A buggy Sonos mystery | The Vergecast - video Dailymotion

The Verge

The Verge's Will Poor recently came home from vacation and discovered he had an insect problem. More specifically, his Sonos speaker had an insect problem. Will brings us the story of what really happened there, and what he discovered about how the animal kingdom — and the electronics world — works. After that, The Verge's Andru Marino tells us about his research on all things AI podcasts. He tells us why people are so hooked on NotebookLM's Audio Overviews, where these generated shows fall short, and what all us human podcasters could learn from the bots. Finally, The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy helps us answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email vergecast@theverge.com!) all about smart lights. Which get complicated faster than you think.

Transcript

00:00:00Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of a very specific kind of pest control.

00:00:08I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am sitting here doing a project I've been putting off for

00:00:13years, which is going through my surprisingly enormous collection of sports cards to see if

00:00:19any of them are worth anything. They've just been sitting in a box. I really loved collecting them

00:00:23as a kid, and now I just have binders and binders full of them sitting around. I don't know if any

00:00:28of them are worth anything, but I found this app, thank you technology, that lets you just scan the

00:00:33front of the card, and it'll immediately identify it and tell you if it's worth anything. The app's

00:00:39called Ludex, and I have no idea if it's legit, but so far it's told me all of the cards I have

00:00:44are essentially worthless. We'll see. I got a lot of them to go through. All you need is one, right?

00:00:50Anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about. We are going to do two things on the show today.

00:00:54First, I'm going to talk to Will Poore about a very strange adventure he had after getting home

00:00:59from vacation and discovering what was going on inside of his Sonos. Then I'm going to talk to

00:01:04Andrew Marino about an adventure he's been on, trying to figure out whether all of these AI-generated

00:01:11podcasts are actually up to something. Lots of fun stuff. We have a hotline question about smart

00:01:16lights. Lots to do. Lots to get to. All that is coming up in just a sec. But first, I've decided I'm

00:01:21going to scan these cards until I find one that is worth $20. That doesn't seem like too much to

00:01:27ask. $20. We're going for it. This is The Verge Cast. We'll be right back.

00:01:35All right, we're back. Will Poore is here. Hi, Will.

00:01:37Hello.

00:01:38It's been a minute.

00:01:39I'm back, back.

00:01:40I know you're back, back. You were on parental leave for the last few months.

00:01:44I was.

00:01:45How are things? Things are good?

00:01:46Things are good. Yeah, we're sort of settling back into all of the normal life things.

00:01:51And I'm figuring out how to be a podcast producer again. So we'll see if this is coherent in

00:01:57any way. But I think it's like riding a bike.

00:02:00So one of the things we've been looking forward to in you coming back is you're a person with

00:02:04lots of ideas and thoughts about stuff we should do. And you and I overlap in some ways and also

00:02:10think really differently in some ways. So it's very fun to get to work with you on stuff.

00:02:13You came back just like a house on fire. I have to talk about ants and Sonos.

00:02:21So with I just I don't even want to wind this up for anybody. Like, let's just you literally

00:02:27came in and you're like, I have a story about ants and Sonos.

00:02:29Well, yeah, I came back and I was like, a thing happened to me.

00:02:33Yeah.

00:02:34And I need to tell you about it. And the more I think about it, I think I need to tell the world

00:02:38about it. So here we are. Yeah, I love it. That's basically the setup. I do have a story

00:02:44about ants and my Sonos speaker. I should say I've told a few people the story and they've been

00:02:52beyond grossed out about it. So if you are a person who doesn't like bugs, who is squicked out

00:02:58about that kind of thing, this is maybe not the story for you. I don't know. How does that

00:03:03disclaimer hit you personally, David?

00:03:06I think that's good. I would say I'm like, as long as it's not about spiders that can jump,

00:03:11I'm cool.

00:03:12Crawling is fine.

00:03:14Crawling is fine. As long as as long as they are floor bound. But if they if something can leap,

00:03:20we have a problem.

00:03:21I think this might be borderline for you, but we're gonna see how it goes.

00:03:24All right. We'll see. I'm gonna I'm gonna go with you as far as I can, but I may suddenly

00:03:27disappear from.

00:03:28Yeah, I'll just take it from there.

00:03:30All right. Sounds good.

00:03:31Okay. So the the story in brief is that before my leave ended, we we went on we took a trip

00:03:37with the whole family for a week. So we were gone from the house for about a week. And the day we got

00:03:42back, we walk in the front door and there's this little line of ants marching across our living

00:03:47room. This in of itself, not an unusual thing. We're dealing with ants all the time. I recognize

00:03:52these particular ants specifically. They're, they're like an eighth of an inch. They're

00:03:57really small. They come up through our floorboards. They find snacks in the kitchen. We have to keep

00:04:04the house super clean because they're always we're always kind of playing whack-a-mole with

00:04:07them. So we're like, the answer back. And I could see that they were headed to some dog

00:04:13kibble that we had left in the front closet.

00:04:15Yeah, I feel like you have pets and you have kids. And so like answer just sort of a fact.

00:04:19Yeah, this is like we are the best house on the block for the ants like bar none.

00:04:23So none of this was shocking until I followed the little ant trail. Usually it just disappears

00:04:30into a crack in the molding or something. But this time it went across the living room

00:04:34and up onto this bench where we have these three big house plants. So I was like, they found

00:04:39the house plants. I guess they maybe they're like nesting in the dirt. This is this could be

00:04:44worse than I thought. But then I kept following the trail and it didn't go into any of the house

00:04:49plants. It went underneath our Sonos speaker, which is sitting right between two of the house

00:04:56plants. And I was like, why is it disappearing into the speaker? And I walk over and I lift up

00:05:01the speaker and just ant explosion, just hundreds, thousands. I don't know how to judge when all

00:05:10of a sudden, like every every surface is moving with ants. Too many, too many eggs, the whole

00:05:17nine yards. I pick up the speaker and start running around with it like I'm holding something

00:05:23that's on fire. I don't want to set it down because there will just be ants wherever I

00:05:29put it. But at the same time, I can feel ants like crawling up my arms as I run around with

00:05:33this thing. My wife is freaking out. My four month old baby is starting to fuss. My three year

00:05:39old is like playing with trains or whatever. He doesn't care. But it's it's bedlam. So

00:05:45I the closest thing I could think of to do is just sprint out the back door with it. So

00:05:51I go outside. I put it outside. I brush myself off. I walk in. We finish coming back from our

00:05:58vacation a little scarred. I would dispute the idea that this is like problem solved, but

00:06:03like, but at least it's outside. No, this is problem deferred. Yeah, this is very much like

00:06:08let's put pause on this and deal with the kids. My wife, incidentally, is one of the

00:06:13people who is unbelievably grossed out by any ant. So this is like a very traumatic moment

00:06:18for her. So that all happened. I came back a day later. Blood pressure was down. I had

00:06:25the wherewithal to attach a microphone to myself this time. And I brought the speaker

00:06:29into my garage to try to take it apart and see what was going on. Okay. So now the screen

00:06:37up should just slide right up. Oh, God, there's more. Oh, God. Oh, God. There's eggs. There's

00:06:47f**k. F**k, f**k, f**k, f**k, f**k. Okay. Going outside. Going outside. Going outside. Going

00:06:52outside. Going outside. Oh, God damn it. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Okay. I'm opening it up. Underneath

00:07:07the case, there are still, oh, there are so many ants. There were still a lot of ants.

00:07:17That's tough. It was not great. Many, many more ants. Many, many more eggs. It was still,

00:07:24it was still just a whole ecosystem. Uh, so I left it outside for another week. I, I just

00:07:29extended the problem and forgot about it. Did it not occur to you to just throw this thing

00:07:34in the trash? There was still a part of me that was like, I can save this. Okay. I

00:07:38don't want to let go of the speaker. I like the speaker. So no stuff is expensive. I get

00:07:42it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, yeah, we've got two of them in the living room. It's, it's

00:07:46a whole thing. So I, I came back to it a week later and I like fully took it apart because

00:07:52I couldn't just assume that it was ant free. Uh, I probably broke it in the course of taking

00:08:01it apart. I haven't tried to put it back together. Um, but I, I may have lost the Sonos

00:08:04after all, but the answer gone. So that is at least the end of that story and that speaker

00:08:12probably. It's sure. Yeah. So I, that happened time past, but I couldn't get it out of my head.

00:08:21I needed to know what the heck was going on. I, in my head, the weird thing, not being an

00:08:28ant was that it was, the speaker was sitting next to all of these lovely house plants.

00:08:33It just seemed like answer ants like nature. Look at all this nature. Why did they choose

00:08:38the Sonos out of all of these places to nest? Well, and it sounds like from the sound of the

00:08:43way you're describing it, it's not just like, I had a bunch of ants in my speakers. It's

00:08:47like the ants of the neighborhood decided to move into my speakers. Yes. Which feels different,

00:08:53right? Cause if you were just like, I had some ants, I have questions. I'd be like, why

00:08:56ants are everywhere. But this is like the ants as a group, like got together and decided

00:09:02to be in your speaker. It was a different thing. It was different from the, like the

00:09:07answer back that we've experienced. Yeah. Like there was a meeting about it in which

00:09:10the ants picked your speaker and we're like, this is the place. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, absolutely.

00:09:15So I got curious and I just Googled ants in Sonos and I've, it's the internet. I found

00:09:21a lot of stuff. There are all these forum posts on the Sonos

00:09:26website with people with the exact same problem. And in many times by exact

00:09:31model, the Sonos play one, like there are many Sonos play one customers with ant

00:09:37problems over the past few years, other stuff on Reddit. Like it's a thing. And

00:09:43all of these forum posters are just sitting on these sites, trading theories

00:09:48about what is going on. Some people are feeling like some people thought there

00:09:53might be a glue in the electronics that they like. They thought the electronics

00:09:58could generate heat and maybe the ants like that. There's this theory bouncing

00:10:02around that ants might be attracted to magnetic fields for some reason. Like it

00:10:08was going places. Everyone was also trading a lot of theories about how to get rid

00:10:12of them because they, you know, someone suggested they just put the Sonos in a

00:10:17freezer for a while, but people also don't want a speaker full of dead ants.

00:10:22Like that's not a great solution either to get rid of the ants and also destroy

00:10:25your speaker. Like that's a, that's an easier problem. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So

00:10:30there's, there's a lot of talk about how to maybe bully the ants out of the

00:10:34speakers with, with an air conditioner or a heater or a fan things at them through

00:10:39the speaker. Playing Ed Sheeran through the speaker was one suggestion that got some

00:10:45traction. The zaniest one was for some reason, people thought that maybe if you

00:10:50suspend the speakers over a bucket of water, but provide a bridge away from the

00:10:55speaker, there's something about that setup that ants might not like. It's people

00:11:00just doing their best. Yeah. With not a ton of information and a speaker full of

00:11:05ants. So I set out to answer this question for myself, for the people on the

00:11:10internet, the two questions I had, one was just kind of how specific is this

00:11:17problem? Like if you Google around, you can find lots of examples of ants getting

00:11:22into electronics. So my question is, is this a problem with electronics and bugs?

00:11:28Is this a problem with ants and speakers? Or is this a problem with this kind of

00:11:32ant and this kind of speaker? Like what scale of problem are we dealing with here?

00:11:36I'm trying to imagine where you even start on this. Cause I like, I like that

00:11:41the place you go is like, am I the only person this has ever happened to? And you

00:11:43determine no, but I can't imagine there's like a copious body of scientific

00:11:49research on the ant qualities of, and I can't imagine like Sonos has thought

00:11:54about this particular, like where do you start?

00:11:56No, Sonos, I, Sonos did respond to a couple of the forum posts with basically

00:12:00just like, try your home warranty. Like this, this, this cannot be a Sonos

00:12:05problem. Like we've refused to make this a Sonos problem. Uh, so I, I also just

00:12:11really wanted to know what to do about it. Like this was such an escalation from

00:12:16the ant situations that I've dealt with in my house. I all of a sudden start

00:12:21looking around at my like Roku box on the TV, the TV itself. I just felt like

00:12:27nothing was safe anymore. Yeah. And if there was something, everything closed is

00:12:30like crawling with ants inside. Right. And if, and if there is something specific

00:12:34to electronics, then like, yeah, this, this could go a lot of bad places.

00:12:38Uh, this officially just became my least favorite segment we've ever done. Um,

00:12:41like now we got you there. You're still here, but yeah, I can feel your mouse

00:12:45sort of like hoveling, hovering over the exit box. All right. We're coming back.

00:12:49I'm ready. I'm back in. All right. So we're gonna, we're gonna learn some

00:12:52things. It's going to be fun. All right. The, the place that I started, which

00:12:57turned out to be really fruitful was entomologists. I, I live in the Seattle

00:13:02area. So I, I reached out to the entomology department at Washington

00:13:06state university. I figured someone regional might have a good sense of

00:13:10local populations. Uh, so I emailed the department. Uh, they, what does that

00:13:16cold email say? I mean, it was really straightforward. This is the best thing

00:13:21about doing my job is I can just send insane emails as if they're completely

00:13:25normal as hi, I'm a technology journalist and I have a bunch of ants in my

00:13:29speakers. And I was wondering if, uh, an entomologist could give me some tips

00:13:33about that. And true to form, they were like, absolutely. They put me in touch

00:13:39with a master's student that had just graduated named Sam Dilday. Uh, she

00:13:44specializes in, in what they call you social insects. These are insects like

00:13:49bees and ants that have Queens and casts and colonies and that kind of social

00:13:54structure. She was super into the question. She had some, uh, experience

00:14:01with this kind of thing. And her first step with me was identifying the species

00:14:07of ant. It was like, let's figure out what kind of ant this is. And that'll

00:14:11tell us a bunch about why they went and did this thing to you. How does one

00:14:16identify a species of ant? Well, a bunch of different ways. She had some suspicions

00:14:20just based on where I live and the story that I told basically their

00:14:24behavior. Uh, she also asked for a closeup photo. So I got as, as macro a

00:14:28photo as I could of a dead one and sent them, uh, along to her. And then she

00:14:34suggested that I crush some of them up and smell them. Uh, my God, which

00:14:40speaking of bullying the ants, I found a bunch of dead ones. Okay. I collect, I

00:14:45just, I just shook the speaker out onto a piece of paper, collected a bunch of

00:14:49dead ones. The trouble is I have a condition called anosmia. I basically

00:14:54have no sense of smell. This is a fun fact about me. I did not know this about

00:14:58you. So I was out of the running to perform this particular experiment. So the

00:15:03next best person was my already traumatized wife, Caroline, who was a real

00:15:08champ when I got a bunch of ant carcasses and asked her to smell them. Okay.

00:15:15I'm just going to crush them with the back of the spoon and then you're going to

00:15:18take a big sniff and tell me if you smell anything. Okay. Okay. Ready? Oh, it's not

00:15:27a bad smell, but I do smell a thing. What does it smell like? Um, I will need a

00:15:34second sniff. Get in there. It's kind of lemony. Oh, is that? I don't know. I don't

00:15:43know what they're supposed to smell like. Oh God. Did I get ant on my nose? Your

00:15:49poor wife. My poor wife. Caroline, thank you. We're all grateful. Of all the debuts

00:15:54to the verge cast. Okay. So we have some evidence though. We have, we have a lemony

00:16:00smell. We have a lemony smell. We have a photo. We have behavior. We have a lot. So

00:16:06I sort of collated all of that and finally called Sam up on the phone to talk about

00:16:11it. She got like a citrusy lemony smell. Does that track with your experience?

00:16:18You know, everyone smells something different. Oh, no, they don't. But like the

00:16:23smell that people reference a lot is rotten coconut or blue cheese. Okay. That's different

00:16:31than lemons. Yeah, that is very different than lemons. Um, I think it almost smells like

00:16:37turpentine. So based on the story, the behavior, the description, the photo, the fact that there

00:16:43was a smell, even if it wasn't the most expected one, all of this made Sam really confident

00:16:49that we were dealing with something called the odorous house ant or OHA OHA. Okay. Is

00:16:55that like when I think of an ant, is that the ant I'm thinking of? Do you know what I mean?

00:16:59It's like everybody has like the ant in their house. Is this that ant? I think it depends.

00:17:02I think if it's, I think there's a really good chance that if it's a really small ant that

00:17:08is constantly annoying you in your house, there's a good chance that it's an OHA because they're

00:17:14native to North America. They're found all over the continent. They're very common.

00:17:19There are other ants that get confused with OHAs, but this is a really common one. Um,

00:17:24they live there. Like I said, they're, they're these social creatures. They live in really big

00:17:31colonies with a few Queens and thousands and thousands of workers that run all over the

00:17:36place and do cooperative colony things. Um, they're super, super common in homes, hence the name.

00:17:42Uh, and they're really interesting to entomologists right now because they're in a, in

00:17:49North America, they're undergoing this kind of mysterious shift.

00:17:51Odorous house ants in their natural environment, which is in, uh, wooded areas. They usually will

00:17:58only have one, maybe a handful of Queens, very small colonies. And, uh, but what we're, we've

00:18:06seen in the last 10 or 15 years is that in urban environments, the odorous house ant starts

00:18:14kind of changing how it reacts. Um, so our nests are now made up of hundreds of thousands of Queens

00:18:22and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of, of workers in these urban environments. Um,

00:18:29so that's part of what makes them so difficult to treat is just the size of them. And it's not just

00:18:34one single nest that they're staying in. It's multiple interconnected super colonies that are forming

00:18:41in your backyard, in your neighbor's backyard, in your neighbor's neighbor's backyard, pretty much

00:18:47just entrenching a whole area in a cooperative nest, which is crazy. Very interesting.

00:18:54So that's all kind of a mystery. What we do know is that they just have a lot of reasons to like

00:19:01suburban or urban areas. There's human food and pet food all over the place, toddler crumbs, uh, nice

00:19:07heated homes. And then homes have all these nice little nooks and crannies inside to, to live.

00:19:14If you can think of a house and your basement and your kitchen and your bathrooms, those are ideal

00:19:20spots for our odorous house ant. They want to live there, um, just as much as we do. They find it just

00:19:27as nice.

00:19:27So, knowing what Sam knows about Ohaz, she was not remotely surprised about this story that I told her.

00:19:35I mean, this is the calling card of odorous house ants, is that they seem to just appear one day. And it's

00:19:45because they are so transient. About every two weeks, they are constantly moving their nests. And, uh, unlike other

00:19:53ants that will find the food source, take bits of it, bring it back to the nest for distributing,

00:20:01Ohaz don't do that. They don't take the food to the brood. They take the brood to the food. The

00:20:07speaker is situated in a perfect place that they can easily get to the dog food in your, in your closet,

00:20:15uh, scraps in the kitchen. Um, so they just really found this one place and were like, this is perfect.

00:20:22And you say that it took you about a week for them to move and that's on brand. I don't know if it rained

00:20:28before or during that time when you were gone, but rain is, it is definitely one of those that elicits

00:20:35them wanting to, to move around and Seattle being one of the wettest places out there.

00:20:41All the time. Yeah. So there, that might be constantly sort of scrambling them.

00:20:46Exactly. So weather, food resources, um, and also just, um, the seasons as well. Uh, March is when

00:20:55they, everything is coming to life. It's when we're getting out and stretching our legs and it's the

00:21:01same with our ants. They're, those little ladies are, are trying to find new homes and, um, they're

00:21:07trying to expand their numbers while the weather's nice and the resources are available.

00:21:12So I feel like this explains why they're around, like sort of why they'd show up at all, but

00:21:17have we answered yet why they would pick a speaker or I guess more specifically a Sonos play one?

00:21:24I really hope this mystery ends with some play one specific stuff, but it does feel like I get it.

00:21:32But do we know the speaker bit yet?

00:21:34We, we have not gotten to the speaker bit yet, but here we go. Here's the speaker bit.

00:21:38I did see a bunch of people having the same problem with that exact speaker.

00:21:45Really?

00:21:45Yes. And you know, if I put on my, my aunt glasses and look at things as if I were a worker.

00:21:52Please, this is exactly what I need.

00:21:54That is the perfect housing is that speaker.

00:21:58Tell me everything. What, like you, the aunt, why is this seventh heaven for you when you like

00:22:03discover a Sonos play one? Well, as I'm looking at it and when you were pulling it apart, it has a

00:22:10lot of crevices in it. It had a lot of little spaces where as an aunt, I would be happy to place

00:22:16a bunch of brood in there, make sure it's nice and moist in there for them. It's easy to climate

00:22:21control. It's a dark color. So if the sun is hitting it, it's going to warm it up inside there,

00:22:27make it nice and like tropical for me. That's perfect. That's seventh heaven to me.

00:22:33The thing that I realized after learning all this is I think the reason the Sonos made no sense

00:22:37for me as a human, for an ant colony, it was because I picture ants digging tunnels and building

00:22:45nests. Like I think I was thinking about ant farm ants.

00:22:48Same.

00:22:48And that's just not OHAs. That's just not their behavior. They don't build their own extensive

00:22:54nests. They look for spaces that just work for them. They look for confined, protected spots,

00:23:00and they just go to town. So the inside of a speaker is great for them. They also, in your house,

00:23:08love the voids between walls. They love the little spaces inside power outlets. They like little

00:23:13crevices around water pipes.

00:23:14I've heard stories of people coming back from the weekend and finding odorous al-sant colonies

00:23:20underneath their calculator at work.

00:23:23There was another thing, though, that Sam really zeroed in on about this specific Sonos speaker

00:23:30and others that are like it.

00:23:32I noticed that there's some speakers that have like the fabric that's over the speaker head.

00:23:39This one doesn't. This one has those tiny little holes.

00:23:43It's got a little metal grill. Yeah.

00:23:45Those are perfect size for me. Those that that is an entrance to the lobby, you know, that that was

00:23:52made for me to enter. So that those ants are seeing this tiny crevice and they're seeing the

00:23:59the warmth in there and the electricity.

00:24:02The electricity is part. I honestly like of all the crackpot theories you described at the top.

00:24:07This sounded like the most crackpot of the crackpot theories. And you're telling me the electricity is

00:24:11real. Same. I I was completely skeptical that there was something like about the magnetic fields and

00:24:19insects. It just seemed like totally out of left field. But Sam had thoughts on that.

00:24:25It hasn't been looked at specifically in OHAs, but it has been looked at in other ant species where

00:24:31they are actually attracted to magnetic fields or the voltage. And there's a couple of different

00:24:41trains of thought when it comes to that. One, with the electricity, there's a slight heat increase.

00:24:48So some ants might be perceiving it as a slightly warmer environment. There's also some evidence that

00:24:54should suggest when they, when ants get into electronics, they're more likely to get shocked.

00:25:03And when they get shocked, they've released a pheromone. And that pheromone is then attracting

00:25:09more ants. Those ants are more likely going to get shocked and they're going to release the pheromone

00:25:15that's going to attract even more ants. And it's a vicious cycle. And so it's this pheromone that's

00:25:20being released that's making this behavior to say, come here, come here. But it's an interesting

00:25:26thing. And it's only been looked at in a couple of studies about what is it. And they did see an

00:25:32increase in attractiveness as the voltage increased.

00:25:37Gotcha. So they're noticing an attraction to electricity. And the, the possible reasons for

00:25:43that are the heat, the, the, the shockings.

00:25:49Or a third thing, like I, there, they could be picking up on a magnetic field that is

00:25:54eliciting some kind of response that we don't understand. You know, I'm, I'm not an ant. I'm an

00:26:02ant person, but I can't necessarily think exactly like an ant. So there could be some

00:26:07third reason behind this.

00:26:09I wonder if Sam frequently has to remind herself that she's not an ant. That seems like the

00:26:14kind of thing that is an entomologist, you every once in a while have to be like, it is

00:26:17true. I'm not an ant. Like she says that sort of reminding you, but also sort of reminding

00:26:22herself. You know what I mean?

00:26:23Yeah. Well, she kind of went back and forth between, well, I'm not an ant, but if I were

00:26:27an ant, in a way that you really felt like she was inhabiting this position.

00:26:32Yeah. So is this satisfying to you? Like, do you feel like this is, this is sort of the,

00:26:38the complete answer? It feels like I understand now why they might pick your speaker in particular.

00:26:44Uh, but does it feel like you've gotten all the way to the end of the answer?

00:26:49It kind of did. Yeah. I honestly wasn't expecting to get quite this far, but it, after talking to

00:26:56Sam, it felt like, yes, it is these specific ants that are doing this. And this specific

00:27:03feature definitely has some, and this specific speaker definitely has some traits that they

00:27:10love. So I don't, to me, it really does explain all of those forum posts on the Sonos website.

00:27:16Like it's, it's not just this speaker. There's all kinds of electronics that have grills and

00:27:22little cubbies and are, you know, have magnetic fields. But this speaker of mine definitely ticks

00:27:28all of these different boxes for the ants. It's like the perfect storm for ant attraction,

00:27:35where it's like, it's absolutely, lots of electronics do sort of one or two of the things

00:27:38you just described. But the, the play one is sort of the perfect center of the Venn diagram of all the

00:27:43things that those ants like to live in. Exactly. And so that's the thing that just completely flipped

00:27:48my thinking 180 degrees from like, of all the places, why the Sonos to like, oh yeah,

00:27:53no, it would be the Sonos. So you destroyed your play one, we think. I'm very curious to know when

00:28:00you put it back together, how it goes. I'll follow up with that, but I don't have high hopes. It was

00:28:04done sort of in a fit of mania. Yeah. But knowing what you know now, outside of full panic, heave the

00:28:11thing into the yard, what would you do? What, like for all the people who are on these forums trying to

00:28:15figure it out? What is the right answer? How do you get the ants out? So it turns out I, in my own

00:28:21panic, I was kind of on the right track. So let's talk about getting them out. I think I might have

00:28:25lucked into a solution, but if someone came to you and said, my speaker is full of ants,

00:28:32what would you tell them to do? I think you, you did the right thing. You got them out of your house

00:28:38and gave them time to move all their brood out. You just have made it an environment that's

00:28:45not what they want anymore. So, I mean, basically the advice is leverage that fact that we learned

00:28:51that they move around pretty regularly anyway. Just move the nest outside and wait for them to

00:28:57just wander off. If you can't move the nest, then you're in kind of ant trap territory or calling in

00:29:03a professional or something like that. As for all those other ideas in the forum, San said that trying

00:29:09to bully them out with heat and cold is kind of tricky because they're just so resilient. Like, she told me

00:29:16the story about how the thermostat in her lab went haywire one weekend and just cooked her whole lab at like

00:29:23100 plus degrees all weekend. And she came back and all of her ant colonies were dead except for the

00:29:28Ohas, which were just chugging along. So you might have a hard time with extreme temperatures with them

00:29:35specifically. Fair enough. And she did not know what to make of the bucket of water trick.

00:29:39That is just going to be the last enduring mystery of this story.

00:29:43So the electricity theorists are going to be unbearable on these forums now is what I'm hearing.

00:29:47Yeah. Yeah. We just added a lot of fuel to that.

00:29:49Can you just play really loud music? Like my immediate instinct was just like put on something

00:29:54bassy, turn it up to 100 and see if you can just like bounce them out of the speaker. Did you ask Sam about

00:30:00this? I did. And the answer is maybe like just just walk it outside and leave it alone is the

00:30:07easiest thing to do. But she got really curious about all these options. And she she thought that

00:30:13that might bother them because it turns out that these ants communicate via sound themselves. They

00:30:18rub little parts of their ant bodies together to talk to each other. And so a whole bunch of

00:30:24vibrations from the speaker might interfere with that. And it might piss them off enough that they

00:30:28would just give up and leave. So that's a real possibility, too. She got really into the idea

00:30:32of of further testing of speakers and ants. So I really think I might have accidentally inspired

00:30:38like a PhD thesis in her. Which genre of music most repels ants is a thing I very much look forward

00:30:46to reading. So that was sort of the rundown of all of the theories. She also just gave me a bunch of

00:30:54ant 101 kind of tips to keep ants from getting into my house in the first place. So that I'm not

00:31:00playing whack-a-mole with the colonies once they're in there. Just basic prevention.

00:31:04Probably the best strategy.

00:31:06Yeah.

00:31:07But OK, do you know what I keep thinking about here this whole time is as soon as you said

00:31:11the the the cubbies and the grill and the mesh of the play one, I just keep sitting here being like,

00:31:17there's going to be some Sonos designer who is sitting there listening to this being like,

00:31:21oh, my God, do I have to add ant colony habitability to my like design checklist the next time I make

00:31:27a speaker? Like, do you have advice? Did Sam have advice for Sonos on how to solve this clearly very

00:31:33real problem?

00:31:34Well, I wanted to ask Sonos these questions. Like my first stop was going to be Sonos because I had

00:31:40to know, I don't know, there's a lot of people that keep their speakers outside on patios and

00:31:44things like that. And after this happened to me, I was like, is there a designer at Sonos somewhere

00:31:49that is asking ant infestation questions about the design of these speakers?

00:31:55So I got in touch with them. They were very polite. They said no very firmly two times

00:32:00about participating. I was still very curious. So I emailed a bunch of other speaker companies

00:32:06because I figured a lot of them would be dealing with a similar question. All knows

00:32:11or non responses from them. I think I'm just creating small panics on comms teams around

00:32:17the speaker industry.

00:32:18I can guarantee you that somewhere there has been a meeting about the ant infestations

00:32:24over the last week. And if that's not impact journalism, I don't know what is.

00:32:28I just, I want to be, to be an ant on the wall in one of those meetings. I just, I just

00:32:32want to know, but we may never know. But like I said, I think I really inspired Sam to look

00:32:39into this more.

00:32:40I would love to do an experiment where I had a bunch of these speakers and I could have

00:32:46them in different environments and, and have some that are plugged in and some aren't to

00:32:51see if it's the, the, the magnetism. So I'd love to do an experiment like this.

00:32:56Well, I guess my last question is you said you have some experience with this particular

00:33:01speaker. So any advice for Sonos on making speakers that ants might not be as attracted to?

00:33:08Uh, I think that they should switch businesses and start making ant homes. They're really

00:33:14good at that.

00:33:16They're just, they're accidentally really, really good at this.

00:33:20Look, I'm just saying Sonos tried headphones that didn't really work. They were going to

00:33:24do set top boxes. They canceled that. It's, there might be a straighter line from speakers

00:33:31to ant homes than from speakers to any of that other stuff. They've done all the hard work

00:33:35already.

00:33:35They've got this.

00:33:36Just start selling it at PetSmart. You're good to go.

00:33:39Ask the ants. Like they, a whole, just dozens of colonies of ants in speakers can't be wrong.

00:33:46They're, they're onto something.

00:33:48I love it. So you, this story for you started in the best possible way, which is just like

00:33:52a reporter staring at a mystery, trying to figure it out. I feel like you, I feel like

00:33:57you a hundred percent of this mystery. You solved it. Do you feel?

00:34:00I'm giving myself, yeah, I'm giving myself full points. I feel good. I've, I don't feel

00:34:04good about my Sonos, but I feel good about everything else.

00:34:07This was going to be the last question I asked you. Has it changed how you think about

00:34:10speakers? Like, are you looking at your speaker placement in your house differently now knowing

00:34:15what you know?

00:34:15I am looking at all of my electronics differently. I will say that because I, it did completely

00:34:22invert my thinking around what ants want. And we're still going to be dealing with these

00:34:28ants seasonally forever. And it's a little ominous. I, it's, it's a little bit of a burden

00:34:34of knowledge situation. Like you said, I look at my Roku now and all I can think of are the,

00:34:40the tiny little cubbies inside of it. And that's a weird thing to think about when you're

00:34:44looking at your Roku.

00:34:46Yeah. If you're, if you're watching or listening to this, my advice is just, just forget all

00:34:50of this. Just it's, it don't look ignorance is bliss. Everything's probably fine.

00:34:57You all shouldn't have listened to this is basically the takeaway.

00:35:01Yeah. But if you, if you find a bunch of ants, now you know what to do. And if you don't

00:35:05see them, don't go looking and everything will probably be fine.

00:35:08Yeah. And join the, the Sonos user forums. It's a, it's a fun time. I'm going to go post

00:35:13a few things.

00:35:14Yeah. You've got, you've got answers for people. You're going to, you're going to conquering

00:35:17hero.

00:35:18Yeah. I need to like go back and be the conquering hero. Exactly.

00:35:22I love this time that the people knew.

00:35:23I love it. All right. Well, Will, it's very good to have you back. Thank you for running

00:35:27down this wild mystery for all of us.

00:35:30Thank you. I'll be back with more, even weirder stuff soon. I'm sure.

00:35:34I can't wait. I have heard rumors that you have gotten back in touch with our

00:35:38buddy delivery, Tony. So, oh boy, we need, that's not going on the air. We got to talk

00:35:43about that.

00:35:44All right. We got to take a break and then we're going to come back and we're going to

00:35:48talk about podcasts, specifically AI generated podcasts. We'll be right back.

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00:36:56All right, we're back. Andrew Marino is here. Hi, Andrew. Hi, David. You have been making

00:37:07podcasts for a very long time and then recently decided to make a very weird and slightly unnerving

00:37:12kind of podcast. Yes, with artificial intelligence. Yeah. So this one, I'm actually curious to hear the

00:37:20backstory of for you because, uh, I think this is the sort of thing that a lot of people who have

00:37:26made podcasts professionally get really kind of squirrely and itchy about, but you were just like,

00:37:31I'm going all in. I'm going to get weird with AI podcasts. Why did you get into this in the first

00:37:35place? Yeah, the real draw to me was you can upload any kind of document to it and it will take it and

00:37:43turn it into two robots talking to each other. So like my immediate thought about this was

00:37:50what if I upload stereo instructions as kind of like a funny gag, but also like thinking of stuff

00:37:59I wouldn't want to read and maybe an easier way to understand something. Um, it's such a novelty that

00:38:07I think that's initially where I was going, but yeah, there's actually some interesting use cases for

00:38:12it. Yeah. Talk me through that a little bit. And I'm curious how you think about this as somebody who

00:38:16has been making podcasts for a long time, I think because the sort of obvious step one is like

00:38:23stereo instructions is a good example, right? I, I have this giant document that is full of technical

00:38:28information that I don't want to read. Right. And for years, the step was just have something read the

00:38:34document to you. Right. And there, there are just lots of people who learn better that way,

00:38:38who rather than reading something, you hear something. And that is a better learning tool for lots of

00:38:42people. That's very straightforward, right? This is something different. The idea of like,

00:38:48we're, we're going to, we're going to not read the thing to you, but we're going to talk about the

00:38:52thing is, is both sort of in that same line, but also just a very different proposition for like

00:38:58how to learn information. Yes. So I have realized from listening to a bunch of these, how much easier

00:39:07it is to understand something when it's a lot more casual and there's a lot more space between

00:39:13sentences and, uh, kind of breathing a little bit between topics. Um, I just want to play a clip and

00:39:23you can kind of understand what this is sounding like and what, what it's trying to mimic. That's

00:39:28okay. Yeah. Okay. Get this. Imagine a world where like every website you go to starts charging robots to

00:39:36access it. Oh, wow. And, and smart homes still can't even make us a decent cup of coffee.

00:39:42Yeah. Okay.

00:39:44So there, there's like space between each phrase and there's the other host is like commenting back

00:39:51and you kind of like take a second to digest what that last sentence was versus sometimes when I read,

00:39:59uh, just in a, uh, person reading straight text. Um, you kind of don't, you kind of forget what the last

00:40:08paragraph was about or you weren't paying attention closely. Um, I realized that podcast actually is great

00:40:15for, uh, listening in the background because it does move really slowly and helps you still grasp what they're

00:40:25talking about without paying super close attention. So as you listen to something like that, what do

00:40:30you like? I always think about the training data with something like this. Like what's, what are these

00:40:35being trained to sound like? Do you think? Yeah. So I talked to the director of product, uh, Simon

00:40:41Tokamine at a notebook LM and he was saying that like a lot of this was, they got two people whose voices

00:40:50you're hearing in those notebook LM pieces, um, to just riff in a studio for a long period of time.

00:40:58Oh, interesting. He said, one of the things they did was just give them a picture and try and just

00:41:03like describe to each other what's in the picture. Uh, so you can hear a lot of stuff within these

00:41:09generative podcasts that, um, were probably picked up over time in these recordings.

00:41:15That's fascinating. Like how do you mimic a podcast without making a podcast is such a

00:41:22mind-bending exercise. That's very fun to think about.

00:41:24Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's moments where I've listened to the, these, uh, audio overviews where

00:41:30they tossed to a break and it's just, there's no need for that at all, but that was, you know,

00:41:38probably over time, that's what this, uh, tool was gathering. Um, and also there's probably a lot of

00:41:45other like podcasts that Gemini was, had been trained on, which, you know, obviously this uses

00:41:50Google's Gemini as well. Okay. So take me through your research process a little bit. Like I think

00:41:55part of what I'm curious about on this one is like what you even decide to upload to test how

00:42:02something like this can be used. What did you, what did you feed into the audio overview system?

00:42:06Yeah. So there's different things you can feed in. Like you can link your Google drive right up to it.

00:42:12So any document that's in your Google drive, it's pretty easy to add. Um, you can, any text, um,

00:42:19audio, any link for like a website, uh, and YouTube. So YouTube, it will just grab the transcript

00:42:27basically for, from the video and turn that into a summarization. Um, so what I was trying to do was

00:42:36figure out, uh, what you can actually get from adding a bunch of different sources together.

00:42:44Um, so like a YouTube video, just putting one YouTube video, I don't think is a great way of,

00:42:49of using this, but if like a YouTube video and some notes that you took and recording of a meeting and

00:42:55like, uh, a PDF of something like I combining all that stuff together and then turning it into an

00:43:02overview or just whatever you want to do with the notebook, like take notes and ask it questions and

00:43:08all that. Um, that was the most useful. And I thought that was like a, just a great way of

00:43:14researching and studying for something. Yeah. I think that's, I mean, that's kind of the notebook

00:43:18LM pitch in general. And I think it makes a lot of sense. I am curious though about the, if you just

00:43:23feed it one YouTube link, what do you get back? Like a podcast about a YouTube video. Do they just

00:43:28describe the YouTube video? Yes. So I uploaded the verges six iPhone 16 pro review and it kind of

00:43:38just went through all the points of the video and, but it, so the video was 22 minutes and it made it

00:43:46into a 20 minute podcast. So it's not really something that you could have just listened to

00:43:51the YouTube video, you know? Uh, so it doesn't really translate that well, but if you upload maybe

00:43:58a bunch of iPhone 16 pro reviews and you kind of get a summarization of all these, uh, different

00:44:06takes on the phone, right? Maybe that's more useful, but so, okay. So walk me through, let's start on the

00:44:11good side. What, what have you, what did you try that sort of worked for you that you were like,

00:44:16okay, this is a, this is a real useful or interesting thing that is coming out of this

00:44:22whole process. Yeah. Like I said, instruction manuals, like the, the stereo receiver. Um,

00:44:28I, uh, recently came across an Ibo original Ibo, uh, dog robot, and there's a pretty long

00:44:35instruction manual. And I just uploaded that PDF to kind of just, I can listen to on my commute or

00:44:40something, uh, to understand how that works. Um, that, those, that thing worked pretty well.

00:44:47A robot with moods. That's pretty wild for the early 2000s. It really was ambitious and

00:44:52you could still interact, pad its head sensor, show it the ball, or maybe colors that had learned

00:44:57to like. The other one is I'm trying to get my drone pilot's license. So notebook LM has

00:45:04this tool called discover where you can just type into it. I want, you know, a drone license

00:45:12tutorial and it will pull up a bunch of stuff from the internet that is related to that. And you can

00:45:19check off boxes of which source you want to use to put into the notebook. So you can really use it as

00:45:26Google and then input those links into your notebook and turn that into a podcast or whatever.

00:45:34So like I wanted to read all these different tutorials about how to get my drone pilot's license.

00:45:40And I put all that, all those different sources, a YouTube video, a PDF, a website. Um, and that

00:45:47kind of took all the stuff, maybe that they're all, there's some stuff that they're all saying,

00:45:52uh, similarly. And then some stuff you grab different from different sources that might help

00:45:59better than others. And then that was all in there.

00:46:02Give me a sense of what that sounds like. I'm, I'm, I'm just trying to figure out. Cause you,

00:46:05you know, again, you don't want it to read you the instructions for the robot or your stereo or

00:46:10whatever. But I also feel like, uh, them talking about instructions without giving me the instructions

00:46:17is not quite the right answer either. So like what, what, what does this actually sort of come

00:46:21out sounding like when you feed something like this in?

00:46:24Yeah. I'll share what the stereo instructions sound like, which is like pretty useful here.

00:46:29Phono inputs and a ground screw.

00:46:30For your turntable.

00:46:32Yeah.

00:46:32But only if your turntable doesn't have its own built-in phono preamp.

00:46:35Right. If it does use a regular analog input instead.

00:46:39Correct. And don't forget that MMMC switch we mentioned earlier needs to match your turntable's

00:46:43cartridge type.

00:46:45So like out of context, this is kind of silly and you don't really know what they're talking

00:46:49about. But, uh, when you're listening to the whole thing, like they do go into each thing

00:46:52and it's not just, they're talking about, so this is a PDF of the, um, stereo manual and like

00:46:59it goes through a bunch of these different options. Like, um, this is probably actually

00:47:05better. If you just want to know, how do I do this on the stereo? And you just type

00:47:08to it or you can ask the podcast a question.

00:47:13Well, you can ask the podcast a question. Like, like it's like a call in show. Like you

00:47:17can, you can actually stop the hosts and tell them you have questions.

00:47:22Yes. Within the notebook LM, um, interface, there is a interactive mode, which you can

00:47:29basically join the discussion. Like while they're talking, you can, they'll be like,

00:47:35Oh, Hey, what's up?

00:47:36And then you just like barged into the studio while they're recording. And you're like,

00:47:39I have something to say.

00:47:40Yes, totally. And you're like, Oh, how do I do this? Uh, turn this on or whatever.

00:47:45And it'll be like, Oh, great question. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And it'll tell you that.

00:47:49And then we'll get back to the rest of the show and be like, okay. So you can't, you

00:47:52can't sort of right turn the whole thing, but you can just, you can kind of pop your

00:47:56head in and be like, Oh, but what about, and then they'll get back to work.

00:47:59Yes. There are like prompts you can kind of do, um, when you generate to be like, focus

00:48:04on this topic or make this topic shorter, or, you know, I only want this amount of time

00:48:09to listen to this.

00:48:11I've got it. Okay. Okay. One thing I know you tried that I'm, I'm very curious about is,

00:48:16uh, recipes, because I think this is one thing. Audio recipes to me strike me as potentially

00:48:22a very good idea, you know, in a way that is weird. Right. Cause it's like, I use, I

00:48:26use an app that I'm like checking on my phone a hundred thousand times while I'm cooking.

00:48:31And the idea of like, just somebody in my ear sort of talking me through the process

00:48:35as I'm cooking seems very cool. Complicated, right? Like you can't make a 20 minute podcast

00:48:40that like perfectly matches everything that I'm doing, but it does seem like there's something

00:48:44to like, you could make a fun cooking show recipe by recipe that is actually kind of instructional

00:48:49if this really works. So I've like, I went from thinking this is a totally silly version

00:48:53of it to thinking maybe there's something here. What did you find?

00:48:57Yeah, I, I was real, someone on the team suggested we upload some recipes to it to see how it would

00:49:03do. And, uh, I didn't feel like it was something I could follow along with while cooking. Um, and

00:49:10also like in podcast fashion, it took like way too long to get to the point of the conversation.

00:49:17Now, let me play you a clip I got from this honey lemon chicken recipe.

00:49:21But the thing is, we're not just going to like read out the ingredients and call it a day, right?

00:49:26We're going to try to figure out why this particular approach, and it's got like a 4.7 star rating,

00:49:32by the way.

00:49:32Wow.

00:49:33Yeah. Pretty solid.

00:49:34Right. So we're going to figure out why this approach is so popular and what we can learn from

00:49:38it, even if we're not, you know, planning on cooking anytime soon.

00:49:41Absolutely. Yeah.

00:49:42I mean, what's really interesting to me is I love so much that they're like, no, no,

00:49:47no, we're not going to tell you about the recipe. You uploaded a recipe. We're not going

00:49:49to tell you about the recipe. We're going to talk about other stuff.

00:49:52Right. So eventually it does get to like what you do, what the ingredients are, but it, it

00:49:56was like, let's speak to the power of why this honey lemon chicken is so popular. And

00:50:02it's like, I don't really want to know that. I just want to get to the points. Um, there

00:50:06may be a world in the future where it's like, all right, now you're going to do this. Let

00:50:11me know when you're done and, uh, I'll get to the next thing.

00:50:13This does sort of neatly map to everything wrong with recipe sites on the internet, right?

00:50:18The thing where you, you open a recipe webpage and you're like, I would just like to see

00:50:21the recipe. And they're like, first, how about 2000 words about my life and all of my thoughts

00:50:25about honey chicken and everything that's happening to me right now. And then way down the page

00:50:30after some ads and videos, we'll get to the recipe. It's like, they're just making the

00:50:34podcast version of that. Oh my gosh. And at that, and like what I mentioned about how

00:50:39they toss to a break, like there's a, there's a world where maybe like they want to start

00:50:44monetizing these. And when you rent, uh, you generate a honey lemon chicken recipe, there's

00:50:48like, all right, let's get to a break before we get into the ingredients. And it just plays

00:50:52an ad or something like that. Yeah. That's, that's, that's super interesting. Um, did you test

00:50:58this with podcasts? Like you, I know you did YouTube videos, but like, can you put a podcast

00:51:03in here and it'll make a podcast about the podcast? Yes. Someone suggested putting like

00:51:08a four hour, four hour Joe Rogan, uh, podcast into it to generate, you know, a 20 minute

00:51:13summary. It's basically like a, it's like a meta podcast. Like I'm going to make a podcast

00:51:17about your podcast. Yes. Um, but how we did try a scenario where we uploaded pre-production

00:51:26documents from our own podcasts and made them into a podcast and compare to how we,

00:51:33made them. Oh, interesting. So, um, decoder with Neil Patel, they have like a nice pre-production

00:51:41document with questions, topics, host bios and our guest bios and, uh, a lot of relevant

00:51:47links and all that stuff. So I uploaded that to notebook LM and it generated a podcast of that

00:51:56discussion. Uh, I made one with, uh, from an episode about EVs that Neil I and, uh, Andy

00:52:04Hawkins from the verge talked about. Um, but it didn't have, it didn't, you didn't upload

00:52:09the actual finished podcast, just the pre-production documents. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to see how it

00:52:14worked compared to how we ended up making the show. Obviously you don't get enough of it

00:52:21because you don't have Neil I, you don't have Andy, but it like did a pretty, it did a pretty

00:52:27impressive job of like taking all these points and like going through them all. But it was more

00:52:33just like how you would do it if you just wanted to get the information for a research paper or

00:52:39something like that. Okay. It wasn't like going to break down these topics and what they mean.

00:52:44And like, what are these questions that unfold because of these news things? Um, much like the

00:52:50verge cast, um, we uploaded a rundown from the verge cast, which is just a, a lot of links to stuff on

00:52:58the verge. That's really interesting because that's like the, the decoder rundown you described is full

00:53:04of like information and clues and hints about what's interesting and has similar structure. Uh, the

00:53:10Friday verge cast rundown is just, I mean, it's just like a hundred links in a Google doc and that's,

00:53:14that's the entirety of the prep doc. Yes. Uh, so when you listen to that audio overview of a verge cast

00:53:21rundown, uh, you quickly learn that it cannot open hyperlinks and that it is just reading the headlines

00:53:30and making some kind of generic takes about what that means. Here's like, uh, it's experiencing the

00:53:38world. Like the way people who just scroll really fast through like their Facebook feed do. Yeah.

00:53:43Here's a clip from it, uh, about the framework laptop. And then there's framework, the laptop

00:53:49company, ah, the modular laptop books. That's them. They actually had to stop selling some of their

00:53:54more affordable laptops, experienced order delays because of the tariffs. Yeah. And even briefly raised

00:53:59and then lowered their prices because of the tariffs. It just sounds incredibly volatile for them.

00:54:04That really underscores the immediate disruption, the instability that tariffs can inject into supply

00:54:10chains and pricing strategies. Total chaos. Seems like the fact that they had to make such rapid

00:54:15adjustments reflects the real time pressures businesses are under. So you can tell like all it's

00:54:21doing is just seeing that headline in adding it to context of the world, which it does have from

00:54:28Gemini a little bit. There was another one where I asked what about a Sony Bravia TV from a headline

00:54:34and it, I actually asked it like, what is the model of that TV? And it didn't know because it wasn't in

00:54:40the headline. Okay. Yeah. That's an interesting one. Like I can even hear they're mentioning in

00:54:44there, you know, that they, they raised and then lowered the prices very quickly. And literally the

00:54:49headline we had in that document is framework raised prices and then unraised them an hour later

00:54:53because of Trump. Like, it's just, it, it said all those words in a slightly different order

00:54:58again. But again, like that, that was all right. I don't know that that was like good or thoughtful,

00:55:04but it was, it was right. You sent me a big chunk of one of these and my, my memory of listening to

00:55:11it was that there are a bunch of things that got sort of flatly wrong all for sort of understandable

00:55:17reasons, which I thought was interesting. Like at least there is absolutely, we should say potential

00:55:22for these things to just completely make things up out of absolutely nowhere. Um, and I'm curious if you

00:55:27had that experience, but at least in the one that I heard, there were a bunch of things that it just

00:55:31kind of whiffed on making connections between or made connections that are wrong and like misread a

00:55:38headline or something. But I, in every single case I could figure out where it was getting the wrong

00:55:43information from, which I thought was really interesting. And it's like, okay, this thing is

00:55:46making a lot of mistakes, but I can trace the mistakes. Most people wouldn't write, which is like why

00:55:52this is dangerous. I, I had, I had also made this podcast that it was trying to make. So like I knew the

00:55:57stuff that was talking about, um, but so there, but it does just very confidently get things wrong

00:56:03without telling you anything about sort of where it's coming from.

00:56:07Yes. Uh, I uploaded some notes from a podcast I was working on and it's had some of the people I

00:56:14talked to in the document, um, but not any quotes or anything. And when I put it in notebook alum,

00:56:20it, the audio overview is just kind of made up quotes that the people said,

00:56:24like attributed to these people. Yes. Oh my gosh. So that is just made up. Like they just made that

00:56:30up. Yeah. That's really bad. Yeah. Um, luckily it was only about salad dressing, but like you can

00:56:36imagine this could be serious. Yeah. I mean, and this is like, that's the thing with all of this

00:56:41stuff. Right. And I, and so many of these tools are like, it's, it's the, it's the glue on pizza

00:56:45in Google, right? Some of this stuff you can see where it comes from. Some of it is just being

00:56:51purely hallucinated by these tools that have been taught to have answers, even when no answers are

00:56:55available. Uh, like this is the thing. A lot of these have been through, right? Where they,

00:56:59they will go and they will, they are asked for information that they don't have. And so they will

00:57:04fabricate it. And that is the wrong outcome. But with something like this, where like it would be a

00:57:09bad version of an audio overview for it to just 10 times in 20 minutes, be like, we don't really

00:57:14know anything about that. So let's move on. And so that, that tension feels so, so real to me in a

00:57:20way that even notebook LM in general has done a good job of citing its sources pretty aggressively.

00:57:26And it'll point you to the thing it's talking about in all of the different documents. And, uh,

00:57:31it is pretty thoughtful in that way. You can't do that with audio. You just can't like you, you,

00:57:36if you are constantly like referencing the name of your source for every single thing that you say,

00:57:40that's bad podcast and it's a problem. Yeah. Um, yeah. And also in the interactive mode,

00:57:47you can try to correct the podcast host and maybe it will learn that and put it in some bank or

00:57:54something, but no, it doesn't work like that. The iPhone 16 review, they kept referring to

00:57:59Neelai as Nelly and calling him he or her and she. Okay. So Nelly Patel from the Verge reviewed this.

00:58:06Exactly. And she brings a really interesting perspective, doesn't she?

00:58:09Oh yeah. Uh huh. And I corrected it and I was like, no, actually Neelai is that's it's Neelai

00:58:14and he, and that was like, Oh, thanks for correcting me. Actually. No, it's, uh, her name's Nelly.

00:58:22And the host is Neelai Patel and his pronouns are he, him. Oh, that's an interesting question.

00:58:29You know, it's easy to make assumptions based on what we've seen and heard, but actually Nelly Patel

00:58:34uses she, her pronouns. Thanks for pointing that out. It's good to be accurate. Absolutely. Thanks for

00:58:38keeping us on our toes. So getting back to Neelai's review. Poor Neelai. Neelai, I have,

00:58:44I've known Neelai a long time and that man has had his name mispronounced every way you possibly could.

00:58:49Uh, but Nelly, she, her is, is a tough beat for, for Neelai Patel. So what, what does that make you

00:58:56think as a consumer of this stuff? I mean, I think you've now done the research to know that like,

00:59:01there is, there is something that works about this kind of thing for certain kinds of information,

00:59:06but is there that thing in your brain that's like, okay, this is giving me stereo instructions even,

00:59:11or like information about a recipe. And I don't know if I should completely trust it. And by the

00:59:15time I have to pull out my phone to fact check this podcast, what am I doing here?

00:59:18Yeah. Yeah. I think it's like low stakes stuff. I think like really, if you want to get the most

00:59:25out of notebook LM, I think it's more useful to just be typing to it and asking it questions about

00:59:29the sources. Um, the audio reviews is interesting. Like maybe it's just some people just like,

00:59:34that's the way they can learn and that's the way they want to do it. And I know, um, they're

00:59:39going to have more voices. If you get tired of those voices, there's going to be more personas,

00:59:43they call it. So I think in the future it's going to get better. Um, I, it's going to be hard to see

00:59:50like how much it is actually improving as far as accuracy goes. Yeah. I think the way I have always

00:59:57thought about AI is like, I, I treat it like I treat Wikipedia in a certain sense. And I, I actually,

01:00:04I would argue Wikipedia is in many ways a more trustworthy source. Um, but in the same sense that

01:00:09like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't take anything I read on Wikipedia and then like submit it as

01:00:15professional work or swear to it under oath or like bet my life on anything that I read on Wikipedia.

01:00:22Do you know what I mean? But it's like, in terms of going from, I don't know something about this

01:00:27to, I now kind of know something about this. It tends to work. And, and as long as the requirement

01:00:33is not that I be an expert with a hundred percent correct knowledge, fine. Right. But I'm like,

01:00:38I was, I was looking it up this morning. Uh, we were watching Mulan because my son is home from

01:00:43daycare this week and we have watched Mulan 250 times. And it was like, who is that? That's singing

01:00:48this song? That voice sounds kind of familiar. That is information that both AI and Wikipedia are

01:00:54well-equipped to have and find and give to me. And also if it's wrong, the world will not end,

01:00:59right? Like it'll be fine. And so for the stuff at the bottom of that pyramid, I'm like, go nuts.

01:01:05Listen to the audio podcast about the Mulan singer and, and enjoy the next 20 minutes of

01:01:11your life. Anything above that. I think like real skepticism becomes very important. Um,

01:01:17but it's so hard because these are like the, the thing that has amazed me. And I'm curious if this

01:01:21has been your experience too, is how quickly I came to listen to these hosts as if they were people

01:01:28like I've made a lot of podcasts. And so I'm like editing their podcast in my mind as I'm going,

01:01:32which makes me realize I'm producing this thing. Like I'm producing people. And that was sort of

01:01:37alarming.

01:01:38Yeah. After a while I do get sick of the host to be honest.

01:01:41Yeah.

01:01:41I just like, I don't, I'm sick of these people. I don't want to listen to them anymore.

01:01:45They make too many puns. There's too many metaphors. Um, let's yeah.

01:01:50What have you learned about like podcast tropes? Cause I feel like this would teach you

01:01:53every, all the bad habits that every podcaster has are like boiled into this. What have you learned

01:01:58about being a podcast producer? Yeah. Like I said, like the arms actually might do something

01:02:04might help. Um, but yeah, no, the tropes of like, let's unpack this. Um, it really speaks to the

01:02:09power of, uh, that kind of stuff is like, Oh my gosh, I can't, I'm, uh, I'm never using those

01:02:15phrases. They start like every episode by being like, let's do a deep dive. And I just now deep

01:02:21dive is like on the list of corporate jargon that I'm just like, I can't hear it without wanting

01:02:24to leap out of a window anymore. Yeah. Um, Simon, uh, Tokamine from notebook LM mentioned

01:02:30that he heard some other podcasts saying stuff that he noticed in notebook LM first, like,

01:02:36Oh, that's the million dollar question. Um, I don't know. I don't know. I think that's

01:02:41just, that's just a podcast. I don't think he gets credit for a million dollar. I don't

01:02:46think so. I think that one's been around, but like, you can see like now you're already

01:02:50like they're sounding the same, right? Totally. Yeah. And I'm, I'm going to be deep

01:02:55in my head about not sounding like notebook LM. It's like, there was that thing going

01:02:59around, uh, not that long ago where everybody was talking about the, the M dash and chat

01:03:05GPT is like the, the, the, how, you know, it's chat GPT is when there's M dashes. I'm

01:03:09like, no, I love M dashes. I wrote them dashes all the time. I write with fewer M dashes

01:03:13now. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Consciously. I'm like, I don't want to sound like chat GPT. I have

01:03:17to not use M dashes. Kind of the more we see of all this artificial

01:03:20stuff online is like the more you appreciate stuff humans make. And the more like, maybe

01:03:25we are making better stuff now because we see like how boring or uncreative AI can be.

01:03:32And like, maybe that's like, we always talk about competition on the verge cast. Like what

01:03:38if humans are now competing with AI and now humans are just going to be better because

01:03:41of what AI is. I'll, I'll take it. That's an okay outcome. That's optimistic take. I think

01:03:47the last question I keep thinking about with this is I can see it as a tool for learning things,

01:03:55right? Like in a sort of deliberate, I need to acquire this information kind of way. And I think

01:04:01the feedback we've gotten so far in the video suggests that there are people who are using it

01:04:05that way that are like, this is just a way that I absorb information better. And that's great.

01:04:08Um, but another thing podcasts are for a lot of people, it's just pure entertainment. It's just,

01:04:13it's like a fun and interesting and valuable way to spend your time hanging out with people.

01:04:19Do you see any of this ever getting there? Like, can these hosts ever be so fun to listen to that

01:04:25you don't even really care what they're talking about?

01:04:27I think the only thing is the interactive mode that really takes it another level because you

01:04:33can't call into the verge cast whenever you're listening to it and ask the hosts a question.

01:04:37Like you can do that with this. Um, you're not getting like, I don't think people are going to

01:04:43have a parasocial relationship with these two AI hosts. Um, so you, you don't get a lot of that.

01:04:48I don't know, man. The history of AI suggests that they might, we don't know,

01:04:53but there is something to that where like, I know that, uh, notebook album is developing an app

01:04:59or they're going to release an app. And that is like, if I'm on my phone and I have the app and

01:05:04I'm just listening to the podcast, I think it's just be like, Oh, Hey, can you take that again?

01:05:08Or what is that? Uh, can you explain more about this thing? That that's actually like pretty useful.

01:05:16Yeah, it makes sense. And I think I like, I want to see the version of this that is just like

01:05:20two dudes shooting the shit about sports, which is like a lot of the podcasts I listen to just to

01:05:27sort of zone out while I'm walking the dog or whatever. And in a way that kind of stuff is

01:05:31sort of replicable. We, we've, we have a lot of data of it in a certain way. It's like,

01:05:37it doesn't require all that much like true information. It's just kind of a hang and people

01:05:42are talking to the voice modes of these assistants that way. Like it both seems totally implausible

01:05:48to me that it might just be fun to listen to this for an hour, but also seems like maybe we're closer

01:05:53to that than I'm giving it credit for. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. I there's, uh, I was given an

01:05:59example that someone who really likes, um, one of the real housewives shows did not have anyone to

01:06:05talk to about it and just wanted to listen to some, two people talking about it on the podcast.

01:06:10And like, I think there's a lot of examples of like sports and stuff that just like thousands

01:06:16of podcasts that do this, but maybe something like super niche, like maybe it's like high school

01:06:23football team of your hometown or something like that. And you're just feeding all that information

01:06:27to it. And like, no one's going to be doing a podcast about that. Um, like that, that could

01:06:32be useful. Yeah. I like that idea. Super niche podcasts is, is a thing I would like to see more

01:06:38of in the world in general. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Particularly. I would prefer it more from people,

01:06:43but yeah. Yeah. I'll take what I can get. Uh, all right, Andrew, this is very fun. Thank you for

01:06:48doing this service. All right. We got to take a break and then we're going to do a question

01:06:51from the podcast outlet. Andrew. Thanks buddy. Thank you. Support for this show comes from

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01:08:01All right, we're back. Let's get to a question from the VergeCast hotline. As always, the number

01:08:05is 866-VERGE-11. You can email vergecast at theverge.com. Send us all of your thoughts and feelings

01:08:11and questions and pictures of party speakers. Statistically speaking, all of you care deeply

01:08:16about smart home things. And as always, we have smart home questions. Today is about lighting,

01:08:22and I bet you can guess who is here with me to answer it. But before we get to that, here's the

01:08:26question.

01:08:27Hello, VergeCast hotline. This is Sean in Berkeley, California. Long-time listener,

01:08:32first-time caller. Today, I'm calling about smart home lighting. We are about to embark on a garage

01:08:37remodel project, converting it to a finished room, and I'll have the opportunity to start from the

01:08:42ground up on wiring and lighting. We are an iOS HomeKit household and have primarily Philips Hue

01:08:48lighting, though recently we did add a couple of Lutron Casita smart wall switches. The garage room we

01:08:54used as a guest room, workout space, teenager, hangout. So I would like a decent white light option,

01:09:01but also fun color-changing stuff would be cool too. Also, regular old wall switches are required

01:09:06because my parents will be visiting and ask them to use an app to turn on lights as a no-go.

01:09:11So I wanted to check in about where we are in the state of lighting. Who has the best ecosystem?

01:09:16Who plays nicely with Apple HomeKit? I see all these influencers on socials with amazing lighting

01:09:21setups, and I get a little jealous. Thanks in advance. Keep up the great work. P.S. David,

01:09:27I went and bought a pair of $19 USB-C Apple EarPods just to record this voicemail on your

01:09:33recommendation. Your efforts have not been in vain. Take care.

01:09:37First of all, Sean gets it. Great job, Sean. Second of all, Jen Tui is here. Hi, Jen.

01:09:41Hello. Hello. Happy to be here.

01:09:43The first time I heard this question, I was like, oh, this is simple, and there are lots of options,

01:09:48and we can go through a bunch of them. And then listening to that again, I'm actually like,

01:09:50this is kind of a complex thing to try and do.

01:09:54Sadly, it is. You know what made it tricky? Color changing. As soon as he said that is when

01:10:03it got complicated.

01:10:04Okay. Interesting. So if you didn't want color changing-

01:10:07It would be so much easier.

01:10:08Really? Oh, okay.

01:10:09Yes.

01:10:10Well, so, all right. Well, so let's start there, because I think the sort of bones of what he's

01:10:14describing, I think, is actually a question a lot of people go through. And then the color

01:10:18changing is a wrinkle. But so let's start without the wrinkle.

01:10:20Okay.

01:10:21What would you, where's a good place to start for that?

01:10:24So, well, whenever anyone asks me a question about existing smart home setups and expanding,

01:10:30I would always start with what they have and build on that. So he said, I have Hue and Casator.

01:10:36And Lutron Casator is, I assume, what he's referring to. And those are smart switches.

01:10:41Number one rule about smart lighting is that smart light switches do not work with smart bulbs.

01:10:47And this is complicated.

01:10:49I never thought about that.

01:10:51Yeah. And this is, and I do have an article explaining this, which we can link to. But there

01:10:57are some exceptions, which I'll get into. But if you have, you cannot put a Philips Hue light bulb

01:11:01in a socket controlled by a Casator smart switch. There are, if it's just on and off, you might be okay.

01:11:09But if you have Philips Hue bulbs, you want dimming. And dimming, they go crazy. I've done it.

01:11:14And I burnt light switches. And I've blown bulbs in doing it. So it's not good. And this is the

01:11:21problem. So if he didn't want color lighting, I would just say, get some decent quality, dumb,

01:11:29I hate that word, but LED light bulbs or light fixtures and Casator smart switches, because they're rock solid,

01:11:37reliable. They work with Apple Home. That would, you could do, you can use fixtures as opposed to just bulbs.

01:11:44So you can have something nice in your guest room slash. But that room has got a lot of purposes.

01:11:50And that also makes it slightly complicated. So yeah, a nice fixture that you can control with light

01:11:56switches. Casators, great. Love them. But when you throw in color changing, and you already have

01:12:02Philips Hue, then I would definitely consider Philips Hue. Then you need to deal with a different switch

01:12:10scenario because you cannot use Casator. Interesting. You mentioned wanting a physical

01:12:14switch because you can't, don't want to have to use an app. I'm guessing that means that in-laws

01:12:20probably aren't going to use voice control either, because that would be another option. But obviously

01:12:24you always do want a physical switch. I will say for this particular setup, like you're describing a

01:12:30room with lots of different people and lots of different uses, I think requiring physical switches

01:12:35feels like the right call. Like this is just not, everyone who comes into your house should not have to

01:12:39download an app to use your lights. You should always have physical switches. I agree. And you're

01:12:45wiring it from the ground up. See, this is the other, this is the fun part for me. If I was starting a

01:12:50house, if I was building a brand new house right now, I would not wire, I would not hardwire switches

01:12:54into my house. Because everything, all smart bulbs can be controlled by wireless switches, which give you

01:13:01placement options so you can move them around if you just don't like where your light switch is.

01:13:05But that could make resale tricky. Because it's not expected. But for Philips Hue, that's an option. So

01:13:15they do have their own wireless switches that you can use. Their smart button, wall-mounted dimmer

01:13:22switches, and then their Hue tap dial switch would all control every light in the home, in the room. Plus,

01:13:28Hue has a great selection of light fixtures if you don't want to just use bulbs. Because, you know,

01:13:33especially in more modern homes, just having light bulbs isn't the way people are going. They're

01:13:38looking for nice light fixtures that add to the aesthetic of the home. And a lot of those are

01:13:44going to be LEDs, so they're permanently sealed, so you're not replacing bulbs. So that's one option,

01:13:49and you wouldn't actually need wires for that. But in terms of code or resale value, you know,

01:13:56you'd probably want to wire them up, the switches, and then you could just put the Philips Hue

01:13:59option, whether you use the dimmer switch, the smart button, or the tap switch over the wall plate.

01:14:05So in future, you could go back to wires if you wanted. I feel like I'm even seeing more and more

01:14:09people just have the existing switches for existing lights, and then just stick the Hue switch or

01:14:17whatever just on the wall right next to it, as if it's another switch. It's not like a perfect

01:14:21strategy, but it seems simple enough. It is, it is. And that would be the most straightforward.

01:14:27Would you stay in one ecosystem with Hue or Casator? But there is good news,

01:14:32and this is something that's changed somewhat recently.

01:14:34Jen, if you're about to say matter, I'm going to hang up on you.

01:14:36No.

01:14:40There is, the matter does play a part in this answer. But no, this is that there are now

01:14:46smart switches with something called smart bulb mode. So you can now buy smart switches that work

01:14:53with smart bulbs. And basically, the problem here is, if you wire up any switch to a smart bulb,

01:14:59there is going to be a point when you flip the switch off, and it's designed to cut the power to

01:15:02the bulb, and then your smart bulb doesn't work. Also, there can be power levels with dimming,

01:15:10because the whole point of dimming, what dimming actually does is just reduce the power to the bulb.

01:15:14And that's where you get into issues with Casator, because it starts flickering. That's what happened

01:15:21to my bulbs. So your smart bulbs will start flickering, and that's not fun. Anyway, so these

01:15:26new bulbs sort of trick the energy flow, and they always keep the bulb with a minimum amount of

01:15:34power. And there's a couple people that make these. One is a company called Innoveli, and they have

01:15:39they're really lovely smart switches. This is the other thing you want, probably want ones that look

01:15:44nice, because there are some cheaper ones out there. But if you want, you know, if you're building

01:15:49a new room, you're going to want some nice looking switches, they have them in different colors.

01:15:53They're really nice. They work with matter. They have thread, they're thread and thread over matter,

01:16:00which should in depending on how much I'm hopefully going to have good Wi Fi out in your garage. But

01:16:05this could help if that's going to be a problem. But they're $70 each, which is also about how much

01:16:11the Casator switches are. So smart switches are expensive. That is the big downside. And the other

01:16:16downside with Innoveli is that they always seem to be out of stock. So they may not work in this

01:16:22scenario. But this way, you could have Philips Hue bulbs and physical switches in your garage. So I

01:16:29think that could work pretty well for you if you can get these ones in stock. They are, yeah,

01:16:37I think they're sold primarily through Innoveli's website. Full disclosure, I have not tested any

01:16:43Innoveli smart switches myself. But I've always heard good things about them. They have a whole

01:16:48line. They also have Zigbee ones, Z-Wave ones. So if you have Zigbee or Z-Wave in your smart home,

01:16:54you could go with that option too. There are a couple other choices though. But this would lock

01:16:59you into an ecosystem, which, you know, you've already got two ecosystems in your home. You've

01:17:05got Casator and Hue, although they all work with Apple Home. But Acara has now really expanded its

01:17:11smart lighting options. And they have a smart switch with smart bulb mode. But they only work

01:17:17with Acara products. So you'd have to buy Acara light bulbs, Acara light strips. And they also have

01:17:23the Acara ceiling light. And they're much less expensive. We're talking like $20 or $30 instead

01:17:29of $70. So that would be one other option. There are obviously lots of great options in smart

01:17:36lighting. You mentioned YouTubers with wonderful backgrounds. I'm going to guess a lot of those

01:17:41are going to be using Nanoleaf, which would be an option here too. Works with Apple Home, works with

01:17:47Matter. They just came out with a new wireless switch, their wireless sense switch, which I've

01:17:53been testing recently. And it's really interesting. It has a lot of great features. But I hesitate for

01:18:01you to throw another brand in the mix right now. I think Hue is probably your best bet if you're going

01:18:08to go with wireless switches. But that is an option if you were thinking like, I want to move away from

01:18:13Hue. You could look at Nanoleaf. LIFX is another one. They don't have any good switch solutions

01:18:19though. It's so odd that it's taken a really long time for us to get a good solution to the smart

01:18:25bulb, smart switch conundrum. Because whilst the white lighting with smart lighting is great,

01:18:30especially when you have tunable white lighting, so you can sort of change the tone throughout the day.

01:18:35But it is fun to be able to throw in colored lighting, especially in a room that's going to maybe

01:18:40used for fun teenage activities or maybe doing some spin classes and you want some pulsing lights to

01:18:47go along with the music. If it's going to be, I think he said it was going to be a workout room,

01:18:51Sean. But yeah, I'd like to see more solutions here. And we're beginning to, but they all tend to

01:18:58stay within the same ecosystem. And this is where matter might help.

01:19:03Yeah, in theory, it is actually, this is a perfect solution for matter to exist.

01:19:09Something I have been looking for since matter came, like, how can I make, because I have

01:19:14a Frankenstein selection of smart lights and switches in my home and I cannot, it's been a

01:19:18struggle to get them all to work together. And that's where I, you know, sort of to me,

01:19:24the ultimate matter actually has worked moment will be when every light in my home can all work in

01:19:30one app. We're not there yet.

01:19:33That's the dream. How many apps is it right now?

01:19:35I don't know that I could actually count. I did just have a great experience with my

01:19:42TAPO smart switches, which is another inexpensive option you could go with. It's not,

01:19:48they're matter compatible, so it'd work with Apple Home, but they do not have the smart bulb mode.

01:19:51So you wouldn't be able to use color. It just cuts the power off. But yeah, there's a lot of

01:19:58good solutions. But for this case, I would say, probably skip Caseta, go to Philips Hue and use the

01:20:07Philips Hue smart button or more mounted dimmer switches, or these Innovelli smart mode, smart bulb

01:20:15switches. I would say go with Caseta if they had supported matter, but they don't. Lutron has not

01:20:22gotten the matter bandwagon. They're great, rock solid, as I said. But again, you know,

01:20:29for future proofing, I think I would definitely stick with products that work with matter.

01:20:36I'm definitely at that stage now.

01:20:38Yeah, I think that's the right call. And I like that's like the hue solution is

01:20:42a little less elegant, but probably a lot simpler to actually put in your house. And the

01:20:48Innovelli one is like going to be more work to get right, but then is the thing that gives you kind

01:20:53of the most seamless version of the experience you're looking for. So I think one of those two

01:20:59things is probably right. That makes sense. Yeah. And there are the run less wire switches too,

01:21:03if you've come across those, which are like kinetic switches that work with hue bulbs. Again,

01:21:08I've not used them myself, but I feel like if you're going to go with a wireless solution,

01:21:13go with hue's wireless solution because the hue system just really works well together.

01:21:18But if you do want wired, I think Innovelli could be a good option. You just may have to wait.

01:21:24I'm not sure when they're going to be back in stock. But yeah. And if you do get this all set up,

01:21:30I would love to hear a report and what it looks like and send us some pictures and tell us how it

01:21:35went. Yeah. Sean, whenever, whenever you do decide, hit us back. We want to hear it. We'll

01:21:41play it on the show and we'll, we'll judge all of your decisions. All right, Sean, I hope that helps

01:21:46Jen. Thank you as always. You're welcome. All right. That is it for the show. Thank you to everyone

01:21:51who was on this episode. And thank you as always for listening. As ever, if there are questions you

01:21:56have or thoughts or feelings, or you just want to yell at us about the fact that we just did an

01:22:01entire segment about creepy crawly things inside of your gadgets, trust me, I understand. And also

01:22:07we deserve it. Email vergecast to theverge.com. Call the hotline 866-VERGE-11 with all of your

01:22:13thoughts and questions and feelings. We love hearing all of them. This show is produced by

01:22:18Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Will Poore. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the

01:22:22Vox Media Podcast Network. Neil and I will be back on Friday to talk about all of the news that's going on.

01:22:28The antitrust stuff continues. Lots of fun new gadgets. We're getting into developer conference

01:22:32season, and there is just a lot of interesting tech news happening right now, and we're going

01:22:36to get into all of it. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

A buggy Sonos mystery | The Vergecast

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