The Vergecast - Quibi's epic fall and the future of books

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

Today on the flagship podcast of what the future of Kindle turns out to be:  We’re once again trying out a couple of our favorite new show formats.  In Version History, we talk through the whole story of Quibi, from its early days as NewTV to its extremely ill-timed launch to its ultimate demise.  From Variety: Quibi Has Raised $1.75B After Closing $750M Round to Fund Launch From Variety: Jeffrey Katzenberg’s NewTV Closes $1B, Major Studios Among Investors Quibi’s CES 2020 launch Quibi app review: short-form streaming in a shifting landscape Steven Spielberg is writing a horror series you’ll only be able to at night Quibi’s Super Bowl 2020 commercial From The Wall Street Journal: Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman Struggle With Their Startup—and Each Other How Quibi imploded less than six months after launch 11 reasons why Quibi crashed and burned in less than a year Next, we try out our as-yet-untitled debate show. The Verge’s Kevin Nguyen and Alex Cranz take on a surprisingly contentious topic: is the future of books print or digital?  The Boox Palma is an amazing gadget I didn’t even know I wanted Kobo’s great color e-readers are held back by lock-in From The Wall Street Journal: How the Kindle Became a Must-Have Accessory (Again) The Playdate makes a surprisingly good e-reader Later, producer Andru Marino answers a question from The Vergecast Hotline about a very unusual shopping situation for MP3 players.  NW-E394 Walkman Digital Music Player  Mighty’s ‘iPod shuffle for Spotify’ gets upgraded battery and Bluetooth Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of whatever the future of the Kindle turns out to be. I'm your friend David Pierce and I am still on vacation. This is the second week that I am out. Right now, if you're hearing this on Tuesday, I am probably at, I'm with my parents in upstate Connecticut. Just hanging out. I'm probably on an inner tube in a lake, as everyone should be at some point this summer. Anyway, while I'm gone, we've been doing this little mini pilot. season. I hope you enjoyed last week. We talked about Roku and we talked about car play,

trying out some new formats and structures for the show. And we're going to do something similar today. We have two more versions of those same shows. We figured instead of just doing one pilot, we'd try it twice. We'd get to learn a lot about how it went. Maybe we'd be better at at the second time. Maybe you'd be more familiar. We'd love to hear your thoughts. We're going to try it again. This time we're going to talk about Roku and we're going to talk about e-books. Both super fun. Very excited for you to hear them both. And as I mentioned before, we really, really want to hear your feedback. I want to know everything you think about these formats, about these shows, about whether you'd like to hear more of them, about whether you hope we

never, ever do them again, all of it. We've been experimenting with this stuff. We always like trying new formats and new ideas, but we also love what this show is, and we don't want to change it just for the sake of changing it. So tell us everything you think about the show, about the formats, about the stuff that we're covering in particular. If you have ideas for what you want to see us do on either of those shows and segments, please let us know. The verge.com. Call the hotline. It's 66, verge 1-1. We want to hear everything. All right. Two more pilots.

Let's go. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. What's up, y'all. I'm Skylar Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports. And mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14.

Tap in with us. Welcome back. All right. First up today is the second pilot of our rewatch show that we're calling version history. So if you didn't listen last week, basically the thing we've been thinking about for a long time is what a tech rewatch show might look like. If you've ever listened to those shows like Office Ladies or West Wing Weekly or, I don't know, any of the million other shows where typically people who were on the show go through the show, episodes. by episode and talk about the behind the scenes stories and what they remember from filming and what they think about that episode now. Like, it's a good way to sort of relive a thing that you

liked, but also learn new things about it. And we've been trying to figure out a way to do that with tech. There's so many old gadgets and so many old apps and so many interesting stories baked into these sort of moments in tech history. And we've been trying to figure out what is a fun way to go back through a lot of that stuff, talk about where we were, how we got to where we are now, what still matters, the legacy of all these things, and all of that. So we kind of cobbled together a show based on all of the different stuff that we liked from all the other rewatch podcasts. And like I said, we've been calling it version history. Last week, we talked about the Roku Netflix player, which was very fun. And this week, we are talking about, I would say,

a wilder story that either is more important or less important to the world, depending on how you look at it. That's right. It's time to talk about Quibi. Big stories told in six to ten minute episodes or quibbies. Neilie Patel, hello. Hello. Alex Krantz, hello. Howdy y'all? Coming off the smashing success of our first version history pilot last week.

I don't know, people might have hated it. I'm on vacation. We'll figure it out when I get back. We're going to do this again. This time with what I would say is everyone's favorite streaming service of all time. It's called quibby. And again, just quick reminder, the way that we're structuring this, We're going to do kind of a brief history lesson.

This one's going to be fun because it's very recent, and we all were journalists through the whole run of this. So I think we all covered this in different ways. Then we're going to talk about reviews and how it was perceived in both as a product and a cultural thing. And then we have some questions we're going to answer about what it was and its legacy in the future. And then at the end, we're going to decide if it belongs in the Version History Hall of Fame, all of the prerequisites for which we have not yet decided. It's going to be great. Alex, I feel like you should do the Quibi history. This is near and dear to your heart in a way that I find very mysterious and strange.

So can you tell us the story of Quibi as we go here? I can. I can. Because once upon a time, there's a man named Jeffrey Katzenberg. And he was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. He still is in 2024, one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, creator of DreamWorks, which was major studio. And he wanted to get in on streaming because at this point, this is 2018.

We know that NBC's got something in the works. We know Disney's got something in the works. We know HBO Warner Brothers, AT&T, whatever that mess is, is planning something. Apple's planning something. Everybody is planning a streaming service. And Jeff is like, yeah, I want to do that too. But he knows that it can't just be any streaming service. He knows that he needs to do something different to complete with Netflix.

And it's not just make good content. So he thinks to something. He calls it new TV originally back in 2018, probably a significantly better name than Quibi. He goes, he gets a lot of funding. He raises over a billion dollars, $1.7.5 billion. Just pulling in the money, he starts picking a bad inventory. I mean, he's really, he's doing good things, but he still has to make a product and release a product. Can I tell a story about this time?

Yes. Please. So I went to a fancy, like, dinner at a code conference around this time. And I was sitting in just the most unusual group of people. It was like the founder of Soylent, another guy, me, and Cats. And Katz was like, I'm thinking about this thing. And he explained what would become. And I will tell you, my reaction was like, oh, no.

And I think I might have said, you know, YouTube exists. Continue on. It's true. YouTube exists is a useful frame for all of what's about to come. But, you know, YouTube was made by the tech people. And what Jeff wanted to do was make something for the rest of, for like Hollywood, right? Like that was his big deal was he knew Hollywood in a way that Netflix and YouTube and everybody else didn't. And so he goes and he gets someone who also knows Hollywood.

Famous Hollywood exec. Sure, right? Meg Whitman, everybody knows her as a Hollywood exec. Right? HP and eBay, really two Hollywoody companies. Yeah, yeah. If I had a name too. He goes and gets Meg largely because he does need someone in tech.

He needs somebody who understands tech. So he goes and he gets Meg and he's like, do you want to be my CEO with me? We'll do it together. And she's like, hell yes. And I want to be a fly on the wall in that particular coffee meeting. Right. Like that that's a dream of mine. Jeff, Meg, call me with the recordings. I want to listen to them. Anyway, so they come together and they, they decide to release this product. And then we all, we're all at CES in 2020. We know this is coming. We know it's called Quibi. We know they are spending a ton, like a billion dollars on content. And they've got, what, Stephen Spielberg, they've got Catherine Hardwick, they've got all these big actors and actresses. Everybody's working on Quibi's stuff. And there's, there's some, there's some energy around it. I'm just going to use the word energy because I don't think any adjective can describe it.

Wait, can I also color in the energy for you? Yes. So before the CES unveil, which I know Alex will talk about, they had briefings. Hollywood. Like a normal company comes to version. I'm like, we'd like to tell you about our product on our embargo, so you can write about it. And we're like, great, here's one reporter. They demanded everyone.

They're like, all of you come. Seriously? Like, Casey Newton, who is writing the interface about platforms and democracy. Was like, I'm going to the Quibi briefing. And I was like, why? And he was like, I'm just excited to see someone talk about building a platform with this much ambition and this much money. And I will never forget. He came out of the briefing and he was like, the only thing I got was that they are spending more per minute a video by like a thousand than any other platform has ever thought of.

They're like, here's what you do. You open this app and you watch video. On YouTube, they get the videos for free from other people. No, no, no, that's not what we're doing. We've taken the fanciest directors from Hollywood and paid the millions of dollars per minute a video. And I was like that. And how are you getting on it? And they're like, ads.

And they're like, yes. It was a beautiful moment. Yeah, they very proudly talked about how they were spending Game of Thrones level money on like everything that they were doing. And it's like, well, no, there's a reason it's Game of Thrones. Yeah. And you're making one about like haunted house flippers at Game of Thrones budgets. It was very good. The whole thing was incredible.

Yeah. But that was before CS. Like before, they were getting the feedback before CS. We're like, so the dollars in are big and then the dollars out are small. What's your plan? And they'd be like, quality. And I kind of, it makes sense. We'll get into it, but it makes sense, right? YouTube is, is basically cable access TV. And they're like, what if we put actual, not like actual producers and people who know how to make entertainment on this instead of everybody just experimenting? Certainly a thing, maybe 10 years too late. Anyway, so, so they decided to announce quibby. They have this big event at CES. I know we all got invited. We all went and did the briefings. I sat there with Meg Whitman,

a document in front of her with my name on it, my photo, and a whole bunch of information about me. And she just, because I guess they get that, right? Like, their CEO, it's a normal way they get prepped. She just, power move, just left it sitting right between us. So I could see it. Oh, my God. That's so good.

Jeffrey Katsenberg just pacing in the room. You were at Giz then? I was at Giz and came out. And we had the one briefing with Jeff and and Meg. And then we had another briefing with the CTO and the CPO. the chief product officer and the chief technology officer and one meeting with like a bunch of the actors and filmmakers. And Catherine Hardwick was like,

I just want to like take control of people's phones so they can see everything I make. And I was like, yeah, me too. I didn't say that, but I thought it real hard. We also did this gauntlet. I did it with Ashley Carman and we rewrote our entire, like, we thought there was a story and we had been like working on it because we'd already had these briefings.

and we threw the whole thing out after we met with Katzenberg. We're like, we got to start over. You just know at that moment it was going to be a bomb? Yeah, I don't, you can read that story. Yes. The answer is yes. But like it was also just, the man is very charming. Yes.

He was terrifying and quiet in my interview with him. Oh, yeah. With us, it was a full, I've encountered Katzenberg several times. I actually just did an event about digital, like digital parenting at one of the companies he's invested in and he was there. Yeah. And, you know, he's very charming. But this was like full sales pitch, Katzenberg. And you were like, this man thinks his energy can overcome reality.

It was just like one of the most, that we just started our whole story over. We're like this whole, the actual technology has nothing to do with this product. He definitely approached it differently with the Gizmoto. crew. I mean, and you can argue that the thesis of his energy can overcome reality is the whole thesis of Quibi. It's basically like this thing is probably too late. It's very specific. It's doing kind of a weird thing that seems to be running against everything the culture is doing, but Jeffrey Katzenberg. Like that was how this thing was covered at the beginning, right? It was like Jeffrey Katzenberg doesn't screw up. He will, he will do it. Yeah, don't bet against

Jeffrey. Yeah, over and over and over. Yeah, everybody assumed he was going to do it. and they bring it out and they knew, it was clear that they knew content alone was it going to win this, right? They knew we're late to this. We have a lot of content, but that alone isn't going to win it

because eventually there'd be the show about the lady with a golden arm and that was a terrible show. Anyway. By the way, our headline was Quibi versus the world. That's where we came out. We were like, okay, this is actually what we're hearing. They did one thing.

Their big thing, the big technological innovation here was that it would basically deliver two streams at the same time. And you'd see a stream depending on how you turned your phone. So you'd either see it in profile or you'd see it in landscape. Those are the only two ways to watch it. And it would change depending on it. And some of the filmmakers were really, really excited about this.

Other filmmakers gave two shits and didn't do anything with the format. But most of them did do it. And it was like, I want to say, kind of impressive technology. The technology itself was impressive. Then they finally launched it during COVID when everyone was at their home. Can I just remind everyone that the rotate your phone technology? Turn table or what was it? Turnstile.

It was called turnstile with a Y. Yep. Like wild style for the leg of it. Yeah. But wait, but Kranz, you just glossed over a thing that's very important. So CES 2020 happens. Yes. Quibi launches April 6th, 2020.

Between those two things, what relatively important world event would you say happened? somewhere right in the middle. Tickto lunch. Birds of prey. The movie came out and it was really, really good. But also, yeah, COVID, which probably a lot of us interacted with at that CES, then started interacting with a whole lot of other people. And we had a worldwide pandemic.

And this device, you know, Quibi was made to be for you on the go. It was the whole pitch was, yeah, you watch a little bit on your way to work. You watch a little bit on your lunch break while you're at work. You watch a little bit on the train, on the way home from work. The assumption is that you would be doing a lot of traveling in that time to and from places. That didn't happen because we were all at home because of lockdown, because of COVID. And this product, which was already late, was charging $4.99 with ads, $7.99 without, unless you were a T-Mobile customer, in which case you got it for free for a brief period of time.

But you had to be a T-Mobile customer. that's a choice you can make. It is. And it was just like the minute it launched, it was like, well, no, this isn't going to succeed. The whole reason this exists. Katz's argument was that everyone was at home, and he'd made a product for watching on the train.

Yeah. And so then he scrambled, he panicked, and was like, well, we need to now release some sort of, like for the TV version of this app that is very dependent on your phone and how you rotate your phone to get the scenes. And that was a real challenge. then he was doing some really wild stuff to get people in the office and get people working on and thinking about it at Quibi itself.

Do you remember that? No, what was going on? They were just really trying to entice people into work. And he was, as, as Neil I said, like, he was really just using the force of being Jeffrey Katzenberg to get people to try to make this succeed. He was like, no, everything is totally fine. Yeah, we're just going through a little blip. It'll be okay. We just need to keep going.

We've got all this content. We're working on an app that we're going to release. so that people can watch it in their homes. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. It wasn't fine. Spoiler alert, not fine. Wait, real quick, the one, I think, important piece of Quibi history that you missed so far, Kranz, is the Super Bowl commercial.

This is just like not even in my brain. Can I play you the entirety of the Super Bowl commercial? Yes. I would like to play it for you. Frank, where are you? I'll be there to Quibi. A Quibi. Less than 10 minutes.

Meg's die. Got Punt. Big Spice, got fun. Quick bites. Big stories. Quibby. That's it. That's the whole Super Bowl commercial.

Nowhere in there does it say, we made a streaming service. Nowhere in it does it say, here is what we're doing. But you do learn that a quibby is a quick bite. And a quick bite is less than 10 minutes. And that is apparently very important. That was a Super Bowl commercial.

What a time for you. I made the joke about TikTok earlier. But it is also true that the thing that happened in the pandemic was people just started opening TikTok all day, all night. Because it was free. You got quick bursts of content. You could just scroll right on by. A lot of the ideas that were in Quibi that led to Quibi were right there in TikTok. They were the same idea.

People are going to watch video on their phone. We should make it super easy. The videos should ideally be as short as possible. Yeah, the difference is Quibi was paying the people. I dug up the quote. I have it from Jeffrey Katzenberg. Yeah. They're making content at $100 a minute.

We're making content at $100,000 a minute. And he says that like it's a good thing. Yeah, this was his winning argument in our briefing. The reaction in Hollywood to this was really, really weird at that time. Because a lot of the filmmakers and stuff felt that this was him trying to to get around by breaking up the films and all the footage into these short bites. Get around paying the actual rates. Right.

Get around the union fees. And then he's like, I'm spending literally $10,000 more than, or like $100,000 more than everybody else. Weird. Just weird. I'm just saying the money in, money out was like a real. The way that could be ended is still like the part that really gets me because he announces that like, yeah, they're about to be layoffs, tells the employees, then they play

a song from the movie Trolls called Get Back Up Again and he's like this will make you all feel better. Oh my God. And it did. Yeah. And now Quibi is the largest streaming service in America. Thank you, trolls.

No, I just want to, before we get to the actual end, the part where their technical ideas and their user interface and user behavior ideas were correct is actually stunning. Yeah. They were right. about people are going to watch a lot of video on their phones, and we should make it shorter and more vertical. And maybe they needed to trick Hollywood into making vertical video by doing turnstile.

But like, they were correct about what was about to happen to video on phones. Yes. They were absolutely wrong about the mathematics of those videos. And who should make them and why people would watch them and all of that stuff. Yeah, wait. Can I just quickly read you a line from, so Chris Welch reviewed the app for us when it first came out. And here's just a line from it that really jumped out to me. He says, opening Quibi starts you off in the 4U tab, which uses a vertical card interface. It feels more Instagram and less Netflix carousel.

You'll see a show's title, metadata, and if you stay on one card for a few seconds, video begins auto playing. That's just, it's just TikTok. Yeah. Like, it's, it really is kind of amazing how. To be clear, TikTok was out. And, you know, and it's Tom Conrad or was there CT out. Like, he's a smart dude. And also, like, Snap had done a lot of this stuff.

So, like, the idea that vertical video that auto played was going to be a, thing was like not surprising but to its credit quibby was like yeah this is this is the thing we're not going to like go 90 it and tell everybody that the solution is to flip your phone over like except they did like they did it they did it they did a little bit they did say that they did do that they have a patent undurn style which is the supply of but like i just want to i mean i have dunked on quibby more than anybody has ever done quivvy but the thing for a bunch of hollywood executives and Meg Whitman to correctly identify how entertainment would change because of like product changes was why.

Like they nailed it. And then they got completely blown up by not only pandemic, but their own sense that they could literally increase cost by a thousand and then somehow make it up on the back end, which no one can do. To be fair, that's what all of the streaming services were doing at that time, right? Like everybody was investing a ton of work. money into making their own services. So Quibi was doing the exact same thing as everybody else. How did it work out? It worked out terribly.

The only difference is they were part of big as, like, everybody else was established studio. This wasn't like DreamWorks thing. This was Katzenberg was like, I'm going to go make my own new company to be at the start of something new and I'll get everybody else involved. And then the pandemic just cut him off at the knees. Like, I genuinely think if it had come out in a different time, it would have lasted at least six months longer.

Well, okay, so, a big bet from Grants. There we go. Six extra months. This is one of the big questions I was going to get to, but let's just do this now. Yeah. The, is there an alternate timeline in which this thing was more successful? Feels like the question of Quibby, right? Because when Quibi died, Katzenberg, just 100% blame the pandemic. Right?

He's like, this would have worked except for the pandemic. Just, and I just want to call out. He ended it in maybe the most noble way of ending a thing. Oh, totally. That has raised us. He just gave the money back to shareholders. She was like, I'm not burning the rest of your money. This isn't going to happen.

Here's your money back. Yeah. So there's that. But he did fully blame the pandemic. I do feel like opening the multiverse door around COVID is just a rough, a rough game to play. Fair. Many different decisions could have been made during that time. Yes, but this is the unusual thing that literally lived and died entirely inside of the pandemic.

Right? Like, it's not just that its fortune changed. It's that its entire story is actually a. pandemic story. So I'll just go back to leaving the door closed. YouTube existed. TikTok existed. The game that they were trying to play had already been won by services that, you know, you can have a lot. I have a lot of feelings about the fact that these services do not pay very high rates. I think a lot of people in Hollywood have a lot of feelings about the fact these services do not pay very high rates to their creators. Katzmerer being like, we're going to pay much higher rates

and then figure out how to get people to pay for quality. Very noble. I think no matter what But maybe you get six more months, like Kranz is saying, they would have run up against the fact that YouTube exists. And YouTube is fundamentally what all these companies are competing with. And to some extent, TikTok is... Would TikTok have grown as quickly, minus the pandemic, is the multiverse door that is just, like, hard to figure out? But, hey, there's an app on your phone that's free, full of infinite content versus, hey, there's an app on your phone you have to pay for that's full of some content is... At the end of the day, it's just, like, really hard to win that game. Right. And I think even then there was an understanding that they were competing against infinite content, but the belief was that like we can do it better and better will win. And Cranes, I feel like the thing that we've learned a million times over now is that better doesn't actually always win. I don't even know if better usually wins.

Quibby wasn't better. Like most of the shows that were on Quibi, not all, a bunch of them were killed. I know Gizmodo had like a documentary. I think Verge had one. A bunch of us had it. We, no. It didn't happen. Can we pause on that really fast? I went back and was reading a bunch of stuff, and there are like three disclosures in stories that are like, there have been conversations about a Verge show on Quibi. Eli, I need to know the story. So it was a Polygon show on Quibi.

Yes. You know, Quibi broke its content up into three categories. There was the spotlights. There were Quibbies. And then there was something called Daily Essentials. And they thought daily essentials would be sticky. And this all made sense. Again, none of this was incorrect.

You got your Halo things, you got the stuff everybody watches every day that makes your product sticky, and then you got whatever weird garbage in the middle. That's how you program anything. So Poggan had a new show about games, and then they wanted to do a tech show, obviously. And so we were like in the mix, and I had to disclose it constantly that like someone else is having a conversation. And that thing I keep talking about where I don't live on the business side of our company and I don't tell them what to do and they can't tell me what to do. Boy, where we just like staring at each other through bulletproof glass. I was like, I don't want to waste time on this. And that was where that ended, basically.

Did you ever sit in a meeting about what the Verge Quibi show was going to be? Only on the Vox Media side. Never with Quibi. Where they were like, here's our thought. And I was like, weird. You know, like you are going to, like, we give this away for free on our website. Why would anybody watch this on Quibi? That was basically where it ended for me.

Yeah. Can I read you just the names of a few shows that did exist? And these I actually am lifting directly from the CES presentation. So this is not just shows that exist. This is shows that like Quibi was very excited about. There was the now. There was bar architecture. Nightgowns was just a show. One was called beauty. Sure. There was one called 50 states of fright that was going to be a whole anthology series that was a horror thing set in a different state for each one for reasons. One was called Don't Look Deeper, which I was liked. And then there was one just called action scene. Yeah. Just called action scene. The only one I remember watching was the one with one of the Hemsworths where he was being hunted by Christoph Waltz. That's the only one I remember. I liked that one. Yeah, there was a lot of garbage.

I think is the best way to say it. Most of it, none of it was very good. And after Quibi kind of started to die, they started selling off a lot of it trying to like. Yeah, like Roku bought a bunch of it, right? Yeah, Roku bought a bunch of it. And I think it is telling that none of those shows survived. I think that is telling, and part of that is probably certainly Quibi. A big part of that was the shows just weren't very good.

Yeah, which, by the way, we've talked about this a bunch, so I'll just blow through the review stuff. That thing is, I would say, the main criticism is basically there. A lot of people who are like, there's some really cool technology here. For a 1.0 app, it's actually pretty good. A lot of people agreed with what Chris said about the tab. People liked turnstile, fun fact. Yeah, it's neat. But overwhelmingly, it's like, there's nothing here that is like particularly compelling.

It's just Quibi didn't have like, it's, thing. It didn't have the house of cards. It didn't have its like HBO equivalent. It just, it needed one winner and it just didn't have it. No Mandalorian. And the interesting thing about that, going back to what Cranes was saying about Hollywood, is everyone wanted cats's money. No one wanted to bet against cats. But then there were all these like contracts and labor questions about like, how do you cut us show up like this? And so he absolutely bought everyone's like C-list work. Yes. What's the least risky thing that we can sell to this thing that might blow up, but we don't want to bet against it.

So everyone made a deal and took the money. But just like very obviously they were putting up their like C content. Again, the golden arm. Just go Google Quibi Golden Arms. Take a minute. Google it. And you'll be like, oh, I get it. Yeah.

Were there any like underrated winners, crayons? Like, do you have any Quibi shows that you hold on to? and you're like, actually, that was a banger and nobody knows? I vaguely remember there was Reno 9-1-1, like, sequel. Oh, yeah. It was a nice little diversion. And the house flipper show. And I don't think the Steven Spielberg whenever came out.

That was the one that was like, we heard so much about before Quibi was. That was the one you could only watch at night. Yeah. Wasn't that the thing? Yeah. It was Steven Spielberg's idea. He, like, came to them, was like, I hear you're doing this stuff. Here's what I want to do.

And that was, like, I think the most interesting part of this was listening to all these different filmmakers actually really engaged with the technology in a way they haven't with other streaming platforms. Like even TikTok, they just haven't touched like, oh, there's an actual product here I can fuck with the way they did with Quippy. But then none of it was successful and they never tried it again. That sounds about right. All right. Before we get out of here, let's roll through the big questions that we do here on version

history. What was the best thing about this thing? Turn style. Legit. I think it's a fascinating technology. I kind of agree. Like, I don't know that it was a good. good idea, but it was awesome. Yeah, it was just cool. You just look at it and you're like,

this rips. I don't know if it's going to work. Yeah, like, did it accomplish anything? I don't know. What are you talking about? David and I are just having the best time over here. What are you talking about? Turnstile was awesome. That was the only part of it. You should, you can go read the turnstile Pat. They had very complicated ideas about how you should frame a video so you could turn it inside the viewport. That's cool in the sense that like, you know, you look at a Rube Goldberg machine, you're like, that's a very impressive. Or like a giant, you know, those

like videos where people have set up a huge amount of dominoes. Yeah. And you're like, I just want to see him fall down. Like, I don't care about the millions of hours you spent setting up. Turnstile is brain ASMR. It's just like, yeah. I just want to like soothingly think about this. Neela, what do you think was the best thing about Quivvy?

Going back to what I said Casey's reaction was, if you just remember that period that was like it was a dark and boring time in tech in like a particular way and like here's this explosive amount of money and new ideas and like we're going to blow it up in the we can do it with just like confidence and plaster and an enormous amount of cash was actually great like it was a good reminder that you can have a new idea in what contextually especially through the pandemic was like not a choice. And so like there's that of it.

But at the same time, like, do you, I don't even remember this. At that same CES, Samsung introduced a TV that rotated. And like Katz was like furious at it because he was like, they stole my idea. And I was like, no, dude. Like all the videos are vertical. Yeah. But they are reacting to Instagram and TikTok. Like they didn't steal quite a piece idea.

Can you imagine people just getting up and flipping their TV? like, oh, I wonder what this scene will look like. I mean, they still have it. The frame TV, you can buy a mount for a frame TV that auto rotates it when you play vertical video on it. I have not bought such a mount. I've stared at it many, many times and then tried to bring myself to a place where I think the right thing to do is cast a vertical video to a TV that's motoring around.

We're staging an intervention if you ever reach that place, like emotionally. I'm like, but like we're many generations deep into those products now because the companies understand that people are watching vertical video. So I think the thing about it was the idea that Hollywood would have some bluster here, and that would be a counterbalance. And it all got blown up for all the reasons got blown up. And you just haven't seen that. You've just sort of seen Hollywood like fall over instead. And I would like to see some energy come back. Fair enough. All right. What was the worst thing about Quibi? I have a very strong opinion about this, but I want to know what you guys think. It's the name. It's got to be the name. There we go. It's the

name. As I've said many times on this show, one of my strongest held beliefs is that you cannot overcome a terrible name. Like I honestly, it sounds like a bit. I believe it so sincerely. I don't know, man. iPad. It's fine. You can turn like a name into a good name. You cannot turn a terrible name. You can't survive. Like a C, a C or higher is fine. But if you, if you have an F name, it's never coming back. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I agree with you. Quibi is an F name. Quibi is one of the worst. I had so much fun ripping on that name and everything I wrote about that site. Like, like, just looking for puns, looking for, it's just a horrible, horrible name. And the fact that they tried to make it that unit of time in the, like, awful. Like, it was just, you were trying to, they were trying way too

hard to make Quibi happen. Do you think, do you think that they're like forever pissed that TikTok won, like the Kesha spelling of TikTok? Yes. I think that, like, Keisha gets said. They should have gone to her and been like, hey, help us fix this name. But I think if TikTok had come out being like, you know, it's like the clock does, right, guys? It would have been worse. You know what I mean? Yeah.

If they've done a Super Bowl ad where they're like, I'll be there in a TikTok. Like, yeah, exactly. Yeah, maybe the Super Bowl ad was the worst thing. Yeah. Actually, take it back. Super Bowl ad was the worst thing. It really just put it all together. If you could go back in time and make Quibi before somebody else made Quibi, what would

you do differently? Make it before 2020. Fair. You know, that golden arm thing is really interesting because it went viral, just not on Quibi. If you remember this, it was a Hollywood app. It was like heavily DRMed. You couldn't even screenshot it. Yeah.

And at one point, they were like, oh, we know people want to screenshot Quibi. We're going to build this like convoluted system where we pre-select screens and clips for you to share. And it's like, no, to just let people do, like let people make memes. that's the one thing I would have changed is like make this thing more social because that was the thing they missed. Yeah, I agree. I think that was going to be my answer too is like embrace the other parts of TikTok, right? Which are like let people, I think you probably can't like let people stitch and duet stuff. Like that doesn't feel right. But like let people clip stuff and share clips. Let people make memes out of it. Like you're talking about let people share screenshots.

Like they had done so many different things even just with like the way they licensed content that it's like just blow up the. idea of what it means to like be a show even further. And I actually think there's like some really interesting stuff you could do there. Also I would name it not Quibi. I realize Sam Ramey directed that. The golden arm. Speaking of C material. He just. I think the golden arm gets a bad rap. There's some, it's in my brain and, you know, I don't, I'm not going to burn the calories to get it out. But it's like, it was a joke in some way. And it got de-contextualized as a joke into people believing Quibi thought it was serious. And then it became a different kind of The actress was like, this was a joke.

We were like making fun of people obsessed with like tech and stuff. And instead everybody was like, nope, you got a dumb golden arm. I'm going to laugh at the golden arm, dumb. It's dumb. I don't, again, it's in there somewhere. Yeah. And I, you know, someone else can Google it and send it to us. All right.

We have two more Quibi questions. Question number one is could you reboot it in 2024? Could Quibi post-pandemic, post-tick-Tic-Tac. Could we do Quibi now? Yeah, but they would just be friends episodes. up and put on there, but like paid for instead of shadow put up on TikTok. So it's just TikTok minus the impending copyright lawsuits, basically. Yeah, exactly.

Nilai, you're very pensive. I want to say yes. Really? Yeah. I'm trying to make the case, and it's much harder than I thought it would be. You know, you don't want to be a reflexive no. It would be really hard to raise the money now. Quibi was a true Zerp, uh, zero, straight phenomenon.

The content would be easier to get because all the other. other streamers are kind of falling apart and they want to sell things. But getting people to download an app that isn't TikTok in 2024 and pay money for it, it seems hard. Do you think the thesis that somebody at some point will do a really good high-end, mostly vertical streaming service is real? Like, can Holly, will somebody eventually make a vertical feature film starring Chris Pratt that is like good and successful? Not as long as YouTube and TikTok and totally free content exists, right? Like, if there's no real clear path

to making money back on that, who is going to invest the money in that? You know what? I think vertical video, I was reading a story about fashion brands, wanting things shot on iPhones for the ad campaigns now because it's more authentic,

which is fascinating for a million reasons. I think vertical video is personal and horizontal is Hollywood, and I don't think you can cross that gap. That's just my guess. I'm switching my answer to no. You can't do it. I tried.

Let it be said that I really tried. It's still not good idea. YouTube still exists. Yeah, I don't know. Part of me wonders. I mean, like, YouTube and TikTok are forever trying to find ways to get fancy content. And fancy content is forever trying to find ways to get the engagement and excitement and user-generated content of those other platforms.

And it does feel like at some point there might be a middle ground. that makes sense, but maybe it's just the two ends of the spectrum and actually every time you try to cross the two, it doesn't work. The economics are just super weird. Because, okay, you start making movies for YouTube. Then you need contracts with the unions, which means why aren't all the people making stuff already for YouTube not getting contracts? And then it's like, oh, boy, nobody wants to touch that.

Okay, well, then let me ask the question slightly differently. Will Netflix ever make a vertical movie that is just vertical? No. No way. Why not? Because where are you going to distribute it? You're going to distribute it on phones only, not TVs. There's no way anyone's going to watch a vertical video on their TV.

But what if you have a TV that turns? This is it. Samsung's going to buy the first vertical Netflix show. Wait, what's Samsung streaming service called? That's where it's going to appear. It was called Milk Video. All right. Okay.

Last question. Does Quibi belong in the version history Hall of Fame? No. No, no, no, no, no. A real strong reaction for P. Absolutely not. Sorry. It's like my personal Hall of Fame, just because it was so nuts. Like, it was all of tech and media were conspiring to gaslight the American public. It definitely goes in the good content Hall of Fame.

Not itself, but the content about it was, it was a terrific year. When we say Hall of Fame, what do we mean? Because, like, in a lot of respects, this is a Hall of Famer. Just not like a good product. In which respects would you say this is a Hall of Fame? Again, for what you said, like, the drama. The drama was beautiful. Like the Clown Hall of Fame?

Yeah. The Trolls Hall of Fame. No. No, no, no. We got a high bar. The Hall of Fame is like an industry shaking. You can, that you remember what life was like before and what life was like after. So the juicero goes in the Hall of Fame.

No, your idea of what a Hall of Fame is is very confusing. Here's my early idea for the Hall of Fame. I think it has to have either been very good, very important, or very interesting. And you kind of need at least two of those three things to be in the Hall of Fame. And I think Quibi was just interesting. That's fair. Like it wasn't important and it wasn't good. It was very interesting, but I feel like it doesn't quite move over.

Like, I don't know, the other failure that comes from, mind was like Theranos. Theranos, I think, was very interesting and very important in that, like, what it meant in the bigger world was a lot more. This Hall of Fame sucks. Theranos will probably never be on this show. Let's be clear. We'll put the Game Boy or something in there.

Yeah. There will be good things someday. We'll get to those. The iPhone 5 is going to go in there. Deeply confusing Hall of Fame. It's going to be great. I'm excited about it. Listen, these are just pilots.

We're just figuring stuff out here. That's all it is. All right. Thank you both for doing this with me. This was delightful. If you have an idea for a better name than Quibi, tell us, and we'll bring it back. It'll be amazing. All right. We've got to take a break. Then we're going to go back. We have more pilots. We'll ride back. Hey, I'm Matt Bouchel, comedian, writer, and floating head you may or may not have seen on your 4U page. And I'm starting a brand new podcast. Wait, wait, don't swipe away. It's called, that sounds like a lot. You read through headlines and you immediately think, oh, that sounds like a lot. I can't deal with all this. But guess what? I can deal with it. And I'm going to get into it every Friday. I'll break down whatever chaos is happening in the world. Then I'll sit down with a comedian. You can be progressive and not be like fucking annoying.

Maybe an actor. They go, feminism has gone too far. You go, why? Because the Sadie Hawkins dance happened? Maybe a filmmaker. Since leaving that show, I'm challenged to sparing. I just got to hang out and try to do stuff. You're the one with a charmed life.

Could be a politician. Basically anyone who responds to my cold DMs. We're recording the whole thing in a beautiful studio, so yes, you can watch it on YouTube. or you can listen wherever you get your podcast. This is not the place to get the news, but it is the place to feel a little better about it. That sounds like a lot, part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. All right, we're back.

Our second pilot today is the second episode of the, I would say, as yet untitled, Verge debate show. By the way, if you have better names for either of these shows, I'm very into it. Naming things is hard. Let's just say that. We've been talking about these names forever. We haven't landed anywhere we really like.

I think the debate show should be called Gotta Hear Both sides, but not everybody finds that as funny as I do. So if you have name ideas, structure ideas, show ideas, anything, hit us up. Vergecast at theverge.com, call the hotline 866, Verge 1-1. We love to hear it all. But anyway, back to the debate show. The idea with this one was basically to just have a mini courtroom on the Vergecast. We get into these which thing is better debates all the time.

Sometimes it's really high-stakes stuff about whatever car brands or Nokia versus Apple. a million years ago. We had like big, long debates about Windows phone versus Android. There were so many of these things. We've had teeny, tiny inconsequential debates about which music app you should listen to. All of this stuff is very fun. And Liam James, our producer, has been wanting to find a way to structure this for a while and kind of put us in a room, pit us against each other, and have us like fight for real about which thing is better. So that's essentially what this show is. Last week, we talked about CarPlay versus the automakers. Neli and I got, I would say, more heated than either of us expected.

I definitely won, but, you know, that's neither here nor there. This week, the debate is about books. Print books, digital books, who reads in the future, and what do they do it with? Let's do it. Good day. I am Liam James, the moderator for today's debate, and my job is to facilitate a debate between today's Vergecast's hosts on the topic of books versus e-readers. First up, we have Alex Cran's deputy.

editor. Welcome to the debate, Alex. Hi, I'm so happy to be here and destroy my competition. First, this grant, we have Kevin Nguyen, our features editor at the Verge. Welcome, Kevin. Thanks for having me. Before we get started, I'd like to share the rules for our audience. Each person will make their case directly to the Verge cast audience. A virtual coin toss will determine who gets to go first. Following open statements, each host will be given two minutes to answer my questions with an option of up to a minute in rebuttal from the opposing host. The questions were not shared in advance, and our hosts may use the Internet to confirm factual details, but they use their limited time while doing so. Okay, so with the rules out of the way, let's move on to the topic for today.

We're going to talk about e-books versus printed books. Now, e-books as we know them today, have been around for decades, believe it or not. In fact, you can go all the way back to the 1970s to get early examples and prototypes of what we now consider to be an e-book. But it was in 2007 that Amazon released the first Kindle, and it kind of revolutionized the whole e-book market. Kindle had wireless connectivity that allowed people to download books directly to the device, simplifying the whole process and making it something that regular consumers could buy and use and enjoy. Now, since then, tons of other companies have come out with similar devices to the Kindle, but it's still a relatively small market compared to actual printed books.

So we asked the question, which is better, an e-book or a printed book? Now we move on to our opening statements. A virtual coin toss, let's see, Kevin is the visiting person. So he gets to pick heads or tails. Kevin, has your tails. I see how it is. Let's do tails. Tales, okay.

Okay, it is tails. Kevin, would you like to go first or second? You know, I'm a gentleman. Alex, why don't you go first? I see how it is. I see how it is. Kevin wants that final word in the closing arguments. Okay. And with that, we'll go to our opening statements. Alex, you have two minutes. Okay. Hey, gentle readers at the verge, listeners, wonderful human beings. I'm here to talk to you about e-books and why they rule. Number one, you can put them on anything. Can't do that with a book. Books, you have to like take with you. You can only have one, two at a time unless you're really strong. E-books, you can have like, like dozens, depending on the storage of your e-reader or phone. Also great about e-books, they can be changed at any time. So, you know, if a company says, hey, we need to release an edit for this book

because we mess something up, they can just push that edit out. And then you'll get the fixed version of that book. And I think that's really great and can never go wrong for anyone. Also, e-books are really, really nice because of accessibility. They are very, very easy to read. There are wonderful fonts out there that allow people with dyslexia to read a little easier. There are ways to make the fonts bigger so people with really bad eyesight can see the text easier. And you just don't have that kind of flexibility from a traditional book where you usually have to have some sort of magnifying glass. And then you have to walk around carrying a magnifying glass. And then everyone judges you because you have a magnifying glass.

And I think you'd want to avoid that most of the time. And you can with something like the book's palma or the Kindle. you know, any of them, or the Libra from Kobo. A lot of different companies make really, really nice e-readers that have really, really nice displays. They have really, really good features in them. And again, they give you that flexibility. And I think that's what's most important about e-books is the flexibility they provide you.

How much longer do I go? I didn't look when I started. You had 11 seconds left, but now is it worth. Oh, and in conclusion. Ebooks rule. Regular books are fine. Thank you for your time. Okay, Kevin.

What say you? Well, I just want to start. You know, I feel like I'm being cast as a Luddite by my opponent. And I have to say, I do think ebooks are an interesting technology. You know, I own a books, Palma, like half of the Verge staff now. And so I'll start with some concessions. Ebooks are faster. Sometimes they are cheaper.

We will talk about that later. And they are great for accessibility. especially for the visually impaired. That said, the book, the print book, is an old and near-perfect technology. It's inexpensive, it's durable, it's shareable. It's also accessible in a very different way. No technology, no modern technology needed,

no software necessary, no updates. And also in a time when we're being, not just in books, but across all of the media we consume, video games, TV, film, music, a little more skeptical of our platforms and what kind of access we'll have to our media in the future, print books give you that access forever. Owning a library of your own physical books

means you'll be able to read them in perpetuity to sell them, to share them with friends, to get rid of them if you want. That's a kind of freedom that is not offered by most of the ways we read digitally. But I think most importantly, I think reading is about being deliberate. Reading is not about reading as much

or consuming as much as you can as quickly as possible. I think reading, good reading is about good habits and discipline. A print book is isolated from the rest of the things on your phone, and that's what makes the reading experience so powerful, meaning that when you read, you'll be more focused and hopefully more patient, and you'll just take in more ideas, you'll have more enjoyment out of what you're consuming. Maybe you'll even think about it outside of consumption itself. You know, art is meant to be experienced. I also think books allow you to be very deliberate with your time, the physical presence of a book, on your nightstand is a reminder of what you're reading and what you've decided to spend your time with. I also think being deliberate about what we choose to spend our time with is important, too.

We all know that Amazon's monopoly is in e-books, and I think every publisher and author in bookstore would probably say that it's not great for the ecosystem. You know, if you, listener, don't believe in monopolies. I think you have some skepticism about how much you buy from Amazon. There's also a whole ecosystem of independent bookstores that sell print books, that support authors as well. And that is your time. Yeah, I'm ready.

Kevin, you will have an opportunity to finish that thought with your first question. However, our first question goes to Alex Krantz. Alex, in your opening statement, you mentioned the ability to carry more books with you than is possible with printed books. This reminds me of the iPod, but in that category, music has very much moved into the digital realm. Why haven't books been able to do the same? You know that monopoly Kevin mentioned? I think that does actually have a lot to do with it. I think ebooks are not consumed at the same way that music is consumed. And so people are much more, as Kevin said, deliberate with their choices. And there have been very, very few options for them historically,

right? Historically, it was Barnes & Noble and Amazon. And they both kept very, very tight control over their ebook marketplaces. That has become to change in the last few years, also coinciding with a rise in reading of e-books and a rise in the sales of e-reading devices. So I think things are changing due to companies like Kobo, due to choices like Libby, which allow you to check out e-books from your library. Kevin, you mentioned in your opening statement that books are a near perfect technology. But as we look towards younger generations, it seems like books have fallen off as a form of media and entertainment and pleasure.

What does the publishing industry need to do to solve that problem? Yeah, I actually don't think there's a lot of evidence to say that, you know, Gen Z is actually reading less. It's just the format that they're reading in. And honestly, you know, with Zoomers, however they want to read, that's great with me. I still think reading is just a greater way to access a deeper level of idea and thought than, you know, maybe consuming a lot of YouTube content. But I think it's publishers just need to think about what like younger readers, actually are interested in. I think the industry itself is run by a lot of much older people that don't understand the youth. So I think just understanding the trends and what young people are

actually interested in and publishing books around those topic areas is probably the place to start because I actually don't think the resistance to reading has anything to do with books themselves, but what publishers are choosing to put out in the landscape. Cran's opportunity to respond? Yeah, I think Kevin's wrong. And that the youth aren't reading as much because they want to read on their phones. No, that's not true. You look at TikTok. You look at Book Talk. And there is a lot of reading of actual physical books there, but they're also really, really pretty. And they'll show you just the paper side. They'll never show you the spine. But they want to show those books off. However, the majority of

people are not TikTok creators. They're just people living in their home, particularly Gen Z. and they enjoy reading other ways, right? The phone is the center point of their technological universe, and having those opportunities there are really, really important. But I do agree that there has been a struggle due to the fact that Amazon. That's right. It's all Amazon's fault. We're actually going to end up in agreement here.

Yeah, we're going to be like actually both are great. Amazon's the real villain. Okay, Kranz, the next question is for you. I want to stick on book sales for a moment here. One of the more harsh criticisms that is perennial to e-books is the cost of them, that they are oftentimes, if not usually, cheaper than their printed counterparts. Apple notoriously colluded with other book publishers to try to raise the cost of e-books when they introduced their own digital book platform. Do you think authors are getting the short end of the stick when consumers buy e-books? Depends on their publisher, honestly.

I think authors are highly dependent on their publishers and the deals they make with their publishers. Both Kevin and I are published authors, Kevin, with his name, me under a pseudonym because it was a romance novel. And what you find out is that you can make a lot of money through digital sales. And we've seen really good examples of that, usually involving a person boning some sort of sentient dinosaur or sign. But, you know, it happens. It's out there. And the worst part of this is that I think the publishers are still getting in the way and taking a significant cut and trying to make sure that the cut that the authors received via e-books is the same as via traditional print, despite the fact that traditional print has a much higher cost. Kevin, a chance to respond?

Yeah, I'd like a respond. This is strange because actually in some ways I think I'll be siding with crayons on this. But ebook royalties are actually by percentage higher for authors than they are in the printbook space. For hardcover and ebook, it usually mess out to about the same. But once you get to paperback, you know, selling an ebook versus a paperback actually nets a lot more for the author on a per unit level. But I actually don't think publishers are the villain here. They do a lot to protect. I think, you know, Apple and, you know, PRH did collude to raise the cost of books, but it was like to protect, you know, an existing infrastructure of cost that was being driven down by the digital marketplace by Amazon.

So publishers do understand that, like, when they're healthy, authors are healthy too. And they do a lot more to protect the interests of authors than Amazon does. So it's Amazon's fault. It's Amazon's fault. Okay. Moving on to the more of the technology side of these two technologies. The next question is for you, Kevin. What do books provide to the reader that e-books cannot? I'm not sure if they provide something that the e-book doesn't, but I do think the experience of reading a print book is much richer. I actually think, you know, we talked earlier about how young people, but I actually think everyone has struggles with this. Like, I think we all wish we read more. I think we all wish we had time to read more. more, I think we all wish we had the patience and space to read more. And I think the print book gives you that space more so than reading off your phone or a device or something that can do

many things. I know we've talked a little bit about e-ink devices or dedicated digital reading devices. Some of them are very good. But I just think the focus, even to just choose one book and stick with it, is a very powerful thing a print device or a print book does that a device doesn't give you. The device just gives you too much choice. And it's just kind of, you don't want the same feeling of scrolling Netflix endlessly when you're trying to read a book. Crens, instead of giving you a chance to respond, I'm going to ask you a similar question. E-books provide many features on top of the reading experience. Some of these could be criticized as distractions. Some of them could be described as providing new ways to help readers understand or gain knowledge.

about what writers are talking about. What is essential to you as an e-book reader in terms of these features? What is the minimum required? All right. First, I am happy to answer that question, but I'm going to take five seconds to respond to Kevin. And one thing is books provide that e-book stone is paper cuts. So take that, Kevin. I've never gotten a... Is that you often? Never gotten a paper cut from my books, Palma, that I've had for two days. But I have gotten a paper cut from is a yearbook in my childhood bedroom. It sucks. Anyway, that was more than five seconds. But what really matters about e-books is the flexibility. I think that flexibility is so, so, so, so crucial to

e-readers and that ability to be able to switch. For me, it's also, I read really, really quickly, and I tend to read one book at a time, like the focus problem that Kevin has discussed, I don't have myself. And so I like to read a book and then just move on to the next one. And I hate having to wait because I want everything now. And the fact that I get instant access with an e-reader and I don't have to worry about is somebody going to deliver it to my doorstep. Do I need to go down to the bookstore to buy it? I can just have it. And oftentimes, while still paying an independent bookstore and making sure they get a cut of the profit, is just something really rewarding about the e-book and digital books in general. Great. And it doesn't give you paper cuts. Kevin, a chance to respond.

I just want to say, I don't think I've ever gotten a paper cut from reading a book. You're going to now. I think You need to be reading more of those like really big like tabletop books, you know, with the super thick pages. You'll be getting a ton of paper cuts. That taekwondo one I had in fifth grade,

oh my God, all over my fingers. But yeah, no response from me there. And our final question for you, Kevin, while doing the research for this episode, one of the things I saw that came up more often than not for the side for printed books is the experience of marginalia. I know that e-books have this ability now, but many people that I read opinions of thought

that it's just nothing in the, just not even close. It's an order of magnitude different to them. Do you think marginalia is important? Is that something as a reader you participate in? and do you think that is part of what makes the book on your perfect technology? Yeah, I mean, the marginalia in an e-book reading experience is one that's just imitated from the print book, right? So I don't think it surpasses it unless you feel very strongly about your highlights syncing to the cloud, in which case I would urge you to read digitally then.

But no, I think writing in the margins, highlighting, I think those physical acts actually help in terms of helping you synthesize and remember things that you're experiencing. My issue with breeding on electronic devices is that the advantage of them is that they are frictionless. But I actually think friction is a good thing when you're taking in art, when you're taking in information, when you're trying to learn,

when you're trying to remember things. Writing in the margins is just a great way actually to remember things. It's why you take notes in school. It's not just so you can refer to them later. It's because it does something to your brain that helps you process it. And I think that experience isn't quite as replicated in e-reading as it is in a print book. That said, I'm someone that writes really stupid things in the

margins, so I'll revisit some of my books, and I've just written L-O-L. Can I respond? Yes. Okay, my respond, why are you all writing in your books? Get a notebook. Everybody. Just go get a notebook, put the little page number down, do the librarians and booksellers in your lives a favor. Don't go writing in your books. That's just, that's, that's not even an argument. I'm I'm just upset everyone's writing in their books to the point that we have a whole word described for it. It's now a feature on a Kindle. Okay, fascinating POB from you both. It's time now to move on to closing statements.

And up first, we have Alex Kranz. Yeah, I mean, I could just say e-books rule and regular books drool. I think that would be like a really evocative statement here because e-books do rule. And like if e-book gets read, it's fine. You just dry it off or you buy a new e-reader. still have all your books. You leave your copy of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table out on the porch and it gets totally soaked and then 20 years later you're like, why are my pages all weird? That sucks. That's why books suck compared to e-books. But really the truth of it is

is that even though e-books are, I think, substantially better at a market improvement over the traditional book, what's really, really nice about them is that they provide for a lot of people. everyone who says that they make you ill or sick or something like that is generally proven to just be like a normal book nerd. And you can technically write in the marginalia. Is that what it's called? You can write in your books on an e-book, but you shouldn't. And you can just go get a notebook. You can just write in it like a five-star binder.

You get yourself a trapper keeper. You write all your notes in there. You can organize them. It'll look beautiful. You put little stickers on it. I think that is really, really and crucial. And you can do that with both books and e-books. But ultimately, I just think that e-books are a really, really powerful new medium that provides opportunities for a lot of people that might not otherwise have the opportunities or access to libraries, which are an endangered species in the United States.

So support your public library. Go check out some books, e-books specifically, and that's why e-books are the best. And a note for our listeners that were born in the 21st century, a trapper keeper. is a fancy binder from the, or I believe the early 90s that had a fabric covering and a zipper. There was unicorns. Unicorns, pockets, all kinds of things. All right, Kevin. I don't think I'm going to reach the kind of person who thinks only about efficiency.

It's true, the e-book is a more efficient form of a book, whatever that means. I'm here to appeal to the reader who doesn't think of books as merely content. I want to speak to the person that sees not just the value of books as a medium, but also wants to see a future. where making books is healthy and sustainable. Because those are the conditions I think we should hope for for all artists, writers, and creative people. To say otherwise is to wish for future where a large hydraulic press smushes everything violently

into an iPad. I'm an author, Kranz is an author. Many of our friends are authors of fiction, of nonfiction, and for the friends that are a little crazier, of poetry. Not one of them would prefer you read their work as an e-book instead of print. No editor, no publisher would prefer you read the digital version. Every independent bookstore could use your business, and you should shop there, unless you want a future that's just Amazon.

And for the folks out there who want to save a few bucks because their imagination is that the e-book is less expensive, I think that's the logic of a cheap person. It's the same kind of argument that leads people to leave bad tips at restaurants, because the core of that argument is entitlement, and a lack of appreciation of understanding of what goes into making the things you enjoy. In this moment where AI threatens creative industries, I would challenge us to think about the people who make the art work, enjoy, challenge us, and make us think differently. Thank you. You waited until the end to call

me out like that? Wow. I can't, and I don't even have a rebuttal time. This is outrageous. Only a minute and 26 seconds, too. That was impressive. Oh yeah, it's like, I don't care about winning this debate. I just want people to think Alex Cranes is a bad tipper. Which isn't even true. Man, I'm going to get so much hate now for tipping 5%. It was one time, guys. It was one time. It's a lot.

Okay, Vergecast listeners, what do you think? Did Kranz make the case for ebooks or was Kevin Wright about the perfect technology that is printed books? Let us know what you think by calling 866 Verge11 or email us at Vergecast at theverge.com. And let us know what you think of this format. What other topics you'd like us to debate? There's a whole lot more stuff from this conversation at theverge.com. We'll put some links in the show notes, but also read theverge.com. It's great.

All they found in e-books. All right, we've got to take one more break, and then we're going to do a question from the Vergecast hotline. Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it. Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game. of where are they now since maybe COVID? Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus. And yet public health officials seem remarkably calm.

We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning. And we assessed that individual. They are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, explain drops every weekday afternoon. All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866Vorge11.

The email is Vergecast at the verge.com. We love all your questions, and we try to answer at least one on the show every single week. This week, we have one of my favorite questions in a while. I don't play favorites, but this is my favorite. It's about MVP3 players. Hey, Vergecast, this is anonymous from San Diego, California. I have a question that I can't really figure out if there's a modern solution to. Maybe you can help out with.

I work in the military, and there's certain aspects of my job that we're not allowed to have Bluetooth, or we're not allowed to have cameras. So there for a while I had to carry the light phone, too, because there was no camera on it so I could use it where I was working. But the thing that gets me is having music that I can carry around with me and not have some sort of external attachment, whether that be Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. and I'm just wondering, is there any other solution other than buying an old, old iPod off of eBay and using that? Is there no modern solution because it seems to be that everything has Bluetooth or Wi-Fi? And what I'm looking for is just a strict MP3 player that has headphones out, like a 3-5 millimeter headphones out, like no Bluetooth, no Wi-Fi,

something I have to either load on a SD card or maybe plug it in my computer to add the music. I was just wondering maybe somebody somewhere inside your place of business as an answer or a fix. If I ever hear back from you, I would be super ecstatic to see what you guys come up with. Thanks. I love you guys. Okay. So every once in a while, we get a question on the Vergecast hotline that sends somewhere between one and all of us just deep down a rabbit hole. This time that happens to our producer, Andrew Marino. Hi, Andrew. Hi, David.

So what did you find this time? Okay, so yeah, this was actually kind of hard. Like, a lot of this stuff is connected to the internet. You have to use Bluetooth to connect to it. Sony still makes Walkmans, and a lot of them are very high-end. They're basically an Android phone. It's like has Android on it, touchscreen. That's all connected to Internet.

But they do make one Walkman for $80. It looks like an iPod Nano. Okay, wait, can I just quibble with that for just a quick second? So you just held it up to the camera as we're recording. And what I would say is like if you imagine an iPod Nano, but like the iPod Nano you would find like on Timu or like if you searched on on Alibaba Express. Like it's a real like we have iPod Nano at home kind of situation at least from what I can tell. Yes, it's an iPod Nano without a scroll wheel. It's yeah.

Okay. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, Sony still makes it like a Walkman MP3 player. What is great about it? It is not connected to the internet. It does not have Bluetooth. It is exactly what this person wants. It has only 8 gigabytes of memory on it.

It's not a lot. But, you know, that's enough to swap a bunch of stuff out. I was easily able to just plug this right into my Mac, drop songs into it like a flash drive. And it showed up immediately on the MP3 player. I brought it over to a PC. I plugged it into a PC. Same thing showed up, dropped a song into it,

like a thumb drive, and it showed up on the player. It works just, it works great. I feel like there's a catch coming here. What is, what is the catch? Actually, not a, not a huge catch. It doesn't sound amazing. Okay. I'm actually like surprised how easy it is to get one now. It's $80. You can get one on Amazon. You get one on Sony's website. It has micro USB. There's a catch. Yeah. I would also like to note that it has an FM radio in it. So when you plug in your headphones, your headphones act as a little antenna, you can listen to the radio. And I think that's just a beautiful thing. That's cool. And it has a headphone jack, which seems very important. It has a headphone jack. Yeah. Okay. Wait, so what is the full name of this thing? I'm assuming it's some insane hexadecimal

nonsense like Sony likes to do. It is the NW.E394 Walkman Digital Music Player. That is the fakes sounding that I've ever heard in my life. Okay. So this is good news. This thing exists. I was thinking we were going to end up down the road of like modding an iPod classic, which is a thing I've seen a bunch of people doing recently. You can actually get it to run sort of one specific app or just get it to connect better to modern computers.

I thought that might be the answer. But this is like you're telling me there is at least one half decent, dedicated offline music device that exists in the world still. Yeah, totally. This will do it. If other people are looking for something like this, but can use Bluetooth, the Mighty Player is another good option. Do you remember that one? That was the one that was meant for Spotify specifically, right? Yeah, it syncs with your Spotify. Like an iPod shuffle looking thing. Yeah, exactly. It uses the internet to sync in Bluetooth to sync, but it doesn't use the internet while you're actually using it disconnected. I see it. Okay. So that is a fun.

option if you can do Bluetooth. But yeah, the Sony one, no Bluetooth, no Wi-Fi. You're all set to go. It's like a thumb drive with a screen on it. In a while that that feels like sort of magical now that you can just plug a thing and drag some MP3 files and it just like works. What a concept. It is, yeah. I will say it is kind of odd that Sony is making this thing as a low-end device because you would think the people who might want something. I think it's also the people who want the kind of high-res, super high-fidelity audio that you're talking about, to make it as kind of an entry-level device is a little surprising. I wonder if Sony imagines this is like mostly a thing for kids.

Yeah. Instead of, you know, super-duper music fans. That's probably right. Maybe for people who work on military bases, we don't know. That's fair. I mean, listen, there's a lot of them out there. Yeah. All right.

Well, no reasonable person should be required to remember that bottle name. So we'll put the link in the show notes. but Andrew, this is like the most successfully we've ever answered a hotline question. This is great. We just found the thing. Happy to help. Anonymous, I hope that helps. Let us know how you feel about your cool new Sony Walkman.

Andrew, thank you as always. Thank you. All right. That's it for the Vergecast today. Thank you to everybody who came on the show. And thank you, as always, for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about. Tons of Quibi coverage.

The Verge was alive during Quibi, unlike the Roku Netflix player a million years ago. So we have coverage of the whole life of that company, and it is wild to read in retrospect. Plus, lots of stuff on e-ink devices and lots of stuff on books. Tons of stuff. Check out theverge.com. We'll put some stuff in this show notes. But as always, read the site. Again, it remains a very, very, very, very newsy summer.

So keep it locked. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Por. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Nelai, Alex, and the gang will be back on Friday to talk about whatever news is going on. I'm on vacation, so I don't really have to worry about it for right now. But there's a lot going on. I will miss them terribly. I miss talking about the news.

They're going to be back. Lots to cover. I'll see you next week. Rock and roll.