The 2026 midterm elections in the US ended in a sweeping win for Democrats — and several dozen sweeping losses for the AI industry. Nilay and David dig into what the results will mean for data centers, Big Tech, and even the future of X. Then, they try to figure out whether anyone's making any money in AI — not so much, it turns out — and whether the touchscreen MacBook is worth the price.

Further reading:

• ⁠The fight for tech accountability starts now ⁠

• ⁠Tech is about to get hammered in Congress⁠

• Forbes: ⁠Elon Musk Deletes Midterm Posts After Stunning Election Losses⁠

• ⁠Data centers lost the midterms ⁠

• ⁠Democrats leaned into Big Tech and AI opposition this cycle. ⁠

• ⁠Not even $200 million could help Elon Musk buy Texas ⁠

• ⁠OpenAI says ChatGPT is catching up to Google in search ⁠

• ⁠Google hasn’t figured out how to make AI pay like its search engine ⁠

• ⁠Uber only fulfilled 4 rides from AI agents last quarter ⁠⁠

• ⁠DoorDash's CEO: Don't be 'delusional' after just a few hundred AI agent orders⁠

• ⁠Apple is reportedly lowering AI usage budgets.⁠

• ⁠Brendan Carr plans to let prisons jam cellphone signals⁠

• ⁠SpaceX could buy Boost Mobile as part of its big mobile carrier plans ⁠

• ⁠Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display review: a touchscreen winner⁠

• ⁠Sam Altman addresses RAM comments: People should ‘put as much as they want in their computers⁠

• ⁠⁠Sam Altman says it’s better for RAM to be in a data center than on your desk ⁠⁠

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0:00 Bezos Hair Transplant Hoax

01:15 Midterms Shockwave Begins

02:00 Corruption And Data Center Backlash

06:53 AI Products Not Worth It

09:26 What Democrats Can Do Now

11:15 Congress Investigations Lawyer Up

13:15 Hype Reels Take Over Politics

15:42 X Bubble Versus Real Life

22:47 Microblogging Decline And AI Regulation

23:56 Ossoff Speech And AI Doomerism

27:35 Google Then Versus OpenAI Now

33:35 Back From Break

33:42 OpenAI Search Claims

35:19 Google Moat Erodes

38:02 Monetizing AI Overviews

42:52 Ads Break Trust

45:49 Google Zero Spiral

47:43 Agents Reality Check

50:41 Token Spending Pullback

52:50 Muse Novelty Wears Off

01:00:16 Brendan Carr is a Dummy

01:02:00 FCC Heat On Carr

01:07:04 MacBook Pro Touchscreen

01:09:09 Touchscreen Love Hate

01:10:25 Dynamic Island Reality Check

01:11:17 Best Touch Use Cases

01:11:58 App Support And Optimization

01:14:10 MacBook Pro Verdict

01:14:27 Speakers And Trade Ins

01:15:42 Sales And Upgrade Timing

01:17:11 SpaceX Boost Mobile Drama

01:22:05 Ram Altman Cloud Take

01:29:31 AI Photo Editing Panic

01:37:13 Wrap Up And Plugs

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Morgann Book reads a lot of books. And, as a literary creator and podcaster, makes a lot of content about books. She joins the show to explain why BookTok loves all things romance and romantasy, why physical books are an important balance to digital life, and why she's not worried at all about the future of reading.

Further reading:

• Bookish Media

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Film director and camera nerd Rian Johnson sits down with Vergecast guest host and camera nerd David Imel for an unapologetically nerdy conversation about cameras. They chat about cinematography, Rian's viral Chromagraph Camera app, and check out David's vast collection of quirky equipment. (As of recording, Rian is still waiting for his to be delivered.)

Further reading:

• ⁠Rian Johnson explains why he had to build his own iPhone camera app⁠

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It's Election Day in the United States, and data centers have become a core issue in some of the country's most important midterm races. The Verge's Adi Robertson explains why people are uniting against data centers, why they've become a proxy for all kinds of other fights, and how this year's results might change the AI industry going forward.

Further reading:

• Apple is all in on AI — its own and everyone else’s | The Verge

• OpenAI is quietly renaming data centers ‘compute campuses’ | The Verge

• GTA VI’s download will need up to 212GB of hard drive space | The Verge

• Midterm elections 2026: all the news

• The Verge's investigative series: The Center Will Not Hold

• The 2026 iPad Mini is a terrific tiny tablet — for a big price

Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.

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Streaming all your video games seems like such a good, simple idea. All your games, everywhere, on any screen you like — it's the dream! The Verge's Sean Hollister explains how the tech works now (which might be better than you think), why it'll take a huge amount of work to make it even a little bit better, and why games like Grand Theft Auto VI probably can't just live in the cloud.

Further reading:

• SpaceX could buy Boost Mobile as part of its big mobile carrier plans | The Verge

• Anthropic’s updated S-1 has even more eye-popping numbers. | The Verge

• More European supermarkets are getting their freezers hacked | The Verge

Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.

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Nilay is going to buy the new touchscreen MacBook. But not for the touchscreen. He and David talk through Apple's new laptop, and what it means for Apple's other devices, including the tablet that used to be the future of everything. Then the hosts talk about Instagram's push into long-form video and its battle with AI content. Finally, it's time for Brendan Carr, Anthropic's S-1, robot vacuums, and the rest of the lightning round.

Further reading:

• Apple finally combined a toaster and a refrigerator

• Hands-on with the new OLED iPad Mini

• Instagram doesn’t have a plan to pay long-form video creators

• Adam Mosseri says negativity around AI is ‘going to get worse’

• Invasion of the Sexy A.I. Joke Thieves

• Brendan Carr plans to let prisons jam cellphone signals

• Five weird details from Anthropic’s IPO filing

• Microsoft is ending Copilot support on smart TVs

• Google says its investments in AI are driving more searches

• Palmer Luckey’s Anduril is getting into laptops — and claims they’ll be American-made 

Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.

We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11.

0:00 ProLED Cold Open

01:04 Touchscreen Mac Arrives

02:39 Why Apple Did Touch

05:27 App Store Pressure

07:54 Touch Is Just Enough

09:49 Influencer Event Demos

13:56 iPad Squeezed Middle

18:34 Luxury Hardware Bet

22:37 Duo Reality Check

28:18 Instagram Going Through It

29:07 AI Agents vs Ads

32:18 Zuck Escapes iPhone

32:41 Instagram Becomes TV

33:23 Slop Meme Deepfakes

36:09 Mosseri AI Crisis

42:58 Longform Video Push

44:34 Creators Demand Revshare

48:19 Loop Closing Arms Race

49:34 Reddit Versus Google Zero

53:22 AI Kills The Web

01:00:20 Brendan Carr is a Dummy

01:02:22 Spectrum Auction Plan

01:03:35 NOAA Weather Spectrum Fight

01:04:29 700 MHz Auction History

01:05:38 FCC Spectrum Power Grab

01:06:09 Privatizing Weather Data

01:09:27 Anthropic S1 Reality Check

01:12:34 AI Products Beat Models

01:16:55 Claude Goes Sentient

01:17:55 Copilot Leaves Smart TVs

01:21:16 Quiet Robot Vacuum Thoughts

01:25:03 Palmer Luckey Laptop Fight

01:30:10 X Replies and Racism

01:32:32 Wrap Up and Next Week

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Steve Jobs once said touchscreen laptops were a terrible idea. Now Apple is shipping one. The Verge's Antonio Di Benedetto tells us all about the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR, how MacOS is changing for touch, why a laptop user might want a touchscreen, and whether MacBook and iPad are destined to become one.

Further reading:

• Hands-on with Apple’s touchscreen MacBook Pro
• Apple finally combined a toaster and a refrigerator
• DoorDash is acquiring Instacart for $17 billion
• Google says its investments in AI are driving more searches
• Samsung’s expecting the RAM shortage to last until at least 2028.

Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.

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Amazon's product launch spree continues, this time with a bunch of new Alexa-powered Echo devices. The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy explains what the new Echo Show 16 finally got right, why a digital photo frame could be Amazon's next big Alexa hit, and whether this new way of thinking about smart home gadgets might help Amazon defeat the HomeView and win a space in your kitchen.

Further reading:

• Apple announces its first touchscreen MacBook Pro

• Amazon’s new Echo line is here: the 6 biggest updates

• Here’s Virgin Galactic’s new Apeiron spaceship

• Amazon’s new Echo line is here: the 6 biggest updates

Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.

We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11.

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Kevin Roose's new book, The AGI Chronicles, tells the story of the AI revolution. He joins the show to explain its earliest beginnings: the researchers who discovered what language models could do, the people who debated whether humans or computers should are more special, and the executives who started the companies that currently rule our economy. What do they want, and what are they building?

Further reading:

• Kevin Roose is AGI-pilled. Why aren’t you?
• Machine Gods
• The AGI Chronicles
• Apple refreshes the iMac with M6 chips
• Apple updates the MacBook Pro with M6 chips
• Palmer Luckey’s Anduril is getting into laptops — and claims they’ll be American-made
• OpenAI announces three big science discoveries and a new way to work with academics
• Data center backlash is uniting America

Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.

We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11.

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We talk a lot about where the computer is, and where your stuff is. Paul Ford, a co-founder of Aboard and longtime tech blogger, recently built a tool called TinyLittleOffice that puts all the stuff in an unexpected place: the URL. Paul joins the show to explain how the web and the cloud have become powerful development tools, what it means to store a document in its domain, and why tiny, disposable software could make a comeback in the age of AI.

Further reading:

• A YouTuber dissected an iPhone Duo and thinks he found the cause of crackgate

• Anthropic’s IPO filing lays out a plan to ‘revolutionize every area of human endeavor’ with AI
  

• Apple updates the iPad Mini with a larger OLED display

• Tiny Little Office

Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.

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We gave the iPhone Duo a 7 /10. But that wasn’t always the score we planned, and it might not be the right score forever. Such are the challenges of reviewing — and assessing — a big, new idea about the most popular smartphone in history.

On this episode of The Vergecast, David and Nilay debate whether the Duo deserved the score it got, and try to work through how this device might change over time.

After that, the hosts talk about the huge PHP cybersecurity flaw that rocked the web this week, the ongoing increase in AI shopping, an impending reboot inside of Netflix, and some very confusing Gemini news. Also, Brendan Carr is a Dummy.

Further reading:

• The iPhone Duo is a messy, expensive, good time

• All the news about the iPhone Duo

• Daring Fireball: The iPhone Duo

• PHP: The three little letters wreaking havoc across the web

• AI agents are ready to shop. Some retailers are wary

• Walmart is inviting AI agents to shop for you

• 10 million people have already set up Muse agents.

• Netflix is telling investors not to worry, even though you’re watching less and less

• Google’s more personalized Gemini AI is heading to your car

Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.

We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11.

0:00 No Sevens Pact

01:03 Show Agenda Setup

01:46 Duo Score Debate

03:08 App Optimization Phases

07:47 Two Thousand Dollar Problem

10:44 iPad Not iPhone

14:41 Outer Screen Compromises

18:04 Developer Badges Future

20:34 Early Adopter Reality

30:19 Handoff eSIM Limitations

34:49 PHP Shell Chaos

36:17 PHP Under the Hood

37:46 AI Finds the Exploit

40:46 Disclosure Panic Fallout

42:44 Patch Now or Go Dark

45:58 Autonomous Defense Arms Race

48:42 Agents Break the Web

53:04 Muse Adoption Shopping Stats

54:11 Bots Buying Movie Tickets

01:01:05 Instagram Deepfake Crisis

01:07:30 Brendan Carr is a Dummy

01:10:06 FCC Threatens Poll Coverage

01:17:44 FCC Free Speech Alarm

01:20:20 The Lightning Round

01:20:49 Arc Browser Shutdown

01:23:12 AI Browsers Future

01:27:14 Meta Terms Backlash

01:34:04 Netflix Identity Crisis

01:43:16 Gemini Confusion Car

01:49:12 Wrap Up And Awards

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