The Vergecast - Pacific Time should be illegal

Episode Date: September 25, 2015

Nilay Patel is joined by Liz Lopatto, Loren Grush, and hype-seater Arielle Duhaime-Ross in a special science issue of The Vergecast. They break down why The Verge cares about science, the space (lack of) race, Verge staff childhood misadventures, the Vergier year ahead and the terrible, oh-so-terrible use of exclamation points in ad copy. Don't forget to check out our brand new podcast Ctrl-Walt-Delete with our very own Walt Mossberg. The first episode will be on our Vergecast feed right after this. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast. It is a day in September. The 24th of September. 24th of September. 24 of these goddamn days have happened. There's going to be six more. That's life. That's just how punishing life is.

Hello, welcome to the Vergecast. Today is a very special Verge cast. Many things are going to happen on the show. So here's the first thing I'm going to say. I am joined by the cast of Verge science, which is awesome. So our science editor, Liz Lapato, is in from Oakland. she's in New York visiting us. Lauren Grush is here.

She's always in New York, but now she's here in the chair. She's on the 8th floor instead of 9th floor. I took an elevator ride. I'm blowing it. That's what's happening. And then this I didn't, this I did not know. Ariel de M. Ross is in the hype seat. Hello.

And I was like, man, should we, I'm happy, remembering a science show. Why don't we all the table? And Liz was like, it's actually Ariel's dream to be in the hype seat. Oh, I'm so hype. I'm so hype. So that I think is very exciting. So it's going to be a science cast. It's actually Liz has been at the verge for a year now.

It's true. She has built an incredible science program. We're going to talk about why we're covering science and all the science stuff that's happening. And you might be wondering, because this was iPhone review week, why we are not talking about the iPhone on the Vergecast. And there's a very special reason for that, which I'm announcing now to the live viewer. but then many tens of thousands of people will hear this in their cars and on the subway and you'll be able to take action on what I'm about to say. The suspense.

I know, that's crazy suspense. We have a new podcast. The verge has a new podcast. It is called Control Walt Delete. It stars Walt Mossberg. The first episode was taped this week. It would be up right now concurrently with us. but iTunes is a little glitchy for us right now.

So Control Walt delete is up. It is me and Walt. We're going to talk for 30 minutes every week about his column, about technology, about all of this stuff. Walt knows that nobody knows. Walt is full of incredible stories. I'm so excited about it. So we did the first episode this week on the iPhone, on our iPhone reviews. If you are into that, you want to hear some tech nerds talk about some tech nerd stuff.

Please listen to Control Walt Delete. You can go listen to it. It's in the iTunes store. Actually, they post this one up on the site. And it is 40 minutes of me and Walt, just getting deep on the iPhone. Can I just say that I'm so excited that that is the title of the podcast? Can I get a hype check on the title? So out of this world, so hype.

Yeah. Ariel, just ace that hype. I'm going to try to stick more to the Sam Schaeffer version of the hype. So like less numbers, more like random throwout exclamations of things. Sam was always a free-form. High form hype checker. So free form. It was like the jazz of hype check.

You know, in my mind, what's happening in the hype seat is sort of an open, you know, we're seeing it's a name and a chair that I made up to make fun of Sam, rest in peace. And like, and now it's become like a thing. Like people are like into it. And so we've got to find somebody who can embody it. So, Aaron, this is your, I mean, this could be it. This is my try out. This could be your career.

Yeah. If you pull this off. I'm trying out up for the head desk. I think you're doing a great job. Thank you. See?

Lauren's always there. Virg science. It's like a cabal. You can't crack it. We're like our support system. Yeah. It works out. Okay.

So we should talk about science. So Liz, it's been a year. It has been a year. I will say, let me tell a little story about Elizabeth. So about a year and a half ago,

I took over as editor-in-chief of the verge. And Deeter and I were, we had some open head count. We're like, we need to hire. How are we going to grow the site? We need a fucking plan, basically. A plan. And we spent some time crying in each other's arms with no plan.

That was, it was very tender. And then we're like, we need a, like, our first hire has to be kick ass, has to be a leader, has to help us shape this thing called the verge and like explain why we're going to do this stuff. And literally, like, the only person we called Liz. Like, that's what happened. We're like, it was, like, we talked to Liz a long. time ago when we were thinking about hiring a science at her, and we're like, it's just Liz. So we called Liz, Liz Condus for more money. True. It's totally accurate story, which is great. As she should. Yeah. As she absolutely should. But now it's a year and a half later. It's a year for Liz.

And I think we have a really great and vibrant science program that has a lot of narrative and character and understands why it exists. So I just want to talk about what you were, what you've been trying to do for the past year. Yeah. So I'm actually going to finally answer all of those why is this here comments that some people have been very graciously leaving on our articles. And the reason that we care about science is because that's really where the future starts. I was talking with Nilai about one of the things that is like my biotech reporter PTSD. I don't think that anything that hits the market is new. Like the stuff that I care about is five to ten years from being in a consumer's hands.

and that's true in science that's also true in tech you know there's a great story that Addie Robertson wrote a little while back about a lab that tests out you know the new new VR tech and they're not really interested in like optimizing the user experience just so much as they want to see what the possibilities are and play with those and then like let other people like make it beautiful and like make it ready for the market and that lab is like right next to my heart like that is exactly the kind of stuff that I care about

is like, what can we possibly do? And then, you know, let somebody else figure out, like, what the way to sell that is or how to integrate that into society. But, like, what are the possibilities that are open to us? And I really feel like science is that kind of a thing for tech. And the other piece of it, of course, is that increasingly we're seeing a lot of Silicon Valley firms and a lot of sort of tech companies trying to get into science, trying to get into, especially medicine.

And I am so skeptical about it just because, you know, there's that credo, like move fast and break things, literally the opposite of first do no harm. And so we occasionally run across things where we'll see someone doing something that's meant to be helpful for health, but that doesn't have the data to show that it actually is helpful. Right. And if you saw her CS covers with Liz, she just blew these four companies apart. She was just walking around the CES unveiled show floor being like, I don't, do you have any science?

And they're like, I don't know, it counts you. And it just counts everything. And Liz would be like, I don't, do you science? Do you science? Were there studies? Did anybody like think about like, you know, what might be important in terms of outcomes here? And they were like, well, but it counts your steps. And I remember I was standing next to Thomas Ricker like, do I need to write about these things?

Like, are these, should I be writing about this? And he was like, obviously, you know, like, I don't know that people necessarily realize that these aren't real things because they sound real. They're using buzzwords, you know, that sound impressive. And, you know, if you don't necessarily get into the weeds and some of the stuff, you could potentially think, oh, this is a real thing. And so, you know, just to, for example, yesterday on our site. Oh, a website, you say. A website on the verge. Hey, I like that site.

Yeah. We actually This is what happens when you invite us on the podcast. This is our show. Get ready. But we had Ariel writing about an article that appeared in the British Medical Journal. And if you read the article by itself, it looked impressive. Very convincing.

Very convincing. But if you dig into the data, you discovered several big mistakes. And I don't expect most people to dig into the data the way that we do. But that's why we do it. Because we want to make sure that the people who are reading the verse. aren't being ill-served by people who are marketing to them. Think of us as like ad blockers. Oh man, we're going there.

Ad blockers for bad ads. So I'm going to throw to Ariel and let you tell us. Ariel blew up the world. I mean, so yeah, we got this, you know, the press release for an article that was going to appear in the British Medical Journal. And it was super convincing. it stated that there were a number of issues with the U.S. dietary guidelines advisory committee. They're the issue of reports.

So you have, you know, those guidelines that you have in like high school, maybe they'll tell you about it. Like you should eat this much of meat, this much of rice. The food triangle. Yeah. Yeah. They now discounted pyramid. Right. Much of whatever.

Right. The food pyramid. So that changes every five years. And the reason that it changes, all of that is based on evidence that is, based on evidence that is in the report that this committee, the dietary guidelines committee, puts out. And essentially, the article in the British Medical Journal was going after that report that was issued this year. The guidelines have yet to be issued. They will be later this year. Going after that report and saying that there were a number of issues with the science and that they didn't do proper analysis.

But the thing is, is that that article was full of mistakes. They're the way that they looked at For instance, you know, they fault the committee for not including studies about diabetes and, you know, the kinds of diets that can be helpful for managing diabetes. But the thing is that the guidelines are not supposed to be used to manage any kind of illness. They're really, the only thing that they can do is that they can be used to prevent the, like to lower the risk of you developing in chronic illness like diabetes. But once you have diabetes, those studies, those studies, those guidelines aren't relevant anymore and which means that any studies that looked at a population that already had diabetes

Not helpful. So those are the kinds of things that we found in the BMJ article. They said that Meat had been deleted as a recommendation, which is like not true. Like Ariel went into the report and found Yeah, places where meat is included as part of a healthy diet That's a sentence that says that lean meat can be a part of a healthy diet. So deleting meat not a thing They seemed to harp on that part that it was like reduced red red meat. Nowhere did it say get rid of meat entirely. Well, no, the second thing, right?

So the woman who wrote the article, she's like an anti-carb pro fat, right? And like all the tweets that have been directed at me. Yeah, she's got a book about how you shoot more fat and red meat. So I don't know if the listener knows this, but whenever anyone is mad at the verge, they like tattle to me. And then if I don't respond, they'll like tattle to like Jim Bankoff or CEO. And Jim's always like, people are tweeting me like, what did you do? So I got a lot of tattily tweets today that we're like, you people don't understand how

eating low carbs and red meat will save your life. Right. And it's like maybe. The caveman diet or whatever. So it feels like but like the CrossFit paleo thing. It's like it's deep. Right. It's deep in our culture.

And see, the thing is that I like, I have actually no problem with that idea or that belief. I think that, you know, the science will tell us. But that's like neither here nor there. The problem is that this investigation that the people, BMJ put out was really bad. That's the issue. Right.

And I think that's like a, I've noticed, like Lauren got in trouble, right? Like on our first day, Lauren was like, what if I piss everybody on? This is the other recurring thing at the science section. Well, it's a thing that I think is really interesting about the verge and its audience and how we cover things and how you guys are chosen to cover science, which is there's a lot of, I don't want to, I'm like trying to find a word. There's a lot of reverence for science. and that reverence occasionally crosses into like raw hero worship. And I've just noticed the three of you, like, you don't have any patience for that shit, which is great and I think it's really interesting.

But it also leads you guys to say, like, there's going to be good science and there's going to be bad science. And then in Lauren's case, like, there's going to be a set of real expectations about what we should be accomplishing in a set of, like, distorted, you know, like faith. Right? And like what science can accomplish. Well, with science, there's always talking points. They're the same talking points, and things to get very political. And I think Liz made a good point when I came on. She was like, we're not cheerleaders here.

Like, we're here to kind of wade through all of that and present to you what is being done correctly and what's not being done correctly. So that's kind of how I think we approach things. We don't just take things at face value. And I think it's easy to do that because a lot of people are really into science these days, which is great, but at the same time, you know, being invested in science doesn't necessarily mean just championing everything that you hear. Or, and this is actually the one Ariel has brought up repeatedly as we cover tech, like

science lens of veneer of legitimacy to all kinds of technology where you need to do more work. And the one that right when the Apple Watch came out and Apple started tracking health, Ariel was like, well, you don't track 50% of the population that menstruates. and also like people with eating disorders don't need everything in their lives quantified all the time by default. Right. Can you talk through that?

Because that was really interesting to me. Yeah, well, I mean, what's interesting about stuff like the Apple Watch is you can turn off health tracking, like you can turn off like calorie counting and everything, but it's really difficult to do that. And you have to really find, you have to dig down deep into the settings. I think it took Neely and I like a week and a half

to figure out how to do it. And, you know, those are things that if you're going to turn those things on automatically, which might be fine for the majority of the population, but for some people, those things are going to be really triggering, and it's really hard to get away from them. And everybody's wearing fitness trackers now, and everybody's doing all these things. So if you have an eating disorder and you have an app on your phone that you can't delete, like the health app on the iPhone, it's going to be really hard to avoid that trigger that tells you, oh, you should be checking this. Oh, you should turn it on. Like, it doesn't

matter that you can turn it off. The app is still there and it's staring at you in the face every time you open your device. Right. And that is a real problem. Well, it's a real, I mean, what I actually, I want you to talk about this part too, because it's, um, the notion that we should quantify everything and that will lead to better outcomes. This is like very interesting. And like, just raw counting seems like, uh, because that's a big moment, right? We cover the hell out of fitness trackers. Like they're everywhere. So here's the thing, right? Like, we don't have data that shows that counting this stuff changes anybody's health outcomes. There's lots of anecdotes.

Right. There are plenty of anecdotes, but no actual data. And as everybody knows, the plural of anecdote is not, in fact, data. As everyone knows. That's a real slash dot gold mine that you just pulled into. But so, you know, this is something that, like, I deal with a lot in the Bay Area because that's very hot out there. and I was once out at coffee with someone who's wearing like no fewer than like four of these tracks.

Does this person work here? No. Was her name Lauren Good? And he was talking to me. He's like, oh, do you have trouble sleeping? And I was like, no, I don't. Like, I just don't have, I get tired and go to bed. But I feel like for some people, this can really add a lot more anxiety, which can be really counter.

productive, right? Like, if you were the person wearing four fitness trackers and trying to optimize everything, that's actually not going to reduce your stress levels or make it easier for you to sleep because you have this thing that you now have to monitor and pay attention to and think about. So, you know, it's one of those things where I want to see outcomes. I want to see data. I want to see that like these things do what we think they do or what they're being promoted is doing before we go ahead and say, yes, they're good. And actually it's like not enough to have a device that actually says what it's going to do. Like it also needs to like the behavior, the human behavior that that goes into interacting with this device also needs to be shown. Like if it, if people

don't actually use them, then what's the point? Right. I'm wearing right now a dead Apple Watch. I've been wearing a dead Apple Watch for two weeks. Not one person has noticed at all. Like it's just been like a random. Why are you wearing a dead Apple Watch? So it started like I was wearing it. Like I got a new one with Watch Western. So I gave me the phone. and then to review and they're like and we want to you to check out

watch us too so we know I always wanted the black stainless steel so like here's one of black stainless steel you can check it out and then I wore it

for like a week during the review period and the battery died and I just like woke up the next morning and then think about and put it on and then it was dead

and I was like I'm just like that's fine and then I was like wore it for like a day you're fine with that because I never use it this is why I think the Apple Watch is problematic

because if you are wearing a watch every single day and you are fine with the idea that it goes out, it's probably because it doesn't tell time all the time, and you actually don't check it for time. Well, no, my thing is, like, I hate wearing stuff when I use my computer, because I'm afraid.

Like, I don't want it to scratch. Oh, yeah, you do always take off the watch. I take everything off. I think it's weird. My friends in college hated sitting next to me in school because I would, like, sit down and be like, sunglasses and watch and keys, and they'd be like, dude, you are a disaster. Like, you explode over every desk at this university.

So I used to sit fairly. close to Eli and I can attest that is the truth. Yeah. He just like, he sits down and everything just comes off. Yeah, screw it. And you're like, the man basically strips and then like gets on his computer. Strips his wrist. I feel strip myself.

I've got like a bullet chamber. I don't know if that magazine, a bullet chamber. Yeah, no, I screw that everyday carry stuff, man. Like, if like, if it's time for me to jam, I will not be prepared. Like that's like basically it. I'm like, hold on. Oh, I've got to put all my stuff back on. My thing is that with the Apple Watch is I wouldn't get it because I just don't

wear anything. I don't wear jewelry. I don't wear bracelets. I hate having things on my arm. So if I already have a phone with a time on it. It does most of the things that watch. My point is this has just become like a hilarious social experiment in my life. Like I'm just wearing this like dead thing on my wrist.

And literally until today like I have not told anyone and no one has noticed. Like I work in an office world of nerves. Because the Apple Watch's face is just black anyways. Of course nobody noticed. But no one's like, what time is it? And they watch me pull out my phone. And no one's like, why aren't you checking your watch? Like, literally no one cares.

They're like, oh, yeah, you're just not using that watch. Everyone's been like, Nilai's, like, nothing went on. Yeah, it's not, I guess it's four. The sun is in the sky. The sun is in the sky. It's four o'clock. Yesterday I was at the bar with Deeter and Chris, and we're all wearing Apple watches. And I was like, I got to take this off.

Like, I can't be in this group. Like the three of us can't be seen together. Whenever I see somebody wearing a pebble, I get kind of excited and I want to say hi, but I don't. This is my problem. That's it. Can we get up to wall? Hype check on the pebble? Hype check the pebble.

Okay. So with the iPhone, not hype. Zero, not cool. Negative. However. That was definitely a free-for-armed hype check burn. However, with this Note 5 beauty that I have here that I'm very in love with. I think it's out of this world. It's awesome. It does most everything I wanted to do. And I think that, you know, the trade-off is the long battery life versus it being able to just like automatically pick a contact and be able to text them with your voice or whatever. I think that's totally fine. Yeah. It works the way I wanted to. I can use it to answer a text message in the shower. And that is badass.

Are you a big phone person? What do you mean? Well, you've got a note. So, like, you've, I fully believe that all phones will be huge. And you're clearly on, on my team, the winning team. So I had the iPhone 6, not the 6 plus for the last year. And I was sad the whole year. Yeah.

Because you're like, because you knew. Yeah. And everybody was telling me, like, it'd be too big. It'll never fit in your pockets when I'm wearing skinny jeans or whatever. And you know what? I don't care. I don't care. The protruding phone thing is not a problem for me.

I'm fine. What are you, Liz? I'm a small phone person. I just, you know. On the losing team. Well, I mean, I also, like, in fairness. Enjoy these, the last moments of your small phone existence. Well, I don't know what's going to happen because, like, I have, like, an iPhone

four, maybe an iPhone five. It's like, you know, like a normal phone. Maybe a five. I have no idea. I've had this phone for, like, three years now. That's a four. The best iPhone in my, the best looking iPhone ever. So, you know, it's small.

It fits in my hand, whereas the bigger phones don't. Like, I need to hold it with both hands. And that, um. But that's, that's, that's, that's, you got to. grasp the future firmly. I need to show you my PDF magic with this thing. Oh my God. No, but I mean like, you know, that's going to salt my whole, like, I have like an iPhone

games that you can play with just one hand so that when I'm on the bar and holding on to something, like, I can just be like, yeah, this is cool, you know, whatever. And like, I'm not going to be able to hold my phone in one hand and hold onto the rail with the other. Truly a first world problem. Thank you, New Island. Now I will read an advert. Wait, what about Lauren?

Where were you? I have no preference. I guess I'd give a bigger one if I could, but I have the iPhone 6. Don't you have the plus? No, you have the 6. No, no, I have this. There's two virgins than that one. Verge science, even.

Do not lump me in with those nerds. We'll talk about this later. Yeah. No, I have the smaller version of the iPhone 6, and it suits me fine, but if I had the option to get a bigger one, I would. Yeah, my wife is the same way. She's like, she bought the 6, and she's like, yeah, that's when everyone's fine. And then literally she, like, holds my, like, the big phone, and she's like,

I fuck this. Yeah. I would periodically ask Chris Zegler to like take his plus and just like put in my pocket and just play with it. Glasses should not cost as much as an iPhone. Oh, I'm gonna...

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I just, you know, for every... Try blocking that ad. I was threatening NELA for those of you who are pro ad blocker with ad blocking him, like, during the episode and just interrupting him as he was trying to read the ad throughout. The exclamation points did that for him. I know, I didn't. I mean, I'll say it's good copy.

But it's really exciting. It's just, why would you mix bullet points and exclamation points? Can we get a hype check on exclamation points? I have an idea. I have a thought about this. Abysmal. I had a deep thought about this. Too many exclamation points.

People use them too much. Okay, the only correct number of exclamation points is three. In a text message? Like, give me context here. So you can't use one. One is too sincere. Like in a regular piece of course. Like an I.M.

Or text or something. Right? Use one. Oh, you mean in succession. You mean three in succession. Oh, okay. All right. Use one.

You're like, it's a little too. Like, dude, like calm down, right? Three is a joke. You use two, you're like, you just can't choose. And then three is like the right level of... I disagree. Yeah, that's just where I'm at right now. And I'm not...

I use exclamation points more than I should. I just, like in an email, I hate it. I love them. Lauren, you got to... I actually read somewhere recently, like, why you should, like, lower the amount of times you use exclamation points. And they were like, one of the arguments is like,

what are you in kindergarten? You know what it is? is I read Corey Sika at like a formative period as a young writer and like now I can't not use exclamation marks. Like it's just like, you know, because part of it too is that it conveys tone, right? Like, you know, I'm so excited, period. Yeah. That's it.

But that's like my affect. I mean, then you use an exclamation point. If you're excited, then you can use it. There are rules. Speaking of things we're excited about, space is on that list. He said awkwardly to transition. away from this conversation. So Lauren.

We're very professional today. Have you ever heard this show? This is where we live. So let's talk about space. Lauren. Let's talk about it. There's breaking Pluto news. I was told as I sat down.

Yeah. We're also worried that the government shut down is going to affect NASA. Right. And then billionaires keep firing shit into space. It just keeps happening over and over again. And then failing to land them. Didn't happen recently, but sure.

So first one. Okay, so Pluto. So we got some great high-resolution images from NASA right before we hopped on this podcast. I was kind of racing to get them up before we got in here. You can view them at theverge.com. Oh, hey, hey. So the cool thing about this is these are, I think they're the highest resolution ones we have from New Horizons, which was the probe that we sent there in July.

probe took, what, nine years to get there. Pluto is far. And now it's like, it sent us a bunch of pictures back when it first was over there, but now like it's got to download all of those. And it takes a while. Like I think from where New Horizons is right now, it takes four and a half hours for information to get to Earth. So after we got some really cool images in July,

NASA kind of shut down New Horizons as it was preparing to, download the rest of the data and now we're starting to get those images in. I think we got started getting them in September. And we're getting them at like dial-up speed, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's very slow. So NASA has been like releasing just a little treat for us every week. And with each new image, we learn something new.

So like today, they had like a close-up view of the, if you've looked at pictures of Pluto, there's like a big heart region on it, which they've called. Sputnik Planum. And they think that, you know, that area has like a bunch of methane ice in it. Yeah. So, like, that's what some of these images are telling us. They kind of reveal little clues about, like, the composition of the dwarf planet and, like, you know, what, like, I think there's, like, crazy, icy mountain ranges that they showed in one of the pictures today. There's an ice lake.

Ice lakes. There's glacial flow. like they think that Glacial flow sounds like a soap I'm just putting that out there like you could tell me there's glacial flow at like the CVS I think yeah no it's it smells really good I think one of the cool things as he said was so on

earth we have like this cycle for water we evaporate it condenses in the air and then it precipitates the same thing happens on Pluto but it's just in the form of I think nitrogen or methane so they have like these crazy cycles

just like on earth so it's like really fun. Each new picture reveals some new science about the dwarf planet. I almost called it a planet and I don't want to piss you off. So you're really on one side of that debate. Because you know you pissed off all the other people. Dwarf planet is like the worst compromise.

It's like a, yeah. It's just harder to say because you just want to say a planet. But it's I I'm not of either. But then Neil deGrasse Tyson is going to show up here and be like you know what? I hate dreams. He's going to interrupt the verge cast. It's going to be like and then like it's just going to go blank. I have to say I'm a Neil deGrasse-Heaston fan. He's been on some of our shows. He's, like, done a bunch of stuff with The Verge.

And, like, the only mistake he consistently makes is, like, kind of being a jerk about Pluto. And it's, like, why? But it's, like, I'm so tired of defending himself, you know? Like, I watched, I was, I went to the Natural History Museum when the Pluto flyby was happening, and he was there. And, of course, everybody was like, oh, so, are we going to call it a planet now? And he was like, guys. Like, he's just, like, so over that question. No, I just think it's funny that you can, like, you can always turn him.

Like, that's the one. You just like, you walk up behind him and you're like, Pluto, and he's like, don't know what for you. It's like good. Anyway, so more dwarf planet news. I mean, what a, like, what a rhetorical compromise. So, like, you know, it is a planet. It's just a dwarf planet. Anyway, keep going.

I think I was done. But, yeah. I don't care if we call it a planet or a dwarf planet. I just think it's an awesome space rock. Yeah. Space rock. That's what I like calling to. So let me ask you.

So transitioning into the NASA thing. So obviously, as always, Republicans are threatening to shut down the government. Yeah. For whatever reason this time is like unimportant. It's a year. It's a regular influence. No, it's like, you know, things happen. The sunrises, it sets.

We shut down the government. Does this affect like New Horizons? Does it affect NASA? Like, what are the implications? So it could very well. I don't know if it'll affect New Horizons specifically, but basically what happens when the government shuts down is everyone deemed non-essential goes home.

So I would assume, unfortunately, that New Horizons would be deemed inessential and that people would not be coming into work to work on it. Maybe they might have like a few core people, but the entire team I don't think would be. would be doing science on it. Now does that mean that we would like lose data that we would never get to analyze or does that mean that it's just like put off? I mean, it's possible. I'm not sure. I would have to talk to people on the New Horizons team. I don't know if they've really thought about it because we're not sure if it's going to happen yet.

But I know that when like last year or in 2013 like 17,000 more like almost 18,000 of the entire like 18,000. 18,000. and 250 total employees went home during the shutdown. Wow. And yeah, it's not just, you know, NASA either. Like the big physics labs,

like those nuclear reactors, all of their reactors have to be shut down. And they take days to get back online. Like after the government, you know, starts up again. Like it's, like it's weeks.

Yeah. You know, before they can start going back, before physicists can start going back to their projects. You know, it really interrupts the ability that a lot of our scientists have to actually do stuff that could potentially be helpful for our knowledge of the world.

I don't know. Yeah. I would assume at NASA, the people that would stay would be related to the inter-astal space station because we have people up there right now. So that would be the main focus and all the other projects would kind of fall by the wayside. Right. I just feel like I anthropomorphize like our robots. As one does.

And I'm like, poor new horizons. Just like desperately trying to send. It's like I took another picture. sure and they're like we're not sorry dude not right now i unfriended you i would assume that because right now like i said we're in the middle of downlinking these photos i would assume that that would hold really yeah that's great that's just computers doing stuff right i mean i don't want to say for sure but it's it seems it seems like something that would definitely get under the chopping block so anyway you know call your representative tell them you don't want the government to be shut down because science is cool

Well, so this is a thing that we talked about. It's a thing that Liz and I talked about at the very beginning. And then Lauren, actually, when she came into interview, like we talked a lot about private space companies and how they're affecting sort of our relationship with NASA and just sort of how we think about innovation generally because you have Elon Musk who has an electric car company and is like everyone's hero because he's like doing SpaceX.

And then you have Jeff Bezos who runs Amazon, but also shoots rockets into space. Yes. Which is crazy. It's like the thing to do when you found a website to start your private space flight company. So you know what Jim Bankoff is going to be doing.

Oh, man. I can't even get him to like buy first class plane tickets. Like if he starts shooting robots in the space, I'd be real mad. He's saving up. He's saving up for rockets. I mean, just like get me the PJ.

Like I keep talking about box one and he keeps looking at me like I'm crazy. Like if we had a golf stream, I would be podcasting from the Gulfstream like all the time. Like it would be parked at the airport and I'd be like, whatever, I'm never leaving a golf stream.

I don't care what you say. I live in this plane. I live here now. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, so the private space company, and this is actually where you got in trouble because SpaceX keeps trying to land its rocket on a barge, which they keep saying is like,

this is the hardest thing you could possibly do. And then they're like, keep blowing it. Okay. If I'm going to defend... Do it. We're going to go there. Get in there. We're going there.

And when you get too far, I'll just read this ad for something. Ladies and gentlemen, Grush goes in. Oh, man. Oh, God. Crush chain. Crush chain.

All right, go for it. An oft-repeated talking point, like I was saying, when shit goes wrong with space is space is hard. Which isn't incorrect. Okay, that's not the point I was making. It is extremely hard. I have parents who are rocket scientists. I would never presume to say that it is an easy science. However, saying that over and over again, in my opinion, I believe it kind of makes us settle for when things go wrong.

So I made the point of let's stop saying space is hard when stuff blows up because we need to reach an area where, or we need to reach, you know, this time where things don't go wrong normally. Right. Because right now about, I think it's like one in ten rockets fail. Right. Which that's great, but, you know, we put people on the moon in the 60s. Okay? And I'm not saying that, you know, there's no threshold I think we should be at right now. However, we should demand excellence of our space companies.

Let's not give them the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong. I think parts are going on their private companies. Yeah. Right. And that's like the weird new piece of this that I don't think existed before. Right? Like, you have the private companies involved in spaceflight, but they were shielded by the government to kind of an extreme extent. And now you have them being like, we're going to, like, Elon Musk was like, I want to colonize the moon.

Right. But first, space is hard. And like, and that's a disconnect. And like, you wouldn't, I don't know, like, you don't expect him to say that about anything else you try. Well, it's like, it's also like, to me, it's like saying the sky is blue. I mean, it's blue so obvious. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, space is hard. Of course space is hard. It's remarkable that we get there at all. Like I've said this before. I think it's one of the most remarkable things we've done as a species. It's like the only thing that some other species hasn't done. Right. Every time we've had a candidate thing that's like, oh, this is just humans. This is a uniquely human trait. Then like we do a little more science. We're like, I'll find it somewhere else. Oh, look. These other social animals do it too. There are dolphins who blog. Blocking dolphins.com. My newest website. It's just me recording dolphin chatter. They're great. So personable. You know, like getting off the planet is something that is uniquely human, right? Like deliberately, like, shooting ourselves into space and making the goal to go see the rest of the solar system. That is something that other animals don't do. Yeah.

And I just think we move forward by taking what is hard and making it easy. You know, like air travel. I mean, that was a risky business. like a hundred years ago, but now if a plane goes down, that is an embarrassment. Yeah. You know? And I'm not saying we're at that level by any means. But that's everybody's like dream, right?

Like the dream is that we'll have space tourism. Right. You can't really do that if like one out of ten times you're going to blow it. I guess the point, like for me, the point that you're making is that like by saying space is hard, we are not anywhere closer to actually getting to the point that we are with planes. We're coddling ourselves. Yeah. By saying it's okay we've only reached halfway.

Yeah. You know, because it's hard. I want to say, no, we can do way better. And that's, that it was more of a love letter to our species than it was a criticism on SpaceX. I think it's because, yeah, I mean, I'm not a rocket scientist. I'm not going to say I can do better. I'm saying we as a species can do better. You know, the other piece of it too, right, is like Elon Musk has these almost groupies, I would call them.

Yeah. Like you say, you say anything mildly. critical of any of his projects and people come out of the woodwork. It's like there's like a cult of personality almost, you know, like I, um, a while back noted that, you know, some of the Tesla vehicles that had been promised were delayed. And like his, his stock had fallen, you know? Yeah. But by the way, what you guys don't know about Liz is that she used to be a hardcore Bloomberg financial thing. Every once in a while, I, I, I think I told you at CES, like, um, my own personal Tyler Darden, like, if I were to have like a split personality, like works on Goldman and

it's going to tank the economy because, you know, like, that way. And I say this with love in my heart, like, true, deep affection. Liz is one of the most terrifying people I've ever been. Like, I'm just happy she's on my team, but I'm also, I'm also afraid. Like, every day I'm afraid. Anyway, carry on. But so, you know, I feel like because there is this cult of personality and this resistance to recognize that, like, I think, you know, along the mosque is kind of spreading himself

pretty thin. He's got his solar battery company, right? Yeah. Well, that's not his. Like, that's, okay, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. The cult speaks. But that's not him. Like, that's somebody else does it. And then his brother does it. And he controls his brother from afar. Okay. With lasers. With lasers. With lasers from his lair where he's launching rockets. And, you know, and then he's got Tesla. And like any one of those companies, you know, to say, I think of the hyperloop, good lord. But any one of those companies in and of itself would be a full-time job. Like, those are really ambitious things to be doing that would require all of your attention as an executive. And so to be splitting it like that, like, that really concerns me. It makes me feel like he's not serious.

Right. And we also forget, just to throw in one more point, is there are companies that have a very reliable, well, I should say company, reliable, reliable launch record, and that's the United Launch Alliance, which doesn't get, it's not as flashy as SpaceX. Not as sexy. Not as sexy. It doesn't have a crazy, you know, billionaire running it. I mean, he's probably a billionaire. I don't know.

But it's just they have a reliable rocket, the Atlas 5. It has, I think it's gone up like 99% of the time. No, I don't think it's ever crashed, actually. But the United Launch Alliance is like, A, called the United Launch Alliance, which, like, definitely means that they're also deploying missiles in the space. Right. Like zero question that like when the evil comes like we like what will be fighting like the ULA like what does that stand for?

Well, you used to stand for like yeah like now it's the uniform laser association like whatever like it's just such a bad like might as well just call it sky nut it's like every airline frequent flyer consortium has a name that speaks to world domination like there it's the fucking star alliance that is an association of planets that's trying to destroy a planet, right? Like that's not a frequent flyer sharing program. That's ridiculous.

Anyway, but they don't get any credit because they're the entrenched players fundamentally. I mean, they get credit, but they don't, I don't think they have this cult of personality that Liz was talking about. Like, no one's going to, if an Atlas 5 were to blow up tomorrow, I don't think people, and if I wrote an article saying like, don't say space is hard in response to that,

I don't think I would have gotten nearly as much crap about it. Well, this is, and I have to make more money, but this is the thing that we talked about at the top of the show. And again, verge science is always talking about, which is there's an amount of reverence that you give to scientists and people who can speak the language of science because it's like they're magic or their wizards and they understand something you don't know. But the whole point is to like democratize that information. It's also that, like, loving science is kind of, like, loving science and critiquing science is very intimately linked. Like, that's how you make science better, and that's how I love science. Totally. Yep.

Right. Okay. I love money. So, yeah. Uh-huh. Go on. That's all that's happening. Look, software delivers a class.

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This disaster show. But that's the verge. I think that's, that's, that's, that's, I will say this about the verge cast. It continually surprises me. When we have, so it's been a year for Liz, she's been on the show a couple of times. When we have people on this show, immediately like our hardest core audience, like, knows everybody. It's like the funniest thing. And I'm like, they're like, oh, you know, it's such a great thing that you finally like hired Emily to cover entertainment.

I'm like, she's been here for months. Like, we just finally had her on the show. Hey, this was my first Verge cast. So after, yeah, after like a year and a little bit over half, a year and a half, like, people will know who I am. Finally, it's going to happen. So hype. So hype. Oh, yeah, we've forgotten hype check anything.

Yeah, well, let's hype check the hype desk. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Can I hype check myself? Because I get flying colors. Everyone? Okay, one, the hype checker cannot hype check yourself. Two, I firmly believe that hype checking the hype check. Hyped desk, like, takes us to, like, the-

does that remove the hype desk power? Like, do you take everything away? Right. The point of the hype desk is to validate or devalitate other things. So if you begin to validate the hype desk, it loses its ability to do the validation that's so thoroughly its power drives from. You've lost me. Yeah. So I'm just saying don't do it.

Okay. I won't do it. Okay. Well, I have a different hype check then. All right. Okay. Super blood mood. What are our feelings on the super blood moon?

Oh, yeah. Somebody should explain the super blood moon. All right. Well, let's start with Lauren. because she published a story about it. Okay, so Sunday will actually have a pretty good view of a lunar eclipse. It's like the East Coast at least has a good view of it. Yeah.

I think you can still see it on the other coast, but... The best coast is the name of the other coast. Sure. Pacific time should be illegal. Like we should just abolish it. It is the worst. Anyway, blood moon. Okay, so the cool thing is we have a total.

lunar eclipse happening at the same time as we have a full super moon. So let's explain what this. So supermoon happens when so, okay, sorry, I'm terrible explaining. The moon, the moon has an elliptical orbit around Earth. So sometimes it's closer to Earth, sometimes it's far away. When supermoon happens when a full moon happens when the moon is as its closest point to Earth. It's called Parogy. So it's about 14% bigger. It looks 14% bigger and it's like 30% brighter. This is also happening on the same time as a lunar eclipse. Lunar eclipses look blood red because the earth is between the sun and the moon. And so the light from the sun is coming around the earth and it's refracting through our atmosphere and it filters out pretty much all of the

colors except for red because there's a shorter wavelength. So like the moon gets splattered with red and at the same time the moon's going to be super big so it's going to be a big old bloody red blood on the moon wow blood on the moon my favorite eagle's record um yeah so uh it starts i think the moon starts going in a shadow at like 8.11 p.m. Eastern time and then um it starts to be totally red at like 10.11 and it'll last for an hour a little over an hour we should all go outside at the bar and stare at the moon. I like it. Stare at the moon.

Look at that. So I want to close. We've got about 10 minutes left. I want to close. We haven't hype checked. We haven't hype checked. Now that we've explained the super blood moon.

Okay, you guys ready? I feel like we hardcore sold the super blood moon. I'm not sure what we, okay, go ahead though. No, hype check the super blood man. No, I mean, I won't do it if you don't want me to do it. She goes full Canadian here. The police.

I will say that it's Ariel's Canadian, as you may have noticed. Very polite, but then when we push her over, it's like... The triny comes out. Wow. Okay, so I'm hype checking it. I would say it's like a special kind of off-world cool. Okay.

Yeah. So we are, we're gone for... Technically, yes, it is off-world. That's why it works. You know that feeling when you're like in the car and the brakes go out? No. So I've only experienced this once in my life, and it was when I was four, and I drove a car into a pond. Wait, for real?

Tell me more. A coffee, actually? This is like my, yeah, it's like a, this is such a stupid story. I was four. My dad used to let me drive the car home down the street. Like, this is like millennials. Like, I grew up in the 80s when it was like, all bets are off. Like, whatever.

Like, wear a seatbelt? I don't know. Like, have a beer. You know, like, uh, so I, when we would turn the corner on a, my street. My dad let me drive the car home. From the time I was very small. And he was like, okay, we got in the house, we parked the car. It was not our car. It was a loner.

So reaching the pedals? Yeah. I would like sit on the steering. Okay. And as I got bigger and bigger, I would start to actually use the vehicle. Great. Anyway, so he got home and he was like, sit in the car. I'm going to take these groceries in. It was not our car.

It was a loaner. Our car is in the shop. It was like the car dealer's a loner. It was a stick shift. and I was like, I'm going to screw with the stick shift. And I got it into neutral and it just rolled down the hill in the pond. And then, and I think this is when I truly became a fan of technology and gadgets, a series of ever, the car got stuck in the muck of the pond and like an ever larger series of tow trucks kept arriving. Like there was like the one tow truck that couldn't do it. And I'm like, what about a bigger tow truck?

Presumably by then you were out of the car. Yeah, I mean, it was like a party. Like it was like Wisconsin, you know, like all the neighbors showed up. Beer in hand. And I got the car on the pond. It was like crazy. My dad was like very fond of like how much trouble I got into as a kid, which was like not a good, right? Like bad feedback loop.

And he was just like laughing. He was like, oh, my kid drove the car in the pond. The neighbor's like grilling and like huge church. For some reason, the story, everything makes sense. Yeah. Anyway, but you know that feeling when the brakes and you can't stop the car? That's this podcast is what I'm saying. And soon we're all going to drink beer and grill and like the fire department will come.

And the entire to. truck community will be there. Yeah, my dad was an ER doctor in Wisconsin, so he knew all the firemen. So I grew up thinking that firemen like perform services around the house. Because like, my dad would be like, because he was like, oh, we got to build a tree house. Like, I know firemen who like want to do handiwork. And he was like, a fireman's coming to build a treehouse. I'd go to school.

Like, fireman built me a tree house last week. What about you? And they're like, you're the coolest. I was like, I don't understand how anything works in the world. Do you miss not being able to call fireman? No, that's what I'm saying. My sister and I grew up thinking that. fireman like performed essential services.

Right. So as we became adults, I'm like, oh man, like I need to like fix something in my home. Like you should call a fireman. My wife was like, that's not how it works. I had a similar experience growing up in Texas or at least in Houston. Everybody's parents were engineers. So there was like a point where I was like, oh, people's parents have other professions than engineers. Wait, you're a doctor.

How dare you? How dare you, sir? Oh, no. I feel you on that, though, because of it. like my dad is a psychology professor and I very much grew up in the rat lab feeding the rats. Yeah. And so like, you know, every once in a while I'll mention that I was involved in childhood experiments because I was. And people get very like nervous about this.

Wait, let's back that one up. So there was a preschool at Grinnell College, which is where my dad teaches. And they, it's, I think, free to the community. And you can choose not to have your kids participate in the experiments if you want. Basically it's like there's a developmental site class. and they put you in a room with like that glass that you can only see through one way. And they like do things like, gee, what toy will this child play with if we put 10 toys in here or like the marshmallow test or whatever? Like just totally harmless stuff, right?

Yeah. You know, like... For somebody who doesn't know what the marshmallow test is. Oh, right. Sorry. We have this ongoing problem on the science desk where we're all nerds and we don't realize that like we're talking past people. Right. It's when you like put a marshmallow and then you time how long it takes for them to like not.

Kind of. So what happens is the setup is there's a marshmallow on a plate or a cookie on a plate, famously a marshmallow, hence the name. And you're told as like a five-year-old, if you can not eat this marshmallow, you'll get two when the experimenter comes back. And so, you know, you have to sit there and like some kids can't do it. Like, they just eat the marshmallow and they're like, well. But, you know, some kids do. Some kids can wait and get two marshmallows. And it actually turns out to be a pretty good predictor of adult success, believe it or not.

I would have never waited. Zero. Zero chance, I would have been there. I honestly don't know if I would have. I would have waited. We should do this with our staff. We should do this with our staff. We should just do it with Ben's kids.

I'm often worried that we're experimenting on Ben Ben's. I'm also worried about that, actually. We do it a lot. We're like, here's a gadget. Like put it near your kids. And Ben's like, great. What a good idea. I love gadgets.

In Ndansland. Ariel, can we hype check childhood experiments? Wow. Wow. Okay. Really? I'm going to disclose a conflict of interest. Liz is my boss.

Yes, well, there's that. But also my parents are also professors, not psychology professors, actually marketing professors. But professors nonetheless. So, yeah, no. academia and childhood. Awesome. 10 out of time. All right, you have four minutes left, Liz, and then we've got to do all the wrap-ups.

Here's what I want you to talk about. This is a year. We've built that a great program. Where do you want to go the next year? I want to get, if it's possible, even Virgieer. Oh, that's my favorite. So, you know, we have, when I came in, I sort of had a plan about, you know,

expanding into space, thinking about, like, you know, doing rigorous analyses of some of the tech stuff that's coming towards us. I want to do more of that. And I also want to sort of explain the world a little bit more to people because it turns out like a lot of the things

that I think are obvious are in fact not obvious to everybody, possibly because I have been writing about science for too long. So we're going to think about ways to create cool science videos, explaining how the world works, to introduce you to really weird animals

that we've already started to do that with the verge animal review. Love it. The controversial version of it. yeah it's one of those things where like they were like uh i was really entertained you know we put up the first verge review of cats which i wrote i went first and uh we had a couple of people like oh what is this have has the verge sunk this low that they now must put cats on the site jokes not allowed it's like um the my favorite part though was that people responded like yep and we're like oh

uh yeah man like i don't know uh man you know the verge i don't know what What the verge is doing? What are we doing? Can I tell the true story of the Genesis Vanible reviews? Please. Please do. So we have all these section editors. Like Liz is a science editor and Emmlays are an entertainment editor and Casey's are Silicon Valley.

We have sections, right? And for a while when all these people were like in their positions, we're like, okay, what's all the stuff we're going to make? Like we make TLDRs and we make reports and we make features and we make news. And we make, in tech, we make reviews. So like that was a column on our grid. And Liz is like, the fuck is a science review. She's like, what goes in this box? Can I just review animals?

I was like, you should review animals. And there was a hilarious joke that we were telling. And then we were trying to figure out, like, what are we going to do on weekends? Like, we should need to have some fun on the weekends. And, like, animal reviews was, like, the number one answer we had. Where we had to go back. So there we are. But, like, it was really funny.

Like, everyone just, like, looked at that reviews box. Like, what goes in here for this? And we answered, in some places, it's, like, very normal, like, in tech you. But, like, what does this answer? We have some other answers that are not just like rodents. It's true. It's true. But, you know, and also, like, I am a well-known cat lady.

If you follow that, like, it's just, it's just, I'm just going to be real about it. To know Liz is to know Jeeves. That's true. My cat's name is Jeeves. We put Jeeves on our Facebook channel. We, you, you put Jeeves on our Facebook channel. Me and my friend is, Mark. Me and my friend Mark.

He's a maker. I think I posted some, some photo of her to Twitter. She has an Instagram. account. It's Jeeves old sport on Instagram if you want to follow. She's beautiful. But so I posted a photo and Neil Lice was how is this cat so cute? And then he was

like, I'm putting it on Facebook. Yeah. In the middle of the night, no one will notice. It did it really well. Was it just a picture? Did it do really well? It did super well. Like, you people you think we're just thirsty for traffic, but I could get all the clicks. Like all day long with just

photos of that cat. She's adorable. I'm now on a mission to get my dog on Facebook. Well, behind me see. We'll see. Okay, that is it. That has been our show.

I would like to thank Virge Science for being with us today. Again, if you were looking for hardcore tech news on the Vergecast, I think we mildly provided that when Ariel talked to

about a note 5 lovingly for 30 seconds, but that's where we are. But, like I said, we have a brand-new podcast called Control Walt Delete, which is now up on the site. It's on iTunes.

You can search for it. It's 40 minutes of me and Walt talking about the iPhone that should say You, you monsters. Okay, so please, thank you for listening. You can follow the Verge. We're at Verge on Twitter.

We're the real Verge on Snapchat. We're on Instagram. I will say we just hit 50,000 followers on Snapchat. We just hit a million followers on Twitter. Ferdge. At Verge Science is also doing it. That's three of us, yeah. At Verge Science.

Also doing very well on Twitter. Fingers crossed, I think we're going to have our biggest month ever is a website, brand media portfolio, this month in September. So we're blowing up partially thanks to the efforts of verge science, but also thanks to Virgin Entertainment, Vverage Cars, all these places are growing. So follow us everywhere. Hit us on iTunes.

I would love to know, give us five stars, and then you can say how you'd like the science section to expand. That's always my favorite. One other thing, I'm going to just plug Emily and I, Emily Yoshida. That was literally next on my list. You can do you're here. You're here so you can do it. Emily Yoshida and I, she's our entertainment editor, as you've heard.

We do a science and entertainment podcast together. It's for GSP. It's the only ESP that's real. And, you know, we do something every two weeks. And we have had a number of very cool guests, and we have some really cool stuff coming up. Yeah, it's going to be exciting. Yeah. And then Chris Plant, who you may also know on our website, has What's Tech, which you can listen to.

And you can go get all of it by going to iTunes.com. Slurge. It's all on the website. You can also go to YouTube.com. The Verchcast has its own YouTube channel now. So just search for the Verchcast. You can know us on YouTube. And you can follow us on Twitter. I'm at Reckless.

is. I'm at Ms. Lepado. M. S. Lopato. I'm at Ariel D. Ross. I'm at Lauren Gresh, L-O-R-E-N. So complicated. And that was it. That was our show. I want to thank BrainTree for sponsoring today's episode of the Vergecast. BrainTree gives you a full-stack payment solution.

So you can pay us for this because we're blocking the fucking ads. So support all payment types your customers might want. Start accepting Android pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Bitcoin, Venmo, credit cards, whatever's next, all with a single integration across all the platforms that are possible in human existence. With superior fraud protection, customer service, fast pants. Please check it out for yourself. Visit braintree payments.com slash vergecast. Awesome.

Thanks. Bye.