The Vergecast - Fear the reaper

Episode Date: December 4, 2015

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

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

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

So on my left, if you're listening to the show, you can't hit this, is Michael Zelenko. Hi. And your features editor. I'm the features editor. And my right is Emil Kip. Hi. And I don't. Do you have a title?

No. Writer. I just, yeah. Very good writer. And Nicholas here. Hi. Hi. So we're doing the Vergecast a little bit differently.

We are going to talk about the huge, massive, very impressive feature that Elmo wrote. And Michael worked on about transhumanism. And my involvement was basically nothing. You didn't do it. I came up with like one headline that I liked that everybody hated. What was it? What was it? So, okay.

So we had some arguments with the headline because, one, transhumanism, people might think, we're actually talking about transgender issues, which of course we're not. But so for the general audience, actually, we should start here. Okay. What is transhumanism? Let's define terms. Yeah. Let's back up.

This transhumanism is like crazy. It's like crazy. And we could like try to define transhumanism for the next four hours, right? So, okay, what's out concise? Well, okay, so it's a loosely affiliated movement where people are looking at technology, where it's medical technology or otherwise advanced. of computer science that are going to bring about a kind of post-human future. Like we're going to become augmented.

We're going to become way more powerful as humans. We're going to become post-or trans-humans. So there's kind of like an ongoing disagreement among them themselves, which is like, are we post-humans or are we trans-humans? But transhumanism kind of really did stick as a name when they kind of decided that that was maybe 25 years ago or so, what was really going to be called? And so, yeah, did that answer it at all? Probably not. No, it answered it. But like the thing is like, I get that as a concept kind of.

Like, okay, yeah, we're going to augment our brains and we're going to, I don't know, become cyborgs. Yeah, some of it has become cyborgs or some of it is not at all to do with machines. Like some of it is like, you know, gene sequencing or trying to cure aging or, you know, trying to get, you know, off planet. That's a big part of it. A big part of it is for us to become a dual planet's space. species, like to be people, to be a species that's not just stuck on Earth. Like, they feel like we're stuck here. We need to get into space. I feel like I'm stuck here. Yeah, for sure. So it's, so it's big and it's splintered. It's big and it's complicated. So there's not like a single thing. Nope. No. No. Well, that makes it easy to talk about. Yeah. Right. Okay. So

Zoltan, Zoltan Istvan, right? Yeah. Is it a transhumanist. He is a perfect name. Right? I just have an amazing name. Is that his given name? It's his real name. Yeah. His last name is a shortening of his Hungarian name. Okay. But yeah, Zolt, yet that is his real name. Yeah, by the way, his friends call him Zolt.

Yeah. Wait, really? Yeah. I bet what they use the emoji, the lightning bolt. Exactly. Which really does suit his personality. I think he's a very energized person. Yeah.

Tell us about him. He's very charismatic and he's really fun to be around. And he's really, he's just incredibly committed to this. pursuit that he has dedicated himself to. And he strikes me as someone who should be working as a motivational speaker. Like that's kind of like what you feel like he is when you meet him. That kind of makes sense. In the photos he looks like he does look like a politician, like the way he like strides. Like I know he's got he's got the pose like the gaze into the mid distance and the wardrobeing and the yeah and the wardroving. But I think and I had a conversation with this

about some about this with someone on dig today that he reminds. reminds me of a golden retriever. What? Because. In the best way. In the best way. Exactly. And that was what the person who was moderating the dig dialogue today was

said, that's what I said when I saw the photo of him. I said, he smiles like a golden retriever. I'm like, he is one. Like that's what he were a dog. Like a little broad, blonde. Just you're like totally happy to be alive. Like really there to do stuff. Like what's my job?

What's my job? I'm going to do it now. You know, yeah. I thought it was a compliment. but like I guess maybe you could take that the wrong way. Someone said, you remind me of a dog. But it was really the highest compliment that I could think to pay it. Okay, so this dog-like man who wants to become more than a man,

he's he wants, he's doing, he's not out there like doing medical science. He's not doing like advanced AI research. He's running for president. Yes, he's running for president. That's kind of, I guess, a little bit of a conceit to say that. Like he is more interested in using this platform to get the ideas of transhumanism to be mainstreamed more even than they are now. You know, he's really about sort of trying to push this agenda. He doesn't have illusions of grandeur to the point where he knows he doesn't, he doesn't not really think he's going to get elected, obviously.

But he does, I think, seriously entertained that it could possibly happen like to election cycles from now. That's what he says in the piece, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like, I know that he... After Kanye. Exactly. After Kanye, after Hillary, and that would be enough time, I think, as far as Zoltan sees it, for people to accept that we could become cyborgs. And for that to not be weird. So I think, you know, he's maybe a bit optimistic, but he's definitely committed to his vision.

Well, one of my things about, one of my questions about Zoltan is how serious is he about these actual issues and how much of it is actually just him having a great time? because the entire time, I mean, if you guys read this piece, he is having a blast. Yeah. Actually, before, like, how does the, like this piece, if you haven't read it, you absolutely should. But you basically went on a road trip with him, right? Like, what's the arc of, like, what actually happened here? So let's start. So you went out to San Diego.

Yeah, went out to San Diego to meet him. To join Zoltan. Yeah, to join Zolten. And he's, you know, he's driving all the way across from San Diego to Washington in this absolutely not really at all word-worthy bus that he has turned into a coffin and this is the way that he is getting his ideas about transhumanism out and so I go meet him in San Diego

and I'd stay with him for a week as we crossed the desert like through Southwest Desert getting into Arizona with a little detour to Mexico because we ended up being like around on the border at Yuma and he's like you know it would be fun why don't we just like go get some tacos and there's like you know booze down there's really cheap so we could get that as well and it would just be fun to go to Mexico and I was like, hell yeah, it would be fun to go to Mexico.

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

to be woken up in the future when they can be cured from being decapitated and dead. And then we also went to an immortality cult. I shouldn't say, well, yeah. Yeah, no, I think he's a cult, but I think we could probably say that it's cultish. And they preach, they also preach eternal life through positive thinking. So if we just think positively enough And if everyone around you also thinks positively enough Then that's how we will not have to die

And also like donate some money, right? And also pay please To join in our parties But also one of them died Yes One of the founders died Doesn't everybody Well no well I mean

Just because everyone has doesn't mean that it's right Is the Tagline of the So So yeah It's true one of their founders died. Very sad for everyone who loved that person, but also very obvious.

And they have just sort of plowed on. And Zaltin went there to give a speech and to present his ideas of transhumanism. So he wasn't part of the cult. He was like one of the speakers. Yeah. So we went to their like kind of revival church meeting kind of thing that they have a Friday night. And Zoltan was then like one of the people who got up and gave a PowerPoint presentation.

It was very a lot of slides. And there was like kids. at this event. Yeah, there's little kids, there's little kids, there's babies, there's this very cute little girl who's like two, who was just like ambling around the front of the stage being a child. She's one of these people behind her talking about how, just believe, you don't have to die. Very strange, obviously. With a dancing symbol of youth. Yeah, she exactly, she's like, I'm certainly not even aware that I'm going to die. I'm not really sentient yet, but, um, so that was a very funny contrast. And I mean, like, the desert is just a really,

intense place. I think that, you know, like, it's harsh and arid and very difficult to live there. It's like, it is hot every single day. And I think that maybe makes people a little bit weird. And so it's become this kind of like locust for strange ideas. Like, I don't know, it's trying to formulate it. I was like, what is it about this place that has attracted these two things? Arizona. Arizona is like the Florida of the West. That's so true. That's sort of exactly what it felt like. It's so true. If you live in Arizona, you can tweet Michael Zanko at M-V-D-E-L-E-N-K-K-S.

I'm not going to take it back. Oh, my God, it's so beautiful out there, though. It's gorgeous. I would love to leave that. Can I come in? Yeah. It's beautiful then. It is.

Okay, so Zoltan is, he's a transhumanist, but he's not, like, the movement is so big that he's not, there's like, what kind of transhumanists are there? Like, there's this cult of people who seem to genuinely actually truly believe down to their heart. They're not going to die. There's Zoltan, I can't tell if he actually believes that or not. And neither can I. There's, and what I'm leading you up to here is like, there's like insane Silicon Valley stuff.

Yeah. Like this is crazy to me. Yeah, this stuff is really the weird stuff, I think. And like these ideas were talked about, you know, the idea that you could cure aging or the idea that you could create a computer powerful enough to map a human brain to the point where it would then be able to be programmed to imitate a human brain and think like a person. Those ideas used to be like a futurrama, but now there's like a super big amount of money going into making them real as far as is possible. But there's a huge amount of pushback to those things being even possible at all to do. So is the question, what kind of transomists are there? I guess.

Yeah, like the flavors. So there's the people who believe very firmly and Zoltan's one of these people, that the singularity is a thing that will happen and that's going to come. That's going to come in the middle of this sense. that's going to be unbelievably powerful computing power that we can't even imagine like super intelligent machines will come online as soon as the singularity passes people like Elon Musk also believe this which you know go for it and so this is this is like a really important part of the important part of transhumanism then there's people who believe that medicine will be able to eventually cure aging by figuring out whatever it is that causes ourselves to age right and if we can

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

From your tweets. Yep, your tweets will be part of it. Every email you've sent will be part of it. Think about that. If my future transhumanist self is based on my tweets, I am going to be an asshole. Yeah. We're going to make bad jokes. And dad jokes.

I'll be a jerk who makes really bad jokes. That'll be my whole life. But everybody is. All of Twitter is and assholes. Yeah. So it's like everybody's going to be. It's a bad place to be. Right.

I mean, I mean, this is just like when you, when you like interrogate this idea, this is just a ridiculous idea. like we're saying that about Twitter because Twitter exists now. Like people who like 10 years ago had an idea of what you will be reconstituted from in the future would be like geocities. So your geocities account will be who you are in the future. People like, yeah, okay, let me give you hundreds of millions of dollars to make that real. Would you like come back in the same human form? Like, okay, if you're hit by a truck and you die.

Okay, very sad. Not because your cell's aged, but right? Yeah. Then, and they're like, okay, but we'll just take Nicola's. cloud, that's no personality cloud, and like put it in what? Well,

this is a good question. Or like, where does it go into? Very good question. Well, potentially, uh, into some kind of server.

Like they're very, very thin on details about how this would actually happen. But it's like, yeah, uh, make some kind of algorithm. Or a robot. Uh,

or a robot. Yeah. Well, the idea is like at this stage of our, you know, evolution, the idea that you would even want to bother having a physical body would just be a choice that you make and you might decide not to

have one because it's cooler to hang out in the cloud. Yeah, you'll be like a substrate. You'll be like an intelligence, a disembodied intelligence that exists in a server on the cloud, wherever it is. And it's like this aggregated algorithm that's gone through all your photos. And like, then like, she used to really love playing basketball. Don't know if that's true, but she did. And so your disembodied self might often be at basketball games. She tweeted that one time. But how can I go there? Well, there's no there there.

You're in some kind of virtual reality. That's right. So they think that that is a way for our consciousness to continue. So this kind of goes against like many centuries of philosophical thought, but yes. It sounds, you know, the worst part is it probably won't be able to detect sarcasm. So anything you tweet is like straight. Everything is literal. Like think about all the punctuation you're not using and how you're

future self is going to read that? Like, you don't know. I mean, look. So we should be putting a lot of requests in right now because this will be part of our future digital self. What if they start is more earnest Twitter? What if, oh, the best thing that comes out of this is everyone becomes really earnest on Twitter.

I really, really believe in, I like this thing and I back it. I think you should like it as well. But you should like whatever you. It's like, I'm really good at basketball. Oh, it just becomes a place where everyone wishes their best self out loud. Oh, that's basically what this whole thing boils.

down too. It's a very, very big wish. Yeah. Well, and also, like, I don't know, it, it's not very intelligent. Maybe somebody's thinking, it was anybody, I don't know, you can tell me, is anybody thinking about, like, the actual, like, philosophy of, like, the self, like, we don't need to talk about the soul, but, like, when it comes down to it, you know, is there a self that could actually exist and, like, be a singular entity on a computer? Well, that's, like, an unanswerable question so far, but they don't ever really, like, I mean, that's, like, an ongoing debate that they have.

in all of these different, you know, AI research places. Like, you know, the existential risk place that Nick Bostrom runs, they continually are having these kinds of conversations of like, is it really me if it is a copy of myself? Or is it like, we can't answer that question because it's not possible to create that. But it has, it's because the idea of a self is an illusion in the first place. It's just a thing that we make up. So it's like, is it really you? And you take a drink.

I need take a drink after that. truth. I'm just telling you. So much of it is just like that though. Like so much of it is like conversations you have when you were high at university, but they've like turned it into a profession. But like pay me to have these thought experiments all the time. Well, is it really well so that's the other thing is like it seems like I like like Zoltan maybe is in part of this. He's like running for president because it's a crazy fun thing to do. But I get this this real sense that everybody that is actually putting real money into this. It's like it's the it's the elites. It's the very very rich people that are.

doing this and like if they actually manage to pull something off they're the ones who are going to reap the benefits and the rest of we're like oh yeah I guess we're going to die yeah just like everyone else right it doesn't mean it's right but it doesn't but not because it hasn't happened I don't even know anyone just because it's happened to everyone else doesn't mean that or that it yeah well one of the things that was really interesting means that like we should come back to that sorry well I was just going to say that part of this is like it's already being put into action with the cryogenics bit, right? Where it's like a lot of money going into that.

And what is the purpose of that? We got to talk about Alcor. What is the point? So this is a facility that, assuming they can stay in business, you go there and they lop your head off, they pull out all of the fluid and replace it with the antifreeze, and then freeze the thing in the hopes that in the future somebody will be able to unfreeze it and reconstitute your body, body and identity. Right.

And then also fix all of this cell damage of being frozen at minus 196 Fahrenheit. So you've been turned into a stone. And then, yeah, medical technology being advanced enough to be able to, well, what they think is going to happen is that there's going to be all of these millions of tiny, tiny, tiny nanobots. Like millions of like atomic scale machines will be able to get into your blood. stream and fix everything that went wrong just by replacing broken things with unbroken things inside your body. So this is not at all backed up by any current science or any, any, any science. Well, you talk to the one scientist who's like, yeah, it turns out that a lot of your

personality and sense of self and emotion is actually just the chemicals flowing through your brain, not the actual neurons. Well, that that interacts very importantly with the new, like we don't even understand what exactly it is that makes cognition happen at all. So he's a neuroscientist, dedicated his whole life to this, like, you know, works with hundreds of similar people.

It's like, we don't know anything about this, but we could probably say that this soup of our brain with all of our proteins and all of our dopamine, all of the chemicals, all of the hormones that are in our brain

is very, very, very important to how it functions. And so if you get rid of it, you've got a big, big problem to solve. Yeah, I mean, you hear stories about people like hitting their head and suddenly they're like a completely different personality. They forget things.

Like, imagine not just hitting your head, but, hitting it, cracking it open, taking everything out, replacing with antifreeze, and then pretending, and then hoping to come back to be the person you were in the very beginning. It's like, that is, that is the most insane part to me. Well, we're sitting here laughing about all this stuff, but there are people who take it deadly, deadly seriously. Well, that is a wrong word, I guess, right? I mean, the people, the people who are paying to do it, they're taking it very seriously, but there's no one in actual medicine who's entertaining it even vaguely as an idea.

And it's something that they say about it is. It's like, no, this is going to be, I mean, it's so important to do this because we're going to save people's lives. People who are dead don't have to be dead anymore. And like, you know, morally we should be able to do this. Here's my thing. I think people who are dead should stay dead. Does that sound cool? Oh, like, would you go back and kill baby Hitler? Would you resurrect Hitler? No. Exactly. Now what's the point? Would you resurrect? Gandhi? No, just keep them dead. I know. What's to say that this AI of the future won't resurrect bad people? Oh my God. So many existential risks that they haven't thought of. Well, no, but that's the other

thing is like, they have not thought of that. This weird line of like, we need to be worried about the singularity because the AI is going to kill us. But we want to chase the singularity because if we can manage to like cross this very fine line where we're in charge of the AI or we're, we become the AI, then we're cool. Yeah. It absolutely makes no sense. Like, a really favorite one of mine as well. It's like, Elon Musk is super worried that this is going to happen. He's like very worried that AI is going to become bad and going to kill everybody.

So what he does is donate money to helping it come into being. I'm going to give $10 million to it to make sure that it's friendly. Rather than be like, I'm going to give no money to it to make sure it never exists. It's like, I'm going to make sure that it comes across. Like, that's crazy. It's all crazy, but that's more crazy. But like super evil AI hitting the singularity and like, you know, Terminator Matrix-style

future, for some reason, that feels less ridiculous to me. Then? Then I'm going to like upload my brain and it's going to be me and I'm going to like have a continuity of identity from here to there. So how much of this is just like I'm not in the right cultural space to take like things seriously? Am I dumb to think that like like real AI that actually causes problems is a thing that could happen? Uh, I think it would be extremely unlikely because why would this, this, okay, so this is this other underlying sort of thing that runs through, transhumanism, which is that technology is like in some ways separate and somehow separate from people.

And it's almost looked at as being this supernatural force. It's like technology is coming. Technology wants what it wants. It's going to become what it becomes. It's going to get so powerful. It's like, how does that happen? At what point does it get out of the control of human beings? It never does.

So I find it very difficult to take that idea seriously because machines are not these sentient. They're never going to become like the point at which we lose control of technology. I don't think is a thing that would ever happen. I got to read an ad, but I need a hype check of, I don't know. Death? Death. I'm pro-death. Keep the dead dead dead.

Me too. That there's an ending. I hate the idea of it never-ending. I love life for now. Yeah. Hype check death. That's what I think. I love life for now.

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You ready? There are two. We had a lot of headlines. There were two that got rejected. The one that we were going with until like the 11th hour. I think you heard this one was Choose Life. Yeah. Which I loved.

But it was sensitive. It was a sensitive. Mine was Fear the Reaper. Fear the Reaper is very good. It's not that good. But it's pretty good. It was good enough where I could control people by saying, no, it has to be this. Right.

Nobody could tell if I was being sincere or not, much like the proponents of Trump. transhumanism. I see what you did there. It had a lot of layers. What did we have? We had so many heads and all of them were so, so bad. Super bad.

We got to a point where we're reading white zombie lyrics to each other for like a half an hour. Oh, more human than human. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff in there. Yeah. Well, he's like a, you know, in that whole kind of cyber goth space.

I think there's probably a little crossover there. What about live and let? Live. Nobody liked that one. No? No. Never say die. Never say die.

Never say die. They got knock back. They got knocked back. I mean, I'm the astral creep. Fanam in a box, shadow in your head. Yeah, this is definitely straight up about the singularity. Yeah. I'm a jigsaw man. An electric head.

I'm a jigsaw man. Yeah. That's terrifying. Electric head. This is a very futuristic. That's a, yeah. Right there. This is crazy.

All right. the Nexus one. See, it really is. It's a total, like, cyber goth anthem here. I want more life. I want more life. Oh, my God. Because, I mean, that's like, well, to go back to saying it would be terrible to live forever,

which is true. That's like the whole idea of what pergatory is in religious thinking. You never die or go anywhere. It's like, why would you create that on earth as this horrific, you know, so that was like my number one question in my mind so much through this story. It would be, okay, if we could achieve. this if this were possible at what point would be like okay i need the true death now because i'm a zombie then you have to choose to die you have to choose to die you have to do the thing that they fear most

which is end your life so and think about all those kids but hang on really appeal like this did not sort of cut through to the point where it was like oh but i still want to live forever i'm like it's not gonna actually ever be forever no but it would be like if you're like you know what i'm done i choose to die and then a month later your best friend's like you know i really miss so-and-so and hits the button that recreates you from your tweets and your back. Exactly. Exactly. I've written this kind of like.

Like grandma can't ever. She's like, I know it's the holidays, but like, come on. Exactly. Because I wrote this kind of like extropians horror film sort of treatment and that was like exactly what it was.

It was like the future came to pass and then that they couldn't ever get out of it. And so people maliciously kept bringing them back and trying to kill the person who kept bringing them back didn't work either. So they were just like trapped in this perpetual hell. It's quite anyone who wants to option that I'm ready to go. That's like if you. left a job and they just kept being, like, they kept calling you and being like, okay, what about this one email, this one time?

Right. I don't work there anymore. I don't want to. I know, like never being able to get off a do not call list. Like, you're just like, you're just like always getting solicited. It's just everything about it is just like a horrible nightmare vision. Why are you putting me back on the list? Well, because I'm not done with you yet.

So come on back. Great offer for you. You have to say, send a blank email to unsubscribe. from life. No reply at life. Yeah. Just one email away. So, yeah, being made into a zombie would be terrible.

And then Zolten was like, yeah, you know, it would be really terrible, especially if you had become, like, enslaved in this system. That would be really bad. And I'd be like, yeah, that would be super bad. Like, you wouldn't actually be able to kill yourself. Then you'd be stuck in it forever. He's like, yeah, I guess you would be trapped in a hell forever. Anyway, I'm just going to go get another.

He's just like walking away to get another beer. He's like telling me this. So if he achieves his dream of. We live forever in our physical bodies. The environment's toast. And the things, the entities that enable us to live forever right now, the dream is that all those entities are corporations. It's not like the government or some communist utopia.

It's companies. So we are, we are, their perfect world is a blasted environment where everything is destroyed and the only way to have anything that's good is to be in a computer. and the things that enable you to persist are companies. Is that a fair assessment? Yeah. That's the utopia? Yeah, isn't it beautiful?

Okay. I really can't wait. Sounds pretty good. It's part of the Google, Facebook, Twitter, whatever. Oh my God. Is this my Facebook is interested in virtual reality? Yes. This is it?

Yes. You have to be recreated from what you've posted on Facebook for the duration that you've had of Facebook. You're going to be, like, virtually poked for the rest of your life. Well, I think that a lot of these Zuckerbucks are going to go towards curing. aging. That's one of his big things. He really feels like that's how we can reach. Curing aging. Yeah, it's how he feels like we could reach our human potential best. One of the best things to do that, you know, best ways to do that would be to never die. So I'm really glad that they've incorporated that trust to invest in important things like that. You had like a long day and you wake up the next morning. You're like, I think I caught aging. Yeah, exactly. Like curing aging is like, hang on. That definitely happened to me. When I was like 36, I woke up and I was like, oh. I've got it.

I've come down with aging. No, it's like when you, like, when you're in your, like, early 20s and, like, you have your first, like, real hangover, right? Like, mid-20s, you're like, wait a minute. It's a chronic disease. This happens to people? Yeah. Oh, and you can never go back.

I know. I think that the first truly, truly bad hangover at a point in their life. It's like, oh, my God, I really am going to die someday. Yeah. Like, it's directly connected to your mortality. For sure. It's like, yeah. Okay, so what's next for Zoltan?

Zoltan? Zoltan? Zolt. I can't call Zolt. It's easier to call Zolt. Zee, the golden retriever, is that he's on... Zee, the golden retriever. I feel...

He's on his last leg in this tour. The bus is probably on its last legs as well. And yeah, he's on the way to Washington to deliver his bill of rights. And hopefully maybe I could go there and see how that actually unfolds for him. What's his Bill of Rights? So it's the transhumanist Bill of Rights. It's what that everyone is, everyone's entitled to immortal, eternal life, everyone is entitled to be able to do whatever they want to do to their body.

Government should be putting a lot more money into things like curing aging. Right. But he's got a bunch of other stuff, which we sort of talk about in our sit down halfway through the story where he wants there to be like a universal living wage. And, you know, that's a whole. That sounds like, I know. It's like, there are a lot of parts of this that's like, hey, actually, that's sensible, but then you also get the part where it's like, and I'm going to be

in disembodied consciousness. in a server who lives for millions of years. With a great wage. I can't. With like this perpetual government that like someone has perpetual money. Yeah. So yeah, Zolt's going to just keep going and

realize his goal of getting to Washington and then I think he'll think about what he wants to do after that. Which is probably going to go surfing in Baja. Yeah. That sounds great. Yeah. We were going to do that as well. Forever. It seems like a forever. Forever. I mean that's got to be a pretty sweet wave.

he's that good the eternal wave he's had a lot of time in practice that was not one of his dreams the eternal wave the eternal wave yeah I'm gonna bring that up I'm gonna ask him about that I can bring that up yeah anything else you want to want to say about transhumanism and how amazing and terrible it is yeah it's a terrible set of ideas

that I think people really should be very just come out with it tell us what you're really thinking is what I think and particularly what raised earlier. It's like all these stuff's being driven by private money in corporations. And that's really not great for democracy. So ironically, this person's running for president. Yeah, but isn't this weird that we're, we're terrified of like, it's really terrible if they achieve their goal. But we are laughing at the goal all the way along. So shouldn't we be happy that they're like wasting their money on this instead of something? No. No, that's even worse.

Okay. Give me the money. Give somebody the money Maybe not me But somebody better than me All right Yeah Put that Put that money into doing something

To actually You know Effect change like now in ways that we need Maybe not trying to make a few billionaires Immortal It's had to get serious All right Well I'm going to read another ad

And you guys are going to head out Before you do How can people find you? They can't I hope I'm on Twitter which is Elmo underscore Keep K-E-W-E-P. You'll find me.

And Michael, you are also on Twitter? Yeah, I'm on Twitter. M-V-Z-L-L-L-N. That's it. With a K. Yeah, K-S. Not a Q. No, M-V-Z-Links. You'll find me. If you really want to find me, you know where I am.

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quantity of messages you need featuring pay-as-you-go monthly plans. So go to cloud messaging.guru and sign up for cloud messaging centers rest API. You can start integrating this messaging solution today. That was a deeply, deeply nerdy ad read with an amazing glass shatter in the middle, which was totally fine. Don't be sorry. It was amazing. That was really great.

This is the best bizarro Vergecast ever. Yeah. And now we have two new people here. Siegler, who many of you have met before, and a new Vergecast rookie. Andrew Hawkins. Hello. Are you on Twitter? I am.

Yeah. Aren't we all? How do you feel about Twitter? It rules my life. Yeah. In all the worst ways possible. We're going to make it a better place based on what just happened. I hear about this.

I hear that there's an effort underway to improve Twitter. No, twice in the past two days. Like basically every day now, I've tried to say something nice to somebody on Twitter, and they just assumed I was being sarcastic. See, now you know how I feel. with my earnest curiosity that comes off as condescending. Every time I'm like, well, tell me about it. Tell me about Universal Remote's Deeder.

And you're like, what? And I'm like, no, really tell me about them. Okay. Can never win. I really can't. So you guys are here to talk about the L.A. Auto show and Uber and just car stuff. And also, you haven't been on the verge cast before.

I have not. How does it feel? Tingly. Tingly? Tingly, that's not the adjective. There's glasses breaking everywhere. Yeah. You know, there might be a small fire somewhere in the corner.

Never know. The good news is nobody's going to talk about how you did here because all they're talking about apparently is Nicholas Hare on the YouTube comments. I know. I'm really enjoying it. It's super fun. Are you watching YouTube live comments? Yeah.

During the Vergecast. She's commenting now. Oh my God. Yeah. If you want to come and hang out on YouTube.com slash watch question mark V. Yeah. Wow. I could not handle reading live YouTube comments.

It's fun. They really want to know where Neelai is. Neelah is a way. Becoming immortal. Yeah. Yeah, it's like the movie Transcendence where he turns into a computer and now he's just among us.

God, do I have to watch that movie? You haven't seen it? It's so bad. Dude. That's the Johnny Depp one? Why would I want to watch a so bad movie? So look, the first 80% of it is actually not bad and then it gets really bad, really fast.

Yeah. Which, you know. Okay. I mean, I'm the guy that will defend Johnny Namaana. That's a good one. I like Johnny DeMonic. Isn't the book better? Yeah, but I don't know how to read.

Wow. That's an admission. That's turning into a Moripovic kind of situation. I have no idea how to transition to Uber. I just have no idea. So now we're just going to, I'm just going to do it. Tell me about Uber. What's going on with Uber these days?

So Uber is a company that did a lot of things. It is doing a lot of things. I guess the big news today was that they are seeking or seeking another round of funding because money is of no object. They're looking for about $2.5 billion from their investors which would up their valuation to about $62.5 billion. Why does Uber need $2.5 billion?

So that they can continue to... Make it rain on them politicians. That's right. That's right. Yeah? That's one explanation. But no, because I think the assumption is that they're, you know, steadily moving towards an IPO. That's been sort of the word on the street, although the CEO has declined to discuss any details about that at all.

It's, you know, he says that, I think he said something at this conference a little while ago that, you know, they're like the new girl at the prom. Right. And why would we go home with, you know, anybody when we can just sort of be at the prom? Whoa, you can't say stuff like that these days. Well, this guy says a lot of crazy stuff. Yeah, Travis Klanak says a lot of insane stuff. I mean, we just got to finish talking about, like, crazy people funding transhumanism. So let's talk about Travis just a little bit.

Are you familiar with how insane the CEO of Uber is? Oh, Kalinick. I mean, like in an abstract way, but not in like the way that like, no, not as much. I mean, he's a deeply committed, uh, Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand, Ayn. Randian. Randian. Randian. He's a Randian. So he, he hates him some, some leachers, some poachers. Yes. Moutures. What's the phrase that she uses? Takers. I'm shrugging like Atlas right now. I don't know. Right. Yeah, yeah, right. I've never read the book. His Twitter avatar was Alexander Hamilton for a while. And then it was the, I think the cover of Atlas shrugged or something.

It was, yeah. And, yeah, no, he's, yeah, he's very much into self-determination and making it for yourself. And having amazing hair. The dude has an amazing head of hair. Let's be honest. Really? Yeah. For someone who looks like he's perpetually 12 years old, it's not a bad.

It's not a bad. Hair dude. Oh. Right? I googled. Right? He's not bad. So, yeah.

So, yeah, they're raising a ton of money and they're, you know, crushing the competition. And I think another story that I wrote today that sort of reflects this is that, that you've got Lyft and all of Uber's Asian competitors banding together like the Super Friends so that they can defeat the Uber Menace. Isn't one of the Super Friends Hart? Or no, no, I'm thinking of Captain Planet. Pretty sure Hart is a band from the 80s. No, no, in Captain Planet, one of the rings is definitely Hart.

You're like, oh man, like every other kid has like a real power. Like wind, water, fire. Right. Heart. No, the Super Friends are Superman, Green Hunter, and Wonder Woman, Batman. But no, yeah, so Lyft is getting together with Didi Qaeda, which is China's big Ryan Hale company, and as well as Ola, which is based in India, and grab taxi. And they're sort of getting together and they're going to share technology, share mapping technology. people who use Lyft can go to these other countries and hail these other services using their Lyft app, I guess.

So it really sort of expands Lyft's reach across the world, whether or not that's going to have any sort of effect on this competition with Uber. It remains to be seen. I don't know there's an antitrust concern here because a lot of those companies operate in the same markets, right? And now they're just all sharing everything with one another. That's a good point. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there was, there's been massive deregulation in the transportation area since like the 70s. Right.

So I doubt that there's, I don't know. I mean, here's a real question. As a, I don't know, bleeding heart liberal, do I need to feel really bad whenever I use Uber? Like, that's it. That's the question. No, I know. I like, I use Uber all the time. I'll probably spend $2.5 billion on it next year, so they'll be good.

That was something I didn't mention that they're raising all of their money from Nicola. Me. Me trying to get the fuck home sometimes. But no, I like mentioned I was in Seattle and like mentioned my friend and I were like, we're going to take Uber or whatever. And then our like one of our like punk friends just like went off on us. And Uber was something that we just like didn't talk about for a while after that. Yeah, my anarchist friends like are all over me.

How many anarchist friends do you have? I actually have like two. And they happen to be dating each other. So it's very... You actually have like two. No, but they are all over my case all the time about Uber sending me links to dubious websites and, you know, this and that. But no, I think, you know, you look at some of the legal challenges that Uber's facing over the next few months next year. I think a lot of this stuff's going to come to head how they treat their workers, how they classify their drivers.

It's really going to be something that they're going to have to. to contend with. But you still have to answer my question. I think you can continue to use it in good faith. Really? And not feel like I'm a horrible person? I think. Well, you should for other reasons.

Yeah, you should definitely use it and feel terrible about yourself. Right. Okay. But just, you know, because of your health choices. I don't know. Why not? They could treat their drivers better.

They're, the question of whether or not you can make a living wage on Uber. without like making it more than a full-time job is up for debate, especially depending on what city you're in. Yep. Man, I went to Washington, D.C.

this time last year with my parents and they discovered Uber there and like grilled every driver. Oh, really? Yeah, so I heard more, like I would never ask someone like, so how much do you make? Like, what do you like about this? You know what I mean? Like that was just like in polite conversation.

But like, parent, oh man. No, they're not going to listen to this. The other one will. but the one that did it won't. Sorry, I got distracted. Shout out at Nicholas Parks. Holidays, family, what's coming next. But yeah, they asked every driver about it.

And a lot of them, this was in, like, D.C. area. A lot of them lived, like, elsewhere in Virginia. Yeah. We're, like, retired guys who were just like, you know, I'm kind of bored at home. Why don't I, like, go make some money? And then they're pulling in, like, thousands of dollars a month, per their stories. Yeah. But I don't know.

I don't know in New York if it's. I don't know. I feel like any time I bring up like the job, they're pretty, they seem pretty into it. It definitely depends on the market because like L.A. I always think about, I go to L.A. and you, you go like 40 miles in an Uber X and you spend like $8. Yes, I was just there and it's like free. It's free. Yeah. It's basically free. Yeah. Well, that's the question. How long can they sustain this business model? How long do they continue to try to undercut, you know, traditional taxi businesses by offering such cheap fares? And that's part of where the funding comes from, right? It's like They're plowing money into undercutting all the traditional competitors.

They're basically burning large piles of cash on these extremely discounted fares that they offer. Yeah. Which is why they need $2.5 billion more, apparently. Yeah, exactly. So the other thing that happened is Amur wrote a piece about a bunch of Uberjars in France that screw it, and they, like, band it together and created their own app, basically. Yeah, I thought that was pretty amazing. It's an amazing story.

I think I'm surprised that. When I read that, I was like, this is not a terrible idea. Right. I mean, it's not, it's not probably not going to work, but I'm surprised it hasn't happened in, like, the United States. Right. So, like, when I think of Uber, I think of a company that fundamentally, like, their technology is fine, but it's not like this huge moat. Like, what they have over everybody is they're like scale. Scale. They're everywhere. And now, honestly, they have like the infrastructure to get to fight the cities to like make their app legal there. Right.

And so the question is, are they, when they, if they do that. They cared about that to begin with. Nothing they cared about that to begin with. But now they have to do it. Right. And so if I were Uber, I would actually want to create some like gray zone kind of license that they would get so that, you know, there can't be some other like, you know, I made a communism joke about there. There's a spectre haunting Uber. And it's the specter of a crowdsourced French ride sharing app.

Right. Like, it's the means of production. I'm serious. It's the means of production. The means of production for ride sharing is the ability. to use a smartphone to connect to the customer who wants a ride. Right. And right now that's what Uber provides. But Uber doesn't, like that thing could just be made.

Sure. And it's just, what it needs is scale the network effect and legality. And right now Uber and Google, Uber has... Which is invested in Uber. All three of those things. But if like the question is, are all three of those things, does that basically mean that Uber wins? Like Lyft is done. All this consortium of other companies trying to get together are done.

It seems to me that's why they need the money. They need the money to make sure that whatever lead they have never gets encroached on. I mean, that's the question. And I think that's what Lyft is definitely trying to staunch the bleeding. Right. Because they, you know, enjoying forces with these other companies. And I think, you know, Uber's making a big push in China too. So there's clearly there's a threat there to, you know, sort of these Asian companies as well.

So whether or not that can be sustained or whether or not just Uber is going to become the default taxi service for the world. I think as obviously the question that will be answered over the next year or so. I mean, this was the year that they basically consolidated America. They're still kind of on the ropes, I feel, in Europe. They've got a lot of legal challenges. Because the labor protections are so much stronger in Europe than they are here. You get a lot more pushback from people in France. No, I used them in Amsterdam, and I was getting dirty looks on the street.

Like, people are like, what are you doing? Wow. That's interesting. They're like, why aren't you on your bicycle? No, why? Because they're still fighting the taxi industry there. Oh, yeah. And so, like, that hasn't resolved itself yet there.

And so, like, I mean, yes, I wasn't riding a bike, so of course they didn't like me to answer to that. But, like, genuinely, like, there was, like, people, like, looked at me. They made a, her face. But it's like, what are we bemoaning? We bemoan about the way they treat their drivers, but also, like, are we bemoaning the poor taxi millionaires that are going out of business now? Yeah. Uber's coming in to replace.

I mean, nobody really, I don't think we, it's hard to must have. threw up some sympathy for medallion owners in the New York City area or taxi companies in Las Vegas who are all in by the mob. Yeah. Right. I mean, I will say that, I don't know, this is an old fight between Chris and I that fundamentally I don't like the idea of cars or driverless cars because I feel like mass transit is better. And there's, the dream of the personal driverless car doesn't seem to be designed for people

that want to pay two bucks to get somewhere in the city. It's designed for people that want to pay $10,000 or $15,000 for a car. Right. Or car sharing. Like the level of income you need. God, I sound like such a communist. I'm ranting. Where's your beret, man?

Where's your little beret? It's crazy. But yeah, like, you know, getting a taxi before Uber sucked. And it sucked for really bad reasons, right? Yeah. And they're fixing that, which seems great. Well, yeah, it was racist. It was dirty.

It still is racist. Yeah. Sometimes it was dangerous. You know, yeah, and Uber sort of took all of that kind of out of the equation and was like, hey, it can be clean and seamless and your driver can be nice to you. I will say the one time where I still consistently use a taxi in New York is when it's raining because you open Uber and it's, it's, you know, 2.5 or 3.0 surge, but you can always find a taxi if you just wait for five minutes. Yeah. But not always. Yeah, well, yeah, not always.

Yeah, but sometimes you're lucky. I took a taxi in September because my phone died and whatever. And I forgot how expensive it is compared. Like I got, it took me like, I think it was $45 for me to get home from the west side of Manhattan. And I was, and it's something that I would have expected to pay like maybe $30 for. Yeah. And I, like, by the time I got to my place and it was weird, like it was so bumpy, like the car, because it's like those cars are different. It's all bumpy.

You're like, yeah. It's unpleasant. Yeah. It's like, oh, this is so weird. Well, some taxis still use crown vicks, which are like basically ancient tanks at this point. Yeah. Like they've been around. The fundamental cars has been unchanged for 35 years.

And they just stopped producing them like five years ago. But the taxi industry is still using them. My best friend in high school had like an 87 crown vick. God, I love that car. It's a big car. It's a big car. It had like the 300 Mustang 300 horseback engine. Yeah, yeah.

Just just massive, massive. Yeah, you can crash into anything, won't feel it. Yep. And like you can turn the steering wheel like 45 degrees before it started moving. Yeah, you can go like this and the car just sort of rocks back and forth without turning. All right, what else? Spot. It's happening in cars.

Uber Spot. Yeah, it was a sort of under the radar thing, but they are rolling out this new feature just in Seattle to start out with. That's meant to address the problem. You hail an Uber. you're waiting on the street, you get into the wrong person's car because you think it's your Uber car. Right. Which apparently happens to be.

They're all Camrys and Highlanders. Right. Whenever I get into Uber, is your name Dietrich? Dietrich. Right. Are you Dietrich? I'm Nicole. Always Nicole.

Nicole. Yeah. Well, so their new solution to that problem is they're going to be starting out these LED lights for the drivers to put into their windows. And the writer can then select the color that the light will, light up as using their app. So. You just got to look at the last three digits

of the license plate. Duh. Why doesn't the Uber app tell you the color of the car that's coming? Yes. What is the deal? Why is that hard? They can tell me the make.

They can tell me the license plate. They can tell me who the driver's. They show the person's face. Yeah, I know. And they can't just tell me it's going to be black, yo. Yeah. That's a good question. Apparently they decided that they

didn't want to go that step and instead wanted to invest in some sort of new light- Light-based, you know, close encounters of the third kind era. It's good, though, if, like, you know, you're in front of a really popular restaurant or something in Manhattan, and there are eight Prius is pulling up, and you need to know which one's yours. And you've had a few. You've had a few. You've had a few.

You've had a few. You're deep in your cups. This is fashion week. Wait, wait, what? Like, this problem is, this is all a fashion week. It's like, you get out. Is this my Uber? No, it's yours.

Yeah, because there's 8,000 people leaving the same thing, all hailing the same service, and all the cars look the same. I did like a casual search on Twitter to be like Uber and random. And it was like full of people that were like, got into some random guy's car, thought it was my Uber. Turned out it was, you know, somebody else. But he gave me a right anyways. I was like, who does that happen to? But apparently a lot of people.

Wait, yeah. Was it was the person even a professional driver or just some dude? I would have to go deeper into the story than I want to to find out. You freaked me out when you said this is Fashion Week because I thought you meant it was fashion week right now. No. I was like, oh, wow, that's, we need to talk about that. Well, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Fashion Week, at least in the city of New York, is sponsored by Mercedes-Benz, which is a good segue into.

Oh, snap. We've been talking with cars the past 20 minutes. I thought they pulled out. But they did just host, they did just host this runway show in Dubai with public school. Okay, Mercedes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, which is kind of like interesting and weird for many reasons.

I can't even like get into it. I'm going to get emotional. Please do. Let's see what the YouTube combat say. Can the camera zoom in right now and she's crying? A tear rolls down. That would be a Verge cast first, I think, right? Somebody crying.

Well, it used to be weird because, yeah, you would walk into. No, not a first. Not a first. Many, many, many, many tears cast. You would walk into Fashion Week like the main sponsor whatever and there would be a car park. in the middle with like ropes around it and like people would like take selfies with the car but you couldn't like touch it it was really weird even i don't take selfies with cars no because you're so used to them you're like cool guy around it's like i don't need you is it a thing

that you're not supposed like touching the out the paint of a car is bad like the oils from your hand are bad well yeah i mean you'd want to polish it off yeah like right away relatively you wouldn't want to leave it like that that's why at when you drive a car you you actually don't touch a car. No, you're like a white glove. But you also keep it waxed and buffed and all that stuff. But that's why at an auto show, like literally all the time you see the guys with the rags going over the cars all day long because they want to keep the fingerprints off

the cars. Because the fingerprints literally corrode the car because our, yeah, no, if you go more than like 15 minutes, the car just starts to rust and fall apart into the floor. Right. These luxury items. We haven't talked about the LA Auto show at all. No, we have not. So what happened there?

So it was... Speaking of car shows where people are buffing things constantly. It was a weird show. We expected it to be bigger than it was, but the announcements that were made were still pretty bizarre. There was a convertible SUV, which doesn't happen every day. Wait, what? Yeah, this is the Land Rover Evoke convertible. Wait, I think we talked about this on the last Verge cast.

Did we talk about this? Oh, did we? The one that it was in the snow. Well, I mean, the Royal Wee. Yeah. But yeah, it's a convertible SUV. Which is like maybe the most pim thing in the whole world or the worst thing in the whole world. Maybe both.

I mean, it's a pretty large range. Do you get this because it actually has a utility or do you get it because it's the most pimping thing in the world? Or the worst. You get it because you want to project the world. It's the worst already like included in the idea of being a pimped thing. Yes, true, true, true. It's wrapped up in itself.

You get it because you want to project to the world around you that you have infinity money and you have run out of things. to spend it on. So that's why you would get this. But, you know, L.A. is traditionally a show where they show a lot of convertibles because it is a convertible town. So that's why the car debut there. It's obviously a very limited run vehicle.

They're not going to be selling a million of these things. So that happened. The press shots, by the way, if you haven't seen our post on this car, please check out the press shots for it because they're the most hilarious press shots I've ever seen for a car. There's one where it's driving through a lake with the top down. There's one where they're dashing through the snow with the top down. There's one where they're going over dunes in the Middle East with the top down.

It's just a very bizarre set of press photos. That happened. Then the Fiat 124 happened. I'm looking at them. They're insane, right? They're completely insane. The one at the top with the dude in the button down and he's just like casually driving to a like low, like low water.

Yeah. It's a what are you doing? It's the world's first aquaccar. It is. No, no, no. The world's first aquaccar was a little. Lotus is a spree from James Bond. From Octopus?

No. It was living let... God damn it. I don't know. He was octopusy. I'm going to be octopusy. So anyway, Fiat 124, which is a... Wait, you love the Fiat 124?

No, I love the... Oh, the Espri. So does Elon Musk? He bought it. Yeah. Spy you love me. What's up? Spy you love me.

Okay. Well, you were wrong, too. Don't give me that. Well, I knew it wasn't octopussy. Anyway. Fiat 124 debuted, which is a Fiat version of the new Mazda Miata. Right. And this is the car that everybody with taste loves.

No. No, that is not accurate. It is the opposite of the LG Urbane in that it looks bad. Our senior reporter Tamara describes it as the most polarizing car in L.A. Yeah. Well, no, so she was writing it up and I texted her. I text message or I'm like, Tamara, you need to call it polarizing because that's what it is. Yeah, no, on the floor, you know, just overhearing conversations with different journalists.

Like, people were getting like emotional about this car, describing whether they loved it or hated it. Because to me, it looks like you took a Miata and bolted on a bunch of crappy aftermarket parts. Oh, it's like the, it's like the, what's the Pontiac equivalent of Camaro? Firebird? Yeah. It's the Pontiac Firebird of the Miata. kind of except the firebird was a genuinely badass car that is not true have you wow oh I like it in the 80s in the 80s and 90s the firebird was a dumpster fire

with the giant like bird flaming bird on the hood yes it's awesome come on the micromachine version of it was awesome I believe that I launched that thing off so many ramps with a fast-talking micromachine guy oh man he was the best. Man, I loved him. Yeah. I don't know. Is he alive?

I wanted to be him when I grew up. Yeah. We all wanted to be him. Oh, yeah. I bet there's some story there. The commercials made no sense. It was like 15 seconds long as just this dude talking fashion that you could understand. And then that was the end of the commercial.

John Moschita Jr. He lives. He lives. He lives. He lives. He lives. Is he doing anything cool? He lives in New York.

Oh, my God. Or at least he's from New York. If you know John Machita Jr., ask him to come on the Vergecast. It would be the quickest interview. review. It'd be so fast. So Fiat 124, that happened. Then we had a wrap up at the end with Jason Harper, Tamara, and myself, who were all there.

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

And we're going to see the Faraday. Well, Faraday Future is exhibiting there. We don't know what they're showing. Back up. Faraday Future is what? Faraday Future. So this story that we put up, this sort of mini future, written by Tamara, was not part. of the LA Auto Show scene per se, but they are an LA company.

They are headquartered in Nissan's old R&D facility outside L.A. They are a California company that has been very quietly poaching Tesla, BMW, Mercedes, and Apple engineers for the past two years. The only electric car stories I see anymore are Apple poach from Tesla, Tesla poach from Apple, Farad poach from these other people. And they're just like 50 people that know how to make electric cars and they're just like 50 people that know how to make electric cars. It just all gets stolen from each other over and over again. And Google just poached someone from Tesla. Right. Last week.

Yeah. Very incestuous scene. Yeah. And it's very California specific. There's not a lot of poaching from Detroit, right? Like. Well, because I mean. But, but all the, all the, all the, all the Detroit companies of open labs in the

Valley in the past two years. So they're in that scene now, too. How much longer is Detroit going to be Detroit in terms of cars? No, in terms of. existing. Well, it's like, well, yes.

That's not fair. So how do I put this? Detroit is like a whole box to open. Yeah, it's like, it's a podcast onto itself. Well, maybe if we have a transportation podcast.

Maybe if we have a transportation podcast. That's an incredible, what? Oh my. Oh my. That's a great idea. Wait a minute. I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to. You can just open a Pandora's box, my friend. I did. No, it's a good. You know, a fiat,

whatever that car was Colts box. You don't even know. You claim that it was a great looking car. You don't even know what is called. You just opened a Miata box. So anyway, Fair Day Future. They're in stealth mode still.

They've raised tons of money from unknown sources that are, we think are Chinese. And they won't even name their CEO. They won't tell us who their CEO is. That's crazy. They're the Manchurian electric car company. Yes. Yes, they are. Procative.

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

like furniture or IKEA or whatever. Would the car like drive itself to you? Yes. That's the idea. So, like, first of all, they have huge regulatory challenges to overcome. Secondly, the technology isn't fleshed out. Three, they don't have a car yet. They have many, many problems, but they also have infinity money, allegedly. So we'll see. Well, it's kind of, it also sort of dovetails with the Uber ethos, which is to end private car ownership and have everyone just share cars, share rides.

Yeah. It sounds like it's sort of like. There are a lot of companies betting that this is what people want, and that hasn't been proven yet. I mean, I don't want, okay, I want to own a car, but like when I'm really honest with myself, I don't. No, I don't either. But, but we all live in New York City.

I mean, if you live... Yeah, but, like, even, like, when I go to other cities, I don't want to rent one. I, like, want to be taken places, but I don't want the responsibility of a car, like, at all. Yeah, that's fair. What I want is for a car to be there two minutes after. I'm like, I need a car. That's what I want.

Fair Day Future is your friend. Fair Day Future is your friend. If they can actually pull it off. Right. So, but, yeah, their, they're lead designer. is a superstar from BMW. He designed the I3 and I8. And Tamara saw sort of a profile of the car,

which she was sworn she wouldn't discuss in our piece. Yeah. But if you look at our video from Dirty Day Future, it's right behind her. So you can judge for yourself. I really was waiting when I was watching a video for her to just be like, you know what, yoink? And like just pull the tarp off.

And it would have been a bunch of like upa lupas in there. Like sticks to like make the form of the car. Like the, from Bojack Horseman, the three kids inside the trench coat. Wait, what? What are you talking about? The Netflix show. Bojack Horseman. Yeah.

What? What? Have you not seen Bojack Horseman? Yeah, of course I have. Oh, he's playing along with the joke in it. Oh, you're playing the role of, what's your name? The agent. Yeah.

Yes. Amy Sedaris's character. Yes. Whose name none of us can remember? Shout out Bojack Horseman. Good show. But it is a good show. Best show about depression.

I think so, too. I haven't seen the Christmas special yet, which apparently came out last year, and I didn't know existed until like last week. Yeah. So I'm going to watch it. Anyway, that was All I Auto Show. Then this week we put up a really cool piece on the McLaren 67LT. Which is bonkers, it's fire. Which is an insane vehicle.

I had the 650s, yes, which is sort of. of the low-key version of the 675 LT for a week. And it was, it terrified me in so many ways. I was driving in Long Island with it. And when you put the accelerator all the way to the floor, you feel like your entire face is going to be ripped off and there will just be bones and like tendons underneath. And it's going to be really disgusting.

And then you'll die. Like the Trevoltz-Dade cage. Right. Yeah, face-off situation. Except there's no replacement. face so you just have a you know a bone situation that sucks it does suck but no it was a fantastic car this thing is like the super hardcore version of it so more horsepower um more bolstered seats it's basically intended for track use it's limited to 500 units so um jason arbor our columnist uh had this thing

for a day um at a track upstate and was if you watch the video of it there's a moment where he is literally at a loss for words like he is unable to like evoke any verbalization of what he's experiencing. And that's how you know that it's a good car, because he's given everything on the planet. Check that out. And we have 72 wallpapers. 72 wallpapers of high resolution wallpapers of this 675LT on our site.

Oh, like for the back of your computer? Well, no, for like, for the front of your computer. For desktop. Yeah, yeah. No, for your bedroom. I mean, hang on. Wallpaper for your bedroom. Who had a Lamborghini car post?

Oh, yeah. Kuntash. Absolutely. What? No. What did you have? What kind of posters did you have? Movie posters, comicable posters.

Okay, that's fair. Terminator 2. 98 degrees. Wow. Wow. My brother had the, who's the 80s artist? Like the black and white women, like the full-on 80s thing with like one slash Duran.

Yeah. He had a bunch of those. I forgot who that artist was. Whatever. I had the, I had this, the poster everyone did. They still make this. You can still find this. online the justification for higher education poster where it's like it's a mansion with a garage

in the front of it with like six garages with like a Lamborghini and two Ferraris and a portion. Oh yeah. Yeah, because when you go to college, you get that. Yeah, that's exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what we all get. As soon as you graduate, you get your diploma and your six car garage. Your cars.

I got. And not massive debt. Loan debt. You didn't pick yours up like when you were leaving? Yeah, you should have gotten a little. It's in the gift bag. Peter. Dude.

It's really annoying. There should be a little ticket you turn in. So that happened. And, oh, and then one final thing. Okay. So I've had these feels in my heart for a long time, and I wanted to put them on the website. Oh, we can't get into this. We do not have time to get into this.

Just do you get one sentence? And then we're going to be out. Jeremy Clarkson, not a great guy. Okay. That wasn't even a sentence. It was because there was a sentence fragment. Jeremy Clarkson, Colin, not a great guy. Not a great guy.

Also, Amazon, colon, what are you thinking? But that's another sentence. You said I had one sentence. I said you got, I got as many sentences as I want. Wait, what's Amazon thinking right now? Amazon has a guy who had to leave the BBC. He was like quasi-fired, basically fired. Maybe he resigned.

Who knows? For saying racist and massages things and assaulting his co-workers. Punched his producer in the face because he didn't get dinner. Which is ironic because he looks like he's been punched in the face. Wow. So Amazon um,

Amazon, uh, picked him up almost immediately. Well, not almost immediately. There was a protracted negotiation period, but ended up picking him up along with his two co-hosts at a 10 times raise what he was making at the BBC.

So at BBC was making about a million pounds a year. Now he's making, 10 million pounds a year, 30 million pounds over three seasons, which works out to about $45 million. So, and look, he's an amazing entertainer. Top Gear is arguably the best automotive program ever put on television, but he is not a great guy. Duke's a Hazard?

No. Top Gear's better. But Duke's of Hazard is a sitcom. I'm talking about like, I'm talking about a straight up like. Kirby. You're going in the wrong direction, my friend. The love bug is not a good friend. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Night Rider. Oh, that's a tough one. Is Night Rider the best car show ever made? Are we getting up to, that's my question. Are we getting to a moment when self-driving cars will be like Kit from Knight Rider, where they will talk to us in a sinuous voice? They'll talk to you. What's that actor's name who did the voice of Kit?

I can't remember. He, remember he played John Adams. Yeah. To the Hoff? Yeah. He played John Adams in 1776. the greatest historical film ever made. Anyway, yeah, I hope that he talks to us.

I was a writer. I was a magnum P.I.'s butler. Or friend or whoever that guy was. Oh, yeah. William Daniels. Those are the same person. No, no. I don't know any of these words. And then, fun fact, Val Kilmer in the 2008 reboot. What?

Oh, God. Which I was not aware existed. No, yeah, I was. that was with a Mustang, right, instead of a firebird. Yes. Which is insane on multiple levels. So, funny story about that show, that reboot. Nelai and I were working at Engadget at the time, which is an AOL property, Autoblog, also an AOL property.

AOL decided, or excuse me, Autoblog decided that they were going to live blog every episode of the Night Rider reboot. And whoever was live blogging out, I can't remember who, unfortunately. the lie blogs were hilarious. They were so well done. And Nelai was so jealous because it was a Mustang. And of course, he's a huge Mustang fan, but he's like, I need to be involved with this lie blog. So he started talking to the auto blog people, please let me get out on these lie blogs. Never happened.

And I think to the States, one of the greatest regrets is that he couldn't lie blog. And he's not here to defend himself. No, he's not. He is not. He's not here to counter us talking about how the Packers are terrible. Wow. Nicola, how many times you heard it's due the socials at the end of the podcast? I think this is my six, seventh appearance.

It's got to be like your dozenth. No, no, no, it's not been that many. Do you want to try it? Yeah, sure. Where's the words? Oh, man. You should follow. No, I'm going to mess it up.

It's just, it's, I always forget on Twitter. It's just Verge, at Verge. On Twitter at Verge. Dieter's at Backlon. I am. I'm at Nicola underscore Fuma. Well, y'all. At Andy Jayhawk, J-A-Y-H-A-W-K.

And Z-Power, one word. Z-E-D power? No, no. Pretend I'm Canadian. Z-Power. Z-Power. You can also find us on iTunes. We are there at, just search for Vergecast on iTunes, really.

But if you go to iTunes.com slash the Verge, you'll find us. And you'll also find other things like Verge ESP, what's tech, and ControlWalt Delete. And when you're there at iTunes, you might as well rate us five stars and tell us why you want to live forever, I think. Pull open Snapchat, the real Verge. Oh, what's up? On Snapchat. Did you guys talk about the Easter egg on that? Oh, if you go to the TransUnism piece and type in Zoltan, you'll have a party.

Ooh, I didn't even know this. I rocked out to that. Yeah, you'll have a party. That was a jam. That was a jam. Hey, thanks to Braintree for sponsoring today's episode of the Vergecast. Braintree gives you a full-stack payment solution. They support all kinds of payment types for your customers that they might want to want,

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Bye, everybody. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye.