Your next laptop could be a foldable phone

and maybe kind of smartwatches.

“I'm a friend of yours and I just got a new game for Nintendo Switch and this is a surprisingly”

big deal to me. So I'm sure I've talked about this before but my true sweet spot era of gaming growing up

was the Nintendo 64 which means I logged, you know, a million hours on Gold Nye, I played

a lot of Mario Party, I played a lot of Mario Gulf but the Nintendo 64 game for me was Mario 10s. It was the game I played against all of my friends, all of the time we would have these epic 5 set like 3 hour long matches, it was the best game ever to sort of sit next to somebody and have a conversation while you also were playing a video game because there's

a lot happening but you don't have to fully focus, I love you very much. But anyway, this new game, Mario 10s fever just came out for the Switch 2 so I immediately got it and I have to say so far it's like it's good, it's kind of a lot, these games have gotten much more complicated and gimmicky and just kind of wacky over time they're all trying to bring more stuff into it and that's frankly not for me, I like to win

“it was just tennis but this is still tennis on the Switch and I will play it presumably”

for decades, I'm very excited about that anyway, I'm going to put this away because I'm just going to get distracted otherwise today in the show we're going to do two things.

First we're going to talk to Allison Johnson about an experiment she's been doing about

whether she can actually use a folding phone as a computer. This is a thing people have been talking about forever, it's sort of the dream of big phones is that they can adapt to be other things, Allison has given it a real try, she's bought some gear, she's used the thing and she's going to tell us how it went. And Jacob Feldman, our friend from Sportico, is going to come on and catch us up on the

state of sports streaming. We have some YouTube TV news, the Super Bowl just happened, the Olympics is going on right now and it seems like a good moment to just catch up on what it means to be a sports fan in 2026 plus we have a hotline question about foldable phones which happens to be right up my alley at this moment, I'm very excited to talk about it.

All of that is coming up in just a sec but first I'm going to go win this tournament because I play with Lefty Luigi and I am unstoppable in Mario Tess. This is the Vardcast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from a Loreal group, the global beauty leader, defining the future

of beauty through science and technology, Loreal group, create the beauty that moves the world. Support for today's show comes from Dark Trace. Dark Trace is the cybersecurity defenders deserve and the one they need to defend beyond. Trace is AI cybersecurity that can stop novel threats before they become breaches. Across email, clouds, networks and more.

With the power to see across your entire attack surface, cyber defenders such as IT decision makers, CISOs, and cyber security professionals now have the ability to stop zero days before day zero. The world needs defenders, defenders need Dark Trace, visit darktrace.com/defenders for more information support for the show comes from CoreWeave.

Everywhere you look, AI is expanding what we thought was possible, and at the center of it all is CoreWeave. Medical research and diagnosis, education, complex visual effects for movies, science and technology break-throughs, CoreWeave powers AI pioneers around the world with purpose-built

tech, building what's never been built before.

“CoreWeave is the essential cloud for AI, ready for anything ready for AI.”

To learn more about how CoreWeave powers the world's best AI, go to CoreWeave.com/ready for anything. All right, we're back. Allison Johnson, first senior reviewers here, hi Allison. Hello.

Um, you have been on what I would say is one of your stranger phone adventures recently. You think that you do is just sort of ruin your life with phones in tearing degrees. And that is your job, and I love that for you. But you've been trying to figure out, recently, I would say, how to make a phone work as your computer.

And it seems like you've had some success. Uh-huh. Yeah, surprise. How was it going? Tell me the origin of this experiment.

Okay. Yeah. It's specifically a foldable experiment, um, which I can date back all the way to the, um, Samsung launching the Z Fold 7. The summer summer.

Yeah. V-song and I were in miss, you know, tin can of an auditorium. Wi-Fi on our phones was like working okay, but we couldn't get our laptops connected.

I opened it up and used the inner screen and it's just enough room to run, like, to, like,

functionally use WordPress. Um, so that was kind of a light bulb moment. Uh, I remember V came out of that, like a changed person. Yes. She watched you use Slack and WordPress in sort of a desktopy way on your foldable phone.

And she came out of it being like, I have seen the light. Yes. This is the future. She still brings it up to this day. Um, that's true.

Uh, so yeah. When I, you know, ran the gauntlet of new phones coming out over the fall and into the winter, but I, I find myself with some time to, to use whatever phone I wish right now. Um, so I came back to the Z Fold 7. People have been doing this specifically, our, our friend, Mr. Mobile, Michael Fisher.

Um, he's been evangelizing the, the foldable as a computer kind of thing for a long time now. Um, I actually called him up and I was like, what, oh, I do like give me your, your tips and tricks.

“Um, so I think I liked about your experiment though.”

And I, I might, Michael is the best. Um, and we'll link his videos. He's been doing this for a long time.

I've never been able to tell for him how sort of real a part of his computing life it actually

is. Do you know what I mean? Because I think there's a thing where, you know, we talk about decks all the time on the show, which is Samsung's sort of desktop browser all the way back like 12 years ago, what a roller was trying to do this, this thing like the idea of what if my phone was

also my computer is a very old one, but I feel like you in this experiment tried more earnestly than most, like this wasn't, this wasn't sort of a like a bit you were trying to do. Like I feel like you went after this question that I have been asking for a long time, which is basically where does my phone end in my laptop begin and you tried to sort of see

how far into laptop your phone could actually get, um, and I feel like you've got pretty far. Like it, I am.

“Were you surprised by how much you have enjoyed using a foldable phone kind of as a computer?”

Yes. And I've seen people trying it and doing it over the past few years and kind of wrote it off as like, okay, that's great for them, but you know, that's like a weirdo thing to do. To me, it's like the exact opposite of the people who bring I'm acts to Starbucks.

I mean, it's like, yes, this is technically a thing you can do, but I don't think your series. Oh, yeah. It's like, you're just being way too extra, um, but I was getting annoyed with like, you know, it's, this MacBook era I have in front of me is a very light laptop, like relatively

speaking. But once I'm leaving the house with it, and if all I need to do is get into Chrome and write something up in a Google Doc or WordPress, I'm like, why do I have this big thing? And I, you know, I was thinking about it, it kind of changes your, my, my kind of mindset, you know, if I'm leaving the house with a backpack and I've got my laptop and you know,

water bottle and snacks, I'm like, I'm on a particular kind of journey, whereas if I can outfit my phone, the thing that I was going to have anyway into a package that I can put in my purse, all of a sudden, I'm on like a totally different kind of journey. I'm like, I don't feel weird if I go run an errand afterwards or if I go pick my kid

“up, I'm like, what do I do with, you know, do I put the laptop in the trunk of the car?”

It's just, it just all exists at once. And I, yeah, I've gone pretty far with it. I'm not trying to like replace my computer at my desk, you know, crucially, but it's sort of that thing of like, when I leave the house and my needs are pretty straightforward of like, need something around Google Docs,

you know, that's basically a Chromebook. I, like, I have Chromebook. It's this phone and

it has really worked surprisingly well. That's, that is very exciting. So let's walk through the setup you've landed on. It seems like from reading your story, you picked the Z Fold 7 pretty immediately. That like, it was clear to you that this, you've been calling this purse computer. It was clear to you that this was going to be purse computer right away. What is it about the Z Fold 7 as opposed to like the pixel fold or any of the other

sort of giant screen phones out there? Yeah, it really is just the size and the weight. It is on paper. It doesn't seem that much smaller or lighter than like the pixel fold, but I, I feel the difference every, you know, day that I'm carrying it around. It feels like a normal phone. So if it feels like all upside, you know, what you get with the inner screen as opposed to like, well, I'm putting up with this, you know, kind of

heavier phone that fits weird in my pocket to, in order to get this other stuff.

you know, maybe if I go to the coffee shop today, I will experience the full magnitude of the

“phone. But in the meantime, it's going to be hard to hold and use with my thumbs. Yeah. Yeah,”

we're looking for. So in it, it's the pixel fold is fine and it does air drop now, which I enjoy. But Z Fold 7 just feels like a normal phone. It feels like all upside. So I was like,

well, I'm carrying this anyway. Why don't I, you know, the first step is a little keyboard.

And I saw Michael Fisher posting about, you know, a thing called like a travel keyboard, like a portable keyboard. I didn't know that was a thing, a category of keyboard that exists. Every imaginable keyboard rabbit hole is 100 times deeper than you can possibly imagine. This is what I've discovered is like any specific kind of keyboard you need. A exists. B, there are thousands of them. And see everyone has really strong opinions about all of them.

Oh, my God. I, I have learned very quickly not to ask like the keyboard nerds on staff, because they just keep recommending stuff that I don't understand. I'm like, no, no, no, you don't get it. Like, I want some things that folds in half. Like, our needs are different.

So yeah, I started out the first thing I ordered was this proto arc. I have them all here,

because of course I do. So it folds up about the size of, I don't know what I've compared this to. Like a notebook, but it does kind of a tri-fold thing in it unfolds into a full size, backlit keyboard, which like a number pad, and kind of realized that was overkill, and it was a little too heavy anyway. Okay, I was just about to say we've arrived at my biggest picture question here, which is the minute you buy a keyboard, haven't you completely undone the

whole problem you're trying to solve by not having your laptop? Yeah, I started to question

“the journey honestly. And I really think that part of the reason for getting this particular keyboard”

was because it came with a little like carrying case, and I was like, well, that can't be the, you know, reason why I. There's such an easy road here to actually ending up with more gear. Oh, I am a wash in gear. It's so silly. Like, they keep arriving in my husband's like, oh, God, another one of these things. Yeah, which one ended up working for you? It's kind of been like a Goldilocks journey. I got one that's like really slim and light, folds in half, it's called like

samsers. Yeah, it like it's the size of a passport, and I don't feel it in my purse when I'm carrying it. But it is a little like squarely when you put it down, it like flies around a little bit, typing on it, it's a little funny. There's a hinge right in the middle, so you kind of like are working around that. What I've landed on is this logic hack. It's called keys to go. It's a, it's an iPad keyboard basically. And it's very slim and light. It's sort of right in

“between like the other two. I had tried out. It's amazing. I think it's basically the keyboard”

I use at my desk, but made super small. I, this is so funny. I did not realize that was the one you had landed on, and I was fully prepared to tell you that no matter what you've been using, it's not as good as the logic. I have one of them lying around here somewhere. And yeah, this keyboard has no business being any good, right? Like it's not. The keys don't travel really. They're all, it's all sort of one sealed thing. So everything just feels like kind of gross and membraney,

but like 30 seconds of work. And I'm typing as fast as I do on my full-size keyboard. It is yeah, shocking. How good that keyboard is. And it basically weighs nothing in the battery less forever. I have a red one that for a long time went everywhere with me, and I love it's so nice in the, the battery. Yeah, it's not USB-C rechargeable, but you get three years of battery out of the like little coin cell batteries in there. So I'll take that. Yeah, and it's been great.

It's, it's totally the size and weight that I was looking for. I can put it in the bag that's on the back of my bike. This is a good example of of purse computer versus pocket computer, right, because the keys to go takes this out of being pocket computer. But it remains fanny pack computer or, or purse computer, or like the thing about the keys to go is like you

mentioned, am I okay just like leaving this in the car while I'm at Target? Like the answer is yes.

It's yeah, it's a tiny little like wafer of a keyboard. If you lose it, I promise it will be okay.

don't worry about it. The thing that is also I think really important for this particular use case.

Yeah, what I wonder most about this is my discovery with the keys to go in particular was that actually I realized what I wanted most was not some wild new operating system idea or like I spent less time doing the multi-tasking stuff than I expected. But I realized like what the actual utility here for me is to have my phone with a much better keyboard on which I can type much more quickly and that there was just a series of things that made it feel like I was getting more

done on that than I could just with my thumbs on my phone. It just like I could sit. I could put it

down. I could prop it up in a coffee shop and it felt like I was doing stuff more efficiently.

Yeah. But I feel like you had I don't know you tried to take it a step further. You were like how can I actually make this feel more like a desktop computer and not just like I can type faster into my phone apps. Yeah. I feel like that's where all of this starts to fall apart. It's and it definitely I have boundaries around like when I'm willing to take this out as my

“only computer. I do want to talk about those boundaries. Okay. Because I think that line is really”

complicated. Yeah. Yeah. Well and I like I have some trips coming up. Wouldn't it be nice to not

haul my MacBook around but then I start thinking about using Lightroom on Android and the whole thing

just disintegrates. Yeah. But it really is kind of the I want to leave the house. I want to be as unencumbered as possible. But I still you know there's a minimum viable product of I sit down at coffee shop. Something you know Michael Fisher and I talks about is we both have trouble writing anything meaningful on a slab style phone. It just feels like your boxed in and I'm like I can type an email but everything anything longer than that just feels like it's not working.

So having the inner screen of the foldable changes things for me. How big is the internal screen on this default seven? The inner screen is eight inches. So just big enough to run WordPress right my little blogs and it does something for my mindset and having a real keyboard and front of me

“also does the same thing and it's there's sort of two parts to this journey I think which is”

convincing myself that the phone is a computer and not a phone and the keyboard all of that has done it you know like six weeks. You tease that out for me what what is that sort of emotional difference look like? I think it is the thing where it's on a phone if I'm typing out with my thumbs you know it I'm I'm just so aware that it's a phone and something about having like keys under your fingers you're not like tapping around with your thumbs on the screen. Yeah it does it for

me it just like clicks I think. Okay I buy that. So where where has your line landed like you're you're leaving the house what what is the most complicated thing you're you're willing to sit down prop up the keyboard open up the phone and try to do. It definitely comes down to like dealing with images if I am going to be like taking photos and I need to move those onto a computer phone and manipulate them and export them like I'm sure I could do that on Android but it

makes me kind of crazy. I will do as much as like you know when when we're writing up some news

“we'll get some images supplied and you need to resize them or crop them because they're not”

quite right and all that like I'm comfortable doing that but that is like right up to the edge of like if I need to start doing background cutout things like forget it. Yeah that that seems right but it's I think yeah it seems like if you can hit the list of I'm comfortable doing basic communication stuff even if what I need to do is like right along email I can I think spread cheating is a tricky one there's going to be a lot of people who are like even an eight inch screen with a keyboard is

not enough to do spread cheating yeah I think that line is probably different for everyone to some extent but again one of the things I keep coming back to you is I think Android is part of the problem here and you you ran into this a bunch that like for our purposes we use Google Docs like for a living right like I fundamentally I I make Google Docs for my job it's essentially what I do

it just constantly yells at you to open the app and the app is garbage as I said because it's

garbage and there's just through to this ongoing frustration that I think like you mentioned it being a Chromebook the thing about a Chromebook is it is a really good browser and if you open up the Z Fold 7 and it gave you honest to God desktop Chrome I would be so much more compelled by this whole setup because it would feel simple and thoughtful and you could just open up a thing with a bunch of tabs and that would be your work system but it feels like at every turn

Android is fighting this thing that your phone is trying to let you do yeah it just drives me nuts

and you can wrestle it into a place that works but you do have to be willing to deal with the

weird edge cases where it's just funny like some stuff is just so much better on the inner screen in a Chrome tab as opposed to the app slack terrible on the you know like tablet kind of screen it just is the slack app but stretched so there's a bunch of white space that's not used but actually Richard Lawler our friend and senior news editor he was like I opened it in Chrome and it's great it's everything you want it to be you get the columns and yeah it you will inevitably like close the

phone and I'll open that tab on the outer screen and be like oh my God what is this and app for ants you

“know so you have to be willing to like fuss with things a little bit but when I'm sitting down”

at the coffee shop to work you know I I get situated I get slack going in a Chrome tab and what

trips me up and it always trip me up on a Chromebook is the switching profiles like

my phone is you know kind of default assigned to my personal Gmail and Google account I have the work Google account on there but Chrome is constantly trying to like shove it to the back seat like no no no you don't you don't belong here like every time I open a new tab it's my personal you know go on and all the things tied to that and like no I went the work profile and you have to kind of keep doing that but for me I can get to a place like without too much trouble or I can sit down I have my

little blog I I put up with the Google Docs app because I cannot get it to run the desktop version of Google Docs in a Chrome tab even though it's all made by the same company I am convinced that no one at Google has two Google accounts somehow they because this is this has been a problem for 20 freaking years and somehow nobody understands how to just make it work with multiple Google accounts and also I don't think anyone at Google uses a web browser

“I I'm dead series this is the it's the only thing I can man everybody is just like desktop”

apps are great and and we don't need web tabs and I'm like have you what if what if we opened up Google Docs would not be cool on our phones and they're like why would you ever do that I don't even say but back to your sort of is this a computer is this a phone question like when you when you sit down and you're sort of in the flow state of your your personal computer life what does the screen look like are you are you in a are you in a one app at a time thing and you're

sort of flipping back and forth are you tiling as many apps as you can fit on this eight-inch screen because that's kind of what you would do on a laptop like how does it how does it end up after you've been doing this for an hour I am usually kind of like one app gets most of the screen and that's Google Docs and then off to the side I'll have like Chrome with whatever I'm referencing or I'm looking up I had the pixel the Google pixel recorder you know I had a transcript

and recording that I was referencing kind of back and forth it gets a little hinky because

“Google Docs app will constantly like you you have to like tap into it and then you're actively typing”

and writing it's not as seamless as if you're just kind of like tapping back and forth on a desktop you can you can open like so many tabs on a little windows on the Samsung in particular I find that like I can just as easily you know have my two apps set up swap over to Spotify

something quickly like pause or turn the volume down okay so that's that's like slightly chaotic

“which feels sort of manageable and I feel like I'm looking at my computer right now I'm sitting”

in front of a 27 inch screen and I have four windows open including the one that we're recording into right now and that's like that's probably one more than you would do on Perse computer but like you could split screen and eight inch screen fairly functionally and Android does allow for that more or less yeah and and Samsung is very like you can make each window as big or as small as you want to it doesn't matter if it looks like garbage or like yeah go for it it's

so nice of you Samsung yeah yeah I appreciate it yeah so what what about the software in particular would work better for you like have you do you have a wish list coming out of this experiment that you're like if only I had X, Y, or Z this thing would be totally doable I want every company to remember that they have an Android app into fix the bugs in their Android app because it's just like I know all these developers are running around with iPhones

and they're like oh something is horribly broken on the Android so first things first fix your

“Android apps second I think the profile thing is really the only thing that I get tripped up on”

over and over and I'm kind of like this like it could just be better you know I know how I have it working on my laptop you know the two profiles coexist reasonably well on on my MacBook so those would be my two things I think okay I think that's a good one and I think I've actually been thinking a lot about the app thing from a different direction I've been using this Razor Ultra for the last one and I'm actually I find myself more and more convinced that I'm right that flip

phones are the correct form factor and should be the future for everybody so congrats to me but there is this thing about even even the apps that are best designed and there are some very good Android apps out there like a thing that is true is that iOS apps are better than Android apps like it's just just just a fact but there are some very good Android apps out there but none of them have done the work required to work on a bunch of different screen sizes right

and this is like the promise of Android is that Android can be functional all the way up to the size of a TV and all the way down to the size of like a watch like this this is the thing we're supposed to do and there is nothing in these apps that works properly on anything other than like a six point something inch candy bar screen it doesn't work on the smaller screen this stuff doesn't work great on the bigger screens like my guess would be the z-fold experience probably works best

in some ways when you have two apps side by side because they are essentially phone apps like you get something that looks and feels sort of like a vertical oriented phone app side by side and that that in many ways is actually how these things are intended to be looked at and there's like Android is so desperate to be versatile but just hasn't quite finished doing the work and all the developers haven't quite finished doing the work of life you want the phone to be all of these

things and to be able to do all of these things and and sort of satisfy all of these different use cases and technically speaking Android is so close to that and so much closer than anything else is out there but there's just all of these tiny little design quirks and the fact that everybody

“wants to push you to mobile apps because that's what the ecosystem is and all of this stuff that's”

like we we've talked a lot about aluminium this this like long Google project to unify these things that it's like if Google can actually start to put some of these pieces together like they will solve per computer like this is the thing they want to make work which I find very exciting and every time I use it I am just less and less convinced that everybody who is going to need to be on board to pull this off is going to be anytime soon yeah it's frustrating because like the hardware

exists like I have there is so much more like horsepower in this Z Fold 7 than like the Chromebook I bought five years ago you know it has you know like an insanely good

Wi-Fi and cellular chip like so many problems like hardware problems are solved there's a million

tiny keyboards you know like it's all here but then you kind of get let down by the software and you're like oh this is where the limitations are and it feels like yeah could it just could be so much better yeah all right so real talk before I let you go here your hypothetical situation

sometimes work happens we always exist in a phase of I might have to work soon um it's it's a delay

“everybody shouldn't do that but you're you're going away just for a couple of days”

are you comfortable enough that that first computer the the Z Fold 7 can do it that you're going to leave your laptop at home yes yeah I really am I am bringing first computer I'm bringing my little logitech keys to go love it I have had enough success being in WordPress and getting everything I need to do done that it feels like this is the minimum viable product I'm not going to run into some weird edge case where I'm like oh god now I need to

slack somebody to do something for me or like upload an image or something like embarrassing

it it covers all of those basic use cases for our jobs that I'm I'm totally happy and

only like 5% unsure what do you do with the fact that this thing is going to be super destructive

“to your battery like we we all kind of baby our phones anyway and you're saying I'm going to do”

more aggressive stuff for hours with the screen on even more like are are you just killing your phone by one PM every day now no not quite I am I would not trust it as like a full day you know I'm going to write the bus downtown and use my phone and sit at a we work and write blogs for five hours phone the phone would absolutely be dead for those kind of one to two hours stints in the middle of the day at the coffee shop I'm finding it's fine I get to the end of the

day like in the in the alarmingly low percentages of battery but it's okay for those little short stints anything longer than that I would definitely plan to have like some recharging time or a battery or something like that okay the version of this experiment that personally I'm very excited to try is the the I had it's a three hour train ride from DC to New York can I can I purse computer through the whole train ride which is like I very rarely have like serious business to

do but it's it's a perfect time to catch up on emails and get some reading done and watch a show and whatever and and that is in theory the thing this is perfectly set up to do for me really well without me even needing to bring a bag on the train which would just be glorious there you go that's the dream like this idea all right well I'm going to do it I'm coming in New York and like two weeks I'm going to keep you posted it's it's going to be unbelievable all right I want to hear all about it

good all right Allison thank you as always next time we're going to do this from your phone and

it's going to be awful and we're going to have a whole different conversation but I'm ready to look at we're going to take a break thank you Allison we'll be right back support for the show comes from framer your website sets the tone for your brand and it's the face of your company so if you struggle to make small changes and simple updates you're leaving

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those what ifs into which Shopify today you could sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com/vergecast go to Shopify.com/vergecast that's Shopify.com/vergecast welcome back one of the most interesting pieces of news to me over the last couple of weeks was a new set of packages from youtube tv that tried to kind of split out different parts of what you might want to watch on youtube tv and the funniest thing to me was that there is a sports

focused package right so the idea is you don't want everything you just mostly want sports and the sports package is like 80% as expensive as the whole package so this really just is the state of sports streaming sports rules television particularly live television and most of the

money and most of the resources and most of the viewership in tv in live events period

goes to sports. So I figured now was a good moment to catch up on where we are in the state of live sports and streaming. Jacob Feldman who is a reporter at sportico keeps up on this and covers it tons all the time and he was on a show last year to explain where we were with ESPN and a lot of these changes going on with how the sports industry is morphing itself for a streaming universe. So I invited Jacob to come back and talk about the Super Bowl and the Olympics and what's going on

“with youtube tv and ESPN which I honestly forgot launched a streaming thing we got a lot to catch”

up on. Let's get it to it. Jacob Feldman welcome back to the virtual test. Oh it's a pleasure to be here. This is like an annual tradition where I watch a bunch of sports and I get really annoyed at how hard it is to watch sports and then I bring you on to talk about watching sports. Sports streaming therapists is kind of my title in many ways and so it's an honor to do it. This sounds right. So I have a bunch of things I want to kind of jump around and

then I want to talk through a bit of a PC wrote kind of about the these sort of big wars in sports streaming coming this year. But I want to start with the winter Olympics for anyone who can't see you're wearing a USA curling jacket which just hopelessly biases you forever in this whole thing. Have you been watching the winter Olympics? I have been and we can get into this. Obviously the winter Olympics overlap to the Super Bowl this year so I was out and Sam just go last week

or two weeks ago, depending on when you're listening to this and so I missed the beginning but I've been catching up and watching morning midday and night. What have you made of it as a as a sports business reporter thinking about like the streaming of it all? Yeah the streaming of

“it all is amazing. I think as a fan I think they finally figured this out and we can talk about the”

progression here because for a long time the Olympics were one of the most frustrating sports to watch you had it on for three hours each night. They were kind of spending most of the time talking about family back stories which are great if you're into family back stories but if you're into curling not so great. I think there was a lot of stuff that had already happened that you already knew all of the results of that they weren't showing enough of. So it was just like it for the longest time

the Olympics sort of satisfied nobody. Exactly. It drove me crazy but it does if it feels now like peacock in particular was just like what you want to Olympics? Here's all of it. Here's the Olympics. We have 400 streams going at any given time and honestly it's exactly what I want to. Yes and if you want multi-view they have that. If you want curling only multi-view they have that this year. If you want red zone of Scott Hanson they have that. It has really been a huge run adventure in

the best kind of way. It does seem like the biggest technical innovation at least the one that has sort of blown the most people's minds is the drones. I feel like the drones are suddenly everywhere. They have absolutely made some of the coolest shots I've ever seen in the Olympics. There's one for the downhill skiing that it would just sort of fly up behind them and follow them for

this worrying sound that I now associate with the winter Olympics. What have you made of the drones? Yes, the worrying Olympics and I have heard from some producers glass and about this too. Some people think this might be a solved problem and maybe even by the end of the Olympics they'll have figured out the right setting in terms of the audio to cut that out. The drones have been

“one of the biggest surprises and delights of this Olympics. I think it's probably, I'm curious”

you're perspective on this and someone from the tech side. You guys have seen these drones develop and then also on the sports side every four years. They can go that fast so that's small. The cameras are that good. It's kind of like when you jump four generations of iPhones all a sudden it's like, "Oh, okay. These guys actually can fit in. They don't distract from the broadcast. They might have four or eight years ago." Yeah, it is really fun to watch that progression

because there was this moment, I don't know, five, eight years ago, that there was this thought that drones were going to become sort of a real consumer product that you would have a drone and I would have a drone. Sure, everyone needs one for a Christmas. Yeah, and we would just play with our drones and that has not really panned out for the FAA. I got involved, I think, and they're still still a little too expensive and they're still a little bit fragile. So there's like a lot of

reasons it didn't quite hit the mainstream that way. But as a professional tool, we just continue

to unlock incredible new things that drones can do and I've had the same experience that it's like

every time I'm around some sporting event or another, they're all over F1 now to these drones. That are like, they're just, they're opening up new ways to watch all kinds of things in ways that I find just unbelievable exciting. Even as somebody who just absolutely does not care about drones,

“as a product. I think there's such a cool camera thing. Yeah, the cool things I think will get to”

the point where it's just a cool shot, right? We can talk lots about the technology and yeah, they're coming to NASCAR this year in a big way, baseball, using them. One of my favorite little details about the Olympic drones is that in a few cases, it's actually ex Olympic athletes piloting the drones. So one of the big concerns was, are these going to get in the way of the athletes? Are they going to crash? Is there other going to be injuries? And so this was a

multi-year process to get all the various sporting bodies on board, eventually get the athletes on board. One of the things that helped us get these are, I think it's the ski jumping and maybe one other where these are extreme sport athletes who were the core during market. And so a lot of them after their playing days are over, have moved into the drone piloting world. And bring, I think, that expertise of, you know, here's actually how we should be using these drones.

Here's the coolest shot. Here's how to get people at home a sense of what it's like to jump out for in these mountains. That's so cool. I mean, that's kind of an extension of the sort of athlete

to sports photographer pipeline, which is something I always enjoy. The Randy Johnson's of the

world who are like, I know what's happening. I know what it looks like. I know where it is, and so I can get different sorts of shots because I just understand the game differently. I loved that. And especially with extremes, sports athletes, I was going to be like, oh wow, impressive that they're, this could have flying drones, but they're probably all learning how to fly drones anyway, because if you're hell of skiing, you probably have a drone with you.

Right. Right. Exactly. That's awesome. So real quick, I'm curious also about the Super Bowl. You were there. It sounds like as a viewer, the Super Bowl was pretty

“uninteresting this year. And I mean, uninteresting in the best way, right? Like there were no streaming”

issues. There were no, it wasn't like, oh, it's on two B. How do I download two B? It just like what is the Super Bowl? Yeah. Did you notice anything different this year? No, I think that's right. And it's interesting last year it was on two B. S. You mentioned, which is free. And so the other was no free streaming option, but it didn't seem like there was any uproar. I think people still accept that if it's on a broadcast network that you can get with an antenna, they're not too

upset. And so yes, the streaming option was peacock. Peacock, as we mentioned, has grown a lot over the last four years. It's the last time they had a Super Bowl. I think it seemed to hold up well, you know, who YouTube TV, all those companies now at this point can handle the scale of the Super Bowl. And as you mentioned, it just, it, it, it's become standard for them to broadcast these massive events. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about some of these streamers, because I think we're

running around really interesting moment of change for a bunch of different streaming services. And almost all of it is centered around sports in some meaning way. But let's start with YouTube TV, which just announced a bunch of new packages. There's the sports plan. There's the sports and news plan. There's the news and entertainment and family plan. They're trying to sort of slim down the bundle a little bit to make it a little less expensive for people. Yeah. But the most interesting

thing to me here is basically, there's YouTube TV, which is all the channels. And then there's YouTube TV, which is just the sports channels. And boy, is it almost as expensive as the, so watching these things, you've been covering YouTube TV for a long time. I think YouTube TV is the closest thing we have to like a real success of a cable replacement, I think. What, what stuck

out in these new plans to you? Yeah. I think taking a step back, this is what YouTube TV always wanted

you remember, like, low cast and area, and some of these, like, free streaming, legally dubious

services. Yeah. I don't remember exactly how that shook out in the courts, but they no longer

“exist. Not well for ever since. Yeah. Yeah. But point being, I think YouTube TV kind of thought”

about that model too. Like, you know, we're YouTube, we're a free streaming service. There's anyway, we could ingest these local channels and give people a package of TV on top of YouTube. That didn't work out because as a, as low cast in area, these, these programmers, the channel owners wanted you, if you're going to show Fox, you also needed to show Fox news and Fox business and Fox sports that their bundling is all together. You had to buy them all

essentially. And YouTube said, okay, we'll do that. We'll put together this big base plan. And then YouTube TV got big enough where they're like, actually, what we want to do is offer a sports plan. And if you're not going to go along with that, we're going to go, you know, we'll offer it without you, essentially. So there was the big Disney dispute last year. So this was all part of this. Yes, exactly. Interesting. Okay. Yes. So even before the Disney one, there was a

renegotiation with Paramount, which on CBS, with NBC Universal, I think Fox as well. And so they have a new set of deals that allow them to offer these bundles. And, and the sports one is particularly interesting because it separates sports and news for the first time. Basically, you can get TNT without CNN, which, which normally come together, you can get Fox sports with

that Fox news, which almost always come together. But as you mentioned, it's not that much cheaper.

“I think it's $55 of your new user, which is a pretty good deal. $65 if you're not a new user.”

And, you know, I think that'll be most people, which is $18, $17 less than what's called the main plan now. You'd see what you call the base plan, but it's kind of confusing because now base is the most expensive. So some education to be done there. But I mean, in my world every sports fan that subscribes you to TV is like, okay, great. $15 less. I'm not losing that much, signing up. And I do think the timing of this is really notable as well. They launched this or they

announced us the day after the Super Bowl. As you know, YouTube TV is most popular during the football season. They have Sunday ticket, obviously, it's a big part of that. And turn rates are the highest in February. Everyone cancels or down sizes. And so I think this is YouTube TV's effort to say stick around with the spring and get all of March madness on this slightly cheaper bundling, get all the world cup in the summer on the slightly cheaper bundle. And then football season will

be here before you know it. That to me, I think is what will be successful. They can flatten that churn a little bit in between football seasons. Yeah. Well, and I think that reaction you described where a bunch of people just immediately go, oh, great. This is all I'm here for anyway. And now it's $17 cheaper is I think a really telling one. And to me, it feels like what I can't decide is if YouTube is in a particularly good position of leverage where it is the one that is the most

successful. It's also YouTube. It's also Google. Like it just doesn't need to play the games that everybody else needs to play. So it can afford to basically sit back and be like, listen,

here's what we're going to do. Either get on board or don't. We don't really care all that much.

And I think that the dispute with Disney pretty clearly proved that YouTube has more leverage than its content providers at this particular moment. But what I wonder is is this just YouTube or is this the beginning of a sea change that's like actually what's about to happen is we are all just going to recognize that cable is sports and sports is cable. And in 12 months, that's all it's going to be. Yes, I think it's both. So YouTube TV is not the first of these products to

come out with a sports specific bundle. Sure. Fubo did it six months ago. Direct TV did it a year ago.

“No sense of Fubo, but I don't think that's going to move the needle quite the way you should”

direct. But the point thing is it's not a new idea. I think for a long time these companies have looked people are signing up for sports. How do we maximize and make the cheapest we can with the most sports that we can? I think that has been the direction for a long time, really probably since the launch of Netflix and since the destruction of the cable, the slow death of the cable bundle, which are both started 10, 15 years ago. And then yeah, I think YouTube

size is what allows it to pull this off it in a big way and allows it to charge $65 in still-based successful. And I do think we're going to see my senses and other part of these negotiations from last year are going to be more integrations between YouTube.com and YouTube TV. I'm sure you have this experience too when you talk to those folks. There's YouTube on TV, which is the YouTube app on the TV. And then there's YouTube TV on the TV, which are still two different apps. And

they'll explain to you why people love that. I will tell you that that's confusing. They're wrong about that fact. And not only that, those two apps seem to have no idea that the other ones exist. The thing I keep asking people at YouTube is like, you understand that people who watch NFL games might be interested in NFL content on YouTube. And every single time they're like, oh, that's such an interesting point. And like how it's like, have a meeting guys. This is

that he's on his journey on your other app. But yeah, they'll tell you, it's actually, yeah, whatever,

“we'll hold another conversation. But point being, I think those are going to get closer together”

now that they have some more flexibility in that. And I do think YouTube, as you guys have written about is dominating TV viewing time, both apps included increasingly in recent months. And this is only going to accelerate now that they have some flexibility both in Tyler selling it and also how they're distributing some of this content. Yeah, that's interesting. It's, we've been tracking

this change for YouTube for so long from kind of, you know, video platform to hugely powerful

cultural influence. But that everybody still thinks of as cat video platform, right? Like the sort of in the in the business in particular, the idea of what YouTube was was so far behind what YouTube actually was for so long. And I really go to the last two years, really, that has caught up. And now everybody who needs to know from like the CEO of Disney to advertisers, to users, understands that YouTube is this like unparalleled cultural power. And I wondered if this is the

year it starts to flex that power on a lot of different fronts like you're describing.

“That all of a sudden in the way that I think back to like Steve Jobs basically going to AT&T”

with the iPhone would be like, you will you will either play our game or we will walk away.

I have all of the power in this relationship. Like that's a game YouTube is sort of uniquely

positioned to start to play on a lot of different fronts if it wants to. And it'll be interesting to see how hard it tries to push. Yeah, I think before he said sports is cable and cable is supposed to think increasingly YouTube is TV and TV as YouTube for 100%. Yeah, I totally agree. The other company sort of sitting there next to this and this is the one we talked about a lot last year is ESPN. When you came on last year, one of the things you talked about a bunch was this

looming launch of ESPN as a streaming platform. They were going to just launch the channels. You could just stream ESPN, the channels ESPN was doing where to watch. It had this big idea of we want to be the destination for all sports everywhere all the time. I was preparing to do this conversation with you and I literally just straight up forgot that ESPN actually did launch that. I'm sure it exists in the world and I'm sure people like it. It is just non-part of this

conversation in the same way. Where is ESPN? ESPN did make this big deal the NFL to just close that brings a lot of NFL stuff to ESPN. Where is ESPN in this journey to be like the sports platform for all sports things everywhere? Is it working? It is complicated. So ESPN, as you mentioned, wants to be the destination. When you think sports, they want you to think ESPN. The challenge for them is that right now, all of their money still comes from the cable bundle. So they don't want

you to get rid of the cable bundle. So they are trying to walk this middle path. Which included launching a service last year called ESPN, but also sometimes called ESPN Unlimited, that is free if you have cable, but otherwise is $30 a month. That includes everything. There's also ESPN select and plus if you just want a little bit less of things and increasing with less and less, but they're going to try to get you to Unlimited. Then they're also going to bring in MLBTV.

And that's going to cost extra. It's going to cost a little less if you have ESPN Unlimited, which is free if you have some cable doesn't it currently include YouTube TV, but will by the end of the year. It's a big mess. It's a big trouble. You just were able to do that coherently off the top of your head is the most impressive thing anyone has done in this podcast. It's terrifying and fortunate. I go to bed and wake up every morning being like, what is ESPN Unlimited again?

What is it today? You're the guy with like drawing the lines on the white board, being like, here's how all of this makes sense. Or doesn't. People with people in the office give me a hard time for saying I've just become customer support. At this point for ESPN and

MLB and then who else? Here's what you need. Here's why you don't have access to this. Here's what

channel it's on. Maybe one day that will end, but for now ESPN is going to be a good job of explaining what they have going on. So in the long run, I think they'd like to get to the point where again, they are the front door and you can buy other services from them. You pay them monthly, but getting there is it's very complicated. And has upset a lot of sports fans over the last six months, both in terms of the confusion of what do I have access to? Why

do I not have access to it? And also the cost of $30 a month is a lot for a streaming service, especially when it doesn't include everything that you might expect to might. Yeah. Does ESPN have moves coming this year? Do you think like is this NFL deal a big one?

“I think it's smaller than some people might think. So again, you have to get into the details here.”

For instance, they are getting NFL network, which means that they are getting seven more NFL games. I think that's the biggest deal. So they'll have more games. As part of the deal, they're giving back four games to the NFL. So they really only getting three more games. They're getting the

So red zone's not going to be included in ESPN, not going to be included in ESPN unlimited,

but there are some tie-ins there. And again, it's a little more complicated than ESPN also in owns the NFL. It's not going to be as straightforward as you might think. But it does help a little bit. This MLB TV deal is going to be a big deal. I think next year, more so than this year, I think they're still getting up to speeding from what the integration is. This year, you're still going to be able to watch in the MLB app or in the ESPN app. I think they'd like to

get you to point where it's all in the ESPN app if they can get all of the various authentications and configurations and bundles with local deals and team-obles has a benefit that doesn't expire until 2020. And again, you very quickly go down the wormhole of rights deals that make this all much more complicated. But ESPN is slowly working its way towards a more simple structure.

Slowly, but surely. And part of the challenge is, I think, again, I was looking at some of these other

deals going on right now. And Amazon continues to a have all the money in the world and be invest pretty heavily in sports. In such a way that I kind of think, I don't know, I took Amazon only like half seriously as a sport player for a long time that it was like it seemed to have you to have football and you can see why it would be useful to have football and maybe that would be enough. But it seems like Amazon is really interested in being one of the main sports networks

in the world. Is that what you're reading to? Yes. And it's even bigger than that because Amazon is really interested in being your TV app. And so in a very different way than YouTube TV, it's very different models. So YouTube TV's model is you pay usually to be a $65 a month. You get every channel you would need to watch sports. Amazon's model is, okay, actually on YouTube TV,

you're not going to get Thursday night football because we have that. You're not going to get a lot

of MBA because we have that. So you're already coming to the Amazon. And while you're coming here, you might as well buy P-cock from us. You might as well buy a paramount from us. Hopefully one day ESPN will allow you to buy ESPN from us. And we'll bundle it all together. We'll give you one interface with all of your sports. And it's also a big deal for a lot of sports fans who maybe are not as technically proficient that maybe they have an Amazon fire stick. They have an Amazon

“remote. There's an Amazon button on the remote. I hear from a lot of people that that's how they”

watch sports is they click the Amazon button and they see what's there. And so Amazon, I think has a much bigger ambitions than just being a channel or network. I think they want to be the place. You go to just like all the other apps that we've talked about. Right. But Amazon can do that without needing sort of exclusive rights everywhere, which is a really interesting play that it has that is going to be hard for anyone else to do. They need just enough exclusive rights to

become the default place where they then have everything else. And this is why it all is all so fragmented. And we haven't mentioned Netflix. They have a somewhat similar model. Increasingly YouTube had an exclusive game. So all these companies want to be the place where they can offer everything. And as we're told, everyone has a very small slice of the pie. Right. But it does seem like the way that race shakes out to me as it seems like the future is there's sort of one of

two futures that's going to happen. Right. Either we get to a point where every sport has one

“provider. And you have to go to lots of providers for different sports. But like in the way that Apple”

is just doing F1 and the MLS. Right. But eventually, everybody has, they're all sort of stratified that way. Or you get to the point where it is so impossibly dispersed, which is like what the NFL is, right? I mean, it's trying to know where all the NFL games are is insane. No one should be required to have to do that. Just be. I'm the only one who has to do that. No one else has to know. Correct. That's why we bring you here, everyone. Right. But then the race is to be, okay,

how do I become the the gateway to all of that? The hub. Right. And this is we've been talking about this with streaming in general for the longest time. That was like Apple TV is desperate to be the search engine for all of your other streaming numbers. And that stuff has been messy over time for a variety of reasons. But it does feel like the race to do that for sports in particular is it's getting really hot as this stuff gets so much more dispersed than for Amazon to say,

okay, you're coming here anyway. Like sure, we'll send you to the ESPN app for the ESPN stuff, but you're going to find it through the prime video app. That's a source of power that I think all of these companies are now after even when they can't win the rights with all of the money in the known universe. Yeah. And as you guys talk a lot, a big part of that is, okay, if you buy

“ESPN through us, we're going to get 30% of that on and on and on. And that's how you make them”

make where for a financial perspective. Yeah. You mentioned Netflix, which is obviously a fascinating and unknowable player in this. The other thing that's going on right now is Netflix is trying to by word of others, which is another player, a long time player in the sports world. What do you make of that deal? If let's say that goes through. Sure. Just purely empathetically, it seems I would say Occam's Razor says that deal will eventually close. Does that change the sports streaming world in any meaningful way?

Brothers already spun off Discovery, which included TNT sports in the US. And it's actually more complicated in Europe and we don't have time to get into the Euro Sport and Discovery in Warner Bros.

“So we'll stick in the US. Okay. And so I think basically the only sports that Warner Brothers have”

is like hard knocks. Things that are on HBO, essentially. Whereas the things that are on TNT like NHL and college sports, those are still streaming in the HBO Max app. It's unclear how long that will continue. But wouldn't be owned by Netflix. But I think it goes back to the larger point of Netflix by Warner Brothers in theory. And suddenly it becomes a much bigger player. And all the sudden more sports are going to want to gravitate to where people are watching. And we can talk about the

podcast part of this too. I mean Netflix really wants to be a place where people are coming for sports content. I think they realized which drivers survive, you know, kind of woke them up to sports fans, you know, that pretty serious. They'll pay to watch this stuff. And it's gone on and all the way to point of Christmas games and a fellow and World Cup coming women's World Cup next year. I think what it's an ex-big test. Yeah, the women's World Cup one is going to be really

interesting. Because the question I was about to ask you is it is very telling to me that we continue to bring up drive to survive as the example. That show is old now. It's been around a while. It is falling off a bunch. Like I love F1 and I don't watch drive to survive. Like it's you.

Right. But there was that that phenomenon of the first like two seasons was really something.

And it doesn't it feels like Netflix has spent a lot of time trying to repeat that. And I'm not sure it quite has. It did for one evening. What was that? Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson. No. Yeah. Fair enough. Okay. Okay. That's right. Yeah. So they did drive survive as you mentioned. It blew up bigger than anybody can have expected. They did about 12 different other versions of drives life for golf and baseball antennas. The telescope is pretty good. They can't do it so fast,

but I really liked the tennis one. Tennis one didn't go over huge. Yeah, with the audience.

“The golf, I think, was the one that has done the best baseball was one and done. And so yeah.”

And then they slowly pivoted to life. And they had some really weird stuff early on. They had a golf tournament featuring F1 drivers. They did a tennis exhibition match. This Jake Paul Mike Tyson thing that's, if you believe Netflix is numbers like the most viewed sporting events outside the sea revolve this decade. And that is letting say, oh, like live events. We can do that. So they've done more boxing. I don't know if you watched Skyscriper live.

It. I would argue that a sports. Hero of mine. Yes. Yeah. Like on the guy who gets like sweaty palms watching YouTube videos of people at the top of building. So watching this happen live was like an actively stressful experience. Yes.

And I think. But it was amazing. The announcers seem to be stressed too. I think everybody didn't

really know what they signed up for until they got going. Like, oh, he's actually just there's no that. It's just a guy climbing up building. Okay. Okay. Cool. Yeah. I could start raining and

“he's just up there. Okay. So anyway, point being, I think that sports is part of their”

larger life events push. And I think they're going to try to get more. It's going to be really interesting to see. So the NFL is really negotiating its right packages starting basically now. And there's a big question of whether Netflix is going to go all in. Are they going to try to get Sunday night football or Monday night football? Is the Amazon going to try to get even more? Is the Amazon going to try to get a Super Bowl? Is the NFL going to give them a Super Bowl?

Is YouTube going to do a lot more? And they've only had one game today or are the existing players CBS Fox NBC and in the SPN going to say, we really need football. We can't give any more up. And the streamers say, okay, well, we'll pick up everything else. You know, we'll take the world cup that you can no longer afford because you're spending all your money in the NFL. We'll take the world series. We'll take college football. We'll take March madness. So that is

going to be the next big shake. I think it's going to be one of those two things. And this next NFL writes like, we'll really determine how important the streamers want to play a role in broadcasting football. So you bring up one of the last things I wanted to ask you about, which is it seems like we've been talking for years about this, this looming change, where if these unbelievably rich tech companies decided they wanted to win its sports, they just could. They just outbait everybody.

And there are questions on all sides, right? It was like, okay, well, does the NFL want to lose broadcast because it has these huge audiences, even in exchange for more money. So the back and forth has been really complicated, but it does feel like going back over a lot of this, that change, if it hasn't already happened is like in the middle of happening right now, that like

you, the first companies you just named as the most interesting players for the NFL, all tech companies.

And then we lump all the other ones under the traditional players, which is like the first faint, very imaginable. So what is your read of that dynamic right now? Like this has this great shift to tech money and streaming happened, or are we still in this kind of diverse diffuse space

between the streamers and the traditional channels. And those channels have streaming networks

that's a little more complicated than that, but that was the basic idea. Where are you going to watch this stuff? You know, watch it via a cable bundle or you're going to watch it, direct to consumer via one of these streaming apps. And the streaming apps largely won. I mean, there is still stuff the biggest events are still on broadcast TV, but for the most part when you think of entertainment, you think you're going to have Netflix and prime video and you know, you look at the Emmys or what

“have you. So the battle now is between the streamers, right? And that's what has really changed.”

Is it used to be, you know, am I going to bring this from put this on TV or put this on streaming? And now the question is, am I going to put this on Netflix or am I going to put this on Amazon? And I think that is where it's going to really interesting to see different priorities emerge between what is Netflix want to do versus what is Amazon want to do versus what is YouTube want to do rather than it's just making more sense on streaming or TV. Got it. Okay. All right. So I'm going to

give you three events coming up soon. Okay. And you're going to tell me which one is the one your most looking at is like a moment in this transition. The beginning of the formula one season, exclusively on Apple TV, March Madness being March Madness. I think it's like that's the next big moment on the sports calendar. Yeah. And the masters, which also is is moving. I think to Prime Video, right? There's a couple hours on Prime Video, moving very slowly, little masters.

Yeah, fully Amazon made a big deal out of that. It's just a couple. I believe it's like Thursday, 12 to two. Don't quote me exactly on that, but it's something like that. Yeah, early rather than I'm guessing the masters is not going to win this game that we're playing here. But of those three, which do you think is the most sort of meaningful next moment in this sports calendar for streaming staff? Well March Madness is the most interesting property because of who owns it and we've already

mentioned them several times. So TNT March Madness is a weird event and that it's split between CBS and TNT and the final alternates between these two. These are two companies that theoretically are competitors, but because CBS didn't have a big cable presence and because TNT didn't have a big broadcast presence teamed up for this kind of unlikely alliance to broadcast March Madness. And those are two companies, Paramounts and Warner Brothers, but now TNT has spun out that have been talking about

buying each other in different ways and emerging in different ways and both trying to figure out

“what TV sports looks like in an instrument world. So if you want to watch all of the games,”

you need a cable bundle, right? They're not all going to even want app. And if you have a cable bundle, then you can, I think authenticate into the March Madness Live app and watch it there. Again, it gets very technical very quickly. But that has made it a great event for YouTube TV for Spectrum for Comcast to say, "Look, this is actually the best way to watch. You can watch in multi-view. You can have a CBS and a TNT game next to each other." And so the question is,

"Are people going to pay up for that experience?" So they're going to say, "Yeah, you know, I'll watch what I can watch and my Paramount Plus app." So I have that subscription or I'll watch the highlights on YouTube or, you know, I'll watch the documentary series a year later, probably not that option. But that is the question, as Ken needs events that are such signature TV events, can they continue to be that way? Or do they need to reformat themselves, reframe themselves,

and pitch themselves like you're saying to an all-in-one audience that now is so he's still getting stuff. So easily, I loved your summer takes episode, but as I said six months ago, where you were like, "Hall streaming services are bad." And I believe that. I really do believe.

It's still a winter take. Okay. Because as interestingly as I mean, what you're basically saying

“was, you know, you should just rent the movies individually or buy them or what have you.”

And I think the reason all these streaming services are getting into sports is because you can't do that with sports, right? There is no alternative. They own this exclusively. You can't buy these all-acart. And so the question is, can these events like March Madness, which is like what 63 games on the men's side, 63 games on the women's side? I think it's actually 67 games that with expansion, and they're going to expand again. Does that work in a streaming environment

compared to these big, you know, temple events? Is it all just going to turn into Jake called Mike Tyson's standalone events? Or can we do these month-long things via streaming? I think we're so old and seen. Yeah. It does feel like whatever is going to happen, this is not the year it gets less complicated to be honest. Right? Like there's no sign of this thing letting up. Yes, and he's next year. Next year, it'll be simpler. That's what we've been saying for

10 years and one day it'll be true. We're going to have you back in 2027, and you're going to say, guys, we fixed it. Yeah. It's one app, and everybody knows when he has been unlimited by now, right? I don't need to explain that. Boy am I looking forward to that. All right. Jacob, thank you as

always for being here. My pleasure. I appreciate it. Go, go watch more Olympics. This is what I'm

going to go too. It's going to be great. Yes, you as well. Enjoy. Go team yourself. All right, we're going to take one more break, and then we're going to go back and do a question for the first guest hotline. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from anthropic. Complex problems are just that complex. And when you're trying to run a business, complex problems often mean there's an even bigger issue just under the surface. Thankfully, there's cloud. Cloud is the AI for minds that don't

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All right, we're back. Time for a question with the Vergecast hotline. As always,

the number is 866 Verge11. The email is [email protected]. Keep all of your questions. All of your thoughts. All of your feedback coming. A lot of the stuff that we've been hearing recently is still about what tiny, smart home mysteries. And I have to tell you I love it. Please keep them all coming. Anyway, our question this week happens to me just perfectly at the alley of what I've been thinking about a week. And it comes from Drake.

Hello, I'm Drake from Portland, Oregon. I'm actively listening to your podcast about the AI, the Bockelton. And as you were talking about the football sort of idea, it reminded me of the days when people would actually wear the football as like a belt flip, or like a shirt flip. So be like it just being held there in place and build with you that has bigger bone with little tiny, 80 bitty light screen on the outside. They're in an active

phone call. So they've used it as a bigger bone sort of device. That might actually be another approach to the flip phone AI debacle. Okay. So the reason I've been thinking about this question all week is because I am using the Motorola Razor Ultra right now. I mean, my phone switching project and basically what I'm trying to do is I'm going to spend a week using six different kinds of

phones, foldable phones, phones with keyboards, phones you've never heard of, phones you've

super heard of. I'm going to try and do the full sweep of the smartphone landscape to figure out which one I really want. It took me a day and a half to get the stupid E sim ported from my iPhone to this phone, but it is now my phone. It's up and running everything's going fine. And I've had the most

“fascinating experience, which is that I think more than ever that the flip phone is an important”

and good and correct in many ways form factor. And I think this for a bunch of reasons. One, I think it is just easier to hold and carry. Having this fit into your pocket makes more sense. It also fits in my hand. There's something really nice about the idea that I can actually hold and reach every corner of this device with one thumb. I can use it. Like when I sort of roll over and bed, I can tap around on it much more easily. This thing just works for me. And then there

is this feeling like, okay, I'm opening up my phone to do something. Take a call, write an email, look at a notification, whatever. And then I close it and I'm finished. And there's just something psychological about I am done with my phone now that I think has actually made me use my phone.

does not exist in a meaningful way to make this work. So what you're stuck with is every time I'm using an app and I close the phone, it pops up a thing saying, do you want to allow this phone app to run on your external display? And I just say yes because who cares? But then what happens is it just runs the full version of the app. And so you just get a thing that just feels like a smushed Android app. Like what this should be, the correct version of this in my head is a

phone on the inside and a smartwatch on the outside. What I want from this is to be able to do very simple input and very simple output. Right? I want to be able to quickly see what the weather is. I want to be able to quickly do a tap back emoji on a text message. I want to be able to change the music. What I don't need is the full freaking Spotify app on this tiny little thing or my full Gmail or the full anything else. It's just pretending this is a tiny phone and it's not.

“And this is like fundamentally the thing I think is left to solve. Right? In the way that a”

foldable phone acts like a phone that turns into a tablet or acts like a phone that turns into a laptop as we were talking about with Allison. That's an interesting software and UI problem to solve. This one goes the other direction and this is where I think Drake's idea about having these be AI systems is really interesting. Like the idea of having a phone that I can close or sort of turn

off and mute in some way that then morphs into this whatever always on or push to talk or whatever

AI machine actually think is super interesting. Like if I if when it was closed like this, I could press and it was essentially just a Gemini machine. That's pretty cool. I can use this for Gemini but it's trying to do a lot of other things. So if I'm using an iPhone and it's like, okay, I close the iPhone and then it turns into like a home pod or a basic controller for Siri and music. I think that could be very cool. And I do think there is something meaningful about

the idea that I am actually shapeshifting the form factor. I've come to feel this way about foldable phones too and Alice and was saying this earlier that if you have a device that you change its sort of stature and the way that you're holding it and looking at it and using it, you can convince your brain and it is a new kind of device. And actually that's one of the superpowers of a device like this is it can transform and so does your ability to interact with it.

So I'm like thinking about Drake's idea and it's like, okay, right, I have this on my collar and the other problem with this razor is it is exactly the wrong form factor. Like it's it's to kind of big and thick like and wide like this and then this is just a little too much. Again, I want something that might not be possible to exist, which is I want a big phone that turns into a tiny smartwatch, but I digress that somebody else has probably figured out.

But if I take something like this and then, you know, instead of having it open in my pocket, I turn it into like a pinnable, waiterable on my collar and now what I have is is a sort of plot style AI recorder that I can talk to and get information from or take notes with or whatever.

“I think that's super compelling and I think there is something more interesting about that”

than the idea of making a wholly different device. And that's where everybody wants to do. They want you to either use a smartwatch for a lot of these purposes, which I think is where Google and Apple and others will head or they want you to buy some complete new form factor. And to me, I'm like, what if it's just half my phone? And having now used this for a week, this feels like two devices. It is one thing when it's closed and it's another thing when it's open.

The problem is that the thing that's when it's closed is optimized for when it's open.

And if we can just fix that, I think we'll be on this something. This is the same problem Allison had trying to make her medium sized phone into a big tablet. I'm having it in the opposite direction and she wants to make laptop. I want to make AI. I think there's something really interesting there. Anyway, if you've figured out how this works by the way, if you have a razor or a z-flip and you've like solved this external display system in a way that you get

your notifications and you can do your media controls, but you don't accidentally end up using a full Android app on this tiny screen all the time. Please let me know. It's possible. I'm just

“missing settings. But I don't think so. I think we just need to fix this problem. Anyway, for now,”

that's it for the show. I'm sure I'll have new feelings about new kinds of phone next week. Because that is what we do here on the verge cast. But for now, we're going to get out of here.

Please, as always, remember to subscribe to the verge.com/subscribe. You can get this podcast

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And this episode is produced by Eric Omnis, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Star Trek.

“Me and I will be back on Friday to talk about all of the news. Presumably more Fc and Files”

because that keeps happening and we keep talking about it. And some gadgets. We're getting gadgets again.

It's mid February and it's already gadgets season. It's great times out there. We'll see you then. [MUSIC]

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