Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Joanna Stern is PROBABLY Not a Robot

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

Joanna Stern stopped by to chat with Marques about everything from John Ternus becoming the new Apple CEO to whether or not humanoid robots are the correct form factor for the future of helpful AI robots. They also talk about her new book (out now!) where she let AI run her life for a full year. Then they talk YouTube and going independent in media before wrapping it up with A Race to Z typing test. It's a very interesting conversation and we hope you enjoy! Links: Joanna Stern - I Am Not a Robot New Things with Joanna Stern Follow us on socials: Marques: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd⁠⁠⁠ Joanna Stern: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.threads.com/@joannastern⁠⁠⁠ Andrew: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli⁠⁠⁠ David: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.threads.net/@davidimel⁠⁠⁠ Adam: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17⁠⁠⁠ Ellis: ⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/EllisRovin⁠⁠⁠ Waveform Threads: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast⁠⁠⁠ Waveform Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/?hl=en⁠⁠⁠ Waveform TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast⁠⁠⁠ Join the Discord: ⁠⁠⁠https://discord.gg/mkbhd⁠⁠⁠ Intro/Outro music by 20syl: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/2S53xlC⁠⁠⁠ Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Madamy Holmes Bike for Brain Health supporting Baycrest returns on May 31st for its fifth anniversary with a new start and finish at the Aga Khan Museum. Join thousands of cyclists as we take over the DVP and Gardner Expressway in support of dementia research and brain health. Riders of all abilities are welcome and both regular bikes and e-bikes can participate. Bring your friends, family, or corporate team, and make an impact. Register today at bikeforbrainhealth.ca. If Apple doesn't provide me a large language model to talk to in a way, I don't care. It took me like half an hour to watch the video because I kept pausing it and laughing so much. I'm a little scared about Waymo's on New Jersey highways.

It's a different type of driver. They say AI is going to change health care. What does that really mean? AI is going to change our streets, our highways. What does that really mean? Oh, we're going to get humanoid robots in our homes that are just going to change our lives forever. What does that really mean? Joanna, thank you for joining me on the Wavephone podcast.

Yeah. All the way here in Kearney, New Jersey, which is 20 minutes away from my house. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we like having people in person on the podcast more than virtual because it's just more personal. It's more fun. We're right here. Yeah. We're this, you know what? The two most powerful people in New Jersey tech media are in this room. I am willing to accept that. Do you think there's anyone else?

In New Jersey. I haven't thought about that, actually. I'm not really sure. There's got to be other. In tech media. We know there's a lot of important media people in New Jersey. Tech media. I don't know certain people where they're from, but I'm just going to go ahead and accept the crime. I'm pretty sure it's just us. I'm willing to take it. I mean, there's a lot of others, and we are the top, is what I'm saying here. I like it.

I like the confidence. We should talk a little bit about tech, because there's a bunch going on. We have your book here in front of us. We're also going to talk about this. I'm really excited about. It's just holding it up to your face during the entire podcast. It makes all the podcast editors very angry. I like the block it.

We were just talking about the cover, by the way. The title is very in the colors and the shapes. And I have to talk to you about humanoid robots as well. Oh, I would love to. so many takes. I know you do. They sometimes get me in trouble. I'd love to hear your thoughts. I love your takes and they're mostly right. So yeah. Perfect. So tell me about this book. It's called I am not a robot. What is, what is going on? By year using AI to do almost everything. You can search that all. You really just have to search I'm not a robot, but Joanna Stern, because if you search I'm not a

robot, then you just get CAPTCHAs and it's a disaster. Totally. Great idea for the name of a book, not actually a great idea when you go to sell the book. Fresia. Yeah, it's terrible ASIO. show situation. Yeah, this is about my year trying to use AI in as many parts of my life as possible. And that's my pitch. Go by the book. Giving it a shot, being optimistic, open to it being either awesome or terrible, just fully immersing yourself. Fully immersing myself. And I don't define AI as just generative AI. It's not just chatbots. You've got self-driving cars in here, humanoid robots, healthcare, tons of different applications of what One was called deep learning, but now everyone just calls AI or chatbots or generative AI.

Yeah, there's neural nets. There's all sorts of things. It's just all artificial intelligence all the time. Yep. Awesome. Not only do I have a bookout, I have a new media company, which we know we're going to talk about. But it's called New Things, and you can go to thenewthings.com. Or look at these sound effects.

We got a sound. Or you can go to my YouTube channel, Joanna Stern. Perfect. We'll link everything below so people can find it. First, we can talk. Actually, there's a little bit of tech news that we haven't talked about a ton yet on the podcast, which is Apple's new CEO. That's a fun one. What do you think about that?

You feel like you haven't talked about that a lot on this podcast? Well, we have talked about it, but I haven't gotten other people's thoughts outside of the podcast. And now I'm excited to start doing that. Because I've been listening to this podcast in my car, and I'm pretty sure you've done a lot of coverage of this. We did have a lot of optimistic musings about the future of Apple. And do you agree with our thoughts on John Turnus being the new CEO? The product guy? I do.

I do. I think, look, we love products. That's our focus. Tim Cook, is kind of, he likes products. I think we say he's not the product guy, but he's like he likes them. Yeah, he likes using the products to be good at his job of making the company really good. He loves using products to make money. Yes, exactly.

Right? Right. Yeah. We do too, but we also just love using the products. Like even if someone told me you're not going to make money using this tech product. I would love to still use it. Yeah. And I think it's, I love your guys optimism.

I'm optimistic. I think it just means that the most senior leader at the company is going to be able to talk a little bit more thoughtfully about these products, why they made these decisions, what goes into it. You and me have both met Tim Cook over the years, and he's great to talk to. He clearly loves Apple. He loves the products they're making. Yeah.

This isn't going to get deep into the products. You've interviewed a bunch of Apple. execs over the years. And I get, I mean, you've talked to Tim. Do you ever talk to him about products or it's more just like global company vision, big picture stuff? That's usually what he's good at. It feels like that's where the conversation usually goes. Yeah. Right? When you, I mean, I've watched your interviews with him too. Yeah. With the CEO. Yeah. With the CEO that's, but there are other companies where the, I would say what's a, what's a good example of? I mean, I talk to YouTube CEO in the weeds of the products all the time. I haven't done an interview with him in a while on

camera, but we did do one. And that was, that was. very product focused. And I think in general, just when I talk on camera about stuff, I'm trying to connect it to the viewer, and that is through the products that we're both using. So we have experiences with the products. We think there are things that are great about it. We think there are things that could be better about it. And then the competition unveils some shortcomings, and we get to compare and contrast.

So that's what's fun to me. I feel like actually what's really interesting is that right now in the tech industry, the closest CEOs to the products are the AI companies because they're the founders. True. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like you've got the Microsofts, you've got the Amazon's, you've got Apple, and they're not the founders anymore. Right. Right. And they're not, they're making these big decisions about cloud infrastructure and all the things that are not the consumer product. But when you go and talk to the Dario's or the Sam Altman's of the world right now, they're also really deep still into the product that they helped create. Yeah. So you have these conversations. Look, there are plenty of conversations. These. guys are having right now right they're on the circuit and it's everyone is talking to them but if you're a person like me or you you can get really good conversation around the products because they're in it yeah yeah that's that makes a lot of sense also there's a lot of AI in your book on actually give us the give us the 10,000 foot view of how you used AI for an entire year or well you had the day but also

the entire year in the book how did that go what happened you don't have to spoil everything but how did it go? Oh, it went. It went. That's the top, that's the big answer. It happened. I want, look, there seemed to be a moment last year, 2025, even end of 2024, where there were so many new products coming out that had AI in them.

Yep. And there were all these grand proclamations being made by these CEOs saying, AI's going to change our lives. It's going to be amazing. And I was like, why don't we just try to live that and see if that's true? And can I live five years into the future and see what these people are talking about using today's technology and not giving people a perfect view, right? Because the models have been getting better. The products have kind of been getting better.

And see what life is like. And I tried a big thing that I think is different about this book versus any other AI book is, first of all, it's meant for consumers, the people who are using this stuff. It's not just generative AI. It's not just chatbots. We get into self-driving cars. There's humanoid robots. There's medical AI. And I wanted to look at all these parts of life and say, okay, they say AI is going to change health care.

What does that really mean? AI is going to change our streets, our highways. What does that really mean? Oh, we're going to get humanoid robots in our homes that are just going to change our lives forever. What does that really mean? It actually means nothing because they're really not ready. And so that's – and the book is like done by the year. So I wrote this in 2025.

It starts in winter of 2025, you know, New Year's Day. And I just tried to throughout the year use AI as much as possible. I do want to say, there were places where I couldn't use AI. I say in the beginning of this book, if I went full throttle, I would be divorced and I would have lost everything that was important to me. Wow. So I used that in a tempered way, right? Like I wanted to still be a human and a good parent and a good spouse and all of these things.

But I really, yeah, I mean, name it, I tried it. Yeah. There's so many interesting things in that. Like, I, first, I've wanted, there's a video I've wanted to do. Because in the back in the day, I did a Google versus Siri versus Alexa video. And now it feels like the modern version of that would be to do GPT versus Gemini versus whatever other, like perplexity, all the best ones, Claude. But every time I think about trying to do that, I always feel like there's some massive update around the corner that. As soon as I put out my video, it would be out of date.

And so I don't know if I can make that video or if it's even worth making because it's not useful anymore. How do you feel about those comparison? There's no one model that seems to forever be number one. It feels like it's not a useful comparison. Yeah, I think that would be a tough video for you to do. Like, you would have a very short shelf life, and you would hear from a lot of people saying, like, I just switched to Gemini. Oh, I just switched to that. Like, every week it's different.

And I'm very clear in this book to say, I never actually mentioned model names. Maybe there's one or two places where, you know, I mentioned. 4-0 or something like that. But I really, because I knew that if, you know, writing a book, you only want to sell it for like a day. I mean, or apparently successful authors don't want it to be sold for just a day. I'm not really, I don't know yet. I don't know if I'm going to be a successful author.

But so I think the themes of it, right? So if I was using an image generator, right, I knew that wasn't going away. Yes, there's some examples in this, like, where the image generator just like completely gaslights me and keep saying, like, I was generating a. a picture for my son of five hamsters. And it kept being like, yeah, no, there's five hamsters in this image. And we're like, no, there's six hamsters in this image, you know? And then they'd be like, no, no, look, I did it again.

And then it'd be like seven hamsters. And stuff like that has gotten better. Yeah. But yeah, thematically, I really tried to just stay on that and not be mentioning specific models because if I had, like, at the time, I don't know, GPT would have been the best. And then, you know, today people believe Claude or Gemini or, you know, Gemini is probably getting updated in a few weeks at I.O. Exactly.

We can't say. Yeah. So to your point, AI is a lot more than just the chatbots. There's the self-driving cars. There's the medical breakthroughs. There's all kinds of stuff. What was the most surprising thing that you may be found in looking at all these different things? Because the word AI now, it includes a lot of things we used to call, what do we call it before?

There was like the machine learning. Yeah, machine learning, exactly. Or even neuralinks or even neuralinks or whatever. all these other stuff. What do you, what are you surprised by? Well, there's a lot of surprising moments in the book just in terms of my usage. I think one of the big messages that I want people to know in this book, and I think maybe your viewers already know it, or listeners already know it, but there are so many places right now where we hear about this hate of AI. You might hear it from your friends or from your listeners or viewers. And the truth is AI's already in your life.

There's just no way you're going to be able to say no to it, right? And you've made this point before, like, about the image processing and the AI and the algorithms that go into so many different things. But I think even broader and deeper than that, for instance, one examples, I have a big chapter in here about AI reading my mammogram. And I sought that out, but many are going to get their x-rays or mammograms or ultrasounds. And they're already being read by AI. There is a radiologist behind the scenes using AI to say, actually, that looks like cancer. So that was one thing that I didn't really realize how ingrained it was already in parts of our lives that we don't think about. I think even like self-driving cars, we know they're in specific cities, but that AI is affecting your life because your car is driving next to it.

Yeah. I saw a Waymo out here the other day, which I thought was insane. Yeah, it was like right around the corner. And I saw that they're starting to test in New York City. And I'm a little worried about that. For them, actually, mostly. This is making me mad because now you are the top New Jersey tech reporter. Oh, really?

I mean, I tested Waymo's in Austin, and I tested the robotaxies in Austin. That's the only place I've ever ridden in a, like, fully self-driving taxi service. Really? Yeah. And then I heard that they were bringing it to New York City, and I thought, that sounds bold. And then I saw one, and I thought, oh, that's... Did you see it in New York or in New Jersey? I saw it right here on this block in New Jersey.

Really? Yeah. So it must have been somebody coming from New Jersey. You are the lead tech, New Jersey reporter. This is insane. New Jersey one or whatever it is. I'm so jealous of the job you're about to get there. So they're out here.

No, I had no idea they were in New Jersey. I knew they were like in Brooklyn and they've been testing them around the city. Wow. And you sure it was a Waymo. It was definitely Waymo, yeah. And I saw that because I recognized the headline that I had just seen. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Confirmed, it's true because I see one here probably dropping someone off at the helicopter tours or something like that. Interesting. Yeah, I'm a little. I'm a little scared about Waymo's on New Jersey highways. It's a different type of driver that you have to deal with. And I feel like in each one of these cities, the self-driving car, I guess something people don't always talk about is it has to assimilate to the driving style. So in California, these big multi-lane highways, all this stuff.

And then, of course, the neighborhoods, well-paved roads, usually nothing too insane, at least from the footage I see. Austin, similar stuff, slightly different intersection types. You come to New York and New Jersey, and the way taxi drivers drive, the way Uber drivers drive, the way people on scooters fly past you and bike. bicycles and the bike lane. And jug handles in New Jersey. And all roundabouts and all these other crazy things.

I'm curious. I'm curious how it handles that stuff. So I, in the book, go to Phoenix and go with my whole family. I have two sons and my wife. We went to Phoenix for spring break. We called it our Waymo fun vacation. Okay. And we went there for a week and we took about 40 Waymoes.

And I had been in them in different cities, but I really felt like I got, when you're really in one city and you can pick up all of the little things the cars do. Yeah. you really feel like you're starting to understand that driving style. Yeah, the city specific driving style is fascinating. And I wonder, yeah, cars all have to talk to each other and get better at driving in each place. So if a Waymo starts to move, because this is the thing, if you're a Waymo in New York, and then you do a drop-off in New Jersey, and then you pick someone up and they want to go to South Jersey and then Philly. And now you're a Philly Waymo.

Now what is that like? This is so many years away, but I would say in five years, something like that could be. That's really interesting. happen. You have the book here. You decided to write a book. I'm curious about the decision to write a book in the first place because you have this long history of you've been, obviously you've done podcasting, you've done writing for your website, you've done video stuff. Why the book and why now for a book? Yeah, it's a really good question. Why did I do this book as I am exhausted from being talking about this book? It's made you think about it more. I should ask my bot version of myself why I did this book.

I thought this was going to be a moment in time. Like the beginning of this book, I talk about the internet and this idea that in 1995, let's say, were you even born? I was two years old. Right. Okay. I had a feeling. I was in fifth grade. I wasn't that much older than you.

I mean, a little bit. Someone in 1995 came up to you as a two-year-old Marquez and you were like, I can't even speak. Hi. I only know three words. And told you everything you do is going to be on the internet, right? You're going to shop on the internet. Your mail's going to be on the internet. All these parts of your life are going to be going through a computer.

You would have been like, hell no. People of the time certainly didn't believe it, let alone want it. Right. You're just like, no. And then if you told them, actually, and 10 years after that, it's all going to be on a little screen that you put in your pocket. And then they told two-year-old Marquez, you're going to review those screens. You're going to be. Hell yeah.

be pumped. It'd be like, you're going to be a famous reviewer of little rectangles in your screen, and screen rectangles. You've been like, okay, I want to be an astronaut. Yeah. Mommy. Yeah. Yeah.

So my point is that with the book, I thought everyone keeps saying we're on this, at this moment where AI is going to make that change. It feels like it's good to have this piece that, like, will stand the test of time to either be completely wrong or completely right. So this is the moment in time where we are, there is spectacular specular speculating, speculation, speculation. Yeah, do not edit that out. Spectacular speculation. Yes, that's good. About whether or not this is the future, basically. And we're all in the time where, okay, we know the world as it is. We know the search engines. We know the structures of the internet. We know how we sort of switch on and switch off. But this AI thing is

going to change everything and we're all skeptical. What if we, and this is the premise of the book, what if machines are a part of every part of the fabric of our lives? Yeah. Every part. Just like the internet became. Yeah. But now machines that have smarts that have, that are smarter than humans, these people say, are going to change our lives. Yeah. So look, I'm covering that every day and you are too and it's going to seep into, but I thought maybe a book form would be good. And also, I'll be honest, like I really want to hit a different audience with this book. Yeah, what is it? How is this audience different than your normal, like, video audience?

I am here talking to your audience and I hope they will read the book. Or I'm really hoping that your audience will tell someone in their life where they're like, you know, your audience like heard us debating if you should do that video on Gemini and Claude and they started getting mad. Like, you know, in their head, they were like, no, man. Wait for 5.7. Yeah, exactly. 5.7, 5.5 with the image manager better than this.

You know, nanobanana. The sentence that didn't exist a year ago. Right. Nano banana is better than my five point, whatever. I want them to tell their person in their life that isn't super deep in. You should go read this book because it summarizes and gives you a really good understanding of what AI could do for you. Okay. Yeah.

I do also want, let me look at this person, nanobanana nerd. I want you to also buy the book. But you could buy it for a friend. There is a lot of, I guess there's the two. versions of the way people think about this future. I always have my own nuanced version of this, which maybe we'll get to, but there is clearly a lot of positive use of artificial intelligence, especially in things like pattern recognition, like in the medical field like we talk about, oh, it'll look at this MRI, it'll look at this tons and tons of data in a way that a human

can't and find a pattern. And maybe that actually means something that we didn't know about before. So there's a ton of upside. But then there's also a bunch of downside. And you hear stories about this all the time about the chatbots talking crazy to people about all sorts of other negative things. How do you think about the positive versus negative tradeoff of all of our lives being filled with artificial intelligence? I wish that I had a better answer at the end of this book. I mean, you should still read the whole book. And spoiler, I don't have a better answer at the end.

But you should still read the whole book, even you, Nana Banana friend. Similar to any other tech tool, and I know you've made this point in your videos, there's going to be good and bad. And so like there is a very good chance. This is totally worse and has far more negative consequences than any other technology. Like I feel like I sound like Sam Altman sitting here. Yeah. But I need to learn how to do like a great Sam Altman impression. Like he thinks so thoughtfully off to the side. You know, you study people when you interview them. Oh yeah. Yeah. You always watch a bunch of interviews of other things they've talked about before. And and then you realize they're going to do the same thing.

Yeah, it looks up really thoughtfully. Does a few calculations. And that tells you the good news. Like the job displacement is real. And people right now, I mean, I just started this new media company. And the amount of incoming I have from young people out of college who just can't get a job because they feel like AI is taken over these basic tasks, whether it's video editing, whether it's design, writing, that feels real, and people are furious about it.

And they're like, why do we need this technology? It's hard to answer now. And that's the point of being in this moment of time. I have my nuanced take, which I say, it kind of relates back to smartphones. I saw like the time before smartphones where I was like playing around with the VHS camcorder and there was a bunch of different tech. And then, you know, smartphones came along and they brought all these different technologies into this one supercomputer in your pocket.

and it's gotten really, really, really good, and also it's sort of slowed down an improvement. And I have a hard time picturing a post-smartphone world, meaning we've moved on from this form factor of the rectangle in your pocket to something else. A lot of these big tech companies are trying to prepare themselves for a post-smart phone world. Oh, what if it's a glasses thing?

What if it's a computer on your face? So they're all trying that stuff. But I personally still have a hard time imagining that the smartphone isn't. the center of that universe, do you have a hard time with that? Or do you feel like we could just move on from smartphones?

I have a picture at the end of the book. Bring it back to the book. Okay. We can, we get a tight shot of that? Yeah. So for audio listeners, there's a then, a now, and a soon

is exactly what I was talking about. Yeah. The then is someone sitting down in front of a computer with a tower PC. The now is just holding the supercomputer in your pocket. And the soon is this girl

with some cool glasses on. That's me. That's you. Yeah, yeah. Which is clearly smart glasses. That's super cool smart girl. Yeah. And that's the soon.

That's the soon. That's the soon. Post smartphone. Post smartphone. Not alongside the smartphone. Alongside. You know what? Actually, we need to revise this illustration in addition number two.

The phone is in her pocket. Okay. Or in her purse. You know, it's sitting in the car or something. It's close by. Yeah. Because the phone powers this. And one of the reasons I, well, if you read all of this text here, it basically says,

We went through this, but we didn't lose these other things, right? I mean, we don't, well, actually, it was just by your desk. You do still have, like, a giant tower. Maybe not for long, but I do. Maybe not for long, but, you know, yeah, sure, you're going to get like a Neo. It's going to power everything you do. We still have these, right? So we have this long history of tech where things don't get replaced.

They just, we get added. You get augmented. Augmented. And our focus shifts, right? I mean, certainly the smartphone. And this idea that the smartphone will be replaced, I totally, with you. This is, I can't see it ever. Like, this is, like the devices keep getting more perfect. It knows everything about us. It fits in our pockets. We get to put it down and then pick it up,

which I think is actually something we don't think about a lot, but it's super important. And then there's obviously all the thoughts about how often do you pick it up, how often you put it down. But the face computer, maybe there's a world where you use the face computer a lot and you use your phone a bit less because it's more convenient. You take photos and videos with it. Maybe you talk to it, but you then check the, the rectangle in your pocket a little bit. But that's still the thing that has all the power, all of the best compute, all of the best form factor. So I just, I don't know. I don't see going away.

Okay. So in the book, I write a lot about the wearables. And this is perfect segue. So we'll talk about this one. Did you ever try this out? No. This is the B. Okay.

It was Amazon actually ended up buying it. It looks kind of like a Fitbit. Yeah. The hardware's unremarkable. It's fine. But this I wore for most of the year. and it has a microphone and it records everything you do. Right now I press the button and green means this is recording.

And so everything that's being said goes to Amazon's cloud. They transcribe it. They pull it back down. They get rid of the audio. And then I get a summary of our conversation and it also gives me to-dos about our conversation. So if I've told you like, Marquez, I'm going to apply to be the New Jersey One tech reporter. Number one. Yeah, I don't, is it?

Top three. I actually meant that it's the channel name. I don't know. Is there a New Jersey TV network? There might be. Yeah. Anyway, this will all be in there and it will say, you need to go apply to be the New Jersey number one tech correspondent, right?

Everything from this conversation will have been summarized by AI and it will give me this crazy to-do list, a detailed to-do list. And you can keep this on all day and it happens. Yeah. It's basically another brain. in a way, right? I'm outsourcing my memory. I don't need to remember what we did here. I don't have to actively go and put that in my to-do list. Yeah. Yeah, we were just talking about this. Was it last episode they were talking about this? Of I already sort of augment part of my brain in a way where I've

just given up on remembering certain things and I use, well, right now it's a task app. And I just, oh, it's something I have to do. I immediately take out my phone and I open the task app and I write it down just to make sure I don't forget because my memory is not perfect. And everyone is willing to draw the line in the sand in a slightly different place about how much they're willing to augment or offset their own brain. When you're going all in on everything, do you feel like it's making you, I guess we thought about this as like less smart or less useful? Less human. Does it, yeah, less human? Does that feel bad to like not use your brain as much or is it convenient? Then you can do all sorts of other random stuff you didn't think about before.

There are moments where you're like, oh, don't worry about it. My bracelet got it. Yeah. Like, I don't have to worry about that. And that's nice, kind of. That's nice, kind of, right? Because there are certain times where you know you're missing things. There's, of course, the flip side where it's like, I don't want to record everything.

I don't want to live in my own surveillance state. Yeah. And what I need to remember to do is not that important. It's like change the water filter in my house. Yeah. But if it's unimportant, I'm going to forget. Well, that was one of the findings in here, is that I. I say, like, especially to my wife, like, I say I'm going to do all these things and I never do them.

Or it's not, I don't ever really do them. But also, I just don't have, I don't remember to do them. Right. And so I think this idea of some passive computing that is on us, but works hand in hand with the smartphone, is coming. I mean, and, well, I'm going to do something next because I want to get your tape. but I mean, I know how you felt about many of these devices. Yeah, I'm willing to give them a shot. This is my thing.

And I know that the main tradeoff that I think I think the most about, and probably a lot of people watching think about, is the tradeoff between the data and the privacy and the convenience. And it's almost like a sliding scale. The more convenience you get, the less privacy you get. If you're going to have it remember everything you said and give you a summary of it, it has to listen to a lot of what you're saying, and it's going to be super convenient because it gives you that.

back in functionality. And so how far do you want to slide that? You know what? I'll let it listen to everything. I'll let it see everything through my face cameras and I'll let it hear everything through the microphones and then I'll be the most productive human ever alive or the other side of that which is I just want it once in a while just to remember one or two things and that's fine. And I think that's going to be the calculation going on at every tech company, right? at Apple, at Amazon, at Google, if we're not providing a great tool and utility, people are not going to deal with the privacy tradeoff, right?

So the glasses, I think, are a great example. Right now, not a lot of people don't trust the meta-glasses, but there's a good enough utility there, especially on the camera front, right? That we're willing to put these cameras on our face in specific, I mean, I use them in specific situations, right? Places I wouldn't want to be holding my phone. And so there's a good enough utility there and a good enough benefit.

But once you start, I don't know, always recording or always having those glasses on, what is the benefit? You need to prove that. And that's the conversations that I'm sure meta, Apple, et cetera, are having about what is the features that we can build in here to make that privacy tradeoff work. Yeah. Yeah. Every company has to find a different place for that line in the sand. That is also one of my, I guess it's less of a theory, but it's kind of proving out, which is that Apple is not winning the AI race, but because they've basically not competed at all, it's come around the other side where people like that about them. And they can focus on being the hardware that we run the AI stuff on at some point.

But they have had a focus for a long time on the privacy. and because of that, they do not offer as much convenience. See Siri, Apple Intelligence, etc. I actually don't mind on the Apple Intelligence stuff. I think you're totally right. If Apple doesn't provide me a large language model to talk to in a way, I don't care. Yeah. But Siri is so atrocious.

It is so terrible. That it can't do the basic things that were really been promised. And I talk to Siri all the time. Yeah. I mean, what other choice? I'm like using Carlin. play. I mean, we have, you probably have deep thoughts on this, but it's just a different podcast. Let's cut it there. Um, or like, I need Siri to just play a song or tell me some basic information in the

car or use my home pod. Stuff that doesn't require a ton of data and information. I tell the story all the time. Every morning, I just want Siri to play NPR podcast news in my bathroom while I'm just washing my face and putting on my makeup. Why do I have to ask five different ways and have to perfectly explain the name of the podcast and that is insane. Yeah. It is 2026. So we had to growing up learn how to Google search, which was, oh, you kind of use a certain words in a certain order and then you will find what you need. And as they got better, it became less important to know those skills. The AI is kind of the same way. Like you have to learn how to prompt it. You have to learn how to ask it to get a certain result. But after a while, they should be good enough that you

don't, you should just use natural language and it should just know. Conversational We have the very basics on all of the other chatbots now. Yeah. And look, Apple's going to do this. They're going to do it this year. But I'm with you. Like, you don't need to give me a chatbot that knows everything. But just please, like one that can easily play NPR in the morning or just tell me the weather or, you know, just some of the really basic things.

Like, we got timers right. I spent a lot of time yelling at Apple about that. We got the timers. I don't mean to be really selfish. and, you know, spoiled and say not, like, I'm very thankful for the timers, Apple. Multiple timers. Multiple timers, right. But now we need a little.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I wanted to bring this to you on the podcast. I think it's going to be the hottest AI wearable of the year. Okay. The hottest AI wearable of the year. Ah. It's a pin.

It is a pin. And I know you've had feelings about pins, tech pins. Well, this pin is probably better than the other tech pin. Yeah, this is why I brought this. I wanted a review. I wanted the Marquez review of the product that I made. Okay. So it just says some text on it.

It says verified human. I am not a robot. Now, I didn't have to do anything to earn this pin and prove that I'm a human. This is like a trust basis, like you believe that I'm a human. I've spent a few minutes with you today. I feel like you're a human. But one way I was going to have you tested is that if you poke yourself and see if you bleed. That could be similar.

I mean, I could simulate that. You're saying I passed a Turing test. Let's see. Let's see if there's blood. So far so good. Yeah, we gave Mark has the blood update last week. Yeah, that was a pretty solid. Oh, I saw that room back there.

I was worried about that room. They had to get that blood. Has any other guests made you bleed on this show? No, no. We haven't beta tested the like making me bleed live yet, but I feel like it would do a pretty good job. I mean, I would bleed for sure. Okay. Well, yeah.

then you guys have really advanced Marquez bot here to amazing potential. We had to make, yeah. Yeah, the back room is full of a bunch of non-working prototypes that are kind of just like sparking and it's a whole thing back there. What else are your other impressions of this pin? Look, it's been really rough for other pin makers out there. Yeah. And I, this review means a lot to me. So the other pin that I think you're referring to also has the word human.

Yes. with like an extra letter or something, I think, but it says human on it. That one had a bunch of other claims of things that it said it could do. This one, I don't think there are any claims of things that it should do. It should just verify that I am a human. Yep. Which, importantly, should mean that if I'm a robot, I should not be able to wear this. Like a humanoid robot should not be able to, like, don the pin.

We can take that into it. So maybe some security steps in there. This is a decent review. Yeah. How about the battery life? Oh, it seems like it'll never turn off, which is really nice. The tech that lasts forever is, and this should last a really long time, is underrated in my opinion. Wow, this means I almost could cry.

This is a huge for our team. I've worn like two or three. You know how the swag you get at tech events, you always get a pin? Yeah. Like that, that's all I know. You don't get the little Apple Pin? Oh, the Apple Pin. Like WWDC or like random.

used to make a pin to, like this, this feels like right in line with like the nice, well, I really modeled these after, I mean, again, you might be a little, no, I don't think you're too young. Do you ever go to TGIF Fridays where they had like all the flare? Of course. Yeah. My birthday was, I was born on a Friday. Oh, really? Yeah. And so I used to go to Fridays on my birthday every year, even if it wasn't a Friday. Just somewhere in New Jersey, wherever I was. Yeah. I loved TJ. And they're like not around that much anymore. They're, yeah, unfortunately. I mean, I get it. I can't miss. That sampler was amazing.

The breadsticks went crazy. Yeah. But yeah, this is a solid plan. Truly one of the best samplers. Okay. Yeah. It means so much. Yeah.

Can I keep this one? I know how every tech execs. It seems like you have a bunch. Well, I mean, it's free for you. Oh, thank you. Actually, the promotion we ran for the pre-order was that you had to pre-order the book and I'd send you a free pin. Okay. Which the shipping on the pin was more than the pin.

Yeah. That's what we learned when shipping our pin as well, as we had to figure out the pin economics. But if you two want. the, well, we have to get like a quote. I'm going to have to put your quote on the pin review page. I know that's going to cost a lot of money. Battery life seems infinite. Yeah.

In quotes. Battery life seems infinite. If you would like to get this Marquez approved pin, you just have to pre-order. And then you go to Joanna Stern.com and get your pin. Now you know. Although I'm frightened because I'm actually like doing, well, my AI agent, it deals with all the orders and sometimes it messes up and it's a mess. I'm sure it'll do.

It'll do great for this. Okay, on the bottom of... Is that true? Yeah. You're an AI agent doing all of the back end on your... Yeah, on the pin. Oh, just the pin. Well, I mean, also it built my website and everything.

But yeah. Whoa. Yeah. It's actually a beautiful website. That I believe. That I believe. Yeah. But no, it's like, if you submit a form, or you email, the AI agent puts it into the

spreadsheet and then sends an email to my publisher to say there's a new pin order. Hi, I'm Maria Sharpova, host of the Pretty Tough podcast. Each episode, I said, down with high-achieving women to discuss the pursuit of excellence without apology. This week on the show, comedian and best-selling author Chelsea Handler gives her tips on independence and aging gracefully. I would argue that 50, now that I am 50 and I understand life more than I did when I was 30 or 40, is that you get so much more wisdom and you get so much more experience that you

actually feel like you're beginning again. Check out Pretty Tough, new episodes on Wednesdays. You can watch it on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app. Was the biggest cybersecurity risk in America built by software companies? Software manufacturers have been allowed to develop and deliver flawed, defective, insecure software because they've prioritized speed to market and convenience all over security. I'm John Feiner. And I'm Jake Sullivan.

And we're the hosts of The Long Game, a weekly national security podcast. This week, Jen Easterly, former director of the cybersecurity and infrastructure Security Agency, joins us on the podcast. The episode's out now. Search for and follow The Long Game, wherever you get your podcasts. This week on Networth and Chill, we're joined by Danielle Robé, the journalist Forbes called The Queen of Questions and the host behind Reese Witherspoon's Book Club podcast and her own show, Question Everything.

We're exploring a skill that can transform your career, relationships, and bank account, knowing how to ask the right questions. Danielle breaks down the art of getting real answers in professional settings. from coffee chats to career pivots and shares the money conversations we should all be having but aren't. Get ready for hard-hitting advice on defining success beyond the dollar signs, asking better money questions with partners and friends, and the mindset shifts that separate people who stay stuck from people who keep growing. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com slash your rich BFF. There's a little human-eyed robot at the bottom of the

pin. How do you feel about human-eyed robots? I have so many thoughts. It's a whole other podcast. No, it's this podcast. It's this, it's way for them. This is the one. I really want them. It's weird because I feel like I'm really excited about this category because I've lived through so many new tech gadgets and hardware. And this is one that we've all seen for so long. We've seen it in cartoons and we've seen it in movies.

And it's always this promise. And so now we like see them. They're really being made by these companies or Tesla or Chinese companies, which is my recent YouTube video. And we want them to work. But they don't. Yes. I know you also have thoughts of like, why is this form? Like, is this the right form?

Yeah. But I don't even care. It's cool. And it's so fun. I do think it's fun. I have this thing. So like you said, I don't know that this will be the most efficient form

for a functional multipurpose robot. Let's say it's in your home or something like that. You just want it in your home and it does things like laundry and puts the dishes away and clean stuff or whatever. Having it be an upright bipedal, ten-fingered thing with eyes and a head and stuff, it is fun.

And you do get that like Jetsons feel or the futuristic R.C3PO is a tall one, right? in Star Wars. Like, it's cool, but it's also a little bit creepy when we anthropomorphize things that are clearly not human, almost like an animatronic friend. And it has to get through that, what's the valley called? Uncanny. It has to get through that uncanny valley of being a little creepy before it gets to being

really nice. And I don't know if I'm willing to deal with that. I have spoken to so many. I spoke to a lot of robotics experts for the book. And there's definitely this, there's a, there's a two sides. There are the people that say we should have custom single utility robots that do the things that you're talking about and are really good at them. Right. And then there's a side that the world is built for humans.

This is the form factor. This is what we look like. I've been thinking about this a lot. I thought, so I agree with that. I also think that we as humans built the world around all of the short. shortcomings of the human form, and we can do better. Literally short. Yeah.

We can't even reach things. Like, our arms don't extend. Driving is the perfect example for this, right? So you have a car. Let's say it's not a self-driving car. You could, theoretically, have a humanoid robot, sit in the driver's seat of your car and hold the steering wheel and press the pedal and drive it. That's one version of this solution.

Now you have an operated car from a robot. but it still has the same blind spots it still only has a set of eyes on the front it still only has the reaction time of things that it can see in here or your car is covered in sensors covers all the blind spots it has this neural link that like

maps all this information together can see way further around all the sides of the car and has instantaneous response and doesn't have to move through the steering wheel and the pedal and it's a much better self-driving car operated by a robot in that case So even though yes, we did design the car form around the human, I think that is actually a limitation that we can do better by designing the single-use robots. So, yeah, the world may not look the way it does in many years if we have a bunch of really good robots instead of the world built the way it is.

I love that idea, and I think you see it really clearly in the book when I don't know if anyone in the world knows as much about laundry folding robots as I do. Okay. How many CES laundry folding robots have you talked to? I have talked to so many. Yeah. I've also had a laundry folding robot in my house. Wow. And the interesting thing about the laundry folding robots talking about CES,

there are those demos where it doesn't use hands, right? The shirt goes through a different way. It goes through a conveyor belt that folds, does these things. What the humanoid companies want to do and even some other startups that are doing some wacky things with laundry folding, they want to give it hands. Yeah. And the hands. They want to train it on thousands of hours of folding.

Yeah. Right. So I had this robot in my house. And it's just two robotic arms. But it doesn't have. It's like clunching. I keep doing this. Like that's how they look.

Mr. Grabs. They're like the grabs in like the, you know, in the arcade where it comes down and the claw that you don't get the free thing. Which is actually, it's probably better for folding things. Kind of.

But like. Some things. Some things. Yeah. If there was a lot of, I learned so much about the complication of folding laundry. It's really simple. us, right? And there's this idea of Morvex paradox where things that are really simple for humans

are really hard for robots and things that are really hard for robots are really simple for humans. This robot, like, it struggles so much to fold because it doesn't have the hands. It doesn't have all of the right moves. Like when the shirt falls, it doesn't quite know it because every time a shirt falls, it looks different, right? It doesn't know where the arms are. It doesn't know where the neck is. It could also only fold T-shirts, which is a problem, you know, for, you know, You know, if you only wore t-shirts, it's a problem for people. Sorry, we just had this argument last week on the podcast about how, just about how garments, the nature of fabric and garments are so complex that I have no faith that an ML model

is anywhere close to understanding how they work. And that's what was proven by this. And so now you have millions of dollars going into solving a problem of folding garments with that are trying to simulate the human way of doing it, right? Like you're, and I would like found myself cheering this robot in my basement. It was two giant arms hooked up to a big laptop, it's got all this things. And I'm like standing in my basement, like, you can do it. You can fold my t-shirt in under 10 minutes, you know?

Like, why not create a robot that doesn't have arms that folds laundry a different way? And which we know some companies are doing. Yeah. Yeah, this is the, and I remember like talking in the Tesla factory about there are things that they have humans do that the robots simply can't do. Like when they have to connect like a hose for some system to another one, it just sort of dangles. And the robot just misses it, doesn't, like it's trying to calculate the position,

has no idea what to do. The human just grabs it, grabs it, connects it, and it's fine. So there are definitely things that are probably forever going to be better for humans. But yeah, for the things that are like small, mundane tasks, like I don't want to clean. Like we have robot vacuums. They aren't a human. It's just a thing that rolls around on the ground. That's perfect.

That's all it needs to be. Pretty good. The single-use robot thing, I think, that gets stronger and stronger in my head every time I think about it. And I think for certain tasks, it's going to make sense, for sure, driving, right? Yeah. That one's already here. It took a long time for us to get here. But a lot of these other single tasks that we want in our homes are just so hard.

I mean, like the dishwasher. I know, you know, the scene of the Neo-Robot went viral of it doing the dishwasher for me. Struggle. Struggle. Yeah. Right? I mean, because that's like a. very huge, like the dishwasher was built for a human. I was laughing at your video for like a saw. It took

me like half an hour to watch the video because I kept pausing it and laughing so much because it was really, it was tough. I'm like thinking about it. And it's fine that it's slow because I'm not doing it. Yeah. So it can just happen in the background. But just watching the robot like, I just try to bend over at the waist and I thought it was when we were filming it. I mean, I was like, you know, you're live in this moment. And yeah, it's like yelling at my producer, David, come over here. Like, you know, we can't miss this. It might fall. Got to get from. Like, like. I thought it was going to fall into the dishwasher, you know. Yeah.

And last week we posted a first video, one of my first videos on my own YouTube channel. Marquez, I'm really trying to live in your... We have a soundboard. I'm aware you have a soundboard. I'm surprised we haven't used it more here. It's very impressive soundboard. I got you. Grock context, please.

That's a new one. That's a new one. That's a very new one. Where was it going? Oh, so I wanted to do this story on these Chinese robots, the Unitry G1 that you see going viral everywhere on the internet. Yeah, how is that? Well, the video's doing pretty well, but most people are angry that I'm really talking about the fact that they're all coming from China. I mean, the thing that I wanted to talk about there was that we're letting these Chinese robots into the U.S.

And we're so worried about Chinese EVEs and we're so worried about Chinese phones. But yet, like, we're like, oh, let's let these giant humanoid robots that are, 80 pounds and can do kung fu come into America. Like, yeah, that seems odd. And it's a really interesting exploration of why China is obviously ahead of the U.S. on manufacturing these because they're ahead of us on everything on manufacturing in terms of electronics. But what was just funny, you should watch that one too, is like the robot can't do anything.

I mean, it can do some things. It can do, it can dance, which my kids love, and it can do kung fu, which my kids love. But other than that, it just like sat down. in my house doing nothing. You can do choreographed things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think this is what I've seen about a lot of the AI promises is there's so much

training left to do and there's so much learning left to do by the robots that were sort of selling the promise of the future. I made the humanoid robot bet that there would not be a single humanoid robot shipped to a customer in 2026 that can do all the autonomous things. Oh, it can't. Oh, yeah. I think part one you're wrong about. I think they will ship it.

Do you think the one X? is going to get shipped in 2026? I think that they will ship it to select few. I don't think that I will be. But it won't do all the things. I don't think Marquez is going to be select few. No. Let's say this.

If I get New Jersey packed. Yeah. New Jersey Tech Media packed right here. Okay. If one of us gets the one X, we have to go. We have to share a New Jersey. 100%. Yeah.

You know. You're welcome to try to ask it to do whatever you want. You're welcome to come to my house. Yeah. and sit with it in the car. It sounds like you want your humanoid to ride to drive your car. It's going to be really bad at that. We will shut down the town for that.

Yeah. And so I think they will, to answer your question else, I think they will ship them. Autonomous, zero chance, no way. Maybe it does one thing autonomously, which is like open the door. Yeah. It won't do that. Maybe it will do one task autonomously. Yeah.

Yeah, we had a... Actually, that's what we will do. you can control my 1X from here and your VR headset. Oh, yeah. I'll just start doing the dishes. Yeah. Through the headset with the handle. Yeah, that'll be great.

We had an Amazon Astrobot here for like two or three, maybe longer three or four years. No, it's still here. It's still here. It's still here. That's so unfortunate. It's just unplugged. The poor thing. I had one too in my house.

Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. So you're aware of how bad it is at most things. Like it would sort of just roam around being a security camera, which I guess is technically a successful, and it does what it says it will. But all the other things that's supposed to be able to do, it would not be very good at.

And then it would just kind of trip over things and get stuck on wires. It was this little robot, big wheels. It was just like a Lexon wheels to play music. Yeah. That's the closest we've gotten so far. Yeah. And the whole idea of like it would take the drink to the other room.

Yeah. They'd no sense to me because like it couldn't grab the drink. A person would have to be in both rooms. Right. At which point you could just ask the person. Right. Right. Which.

Yeah. Yeah. Made it a tough cell. Yeah. So yeah, I do, I tend to think we are quite far from the humanoid robot future. But I'm curious to see how that plays out if it'll be humanoid robots or if I'll be proven right vindicated. It'll just be a bunch of specialized, smaller, really efficient, hyper-adapted robots for individual tasks everywhere. Your dishwasher will just have an arm in it.

Or the, or the humanoid will just be. factories and industrial settings. Even that, I don't think it needs to be humanoid. Because even those are like connect this hose, like put the door on the car. At this point, it's just an arm. Like we have this robot arm in the studio, which we've put a camera on and we can teach it to do things. But in this factory, it doesn't have to learn anything.

It just has to grab the windshield and put it on the car. Grab the next windshield. It doesn't have to be shaped like a, like C3PO. Yeah, I guess. And that's the argument that Amazon's made too, right? They've got millions of robots and they're not humanoid. We'll see. I'm very curious. All right.

I have another question about just going independent as a media person. Because you've done now writing and video as part of, like The Virgin Wall Street Journal, and having your own YouTube channel. How does that differ? Like what was the choice to go independent and how does it like compare to being a part of a larger structured corporation? Oh, it's like 30 questions. Yeah, no. Like, look, I'm only four weeks in.

Well, like, I'm two months, three months in, but we just launched the YouTube channel. We just did that last week, two weeks ago. Which, boy, you know, I'm seeing you've been really making, it's a lot of work. You've been working hard here. Yeah, yeah. It is, you know, video production is one of those things where you probably heard my octopus analogy. You end up wanting to do the video stuff, but there's a ton of stuff around the video stuff that you also have to do now, which is, you know, the behind the scenes, the inbox, the accounting,

the bookkeeping, the insurance. All that stuff. I underestimated that. People told me, but I really underestimated that work. But now I'm finally getting past some of that where I can actually get back to the content. I mean, I'm launching a book in the middle of all this, which do not recommend. But one of the reasons I did do this was because this book was coming out. I was going to be on things like this.

And I wanted to be able to talk about the new thing. So it's called the new thing. It's called The New Things. Go subscribe. Joanna Stern is the YouTube channel. But a lot of it, like truly, you know, inspired by people like you for so long I had been publishing to YouTube and I became really obsessed with videos on YouTube, you know, a few years ago at the Wall Street Journal because I started realizing this is where the audience is, right? The Wall Street Journal is made the audience is amazing, but they're older, they have more money. And I felt in many ways I was not being as accessible to all the other people.

in the world that want to know about tech. And so I started focusing a lot on my YouTube videos at the journal. And those would appear on the Wall Street Journal's website too, but I was really looking at the data on YouTube. And more and more, I wanted control over that. I wanted control over the audience. I want to control over what we do because, you know, you have editors and editors are amazing.

And I still have some editors that I'm hired and are working with at the new thing. But I just wanted the freedom to do, even more stuff and weirder stuff. Yeah. Even we're even weirder than what you are already. Some of your, I really like a lot of the interesting video idea concepts that you came up with and decided to pull off at the Wall Street Journal. I wonder what even weirder looks like.

What is your favorite weird idea? I don't know if it's even weirder, but like I just don't have to ask permission to do certain things. Totally. You know? Yeah. And you get to sort of experiment with what works because it connects with the audience, but also just what you want to do

and just to see if it works. Right. Yeah. What was the process for coming out with ideas for that audience? Maybe there's a little bit of a different audience

for the new thing versus the journal, but how do you come up with an idea of what makes a good video? I mean, for me, it's just curiosity. Like, if I have a question about something like this book, like I just,

what does the world look like when AI is everywhere? Okay, let's go out and answer that question. Let me go and report that out. Let me go talk to people. Let me go test it. I mean, I think the major overlap

that both, us have is that we test things. We don't just like go and talk to the companies making it. We wait for us to be able to use a lot of this. And so I want that to be a guiding principle of my coverage forever. I think the the tough thing about tech is like it's all overlapping now in so many ways, right? So if I want to not, you know, it's like, oh, I mean, I don't want to talk about AI, which is not what I want to do, but I think that there might be too much AI coverage. How do I feel? figure out how to put those pieces together in stories that are still interesting to people. Because people can be very oversaturated right now with YouTube, AI YouTube. And that's, I don't want to only be AI YouTube. I really don't. Like, I don't want to be just, you know, every day.

Like, here's 10 prompts that you can do to. That channel is already out there. That channel's already out there. So I think my guiding person is like things that I'm curious about, things that are going to affect our lives with tech. and, you know, not be super technical, but be technical enough that I can still talk to the people who love tech, but also like with the same thing with this book, the people in our lives that are still curious.

We all use phones. Like we all use tech. How do I help make your life better and explain something to you? Yeah. Do you have a big project idea or a big video idea that you haven't done yet that you think you could now pull off? Or is it all top secret? We need a little bit more time to get up.

running. Right now it's just like get through the book launch. Yes, which is a lot of work. Get through WWDC. Okay, June. Yep. Yeah. I know. I feel like September is going to be very busy. Usually ends up being a little chaotic. Yeah. So like, you know. Yeah, kind of think of a, I've talked about this as like this, we have the waves of like the off season, the on season, like September will be on, October will be on. And then you'll have like, post-CES January is a nice little little resting period. Not this year. Lick your wounds, reset a little bit.

What's this year? Yeah, this year it was like Samsung pushed back a little bit. It just kind of kept happening. But you can sort of think of random new ideas and fun stuff you want to try that. Isn't. I mean, I have a lot of those ideas.

It's just figuring out the flow. I mean, I could pick your brain on for hours how you manage all of the different things and channel. And I'm also writing a newsletter. So like that's, you know, twice weekly newsletter, YouTube videos, shorts, events, all of those things, and how do you think about it all

cohesively? I tend to go down the rabbit hole of that often, like content strategy. And I don't have a newsletter, and I'm not also doing like a book tour. So I'm mostly just focused on the content strategy for me is like long form versus short form or now short long form. That's actually something that's a meta in my head, three to five minute long form videos kind of died in the last four or five years and why did they die everyone's optimizing for a long watch time but people want to watch our videos kisi nice stat was talking to me about this and he said

marquez is doing this well yeah yeah i mean i was doing long shorts which were kind of weird but i want to do short longs just have an idea and like you know what people might want to hear me on this and it doesn't have to be 10 minutes exactly yeah i think that i think we need more of that okay so there's a thought for the world there's a thought free yeah i gave you a free pin Yeah, and I gave you a free content strategy idea. Amazing. For basically two decades, the experience of using the internet hasn't changed, which is to say when you want to do something, you go to Google, you type some words,

you hit enter, and then you click on some links. But now Google in particular is really eager to change that. This week on the Vergecast, we're talking about all of the news from I.O., Google's big developer conference, including the ways in which it is going to change search completely and forever. all that plus what a Google book actually is on the verge cast wherever you get podcasts all right i got a couple of rapid fire questions for you oh gosh um feel free to take it's about the magic mouse i'm gonna throw one in there about the magic mask uh are you have two of

them you what is this isn't your this isn't your mouse of choice is it is okay maybe this isn't rapid fire yeah everyone is explaining yourself everyone is rolling their eyes explain yourself you you intentionally use and it sounds like you have two so you bought another magic mouse? Yeah, yeah, because when I'm charging, I like to have them in and out. That's, now you know you could just get one mouse and just, right? Like you could just keep using it while it's charging. Yeah, it's, I love the scrolly feel, like the clicky part.

I like it. Okay. Have you, um. Have I tried other mouse? Yeah. No, never. Never. But do you not like the other mice?

I was born only using the magic mouse. In fact, in 1995, when you were two years old and I had my first computer, I had a prototype of the Magic Miles. They've always had- Johnny I've sent it to me. They've had bad mice for a long time, actually. Like I have, I unboxed some of those old, like IMAG-3s and the mouse, even from those times was notably unique. The C-through, the plastic C-through ones. Yeah. It's an awesome mouse.

It's an awesome mouse. I mean, it's just cool looking. I don't know if it's it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Insane mouse dress. Okay.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Desktop or laptop person. Am I going to be canceled for the Magic Mouse stuff? Should we edit this out? No, no. I'm, we have, I'm not going to name names, but we have people who work here.

It's me and Michael. Also. We like the Magic Mouse. Magic Mouse. I knew that we shared a bond except for this whole basketball thing that you're always talking about. There's just something about the Magic Mouse that brings out. Yeah. I just get mad for no reason.

Maybe John Ternis is the first thing. he's going to do. Yo, that's actually huge. Wait, he has to know the magic mouse is bad. He's a product guy. He has to know the magic mouse is bad. Marquez, please talk into the mic. Tim Cook? I was like, podcast alert. I would, podcast alert here. Did you see that, you've seen the clip where I asked Tim Cook about the magic mouse? And he's like, we make a mouse like that? He hasn't thought about that in years. Tim, John. Wait, no, I haven't seen the Ternis one. Well, I haven't asked him about it, but I know that he knows. He knows the Magic Mouse is bad. Of course he knows it, because he also has two.

and this is exactly what he does. He takes over at Apple. I don't know if that's true. I've not reported that out. Please, as a reporter, I will confirm that. Actually, Apple PR will not. September 1st, when he becomes a new CEO, I'm starting a countdown timer

to when Apple releases a good mouse. Okay. Because there's a lot of stuff I want Apple to make. That's maybe at the top of my list. And honestly, I'm fine with that mouse just having a port someplace else. That would be a really nice start. Right?

Yeah. I mean, Ellis agrees. Even if that's the only change they make, even if it's still an ergonomic nightmare just move the port okay do you have hands yeah how is it an ergonomic nightmare because it's the shape I have a like a hand that is

maybe three times the size of the hand they designed it for that's true so what if they just made magic mouse XL yeah what if they made magic mouse that would solve one of the critical issues Ultra oh yeah magic mouth studio that would solve one of the two horrible things about the magic mouse if they can just

27000 dollars to get that Mouse. What would you buy it? No, I would just use an MX Master, which is just fine. If you spend an extra $600, it has wheels. All right, I'm in. Stainless steel. It's little feet. It just walks around.

A little scary. Yes. And a tail. I'm pretty sure John Turnus is listening and taking these ideas right now. John, if you just watch this part of the podcast, Magic Mouse 2, please. You can do wonders. Okay. Rapid fire.

Lapid fire. laptop or desktop or desktop? laptop. Laptop always. Laptop always. Okay. No desktop at all. I have a Mac mini running stuff.

Totally. What browser do you use? Are you an AI browser person or are you a regular browser person? I have a lot of browsers. Right now, Chrome vertical tabs. I know you have a lot of feelings on that. I like Chrome. I heard a lot about ARC on this podcast.

I don't know what those, I guess. Arc is nice. Arc is not the AI browser, but it is the beautiful functional browser that a lot of us like. But then there's like the perplexity comm. I haven't used in comment a lot. Okay. Yeah, I've been using comment a lot. You know, here's a true story.

I used Microsoft Edge for a long time on a Mac. I know. It hurts people. It hurts when I say it. But they had this great feature called collections, which everyone else ripped off, but you could group your tabs or you could group your shortcuts together.

And it was amazing, especially like when I was working on, like I'd be working on a project like the book. And I'd have 10 documents and 10 different things. and I just wanted them in one collection. Oh, like a tab group. It's a tab group, but it's saved. Oh, okay. So, okay.

It's persistent. Yeah, it's like a bookmarks manager, but it was better than that. And then every other browser was like, we'll add that. And then they were like, finally no more edge. Yeah, I don't use it. Okay, I see it. Okay. Can I share it quick?

I've never met someone else who uses perplexity comment. I don't use it anymore, but I wanted to share the last time I used perplexity comment, which was me asking it to search. I gave it a bunch of things that I was making it. mood board. And I was like, can you go and collect these images for me? And I gave it this big list of everything I was looking for. And it's like, go, go out and find these images. And it came back and it found me 20 images. And I was like, that's fantastic. And I was like, pictures of the magic mouse? Sure. For your mood for the story, it can totally be. But then I asked

it, okay, now here's an updated version of the list. Go out and find images. And it said, I don't have the ability to find images. And I spent an hour where it was just like, I can't do this, Ellis. I don't have image ability. And you're like, you're like, you, you did it. In this chat are the images you found me. And then I was just like, I deleted it off my computer. I was like, I used comment a lot in the book because it became like a reporting assistant where I could say, write to this company, see if they're willing to do an interview

about this. And it could just do that in the browser. Yeah. Comit's good. And I'm testing personal computer by perplexity now, which is pretty good too. Okay. I'll read download it. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Sorry. These are not rapid fire. Task app or pen and paper? Both. Both. Yeah.

How do you choose what to use? When I'm doing something, like if I have like a day of video publishing, I have like a lot of things to do or, you know, column or whatever I'm going that day. I have like lots of tasks that I need to do at the moment. They're like immediate tasks. And I write those on a paper on my, on my desk. Okay. But then I have this crazy notion to do list thing that I've made. It's really not great.

Do you use notion for to do's? Not for to do's. We use it for project manager. for like a per video basis. Yeah, so do we, well, we started doing that. And then I just, because I was like, oh, I'm already here. Let me try to use the AI to build a to-do list thing.

And it did a pretty good job, but, because I'm also doing meeting notes in there. So I'm doing a lot in there right now. But that, like, has a big list. And that's like further, it's like stuff I need to do for the day, but it's not like I need to do it this hour. Okay.

That's a, yeah, good distinction. All right. Yeah. I haven't used a pen and paper in years, I think. Since 1992. Basically. Phone in your pocket right now? No.

It's in my backpack on the side. Oh, which one is it? It's iPhone 17 Pro. If you had to use a different phone, which one would you pick? iPhone 17 Pro Max? That's a good answer. What if you couldn't use any pro? What if you couldn't use any iPhone?

Samsung Galaxy? No, I'd probably do a pixel. I don't know. I have been trying to, I have been playing around with a lot of the Android foldable phones. Yeah. My issue, and I'm sure I'm going to have the same issue with the foldable iPhone, it's very big for me.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting. The way they're trying to, allegedly, allegedly, it's going to be like this much smaller passport style and then wider. So it could be smaller and fitting your pocket better than the current pro. Yeah. I just do a lot of texting on like the fly when I'm commuting and stuff like that. And then it's like, okay, I'm putting it into my pocket, it's too big.

And then I love being able to open it up and, do much more with the bigger screen, but I don't take advantage of that in that many scenarios. And I think I would more if I actually had a smaller footprint. Interesting. Okay. Yeah.

How fast can you type the alphabet? Like, I don't know, 90 or 80 words per second? Is this your keyboard of choice? So it's a bit of a tradition around here for our guests on Way Forum to simply type A through Z as fast as they can. It doesn't matter. leaderboard, no pressure, you'll have three tries, and we'll also offer any of these fine, beautiful keyboards over here if you'd like, I don't know if you typically write on it. No, if you, if you want to get a faster score, if you type faster on any of these keyboards, we can swap it out.

No, I think I can do it at this. Okay. Oh, boy. No pressure. I'm going to point my microphone. You just, so the way this works, so before you take your three attempts, the way this works is as soon as you type the letter A, it starts counting. Yeah. And you just go A, B, C, D. If you miss a letter, you still have to hit that letter, and then that's how you get all the way through Z. Can I tell you something else? Okay. No, no, no. I can do this.

I can do this. You got this. The first one, you'll just figure out how it works, and then the next two, you'll lock in. All right. Ready? I'm ready. You have to press it. Okay.

You got your first rodeo, so now you've seen it. 10.5. Okay. I won't tell you the scores unless you want to hear them, but... Well, I see. It says best time right under five. Oh, no, no. that's because I did earlier.

But you have two more shots. You did it earlier. I just did it to make sure it worked. But we have a leaderboard of everyone who's ever been on the podcast and how fast it typed in. Well, you're at the top. Or you're on there at five, so I know at least. My official time might be slower than that. I don't remember.

They'll find the leaderboard. But you got extra shots to get even faster. All right. Yeah. We go again? Go for it. I want to go again. I restart it.

Okay. Wait. How do I restart? I think you hit enter and it restarts. Okay, got it. All right. Yeah. Sound effects, go.

I'm going again. Go. Is that how it works? I think, yeah, just send it. Just send it until you get to see. Oh, so much slower this time. It was doing better when I wasn't looking at the... Are you like home road just like banging keys or are you trying to like...

I'm trying to touch type, but I'm like, then I realize... Some of them are in weird places. Well, you realize you skip a... a letter and then you're like, oh, I hit that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you got to make sure. I'm like, oh, I've moved on and it's like, oh, no, like you didn't get, you know. Hit beat, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because, like, I should just be looking at the screen and touch typing without looking at the keyboard. Yeah, that's high difficulty. All right. Also, you know, this is making me realize, like, my kids don't know how to type. I have an eight-year-old who does not know how to type. What about on a phone screen? On a phone screen, kind of, or on an iPad, but, like, mostly they just do voice. Oh, that is.

And I'm really upset about it and I'm going to start working with him on Saturdays on typing. Because something we talked about is something that, quote, kids these days don't know anymore. They don't really have to know file structure or how that files are even a thing. And they also don't really have to know how to Google things. And I guess they don't really have to know how to type very much. No. Wow. I mean, they know how to type like they know how to type emojis.

Of course. That's important because you can't just say. Well, you could say the emoji, but you got to really find the perfect. for one more time go for it's this very embarrassing okay I beat my time there 9.3 9.3 lock it in all right I feel like if I did this a few more times I would be way better totally I think that's usually on the put I'm a human on the put my pin on yeah exactly that's very important uh do you want to know leaderboard scores or do yes I do okay is there anyone good on the leaderboard it's in slack I think I'll tell you who's around you in

in your time let's see I got a DM from Adam Boom. Okay. Your 9.3 is exactly in between our own cinematographer Brandon and David Blaine. Wow. Right. Nessled right in between those two. David Blaine doesn't have magic tricks to be faster?

He was also like, I'm going to be super slow. And then he got faster and faster as he went. So there it is. Well, I mean, I feel like I would also. Okay. Tell me what you are. What is that five? I ended up, this is the whole leaderboard.

Cleo is at four? Yeah. That's amazing. Tom Scott had a 3.5. Insane. Some people are just insanely fast typist. Didn't Tom Scott do it on like his Dell laptop? Yeah, it was like his keyboard was the loudest thing.

I'm coming back and I'm going to practice. This is not good. That's good. No, that's perfect. I would really love to come back with the 1X robot. Oh, maybe they'll type. We'll see how fast they can type. Joanna, thanks for coming on.

Thanks for talking to me. And I'm going to point people towards watching your videos and reading this book because I think it's all very interesting. What about the best AI wearable in the world? And of course, well, they can get their hands on this wearable if they get the book, of course. That's right. And they can't. I noticed you stopped wearing it. I can't, I feel bad lying.

Uh-huh. You can't put it on? No, I just, it would imply that. Oh, you feel bad lying that you're, I see. Okay. Yeah. So true. Yeah.

Yeah. I'll get Marquez to wear it. Yeah, you should get... I'll give him the pin. Get the real Marquez to wear it. And I so appreciate that Marquez bought for you being so honest here. I appreciate the pin. You know what we should really do as a test?

Can you fold your t-shirts? I can't fold anything. Yeah, no. I just kind of have claws. Can you fold laundry? I haven't fold. No. I actually genuinely no.

I can put stuff on hangers sometimes. But yeah, I avoid the folding stuff. Yeah, we should test that would really be it. That's the Turing test. Me versus CES robot. That actually is basically the Turing test. The caption means nothing anymore. It's fold my laundry.

But if humans can fold the laundry, you're human. There it is. Now we know. Great. We'll have you back on at some point. Thanks again. Thanks. See you soon.

Good thing I recorded this all my B bracelet. Nice.