The Vergecast - Air Bud 6

Episode Date: May 15, 2015

Nilay Patel is fired up about media aquisions, Dieter Bohn is delirious, Sam Sheffer is hyped beyond belief, Russell Brandom is on the Facebook beat, and Josh Dzieza is on hand to report on the rat takeover. What a time to be alive. Join us, won't you? This week's Vergecast is sponsored by: Highfive Igloo Tripcase Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of the Vergecast is brought to you by High Five. How many times have you had a meeting where you waste the first 15 minutes? It's usually because somebody has trouble joining the call or you can't share your screen or somebody else can't be heard or they don't have the right pin code or Dieter's in charge of your meeting. It's nothing but problems. The people in High Five want to give you back the first 15 minutes of their meeting. That's why they built easy to use video and web conferencing that you can actually love. So go to HighFive.com slash Verge and request a free trial of High Five. That's H-I-G-H-F-I-V-E.

Dot com slash verge and get a free trial today. What just happened there? Fine. It kicked in. It's made... That was our mic drop. You know, mic dropping in the future is actually just pressing a button early. That's what it looks like.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Vergecast, the podcast of the Verge. For the week of? Well, so we're recording this on May 14th. but it is the week of another time, May 11th. But you are probably listening to it on May 15th. Unless you start the week on Sunday, like a buster, in which case it's a week of May 10th.

I don't know. Sunday, the week start thing is crazy. You know what Sunday is for? Sunday is for sadness. Oh. Sunday is the saddest day. You want to know something funny Sunday was my birthday. Oh, my God.

Well, duh. Ah, dear. Sunday is for happiness tinged by sadness. Perfect. Yeah, exactly. What, what, what, Deter's birthday. That's how I think of Sunday. It's, like, the last day of senior year.

Every day. Every week. What? So I will say this. It's whatever day it is for you, for me, for the world. This is the Vergecast. Deeter is sitting to my right. He has just come back from a trip.

Yep. He was on the red eye last night. I did not sleep well in the red eye. Deeter will be crazy today. Yeah. To my left is Russell Brandem, which is very, exciting yeah i'm crazy every day yeah russell is a maniac uh he's russell's illegal in four states yeah i don't know if you know yeah can't go back there uh sam shalom i don't even know wow that sam

is always a member of our crew hype squad the hype squad sam has a new we just hired uh a new junior social person yeah and sam her name is kately you might see her around he's great she's great really smart um yes That is true. We're very excited to have her. But you see her. She sits next to Sam and Sam is tasked with teaching her everything she knows, or that he knows. And you see her just like absorbing

the information. And then there's going to be two of them. I don't know how that's going to go for us, but it's going to be awesome. Are you guys going to get like matching haircuts? I mean, we kind of already have similar haircuts, but she's Oh, burn, dude. What do you mean? I mean, let's be clear. I think Caitlin has better hair than you. She has a really nice red

tint of hair. It's natural, too. What? Oh, you buddy. No, it's a good tint of hair. That's how we talk about hair colors. It's a good, here in 2015. No, it's great. The saturation of your hair is perfect. Love the chroma. I'm just saying I find out. Wow. Yeah, this is literally what I've known of them. This is Visco Cam. You've been hanging out to rush with the Visco kids. Now you look great with the Hudson filter on your hair. And then later on the show, if you have been reading the Virgin's week, which I hope you have, published a great feature about killing rats. which is crazy in high tech and Josh Jeza.

Our reports editor is going to join us a little bit later, and we're going to talk with that. So an action-packed show. Yeah, absolutely. That we will now not begin. They'll sit in silence for some time. Can I tell you that? So on my trip, I was with Rondo, one of our video directors.

A frightening man. He proposed, and I agree, that we are going to start a new band called Champfer and the Bezzles. That's pretty good. Very clever. Who gets to be Shamp for, though? I think he does. And you're just going to be one of the bezels. I'll be one of the bezels.

Yeah. My friends had a band in college called Pixel in the Chronic Network. It's very strange. The whole band was a, they made one record. It was about a robot. I can't believe my friend Gabe and my friend John are going to freak out that I'm going to tell that story. The whole band was about a robot named Pixel who lived in the future. and he discovered like a previous time.

He discovered the past through like artifacts. Which is our present. Which is our present. Uh-huh. Yeah. And he, using the power of rock music, traveled back in time.

Like Deltron 3030. Kind of, but like different. Yeah, Delta Tren's like very future. This was like a robot who wanted to be in the past. He wanted to find his like human size. Well,

it's also like Rush where in 2012 he discovers the guitar and then he frees his people. Yeah. Because of that. I think it's been a while since I really dug in. We need to call Michael Shane. Yeah, no,

there's like an archaeological thing and he discovers the guitar and then there's like a huge solo. Which one of us is going to try and bring this back to Verizon? How is like, we're not going to do it. I'm just saying here's... So Verizon AOL is the guitar and Verizon... Right, Verizon discovered the past, which is AOL. Yeah, exactly.

I'm just going to... But Pixel, their hit song was called rock music time machine, which I still... Oh, that's a good name for song. friends of mine. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, nobody knows a song because there was like three people in Chicago made this song. But they, to release this record, they rented out a full parking structure at our university.

And we had a party, like, on the roof of this parking. It was crazy. That's awesome. It was fun. This was like before any sort of media. So all I have is, like, physical prints. There's, like, no digital record of this occurring. Right.

Yeah. Which is a weird thing. If you, the only time that happens now for an event, it's like Jay-Z's well. wedding or something. And he has to like, it like requires immense resources to. Right. Yeah. To rediscover that past or whatever if you want to connect it. The story that I've heard is that like he rented all the helicopters in the Hamptons to like so that paparazzi couldn't. This is like a story that I don't know. I have no idea if it's true. It's just like a wonderful. Yeah. Like A, it's wonderful that you have the resources to do it. But B, I think it's more wonderful that like in a meeting somewhere was like, ah, Jay, we're going to have to rent all the helicopters. Just to be clear Someone like made a decision and then some intern had to call every helicopter service

Just rent it Yeah and she's like I don't know do you How many helicopters do you have? We would like them That would be that would be wonderful We should talk about this Verizon AILA situation It is in many ways the biggest news of the week It is in many ways the most boring news of the week End of the century

It's boring It's boring There's nothing of white Wireless company, you know, like a broad, like, first of all, like the difference in Verizon and Verizon Wireless is always like super annoying to me. Like I, like they don't consider them separate, but they do and who knows and whatever. They're buying AOL for like a 4.4. 4.4. And I was trying to come up with a metaphor.

Yeah. Hype check my attempt to come up with a metaphor. They're buying AOL for an amount of money that is far lower than what a. Well, no, hype check $4 billion. General. And this hype of a bubble. That's like that's not a sentence. It's peanuts.

They bought it for... That's true. They bought it for one hundred... One-fourth of a WhatsApp. Okay. So let's start way at the back. When I went way at the back. Yeah.

I was born in the year. So my friends had a band. The band was called AOL Time Warner. Then the band broke up. Then Time Warner continued releasing albums by itself. But nobody listens. to them. It's a good metaphor.

It's like actually true. Remember the stores? They had those like physical stores, the Time Warner stores. There was one of my local mall, along with the Zab comics. You know what I saw yesterday? I was in D.C. yesterday.

And I was, I flew to D.C. yesterday because of the train thing, which is crazy and sad. You know, there are people, like Box Media people who were going to be in that train. This is all. Wow.

This goes, I had a whole little thing planned about how everything should be self-driving. But whatever. I'm with you. Anyway, but I was in and I had to fly in and out of DC yesterday. It was like a super decadent day because I had meetings there. And there's a CNBC store in the DC airport.

What is what? And it was just like, what do you? What happens here? CBC baseball cap? No, I was just like, it's called like the CNBC outpost. And they just have like magazines. I've seen Fox News. It's just like very confusing.

There's a Mets store across the park. I mean, I suppose people are fans of the Mets. Yeah, but who's like, yeah. Like, if you have to choose. between a Hudson News and a CNBC store. Yeah. What about you is like, I bet they have better mince. Like, I'm going to go.

Yeah. They just sold like airport crap. Yeah. They didn't sell like CNBC swag. No, there was a little bit of CNBC swag in there. But like. But at a certain point you reach negative brand equity. Right.

And I don't say this is a knock on CNBC, but like I think in general, like, it's so present that it's hard to really be like, yes, I want more of this 24 hour cable channel. I want to experience it. in more aspects of my life. It's super weird at night. It's not actually 24 hours, right? Because it's tied to the market. So it's like weird like...

Right. So like when I go on CNBC, they're like, they start at 5 a.m. And then it runs until like seven or eight. And then it's just like crazy things happen on CNBC. Like infomercials and garbage and like... Like you could probably just buy a show to run on CNBC at like 11 p.m. We should just do that.

That's a great idea. We should just start running verge videos on CNBC. What is from the verge cast on CNBC? I'm going to look into this. I'm making a note. Anyway, so Verizon, these rumors have been around for some time. Have they? They have.

Well, credit to Bloomberg. I mean, people thought, people, they came out and they, you know, in January, right? So the deal was happening at Sun Valley, so around that time. And so they denied it. And there was this moment where you were like, so was this guy right? Was this guy making this up? Did he get burned? Like, and that moment turned out to have lasted for four months.

Right. And now we know, like, oh, no, he totally had it. Right. But that's a long time to wait to find out. So in the background, so that, you know, the little TikTok of the deal is that there's this Allen and Co, the investment bank runs a conference called Sun Valley. And the deal was agreed on there. So this dude at Bloomberg, somebody probably told him like, hey, like, Lowell McAdam and Tim Armstrong were like drinking beers at the bar and said Malley, you know. Dude, what a bummer company?

Apprae ski. Yeah. Yeah. And I bet Armstrong was like, yeah, yeah, you know, fuck it. Tim Armstrong doesn't say fuck it. He says, like, the synergistic qualities of optionality require me to fuckingate it. Yeah. That's what Tim Armstrong says.

As a man who has worked for Tim Armstrong, I can confirm that this is true. So, back with full disclosure, and most people listening to the show, I'm sure, are somewhat aware of this. The Verge was started by a bunch of people who left NGadgett. which was a part of AOL, which still is. Which continues to be a part of AOL. For now, and maybe forever. Well, we'll get into that. AOL. Engadget is now, of course, one of our competitors, but I feel a great affinity

for Engadget. It's a thing that I'm... We're friends with people that work there and like them. Yes, although they're currently somewhat mad at us. Sam started, Sam emerged onto the scene as an intern at Engadgett. This is true. Out of an egg. He hatched and he was 16 years old. 19. 19. 19. But anyways, many of our founders, many of our co-workers, the CEO of our company used to work at AOL, the president of our company used to work at AOL. Yeah, Deter's like the only one. No, of our founders.

I think you might be the only one. So just down the line, Vlad, Sean, Thomas Ricker, like many people from The Verge used to work at Engadgett and many people of Voxmen used to work at AOL. So there are, obviously, we have many ideas about, right? We have many thoughts and feelings about AOL as a company. But it is true that Verizon purchased AOL for $4.4 billion. It is true that they now own Engadget and TechCrunch, who are both enormously influential technology sites. And the Huffington Post as well.

And the Huffington Post. But Engadgettec Crunch in particular, right, cover Verizon, cover mobile, cover all this stuff. Huffington Post is like... They cover whatever and everything all the time. I don't know, Alec Baldwin just logs into the Huffian Post. He's like, here's some words I thought, you know? Well, no, they did.

I mean, they do good political stuff. but especially that's the thing. I mean, I think it's interesting. I mean, how much... It's weird that this happened after Title II came down, right? Like, I mean, not that I'm suggesting anything, but just, like, in terms of the urgency of it, because that would be...

That was, like, the story that all of these publications were covering that involved... Yeah. Like, the carriers, and you had to really be like, okay, like, is Verizon acting in a way that bears on this large issue that people care about. Whereas now, like, I don't know.

It feels less urgent because there's no, there's, I don't know what they would do that would be super interesting. To me as a reader, like. Well, to you, but when I, and when Dieter was a smartphone expert and I was in a gadget, and even now, Verizon is the worst of the carriers. Yeah, they play hijinks with plans lately, but that's like gotten better because of competition. But they used to play, they used to block Bluetooth. They used to block GPS.

They used to block Wi-Fi. They used to prevent Google from putting apps on Android on their network. Right. They just got hit with FTC settlement because they cram charges on the bill. Well, I mean, everybody did that. Well, yeah, but, like, Verizon has a super cookie that tracks all of your data across their network on every device to be used. Right. And that in particular is relevant to this AOL deal because the super cookie has been basically shut down.

Well, no, they, they, there's an app to. Yeah, right. But I'll ask you this, Russell, currently there's like a drone, like, I just see some chatter on Twitter about HTTP getting like phased out in favor of HTTPS, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So people want to give me the one sentence background there. Um, okay. So basically, HTTP is good because.

That's encrypted, right? Yeah, yeah. It's encrypted using SSL. You'll see it, it's by default on like, if you use Gmail or banking or anything sensitive, you'll see the little lock on the screen. And basically that means I can't be like sitting at the router and seeing your bank account balance, right? Because it's sent encrypted. So if you do that, so why would you want to log on to HTPS Verge? Because you might be worried about people at the network level sort of screwing with what's being sent.

Okay. So in response to that, what I have seen an argument. I think it was a motherboard today. It was a really good argument. That, man, it sucks that we're walking here from H. which is the open transparent foundation of the web, right? Like, deprecating H. That's a, that's a symbolic moment, right?

I mean, deprecating. It's like, it's like, people are going to move away from it. Yeah, yeah. But one of the reasons that you would do that is because we have this universe of network providers who are sniffing your traffic to track you. Right. And at the top of that list is Verizon. I mean, it wasn't Verizon's idea.

It was the NSA's idea, right? Like, that's why it's. Yeah, but if you can, you can say NSA stop doing that. and Verizon's still going to like sniff all of your packets to figure out your location and your activity to sell it to advertisers. Well, and so this gets to, so we people talk about how like, okay, Google's an advertising company, but the hot, I mean, the, I don't want to say the hot take, but like the smart analysis of me, we had a piece about this was that this was really an ad deal. Yeah, Ben wrote that. Yeah, yeah. And the, you know, Verizon is an ad company, right? Like, that's

sort of what this is, is that this helps Verizon be a better ad company. And Verizon, like, the carrier business is the carrier business. It's not going anywhere. But as an ad company, they can keep growing and growing and growing really well and returning shareholder value. So nobody thinks about ad tech, right? I think it's like a blind spot for the industry, for at least consumer tech coverage. Like, we don't run a lot of ad tech stories on the verge.

It just doesn't occur. But here's a thing I knew about AWOL. And again, just laying out my preconceasinger. conceptions about AOL. AOL owned our content brands that the group I was in, AOL bought the Huffington Post, which is precipitated sort of us leaving to start The Verge. And they kind of never had any idea how to manage any of this stuff. And the rumor right now is that they're going to spin off the Huffington Post.

Right, but keep the rest. But keep Engadgettec around sort of this other content group that they purchased. That's fine. And I, you know, I can tell you many hilarious stories about AOL mismanaging video brands. That's a, you know, anybody listening to this, you know, come to New York, buy me a couple drinks, and we can get into it. But what is fascinating to me is that Tim Armstrong used to work at Google. He was the head of ad sales at Google. And what he has been doing at AOL, and AOL, I think, in Yahoo are very interesting parallels.

Yeah, yeah. At AOL, Tim Armstrong has been buying ad tech startup after ad tech startup after ad tech startup. And he has built this monster of like, you know, valuable software that can, can do things that are important for the internet. So they can track you, they can, you know, you can find your audience, right? You really want to put your, I don't know, your energy drink in front of 18 to 35 year old males.

Like, they will find you and they will put that ad in front of you, right? You know, it's like Amazon. You look for stuff on Amazon and then that's not sure everywhere. It's that, but like, it higher and higher levels of sophistication. Yeah. And then you look at Yahoo and Marissa Meyer was the head of consumer products at Google. And she'd bought consumer startup after,

consumer startup after consumer startup, and now she has nothing valuable at all. And it's like the two parallel universe. Like these companies are mirror images of each other and you just look at where they made the investments in terms of technology. And people were agitating for AOL and Yahoo to merge. Right. Up until like, I think like people finally gave up by the- Until like 10 minutes ago.

Yeah, yeah. But what is fascinating about that is if you think about what Verizon is now, it's just screens, right? If the future of all of our media and tech is kind of like returning everything back into like cable networks, which is kind of where we're headed. Verizon has like a billion screens connected to a broadband network. They have home internet users connected to their FIO service. They just have screens and connection points everywhere. If they can build the layer that connects all of that to advertising, then it kind of doesn't matter if AOL's content brands are good or bad.

So you can like just sluff those right off. And what you've got is you've got the technology layer that delivers advertising to all of these screens. But spin out for me what precise method Verizon uses to give me these ads. Because in everybody's dream world for Verizon's role in the ecosystem is you're a dump pipe. All you do is get me to the content that I want. I'm sure those content providers are giving me ads. But is Verizon injecting ads like in the process of going there or are they selling it to the content? I think this is where the cable network metaphor comes into play, right?

So if you are the ABC affiliate in New York City, you have some, and you're showing, I don't know, dancing with the stars. Right. You have some ads. There's some national ads. There's some national ads. There's some affiliate ads that you get to sell. There's some, like, ABC stole some ads, and then your cable partner, Verizon or Comcast, whoever sold some ads. Right.

And all of those slots get filled. and there's a huge stack of people in systems and processes that sell those ads and make that money. And it's obviously very valuable because television advertising is very valuable. But at the same time, money is moving away from TV towards the internet. So if your bet and if anybody listening to show follows media companies, like we all say the same things. Right. I think Voxnbee is very special. I love working here.

The Byrd is very special. But when we go out and talk about the company, we're like, we have a great proprietary technology solution enabled by data and we're investing in video. And, like, you can walk over to BuzzFeed and they will say the same thing to you. And you can walk over to Vice and they'll say the same thing to you. Because that's the future. It's like everybody sees it, right? You build a cool platform that enables great experiences. You put ads on it.

You put a lot of data near it so that advertisers can get near the right people at the right time. So you can, like, do sponsored content and put that in front of the right people at the right time. And then you spend a bunch of money making videos because as people stop watching TV and start watching video on their phone, you want to capture all those old TV dollars. Right. And none of the infrastructure. to do local advertising or national advertising or like a big company makes a deal and we're going to put ads everywhere. That all of that is the ad tech.

It's replacing that old series of like four. You know when the Sony leak came out and like half of the documents were like sad people being like, well, we traded, you know, NBC, some free air time for an old bad Sony movie because they gave us free ad spots for a new, like, yeah, I know I remember those. Right. Like that's just people on paper being like, we call the, that, we. We called the NBC affiliate in Wichita, and we gave them AirBud 4 for free so that when we put out Spider-Man, they'll give us some free air time next to whatever, right? Like, that used to be done on paper, and now we're going to do it with computers.

That's ad tech. Yeah. But see, so this is what's interesting. And this is. But, yeah. By the way, I have no idea if AirBud 4 is a Sony movie. I'm sure someone's going to tweet it. What's interesting, though, is that...

I don't even know if there was an Airbud 4. If you think about Verizon as a provider of a bandwidth. of a service of the internet, there's no inherent reason that they need, that they ought to be involved in that business other than it's like incredibly lucrative and they might have a couple

extra levers to pull in terms of tracking its customers. Well, that's the thing they have the data, right? And that's where the super cookie comes in and all that, all those shams. Verizon knows where you are, they know what you're looking at. They can, with the super cookie, they can literally sniff you on the packet level. Right. They have your

billing information. They have your social security, address. They know it's on your family plan. I mean, and this is like the two-year-old verge piece now, but like where you are isn't just where you your address is, right? Right. It's like physically your location at all times because you're going to a cell tower and I mean, and that's not absolutely perfect, but they're already using that as a sort of boutique marketing thing where if you say, okay, we want to, you know, we want to market to these people in this location, they will, they will sort of. Wait, wait, wait, Air Bud 4. John just told me, Airbud 4 was entitled Airbud's seventh inning.

What? The seventh inning stretch. If a seventh inning, fetch. Oh, that's great. Just to be clear, Airbud 4 was titled Airbud's seventh inning fetch. I do not know if it was made by Walt Disney, so not by Sony. I apologize for the error here on the Birchcast. It sounds straight to video to me.

Straight to video. I mean, I hear it. Josh is off to his first year of college, and Buddy has stayed behind with Josh's little sister, Andrea. and the rest of the family. Andrea, this is our ad. Instead of doing the real ad, I'm just going to read the plot of Airboat 4.

Airboat 6, what's the pun for him? Andrea, attempting to fit in with her junior high classmates, decides to join the baseball team, and along the way, discovers that Buddy also has the uncanny ability to play baseball.

I mean, that does make sense. It turns out that kidnappers are researchers kidnapping puppies because they thought they had a special gene that would enable them to play sports. Wait, kidnaping? Buddy must find them and make it to the major league as he goes to bat for the Anaheim Angels. Wait, is it a different dog in each movie?

I have no idea. The Anaheim Angels, all they do is move bad movie commercial tie-ins, right? I'm just saying, they're not an actual base. I'm just saying if you're worried about the future of media and Verizon buying these, you know, tech companies or tech brands and shutting them out, just know that something happened in the world where AirBud 4 was worth it. Well, no, this is the classic. You were like, here's the dystopian vision of me. But don't worry about it, Airbud 4. The classic.

Yeah, exactly. Don't worry, Airbud 4 is here. Well, I mean, okay, so this is... Hang on, hang on, hang on. There's actually technically an Airbud 5 is a... Airbud spikes back. Oh, my God, we're done with this. Is that a volleyball movie?

We're super done with this. John, John's giving us the details. I don't believe that it's basketball, football, soccer, baseball, volleyball. See, it's like, you know, like, you know, like, it's... media was broken before. That's all I'm saying. The next sport that he will tackle is... I think they did a spin-off.

There's a chimp that played hockey. Anyway, my point to bring this... There's a chimp that plays hockey. I'm saying that was in a separate film. So that was why they didn't do hockey. If you were wondering why there wasn't an air-but hockey. Well, this doesn't involve balls. All the rest of these involve sports balls.

He's got to play tennis next, right? This is a scatter. And then he plays... There's a real... There's a real... There's a real... ...sbynation crossover here. And then he played shuffleboard because he's retired.

Sam, hype check, Airbud. Sam's just shaking his head. What are we talking about here? We're talking about Verizon buy an AOL and how it's changed the whole media industry. Is there a world where, is there a world where you turn on your television, you're watching the Engadger channel and your Verizon files cable box? Yes. There could be that world.

Is there a world where you buy Verizon phone? But I don't think that's not what they bought. Right. It's for the tech. Yeah, they're about for the ad tech. No, like, think about, like, you know, Comcast is a really valuable, big company, right? Other cable networks are really valuable big companies. internet is like right it's like valuable it's valuable right that service is valuable

Verizon is basically saying okay now we have wireless connections to all these devices we're gonna do for the internet what TV companies how they've made money which is figuring out how to put ads everywhere like all these little spots on these stacks and like sucks well for the consumer ads are everywhere but it's weird because that's the core of like aOL's business now yeah and gadget and tech crunch and huffington post are not the core that business. And it's also funny because AOL still runs like a $2 billion dial-up service. And now the phone

company owns the dial-up service. Kara Swisher had a really good tweet. I don't know if you guys saw it. Did you do? What's a lot of tweets? Kara Swisher is about the AOL do. She was like, I feel like anytime AOL gets bought, that's the burst of the bubble. Yeah.

Such a smart thing to say. Yeah. No, I think, you know, your point about Title II, net neutrality, like, I am very concerned. AOL or Verizon launched a blog earlier. Sugar String. Sugar String. December, December 2014. It lasted all of like three days.

Right. So the editor of Sugar String, which is Verizon's blog, was like recruiting for writers and his letter his like emails to people included lines like, the only restrictions are we can't write about spying or net neutrality. And it's like, I know how this goes. Like I've worked at AOL. I've, I was managing editor of Engadgett. Like the pressure,

I never felt any editorial pressure. And I'm sure those teams over the, they're of the highest integrity. Yeah, there have been some really great disclaimers. Yeah, they, I mean, they're like in full rebellion mode, and that's great for them, and I love them for doing it. But the pressure comes not all at once. It comes in a steady drip of people being somewhat angry with you,

and it comes with Verizon owning you and not knowing that the value of a publication comes from its credibility, not from its, like, ability to, like, toe the line. And that, that lesson is hard for, companies that haven't been media companies before. And it was hard at AOL because AOL is going from a providing

like AOL, Time Warner and AOL merged because Time Warner was the media company and AOL was the access company. Right. Right. And it was hard for AOL to learn that lesson and they split up. And now Verizon is merging with AOL because Verizon is the network company, the access company. And AOL is the media company. And it's just incredible reversal. And so I'm hoping

for all those teams that like Verizon doesn't do what Verizon is almost certainly going to do, which is want to control everything. And it's going to be rough for them. When the Samsung Galaxy S7 comes out, and it's loaded of a VZ navigator, and, like, you push the wrong button and charges you $5 because that's what Verizon does,

they're going to have to just, like, attack their paycheck. Yeah. That's the way that works now, and it's going to be, I think, very difficult. I don't know, that's the truly dystopian. Yeah, yeah. But you don't have any, uh, nobody, nobody seems to think that like the FCC

is going to stop this or the FTC. They're radically different businesses. Yeah. But it's like when I worked at AOL, here's a true story. When I worked at AOL, and I was at Engadget, was the first time we started covering that neutrality. Yeah. And there was going to be a set of hearings in Congress.

I don't remember if it was the House or the Senate. And I was like, we should submit for me to go and talk. I would love to go and testify in front of Congress about what consumers are saying to us in our comments and what we cover and like how this industry actually works. And I was shut down by AOL's lawyers. because they were like, you will, you're going there not to speak for Engadgeton consumers and you're going to speak for AOL and we run an access business. Right.

And we don't want you to screw with that. Yep. And that was like, it was like a moment. I was like, wow, I am outgunned in this conversation. Like, I didn't even fight it. I mean, that's like a very small story, but like that's the, it's going to be rough. Like, it's going to be super rough when, you know, there's a court decision and it cites. An NGadgette piece that I wrote about net neutrality against Verizon.

That's true. That exists. It's on the site. Figuring that out is going to be very difficult. So we shouldn't, I mean, look, it doesn't really matter because the person that decides what news stories we see or don't see is Mark Zuckerberg. That's true. I got to read the ad and we'll do this. Anyone that has worked in a corporate environment knows how painful intranets can be.

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And money. What we need, I know this is primarily an audio show, but on the video, we need like, we need like an endless loop of a tunnel that like starts while we like read the ad and then when we're done the ad we like exit the tunnel into the sunshine money tunnel money tunnel facebook is the money tunnel all right all right so the story with facebook is that they have um made instant articles where publishers can put okay so first of all we've been calling them

publishers but it's like once you're putting your stuff into facebook you're not really a publisher anymore facebook's the publisher no publishing implies like you make the thing that gets distributed the actual thing that is distributed. You make the website, you make the thing. The act of publishing is, I made a thing, here's the thing. I disagree. I mean, you're... What is our publisher?

Marty Moe is the publisher for the verge. He does none of that. Well, I mean, but he, like, he, the website is the thing that we make. But he doesn't make that either. Well, like, the classic role... He says, here's the thing. I'm saying, he gestures to it grandly. I'm saying that the word is bad.

thing I presented. We need to let the word go. We need a new word for publisher. We need, you know what we are? Yeah. Platishers. I'm going to kill everyone. What? If you were ever hoping, if you were hoping for an episode of the Vergecast in which I went, I murdered everyone. That moment has come. It's a platform publisher. Platform publisher, platisher. But the beauty of the word is, it makes it, the word is just laughing at us. Ugly is the concept. He's just sitting in the corner, mocking us for having a conversation. Quartz has announced that they're an API company now. They don't, they don't, they don't, they don't, They make a journalism API.

Seriously. What if I lived in a world in which everyone else was dead? I'd be alive with you. Would people stop saying the word platisher? Platishers have given their content to Facebook to publish directly inside the Facebook app so you don't load their website because Facebook claims that eight seconds, which is the number that they keep on touting, which is crazy. Have we time, eight seconds?

We should start timing them. It's too long and they want the stuff directly in there. So who are the partners? If you sell ads and get to word. As a platisher, if you sell ads, you get to keep 100%. If Facebook sells them, you get to keep 70%. And everybody in the media industry has so many feelings about this. Because we're already, like, Facebook's already directing just fire hoses of traffic.

Right. So for some sites, Facebook is like more than 50% of their traffic. Right. And that it's like people post it stuff in the news feed and you click on it. It opens a mobile web view. Yeah. It takes eight seconds to live. load. How's that Apple Watch

gone, man? You know it's really great? When you're talking to someone and then somebody just like immediately glances at your watch and starts making with it. It's the best. It's real. And then they start doing, because with the Apple Watch it has the crown, it's like a very like

on the side. So here's a it's not like tapping a screen. It's like it's this other move. It's like this long like stroke. If this were an Android wear device, it would have been a much shorter interaction. Cool story.

Wow. Shots fire. It would have bothered you less. I'm trying to have emotions about that. I just don't. If this was a different smart watch, it would have been annoying in a different way, but for less time. Yeah, it would have been less intrusive.

Anyway. Okay. So Facebook Instant. Yeah. Right now you do this, but instead they're going to preload the articles on Facebook. I think...

And they've added little gygaws and widgets and you can tilt the phone and there's... I think it's all from the paper app that they made. Yeah. You can see. why they made that for this. Yeah.

I feel like this is like a totally, I don't know, media story inside baseball, crazy media. Well, the main thing is like it was, the thing that was really cat-knit for media was, there were, I forget how many, there were a bunch of publications that were in the alpha, and it was like, who's on the list?

And everyone was kind of looking around, it's like, oh, well, the Times, you know, of course it's the Times. Der Spiegel was on there. Yeah, I didn't realize. Wait, what? Build is on there's two German publications. I was like, yeah, no.

Yeah, and The Guardian and everything. It was just like, and everyone's sort of, it's like, how do you get media people to go crazy is you draw a line around some publications and not others? And you're like, everyone's like, oh my God, this is the worst thing. I mean, there are like horrifying aspects of it. Who are the publishers just for the people listening to this podcast? It's the Near Times, BuzzFeed, National Geographic, Der Spiegel, build. The Atlantic. Which I was like, hmm.

But I mean, good for them. Yeah. Good for them. No, I mean, great. Well, and I think, like, National Geographic does incredible science stuff. And, like, I do think it's sort of like, I was like, okay, yeah, these are all, like, these are all the gin. Yeah. I mean, I don't know.

I kind of want Facebook to pre-cash the stuff. It's, it loads instantly. It's a much better experience than hitting, like, the full URL. Yeah. Absolutely. It's like, we put our videos, we spend an enormous amount of time in money-making videos, and we put them on Facebook. Yeah. On Facebook and on YouTube.

What are? There's just no difference for me. Like, the instant. Inside baseball media stuff for me is like, we don't get 50% of our traffic from Facebook. Right. We have, I mean, I'll tell you the numbers. Right. Like 21% of our traffic is just people coming to the verge.com.

Yeah. Very few other publications have that traffic. Yeah, strong home page traffic. 30% of traffic is people just searching. Iverge. It's just that. 30% of our traffic is just Reddit typing Iverge into a comment box. This is mailing us knives.

It's crazy. I don't know. It's weird. I don't know what to do with it. I think what's interesting about it culturally is you do get the sense that people think this is like kind of a beginning of a new era of like what websites are going to feel like. I think that. That like we had the everyone's freaking out about Google era. Yeah.

And then. Which by the way, I never cared about that era. I never felt threatened or nervous about Google news. I always thought that that fear was based in like a fundamental misunderstanding of what Google was doing. And maybe it could have gone that way, but it was like, it never seemed like it was going to to me. Yeah. Whereas this time around, like, Facebook has this incredible, when they talk about it publicly, they're like, yeah, we just want to make users happy. And I don't know what you're so worried about it.

It seems fine. Like, what's the problem? That sounds like a character from South Park. Yeah. No, seriously. But that character in South Park is like a noted child molester. Right. They play dumb about media concerns about Facebook taking over.

the media business on the lab? I just constantly. What are the implications of Facebook instant in the next calendar year? Well, will people, so the way you see articles on Facebook now is you like that page and Facebook knows to surface articles that you would think are interesting. Well, they look at a million signals. Right. They look at how, what you click on, which you stop on.

The point I want to make is, will Facebook's partners, i.e. BuzzFeed and New York Times, will these articles now begin showing up for people who don't follow the? those pages at all. This is Facebook transitioning. How do you know? Because they said so. They're not, Facebook for now, they could change their mind. Facebook for now is not changing the algorithm of what you see in the news feed.

They're just making certain things that you see in the news feed faster. I think there's a future. But they may change it later. But even if they don't, the fact that these things load faster is likely to get people to, like, click the like button more often. So they're not changing the algorithm, but they're like, oh, like, you know, it's a meritocracy. I wrote the thing, it's funny, we just talked about AOL. I wrote the thing, it's, yes, Facebook is the new AOL.

Yeah. Facebook is becoming like a walled guard. It's like a place that you can go to on your phone. Right. And then everything will be in that place. Yeah. And it doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't.

You know why? Because, like, maybe all the traffic from Facebook will go to this handful of chosen websites. No, but it's, are they even getting, is that registering as traffic for them? Yeah, of course it is. No. No. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. They're including podcasts. Quantcast and Comscore and Google Analytics and BuzzFeed was like, we got to put our own internal tool in there. Okay. So it's not stripping. None of their early partners are stupid, right?

Like the quote that almost all, like, the CEO of the Atlantic was like, we're going into this with eyes open. And like, the director of platforms at BuzzFeed is like, we're going to this with eyes open. And it's like, did you all have a meeting where you agreed to use this phrase? Here's the play. I just, is it a desperation move? I mean, I don't have any control over these partnerships, but if we could put our stuff and make it load faster in Facebook, I'd like do it in a heartbeat.

You know what? You're giving it. You're getting Facebook so much control. They already have it. Like, it's their platform, right? Like, we might as well, like,

share some money with them and have a better experience for people. It's like, think about all of the people and you're out there. If you're listening to this, I guarantee you've done this. You've tried to watch a video on the verge. Yeah. You've gotten mad at the player.

And you've left a comment that's like, You should why YouTube? Angry words, I verge. I hate you, right? Yeah. That's our commenters. That's my Russian work on YouTube. And so we like put the stuff on YouTube.

We know it's a better experience for people. Yes. And there are some revenue reasons that we need to have it on our player on our site because we sell ads. Yes. And YouTube doesn't let us put pre-roll. Look, I think I agree with you in the sense. We know that we would rather have people go watch it on YouTube. It's a better experience.

And I agree that it's. Why are we talking about YouTube? It's a parallel. Yeah. It's a direct. How do you pronounce the word parallel? Parallel? No.

Parallel? Parallel. Hey, guys, I'm from Chicago. Parallel. What does that mean? Parallel. Did you just come to burn Chicago? Yes.

Where's Chris Ziegler at? You mispronounce the word parallel? Parallel. No. Like parallel's desktop. No. So, whatever. We're not talking about this anymore.

Okay. That's how you pronounce the word if you're going to end it with parallelogram. Right? Yeah. That's true. What are we talking about? Your mispronunciation parallel. I have a hot tape Facebook

Takes. I'm afraid. I'm afraid that will move toward a world where, I mean, Facebook, Nilai, right? So the experience of Facebook Instant is better than the eight second loading time. I agree with you on that.

It's better to watch YouTube videos than using some Jank built-in player. I agree with that too. I'm just afraid of a world where Facebook has complete control. over the news stories its users see. Hey, Sam. Hey, Sam. Can you, can you, uh, just really quickly apologize to me for the thousands of times you've poo-pooed me when I've talked about the open open web and white matters. Just really quick. Finally. Yeah, this is happening.

Wait, how many how did I poo-poo you about the open web? No way. Well, that's going on. I'm RLT. We're live in the verge cast. That's the, I don't know where we've gotten. But no, okay, so this goes to my hot take, which is like, When everything... Your hot poop-oo take? My hot Facebook tape about why open standards are important. So like when everyone...

Time was... No, no, go ahead. You could have... You could build a successful personal blog by having a lot of RSS followers. Yes. Right? We did that.

That's us. That's... Well, and I mean, and I think one of the things that's... So, I mean, people... are talking about like the nightmare scenario of face of this thing and I don't think it's that like your favorite professional publication is suddenly wiped off the map by like facebook decides you know they don't like the verge anymore and no one sees a verge article on facebook ever again that's not going to happen but at the same time a lot of like people like people people like people people like people people like people people a while ago who just sort of I think of them as old web bloggers because it's just like a guy in a room blogging and a lot of people read what he writes but jason cocky had a post a while ago where he was like, yeah, you know, since Google Reader shut down, like, actually, you know, that was kind of a big hit for me. I think that's how a lot of people were reading it.

I think a lot of people sort of turned away from this model of web consumption after that shut down. And like, yeah, like, I'm kind of, I mean, he wasn't like making any announcements. So we sort of like, yeah, like, this whole thing is becoming less appealing to me. Like, I think the thing that he does is not something that travels really well on Facebook. Like, I read Kotki every day, but like, I don't think. And I mean, I think that's the kind of thing. I read it by RSS. Yeah, no, exactly.

It's what I used to. Around that time, he started putting stuff not on RSS. Yeah. And I mean, I wrote the defense of RSS when Google Reader went down. It's like it should be an essential part of like the plumbing of the internet. Yeah. But the novels don't use RSS. Do you use RSS at all?

I used to, no. Hype check RSS. It should be at like an eight or nine because it's probably the best way to consume things on the web in an organized way. but it's like at a four right now, maybe three. Well, no, but I mean, but so that's the, like, what's, what's sad about it to me is basically we had this era of, I'm going to start a WordPress blog or I'm going to host my own blog. And that enabled like a certain kind of publication. And it's becoming clear that that era is kind of, I mean, that over, that era has been in

decline for a little while now. So I have a theory about this. Oh, yeah. Like, and I think. think it goes to your point about sort of generations. Yeah. I think there's a lot of people who, a lot of great writers who started their own sites, who did their own plumbing, who, like, built their own house.

Yeah, because you had to. Because you had to. If you were going to be one of the first generation of bloggers, you had to. You had to. And now they're very prominent. We know who they are. And we care about them. And their opinions are really valuable.

And all of them have an enormous blind spot, which is Tumblr. Because that next generation of bloggers is all happening on Tumblr. Can I tell you, I like the internet generally. Yeah. But like of social media platforms, Tumblr is the only one that I can go to that actually makes me feel good. Yeah. Like I use Twitter a lot.

Tumblr feels more like the old internet to me than anything else. Because it's just teens whining about one direction and supernatural. Well, no. I mean, like we, I won't say names. So like we're about to make a few hires to continue growing the verge. And several of them, like basically their reference. was another one of our writers being like, I read them on Tumblr and they're great.

Yeah. Brittany Holloway Brown, a great designer who's on... Racked. Racked, right? I was like, which of the... And she's amazing and has done amazing work on Racked, but I had been following her on Tumblr before.

And as soon as they hired her, I was like, oh my God, she's amazing on Tumblr. Like, that's so wonderful. Right. So I just think there's this blind spot where if you're... Like, I don't consume Tumblr as much as anything, right? Like, it's just there. periphery of my world.

Yeah. But there's an entire universe of activity on Tumblr that mirrors the universe of old blogs. We'd set up a WordPress and do like pingbacks to your movable type. Oh, yeah. And you would all link around in a circle to each other. Don't talk to me about pingbacks. I miss that stuff so bad.

What is a ping back? It's like a re-blog? It's like a trackback. Trackback. So if you put up a blog post and I link to your blog post, your blog post knows that I linked to it. This was part of the original spec of what they wanted to do for the web. Ted Nelson, right?

Right. And so you on your post could have, if you wanted, you could list all your trackbacks or linkbacks at the bottom. And so you would know that I linked to you. And then I would link to you. So, like, I could read your post. And then I could read all the websites, all the other blog posts that had linked to the clever thing you wrote. And then just, like, go around and find other people that way. Right.

So it's like, but it turned into a vector for both the most hellacious spam you could imagine. And it just got hard. You know that this is Jaron Lanier's plan for how we get to like full communism. Right. He's like, Pingbacks are going to save the middle class. This is, I kid you not,

like a year and a half ago, an idea a lot of people took really seriously. And it was just like, I don't understand what's happening. Yeah. I will say that. I mean, people saying crazy shit about the internet is my favorite.

Like, maybe we should shut down the verge and just publish those every day. Oh, yeah. Okay, like for real, there are things about pingbacks that are legitimately cool. Here we go. That have enabled legitimately cool things in the web that are now gone.

That's all I'm saying. Grandpa Bones. God damn it. Somebody order a pizza. All right. I'm going to read the next ad. Russell, we're going to switch you out for Josh. We're going to do.

We're going to do some time on rats. Thank you, Russell, for me here. Are we clapping? I clap for Russell. Thank you, Sam. I'm clapping for money. Today's episode of the Vergecast is brought to you by Tripcase. Tripcase helps brilliant people take over 30 million trips last year by

collecting their flight hotel and other trip items into a single app under your phone or tablet. You also get free flight notifications if you get delayed or gate changes. And with support for Pebble and Android, where you'll always be up to date. Too bad you have the wrong watch, Deeter. To get started, go to tripcase.com slash verge cast to sign up. And if you are still not convinced, here is why Tripcase is a place where trips live. There's Uber integration. It fills in your pickup and drop off locations based on a trip.

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This is true. That's why they're called first class. You can look at those maps and piped the right seat. Go to tripcase.com slash vergecast to check it out today. There's a dude who took off his pants in the background while you were reading that ad. That just straight up happened. You know, I was, I had lunch with Helen Trey today. Helen's our engagement editor, Tray's our video producer, and Michael Zlinko.

And Helen was telling us a story. She used to work for ad agencies, and agencies are notoriously crazy. And apparently there's a profile of an ad agency. We were talking about creative directors and shingy and AWOL and all these, like, crazy people work these agencies. And there's a profile of an agency in New York where the guy was like, yeah, you know, when I want to get really creative in meetings, I just take off all my clothes. And we were like, we don't have any of this chaos. No.

And then we spent kind of a while, like, threatened and come back in the office and take off our clothes. That was her joke. And then it just happened. Yeah. Good story. You know, like, Josh Jeza is here. Welcome. This is your first Vergecaste can't be.

It is. Yeah. What? Ladies and gentlemen, Josh Jezahza. Yeah, I don't know what to do. How's the guy? So the, the, the listener of the Vergecast Pride isn't. No, Josh. Josh is our report center. He edits almost all of the stuff that goes on the site during the day. This is true. So most of our reporters and writers work through Josh all the time. But Josh is also, it must be said, a tremendous reporter in his own regard and a tremendous writer. And you just published, I was going to say a killer feature. But it's actually what it's about. You want to give us sort of the quick run through of that?

Yeah, I mean, puns were sort of hard to avoid with this piece. It's about rats and rat control, and we looked at a couple different successful or ambitious projects to get control of rats around the world. The central one being Alberta, which is rat free, one of the only places in the world that's rat free. Part of Josh's pitch for this story was, like, there's a map, and it shows you all the places in the world where there's rats. And, like, literally North America is red. Everything is red, except for the shape of Alberta. Yeah. Right.

And Alberta's not a tiny place. No, it's huge. Yeah. Like 200,000 square miles or something. But one of the last places is that rats invaded. So they just acted quickly and decided to set up a rat patrol. And they patrol the border twice a year, kill any rats that show up. And everybody I tell the story to, they're like, but how?

But how? And I'm like, well, they just, if they see a rat, they kill it. And they're like, well, that's not enough. You understand it a little better once you go there and realize how sparsely populated. So you wet on a rat patrol. So what was this like? We drove for many hours to the border and it's just like endless farmland, fields and fields of wheat and barley.

And then these are just super small towns. So they're just looking at like the winter's so harsh there. The rats can only live in these buildings. Oh, okay. So it's fairly easy. Like it's not New York. I mean, they're very organized about it. Like, it's not a normal situation.

Right. But there's a scene in your story where they actually picked up a whole thing. So that happened the year before. This was something he was telling me about. They found these rats. There were like maybe 100 living under a granary. They poisoned it. And then sometimes for morale, they'll hold a rat shoot and they'll lift up the building and shoot them with shotguns.

When you say for morale? They're like, it gets kind of boring, like checking on buildings and not finding any rats. So like when you get a good infestation, you want to throw a part of that. You just shoot all the rats. Right. So you were saying, but there's like a really high-tech aspect to this. Like, what's the tech piece of this? So that's more with these island eradications where rats have invaded all these islands.

They eat all the birds. They eat the tortoises. They just eat everything. So environmentalists are trying to kill the rats before the rats kill all the birds. Yeah, you had a quote from a guy that's like, well, look, I either kill all the rats or they're going to kill all the things. I have to play God either way. Right. He's very existential about it.

He's like, it's not a decision about whether we kill something or don't kill something. We just have to decide what we want to die. And we have to kill rats. We have to dis. Right. So they do it. They breed so quickly that if you're going to kill them, you have to kill all of them. So they drop hundreds of tons of poison from helicopters and just like run a grid, like hitting poison every square meter and just blanket the island.

And it kills all the rats. So how do the rats come back? That's like a total eradication. So they kill every last one. And it's only successful if they kill like every single rat on the other ones. Because if they're two, they breed so insanely fast that they'll repopulate it in like a year. What? Yeah.

Yeah, they have a three week gestation period. Wow. So they, it's just like exponential growth. So that's the super high tech one. And they're experimenting or talking about using things like, drones to drop bait or they have these automatic traps that are like CO2 powered. So if a rat runs up it, it'll like shoot a piston into its brain and it can just like keep killing rats and you don't have to reset it.

Oh my God. Where do the dead rats go? They just fall down. Yeah, they like put it on a wall or a tree. Wow. And then genetic engineering like making it so they only have male rat offspring and that their offspring is also all male so that it would theoretically. wipe out the population after a couple generations.

What? I mean, that's like, that's like the lysine deficiency in Jurassic Park. That's what that is. Yeah. But that, like, didn't work because I figured out. Of any animal, I feel like the rat is the one where you can say, like, life will find a way. I mean, how many Jurassic Park jokes do you make during the reporting of this story? Because it feels like that is exactly, these are all the strategies there.

Yeah. Containment and control. So you've been reporting this for months, right? And then all of a sudden a couple of weeks ago, something happened in York? Yeah, I mean, all these plans sort of coalesced at around the same time. The major island eradication, this Arctic island finished late March. And then last week, New York announced a new plan to try to deal with our rats, which are much more entrenched than other places.

Basically, what they're going to try to do is track rats to the places that they live in huge numbers. like old sewers or parks or things like that and poison them a bunch, seal up holes in the foundation, figure out waste management plans, and to sort of take a multidisciplinary focused approach to these places rather than the sort of more haphazard thing they were doing before. Right. But I mean, on a scale of 1 to 10, how doomed are these efforts that actually, like, I don't expect that they think they're going to eradicate rats?

Definitely not. Yeah. In the pilot program, they were really successful. like rat sightings were dropped by 80% or so. But like you kind of have to keep doing it. Like if you just move on and don't fix like the core problems, like the huge amount of garbage that sits around on the curb or anything like that, like they'll be back right away.

I mean, New York is an astonishing city because it like New Yorkers just exist with the trash. There's like the summer smell of running garbage. It's coming right now. Yeah. Why live in Chicago, which is like a huge city. Yeah.

And like there's not trash. on the streets. Yeah. Well, same with like, I don't know, Minneapolis isn't a huge city, but it's pretty big. I have a,

I have a theory that's San Francisco's going to have trash all over the streets. The trash comes from people outside of the city. No, like there's trash on the curb every day.

Yeah, it's the inconsiderate idiots that don't use the trash. No, and then it's also the other. Actual garbage bags full of trash from buildings. Yeah.

Don't you live here? Yeah. You're not aware of the trash on the streets. I mean, yeah, they people leave their trash on the streets and then the garbage men

take them, right? Yeah, but they sit there for hours. Have you ever lived in another city? Have you ever been to another city? Yeah. And every other city on the planet. No, I was born right here in the scene.

High check never leaving New York City. No, I mean, I was born in like the suburbs of Jersey. Right. So you're trash like, stay in your garage. Or like, yeah, and then you bring it to the end of the street. Yeah, in the big. In it, but in a trash can. But like on a day, right?

Yeah, like you're walking outside of New York. So if you're not from New York, like this is like a weird part of our city. when people move here, they immediately notice it. Like, you walk around and there's just piles of garbage everywhere. No, but I mean, like, people that get, like, dollar slices and they just will throw the plate, the paper plate on the ground. I don't think that's as big a problem. Are you talking about, like, garbage bags? Yeah, the huge piles of garbage bags everywhere.

It's super weird. Right. It's like in the city like Chicago, there's like alleys and the garbage goes in the alley and it's not just like along the side of the street. Yes, yes. I mean, where I live in the East Village, like right outside my apartment door will just be a pile of trash bags like, like, every Thursday. That's what you're talking about. Yeah.

But also, like, New York is... That should strike you as weird. It should be like, what is going on? What is the other process? How do you... Well, no, the city's just not designed for, like, trash, right?

Like, you don't have space for, like, a garbage can. Right. Right. So it's just like... The city is not designed, actually, but for anything. But also at the same time, New York is dirty. Like, I frequent out at night and see raging drunken morons just knocking over these

garbage cans. And that man's name is, Peterbone. No, but right. Like, I think, I don't know. I think there's... I think, like, of all of the people I know that can be described as, like, a drunken party bro, just, like, out there raging, the idea that it would be you is, like, the funniest.

Okay. Because that's, like, the hardest juxtaposition. But if I was like, and that was Chris Ziegler, like, yeah. Chris loves to rage. Look, my point is, is that I think there's a bit of a difference between, like, the trash, actual garbage pieces of garbage on the streets versus, like, contain trash. bags. I think maybe you're splitting hairs and rats. Yeah, rats can just

go right to the bag. Yeah. They can chew through brick, I read. What? Yeah. That is disgusting. Yeah. They can chew through pretty much anything. Other than like, concrete. Wait, so how do you, how do you, what are like strategies

and like, like, tech to like solve rats in New York City? They're like tracking them and mapping and just like making hotspots. maps and finding out where they are, but like it's pretty much just a strategy more than a technology. They're like, we're going to try really hard to kill them in these areas where they're entrenched. Oh my God.

And like seal up the foundations and stuff like that. The one piece of technology they mentioned was vacuum sealed trash compactors. Oh. So you can like suck all the oxygen out. It won't smell and just leave them on the curb. And maybe the rats will leave them alone. But other than that, yeah, it's like new garbage cans. Yeah.

There's not a whole lot you can do other than just like. be a little more organized about killing them. There's definitely like a line or a piece in your story where you go on the rat hunt. You notice the trails, these trails coming out of everything in New York. Yeah. And now I look, so like the rats get wet. Is that what happens? They like, they're just oily naturally.

They like excrete oil. And so like exterminators call them runways because they like have regular commutes where they pop out of the storm drain and run to the garbage as always on the curb. And so you get these lines called runways just going everywhere. And I looked for them today And that was the worst thing I've ever done Yeah, they're everywhere Once you start looking for them Yeah

And that was one of the things like When I met up this with the rodentologist Poppy Corrigan He was just standing in the middle of the street And then people were walking around And he was looking at the storm drain Which you would never really look at And you could see like

Just watch rats pop out And like run into the bag And run back It was like six o'clock Huh This makes me want to die I'm gonna go buy some of boots some big tall boots

So what was your big And we were running a little bit over here So we're shrap up What was your big takeaway? Like what's the Like for in Alberta It's just like kill all the rats right Right

But you can't do that anywhere else And they're like disease vectors and right Like what's the what's a solution? Yeah I mean The one thing all these products had in common Was sort of like a general civic awareness Everyone's like everyone's got to do their part to fight the rats And this is why Alberta was successful

And what New York is trying to do Where they're like Take community leaders around and be like these rats are living in the interstitial spaces of the neighborhoods and like shared space and things and everyone has to pitch in or the city well the propaganda in alberta is like crazy right yeah like these world war two posters being like defend the province the horse are coming i feel like you just can't get away with that in new york right like it wouldn't it just wouldn't go over it'd be like i don't yeah like i have a thing yeah you got to hot yoga or spin class or

well rats in new york i mean it's a great feature you should definitely 100% and read it. It went up on the website yesterday. Headline, incredible pun. Yeah, tell us what were the other puns? Oh, that was the main thing. I mean,

enemy at the grates, by the end of the grates with a picture of rats popping out of a grate, was the great one, Bezolenko. I'm trying to remember what the other ones were. The standing one was rat tails, obviously.

Yeah. I don't know. I have to look at the list. We had a long one. Yeah. Yeah, but it'd be great. And like I said, Josh, you should actually read everything Josh to put on the verge. It's all tremendous. Some of our best work. Anyway, but we're out of time, sadly. Thank you.

Everybody who are listening, Sam. Hibed it up. Hyped town. Hype it up. Wait, hype check rats. Oh, God. In the negatives. We don't talk about rats in the first gas anymore.

Engagement time. Yeah. You should follow the verge on Periscope. Whoa. That's a new one. We're just at Verge on Periscope. You should follow us there because we do live things there, and it's cool. I'm not going to give too much away because we have plans that are cool.

So follow us on Periscope. You should also follow us on Snapchat. We are The Real Verge on Snapchat. That speaks for itself at this point, I think. If you haven't found us on Snapchat yet, you will like what you see there. If you do it while we're recording right now, you'll still have a chance to see Sean O'Kane ride in an IndyCar. Oh, it's gone? We missed it?

Yeah, but I made a Snapchat story about the secret room in the office today. Okay. So you can look at the secret room in the office. Back to you. That's it. Yeah. No. Two per Sam.

Two for Sam. All right. Well, you can also follow Sam on Twitter. He's at Sam Shephyr. Deere, he's at Backlon. Josh is Josh Jeza. But you got a spell. D-Z-I-E-Z-A.

Yeah. You got it. Follow Josh. Very entertaining. I'm at Rackless. You can also just follow us in many other platforms, but Sam won't tell you what they are. And go to iTunes, rate us, review us. I'm supposed to point out that Eater, our sister publication, has a new podcast called Eater Upsil, which is super great.

Oh wow. You should look for that on iTunes. It's pretty funny. We also have What's Tech with Chris Plant. You should look at that. Like I said, we're cruising our way towards a thousand five-star reviews on iTunes, so help us out there. You know what I want to know this week? How do you get the verge?

Do you do it on RSS? Do you get it on social? What's like, leave a review. Tell us how you read The Verge. That'd be really great. Five stars. As always, my favorite amount of stars. Six, I think overdoing it for clearly not enough.

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Goodbye. Rock and roll.