people who is unbelievably grossed out by any aunt. So this is like a very traumatic moment for her. Fair. Anyway, that all happened. I came back a day later. Blood pressure was down. I had the wherewithal to attach a microphone to myself this time. And I brought the speaker into my garage to try to take it apart and see what was going on.

Okay. So now the screen, oh, should just slide right up. Oh, God, there's more. Oh, God. Oh, God. There's eggs. There's, okay, going outside, going outside, going outside, going outside, going outside, going outside. Oh, God.

Damn it. I'm opening it up. Underneath the case, there are still, oh, there are so many ants. That's tough. There were still a lot of ants. It was not great. Many, many more ants. Many, many more eggs.

It was still just a whole ecosystem. So I left it outside for another week. I just extended the problem and forgot. about it. Did it not occur to you to just throw this thing in the trash? I was still like, there was still a part of me that was like, I can save this speaker. I don't want to let go of the speaker. So no stuff is expensive. Yeah. Yeah, we've got two of them in the living room. It's the whole thing. So I came back to it a week later and I like fully took it apart because I couldn't just assume that it was ant free. I probably broke it in the course of taking it apart. I haven't tried

put it back together, but I may have lost the Sonos after all. But the ants are gone. So that is at least the end of that story and that speaker probably. Sure. Yeah. So I, that happened, time passed, but I couldn't get it out of my head. I needed to know what the heck was going on. In my head, the weird thing not being an ant was that the speaker was sitting next to all of these lovely house plants. It just seemed like ants like nature. Look at all this nature. Why did they choose the sonos out of all of these places to nest? Well, and it sounds like from the sound of the way you're describing it, it's not just like, I had a bunch of ants in my speakers.

It's like the ants of the neighborhood decided to move into my speakers. Yes, which feels different, right? Because if you were just like, I had some ants, I have questions. I'd be like, why? are everywhere. But this is like the ants as a group like got together and decided to be in your speaker. It was a different thing. It was different from the like, the answer back that we've experienced before. There was a meeting about it in which the ants picked your speaker. And we're like, this is the place. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So I got curious and I just Googled ants in Sonos.

And I've, it's the internet. I found stuff. Good reporting tactic. I found a lot of stuff. there are all these forum posts on the Sonos website with people with the exact same problem and in many times by exact model the Sonos Play 1 there are many Sonos Play 1 customers with Ant problems over the past few years

other stuff on Reddit like it's a thing and all of these forum posters are just sitting on these sites trading theories about what is going on some people thought there might be a glue in the electronics that they like. They thought the electronics could generate heat and maybe the ants like that.

There's this theory bouncing around that ants might be attracted to magnetic fields for some reason. Like, it was going places. Everyone was also trading a lot of theories about how to get rid of them because they, you know, someone suggested they'd just put the Sonos

in a freezer for a while, but people also don't want a speaker full of dead ants. Like, that's not a great solution either. If you want to get rid of the ants and also destroy your speaker, like that's an easier problem to solve. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of talk about how to maybe bully the ants out of the speakers with an air conditioner or a heater or a fan. Yell offensive things at them through the speaker.

Playing Ed Shearin through the speaker was one suggestion that got some traction. The zaniest one was for some reason people thought that maybe if you suspend the speakers over a of water, but provide a bridge away from the speaker. There's something about that setup that ants might not like. It's people just doing their best. Yeah, with not a ton of information and a speaker full of ants. So I set out to answer this question for myself, for the people on the internet. The two questions I had, one was just kind of how specific is this problem? Like, if you Google around, you can find lots of examples of ants getting into electronics. So my question is, is this a problem with electronics and bugs? Is this a problem with ants and speakers? Or is this

a problem with this kind of ant and this kind of speaker? Like, what scale of problem are we dealing with here? I'm trying to imagine where you even start on this. Because I like, I like that the place you go is like, am I the only person this has ever happened to? And you determine no. But I can't imagine there's like a copious body of scientific research on the ant qualities of, and I can't imagine, like, Sonos has thought about this particularly. Like, where do you start? No, Sonos did respond to a couple of the forum posts with basically

just like, try your home warranty. Like, this cannot be a Sonos problem. Like, we've refused to make this a Sonos problem. So I also just really wanted to know what to do about it. Like, this was such an escalation from the ant situations that I've dealt with in my house.

I all of a sudden start looking around at my like Roku box on the TV, the TV itself. I just felt like nothing was safe anymore. Yeah, you're like everything closed is like crawling with ants inside. Right. And if there is something specific to electronics, then like, yeah, this could go a lot of bad places. This officially just became my least favorite segment we've ever done. Like now I'm thinking about all the things. You're still here, but I can feel your mouse sort of like hovering over the exit box.

All right, we're coming back. I'm ready. I'm back in. All right. So we're going to learn some things. It's going to be fun. All right. The place that I started, which turned out to be really fruitful, was entomologists. I live in the Seattle area, so I reached out to the entomology department at Washington State University. I figured someone regional might have a good sense of local populations.

So I emailed the department. What does that cold email say? I mean, it was really straightforward. this is the best thing about doing my job is I can just send insane emails as if they're completely normal. Hi, I'm a technology journalist, and I have a bunch of ants in my speakers, and I was wondering if an entomologist could give me some tips about that. And true to form, they were like, absolutely. They put me in touch with a master's student that had just graduated named Sam Dilday. She specializes in what they call you social insects. These are insects like bees. and ants that have queens and casts and colonies

and that kind of social structure. She was super into the question. She had some experience with this kind of thing. And her first step with me was identifying the species of ant. It was like, let's figure out what kind of ant this is, and that'll tell us a bunch about why they went and did this thing to you. How does one identify a species of ant? Well, a bunch of different ways.

She had some suspicions just based on where I live and the story that I told, basically their behavior. She also asked for a close-up photo, so I got as macro a photo as I could of a dead one and sent them along to her. And then she suggested that I crushed some of them up and smell them. My God. Speaking of bullying the ants. I found a bunch of dead ones. Okay. I just shook the speaker out onto a piece of paper.

collected a bunch of dead ones. The trouble is I have a condition called anasmia. I basically have no sense of smell. This is a fun fact about me. So I was out of the running to perform this particular experiment. So the next best person was my already traumatized wife, Caroline, who was a real champ when I got a bunch of ant carcasses and asked her to smell them. Okay.

I'm just going to crush them with the back of the spoon, and then you're going to take a big sniff. and tell me if you smell anything. Okay. Okay, ready? It's not a bad smell, but I do smell a thing. What does it smell like? I will need a second sniff. Get it in there.

It's kind of lemony? Oh. Is that? I don't know. I don't know what they're supposed to smell like. Oh, God. Did I get a hand on my nose? Your poor wife.

My poor wife. Caroline, thank you. We're all grateful. of all the debuts to the verge cats for the science. Okay. So we have some evidence, though. We have a lemony smell.

We have a lemony smell. We have a photo. We have behavior. We have a lot. So I sort of collated all of that and finally called Sam up on the phone to talk about it. She got like a citrusy lemony smell.

Does that track with your experience? You know, everyone smells something different. Oh. The smell. that people reference a lot is rotten coconut or blue cheese. Okay, that's different than lemons. Yeah, that is very different than lemons. I think it almost smells like turpentine. So based on the story, the behavior, the description, the photo, the fact that there was a smell, even if it wasn't the most expected one, all of this made Sam really confident that we were

dealing with something called the odorous house aunt, or oha. O-H-A. Okay. Is that, like, when I think of an ant, is that the ant I'm thinking of? Do you know what I mean? It's like, everybody has, like, the ant in their house. Is this that ant? I think it depends.

I think there's a really good chance that if it's a really small ant that is constantly annoying you in your house, there's a good chance that it's an O-Ha. Because they're native to North America. They're found all over the continent. They're very common. There are other ants that get confused with O-HAs, but this is a really common one. they live, like I said, they're these social creatures, they live in really big colonies with a few queens and thousands and thousands of workers that run all over the place and do

cooperative colony things. They're super, super common in homes, hence the name. And they're really interesting to entomologists right now because in North America, they're undergoing this kind of mysterious shift. Odors' house ants in their natural environment, which is in a wooded areas, they usually will only have one, maybe a handful of queens, very small colonies. And what we've seen in the last 10 or 15 years is that in urban environments, the odorous house sand starts kind of changing how it reacts. So our nests are now made up of hundreds of thousands of queens and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of workers. in these urban environments. So that's part of what makes them so difficult to treat is just the size of them.

And it's not just one single nest that they're staying in. It's multiple interconnected super colonies that are forming in your backyard, in your neighbor's backyard, in your neighbor's neighbor's backyard, pretty much just entrenching a whole area in a cooperative nest, which is crazy, very interesting. So that's all kind of a mystery. What we do know is that they just have a lot of reasons to like suburban or urban areas. There's human food and pet food all over the place, toddler crumbs, nice heated homes, and then homes have all these nice little nooks and crannies inside to live. If you can think of a house in your basement and your kitchen and your bathrooms, those are ideal spots for our odorous house. sand. They want to live there just as much as we do. They find it just as nice.

So knowing what Sam knows about Ojas, she was not remotely surprised about this story that I told her. I mean, this is the calling card of odorous house ants is that they seem to just appear one day. And it's because they are so transient about every two weeks they are constantly moving their nests. And unlike other ants that will find the food source, take bits of it, bring it back to the nest for distributing. Ohas don't do that. They don't take the food to the brood. They take the brood to the food. The speaker is situated in a perfect place that they can easily get to the dog food in your closet, scraps in the kitchen.

So they just really found this one place and we're like, this is perfect. And you say that it took you about a week for them to move, and that's on brand. I don't know if it rained before or during that time when you were gone, but rain is definitely one of those that elicits them wanting to move around. And Seattle being one of the wettest places out there. All the time, yeah. So that might be constantly sort of scrambling them. Exactly. So weather, food resources, and also just, just. the seasons as well. March is when everything is coming to life. It's when we're getting out and stretching our legs and it's the same with our aunts. Those little ladies are trying to find new homes and they're trying to expand their numbers while the weather's nice and the resources are available. So I feel like this explains why they're around, like sort of why they'd show up at all.

but have we answered yet why they would pick a speaker? Or I guess more specifically, a Sonos play one? I really hope this mystery ends with some play one specific stuff. But it does feel like I get it, but do we know the speaker bit yet? We have not gotten to the speaker bit yet, but here we go. Here's the speaker bit. I did see a bunch of people having the same problem with that exact speaker. Really?

And, yes. And, you know, if I put on my aunt glasses and look at things as if I were a worker. Please, this is exactly what I need. That is the perfect housing, is that speaker. What, tell me everything. What, like, you, the aunt, why is the seventh heaven for you when you, like, discover a Sonos play one? Well, as I'm looking at it, and when you were pulling apart, it has a lot of crevices in it. It had a lot of little spaces where, as an ant, I would be happy to place a bunch of brood in there, make sure it's nice and moist in there for them, it's easy to climate control. It's a dark color. So if the sun is hitting it, it's going to warm it up inside there, make it nice and like tropical for me. That's perfect.

That's seventh heaven to me. The thing that I realized after learning all this is I think the reason the Sonos made no sense for me as a human for an ant colony was because I picture. I picture ant's digging tunnels and building nest? I think I was thinking about ant farm ants. Same. And that's just not Ojas. That's just not their behavior. They don't build their own extensive nests.

They look for spaces that just work for them. They look for confined, protected spots, and they just go to town. So the inside of a speaker is great for them. They also, in your house, love the voids between walls. They love the little spaces inside power outlets. They like little crevices around water pipes. I've heard stories of people coming back from the weekend and finding odorous al-Santh colonies underneath their calculator at work.

There was another thing, though, that Sam really zeroed in on about this specific Sonos speaker and others that are like it. I notice that there's some speakers that have, like, the fabric that's over the speaker head. This one doesn't. This one has those tiny little holes. It's got a little metal grill, yeah. Those are perfect size for me. That is an entrance to the lobby.

You know, that was made for me to enter. So those ants are seeing this tiny crevice, and they're seeing the warmth in there, and the electricity. So the electricity is part. I honestly, like of all the crackpot theories you described at the top, this sounded like the most crackpot of the crackpot theories. And you're telling me the electricity, is real? Same. I was completely skeptical that there was something like about the magnetic fields and

insects. It just seemed like totally out of left field. But Sam had thoughts on that. It hasn't been looked at specifically in Ojas, but it has been looked at in other ant species where they are actually attracted to magnetic fields or the voltage. There's a couple of different trains a thought when it comes to that. One, with the electricity, there's a slight heat increase. So some ants might be perceiving it as a slightly warmer environment. There's also some evidence that suggests with ants get into electronics, they're more likely to get shocked. And when they get shocked, they've released a pheromone. And that pheromone is then attracting more ants. Those ants are more likely going to get shocked and they're going to release the pharmon that's going to attract even more ants,

and it's a vicious cycle. And so it's this pharmon that's being released that's making this behavior to say, come here, come here. But it's an interesting thing. And it's only been looked at in a couple of studies about what is it. And they did see an increase in attractiveness as the voltage increased. Gotcha. So they're noticing an attraction to electricity and the The possible reasons for that are the heat, the shockings. Or a third thing. Like, they could be picking up on a magnetic field that is eliciting some kind of response that we don't understand. You know, I'm not an aunt.

I'm an aunt person, but I can't necessarily think exactly like an ant. So there could be some third reason behind this. I wonder if Sam frequently has to remind herself that she's not an ant. That seems like the kind of thing that is an entomologist, you every once in a while have to be like, it is true, I'm not an ant. She says that sort of reminding you, but also sort of reminding herself. You know what I mean? Yeah, well, she kind of went back and forth between, well, I'm not an aunt, but if I were an ant,

in a way that you really felt like she was inhabiting this position. Yeah. So is this satisfying to you? Like, do you feel like this is sort of the complete answer? It feels like, I understand now why they might pick your speaker in particular. But does it feel like you've gotten all the way to the end of the answer? It kind of did. Yeah, I honestly wasn't expecting to get quite this far.

But after talking to Sam, it felt like, yes, it is these specific ants that are doing this. And this specific speaker definitely has some traits that they like. So I don't, to me, it really does explain all of those forum posts on the Sona's website. Like, it's, it's not just this speaker. There's all kinds of electronics that have grills and little cubbies and are, you know, have magnetic fields. But this speaker of mine definitely ticks all of these different boxes for the ants. Yeah, it's kind of the, it's like the perfect storm for ant attraction, where it's like, absolutely. Lots of electronics do sort of one or two of the things you just described, but the play

one is sort of the perfect center of the Venn diagram of all the things that those ants like to live in. Exactly. And so that's the thing that just completely flipped my thinking 108 degrees from like, of all the places, why the Sonos to like, oh yeah, no, it would be the Sonos. So you

destroyed your play one, we think. I'm very curious to know when you put it back together how it goes. Yeah, I'll follow up with that, but I don't have my hopes. It was done sort of in a fit of mania. Yeah, but knowing what you know now, outside of full panic, heave the thing into the yard, what would you do? Like for all the people who are on these forums trying to figure it out, what is the right answer? How do you get the ants out?

So it turns out, in my own panic, I was kind of on the right track. Well, so let's talk about getting them out. I think I might have lucked into a solution. But if someone came to you and said, my speaker is full of ants, what would you tell them to do? I think you did the right thing. You got them out of your house and gave them time to move all their brood out. You just have made it an environment that's not what they want anymore. So, I mean, basically, the advice is leverage that fact that we learned that they move around pretty regularly anyway.

Just move the nest outside and wait for them to just wander off. If you can't move the nest, then you're in kind of ant trap territory or calling in a profession. or something like that. As for all of those other ideas in the forum, San said that trying to bully them out with heat and cold is kind of tricky because they're just so resilient. Like, she told me this story about how the thermostat and her lab went haywire one weekend

and just cooked her whole lab at, like, 100 plus degrees a weekend. And she came back, and all of her ant colonies were dead except for the Ohas, which were just shugging along. So you might have a hard time with extreme temperatures with them specifically. Fair enough. And she did not know what to make of the bucket of water trick. That is just going to be the last enduring mystery of this story. So the electricity theorists are going to be unbearable on these forums now, is what I'm hearing.

Yeah. Yeah, we just added a lot of fuel to that. Can you just play really loud music? Like, my immediate instinct was just like put on something bassy, turn it up to 100, and see if you can just like bounce them out of the speaker. Did you ask Sam about this? I did. And the answer is maybe.

Like, just walk it outside and leave it alone is the easiest thing to do. But she got really curious about all these options. And she thought that that might bother them. Because it turns out that these ants communicate via sound themselves. They rub little parts of their ant bodies together to talk to each other. And so a whole bunch of vibrations from the speaker might interfere with that. And it might piss them off enough that they would just give up and leave. So that's a real possibility, too.

She got really into the idea of further testing of speakers and ants. So I really think I might have accidentally inspired like a PhD thesis in her. Which genre of music most repels ants is a thing I very much look forward to reading. So that was sort of the rundown of all of the theories. She also just gave me a bunch of Aunt 101 kind of tips to keep ants from getting into my house in the first place. so that I'm not playing whack-a-mole with the colonies once they're in there, just basic prevention. Probably the best strategy. Yeah.

But, okay, do you know what I keep thinking about here this whole time? As soon as you said the cubbies and the grill and the mesh of the play one, I just keep sitting here being like, there's going to be some Sonos designer who is sitting there listening to this, being like, oh, my God, do I have to add ant colony habitability to my, like, design checklist the next time I make a speaker? like do you have advice, did Sam have advice for Sonos on how to solve this clearly very real problem? Well, I wanted to ask Sonos these questions. Like, my first stop was going to be Sonos because I had to know, I don't know, there's a lot of people that keep their speakers outside on patios and shows like that. And after this happened to me, I was like, is there a designer at Sonos somewhere that is asking ant infestation questions about the design of these speakers? So I got in touch with them. They were very polite. They said, know very firmly two times about participating. I was still very curious, so I emailed a bunch of other speaker companies because I figured a lot of them would be dealing with a similar question.

All knows were non-responses from them. I think I'm just creating small panics on comms teams around the speaker industry. I can guarantee you that somewhere there has been a meeting about the ant infestations over the last week. And if that's not impact journalism, I don't know I just, I want to be an aunt on the wall in one of those meetings. I just, I just want to know, but we may never know. But like I said, I think I really inspired Sam to look into this more. I would love to do an experiment where I had a bunch of these speakers and I could have them in different environments and have some that are plugged in and some aren't to see if it's the magnetism. So I'd love to do an experiment like this. Well, I guess my last question is any advice for Sonos on making speakers that ants might not be as attracted to? I think that they should switch businesses and start making ant homes. They're really good at that. They're just they're accidentally really, really good at this. They're accidentally really good.

Look, I'm just saying Sonos tried headphones that didn't really work. They were going to do set-top boxes. They canceled that. there might be a straighter line from speakers to Anne Holmes than from speakers to any of that other stuff. They've done all the hard work already. They've got this. Just start selling it at PetSmart. You're good to go. Ask the ants.

Dozens of colonies of ants in speakers can't be wrong. They're on to something. I love it. So this story for you started in the best possible way, which is just like a reporter staring at a mystery trying to figure it out. I feel like you 100% of this mystery. You solved it. I'm giving myself full points.

I feel good. I don't feel good about my sonos, but I feel good about everything else. This was going to be the last question I asked you. Has it changed how you think about speakers? Like, are you looking at your speaker placement in your house differently now knowing what you know? I am looking at all of my electronics differently. I will say that because it did completely invert my thinking around what ants want. And we're still going to be dealing with these ants seasonally forever.

and it's a little ominous. It's a little bit of a burden of knowledge situation. Because like you said, I look at my Roku now and all I can think of are the tiny little cubbies inside of it. And that's a weird thing to think about when you're looking at your Roku. But here I am. Yeah, if you're watching or listening to this, my advice is just forget all of this. Just it's, it don't look.

Ignorance is bliss. Everything's probably fine. You all shouldn't have listened to this is basically the takeaway. Yeah, but if you find a bunch of ants, now you know what to do. And if you don't see them, don't go looking, and everything will probably be fine. And join the Sonos user forums. It's a fun time. I'm going to go post a few things.

Yeah, you've got answers for people. Yeah, I need to go back and be the conquering hero. Exactly. It's time that the people knew. Yeah. All right, we've got to take a break, and then we're going to come back, and we're going to talk about podcasts, specifically AI-generated podcasts. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify.

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Hi, Andrew. Hi, David. You have been making podcasts for a very long time and then recently decided to make a very weird and slightly unnerving kind of podcast. Yes, with artificial intelligence. Yeah, so this one I'm actually curious to hear the backstory of for you

because I think this is the sort of thing that a lot of people who have made podcasts professionally get really kind of squirly and itchy about. But you were just like, I'm going all in. I'm going to get weird with AI podcasts. Why did you get into this in the first place? Yeah, the real draw to me was you can upload any kind of document to it, and it will take it and turn it into two robots talking to each other. So, like, my immediate thought about this was, what if I upload stereo instructions as kind of like a funny gag, but also, like, thinking of stuff I wouldn't want to read and maybe an easier way to understand something.

it's such a novelty that I think that's initially where I was going. But yeah, there's actually some interesting use cases for it. Yeah, talk me through that a little bit. And I'm curious how you think about this as somebody who has been making podcasts for a long time. I think because the sort of obvious step one is like stereo instructions is a good example, right? I have this giant document that is full of technical information that I don't want to read. Right. And for years, the step was just have something read.

document to you, right? And there are just lots of people who learn better that way, who rather than reading something, you hear something, and that is a better learning tool for lots of people. That's very straightforward, right? This is something different. The idea of, like, we're going to, we're going to not read the thing to you, but we're going to talk about the thing, is both sort of in that same line, but also just a very different proposition for, like, how to learn information. Yes. So I have realized from listening to a bunch of these how much easier it is to understand something when it's a lot more casual and there's a lot more space between sentences and kind of breathing a little bit between topics. I just want to play a clip and you can kind of understand what this is sounding like and what it's trying to mimic. That's okay. Yeah. Okay, get this. Imagine a world.

where like every website you go to starts charging robots to access it. Oh, wow. And smart homes still can't even make us a decent cup of coffee. Yeah, okay. So there's like space between each phrase and there's the other host is like commenting back. And you kind of like take a second to digest what that last sentence was versus sometimes when I read a person reading straight text. You kind of forget what the last paragraph was about or you weren't paying attention closely. I realized that podcast actually is great for listening in the background because it does move really slowly and helps you still grasp what they're talking about without paying super close attention.

So as you listen to something like that, what do you like I always think about the training data with something like this. Like what's what are these being trained to sound like, do you think? Yeah, so I talked to the director of product, Simon Tokomini, at a notebook LM. And he was saying that, like, a lot of this was they got two people whose voices you're hearing in those notebook LM pieces to just riff in a studio for a long period of time. Oh, interesting. He said one of the things they did was just give them a picture and just like describe to each other what's in the picture. So you can hear a lot of stuff within these generative podcasts that were probably picked up over time in these recordings. That's fascinating.

How do you mimic a podcast without making a podcast? It's such a mind-bending exercise. That's very fun to think about. Yeah, yeah. There's moments where I've listened to these audio overviews where they tossed to a break. As we navigate this crazy, ever-evolving tech landscape, Couldn't have said it better myself. Right.

So let's take a quick break and then we'll be back to explore some of the other intriguing details from the Verges review. Sounds good. Stay tuned. There's no need for that at all. But that was, you know, probably over time, that's what this tool was gathering. And also there's probably a lot of other like podcasts that Gemini was had been trained on, which, you know, obviously this uses Google's Gemini as well. Okay. So take me through your research process a little bit. I think part of what I'm curious about on this one is like what you even decide to upload to test how something like this can be used. What did you, what did you feed into the audio overview system? Yeah. So there's different things you can feed in. Like you can link your Google Drive right up to it. So any document that's in your Google Drive is pretty easy to add. Any text audio, any link for like a website. and YouTube.

So YouTube, it will just grab the transcript basically from the video and turn that into a summarization. So what I was trying to do was figure out what you can actually get from adding a bunch of different sources together. So like a YouTube video, just putting one on YouTube video, I don't think is a great way of using this. But it's like a YouTube video and some notes that you took and recording of a meeting and like a PDF of something like combining all that stuff together and then turning it into an overview or just whatever you want to do with the notebook like take notes and ask it questions and all that. That was the most useful. And I thought that was like just a great way of researching and studying for something. Yeah, I think that's, I mean, that's kind of the notebook LM pitch in general. and I think it makes a lot of sense.

I am curious, though, about the, if you just feed it one YouTube link, what do you get back? Like a podcast about a YouTube video, do they just describe the YouTube video? Yes. So I uploaded the Verges iPhone 16 Pro review. Okay.

And it kind of just went through all the points of the video. So the video was 22 minutes, and it made it into a 20-minute podcast. So it's not really something that, like, you could have just listened to the YouTube video. you know. So it doesn't really translate that well, but if you upload maybe a bunch of iPhone 16 pro reviews and you kind of get a summarization of all these different takes on the phone,

right. Maybe that's more useful. But so, okay, so walk me through. Let's start on the good side. What, what did you, what did you try that sort of worked for you, that you were like, okay, this is a, this is a real useful or interesting thing that is coming out of this whole process? Yeah, like I said, instruction manuals, like the stereo receiver, I recently came across an Ibo, original Ibo dog robot. There's a pretty long instruction manual, and I just uploaded that PDF to kind of just I can listen to on my commute or something to understand how that works. A robot with moods, that's pretty wild for the early 2000s. It really was ambitious, and you could still interact, pad its head sensor, show at the ball, or maybe colors that had learned to light. That thing worked pretty well.

The other one is I'm trying to get my drone pilots license. So notebook Elm has this tool called Discover where you can just type into it. I want drone license tutorial. And it will pull up a bunch of stuff from the internet that is related to that. And you can check off boxes of which source you want to use to put into the notebook. So you can really use it as Google and then input those links into your notebook and turn that into a podcast or whatever. So like I wanted to read all these different tutorials about how to get my drone pilot's license. And I put all that, all those different sources, a YouTube video, a PDF, a website.

And that kind of took all the stuff maybe that there's some stuff that they're all saying similarly. and then some stuff you grab from different sources that might help better than others. Give me a sense of what that sounds like. I'm just trying to figure out because, you know, again, you don't want it to read you the instructions for the robot or your stereo or whatever.

But I also feel like them talking about instructions without giving me the instructions is not quite the right answer either. So like what does this actually sort of come out sounding like when you feed something like this in? Yeah, I'll share what the stereo instructions sound like, which is like pretty useful here. Phono inputs and a ground screw.

For your turntable. Yeah. But only if your turntable doesn't have its own built-in phonop. Right. If it does, use a regular analog input instead. Correct. And don't forget that MMMC switch we mentioned earlier needs to match your turntable's cartridge type.

So like out of context, this is kind of silly and you don't really know what they're talking about. But when you're listening to the whole thing, like they do go into each thing. And it's not just they're talking about. So this is a PDF of. the stereo manual and like gives through a bunch of these different options like this is probably actually better if you just want to know how do I do this on the stereo and you just type to it or you can ask the podcast a question well you can ask the podcast a question like like it's like

a call-in show like you can you can actually stop the hosts and tell them you have questions yes within the notebook lm interface there is a interactive mode which you can basically join the discussion. Like, while they're talking, they'll be like, oh, hey, what's up? So you've just, like, barged into the studio while they're recording, and you're like, I have something to say. Yes, totally. Is it to move production back? Good point.

Apple's preemptive shipment of that volume. Yep. Go on. Can we skip to the lightning round on AI? You know what? Absolutely. Sounds like you're eager to dive into the world of artificial intelligence. Let's do it. We were just about to wrap up our initial look at the terrace anyway.

Exactly. So without further ado, let's jump right into that AI lightning around. First up, we saw that meta was apparently caught doing some interesting things. And then we'll get back to the rest of the show and be like, anyway. Oh, okay. So you can't sort of right turn the whole thing, but you can just, you can kind of pop your head in and be like, oh, but what about? And then they'll get back to work. Yes, there are like prompts you can kind of do when you generate to be like, focus on this topic or make this topic. shorter or, you know, I only want this amount of time to listen to this. Got it. Okay.

One thing I know you tried that I'm very curious about is recipes because I think this is one thing. Audio recipes to me strike me as potentially a very good idea. Okay. You know, in a way that is weird, right? Because it's like, I use an app that I'm like checking on my phone 100,000 times while I'm cooking. And the idea of like just somebody in my ear sort of talking me through the process as I'm

cooking seems very cool. complicated, right? Like, you can't make a 20-minute podcast that, like, perfectly matches everything that I'm doing. But it does seem like there's something to, like, you could make a fun cooking show recipe by recipe that is actually kind of instructional if this really works.

So I went from thinking this is a totally silly version of it to thinking maybe there's something here. What did you find? Yeah, I was real, someone on the team suggested we upload some recipes to it to see how it would do. And I didn't feel like it was, something I could follow along with while cooking. And also, like, in podcast fashion, it took, like, way too long to get to the point of the conversation. Now, let me play you a clip I got from

this honey lemon chicken recipe. But the thing is, we're not just going to, like, read out the ingredients and call it a day right. We're going to try to figure out why this particular approach, and it's got, like, a 4.7 star rating, by the way. Yeah, pretty solid. Right. So we're going to figure out why this approach is so popular. And, and it's got a four point. And it's got a four point. And it's and what we can learn from it, even if we're not, you know, planning on cooking anytime soon. Absolutely. I love so much that they're like, no, no, no, no, we're not going to tell you about the recipe. You uploaded a recipe?

We're not going to tell you about the recipe. We're going to talk about that. Right. So eventually it does get to like what you do, what the ingredients are. But it was like, let's speak to the power of why this honey lemon chicken is so popular. And it's like, I don't really want to know that. I just want to get to the points. There may be a world in the future where it's like, all right,

Now you're going to do this. Let me know when you're done, and I'll get to the next thing. This does sort of neatly map to everything wrong with recipe sites on the internet, right? The thing where you open a recipe webpage and you're like, I would just like to see the recipe. And they're like, first, how about 2,000 words about my life and all of my thoughts about honey chicken and everything that's happening to me right now? And then way down the page after some ads and videos, we'll get to the recipe. It's like they're just making the podcast version of that. Oh, my gosh.

And what I mentioned about how they tossed to a break. Like, there's a world where maybe, like, they want to start monetizing these. And when you generate a honey lemon chicken recipe, there's like, all right, let's get to a break before we get into the ingredients. And it just plays an ad or something like that. Yeah, that's, that's super interesting. Did you test this with podcasts? Like, I know you did YouTube videos, but, like, can you put a podcast in here and it'll make a podcast about the podcast? Yes.

Someone suggested putting, like, a four-hour Joe Rogan podcast into it to generate, you know, a 20-minute summary. It's basically like a meta-podcast. Like, I'm going to make a podcast about your podcast. Yes. We did try a scenario where we uploaded pre-production documents from our own podcasts and made them into a podcast and compared to how we made them. Oh, interesting.

So Decoder with Neely Patel, they have like a nice pre-production document with questions, topics, guest bios, and a lot of relevant links and all that stuff. So I uploaded that to Notebook LM and it generated a podcast of that discussion. I made one from an episode about EVs that Nilai and Andy Hawkins from The Verge talked about. But it didn't have, you didn't upload the actual finished podcast, just the pre-production documents. Yeah, yeah. I wanted to see how it worked compared to how we end up making the show. show. Obviously, you don't get enough of it because you don't have Neelah, you don't have Andy,

but it like did a pretty, it did a pretty impressive job of like taking all these points and like going through them all. But it was more just like how you would do it if you just wanted to get the information for a research paper or something like that. It wasn't like going to break down these topics and what they mean and like what are these questions that unfold because of these news things, much like the Vergecast. We uploaded a rundown from the Vergecast, which is just a lot of links to stuff on the verge. That's really interesting because that's,

like, the Decoder rundown you described is full of like information and clues and hints about what's interesting and has some real structure. The Friday Vergecast rundown is just, I mean, it's just like 100 links in a Google Doc. And that's the entirety of the prep doc. Yes. So when you listen to that audio overview of a VergeCast rundown, you quickly learn that it cannot open hyperlinks and that it is just reading the headlines and making some kind of generic takes about what that means.

So it's experiencing the world like the way people who just scroll really fast through like their Facebook feed do. Yeah. Here's a clip from it about the framework laptop. And then there's framework, the laptop. company. Ah, the modular laptop folks. Them. They actually had to stop selling some of their more affordable laptops, experienced order delays. Because of the tariffs. Yeah, and even briefly raised and then lowered their prices because of the tariffs.

It just sounds incredibly volatile for them. That really underscores the immediate disruption, the instability that tariffs can inject into supply chains and pricing strategies. Total chaos seems like. The fact that they had to make such rapid adjustments reflects the real-time pressures businesses are under. So you can tell like all it's doing is just seeing that headline in adding it to context of the world, which it does have from Gemini a little bit. There was another one where I asked about a Sony Bravia TV from a headline.

I actually asked it like, what is the model of that TV in it didn't know? Because it wasn't in the headline. Okay. Yeah, that's interesting one. Like I can even hear they're mentioning in there, you know, that they raised and then lowered the prices very quickly. And literally the headline we had in that document is framework raised prices and then unraised them an hour later because of Trump. Like, it's just it said all those words in a slightly different order again. But again, like that, that was all right.

I don't know that that was like good or thoughtful, but it was right. You sent me a big chunk of one of these. And my memory of listening to it was that there are a bunch of things that got sort of flatly wrong. all for sort of understandable reasons, which I thought was interesting. Like at least there is absolutely, we should say, potential for these things to just completely make things up

out of absolutely nowhere. And I'm curious if you had that experience. But at least in the one that I heard, there were a bunch of things that it just kind of whiffed on making connections between or made connections that are wrong and misread a headline or something. But in every single case,

I could figure out where it was getting the wrong information from. which I thought was really interesting. And it's like, okay, this thing is making a lot of mistakes, but I can trace the mistakes. Most people wouldn't, right? Which is like why this is dangerous. I had also made this podcast that it was trying to make. So like I knew the stuff that was talking about.

But so that, but it does just very confidently get things wrong without telling you anything about sort of where it's coming from. Yes. I uploaded some notes from a podcast I was working on. And it's had some. the people I talked to in the document, but not any quotes or anything. And when I put it in notebook alum, the audio overview is just kind of made up quotes that the people said.

Like attributed to these people? Yes. Oh, my gosh. So that is just made up. Like, they just made that up. Yeah. That's really bad. Yeah. Luckily, it was only about salad dressing, but like, you can imagine this could be serious. Yeah. I mean, and this is like, that's the thing with all of this stuff, right? And so many of these tools are like, it's the, it's the, It's the glue on pizza in Google, right? Some of this stuff, you can see where it comes from. Some of it is just being purely hallucinated by these tools that have been taught to have answers, even when no answers are available.

Like, this is a thing a lot of these have been through, right? Where they will go and they will, they are asked for information that they don't have, and so they will fabricate it. And that is the wrong outcome. But with something like this where, like, it would be a bad version of an audio overview for it to just 10 times in 20 minutes be like, wait, really know anything about that, so let's move on. And so that tension feels so, so real to me in a way that even Notebook L.M in general has done a good job of citing its sources pretty aggressively,

and it'll point you to the thing it's talking about in all of the different documents. And it is pretty thoughtful in that way. You can't do that with audio. You just can't. Like, if you are constantly referencing the name of your source for every single thing that you say, that's bad podcast. And it's a problem. Yeah. And also, in the... the interactive mode, you can try to correct the podcast host, and maybe it will learn that and put it in some bank or something. But no, it doesn't work like that. The iPhone 16 review, it kept referring to Neli as Nelly and calling him her and she. Okay, so Nelly Patel from the Verge reviewed this. Exactly. And she brings a really interesting perspective, doesn't she?

Oh, yeah, uh-huh. The host is Nelai Patel and his pronouns are he, him. Oh, that's an interesting question. You know, it's easy to make a sum. Based on what we've seen and heard. But actually, Nellie Patel uses she her pronouns. Thanks for pointing that out. It's good to be accurate. Absolutely. Thanks for keeping us on our toes.

So getting back to Neely's review. She wrote the review. Poor Neelai. Nealai, I have, I've known Nealai a long time, and that man has had his name mispronounced every way you possibly could. But Nellie, she, her is a tough beat for Nelai Patel. So what does that make you think as a, consumer of this stuff. I mean, I think you've now done the research to know that, like,

there is something that works about this kind of thing for certain kinds of information. But is there that thing in your brain that's like, okay, this is giving me stereo instructions even or like information about a recipe. And I don't know if I should completely trust it. And by the time I have to pull out my phone to fact check this podcast, what am I doing here? Yeah, yeah. I think it's like low-stakes stuff. I think like really if you want to get the most of notebook at a lamb, I think it's more useful. to just be typing to it and asking you questions about the sources. The audio overviews is interesting.

Maybe it's just some people just like, that's the way they can learn and that's the way they want to do it. And I know they're going to have more voices. If you get tired of those voices, there's going to be more personas they call it. So I think in the future is going to get better. It's going to be hard to see like how much it is actually improving as far as accuracy goes. Yeah. Yeah, I think the way I have always done. thought about AI is like I treat it like I treat Wikipedia in a certain sense. And I actually,

I would argue Wikipedia is in many ways a more trustworthy source. But in the same sense that like I wouldn't, I wouldn't take anything I read on Wikipedia and then like submit it as professional work or swear to it under oath or like bet my life on anything that I read on Wikipedia. Do you know what I mean? But it's like in terms of going from I don't know something about this to, I now kind of know something about this. It tends to work. And as long as the requirement is not that I be an expert with 100% correct knowledge, fine, right? But I'm like, I was looking at up this morning. We were watching Mulan because my son is home from daycare this week and we have watched Mulan 250 times.

And it was like, who is that that's singing this song? That voice sounds kind of familiar. That is information that both AI and Wikipedia are well equipped to have and find and give to me. And also, if it's wrong, the world will not end. And so for the stuff at the bottom of that pyramid, I'm like, go nuts. Listen to the audio podcast about the Moulon singer and enjoy the next 20 minutes of your life. Anything above that, I think, like, real skepticism becomes very important. Yeah. But it's so hard because these are like, the thing that has amazed me, and I'm curious if this has been your experience too, is how quickly I came to listen to these hosts as if they were people. Like, I've made a lot of podcasts, and so I'm, like, editing their podcast in my mind as I'm going, which makes me realize I'm producing this thing like I'm producing people. And that was sort of alarming.

Yeah. After a while, I do get sick of the host, to be honest. Yeah. I just like, I don't, I'm sick of these people. I don't want to listen to them anymore. They make too many puns. There's too many metaphors. They do. What have you learned about, like, podcast tropes? Because I feel like this would teach you every, all the bad habits that every podcaster has are like, boiled into this. What have you learned about being a podcast producer? Yeah, like I said, like the ums actually might do something, might help. But yeah, no, the tropes of like, let's unpack this. It really speaks to the power of, uh, that kind of stuff is like, oh my gosh, I can't, I'm, uh, I'm never using those phrases ever again. They start like every episode by being like, let's do a deep dive. And I just now, deep dive is like on the list of corporate jargon that I'm just like, I can't hear it without wanting to leap out of a window anymore.

Yeah. Simon Tokamine from Notebook Elam mentioned that he heard some other podcasts saying stuff that he noticed in Notebook LM first. Like, oh, that's the million dollar question. I don't know. I don't know. I think that's just a podcast he phrased. Yeah, I don't think he gets credit from a million dollar question.

I don't think so. I think that one's been around. But, like, you can see, like, now you're already like, they're sounding. the same, right? Totally. Yeah. And I'm going to be deep in my head about not sounding like notebook LM. It's like there was that thing going around, not that long ago, where everybody was talking about the, the, the, the, how you know it's chat GPD is when there's M dashes. I'm like, no, I love M dashes. I write with M dashes all the time. I write with fewer M dashes now. Yeah, yeah, right. Consciously, I'm like, I don't want to sound like chat GPT. I have to not use

m dashes. Totally. The more we see of all this artificial stuff online, is like the more you appreciate stuff humans make. And the more like maybe we are making better stuff now because we see like how boring or uncreative AI can be. And like maybe that's like we always talk about competition on the verge cast. Like what if humans are now competing with AI and now humans are just going to be better because of what AI is? I'll take it.

That's an okay outcome. I think the last question I keep thinking about with this is I can see it as a tool for learning things, right? Like in a sort of deliberate, I need to acquire this information kind of way. And I think the feedback we've gotten so far in the video suggests that there are people who are using it that way

that are like, this is just a way that I absorb information better, and that's great. But another thing podcasts are for a lot of people is just pure entertainment. It's like a fun and interesting and valuable way to spend your time hanging out with people.

Do you see any of this ever getting there? Like, can these hosts ever be so fun to listen to that you don't even really care what they're talking about? I think the only thing is the interactive mode that really takes it another level. Because you can't call into the Vergecast whenever you're listening to it and ask the hosa question. Like, you can do that with this. You're not getting, like, I don't think people are going to have a parissocial relationship with these two AI hosts. So you don't get a lot of that. It is through they, I suggest, that they might.

We don't know. But there is something to that where, like, I know that Notebook Alama is developing an app or they're going to release an app. And that is like, if I'm on my phone and I have the app and I'm just listening to the podcast and I can just be like, oh, hey, can you take that again? Or what is that? Can you explain more about this thing? That's actually, like, pretty useful. Yeah, it makes sense. And I think, like, I want to see the version of this that is just like two dudes shooting the shit about sports, which is like a lot of the podcasts I listen to just to sort of zone out while I'm walking the dog or whatever.

And in a way, that kind of stuff is sort of replicable. We have a lot of data of it. In a certain way, it's like, it doesn't require all that much like true information. It's just kind of a hang. Yeah. And people are talking to the voice modes of the. these assistants that way. Like, it both seems totally implausible to me that it might just be fun to listen to this for an hour, but also seems like maybe we're closer to that than I'm giving it

credit for. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. I was given an example that someone who really likes one of the Real Housewives shows did not have anyone to talk to about it. It just wanted to listen to some two people talking about it on the podcast. And like, I think there's a lot of examples of like sports and stuff that there's like thousands of podcasts that do this. But maybe something like super niche, like maybe it's like high school football team of your hometown or something like that. And you're just feeding all that information to it. And like no one's going to be doing a podcast about that. That could be useful. Yeah, I like that idea. Super niche podcasts is a thing I would like to see more of in the world in general. Yes, yes. Yeah. Particularly I would prefer it more from people.

But yeah. Yeah. I'll take what I can get. All right, Andrew, this is very fun. Thank you for doing this work. All right, we've got to take a break, and then we're going to do a question from the first cast hotline. Andrew, thanks, buddy. Thank you.

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And as always, we have smart home questions. Today is about lighting, and I bet you can guess who is here with me to answer it. But before we get to that, here's the question. Hello, Virchcast Hotline. This is Sean in Berkeley, California. Long-time listener, first-time caller. Today I'm calling about smart home lighting. We are about to embark on a garage remodel project,

converting it to a finished room, and I'll have the opportunity to start from the ground up on wiring and lighting. We are an iOS HomeKit household, and at primarily Phillips hue lighting, though recently we did add a couple of Lutron Caseta smart wall switches. The garage room we used as a guest room, workout space, teenager, hangout. So I would like a decent white light option, but also fun color-changing stuff would be cool too. Also, regular old wall switches are required because my parents will be visiting and ask them to use an app to turn on lights as a no-go. So I wanted to check in about where we are in the state of lighting. Who has the best ecosystem? Who plays nicely with Apple HomeKit?

I see all these influencers on socials with amazing lighting setups, and I get a little jealous. Thanks in advance. Keep up the great work. P.S., David. I went and bought a pair of $19. USBC Apple Earpods just to record this voicemail on your recommendation. your efforts have not been in vain. Take care. First of all, Sean gets it. Great job, Sean. Second of all, Jen two is here. Hi, Jen.

Hello, hello. Happy to be here. The first time I heard this question, I was like, oh, this is simple, and there are lots of options, and we can go through a bunch of them. And then listening to that again, I'm actually like, this is kind of a complex thing to try and do. Sadly, it is. You know what it made it tricky? Color-changing. As soon as he said that, is what? when it got complicated. Okay, interesting. So if you didn't want color changing, it would be so much easier. Really? Oh, okay. Yes. Well, so, all right. Well, so let's, let's start there. Because I think the sort of bones of what he's describing, I think, is actually a question a lot of people go through. And then the color changing is a wrinkle. But so let's start without the wrinkle. Okay. What would you, where's a good place to start for that? So, well, whenever anyone asks me a question about existing smart home setups and how, and expanding, I would always start with what they have and build on that. So

He said I have Hugh and Cassata. And Lutron Casator is, I assume, what he's referring to, and those are smart switches. Number one rule about smart lighting is that smart light switches do not work with smart bulbs. And this is complicated. And I do have an article explaining this, which we can link to. But there are some exceptions which I'll get into. But you cannot put a Phillips Hugh light bulb in a socket controlled by a Cassata smart switch. If it's just on and off, you might be okay.

But if you have Phillips U bulbs, you want dimming. And dimming, they go crazy. I've done it, and I burnt light switches, and I've blown bulbs and doing it. So it's not good. And this is the problem. So if he didn't want color lighting, I would just say, get some decent quality dumb. I hate that word, but LED light bulbs or light fixtures and Kassata smart switches. Because they're rock solid, reliable.

They work with Apple Home. You can use fixtures as opposed to just bulbs, so you can have something nice in your guest room slash. But that room has got a lot of purposes, and that also makes it slightly complicated. So yeah, a nice fixture that you can control with light switches. Cassetas, great, love them. But when you throw in colour changing and you already have Phillips Hugh, then I would definitely consider Phillips Hugh. Then you need to deal with a different switch scenario because you can. cannot use Cassata. You mentioned wanting a physical switch because you don't want to have to

use an app. I'm guessing that means that in-laws probably aren't going to use voice control either, because that would be another option. I will say for this particular setup, like you're describing a room with lots of different people and lots of different uses, I think requiring physical switches feels like the right call. Like this is just not everyone who comes into your house should not have to download an app to use your lights. You should always have physical switches. I agree. And you're wiring it from the ground up. See, this is the other, this is the fun part for me. If I was building a brand new house right now, I would not hardwire switches into my house.

Because all smart bulbs can be controlled by wireless switches, which give you placement options so you can move them around if you just don't like where your light switch is. But that could make resale tricky because it's not expected. But for Phillips Hugh, that's an option. So they do have their own wireless switches that you can use. Their smart button, warm mounted dimmer switches, and then their Hugh tap dial switch would all control every light in the home in the room. Plus, Hugh has a great selection of light fixtures if you don't want to just use bulbs. Because, you know, especially in more modern homes, just having light bulbs isn't the way people are going there, looking for nice light fixtures that add to the aesthetic of the home.

And a lot of those are going to be LED, so they're permanently sealed. You're not replacing bulbs. So that's one option, and you wouldn't actually need wires for that. But in terms of code or resale value, you know, you'd probably want to wire them up the switches, and then you could just put the Phillips hue option, whether you use the dimmer switch, the smart button or the tap switch over the wall plate. So in future, you could go back to wires if you wanted. Sure.

I feel like I'm even seeing more and more people just have the existing switches for existing lights and then just stick the Hugh switch or whatever, just on the wall right next to it, as if it's another switch. It's not like a perfect strategy, but that seems simple enough. It is, it is. And that would be the most straightforward.

You stay in one ecosystem with Hugh or Kasseta. But there is good news, and this is something that's changed somewhat. If you're about to say matter, I'm going to hang up on you. No. There is, the matter does play a part in this answer. But no, this is that there are now smart switches with something called smart bulb mode.

So you can now buy smart switches that work with smart bulbs. And basically, the problem here is if you wire up any switch to a smart bulb, there is going to be a point when you flip the switch off and it's designed to cut the power to the bulb. And then your smart bulb doesn't work. Also, there can be power levels with dimming because the whole point of dimming. What dimming actually does is just reduce the power to the bulb. And that's where you get into issues with Caseta because it starts flickering. That's what happened to my bulbs.

So your smart bulbs will start flickering and that's not fun. Anyway, so these new bulbs sort of trick the energy flow and they always keep the bulb with a minimum amount of power. And there's a couple people that make these. One is a company called Innavelli. They're really lovely smart switches. This is the other thing. You probably want ones that look nice because there are some cheaper ones out there. but if you're building a new room, you're going to want some nice looking switches.

They have them in different colors. They're really nice. They work with matter. They have thread over matter. Hopefully you're going to have good Wi-Fi out in your garage, but this could help if that's going to be a problem. But they're $70 each, which is also about how much the Caseta switches are. So smart switches are expensive. That is the big downside.

And the other downside with Innavelli is that they always seem to be out of stock. So they may not work in this scenario, but this way you could have Phillips Hugh bulbs and physical switches in your garage. So I think that could work pretty well for you if you can get these ones in stock. Yeah, I think they're sold primarily through Innavelli's website. Full disclosure, I have not tested any Innevelli smart switches myself, but I've always heard good things about them. They have a whole line. They also have Zigby ones, Z wave ones. So if you have Zigby or Z Wave in your smart home, you could go with that option too.

There are a couple other choices, though, but this would lock you into an ecosystem, which, you know, you've already got two ecosystems in your home. You've got Kisata and Hugh, although they all work with Apple Home. But Akara has now really expanded its smart lighting options. And they have a smart switch with smart bulb mode, but they only work with a Kara product. So you'd have to buy Akara light bulbs, Akara light strips. And they also have the Akara ceiling light. And they're much less expensive. We're talking like $20 or $30 instead of $70.

So that would be one other option. There are obviously lots of great options in smart lighting. You mentioned YouTubers with wonderful backgrounds. I'm going to guess a lot of those are going to be using nanoleaf, which would be an option here too. Works with Apple Home, works with Matter. they just came out with a new wireless switch, their wireless sense switch, which I've been testing recently. And it's really interesting. It has a lot of great features. But I hesitate for you to

throw another brand in the mix right now. I think Hugh is probably your best bet if you're going to go with wireless switches. But that is an option if you were thinking like, I want to move away from Hugh. You could look at NanoLeaf. Lifex is another one. They don't have any good switch solutions though. It's so odd that it's taken really long time for us to get a good solution to the smart bulb, smart switch conundrum, because whilst the white lighting with smart lighting is great, especially when you have tunable white lighting, so you can change the tone throughout the day. But it is fun to be able to throw in coloured lighting, especially in a room that's going to maybe use for fun teenage activities or maybe doing some spin classes and you want some

pulsing lights to go along with the music. If it's going to be, I think he said it was going to be a workout room, Sean. But yeah, I'd like to see more solutions here. And we're beginning to, but they all tend to stay within the same ecosystem. And this is where matter might help. Yeah, in theory, it is actually, this is a perfect reason for matter to exist. Something I have been looking for since matter came. Like, how can I make?

Because I have a Frankenstein selection of smart lights and switches. in my home and I cannot, it's been a struggle to get them all to work together. And that's where I, you know, sort of to me, the ultimate matter actually has worked moment will be when every light in my home can all work in one app. We're not there yet. That's the dream. How many apps is it right now? What would you say? I don't know that I could actually count. That's too many. Yeah, there's a lot of good solutions, but for this case, I would say probably skip Cassata, goes to Phillips Hugh and use the Phillips Hugh smart button or more mounted dim switches or these Innavilly smart bulb mode switches. I would say go with Caseta if they had supported Matter, but they don't.

Lutron has not gotten the Matter bandwagon. They're great, rock solid, as I said, but again, you know, for future proofing, I think I would definitely stick with products that work with matter. I'm definitely at that stage now. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right call. And I like that's like the, the hue solution is a little less elegant, but probably a lot simpler to actually put in your house. And the end of the only one is like going to be more work to get right. But then is the thing that gives you kind of the most seamless version of the experience you're looking for. So I think one of those two things is probably right. That makes sense. Yeah. And there are the run less

wire switches too. come across those, which are like kinetic switches that work with hue bulbs. Again, I've not used them myself. But I feel like if you're going to go with a wireless solution, go with Hughes wireless solution because the Hughes system just really works well together. But if you do want wired, I think in a valley could be a good option. You just may have to wait. I'm not sure when they're going to be back in stock. But yeah. And if you do get this all set up, I would love to hear a report and what it looks like and send us some pictures and tell us how it all went. Yeah, Sean, whenever you do decide, hit us back.

We want to hear it. We'll play it on the show and we'll judge all of your decisions. And I very much like forced it. All right, Sean, I hope that helps. Jen, thank you as always. You're welcome. All right, that is it for the show. Thank you to everyone who was on this episode.

And thank you, as always, for listening. As ever, if there are questions you have or thoughts or feelings, or you just want to yell at us about the fact that we just did an entire segment, about creepy, crawly things inside of your gadgets. Trust me, I understand, and also, we deserve it. Email Vergecast at theverge.com. Call the hotline 866, Verge11, with all of your thoughts and questions and feelings.

We love hearing all of them. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Will Poor. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neil and I will be back on Friday to talk about all of the news that's going on. The antitrust stuff continues.

Lots of fun new gadgets. We're getting into developer conference, season and there is just a lot of interesting tech news happening right now. We're going to get into all of it. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.