If Netflix can't make live work, can anyone?
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Welcome the verge casts the flagship podcasts of the bullet journal method. I'm my friend David piers, and I am sitting here on a weekday buying Candy on tiktok like I don't know how this happened, but suddenly my algorithm is just absolutely overrun by freeze dried skittles, which are the thing you can buy. And there's like a sour coated gushers thing that everybody he's really excited about.

But the biggest thing that's happening all over tiktok is swedish Candy. There are these things called bubs, their little like schools that are massively popular. People are so excited about them, they sell out like crazy.

There is this company called bond bone that has absolutely blown up on tiktok. There's something happening inside of Candy talk, and I can't figure out what that is. I can't figure how IT works where all these companies and people are getting this can be from and rebook, aging, selling to people.

But i'm now deep down this rabid hole. I bought Candy on a tiktok livestream last night while I was walking my dog, a real thing that happened. And i've bought IT on the stream and the guy was like, oh, David, thanks for your order.

I'm going to give you extra power powder because you ordered on the live stream. And I was like, really excited for a long time that this was a thing that had happened to me. It's coming in two to four days, apparently.

Is there anything? Is IT food? Did I order IT from an actual company? I literally have no idea that's the tiktok shop, but it's possible there is going to be an alarming amount of Candy coming to my house very soon.

And Frankly, that's great news. Anyway, we are not here to talk about Candy. I have a feeling I will be talking more about Candy over time, but not today.

Today, we're going to do two things. First, we're going to talk about the jake. Paul might take some flight on netflix. I really care about the fight, but I care a lot about what that means that netflix had this massively popular event and I didn't go great, and netflix has some more massively popular events about to happen.

And we're also just a really interesting moment in the sports streaming world where if netflix can't do IT, can anyone? We're onna talk about IT. Also, i'm going to talk to roll in Allen, who wrote a book about the history of notebooks.

And actually what he wrote is the history of civilization told through the notebook. He makes a really fun case for why pen and paper has been so important in history, why is so important now, and why, even in an increasingly digital world, writing things down and a notebook is not going away. Super fun.

We also have a hot line question that we're gna get into that send or producer will power down kind of a wild, rabid hole of, again, the tiktok shop to weird world that there all that is coming up in just a second. But first, i've now been staring at these freeze dried skittles for too long, and i'm gonna buy them. Wish me luck. This is the verge cast. We will be right back.

Support for the verge test comes from pole polestar, an electric performance car. Brad focused on innovation for both cutting edge technology and design. Nothing exemplifies this Better than polestar three. Their luxury electric S, U, V IT features an aerodynamic exterior and a scandinavian minimum st interior. To have you a driver who doesn't want to choose between having an electric vehicle and the agility of a sports car, then this might be the car for you experienced for yourself at your local polestar space. Look, a test drive at polestar 点 com。

Welcome back. All right. So friday night, j. Paul, mike tyson both was and was not the fate of the year. I don't know anything or particularly care about boxing if i'm completely honest with you. But the thing I heard from everybody is that actually the undercard, all the fights that were before the main fight, was great, lots of good fights. Then j.

Paul versus mike tyson, and I mean, I was like a youtube r versus a man at his late fifty, is, I don't really know what anybody expected, but that is the fight that we got anyway. I think the more interesting story here has less to do with that fight itself and more to do with how things went on netflix and what IT says about what netflix is ready for as IT tries to take over live TV and what the whole streaming industry is ready for. Lots to talk about.

There's lots of this stuff left to come. The test skip coming for these companies. So figured that was a good hundred hundred.

And nobody Better to do IT with than Richard dollar. Richard, hello, hey, I just saw you the other day. This is very exciting.

We were in person and you want to stood. That I exist outside this room .

I did is useful to be reminded of that everyone is well, but not like for two. I think we got about the right amount of time near each other. This this is, this is good.

Yeah, right. So first question.

did you watch to fight IT on friday? I did not .

watch the fight because doing anything else was a Better choice.

yeah. I mean, I I would say, as IT turns out, that is largely correct. Uh, IT is a real amer, that this whole thing was not about a sport. I enjoy IT more than boxing between youtube s and old men. But alas.

here are as as a service social media. I wanted to see a youtube fight, old man, I would just go punch a youtube R. I can put that fight on myself right now.

This is is a beautiful taking. If you walk outside, i'm sure someone is filming a tiktok and you can just punch them in the face and interior ah and apparently sixty million people watch IT if you do. Uh, but I think the reason I wanted to talk to you about this is we've talked a lot over the last couple years about basically the question is streaming ready for sports.

And it's been it's been coming. It's been happening. Amazon is kind of making IT work with football, but like the nfl is is the thing right in every room in platform.

Once the nfl, a bunch of them. I've gotten IT. Netflix is gonna have IT on Christmas day. And I think to me, the single most surprising thing that happened this weekend was that netflix was not ready for this fight.

You think they would have been long. They have the data. They know how many customers they have.

They know how many people were interested in this fight. They know how heavily they promoted IT. They know there wasn't really anything else to do on friday night. They felt like, and still they were surprised on how they just want ready for the moment.

Yeah, I am I crazy for thinking that if anyone should be able to do this just from a pure technical, deliver the bits in high quality to people perspective, IT ought to be netflix.

you think so, but delivering things that live is very different. And I think that's what we found basically, every time there's a massive event in every time we've had the super bols streaming now for years that they've i've been available the internet each and every time is just a little bit glitter than you would expect even though they know how many people are going to tune in because it's hard because delivering these things with many seconds and just fractions of the second of delay is difficult like that you can cash the streams and videos.

And if you have a new series, you can put your little devices in every everyone's nearby I S. P. And you could put IT very close to them and have IT preloaded. You can do that with life. IT just doesn't work.

yeah. And it's starting to make me wonder if IT is technically speaking right now just an unsolvable problem because like you said, I think if you got reminder ways like game of phones had streaming issues and there were a bunch of ways that these companies couldn't did solve them, right?

And like you don't hear that anymore from this sort of big, is that H B O style shows anymore? Like the everybody looked on the H B O at nine o'clock on a sunday night and couldn't watch their show. I have not heard that in years.

We just fixed that. But there is something about trying to do this life and just literally like the physical infrastructure of making all of that happen that we're very good at with linear television. And they've been doing IT for decades and they have trucks s and it's a whole thing. And I am starting to wonder if we just haven't developed the over the internet pieces of this in such a way that it's gonna work. I think the main issues.

just as the internet wasn't made to work like that and we're kind attacking things on and were make creating these solutions to work around the problem that the internet was never designed to sol on something we talked about last year. But that still has not really rhythm is l for us was supposed to help the land and see issue so that when you send a packet, IT and IT really needs to get suit to someone on time.

That is the first one to get there. And there are so many other strategies that I think these companies have done to try and make sure that when people are streaming, it's not getting bog down. This is not in clock at the various choke point, but IT still does.

You've got how many different devices, you've got how many different bit rates, you've got how many different encoding in D R, N. Protection in all of these other things that you're putting on top of this that make IT that much harder to stream alive of IT. And it's just not a problem that we solved IT. And I guess on Christiana's day, we're going to get another opportunity to see how close nett exit a well.

I think i've been making fun of netflix for like forty eight hours now because they put out that statement on every day that was basically like we think we did a great job after a whole evening and day of people online being like this looks awful. I can't see anything. This is just like a thousand thousand and eighty picolet ted monstrosity, a picture and then netflix like, you know what we did IT.

And i've kind of come around for all the reasons that you're saying. I'm like, honest, maybe this is literally the best networks could have done and to something that that might be more alarming as we think about what we're going. But maybe netlist is not out of its mind to think IT actually did this about as well as I could have.

I I can definitely see why they would have that uh, perspective was interesting is like i'm hearing from people of, you know I was watching uh stream of someone pointing the phone at the T V on tiktok and live stream because the netflix stream was forty five minutes behind, right? And so it's like IT can be done. You can get live video that people actually, why as long as sixty million people are not tuning into this particular stream at the moment.

a there there is a magic number at which IT all kind of falls apart. And i'm very curious. This is for the reason i'm interested in these Christmas foobar games, because network has these two games on Christmas for the first time.

Uh, there are both actually going to be really good games as IT turns out there there, like some of the best teams in the N. F. fell. It's going to be very exciting as Christmas day. Lots of you IT seems unlikely that is going to be sixty million people on either game. But like let's say it's let's say thirty, we're going to get such an interesting test case of at what point have we just hit the capacity of all of this infrastructure. And there is also just not that much time like netflix can fix the internet between now and Christmas day. So does some extent, I assume there will be lot of things that can learn, but it's not like IT can rebuild its whole data delivery system between now and Christmas in order to get these football in, right? So I feel like we're going to get a totally different but very similar test.

And I think that's a big part of this. Just that you want dealing with just one problem or just one problem in just one play. You have many people in many different places.

You have different issues. You have all the network bad here, or we don't have the the back end not connecting close enough to this. Many people who are all trying treatment.

You have different kinds of demand in different places. What is this good in most places, but it's not good in bottom. Like bottom are playing away at this texan's game. And if it's just bad in one city, that is millions of people who are going to be very upset with netflix beyond like, thanks, not always a ready, ready if you are going to cause problems for them to watch their favourite could be an issue. We are going to find out .

what happened yeah so speaking of beyond say, let's talk with this because the the news on monday was that beyond say is going to be doing the half time show .

the second game between the the ravings in the text in houton SHE from houston.

Natural but like it's beyond I I in terms of who you could announce your half former that's about as big as IT gets right. Like that it's beyond say and so to me and like if you've ever wondered how serious netflix is about doing this beyond say, is the answer right? Like this? This company is not kidding. And I think jake, paul, my tyson, you can be like, oh, this is like slightly interesting, but also like slightly silliness. Two football games is like cool but whatever but like it's it's beyond, say, Richard, they got beyond say .

there are millions of people who will not miss that. This can be probably the first time to be able to see the songs off of her new album. Just there are a lot of things are lining up. They are going to be ready. They are going to be prepared for this, and netflix has to deliver.

What do you make of this for netlist? Netlik is clearly like all in now on sports. After you, I ve spent years on the show talking about how netflix was very happy to not be in live sports. They did the drive is survive thing.

They were like where to make that sort of ancillary content around games we don't need to compete in this net least has been saying this IT feels like this company is on a total one eight is not like we have to figure out how to do live. And that means sports. Does this make sense to you?

The thing i'm not sure about is how far theyll go into life, because I think that IT leads in one way that kind of serves them. How do we keep people from not cancelling netflix? And one of the answers is we have a huge event every few months so that every time you start thinking and you not have watch an ethnics in a while, do I need scription beanes on you? I get can cancel yet there .

that gives me yeah, that's true IT. Like is you need to basically have one of those at least announced every month so that i'm like, okay, well, i'll keep IT until then. And then like the day after Christmas, they're going to to announce the next thing for february, whatever.

And then that all that will be that we grow with the H B O. Show time. Playing this game, with boxing, with music, with all these things our entire lives going up in the night is the same playable you know.

you just made me rizzi they are definitely going to announce the stranger things, the view of some kind the day after Christmas and that's that's that's how we get there for yeah .

IT just rolls in on itself yeah exactly.

Do you think netlist has moved in sports here? Like is this are you at all as a sports fan interested in was coming here?

Not really. Um I I just I I wonder what what they can do, but they have enough money. That kind of doesn't matter because they can get enough events if they can sign up, say, the N B, A cup or whoever, if if they have enough money, people work, create for them.

To the host jake poll vers mike tyson, they said, how can we get generation, the generation x and millennial, all to watch the same thing at the same time? IT and they'll ll fine. Something else will create something.

They try the uh, hot dog competition. I don't think that really like all that much attention that seem to go off prety well without glitches. Their reality show was the first one that had huge problems.

And I think they did the comedy thing that didn't work all that well. But you know, being kind of up and down. So it's hard to have these hits, but they're just going to keep looking. They're to keep digg. They have got the checkbook ready to spend clearly.

And I think the thing i've been trying to figure out whether I want one of these streaming services to really try and reinvent the wheel, uh, because I think like you look at amazon, which has been doing thursday night foobar for a couple of years now, he just is football. Amazon has like a couple of interesting stats ideas, but they're even like doing that in a sponsored way on other networks. Like that's just a whole separate thing.

But it's like it's it's all myles IT is like the most straightforward down the middle old school kind of football game. And we haven't seen an netflix foobar game, but I would assume it's gonna very much the same thing. P cock is now streaming sunday at football, but it's just taking A T V, streaming, turning and in streaming.

So part of me is like somebody needs to take this and like, blow up the whole concept of what I might be and give us new ways of looking at stuff and changes the cameras and make IT more interactive and whatever else. Youtube sunday ticket, another example, like youtube sunday ticket is just sunday today and that's fine. But it's part of me is like, what's the next thing? And then the other part of me is like, maybe let's spend our time making sure the thing works and then give you a few years and will worry about actually putting this out there.

I think that that is the the big question here because what I think what people want is not personalization. IT is the same thing, but Better because that's one thing that that has been pushed out there. Oh, you'll be able to get your personal thing.

You will will be exactly what you want. Maybe you'll able to tune into whatever camera you. But what works Better is when we're all watching the same thing at the same time, like pol versus tin, which creates a spectacle, which creates A I can't miss this and it's not personal.

It's together and that is Better. And you don't need like a fake auditorium of people, people. You just need an event that people want to watch.

You don't need avatar ars. You don't need three. You don't need you need those things. You don't even need a good fight.

What your saying is, if you had picked the other camera, you ouldn't have seen my tyson's bear as, and now would have been a problem.

We could have all avoided that. I just would have been a change if if we had all been able to. But apparently that wasn't what the people voted for. Sixty million people went the other way.

So I said, we are wrong, knows what people want. Richard, like, goes to be honest with each other. That active and my conspiring theory says that was completely deliberate.

And and IT is IT is just to use views. You gotta a get him how you can every, this is the world we live in. Richard, it's fine. export.

Guess going to be very interesting.

Listen, it's it's q 4。 I'll do what I got to do. So how are you feeling as a as a streaming sports fan right now?

This is like, this is a fun time to do this because we're in middle N, B A season. We're in the middle the n file season. The N, H, L started college baskets in college football picking.

It's like, this is the best part of the year, if all you want to watch a sports. uh. And yet I feel like my sports watching life is more chaotic and more expensive than ever.

I tried to watch the bills chief game on sunday night and literally couldn't. I went through ten services and was like, oh, I just don't have this game somehow. Uh, and I feel like you feel my pain on this. As somebody who also likes to watch as a Terry sports, they are not a lot to watch.

That is the greatest thing like, oh, your team is playing. You pay for maybe three packages already to watch this particular sport and you find out, wait, I don't have the one. Has this game still somehow um um maybe Better than last year because of the monopoly that controls piston streaming? They're still bad monopoles y're named after a different gambling company now, but at least IT works. So when I give them my money to watch the big stance, I can actually watch the game sometimes and then i'm painfully gue past on and i'm paying for my local team subscription.

But then if the game is on national T V, on the S P N, if if i'm not paying for, you know, a cable package can't get IT or I can't get the good T N T stream, I can get the league past T N T stream, which you know, but no analysis and what that and it's just like, wait, how is this Better in cable because I used to just have cable and I was like, okay, so I pay this much and I know that I will be obsess the game. Maybe it'll on a different channel, but I will be able to turn on my TV in the game will come in. I don't have to log game and log out and have glitches and have the same three times a route.

Yeah I remember years ago having sort of the the mental rubrics of lake. okay? If it's a good game, it's going to be on this channel.

If it's a net game, it's can be on this channel. And if literally no one cares because both teams are trashed, they'll just put IT over here. And I knew the number of all of those channels and so I could find the game in thirty seconds to no matter what. And now it's literally like I went on I went I was on saying watching red zone um because they still has red zone for reasons I don't clear understand uh I sling doesn't have C B S. So when red zone only got down to one game, I didn't have IT there anymore.

I went to, uh I went to youtube T, V, which had IT but my access had turned off because I forgot to pay IT that that once probably on me ah but then I went over to every string service I could think of being like which one has C B S? And by the time I realize that was paramount plus, which sure, that's the one of C B S, uh, I had IT was over and I had to go in and find my paramount plus password because he uses per. Now plus and IT was just a whole. And I was like, I will pay you just to watch the last five minutes to this game. I couldn't do IT wouldn't wouldn't .

let me devastating in the day. I just knew three channel numbers was all I needed to know. I didn't have to figure whole much things out.

yeah. Do you have any sense of whether this is going to get Better? You and I even talked about venue sports in a while, this supposed like smooching together of all these different companies rights.

Well, that depends on what happens on the courts if they ever actually get to launch on whatever they do. Or if I would be any good if you actually did exist, which will we ever find out, we do not know. Um also I think there's some interesting things going on because amazon for example, like with the N B A I think in twenty twenty five could be very interesting because amazon going to have a lot of N B A games directly.

They also owe a share of the whatever it's called now fan do sports networks that have some of these local broadcast rise in and has the local broadcast, right? So maybe they can package IT together. So I can just use one APP to watch most of the games.

Unfortunately, the presence might be good. And then you'll be on national T, V, and i'll have to pay even more to watch more games. So these problems on top of problem.

well, at that point, then you have to pay for E, S. P, S. Multitude of streaming services is part of venue IT, as E, S, P, N plus is the called flagship, right? That's the thing.

That s just the internet that's supposedly launching next year. Like in a funny way, we were having conversations a few years ago about how a bunch of really old right deals were slowing everything down, right? They had all been signed a decade ago.

They were. They were really focused on broadcast T. V. In particular. And so the idea that this stuff could be streamed available likely didn't exist.

Now, IT feels like basically all of those deals have turned over. Uh, I think the N B A is probably the last one turn, and that starts next year. Big streaming shifts, like he said, amazon's a big player now lots of is moving the S, P, N, which is doing last stream self.

And now IT feels like the hold up is the platforms, which can't figure out how to launch. They can't figure out what they're supposed to charge. They can't figure out how to serve this stuff to this many people like we should be in a moment where some streamer is like we are going to exclusively stream the super bowl and it's going to be fine.

Netflix should be able to get there are more people in amErica who have netflix than anything else like this should be possible. And yet IT isn't, and everyone knows it's not possible. So we're a weird moment now where the problem we used to have is no longer the problem is making very obvious this new problem that we have, which is that none of the platforms are ready for this IT.

Turns out as the problem is money and certain company, they said lots of and they willing to spend IT. So the leagues are gonna, SE, IT. And however they they can. And what the leagues have found is that playing the networks off of each other or now the platforms off of each other and the networks in the various internal ings of those is the way to get the high bids to make the most money. And so now we're in for another ten years or so of of switching and swapping between apps.

I really hate how aggressively i'm starting to root for amazon because I think you're right that amazon has this big idea of being like the one that puts IT all together. And I think in theory, E S P N wants to be that and is doing interesting stuff along those lines. But did he just isn't have the money to do that? Uh, but basically like the companies that could just buy all the sports rates, it's just kind of a amazon, an apple, an apple I don't think is is interested in playing that particular sports game. Um but he was on like IT IT could get as much as IT once, right like I can afford all of IT.

And they have the scale they also have the scale to deliver. As bad as their apps tend to be, they can actually deliver a live string. A W S does exist yeah .

tuesday that foobar works. It's not as big as these like I would be interested to see sixty million people try to watch prompted ty, right? Like again, it's there is a there is a matter of scale that we just haven't seen on streaming work anywhere yet.

But but yeah, I feel like if if someone we're going to give us the dream back, it's probably going to be amazon, which I mix. I hate saying that out loud, even just that that felt bad that on my gosh H, I hope amazon wins TV because that would be terrific. But I kind of feels like IT.

That's how dark the future has got. Them are looking at amas on the same.

say us and do Jesse. It's all to you, brother. So what have you seen this year that gives you hope? What's on A T here? I wanted say we even talk about on the time I thought p cock crush the olympics.

When IT comes to sports streaming, the thing that I was like, okay, internet sports TV is going to be cool, was peacock in the olympics. All the sports, all the different ways to navigate. They had the gold zone thing. They had the prime time thing like that was great. And I don't know how replica ball that is for sports, but like that to me, I was when I was like, okay, the streaming out of sports might be gray.

IT was there. IT worked. The streams were consistent.

The quality was high. I didn't feel like I was way behind. I didn't have to feel like.

I didn't feel like I had to watch a bunch of things that I didn't want to. I, I got a lot then I wanted. There were some things that we could have been Better.

I felt like know when you were navigating through like archive device when you wanted to watch something that are aid. IT was harder than I needed to be, but I felt like they also made some concessions perhaps to to make the viewing experience a little bit Better. Like if if you jump out of something, you jump back in, okay.

So that doesn't play just again the way seen in previous years in on other platform. Yeah um and I think there's some push pole because I understand, hey, this platform needs to make money from this event. Got IT, but I ve just want to watch IT I paid for IT I would like to watch IT give me that they they cross that bar and that's where everyone else should be aiming at. At the minimum.

your simple man is simple means we should show me the thing that I have clicked on, please.

Yes.

fair enough. Alright, Richard, thank you. Is always thank you. right? We got to take a break and then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about notebooks all right back.

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Welcome back. So a few weeks ago, I started reading this book called the notebook, a history of thinking on paper, bygone role and Allen and IT traces, like a thousand years of history of how people, right on peer, he makes this big case. That paper is this incredibly critical invention in the history of the world.

And that actually, without paper, without notebooks, we wouldn't have modern capitalism. We wouldn't know nearly as much about history as we do that. Actually, a lot of the world that we live in is defined, by the way, that people rote stuff down and what they wrote stuff down on.

He saw the whole history of notebooks all the way through the render sons and all the way up to now. And even in the future. If you listen to the show, you know that I love no taking apps.

I love thinking about how people, rights, stuff down. I think the systems fall is are fascinating. And this book was like cabinet for me.

So I asked her to come on the show and talk through some of the big ideas in his book, and also, why notebooks continue to survive in this increasingly digital world is a super fund conversation. I really enjoyed talking to him. And yes, there is more twelve century history in this episode the most, but we're going to go with that. So to start with, roll and I asked him to quickly recap the case that he makes that paper is a hugely important invention in the history of the world, and that without paper we might not have any of this. Here's what he said to that.

Yeah, permanent is really why for thousands of years we've had different ways of writing things down as human beings. So you go back to you, you can carve on stone. You can um make little dents in clay tablet lets which you then fire and dry out and their permanent.

But they are clay tablets so they're not super portable or practical or robust. Uh then you have peppers to paris, the uh read product which grows in egypt and you can write on that, you can draw on that. But papara IT turns out unless it's actually an in an egyptian tomb completely dry with no movement and nothing to disturb, IT IT will just source actually fall apart if they can cope with any kind of damp or IT can't really cope with being handled.

So per paris is handy but it's not permanent. Um and then you have wax tablets and these are beautiful things. They are amazing, completely died out in europe, but for about two thousand years.

This is how europeans retained information, took notes, rope poems, agreed contracts, bills of sale, whatever, with a layer of wax on wood, which you would then scrape into with a little styles. Now obviously, that's not permanent. So it's very useful for being an poets notebook, for instance, because you can wipe IT over at the end of the day when you finish writing your perm.

But for a business record is no good at all because you know you you have to know what you agreed, what you contracted. Then you have partment apartment comes long a little bit later during the period of the roman empire probably. And that's a really good writing material, is very tough.

It's completely destructive. And you can raise on IT beautifully, and you can also paint on IT, if you like. So the illuminated many groups, which we see, the book of cows and so on.

These are on parchment, and they're very beautiful. But the problem is, when he write on parchment with a pen, the ink sits on the surface and drive, which means you can scrape IT off, which means that, again, is not permanent. You can change IT.

You can affect the record. So it's no good for business. Paper turns up in europe around the year twelve fifty, twelve fifty. And very quickly, a few people realize it's a game changer, because anything which is written on paper state within stays there. So you can have a contract, you can keep a business record, you can do anything legal, you can have a deed, for instance, and you don't have to worry about IT being forged yeah, and that's important. So paper is really important because it's permanent and that leads to its very, very rapid adoption um in the business community in particular.

With that, where I started, I was I was trying to match some of the timelines and going back through IT, seems like if I have the time I incorrect, there were there were two threats. There was kind of the people who use IT for business and people who use IT for recording things in their own personal lives. But I just seem like business became a real use case for notebooks first. Yeah.

absolutely hundred percent. And the analogy, which he can very easily ly draw, is with the modern computer there that comes from my B. M.

And its businesses and governments, which have been to begin with for the first, how long? Thirty years, maybe forty years. And then you get people using IT creatively.

And then you get people like jobs thinking, uh, you can have some fun with this thing, you know, you can play games on that, but you can also be seriously created. So now you have pixar, for instance. And I don't think anyone, I B M.

In the one nine hundred and forties was thinking the pizza was gonna happen, right? Looking back, IT seems inevitable that people would do something like that. And it's exactly the same kind of relationship with notebooks.

You have businesses come to rely on notebooks utterly. They use them for everything. And therefore, notebooks get into everyone's hands, particularly in the culture like ita, which at the time italy's richest part of europe. But it's also where they invent banking, where they invent companies, where they invent account cy, double entry book keeping, limited liability partnerships, futures markets, all of these things which we know in love.

And and a lot of that you talk about happens, not sort of IT IT does that doesn't happen. And then they put IT down in no books like the existence of those things. And notebooks and this new writing, permanent technology, go hand in head.

Absolutely, you can't do one without the other. But then, of course, so they have to have these notebooks and once they have to have them in the evening, they taken home and then then they do the fun stuff with them. And that's entirely accidental, I think. But you know, thank god, from my point of view, is given a sort of this interesting literature in our second poetry yeah so .

I confess I am particularly interested in the fun stuff. So let's start there. I think the first thing I had written down and my notes was like, let's go back to FLorence uh and and there's a word search of disease that I can't pronounce um and I was I was in my god tells me it's pronounce zippo doni but I could be wrong idea that right .

yeah I you just have to imagine yourself ordering is the baldoni an an italian restaurant and you will be fine.

a type of new book and also a beautiful Christan like saying, uh, that I would like very much, uh, tell me what those were. Talk a little bit well, kind of how that spread.

Okay, back to the restaurant. Zl only seems to have been a word for salad, and that's exactly what IT is. So it's a collection of lots of different things jumbled together.

Now this is a time before print. We're talking about about thirty hundred and its FLorence and is a time before print. So if you wanted to have any book or literature or poetry in your house, you had to basically write IT down yourself.

yeah. And therefore, FLorence is a very business like community. They're very entrepreneurs. Everyone's got their own little business there for everyone's got there business notebooks they taken home in the evening.

And if they hear a pom, which they like, or if they hear is one of these fables is very popular, or a bit of ovid, or a prayer, which is particularly resonant to them, or a recipe, very often they are writing down medical dictionary cures anything you want to keep written down in your house. You just write that down in your zip doni. And it's a very personal notebook, but it's completely unsorted.

So it's like a salad in this jumbled up way. And that brilliant, because there these windows into what florian tine people loved yet. So we know the poetry they like to read, we know the prayers that they wanted to remember, we know the stories that they like to tell, and we know what they likes to eat when they had a headache.

You know, all of this kind of information, because everyone influence at this time who could read or write, which was most of them. Unusually, they kept ibal doni. And IT was a really strange local thing. But that was so fun.

I also get the sense that folks, back then, we're reckoning with the same thing people reckon with now, which is like, what do I do with any of this? And this is sort the eternal question of no books, right? Is you right on the soft down, you collect all this stuff. And as a historical artifact, especially in aggregate, is very cool, right? You get a sense of what people were doing in a, in a community.

But if i'm a person, influence in the thirteen hundred ds, keeping one of these, what, what am I doing with that day to day? What's gonna happen to these new books? Are they thinking about, like the grand sweep of history and their responsibility ly to write this of doing what was the point .

of these notebooks? So only that the only point was fun. They won't think about the grand sweep of history, but they knew that they were a bit precious because they would leave them in their wills. So this is how we know one of the ways we know how many people had them because the whales often survive.

Um and also you see these little dedications and then someone will start as they will do, then they're leave IT to their sun and then the son will have an argument on the pages of disable only with his brother saying, oh no he dad left IT me actually you know so you have these little Bakeries um and you can see that sometimes they pass down three generations and that people maintain them because the handwriting changes um so that's one thing. So zippo don't you? They're always for fun, but people definitely keep note that they have a value.

The other thing that they also start doing is viewing their family is a kind of business and then keeping you what they would call the library to familiar our record. Dana is the other word friend, where they keep a family record, which is essentially birth, death s marriages, investments. You know, we bought this house.

I invested in this company. My daughter got married. My son died, my grandson was born. He was baptized at etra. And they're very business like you wouldn't call and diaries because there's no emotion in there.

There's no happiness or sadness, but they just record the central of most important events of a family's life and then that would get passed down through the generations as well. And that but that's more viewing your family in a kind of quite serious business like way. If you were a grammar school in, they say, fifteen hundred and sixteen hundreds in europe, you were expected to keep a common placebo in a very rigid way.

And that was a very formal kind of thing. But that was educational. You know, that wasn't no one ever really did that for fun because it's such hard work yeah it's it's a real effect on its study. But I think that outside of school you have people like Leonardo who would withdraw all over the place. You have people who do all, you have people who write very intimate personal diaries, people who write very formal ones, people who write about their relationship with god, you know, does no harden fast rules.

okay? And that feels like the the thing that lingers most over time is that everybody is perpetually finding new ways to Philip. No book kind of more chaotic over time to everybody gets weirder and weird.

R about no books. The venture is an interesting when you you mentioned him. And obviously, I would say you've obviously got more research on this than I have. But I would say the are lot of inches notebooks, probably history's most .

famous notebooks. They say, yeah say when I was telling people are always writing history of notebook and they were looking baffled, I go te but one .

thing I thought was really interesting um in in your telling of history was that he did not seem to imagine that his notebooks would eventually become wildly fairness and the idea that these were four public consumption was kind of a thing that happened much later. The nobles were very personal to and very individual. How did that change come about? Like at what point did people start writing notebooks, even in some of the styles they are talking about, thinking about other people very.

very late in the day? I would say, I think what's interesting, len, no books are fascinating for two reasons. I think very far aise in time.

Firstly, because they are an amazing record of his thoughts, his researches, his explorations and his personality up to a point. So that period around the year fifteen hundred, wow, you know, there was something really incredible going on there. And then basically they just vanished into areas scratch libraries, you know, and no one reads them.

No one, they probably pull them off the shelf. Just look at them as curiosity. No one studies them at all. Until the eighty nineties, when a german guy LED ritter, goes around to europe, he looks at them all. He transcribes them, he researchers, he writes about them.

And then for the first time, four hundred years nearly after the ano dies, people actually realized, oh, he wasn't just a good painter. He was also all of these other kinds of genius as well, because he was just known as a painter up to that point. And then and I think IT is a direct result of the publication of leanna dos notebooks.

And people understanding that there's this process behind his genius, then everyone else starts taking their notebooks much more seriously. So picasso, for instance, he starts painting in the eighty nineties and exactly the same time, or learns had a paint. He's a boy, and he, for instance, took his sketchbooks incredibly seriously.

He never gave them away. He never lost them. He've kept him filed away in boxes in his housley, south france, and they were numbers catalog ordered.

He knew that his sketchbooks were really important, whether painters a hundred years before him seems to have been a very casual relationship. You know, all rather, they, they themselves use their notebooks, but they had no sense that anyone else would ever find them interesting. So yeah, I think there's definitely a change.

And I think that Leonardo, sort of accidentally four hundred years after his death prompt, yeah to the extent that you know, if any, kind of well known right now, will sell their papers to the university of the university of boston. Princess collects writing notebooks, and they will pay good money for them. One hundred, one hundred. And fifty years ago, you know, universities were not doing that.

They wouldn't see the value. You think that changes the way we look at those new books. Now I mean, I think I think about even go back to france. So you you think about those as an important record of real life in a way that as soon as people become self conscious that someone else might see their notebooks, it's sort of ceases to be a record of real life IT IT becomes an instagram version of real life where everything is maybe suddenly self consciously changed to be for public consumption in a way that um I don't know they get we think about no books as these intensely private things but as soon as you understand that someone else might see IT. I wonder if IT changes what that .

thing is oh what's that if when IT comes to dairy rising in particular? So the um any number of published the diaries, you can tell we're written with publication in mind.

I write a diary every day and I don't expect that anyone else will ever read IT and it's certainly never going to be published and it's I think you're right, it's more intimate and it's you know that it's pretty unsensitive unfilled, but then you have to tony blair of this world whose diaries are published, I think so. And that's a completely different cattle of fish. yeah.

And I guess that OK, both of those things can exist, but they are very different things.

Yeah, very, very definitely OK.

I am really curious about how you, as a person in in a digital world, came to think about the box because again, there is such a there is so much about that history that a feels very modern. Like we're talking about the same kinds of things now, and like you said, using computers for the same kinds of things that people were using notebooks for eight hundred years ago.

But I wonder if you're going through, and you have to spend time thinking about the thing itself. And and like you said, paper is this crucially important invention. And if we had invented computers in twelve hundred instead of inventing, paper would IT have gone roughly the same way. Or is there something about that thing and that time and that invention that made IT different from even everything that came after?

I think up to a point, the invention makes the time, you know, you said to me very confidently that we live in a digital world, you know, and and of course you are right. Yeah, we do definitely have in the digital world. We're speaking to each other via digital link up and surrounded by amazing technology.

I would also, if I was being contrarian and say to you, you're living in a note world because capitalism, which keeps a sort of we what we see around us that for six hundred years, was entirely based in notebooks. We would call them ledges or account books, but this was an entirely notebook based system until the first IBM machines. So and that was invented at the same time as, or roughly speaking, the same time as the notebook arrives in in europe, and sort of in that place in italy, around the eight thirteen hundred, they invent all of the mechanisms of capitalism.

So really, we are in that world as much as we in the digital world. But yeah, and there is definitely a sense of you have an invention and then IT shapes the world did you live in but in unexpected, surprising fun, hopefully ways no one saw the twitter was coming ten years before twitter arise. And then suddenly it's everywhere, and then suddenly it's nowhere again, you know? So who knows?

So okay, let's let's fast forward bunch in history to not now, but close to now. A and I want to stark at the bulletin's. L, and the reason I want to start with the simple only is that I feel like you can draw a straight line from that thing influence eight hundred years ago to the bullet journal phenomenon of today, like like a dead straight line through almost a millennium um of time. A how how is that possible? Like why do you think this this thing, this idea of how we want to record our lives in a physical notebook has been so insistently persistent over so many centuries?

It's a really great, simple, minimal tool, I think, like with any kind of technology there, there's or any kind of invention, there's a real virtue to simplicity, you know? So your your knife and four call your chopsticks. Chopsticks are great because they're minimal.

Yeah, you can't. Once you've pictured them, you have invented them once you cannot improve on them. And a notebook, I think, is a lot like that.

IT came to a kind of very quickly. IT became kind of perfect in terms of its how practical IT was, how cheap IT was, how available IT was everyone. And you can't really improve on that as a bit of technology. You because and then people will use IT in different ways over history and bullet journals. I think a really good example, if I can take this really simple thing and just use IT in a slightly new way and suddenly opens possibilities for people which they never appreciated before.

Like there are a lot of people who's genuinely there are a surprising number of people whose lives have really been improved by doing bullet points to organize their life, and that kind of helps them to rationalised things and make proper decisions and act more intentionally. And I thereby live happier lives. I think I find IT constantly incredible how this really simple thing can be reinvented so regularly.

But you're right, there is a continuous all the way through. I think it's just as this incredibly simple and IT doesn't require batteries. Es IT doesn't require system updates. Know if he dropped IT doesn't break. What was that?

There was interesting to you about the villa journal, its history, like, why? Why did that jump out to you as as a thing worth adding to this history?

IT was important me because, firstly, because I was IT was a real thing, was a real trend. You know, when I was starting to think about the book, and IT gave me sort of confidence that there was gonna an appetitive people who are interested in this stuff, which is very key in terms of building my confidence. And then what was interesting was I never, i've never bullet journaled myself.

I've never done the right to carel method, but I got his book, and then I spoke to him, interviewed him, and he's really thought about IT quite deeply, and he's thought about the implications of writing stuff down and of organizing your thoughts on the page and having this notebook, which you Carry everywhere. And would you write everything down on? And that kind of encouraged me to think deeply about IT too.

You know, he's taking IT very seriously for long time and he thought about in a particular way. And i've got a more historical ankle. And I think about IT in different ways. but. Completely compatible but the just the fact that he had taken IT seriously, I found really interesting and and hence giving him a chapter I think was you know kind of fair because he was really about the only person who had written a book about note booking, you know, before I did so N T he also has some really interesting things to say about notebooks, which aren't.

But at channels he was really inspired, for instance, spy kind of artists, scrapbooks and and sort of colleges, sketchbooks, which was a sort of modern sketchbooks, which had elements of diary in them. So not pure bullets journal stuff, but stuff which is a really interesting expression of your experience. And and rather definitely put me on to those things.

Why do you think that way of thinking about no booking in journal and keeping track of your life lagged so much? The business side of things, which, as you turned in the book, got really customize zed and really specific. And like we we built capitalism on top of these things, right? Like double entry accounting became a worldwide phenomenon, and people understood how to do IT.

And there were kind of accepted rules on how to keep these kinds of notebooks. But in people doing IT in their own lives, like you said, there have been bitten pieces of this over time. But uh, somebody like rider Carol comes along hundred years later and really thinks like, okay, how can I break this thing down into sort of understandable, repeatable pieces that just happen much later? Why do you think that is?

Honestly, I have no idea. There are, there are questions you can't answer.

I mean, another big question, which I just have no idea, is why did people start writing diaries or or rather, why did they start writing diaries in england in around the year fifteen seventy, when theyd never done them anywhere else in the world before? I've looked really hard are trying to find out what was so special about england at that time, which made people start to keep a diary like you, not an emotional diary, and how they felt about the days events. Just sorry, not very good podcast will are making a falled expression.

Listen the picture that I have no idea. And I think your miles to your question is is a good question. I have no idea.

Yeah, it's I I have have a theory and it's based on nothing, but it's a theory. I am I going to give you my theories of asking you another question, which I also I think as especially as we became more and matched with digital tools, live took on like a new level of informational chaos. There is just more stuff coming at us now then there ever has been. And that's true in our professional lives, but it's also true in our personal lives.

I think a in a new way in the last I don't know, several decades that there's just more happening around you and to you all the time and where we're still reckoning with that as people, right? This question of like we understand what is going on in the world in a way that we are, like, evolutionary, not equipped to do, and what do we do with that? All these really interesting questions, but I think wonder that I see all the time, is people crave systems there.

There is this idea that if I can just find a way to make this make sense, everything will be Better, right? And I think and you mention the getting things done method, uh, in in the book also, and I think that speeds to the same thing, like there is the sword mass of stuff in my life. And if you can just tell me where to put IT and how my brain will get quieter.

And I think that's meaningful to people. And and again, I there there is a definite sort of we are people of our time and technology thing that is all kind of swirling together there. But I feel like when I see people who like really love bullet journal, what IT but IT says is like, the world is insane and messy.

But I have made this thing that is like my world, and IT is beautiful and looks like me, and IT just feels good. And it's why, like, people get mad at all the bullet journalists who are like spending all of their time organizing their pages and not time getting stuff done. And it's like, no, that the organizing the pages is actually the point of the thing as much as anything .

else is control.

right? Like making the notebook is the point. And I I feel like that was one of the things that just keeps coming up throughout history in your book is like the act of making the thing is as much of the point.

Is anything else going back in reviewing IT is fine, doing stuff with what you put in IT is fine, but the act of making the new book in the first place is maybe the most important part of the whole process. And I feel like they're so much of that happening right now that yeah, we need structure around that more than ever. Yes.

theory that's and my answers to that is yes, that's the short answer. Slightly, slightly more involved example or to sort of back up what you said. So I have a day job and I do this, write books and talked people about IT.

And so did level of inputs into my life in terms of communication and things flying at me from different directions. I've got two email addresses. I've got the instagram.

I've got the twitter, which i'm switching off shortly. But i've got the the facebook, i've got what's up on the phone IT seta IT just goes on. And that's before i'm in a room with anyone actually talking face, face.

And my way of dealing with this is to write a diary. yeah. So at the end of the day, I will put IT all down in here and and it's is under control, as you say.

And i've turned this effect, al non stop flow of craziness, most of which is completely trivial, but has been managed somehow. And i've just turned IT into a calm thing on the page. Yeah completely degree.

And as to how that makes me feel, the analogy I use is is like having a shower. Yeah, showers, lovely, just great. I like have a shower every day.

But if I can, if I have to go day without, that's fine. No one really minds two days without this mentally. I start to smell so and that's what i'm like with the diary the day, yeah, I can't miss two days. I start to smell mentally and and IT really cleans me out. Sort of that process of just dumping IT on the page really, really is refreshing and cleansing in that sense.

Yeah, I like that a lot. Why do you think we haven't found a way to do that digitally in the way that is satisfying and valuable in the same way that we have in note looks because like we pretty much do business on computers now there there is not a lot of paper, no books out there responsible for how capitalism m runs anymore. Yeah but I think I am someone who has tried every note taking up on planet earth.

I I obsessively used them. I build these systems, uh and overwhelming leave the ones that feel the best. And as I talk to people, the answer is you try them all and you eventually just get a nice no book in open and you start filling IT. And there is there is something about that, that we have not replaced. And i'm curious if you have thoughts on why IT has been so hard to replace.

I have lots of thoughts. I'm gonna give you the deepest one because I think this is I think your listener can cope with a sort of high level, bit of neurobiology。 So when you write on a notebook page, and they've done this with M. R.

I scans, and the very clever way of using multiple mini scans called boxall based more formatter, when you can look at multiple brains at once, when you write in a notebook, you use different parts of the brain to when you type, or when you write something on your phone or your tablet. And one of the different parts you use is the hippocampus. Now this is right in the with the brain, and it's your mental map.

So when you drive to your place of work, you're using your hip campus. When you know where the coffee cups are in your kitchen, you're using the hippocampus. Taxi drivers, cab drivers have amazingly well developed.

Tipper campaign was an early case study in a brain plasticity actually, right? So this is very interesting. Why do you engage your hip campus when you're writing in a notebook? And it's because your notebook is a place right? And IT has its own geography.

So when you write things on the pages of a note, but you remember, or I certainly end to remember, oh, that was on the left one side at the top, that was, I wrote, that didn't blue somewhere. Now that was at the back of the notebook that was at the front. And i'm thinking about the notebook.

K, in quite a different way to how I think about the digital node and what they think. The people who research this is that when you scroll or you Carry on writing and what you've written on a screen, just scroll up, up, top, up, top of the vanishes off the top of your screen. It's a fanie es.

IT has no place in the geography of your lived experience, unlike stuff which you write down in a notebook page. So i've got my yellow notebook and I know that if I open hour way through, roughly speaking, i'm going to find what happened in july. And I can't do that with notes are made on an ipad big just because my brain hasn't thought about them in that geographic way.

So that's one reason why you feel more comfortable and you navigate those notes more happening then you do when they're digital. Other reasons are to do with, I think, the sort of the center experience of writing fingers on the page depend on in your hand. Being a slightly richer experience is more difficult as well, is very easy to type.

You can type, you could, roughly speaking, type everything I said to you right now. You'll get IT all pretty much down. You can't do that with dependents.

You have to filter, you have to pass the ideas. You have to process, stem. And and that gives you a much richer, deeper understanding of what you are actually listening to.

You can type whatever I say without actually listening to what i'm saying at all. But to write IT down, you have to paraphrase, and therefore you have to actually interact with the ideas. So this is why teachers and academics much prefer their students to to write notes rather than to types him. So there's a couple of ones.

Do you think there's a marriage there that we can make work? I mean, I you thinking about you, you start the book with moskin, which is probably at the first notebook most people think of, I think of the box and most in for years has been building. Digital tools and they have they have a really beautiful calendar APP, they have a really interesting journal system is all very good. Nobody cares about at the whether they care about physical moskin no box. Uh and you know there there is this phase for a long time of like maybe we're going to do smart pens where i'll write in a notebook, but IT will transcribe IT digitally and now there are things are like, okay, can write with a pen but it's on your ipad and IT will recognize the text and make something out of IT IT feels like where we're poking at this thing where the the act that you're describing, I think, is absolutely the best one. But having a notebook that is a bunch of words on a page that sets on my bookshelf waiting for me to do something with IT feels like it's missing something like there is a best of both world here that I think I desperately want to exist and I don't know maybe maybe he just doesn't and can and want but I am curious, do do you think we can marry those two things?

Um i'm not gonna say never, but i've not seen IT done yet in a way which I think some people, that sort of the most in magic paper, the dotted paper, whatever did they make IT work for them. And and good, good. And that great. And some people also manage to make those kind of push tablets and the remarkable tablets work in a similar way. And again, go you personally, I haven't ever manage.

Okay, last day and then I will truly like that. You go uh tell me just briefly about mosi and why you start the book with moscow. I want to end our podcast with why is moskin so ascendant? What what is IT about this company in this thing that has made moskin the brand, the notebook, the thing in our sort of modern world?

It's the complete refinement SHE took and I say SHE maria, a rubini who was the woman who conceived the the moskin notebook, who took the very simple basic notebook that we knew.

He added to IT SHE added a little elastic strap, the pocket in the back, the little page at the front, saying, if you find his notebook, please return IT to SHE added, all of these things were a very minimal product, and he somehow made IT seem even more minimal, right? So, and to an energy, I makes SHE SHE made IT minimal and SHE made IT black. And that was the most italian thing you could do is like perl sunglasses, proud a little bad dress.

Um espresso, you know, that's what they do. They make a minimum black. And he did that and somehow SHE just SHE tricked us, if you like, SHE fooled us and thankful that he did.

I wouldn't write this book if IT wasn't for most sinks, I think, because SHE made us look again at this simple notebook and think of IT as something which had some material value, that had some material beauty, and which could be therefore inspiring in a way that your school exercise book couldn't be. So she's that one of you is my heroine creatively. She's also, for me, a figure of all.

Because if you look at muskie numbers, the company's numbers through history, that company's profit margin is a ridiculous, is like forty three percent profit every year, gross profit, and is a manufacture company. No company does that. You know, how did they do IT? So I take my hatt off to her, and I can forget quite easily about all of the ridiculous collaborations with the every note in adobe and things like that.

Listen, you got to do somewhere .

stuff because the key product is amazing.

Yeah, will end to that point. Actually, one of the things you say kind of isn't aside in the book is, uh, there are a million other notebooks that are like they they give you ideas and prompts and they put its up inside. And this ones for your recipes, this one is for your travels.

Uh, and what actually turns out to be the cases nobody wants that they want the blank one. Yeah, I think yeah, as as a perfect metaphor for all of this that just Carry with me through the whole thing that, like, you can make IT whatever you want, you can guss IT up and people will want the blank one because then they can do what they want with IT. And there's something very powerful .

in that yeah freedom.

yeah. I mean, that's the story of the no created is permanent and its freedom in in very real way.

love. Yes, i'll take that. Going to have that. Yeah.

i'll take that right.

We got to take one more break and then we're going to come back and take a question from the verge cast online. I'll break back.

Support for the verge cast comes from polestar electric performance is at the core of every decision that went into pull stars. First, all electric S U V star. For example, IT has a computer control tork vector system, which basically senses and redistributes power to the wheel with more grip that means tighter turns.

Poster three even allows the driver to optimize the power train between performance or range mode. Depending on your dress needs, you're able to go from zero to sixty and as little as four point eight seconds and get an E P, A estimated range of up to three hundred and fifty miles per charge. And its design is intentional.

IT features a sleek, aerodynamic exterior, but a minimal alist carefully created interior that emphasises the spacious ness of the vin. And you can relax on your drive to with an intuitive fot screen and an short post. AR three is the S.

U. V that drives like a sports car and has a lot to offer. But you can only fully understand IT by trying IT out for yourself at your local polestar space book, a destroy for polestar three at polestar. That cop.

Sorry, we're back. Let's get to the house line. As always, the number is eight, six, six, verge one one.

The email is verge cast at the very shot com. Please send us all of your questions. We have a couple of specific hot lining.

Things we're gona do in the next couple of months before the end of the year. So keep an eye. Our social were mentioned on the show, but all other questions send them to the hot line.

We love IT. This week, like I mentioned, we have something slightly different. We ve got a question that send our producers or will pour down a pretty wild, rabid hall inside the take talk shop. So here let me just play the question. And then why's gona take IT away?

Here you go, everyone. This is Shawn from ohio. I know that nearly a specifically hate a corporate, but one thing been sing pop up on tiktok a bunch lately is this car play adaptable screens that they plug into your car somehow.

And it's kind of like a retrofit for um all vehicles to use car play or android auto and seeing them all over to talk lately, I don't know if this is everywhere, if this is real. Until the other day, I saw went out in the wild in the car next to me and I wanted to let them down and asked them if it's good or not. So wondering if you guys think they're good. Uh, is this just crazy team of technology or whatever? And I love the here european ian things.

So I am the proud owner of a two thousand six toyota s and I would love to have car play. So as soon as I heard this hot line question, I went on tiktok, and I just searched for car play screen, and I found exactly what our listener, Shawn, was looking at.

If you're like me, you have a much older car that you want to feel more expensive. You need this .

portable apple car play. Once you connected to the car play, IT has your phone, your messages. All your different apps .

on there as well is a great Price. Don't sleep on this shop. Telling ink below you can save yourself hundreds of dollars.

There are at least a couple of different models for sale on the shop. The one I saw the most was made by a 哈 H I E H A。 It's a seventh color touch screen.

IT comes with a couple of different mounting options for your car, and they throw in a backup camera. And all of that is thirty seven dollars, allegedly marked down from one hundred and twenty, which is a very suspicious markdown. I also found a lot of really similar listings for similar products, similar Prices, similar markdowns.

I've never bought anything on tiktok. IT was all really overwhelming and all a little bit sketch feeling. So sean, I completely understand your feeling of, is this real? Is this not real?

You know, IT all kind of reminded me of the page seven of an amazon search result page for a gadget. But it's thirty seven dollars. That is an amount of money that the verge can put on the line on your behalf.

So I ordered IT OK. I got my car play stream in the mail, the brand on the boxes. Ni, but that says from tiktok incorporated IT came very quickly.

What's opened up?

My first impressions of IT seven inches is actually a pretty big screen that kind of has an ipad mini vibe to IT. IT seems solid enough. IT comes with a power cable that goes out to a cigarette later or it's a USB c if you happen to have that ah there's an oxy cable that IT comes with.

It's got the back of camera and the wiring and two different section adhesive mounting options for your dashboard. The screen itself is kind of heavy and the mounts are pretty cheap plastic. So I was a little bit worried about how well I was gonna mount stability to the dashboard, but I gave you a shot.

Let's figure what to put this thing. One tRicky thing for me was just figuring out where to put IT, like my prius has a screen and I need that for the existing backup camera and for a and for other stuff that I don't have physical buttons for. So IT needs to be a second screen that I put on the dash somewhere that is not going to block my view of the road or my view of the spending.

Enter ta mounting itself turned out to be fine. The section in the adhesive worked out well, and once I turn the car on the screen worked fine. Kay, it's turning on.

I've got options for car play. Android auto phone link and audio output set up was really easy. IT was reasonably bright and responsive.

I don't know. IT was a little lagging, a little bit washed out, but again, thirty seven dollars. And for what it's worth, IT is a tun Better than my existing prior stream .

had south on thirty a avenue, southwest or southwest came street.

I drove around with IT for a while and don't know IT did all the car play things. Google maps is amazing on a much larger screen if you're used to a phone that's in a holster on your dashboard. IT was easy to see text.

When I was parked, there was a lot, a little purse to IT. Audio was a little bit more complicated. IT comes with a bunch of options to send audio.

One, there's a standard oxx jack, which for me means a long, awkward, sneaking cable to the port. In my car, you can use blue tooth, which is just horrible on my prius, so that's a no. You can send audio to FM radio, which I kind of love and is an amazing throw back. Or IT does have an internal speaker, which is crappy, but is actually fine for directions, if that the only thing you need the audio for.

The.

and by the way, if you ever wanted to know what the verge cast would sound like on F. M. Radio, here you go.

Walk the word cast, the flagship podcast of quantified brand cycles.

So like I said, i'd drove around for an afternoon with IT and there were things I struggled with. But they don't actually have much to do with the device itself. The screen is cheap, but it's functionality. But a couple things stood out.

The first thing is to get the most out of IT, I would need to install on my dashboard, and then i'd need to snake the power to the cigarette letter in one part of the car and then snake the audio cable to the oxford in another part of the car. And if I one of the backup camera, i'd have to wire that to the break light and to the screen. It's all just a lot of cable management like you're putting a screen in the car where there wasn't one or in my case, finding a place for a second screen, which is all doable.

But it's not something that tiktok show you because, you know, they're trying to sell you this thing. Like if I did a tiktok review, one hundred percent of IT would just be really awkward cable management. And then the other thing that I realized all at once I was driving down the street is that await, I live in a neighborhood where car brains happened kind of a lot.

And I now have what looks like an ipad mini just sitting on my dashboard at all times. Like this thing, one hundred person is going to a get stolen in at some point, which again is not a knock on the screen itself. And IT might not be a concern for you where you live, but it's kind of a deal speaker for me because there's no way this thing is worth a broken window.

So shan, what are we to make of this thing? Well, at a really basic level, IT does what IT claims to do. I don't know how long this will last.

It's certainly really cheap. But IT all works. IT gives you car play in your car if you didn't have IT before. And the rest of IT is just up to you to make work with your car. For me, i've always been jealous of people with car play. But now i'm faced with this question, is this actually Better than just putting my phone in a holster on the dashboard? And I think my answer is no, honestly, but your answer might be different.

Sorry, that is IT for the verge cast today. Thank you to everyone who was on the show and thank you, as always for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about from all the j paul, my test and netflix stuff to roll in Allen's book to all the stuff about the tiktok shop on the verse that com.

I'll put a lot of links in the shown ots. There are a lot of links, but as always, read the verse that come good web. And if you have thoughts, questions, feelings or other good ideas of no books that I should buy, you can always even less add verda ast at the verge shot com or call the hotline.

It's excess first one one. Again, we have some fun stuff coming for the hot line in the next few weeks. So keep on on our social keep IT locked here will keep you posted this shows produced liam James, willie and recommends the verge caste is a verge production and part of the box media podcast network new.

And I will be back on friday to talk about all the news happening this week, all the new gadgets, all the wild stuff with the fcc, and maybe we will have named show and tell by then. But Frankly, I couldn't bet on IT. We will see you then 打成 了。

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