Powerful A.I. By 2026? + Uber's C.E.O. on the Robotaxi Future + Casey's TikTok Test
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the episode today with a little housekeeping. So we've talked on the show the last couple of weeks about the new new york times audio subscription. Uh this is how you can connect your york times uh subscription on apple podcast and spotify to get full access to every episode of hardworking and all of the other shows from the new york times.

Um this subscription is now alive. You may be running into IT if you use those platforms, and you should link your account. I did this week very easy, took me less than a minute, and now I can get all of my favorite shows in the whole back catoche.

And we talked about A I slop on the show last week and how hard IT is to sort of understand what's true and what's not true out there on the internet. And after that show, I did actually subscribe to several different publications. And I now pay for several different publications because I was like, if i'm preaching the value of good information out there, I got to be willing to walk, to walk.

You are being the change you wanted to see in the world. So if you want to be the change you wish to see in the podcast world, you can subscribe to the times audio subscription. Do IT. So that is our third and final pitch for the new york times audio subscription. But there is another piece of house keeping this week, which is that after this episode is over, you will hear a segment from a different new york times podcast that i'll play just at the tail end of this episode. It's an episode of the new york times s newest podcast, the wire cut or show.

And let me tell you, this is an episode about laundry, which might not sound like it's on a traditional wheel house. But i'm going to tell you something I want to a dinner party recently and a person I never met, we got to talk in and he said, have you heard the wirecutters podcast episode about laundry? Because I changed my life and now we're giving that to you for absolutely free.

So please buy a subscription to new work times audio. If we sell the most subscriptions, if we sell more than ezra and Michael barbaro, we do get a free concert by the .

battery place. And i'll say, I want IT that way, casey, you are my fire. You want the fire 都 得死。

We just got to another email from somebody who said they thought I was bored. I apparently crazy balled energy. Energy.

you think as a bald seeming about you?

I think for me, they think of me as a wacky side cake, which is a bold energy, you know I think so. I don't .

think of I don't associate wacky involved because i'm thinking jeff biz like like I know a lot of like very hard .

corn interest. So do you think that maybe people think that I sound like a sort tightness of industry plutocrat?

I would not say that the energy of giving of is plutocrat energy.

But but really, because I just fired six thousand people to show that I could.

you did order me .

to come to the office today. I said they return to office on effect immediately. You know what questions?

Capture attack columns from the new york times i'm casing from platformer. And this is hard fork this time, are we reaching the A I N game? A new esa from the CEO of the Anthony has silicon, baldly talking.

Then uber CEO dara a costa a he joins us to discuss these companies is new partnership with way mo and the future of autonomous vehicles. Finally, internal tiktok documents tells exactly how many videos you need to watch to get book. And so I did very brave. God help me.

Well, Kevin, the A I race continues to accelerate, and this week the news is coming from anthropic. Now last year, you actually spend some time inside this company, and you called IT, the White hot .

center of A. I do. Morison, yes, the headline of my piece called A M clay lame. The reporters don't often write our own headline.

so I just feel they need to clarify their up. But the story does talk about how many of the people you met inside this company seemed strAngely pessimistic about what they were building.

Yeah, he was a very interesting reporting experience because I got invited to spend you know several weeks just basically embedded at anthropic as they were gearing up to launch an update of their chatbot, laude. And I would have expected, you know, they would go in and try to press me with how great claude was and talk about all the amazing things that would allow people to do. And then I got there and he was like, all they wanted to do was talk about how scared they were of and of releasing these systems into the wild. I compared IT in the piece to like being a restaurant credit, who shows up at like a buzz new restaurant and all anyone wants to talk about .

his food poison. And so for this reason, I was very interested to see over the past week the CEO of anthropic darro oma day write a thirteen thousand word essay about his vision of the future. And in this essay he says that he is not an AI tumor, does not think of himself as one, but actually thinks that the future is quite right and might be arriving very quickly.

And then shortly after that cabin, the company put out a new policy, which they call a responsible scaling policy, that I thought had some interesting things to say about ways to safely build A I system. So we wanted talk about this today for a couple reasons. One is that A I CEO have kept telling us recently that major changes are right around the corner.

Some old men recently had a blog post where he said that an artificial super intelligence could be just a few thousand days away. And now here on my day is saying that agi could arrive in twenty six, which check account that is in fourteen months. And certainly, there is a case that this is just hype. But even so, there are some very wild claims in here that I do think deserve broader attention.

The second reason that we want to talk about this today is that anthropic is really the flip side to a story that we've been talking about for the past year here, which is what happened to open an eye during and after sam altman temporary firing, as CEO and proper was started by a group of people who left OpenAI primarily over safety concerns. And recently, several more members of OpenAI founding teams and their safety research teams have gone over to anthropic. And so in a wake of in anthropic, is an answer to the question of what would have happened if open a eyes executive team hand spent the past few years following apart, and while they are still the underdog compared to open an eye, is there a chance that anthropic is the team that builds agi first? So that's what we want to talk about today. But I want to start by just talking about this S A Kevin. What did dorio on a day have to say in this S A machines of loving Grace?

yes. So the first thing that struck me is is he is clearly reacting. This perception, which I may have helps create through my story last year that that sort of he and anthropic are just tumors, right?

That they are just a company that goes around warning about how badly A I could go if you're not careful. And what he says in this essay that I thought was really interesting and important is, you know, we're going to keep talking about the risks of vy. This is not him saying, I don't think this stuff is risky.

I've been take IT out of context, and i'm actually an AI optimist. What he says is it's important to have both, right? You can't just be going around warning about the doom all the time.

You also have to have a positive vision for the future of AI because, uh, that's what not only what inspires and motivates people, but IT IT matters what we do. I thought that was actually the most important thing that he did in this essay was he basically said, look, this could go well or I could go badly. And whether IT goes well or badly is up to us.

This is not some inevitable force. Sometimes people in the AI industry, they have a habit of talking about AI as if it's just kind of this disembodiment ce that is just going to you happen to us inevitable, yes. And we either have to sort of like get on the train or get run over by the train. And what dario says is actually different. He says, you know, this is, here's a vision for how this could go well, but it's going to take some work to get there.

IT also made me realized that for the past couple of years, I have heard much more about how A I could go wrong than how IT could go right from the A I ceos, right? As much as these guys get knocked for endlessly hyping up their products, they also have, I think, to their credit, spend a lot of time trying to explain the people that this stuff is risk y. And so there was something almost counter intuitive about dio coming out and saying, wait, let's get really specific about how this could go. Well, totally.

So I think the first thing that's worth pulling out from this essay is the timeline, right? Because as you said, darro amede is claiming that powerful AI, which is sort of his term, he doesn't like agi. He thinks that sounds like too simple I, but powerful AI, which he sort of defines, is like an A I that would be smarter than a nobel prize winner in basically any field.

And that IT could basically control tools, go due a bunt of task sii, multi eec sly. He causes this of a country of geniuses in a data center that's of his definition of powerful AI. And he thinks that he could arrive as soon as twenty twenty six.

I think there's a tennis sometimes to be cynical about people with short timeline ines like these, like all these just saying this stuff is going to arrive so soon because they need to to raise a bunch of money for their AI companies. And you know, maybe that is a factor, but I truly believe that at least dio omy is sincere and serious about this. This is not a drill to him. And anthropic is actually making plans, scaling teams and building products as if we are headed into erratically different world very soon, like within the next presidential .

term yeah and look, anthropic is raising money right now, and that does give dari o motivation to get out there in the markets. Start talking about during cancer, all these amazing things that he thinks that A I can do at the same time.

You know, I I think that we in a world where the discourse has been a little bit poison by folks like elon us who are constantly uh going out into public making bold claims about things that they say they are going to happen you within six months or a year and then truly just never happen. And our understanding of austria based our own conversations with them, people who work with them, like he is not that kind of person. This is not somebody who lets his mouth run away with him when he says that he takes his stuff, could start to arrive in fourteen once I actually do give .

some credibility. Yeah, you can argue with the time scales and plenty of smart people disagree about this, but I think it's worth taking this seriously because this is the head of one of the leading A I labs sort of giving you his thoughts on not just what A I is going to change about the world, but when that's going to happen. And what I liked about this essay was that IT wasn't trying to sell me a vision of a glorious A I.

Future radar. O says, you know, all or summer, none of this might come to pass. But IT was basically a thought experiment. He has this idea in the esa about what he calls the the compressed twenty first century.

He basically says, what if all AI does is allow us to make a hundred years worth of progress in the next ten years in fields like biology? What would that change about the world? Thought there was a really interesting way to fragment.

Give us some examples, Kevin, of what dari o says might happen in this compressed twenty first century.

So what he says in this, as is that if we do get what he calls powerful AI relatively soon, that in the sort of decade that follows, that we would expect things like the prevention and treatment of basically all natural infectious disease, the elimination of most types of cancer, very uh serve good embryo screening for genetic diseases that would make IT so that more people didn't die of these sort of heredity things he talks about there being, uh improved treatment for mental health and other elements .

yeah I mean and a lot of this comes down to just understanding the human brain, which is an area where we still have a lot to learn.

And the idea is, if you have what he calls this country of genius, that just Operating on a server somewhere, and they are able to talk to each other, to dream, to suggest ideas, to give guidance to human scientists and loves to run experiments, then you, this massive compression effect on all of us side, you get all of these benefits really soon. And you know, obviously, that the headline grabbing stuff is like, you know, daro things. We're going to cure all cancer, and we're going to cure alzheimer's disease.

Obvious, those are huge, but there's also kind of the more mundane e stuff like do you struggle with anxiety to have other mental health issues that are you like mild lead depressed? It's possible that we will understand the neural circuitry there and be able to develop treatments that would just lead to a general rise and happiness. And that really struck me.

Yeah and IT sounds when you just describe IT that way, IT sounds sort of utopian and crazy. But what he points out and and what I actually find compelling is like most scientific progress does not happen in a straight right. You have these kind of moments where there is a breakthrough that enables a bunch of other breakthrough. And we've seen stuff like this already happened with A I like with alpher fold, which won the freak nobel Price this year in chemistry, where you don't just have a cure for one specific disease, but you have a way of potentially discovering cures for many kinds of diseases.

All this A A partner I say that I really like way points out that a crisper was something that. Could have invented long before we actually did, but essentially no one had noticed the things they needed to notice in order to make a reality. And he posits that there are probably hundreds of other things like this right now that just no one has noticed yet. And if you had a bunch of, uh, A I agents working together in a room and they were sufficiently intelligent, they were just notice those things and we be after the racist.

right? And what I liked about this section of the essay was that I didn't try to claim that there was some, uh, you know, completely novel thing that would be required, uh, to result in the changed world that he envisions, right? All that would need to happen for society to look gradually different. Ten or fifteen years from now in dario's mine is for a base rate of discovery to accelerate rapidly due to A I yeah. Now let's .

take a moment to acknowledge folks in the audience who might be saying, oh my gosh, will these guys stop IT with the A I hype, accepting every premise that these A I C E S will just shovel, that they can't get enough. And it's irresponsible. These are just to caster parrots, Kevin.

They don't know anything. It's not intelligence. And it's never gonna any Better than IT is today. And I just want to say, I hear you and I see you and our email address is as we're linch time suck up. But here's a thing you can look at the state of you are right now.

And if you just extrapolate what is is happening in twenty twenty four and you assume some rate of progress beyond where we currently are, IT seems likely to me that we do get into a world where you do have these sort of simulated P H D students or maybe simulated super genois, and they are able to realize a lot of these kinds takes down, maybe doesn't happen in five, ten years, maybe IT takes a lot longer than that. But I just wanted to underlying, we are not truly living in the world. Authentic y, we are just trying to get a few years and a few levels of advancement beyond where we are right now.

yeah. And darro does, in his essay make some caveats about things that might constrain the rate of progress in A I like uh, regulation or clinical trials taking a long time know he also talks about the fact that some people may just opt out of this whole thing, like maybe just may not want anything to do with A I there might be some political and cultural backlash that slows down the rate of progress um and he says, you know like that could actually constrain this and and we need to think about some ways .

to address that so that is sort of the sweet of things that daro things will benefit our lives. You know there's budget more in there, you know thinks that will help with climate change, other issues. Um but the S A has five parts and there was another part of the S A that really caught my attention. Kevin and IT is a part that looks a little bit more seriously at the risk of the stuff, because any super genius that was sufficiently intelligent to cure cancer could otherwise recovered in the world. So what is his idea for ensuring that A A I always remains a good hands?

So he admitted that he's not like a geopolitics expert. This is not. Um and there Better look a lot of people theorizing about uh, what the politics of advanced I are going to look like. Dari o says that his best guests are currently about how to prevent AI from sort empowering autocrats and dictators is through what he calls an onon strategy.

Basically, you want a bunch of democracies to kind of come together to secure their supply chain, to serve block adversity from getting access to things like GPU and and semiconductors, and that you could basically bring countries into this democratic alliance. And as of ice out the the moneths italian regimes from getting access to this stuff. But I think, you know, this was sort of not that the most fleshed out .

part of the argument yeah well, and I appreciate that he is at least making an effort to come up with ideas for how would you prevent A I from from being missing. But as I was reading the discussion around the blog post, I found this interesting response from a guy name, max tegmark.

Max is a professor at MIT who studies machine learning, and he's also the president of something called the future of life institute, which is a certain non profit focused on AI safety. And he really doesn't like this idea of what dario calls the on tone to the group of these, these democracies working together. And he says he doesn't like IT, because IT essentially sets up and accelerates a race.

IT says to the world that essentially, whoever invents super powerful A I first will in forever, right? Because in this view, AI is essentially the final technology that you ever need to invent, because after that, they'll just invent anything else that needs. And he calls that a suicide raise and the reason is this um and he is great vote honey couples know that IT is easier to make a human level intelligence than to raise and alias and IT is also easier to make an agi than to .

figure out how to want to control IT.

Wow ah I never thought about I like that that um so Kevin, would you make up this sort of feedback? Is there a risk there that this effectively serves as as a starter pistol that leaves maybe our appreciation to start investing more in AI and sort of racing against us and you know trigger ing some sort of doing spyri?

Yeah I mean, I look, I don't have a problem with china racing us to cure cancer using AI. That's not if they get there first like more power to them. Um but I think the more serious risk is that they start building the kind of AI that serves chinese interest, right, that IT becomes a tool for surveilLance and and control of people rather than some of these more serve democratic ideals.

And this is actually something that I I asked dario about back last year when I was spending all that time and anthropic um because this is the most common criticism of anthropic is like, well, if you're so worried about A I and all the risks that IT compose, like why are you building IT? And I I asked me this in his response was he basically said, look, there's this problem of uh in A I research of kind of inner training right of the the same technology that sort of advanced the state of the art in A I also allows you to advance the state of the art in A I safety right, the same tools that uh that make the language models more capable also make IT possible to control the behavior of the language models. And so these things kind of go hand in hand. And if you want to compete on the frontier of A I safety, you also have to compete on the frontier of AI capabilities.

Yeah and and I think it's an idea worth considering to me IT just sounds like a, wow, you are really standing on a knife edge there. If you are saying in order to have any influence over the future, we have to be right at the frontier and maybe even gently advanced the frontier and yet somehow not accidentally trigger a race where all of the site and everything gets out of control um but I do accept and respect that is start every point .

but isn't that kind of what we observe from the last couple of years of A I progress, right? Like OpenAI, IT got out there with ChatGPT before any of the other labs had released h anything similar and ChatGPT kind of set the tone for all of the products that followed. And so I think the argument from a anthropic would be like, yes, we could sort of be way behind the state of the art that would probably make us safer than someone who was actually advancing the state of the art. But then we missed the chance to kind of set the terms of what future AI products from other companies will look like.

So it's sort of like using a soft power in an effort to when others yeah the way they put this to me.

uh, last year was that they wanted instead of there to be uh uh just a race for raw capabilities of AI systems, they wanted there to be a safety race, right, where companies would start competing about whose models were the safest rather than whose models could, you know, do your math .

home work Better. So let's talk about the safety race. And the other thing that anthropic did this week to a lay out a future vision for ai. And that was was something that has all say, kind of a boring name, the responsible scaling policy. I understand, you know, this maybe was onna come up over drinks club, but I I think this is something that people should pay attention do because it's an example of what you just said. Kevin IT, is anthrax trying to use some soft power in the world to say, hey, if we went a little bit more like this, we might be safer.

So talk about what's in responsible scaling policy, the anthropic .

released this week. But let's talk about what IT is. And the basic idea is just that as large language models gain new abilities, they should be subjected to more scrutiny and they should have more safeguards added to them.

They put this out a year ago, and IT was actually a huge success in this sense. Kevin OpenAI, when on to released its own version of IT and then google deep mind released is a similar uh, scaling policy as well this spring. So now when proper is coming back just over a year later and they say we are going to make some refinements.

And the most important thing that they say is essentially, we have identified two capabilities that we think would be particularly dangerous. And so if anything that we make displays these capabilities, we are going to add a bunch of new safeguards. The first one of those is if a model can do its own A I research and development, that is gona start ringing a lot of alarm bells and they're going to put many more safer on that.

And second, if one of these models can meaningly assist someone who has a basic tactical background in creating a chemical, biological, rao, logical or nuclear weapon, then they would add these new safe ards. What are these safe cards while they have a super log blog post about IT? You can look at up, but IT includes basic things like taking extra steps to make sure that a foregone adversary can steal the model weights, for example, or otherwise hack into the systems and run away with that.

right? And this is some of IT is similar to things that were proposed by the biden White house in its executive order on AI last year. H this is also these are some of the steps that came up uh, in sb ten forty seven, the A I uh regulation that was vetoed by governor newsom california recently. So these are ideas that have been floating out there uh in in the sort of A I safety world for a while. But anthropic is basically saying we are going to proactively commit to doing this stuff even before a government .

requires us to yeah there's a second thing I like about this. And IT relates to this as b forty seven we talked about on the show, somebody that a lot of folks in silicon valley didn't like about. IT was the way that I tried to identify danger. And IT was not because of a specific harm than a model.

What could cause IT was by saying, well, if a model costs a certain amount of money to train right, or if IT is trained with a certain amount of compute, those were the proxies that the government was trying to use to understand why this would be dangerous. And a lot books in silicon valley said, we hate that because that has nothing to do whether these things could cause harm or not. So we are proof is doing here is saying, well, why don't we try to regulate based on the anticipated harm? And obviously, you will be bad if you could know.

Log on to claude and propionic val ed, a ChatGPT, and said, hey, help me build a radiological weapon, which is something that I might type in o'clock, because I don't even know the difference between a radiological weapon and a nuclear weapon to you. I hope you never learned. I hope, I hope I don't either, because sometimes I have bad day, is Kevin and I get a scheming. So for this reason, I think that governments, regulators around the world might want to look at this approach, say, hey, instead of trying to regulate this based on how much much money A I labs are spending, or like how much compute is involved, why did we look at the horns, are trying to address and say, hey, if you build something that could cause this kind of harm.

you have to do x handy. That makes sense to so I think the biggest impact that both these are of essay the dario wrote and this responsible scaling policy head on me, was not about any of the actual specifics of the idea IT was purely about the time scales and the urgency. IT is one thing to hear a bunch of people telling you that A I is coming and that it's going to be more powerful than you can imagine sooner than you can imagine. But if you actually start to internalize that and plan for IT, IT just feels very different. 嗯， if we are going to get powerful AI sometime in the next, let's call IT two to ten years, you just start making different choices.

Yeah, I think IT IT becomes sort of the calculus S I can imagine IT affecting what you might want to study in college if you are going to school right now. I have friends who are, uh, you know, thinking about leaving their jobs because they think the place where they are working right now will not be able to compete in a world where A I is very widespread. So yes, you're absolutely starting to see IT creep into the calculus. Um I don't know kind of what else I could do know that there is no real call to action here because you can really do very much until this world begins to arrive. But I do think psychologically, we want people to at least imagine, as you say, what I would be like to live in this world, because I have been surprised at how little discussion this is been getting.

Yeah I I totally agree. I I mean, to me, IT feels like we are we are entering. I wouldn't call IT IT like an A I N game because I think it's we're closer to the start than the than the end of this formation.

But IT does feel like something is happening. I'm starting to notice a is affects in my life more. I'm starting to feel more dependent on IT. And i'm also like kind of having an existential crisis, like not not a full blown one, but like typically i'm a guy who likes to plan, like to strategize. I like to have like a five year and a ten year plan. And i've just found that my own certainty about the future in my ability to plan long term is just way lower than IT has been for any time that I can room.

That's anything I mean for myself. I feel like that has always been true. You know in one thousand nine hundred and ninety, I did not know what things wanna look like in twenty forty and I would be really surprised by a lot of things that have happened along the way. Um but yeah there's a lot of any .

other it's scary. But I also like, do you not feel a little bit excited about IT?

Of course I I look I love software. I love tools. I want to live in the future and it's already happening to me. There is a lot of of that uncertainty and like that stuff freaks me out um but like if we could cure cancer, if we could cure depression, if we could your anxiety you'd be talking about the greatest advancement to like human well being certainly in decades. Maybe they've ever see you.

I mean I I have some um players on this because like my dad died of a very rare form of cancer that um was is I got a sub one percent type of cancer and when he got sick I was like, you know I read all the clinically trials and IT is just like there hadn't been enough people thinking about this specific type of cancer and how to cure because I was not breast cancer IT was not lung cancer IT was not something that millions of americans get and so there just wasn't the kind of brain power devoted to trying to solve this.

Now IT has subsequently IT hasn't been solved, but there are now treatments that are in the pipeline that didn't exist when he was sick. And I just constantly am wondering, like if he had gotten sick now instead of when he did, like maybe he would have lived. And I think that is one of the the things that makes me really optimistic about A I is just like maybe we just do have the brain power, or we will soon have the brain power to devote, uh, in a world class a research teams to these things that might not affect millions of people, but they do affect some number of people. I just I don't know IT IT really um I got kind of emotional reading as essay because I was just like, obviously it's I am not someone who believes all the height but i'm like I assign some non zero probability to the possibility that that he's right that all this stuff could happen and I just find that so much um more interesting in fun to think about than like a world where everything goes off .

the rails well and is just the first time that we've had a truly positive transformative vision for the world coming out of silicon valley in a really long time. In fact, this vision is more positive and optimistic than anything that has been like in the presidential campaign is when the presidential candidates talk about the future.

This country is like, well, you know will give you this tax break right? Or will make the other policy change nobody he's talking about, they're going to fricking care cancer. Yeah right. So I think, of course, we're drawn to this kind of discussion because IT feels like you know there are some people in in the world who are taking really, really big swings. And if they connect them in the benefit.

yeah.

When we come back, why uber has way more autonomous vehicles on the road than I used to.

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okay. See, one of the biggest developments over the past few months in tech is that self driving cars now are .

actually working, but this is no longer on the run of.

yes. So we've talked obviously about the soft driving cars that you can get instances and just go now used to be two companies, way mo and crews now is just way o and there have also been on a bunch of different autonomous vehicle updates from other companies that are involved in the space. And the one that I found most interesting recently was about uber.

Now as you will remember, uber used to, uh, try to build its own robot taxes. They gave that a back in twenty. That was the year they sort of sold off there.

Uh, a time is driving division to a start up called aurora after losing just an absolute tone of money on IT. But now they are back in the game and they just a recently announced a multi year partnership with cruise, the self driving car company. They also announced an expanded partnership with way o which is going to to allow uber uh writers to get A V S in Austin, texas and a landa, georgia.

Uh, they've been Operating the service in phoenix h since last year, and that's going to keep expanding. They also announced that self driving uber will be available in abou doby through a partnership with the chinese AV company we ride. And we've also made a longer m investment in wave, which is a london based autonomists driving company.

So they're investing really heavily in this. They're doing IT in a different way than they did back when they were trying to build their own soft driving cars. Now they are essentially saying, we want a partner with every company that we can that is making self driving cars.

yes. So this is a company that many people take several times a week, uber. And yet, I feel like IT sometimes is a bit taken for granted. And while we might just focus on the cards you can get today, they are thinking very long term about what transportation is gone to look like in five or ten years. And increasingly for them, IT seems like autonomous vehicles or yeah .

and what I found really interesting. So tesla had this robot taxi event last to ek kay elan must talk about how you'll soon be able to hail a self driving tesla. And what I find very interesting is that tesla share Price, uh, plumbed after that event, but uber stock Price rose to an all time high. So clearly people think that least some investors think that uber approach is Better here than tesla.

The sort of thing, Kevin, that makes me want to talk to the C.

E. O of uber. And lucky for you, he's here. I think this. So today we're onna talk with uber CEO dark cosa shi. He took over at uber in twenty seventeen after a bunch of scandals LED a the founder of uber travail colonic to step down um he has made the company profitable for the first time in its history and I think a lot of people think he's been doing a pretty good job over there. And he is leading this charge in two autonomous vehicles. And i'm really curious to hear what he makes not just a uber partnership with a but so the whole self driving car landscape. Let's let's do.

Dark ka shi, welcome hard work. Thank you for having me. So you were previously on the board of the new york times company until twenty seventeen when you step down right after taking over at uber. I assume you still have some poll with our bosses though ah because of your years of service. So can you get them to build .

us an icr studio and the board and I certainty i've got negative ful. I think there they're .

taking revenge on me.

Well, since you've left the board, they're making all kinds of crazy decisions like letting us start a podcast ah but right so we are going to talk today about uh your new partnership with O H and the sort of autonomous in future. I would love to hear the story of how this came together because I think for people have been following the space for a number of years, this was surprising.

Uber, and we will have not historically had a great relationship. The two companies were was a little in real in litigation and lawsuits and trade secret that and things like that. There IT was a big deal.

And so how how did approach you? Did you approach them? How this partnership come .

time healing, right? Um we when I came on board, we saw of that we wanted to establish a Better relationship with google generally, limo generally and even though we were working on our own self driving technology, IT was always within the context of we were developing our own, but we want to work with third parties as well.

One of the disappoint tages of developing our own technology was that some of the other players are away as of the word seta heard us but did necessarily believe us, it's difficult to work with players that you compete. So one of the first decisions that we made was we can't be between here, either you have to go vertical le or you have to go platform strategy. You can achieve both.

And we have to make a Better to do our own thing or we have to do with with partners.

Yeah, yeah. absolutely. And so that strategic can fork, uh, became quite apparent to me. Uh, and then the second was just, what are we good at? Listen, we be blunt.

We suck at hardware, right? We try to uh to apply software principles to hardware. IT doesn't work.

Hardware is different pace, different demand in terms of professional eeta. And ultimately, that fork do we go vertical. And there are very few companies that can do software and hardware well.

Apple tesla are arguably one of the few in in the world a and we decided to make a Better on the platform. Uh and so once we made that bet, we went out and identified who are the leaders. When I was a clear leader force, we had to make peace with them and settled in court seta.

Uh we got a good to be a bigger shareholder ah and then over a period of time, we built relationships. And you know I do think there's a syndicate. So IT just makes sense the relationship and were very, very excited to uh on a forward basis, expand IT pretty .

significantly. So this was, I feel like, maybe your most consequential decision to date as the CEO of this company. If you believe that a VS are gona become the norm for many people hAiling a ride and ten or fifteen years, it's conceivably that they might open up the way more upright and not the uber APP.

We no passing active order cars. I use IT fairly regularly, right? So what give you the confidence that in that world IT will still be uber? Uh, that is the APP that people are turning to and not o or whatever other apps might have risen for other AV companies.

Any first is that it's not a dinner outcome, okay. Um I think that a lao APP and uber APP can coexist. We saw in my old job in the travel business, right, iran, and there's this dramatic, is expedia going to put the hotel chains out of business or the hotel chains is going to put a pedia out?

The fact is both thought. And there's a set of customer s who books through x media. There's a set of customer who book's hotel direct, and both businesses have grown and interactivity in general has grown.

Same thing if you look in food, right? McDonald has his own APP. It's a really good APP has A A loyalty program.

Starbucks has its own APP as a loyalty program. Yet both are engaging with us through the uber eat marketplace. So my conclusion was that there isn't and either or I do believe there will be other companies.

They'll be cruises and they'll be we rise and waves that there be other companies and self driving choices. And the person who wants utility, speed, ease, familiar will true zuber. And both can coexist and both can thrive and both are really gonna w because authorities will be the future eventually.

So tell us more about the partnership with way mo a that is going to take place in Austin and atlantic who is actually paying for, uh, the the the maintenance of the cars. Does uber have to make sure that there is no trash left behind in the cars? Like what what is uber actually doing in a direction just making these rides available through the APP?

sure. So I don't want to talk about the economy because their confidential, uh, in terms of the deal. But in those two cities, wao will be available exclusively through through the uber b, and we will also be running the fleet Operations as well. So depos, recharging, cleaning, if something gets lost, making sure that IT gets back to its owner, it's eta and wo will provide the software driver, uh, will obviously provide the hardware repair, the hardware seta. And then we will be doing the upkeep and Operating .

the network for writers, if you want to get in a way. O in one of those cities through uber, is there an option to you specifically request a self driving waa? Or is this just kind of chance like like if the car that's closest to you happens to be a way of that's the one .

you get right now. The experience, for example, in phoenix is that it's my chance. I think you you got one by chance and you can say, yes, i'll do IT or not.

And I think that's what we're gna start with. But there maybe some people who only want lamos and there are some people who may not want lamos and we'll suffer that over party time. IT could be personalizing um preferences or could be what you're talking about.

which is I only want to away. Do the passengers get rated by the self driving car?

The not yet, but that's not the idea.

What about tipping? Like if I get out of a soft driven uber do is an option to tip the car job.

Sure to build that. why?

I don't know. I do wonder if people .

are going na tip machines. I don't think it's likely, but you never know. That sounds crazy.

but at some point someone is going to start asking because they're na realize it's just free march, know? It's like even if only one hundred customers do in the whole year, I don't no, it's just free money.

I need that. The good news is tipping one hundred percent of tips go to drivers now, and we definitely want to keep that. So we like the tipping habit. But whether people tip machines as T, V.

D, yeah. And how big are these fleet? I I think guy d read somewhere recently that way about seven hundred and self driving cars Operating nationwide. How many AV s were talking about in these cities?

We're starting in the hundreds, and that will expand from there.

I I know you don't wanted discuss the economics, even though I would love to learn what the split .

is there going to tell.

But you did recently talk about the margins are on autonomous rides being lower than the margins on regular uber rides for at least a few more years. That's not intuitive to me because in an autonomists, right, you don't have to pay the driver. So you would think the margin would be way higher for uber. But why would you make less money if you don't have to pay driver?

So generally, our designs back in terms of holy bill businesses is any newer business. We're going to Operate at a lower margin while we're growing that business. You don't want you to be profile day one.

And that's my attitude with authorities, which is, again, get IT out there introduced to as as many people as possible at a majority level. Generally, if you look at or take right around the world is about twenty percent. We get twenty percent.

The driver is eighty percent. We think that's a model that makes sense for any autonomous partner going fold, and that's what we expect. I cannot don't care honestly what the margins are for the next five years.

The question is, can I get lots of supply? Can I be absolutely safe? And you know, does that twenty eighty split look reasonable going forward?

And I think he does. Yeah, I want to ask about tesla. You mentioned them a little earlier.

Uh, they held an event recently where they unveiled there. I'd plans for A A robot taxi service. Do you consider tesla a competitor?

Well, they certainly could be right. If they develop their own A V vehicle and they decide to go direct only through the tesla APP, they would be a competitor. And if they decide to work with us, then we would be a partner as well. And to some, stand again, both can be true. So I don't think it's gonna an either or I think elon's vision is pretty compelling, especially like you might have these a cyber shipper's or these owners of these fleet eta, those owners, if they want to have maximum earnings on those fleet, will want to put those fleet on uber. But at this point is unknown what his intentions are.

There's this big debate that's playing out right now about who has the Better A A V strategy between amo and tesla in the sense that we must have many, many sensors on the the vehicles are much more expensive to produce. A tesla is trying to get to full autonomy using only its cameras um and software and under a carpathia, the researcher recently said that tesla was going to be in a Better position in the long run because IT ultimately just had a software problem, whether we know has harbour problem, those are typically heard to solve. I'm curious if you have a view on this whether you think one company is likely to get to A A Better scale based on the approach they are taking with the .

hardware and software. I mean, I think that hardware costs, uh, scale down over a pretty time. So sure, winner has a hardware problem, but they can solve them. I mean, the history of of computer hardware like the cost come down very, very significantly, the way of solutions working right now.

So it's not fairy, right? And I think the differences are bigger, which is way more has more sensors as cameras has lied or so there's a certainly done and see there way mo generally has more compute. Ah so to speak. So the inference of that computer is going to be Better, right? And we will also has high definition maps that essentially makes the problem of recognizing what's happening in the real world a much simpler problem. So under ella's model, the weight that the software has to Carry is very, very heavy vers the way well and most other player model where you don't have to kind weigh as much on training and you make the prom much simpler er as a computer prom to understand. I think eventually both will get there.

But if you had to guess who's who's gna get to a sort of a viable scale first.

And I think elan eventually will get a viable scale. But for the next five years, I bet a way a and we are betting A.

I say this, I don't want to get into an autonomous test in the next five years. I'm going to let somebody else can test that out. I'm not going to be be .

early adopter that these game pretty good have used recently.

I have not used really good. Yeah, yeah.

it's really good. Now again, it's the, for example, the cost of a sad state light announce five hundred, six hundred dollars, right? So why wouldn't you put that into your sensors? Stack is not that expensive.

And for a fully self driving specialized auto, I think that makes a lot of sense to me. Now, elon is accomplished the uni magones many, many, many times so, but I wouldn't bet against them. Yeah, I don't know.

This is always my secret dream free. No obvious. Ly, you should say uber, as long as you want, when you're done with that, actually do things you should run tesla, because I think you would adjust. As you have done uber, you'd be willing to make some of the sort of easy compromises, like just put a five hundred dollar a frick light or on the thing, and we go much faster.

So I have a full time job and i'm very happy.

I thank you. Well, the test board is listening.

I don't know the test. Listen to you too.

Good fact. This.

we're opening of the war dating with an episode of hard clock. Everybody.

thank you. Learn a lot for this show.

What's your best guest for when, say, fifty percent of uber rides in the U. S. Will be autonomous?

I take close to the eight to ten years is my best guess, but I am sure that will be wrong.

Probably closer .

return ser at ten .

what's most .

people have over restituted. A again, it's it's a wild guess the probabilities of you are being write or just as much as mine.

And curious if we can sort of get into a future imagining mode here, like in the year, whether it's ten years or fifteen years or twenty years from now when maybe a majority of rides, uh, in at least big cities in the us. Will be autonomists. Do you think that changes the city at all? Like, do the roads look different? Are there more cars on the road? Are there fewer cars on the road? What does that even look like?

So I think that the cities will have much, much more space to use. Parking often takes up twenty thirty percent of the square miles in in a city, for example, and that parking space will be open for living parks at set or so. There is no doubt that IT will be a Better world. You will have Greener, cleaner cities, and you'll never have to park again.

which I think is pretty cool. I'm very curious what you think about the politics of autonomy in transportation. In the early days of uber, there was a lot of backlash and resistance from taxi drivers, and they saw uber as a threat to their livelihoods. There were well publicize cases of of sabotage protests. Do you anticipate there will be backlash from either drivers or the public to the spread of a VS as they start to appear in more cities?

I think there could be. And what i'm hoping is that we avoid the backlash by having the proper conversations. Now historically, today as a whole, we've been able to adjust to job displacement because IT does happen gradually.

And even in a world where there's great or onto ation now than ever before, employment rates eeta or at historically great levels. But the fact is that A I is going to display drop. What does that mean? How quickly should we go? How do we think about that? Those are discussions that we're going to have.

And if we don't have the discussions, sure, there will be backlash. There's always backlash against societal change that significant. Now we now work with taxes and safest go and taxi drivers who use zuber make more than twenty percent more than the ones who don't. So there is a kind of solution space where new technology and establish players can win. But I don't know exactly what that looks like.

That calculus is does not apply to his self drive know it's not like the uber driver who's been driving in uber for ten years and that's their main source of income. Can just start driving a self driving me. You don't need a driver. So no is not just that they have to switch the apter using. Is that IT IT threats to put .

them out of a job? Well, listen, could they be a part of fleet management, cleaning, charging eeta? That's a possibility. We are now working with some of our drivers. They're doing A I map labeling and training of A I models. Is that a so were expanding the solution set of work on demand work that were offering our drivers because there is part of that work which is driving maybe going away or the growth in that work is going to slow down at least over the next ten years and then will look to address. But listen, these these are issues that are real and I don't have a clean answer for them at this point.

Yeah that you brought up shared rides earlier and you know you back in the day, I think when uber x first rolled out share rides, like I did that a couple of times and then you know I don't know, I like got a raise, my job and I thought, you know from here on out as I think this can be me in the car, how popular do you think you can make shared rides? And like, is there anything that you can do to make that more appealing?

Well, I think the way that we have to make a more appealing is to reduce the penalty, so to speak, of the shared rides. I think the number one reason why people use zoo bers, they want to save time, they want to have their time back. And a shared ride would you know, you would get about thirty percent decrease in Price historically, but there could be a fifty to one hundred percent time penalty. We're working now.

You might end up sitting next to casey.

I said I would be cool, have amazing. I would short, otherwise I have no complaints. People, so far we've her don't have a promote company.

IT really is time and they don't mind writing with other people. There's a good sense with riding with other people. But we're now working with both algorithmically and I think also fixing the product.

Previously, you would choose a shared ride and you get on off front discount. So you're incentive as a customer to get the discount but not to get a shared ride. So we would have customers gaming the system.

They get a shared ride at two A M when they know they are not really matched up with a now you ve got a smaller discount and you get a reward, which is a higher discount if you're matched. So part of IT is we're not customers are working against us and we're not working against customers, but we're working on tech. We are reducing the time penalty, which is we avoid these weird grounds at settle. That's gona cost you fifty percent in your time or a hundred percent of your time. Now in autonomous, if we are the only player that then has a liquidity to introduce shared autonomous into cities about lower congestion lowers the Price that another way which our marketplace can add value to the ecosystem.

Speaking of shared rides, ah uber just released a new uh airport shuttle service in new york city cause eighteen dollars a person, you book a seat goes on a designated service route on a set schedule. I don't have a question. I just wanted to congratulate you on and .

inventing a bus is a Better bus. You know exactly what is going picking up, like just knowing exactly where your buses pick up, knowing what your path is real time IT just gives a sense of comfort. We think this can be a pretty cool product and again, is just going to be hugely profitable for us long term.

I don't know, but I will introduce us to a bigger audience to come into the ub ecosystem. And we think you can pick up for cities as well. Um if you're miami, by the way, over the weekend, weve got buses to the teller swift concert as well.

So i'm just saying, well, I mean, look, IT should not be hard to improve on the experience of a city bus. Yes.

like you know, I mean, so the city buses one is less you .

want a city bus well, if I took the train here.

so IT wasn't a bus.

but I was a transit is I like to write public I would .

love to see .

a picture of view and about sometimes in the past five years. So i'm pressure that never happened. Let let me ask here.

You know.

so far I i've resisted giving you any product feed back that. But I had this one thing that I have always wanted to know the explanation. For instance, at some point in the past couple years, you all, when I ordered in uber, started sending me a push notification saying that the driver was nearby.

And i'm the sort of person when I voted in uber. Dr, i'm going to be there when the driver pose. I'm not making this person way, okay. I'm going to respect their time. And what i've learned is when you tell me the driver is nearby, what that means is that at least three minutes away and they might be two miles away. And what I wanted know is why do you send me the notification?

We want you to be prepared to keep the driver waiting. Maybe we should personalize IT. I think I think that's that's a good question, which is depending on whether or not you keep the driver waiting, I think that is one of the cool things with A I L goes that we can do at this point. You're right, the experiences is not quite .

up to my end notifications as the drivers arriving and that's what i'm like okay, it's time you know go down stairs but sounds like we're making .

progress and I I M just likes you just yeah they .

know that I I love my right yeah the case is previously .

talked about how he doesn't like his uber drivers to talk to him. And this is a man who who doesn't want to be I mean.

here's what I said.

If you're on your way to the airport and six thirty the morning.

do you truly want a person you have never met before asking you who you're going to vote for the election?

I dry, I grow and reading the writer s as to whether they want to have a conversation or not. I was not good at the art of of conversation as as there are you to to no up hey, how's a going and you having good dag going to work and then I just shut up yeah and have .

a nice day .

to me that I was but I don't know if that's no .

that's perfect. That's going to give .

you all the information.

This case's real attraction to oft driving cars that he never .

has to talk to another human. You can make something.

let me tell you. No, I check into safety. Like, yes, did you have a nice day? Like, yeah, but where are you coming in from? Yeah, just T I would like .

to see you checking into hotel. And did you have a nice day? You're like, well, let me tell you about this board meeting. I just want to because the pressure I matter. You don't here.

right? I think at time. Dara, thank you. So you coming fine. When to go back while A I is driving progress and it's driving cars. Now we're going to find out if you can drive casey insane.

He watched two hundred .

and sixty tiktok videos and don't .

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Okay, see, aside from all the drama in A I and self driving cars, this week we also had some news about tiktok.

one of the other most powerful AI forces on earth.

No, truly, yes. I, I, I ironically .

believe that yeah.

I was not a joke. yes. So this week we learned about some documents that came to light as part of a lawsuit ah that is moving through the courts right now. As people will remember, the federal government is still trying to force bite, dance to sell tiktok. But last week, thirteen states and the district of columbia sued tiktok, accusing company of creating an intentionally addictive APP that harm children.

A and Kevin, and this is my favorite part of this story, is that kentucky public radio got a hold of these court documents, and they had many reductions. You know, often in these cases, the most interesting sort of facts and figures will just be rejected for who knows what reason, but the genius over the kentucky public radio, just copy and paste everything in the document. And when they pace in in, everything was totally visible.

This keeps happening. I feel like every year too, we get a story about some failed reduction. Like, is IT that hard to reduct a document?

I'll say this. I hope IT always remains this hard to reduction because I read stuff like this. Kevin, nine in heaven. yes.

So they got a hold of these documents. They coped, replaced that. They figured out what was behind sort of the black boxes in the reduction materials, and IT was pretty juicy.

These documents included details, uh, like tiktok knowledge of a high number of under age kids who were stripping for adults on the platform. The adults were paying them in digital gifts. These documents also claimed the tiktok had adjust its algorithm to prioritize people they deemed beautiful. And then there was this stat that I know you, honey on, which was that these documents said, based on nal conversations, that tiktok had figured out exactly how many videos IT needed to show someone in order to get them hooked on the platform. And that number is two hundred and sixty.

Two hundred and sixty is what IT takes. You know much me, this is sort of ancient. But you remember the commercial, the ads, where they would say, like, how many links does IT take to get to the center of a twi pop? Yes, this to me, this is the sort of twenty twenty equivalent.

How many tiktok do you have to watch until you can look away ever again? yes. So this is.

according to the company's own research. This is about the tipping point where people start to develop a habit or an addiction of going back to the platform. And they sort of become sticky in the parliament of social media.

The disgusting parLance of social media apps, IT becomes sticky.

So casey, when we heard, uh, about this magic number of two hundred and sixty tiktok videos, you had what I thought was an insane idea. Tell us about IT. Well.

Kevin, I thought if two hundred sixty videos is all that takes, maybe I should watch two hundred and sixty tiktok. And here's why I am an infrequent user of tiktok. I would say once a week, once every two weeks, i'll check in or watch a few videos. And I would say I generally enjoy my experience, but not to the point that I come back every day. And so i've always wondered what I missing because I know so many folks that can even have tiktok on their phone, because IT holds such a power over them, and they feel like the algorithm gets to know them so quickly and so intimately that I can only be explained by magic. So I thought if i've not been able to have this experience just sort of Normally using tiktok, what if I try to consume two hundred and sixty tiktok as quickly as I possibly could and just saw what happened after that?

Not all heroes wear caps. okay? So casey, you watch two hundred and sixty tiktok videos last night up.

Tell me about IT. So I did create a new account. So I I started fresh.

I didn't just reset my algorithm other. That is something that you can do in tiktok. And I decided a couple of things.

One is I was not going to follow anyone like no friends, but also no influence, no enemies, no enemies. And I also was not going to do any searches, right? A lot of the ways that tiktok will get to know as if you do a search.

And I thought, I want to get the sort of brodet most mainstreaming experience of tiktok that I can so that I can develop a Better sense of how does IT sort of, uh, walk me down this funnel toward my eventual interest. Whereas if I just follow tand friends and did like three searches for my favorite books, like I politically got their faster. And so do you know the very first thing that tiktok showed me heaven with IT showed me a ninety nine year old boy flooding with an eighteen year old girl trying to get her phone number.

And when I tell you I could not have been any less interested in this continent, IT was aggressively straight, yes. And I was very Young and I had nothing to do me, and I was not my business. And so over the next several hour, this total process, I did about two and a half hours last night, and I did another thirty minutes this morning.

And I would like to share, you know, maybe the first nine or ten things that tiktok showed me. I get, you know that the assumption is that knows basically nothing about me. yes.

And I do think there is something quite revealing about an algorithm knows nothing, throwing spaghetti, seeing what we will stick and then just picking up the spaetzle towards and saying, well, what is IT that I thought was interesting. So here's what is showing. Second video, a disturbing nine, one one called, like, a very upsetting sort of domestic violence and situation.

Scape three, two people doing trivia on a diving board. And like the person who lose has to jump off the diving board. Okay, fine for just free booted clip of audition for americans got talents.

Five vegetable muck, bang. So just a guy who had, like, rose and rose of beautiful multicolor vegetables in front of them, who just eating six, a comedy skit. But I was like running on top of a minecraft video.

So one of my key takeaway after my first six or seven tiktok videos was that that does actually assume they're quite Young, right? That's why I started out by showing me teenagers. And as I would go through this process, I found that over and over again, instead of just showing me a video, IT would show me a video that had been shopped in half.

And on top was whatever the sort of core content was, and below would be someone is playing subway surfers, someone is playing mine raft, or someone is doing those sort of oddly satisfying things. I'm coming through, Roger, whatever. And it's like it's literally people trying to help tize you, right? It's like if you just see the court, oh, someone is trying to smooth something out or someone .

is playing with cutting soup.

Have you seen sop cutting soap cutting is huge and again, there is no content to IT. IT is just trying to stimulate you on some sort of list .

narcotic .

actually IT is like, yes, IT is just purely a drug video number seven and ad video number eight um a dad who was speaking in spanish and dancing, he was very cute.

Can I ask you question, are you are doing anything other than just swiping from one video that to the next? Are you liking anything? Are you saving anything? Are you sharing anything? Because all of that gets interpreted by the algorithm, a signal to keep showing you more of that kind of thing.

absolutely. So for the first twenty five or so videos, I did not like anything, but because I truly didn't like anything, like nothing was really doing IT for me. But my intention was always like, yes, when I see something I like going to try to reward the algorithm, give you a like, and I will maybe get more like that.

So the process goes on and on. And i'm just struck by the absolute weird and disconnection of everything in the feed at right at first, truly nothing has any relation to anything else. And IT sort of feels like you put your brain until like a vitamins.

You know where it's like swipe. Here is a clip from friends swipe, kids complaining about school swipe. Mickey mouse has a gun and he's in a video game. Those are three videos that I saw in a row. And the effect of IT is just like disorient.

yes. And i've had this experience when you when you like go onto youtube, but you're not logged in, you know like a new account and it's not is just showing you sort of a random assortment of things that are popular on youtube. IT does feel very much like they are just firing in a bunch of different directions, hoping that something will will stick. Yeah then I can t of .

I can then sort of zo in on that thing. Yes, absolutely. Now I will add that in the first thirty or so videos saw two things that I thought were like actually disturbing and bad. Like things that should never have been shown to me.

is a clip from the all in.

Unfortunately, I didn't get that back, but when there was a clip of a of a great in like a busy city and there was air blowing up from the great and the tiktok was just women walking over the great and the skirts blowing up, that seems Better. Yeah, that was in the first twenty video so that I saw this video OK.

Um I guess if you like that way says a lot about you, right? But it's like that the the second one and I truly I do not even know if we will want to include this our podcast, because I can't even believe that I was saying that I saw this. But IT is true. IT was an A I voice of someone, an erotic story which involved insist. And IT was shown over a video of someone making soap.

Well.

like what? This is dark stuff. This is dark stuff. Now at what point .

to you start to wonder if the algorithm has started to pick up on your clues that you were giving IT?

Well, so I was desperate to find out this question because I am gay. And I wondered when I was going to see the first gay content, like when I was actually just going to show you to a men who were talking about gay concerns. And IT did not happen ever.

No, I never quite got .

there at on of this more in two hundred six videos and sixty minutes. Now I did show me queer people actually, you know, the first queer person identified queer person that the tiktok algorithm showed me. Are you familiar with the very popular, uh, tiktok mean from this year? Very admire, very mindful? yes.

The first clear person I saw on tiktok, thanks to the algorithm, was jewels lebron in a piece of sponsored content, and he was trying to sell me aleo va laptop. And that that was the clear experience that I got in my rope through the tiktok algorithm. Now, you know, I did eventually show me a couple of queer people IT showing one take, talk about the singer, a chapter one who is clear.

So I count that. And then he showed me a video by Billy. I eh, you know, a clear pop star, and I did like that video.

And now court, Billy elish was one of the most famous posters in the entire, let mean, like, true like on the mount rushmore of famous pop stars right now. So IT makes a lot of sense to me, the tiktok, which show me also incredibly popular with teenagers. And so I liked one Billy elish video.

And then that was what get open. okay. Here's a lot of that just reform that like sort of scrolling IT, we did not get to we did not get to the the the game.

No, I did notice the algorithm adapting to me. So something about me was because, again, I was trying to get through a lot of videos in a relatively short amount of time and take talk. Now we will often show you three, four, five minute log videos.

I Frankly do not have the time for that. The longer I scrolled, the shorter of the videos war that I got. And I do feel like the content aged up a little bit, you know, IT started showing me a category of content that I call people being little freak, you know, is like someone.

These are some real examples, a man dressed as the cat in the hat, dancing to, uh, sears song goodies. Okay, um there was a man in a horse costume playing the family theme song on an accordion, using a toilet lid for percussion. This is the most important media platform in the war. Yes, that hours of ten teenagers are sharing at this.

We are so screwed.

Yeah, you know, I figured out that I was more likely to like contact about animals than other things. So there were started to become a lot of dogs doing two things, cats doing two things. Are you other other things like that? But you know, there was also just a lot of, like, here's a guy going to a store and showing new objects from the store. Or like, here is a guy telling you a long story.

I can I ask you a question, there was any in these two hundred and sixty videos where there any that you felt like that is a great video?

Um I don't know if I saw anything truly great. I definitely saw some animal videos that if I show them to you, you would laugh you and say, that was cute. There was stuff that gave me an emotional response.

And I would say, particularly as I got to the end of this process, I was seeing stuff that I enjoyed a bit more. But there I did this morning, I decided to do something having because I got so frustrated with the, I thought, IT is time to give the algorithm a piece of data about me. So do you know what I did? I searched the word gay.

It's like, in fairness, is an insane search query, because what is the chick tok supposed to show me in response? Show me all sorts of things. But on my like real tiktok account, IT just shows me new creators all the time.

And they're all sorts of things. They singing and they are dancing, their telling jokes, they're tell them stories. So as like, I would like to see a little bit stuff like that. Do you know the first clip that came up for me when I searched gay on tiktok to train my IT was a clip from an adult film like explicit unblurred .

IT was .

from um and I I I don't know this. I've only read about this. But apparently at the start of some adult films before the explicit stuff, there will be some sort of story content, you know, that sort of establishes the premise of the scene.

And this was sort of in that way. But I thought if I just sort of set off handed, you know, oh, tiktok, yeah, bad. If you, if you just surge gay, they'll just like show you like porn.

People say like that sounds like a big and say like why would you say that that's big and safe. Obviously, they're probably ly showing you. They're like most famous clear creator you know, something like that. No, me. So IT was like, again, so much of this process for me was like hearing the things that people say about to talk, assuming that people were sort of exaggerating or being too hard on IT and that having the experience myself and think like, oh no, like it's actually like that. An alternative to explanation is .

that the algorithm is actually really, really good. And the reason to show you all the videos of people being read, little freak, because you are actually .

aware of little freak, that I will accept those allegations, I will not fight those allegations.

So, okay, you watch two hundred and sixty videos. You reach this magic number that is supposed to get people addicted to tiktok. Are you addicted to tiktok?

Kevin? I'm i'm surprised and uh Frankly delighted to tell you I have never been less addicted to tiktok that I have been after going through this experience. Do you member back when people would smoke cigarettes a lot? And if a parent, a child, and the accumulated effective of all that stuff that you're breathing in your length, by the end of that, the teenager says, dad, i'm never gonna smoke again. This is how I feel. Red.

your addiction .

after watching the hundreds of these tiktok.

So, okay, you are not a tiktok addict. In fact, that seems like you are less likely to become a tiktok power user than you were before this experiment. Did this experiment change your attitudes about whether tiktok we banned the united states?

I feel so bad, so good, but I think the answer is yes. Like not not ban IT right like um you know my feelings about that still have much more to do with like free speech and like freedom of expressional. And I think that bean um raised a lot of questions that the united states approach to this issue that just makes me super uncomfortable with uh you can go back for I have to hear much longer discussion about that.

But if I were a parent of a team who had just been given their first smart phone, hopefully not any Young other than like fourteen um IT would change the way that I talk with them about what tiktok is, and I would change the way that I would check in with them about what they were seeing, right? Like I would say, you are about to see something that is going to make you feel like your mind is in a blender, and IT is going to try to addict you. And here's how IT is going to try to addict you.

And I might sit with my child and might do some early searches to try to proceed that feed with stuff that was good and would give my child a greater chance of going down some positive rabbit holes and seeing less know some of the more disturbing stuff that I saw there. So if nothing else, like, I think IT was a good educational exercises for me to go through. And if there is someone in your life, particularly a Young person, who is spending a lot of time on tiktok, I would encourage that you go through this process yourself, because these algorithms are changing all the time.

And I think you do want to have a sense of what is IT like this. Very weak. If you really want to know a what this can be shown in your kid.

Yeah, I mean, I will say, no, I spent a lot of time on tiktok. I don't recall ever getting done with tiktok and being sort of happy and fulfilled with how I spent the time. Like there's a veg sense of like shame about IT.

There's a bike sense like sometimes that like helps me turn my brain off at the end of a stressful day. IT has this sort of like, you know, this sort arctic effect on on me. And sometimes it's coming, and sometimes I find things that are funny. But rarely do I come away saying, like, that was the best possible use of my time.

There is something that happens when you adopt this sort of algorithm. First, vertical video, mostly short form, infinite scroll, you put all of those ingredients into a bag, and what comes out does have this narcotic effect.

Well, kc, thank you for exposing your brain to, uh, the tiktok algorithm for the sake of journalism, I appreciate you.

And you know, I will be donating IT to science when my life is. People will be .

studying in your brain if you die. I feel fairly confident. I don't know why they'll be study your brain, but there will be research teams looking .

at IT can wait to see what i'll find out.

Hard fork is produced by witney Jones and Rachel coon were edited by je poyet. Today's show was engineered by alisa mox sleep original music by marine lizana Sophia lannon Diana ang ROE emotional and then power our audience senator is not globally video production by ran manning and Chris shot. As always, you can watch the full episode on youtube at youtube dot com slash part ford, special thanks to policeman who ewing tam, delia hadad and jeff maranda can email us at hard fork at n White times 点 com。

This poggi is supported by made in cook air as a chef and a restaurant on. I'm as meticulous about my cut war as I am about my ingredients. That's why I love medium cut war.

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the wire cutters show here, everyone.

the wirecutters show. I'm cover black.

Well, i'm Christine and i'm rosy geron, and we work at wirecutters, the product recommendation site from the new york times.

Each week, we bring you expert advice from our newsrom of one hundred and forty journalists who review everyday products that will make your life Better.

Today's episode of the wirecutters show is called the secret to Better laundry.

Hey, it's our very .

first episode .

love IT I an argument episode. Should we tell people a little bit .

about you? Is product recommendation service. We are part of the new york times company.

We have about one hundred and forty journalists who do rigorous product testing and what that is, they are very serious about the product. So all i'll give a couple examples. We've done a guide to hiking boots. And for that, when our writers tried out fifty five pairs of boots and hiked fourteen hundred miles over seven years, I mean, that's a lot of steps. You know, another example, this once kind of wild um we did a review of fire safes and our writer actually built a room and burned the room with all these fire safe inside of IT.

I mean, that's the kind of links are journalists go to test things, tried to and choose service journalism and and we're also independent, which uh, that means we don't let companies pay us to review their products and we don't take free bees. Our recommendations are based only on what we really believe is the best stuff. It's a really fun place work, and i'm excited to introduce listeners here, the amazing people I work with, like kira.

hi kira, who are you?

So i'm a writer and I cover all things sleep and I test matches. People find that hilarious because I get to say that I sleep for a living, and i've probably tested about a hundred matter at this point for work. I've been at war cutter for four years, but cristine here has actually been here longer than me.

That's right. Og, i've been here eleven years, nearly since the site was started. And i'm an editor. How about you? rosie?

cool. I yeah, who are you? And this shows executive producer and i'm kind of gonna be your producer side kick here to pose the questions that, you know, as norms have.

What were so happy to have you here.

cara? So to that end, why are we all here? Let's tell the people, I mean, what are we doing on the show?

What's the plant? Look, we get tons of questions from people about problems they encounter or think that they're just trying to hack or solve. And our staff has .

a lot of expertise to share, right? So we want to bring all of that to audio. Every week, we're going to sit down with a wirecutters journalist and talk through a topic that we think people could use.

Midicine will give product recommendations like we always do on the site, but this is going to be a lot more than that. We're going to talk through solutions, ideas, hacks in ways that you can really make your life Better. And sometimes we will even invite outside experts to come on. I love IT.

and that's why I think today's episode is so good to start with because it's a problem that we all have, but maybe we don't realize that we have. And I am talking about laundry .

why you are going to meet. No, you're you're right. I don't think I ever properly learn to do my laundry. I really hope my mom's and listening.

rosie, i'm going to make the confection that I too don't think that I know how to do my laundry. It's like good company yeah I mean, i'm a lady. I'm a grown and someone for me issue with like the entire time as an adult, I feel like is that I ve just never really been able to figure out how to get stains out. And so all of my entire family is just always walking around with like something on their close.

You know how says, I will say, is very intimidating.

Carrot is a math. Don't even asked me, I don't know. My mom told me how to like separate lights from dark.

And it's not the one thousand nine hundred and twenties. I feel like we don't need to do that anymore. And that's where right now that's a take.

But there's a lot that I don't know. Yeah and you know what that's i'm really glad we have our special guest today because we are wire tr. We do happen to have someone on staff whose entire job IT is to think about laundry, test laundry solutions and basically give great advice about laundry Andray. A barns is a staff writer and industry expert in all things laundry, and she's going to join us to tell us the best laundry products and how to use them properly. Can't wait.

And so listening ers know we're gonna dropping links to the guides and products we talk about in this episode. And all our episodes right in the showed tes. So if you hear a talk about something and wanna more just head over there.

This tie live up to the height. Do we need to use hot water on our dirty clothes? Can anything get cooking oil stands out of my favorite t shirt. I'll find out in just a minute.

We're back with Andrea burns. Andrea is wirecutters s premier expert on big home appliances like dishwashers and washing machines, but we're not have been really gona focus on that today. All of her applicant's testing has also let her to become our expert on all things laundry. She's ring a ton of our most popular guides and articles in the category, like for detergent, washing your tennis shoes, washing things by hand and staining, or mobile. Hi, anda.

hi. Nice to be here. Nice to see you. So Andrea .

does a ton of laundry and and test out different washers and driers and and obviously detergent and the wirecutters office. Is this just massive space in long island city? You know, there's like a weird clothing hanging everywhere that stems with like egg and lipstick and grass and like like lots of detergent all over the place on cards.

And I don't know it's like this weird willing us chocolate factory of laundry over there. I want to know what you're doing because I feel really understood, cared on the topic. But first you're testing our laundry I Q today with a quiz so you can judge our baseline on how much or little we might know about what's coming up.

It's really like how little .

we know we're going to .

come in humble. Yes, I have a little true false quiz for you. So question one, true or false? Solar water is the best thing to remove a fresh red wine steam.

True, I am going to. I was to yesterday. So somebody spilled red wine all over me at my wedding, and I was wearing a White wedding dress. And my mom's best friend, who's an amazing long dress SHE, got IT out with .

solar .

water SHE. Yeah, he was like, we're doing this. yeah. Well, i'm glad that that works, but I would actually say falls according to our test.

Oh no, i'm sure that so of water can work. But we found that the best thing for fresh red line stand is actually White wine. So you White wine on top .

of the red wine, actually councils out CS.

Well, I I mean.

I did drink a whole bottle of White wine after that person spt the red wine on me and the stain did come out. So I did not work. Yes.

I have for different reasons. Our question to what what do you .

get true or false? The top load washer cleaning Better than a front load washing? true? No, it's false. Even though they use less water. Actually, a front load washing is way Better at removing stands than a top load washer.

huh? IT doesn't have that little thing you in the middle though.

I know it's really confusing, but it's actually the friction that really makes .

the front mode wash work.

The friction of the thing wo yeah who knew science?

Okay, next. okay. So you need fabrics softener true or false? Course you are correct. IT is false.

It's actually just fat that usually added to the end of a cycle that, yes, it's that we actually used to use in in college the condition our hair. No, I wouldn't. They do IT now.

But IT worked really well. The olden times were wild. Absolutely one.

okay. So the last question, in order to get stains out, you need to wash with hot water.

This has to be true.

No.

it's actually not. What if my cat pupped on my bed.

especially cat puked, should be washed with a cold water stopping? Oh my god, yes, because as protein in IT and protein needs cold water to be washed out with.

So have I just been baking a deeper into my comforter? You you .

may have .

go away.

I would like to think so, but who knows? I have so many like candles, look at all times.

I mean, more modern will get in out in fiction helps. But you know, cold waters definitely more of a well.

I think under approved our points, we have some laundry and knowledge that we need to acquire. Asa, yeah.

I think I think that's about right. okay. So let's get into IT, Andrea. I want to start with getting a Better sense of how you even test something like laundry .

detergent or that's a great question. No ally. When we when I started designing the london detergent test, the idea was to put common stains on t shirts.

I pulled the wirecutters writer is asked them, what are the worst stains you've had? What are the things that have been hardest to move? And most them were pretty typical, like lipstick ank, uh, cooking oil. And we stained all these shirts. We very quickly realized that is actually very hard to recreate difficult stands and that most of the stand that you recreate, especially because the only sitting for a day or two before he washed almost everything, was pretty easy to wash out.

And so when you say recreate, are you taking a bottle of hides and just motion IT into some?

Teach exactly. Ww, and so with that in mind, I called one of my sources who's a former washing machine, a developer from world pool, and I asked them, what would you do in this situation? Because everything is cleaning out pretty easily.

And he said, you've got ta call chorus and get their standardized test. And he described this a swatch with fifteen different stains on IT that are all the same size. And I clorox, of course, was not going to give me that right.

So but I did find the place that clorox bit from, which is, which is a german company that has a dealer in pennsylvania. So to order these swatches, we actually have to email them and and give them the credit card information, and almost that we can even do IT online. IT took forever, but this machine is awesome, because IT uses the exact same amount of whatever the stain material is, and IT presses them down under thousands of pounds of pressure.

So you have a standardize stand set and the stains are prey, typical stains you encounter in daily life. So there's t uh there's muster. There's something that's called beta carine, which is more like a carriole or a sweet potato stain.

Then there is some that you're not necessarily encountering everyday like there's one that's used engineering with sham know we joked about going to find a mechanic who would give us oil rags, but this seems like a Better solution. Um but the idea here is not to remove all of the stain is actually really just comparative data. What he does is IT shows us how good on on determiner stain remover is by how much stain and removed. So the idea really isn't to see a black t shirt or blank piece of jersey count at the end. That really is to see some stain left.

I don't want to turn anybody stomach, but I am very, very curious, because I think of common, especially few kids. My kids fall and scrape their needs all the time. blood? Oh.

yes.

So I am afraid to ask.

I became very good friends with the butchers at piano, on Smith and brookland, where they sell both pork and beef blood for different recipe. And we I bought, I think we probably between longer detergent testing and stain river testing. I think I probably I bought six quarts of blood.

Are you on some .

sort of this I know today.

我 语文 摩托车。

i probably just think i'm making some a recipe. But I think for testing, we left several t shirts over night for three or four days after being stand with blood. That was actually one of the best tests, like some things that could get those stands out were good deterrence or good stand reverse.

I'm seeing like a Carry seen isn't they used actually .

was about a girl, I think, who was in training to become A. That's a little long time.

Something like that. I person, I don't know about the rest view, but I I just use liquid detergent because it's what I buy and that's what I use and I don't really do anything else. But I from reading your work IT sounds like there is a difference between and powder and when you want to use those.

So can you talk a little bit about that? sure. I mean, I think for most people, look in detergent is probably the best choice.

I mean, there are great products on the market and most people are removing body oils from their clothing. And a lot of people aren't actually removing that. Many stands from their clothing. I mean, honestly, the water itself, there's a lot of the work too, right?

Um if you have a job where your outdoors a lot and or working a lot with clay or or md or particular soils is what they would be called powder detergent, probably a Better choice because powder deterrence is going to work with those stands Better because of the way it's formulated. And also, if you just have a lot of stains in your cloth, in general, powder detergents, nice choice because most of them have oxygen leach or some other sort of uh, non chLorine bleach ach built into them. So there's a little bit more stain .

removing power and you can use those on all .

coloured fabric that's OK totally different than chLorine bleach, which is not safety use on all sorts of fabrics. But oxygen bleach is it's basically hydrogen oxide. So you're going to want to test a small part of your clothing to make sure that we can to stands the oxygen bleach. But we have yet to run into something unless it's like a really poorly died I am that can be used with oxygen bleaches.

like the most favorite oxygen beaches like oxygen rain.

Yes, and we tested. We didn't love in testing. Okay.

wow, that I was lying to me and I.

I was great. I unless .

is the power of oxygen making tough stains disappear like magic.

what oxy clean didn't do greatens hasting because IT takes a really long time to dissolve. IT really needs hot water to dissolve, and IT took a lot longer to to remove steams than other detergent that we test. IT will oxygen ims on the detergent, but we tested thin ultraViolet a, which is a powder tide with oxygen light. And IT did much Better job with removing things the oxy cleaned.

Did I think I read in one of your guys? Is that like the thing that really picks up stains is the thing in IT called enzymes. And that's what really like eats a way at the same. So you don't really need like bleach to get no.

for most teams, you you don't need bleach. I say to use oxygen bleach when it's very specific kinds of stains, like basically anything that you would use as a natural die if you making die in your own clothing. So like tea, coffee, uh, fruit, uh, things where the team really changes the fabric verses just food stands, which are pretty topical. And enzyme mes are really good at getting those.

okay. So we can basically just throw out all of our chLorine bleach and we don't need IT.

No, not for your regular clothes. You don't need choring bleach, but it's still a good disinfectant.

And oxygen bleach is for the sense that are really set in and kind of changing the color of the fabric. Great.

like wine or something. Yes, so king and oxygen leach will the most suborn stands out. And it's great for things like wine or tea or coffee that really do soaking into the fabric and are very hard to get out.

So when you say that those like oxyde detergents are basically just hydrogen oxide, I know there's always like A D I Y community and everything when there's a product, there's a DIY product. But um why can't you just make your own detergent?

I mean, you could if you want to spend a lot of time making something .

that doesn't work as well.

I like a lot of DIY, and you.

You are mentioning when we were talking earlier, this phrase that is a kind of a short end that sometimes helpful is something like, like, likes, likes.

Yes, what is it's a solvent term? Like, likes, like. So for example, when you have an oil stain, lake of detergent works really well because the surfactant in liquid detergent behaviors and oil, so they are Better absorbed into oil stains.

So basically, the best way to look at IT is that there is water stands and there's oil stands, right? The solves that you want to use to get rid of those stands are gonna similar in property. So remember, I said that if you're working around a lot of clay or dirt, powder, detergent is Better. That's why similar, right? So they behave similarly, and they absorb with each other Better and combine Better.

So this is why my kids like muddy, dirty and never gets back to the zero. It's just lake. I'm only using liquid and so it's it's not picking up the dirt yeah I mean.

you can try pretreated with with a liquid detergent. I find that works very well, but you might just try powder to try to my work.

What is exactly is the process of pretreated.

So pretreated a stain is kind of how IT sounds. You really are just putting the stain remover or the london detergent on the stain beforehand. Ds, and it's usually somewhere between five minutes to twenty minutes before you put in the washing machine, got IT for almost every stain.

If you have a laundry detergent on hand, you probably can just use that for retraining. Uh, we recommend a different stained mover, all purpose stainer mover for pretreated called ametek. But that the reason we recommend that is because IT removes other stands that launch torgan is not always good at getting out.

So those two were actually makeup and permanent ink. But otherwise I would say you can pretty with laundry to torgan for most stains. And IT is a good hack for laundry. So I don't know if any of you we've ever had, like a man staying on your shirt .

and you don't pretreated IT not treated my since. Not ever, never forgotten.

She's lying. You on her.

Yeah, so I I mean, I admit you all that when we were doing laundry deterrent testing and one of my sources told me a soaked oil stands in warm water and liquid laundry detergent, I was able to get oil stands. You know, those dark oil stands you get on the colorful fabric and IT all be like the city is just a slightly darker shaded. What I think my daughter's goal in life is to have every article of clothing have this day.

But I was able to get these stains that i'd been in three or four washes and dry cycles out from this soaking. So you know it's there are a lot of different things you can do if a stain removal retreating is great, but that doesn't ascertain mean that you're totally in trouble if you still have a stains coming out of the wash later. Got IT.

So i've heard you mentioned tied a couple times why? And I think both of the the powder detergent, which is which which is that again, the one that we like to ox tide ultra oxy, and then the liquid we like is tired, free and gentle and gentle and free. Why, why? Why do we like tide? Why is tide? Had I been like we're not shilling for tide? There is no tide commercial on the cast. So what's the deal?

You know, it's interesting. I really went in the testing wanting to not recommend tide because I ve had a lot of misconceptions over being allergic to IT. And then the more testing that I did and the more research I did, I learned that the ingredient that most people are allergic to and laundry detergent, it's called mi or mci.

It's a chemical preservation and it's then even coron quote, natural liquid deterrence, almost any all of the ones we test and contain IT. And what's interesting is that people perceive that that's what they're allergic to. One, almost all of its rent off by your washing machine, but the other is that it's the same.

Preservation is probably in your shampoo, your gear shower gel, anything that you're using that needs be preserved. So that's actually probably with causing your allergy. And when we talked in multiple german ologies about this, so that said, we partly chose time for in gentle because IT doesn't have that preservation. And so they had all this money and all this R D, to go into creating a longer by the trogon that lacks these allergies. IT was the combination of that had hypoallergenic detergent with the fact that IT removed stands so well that made to go out on top, so in the end time just kept they're doing something really good there.

I mean, they have a big budget, right? You have a big budget to spend on R N, D, which is something that we kind of find across categories that where cutter that like we're kind of sometimes surprised yeah the the big companies do come out ahead because they just have so much money.

I'm kind of relieved when like the big names are actually doing something right because then you can get anywhere like if you run out, you liking nish stuff sucks.

Okay, a wire T I recommends tied free and gentle liquid detergent for most laundry for really saying stuff, dirt, stain, stuff wire. Ta recommends tide ultra xy, and I trust these recommendations Frankly, because of all of the blood testing and .

stuff we discuss. Know, I think we're learning. We're doing good guy. Okay.

but I do have some like graduate level questions I need throwing here like about dry cleaning and pause and just more questions about .

stains and how to make equal friendly choices at the launder man.

But first a bring.

Welcome back to the wirecutters show today. We're getting a master class in laundry tips from Andrea barns. India is wirecutters staff writer on large planes and all things laundry. So so far we've covered some detergents ics, but now we're going na get into some of the needy.

greedy details literally. okay. So what if you have a really nice or vintage items like cashmere or silk? Do you have to get those drag lined?

Um it's really going to depend on the item. But I would say the vast majority of the time now, first of all, you most likely can use regular detergent, tide friend, gentle on a lot of your drive kling only ims, if you use a math bag and and gentle cycle. I wouldn't do this with something that you really love, but there are a few other options.

Are we recommend a hand washed detergent called soke, which is really great. And what you can do is actually hand wash your garment and you soaked the you soaked the garment with this detergent, which is called soap and that's confusing and it's a no rins detergent. So you don't have to handle the clothing for that long, right? So I use emerge IT for fifteen minutes and then you just take the item out and press the water out and it's ready. The deterrent evaporate ates really quickly.

We and so you don't have to have inset. So you not like what if you have allergies like is then there is something on IT that .

will so that's a great question. The presentative we talk about earlier is not in this, the handwashing tergat, which is good. And then we interviewed the owner of the detergent company and they did third party test, shown less than like point zero zero zero zero five percent of the residue is left on the because you also use a tiny amount like we're talking maybe two tea spoons for several gallons ons.

So there is not much love to begin with. I would say that that ideal for you know with you of a cash sweater that you've warned a bunch of times and that hasn't really been been stained but you wanted freshening up, that would be a great option. Um if it's something that's really you you got stands all over IT or you bought a vintage as is, what we learned is that the best thing to do is to use pure sodium per carbonate, which is oxygen bleach and soaked for hours.

So in that case, we won't news something like tide because there's builders and fillers and IT that you won't necessarily one on your clothing. But pure SONY on per carbonate is great for soaking your vintage items. And the product we really like for that in testing is called restoration and its pure oxygen, which there's nothing else in IT. So oxy clean has fragrance and other fillers, in addition .

the oxygen leach and this is just oxygen bach.

So for i'm not going to give you my keyword search.

I don't keyword but .

um I looked for items .

on ebay that are stains and we ordered a lot of used lines that looks like they had no hope left. And the crazy is part. So we got this huge devey bag filled with table class and napkins and linens and they had stains. But the best part, flash worst part was that we realized when we opened the bag, when we accept that, that the person was definitely a smoker and IT was strong, like steel, like cigarettes, like really yeah .

not a lot of competing bid things.

What they decided in twenty seconds after we ordered.

they were like, it's at your door check outside.

We were praying you address this.

So we found this, and that was all delicate like this. And lin, again, I called the source this time, I called our source a Mickey Evans, who's amazing. And SHE is the assistant, more drop supervisor at the notebook, the musical on broadway.

S, and yeah, she's great. And SHE told me about restoration, this a oxygen bleach product that you can buy for soaking vintage items. So we tried IT against, I think, six or seven other oxygen bleaches. And this one was by far the best one. And we felt, because I had no fillers, was what I would call the least risky one.

Did IT take out the cigarette smell?

IT is, yeah. And we tested a bunch of hand wash chargers with this lot of of smoky womens, and there were definitely done that did not take the stink out. Was at your keyword search, smokin ni sounds like an ice shadow color.

lucky linton.

So one thing we actually haven't gone .

into is laundry pods. Oh yeah.

we got to talk and we got to talk about the pods. So under what's the deal with laundry pods? I initially .

didn't really want to recommend pods because you can't pretreated with them. It's so concentrated that IT actually doesn't absorb well in two stains for pretreated. So if you have to add water in your dealing pond film, so all these things make IT like not a great choice, in my opinion for pretreated. Uh, but when we started having pain testers come to the office and .

let me just interject, you paid testers are people who are not on our staff that we bring in to test with us and basically their their folks who have a like A A variety of different abilities and body types and we like to bring them in and get their feedback to to get a wider diversity of opinions about the .

products for testing. Yes, and some of whom have limited mobility and limited group strength. I observed very quickly that pods were absolutely one hundred percent the best option for them when Operating either, uh, washing machines or dishwashers and IT. So that made sense to me to make a recommendation for that.

Yeah, that does make sense. I actually had a little revelation because I don't have washed drier in my unit. My partner does.

And whenever I go over there it's like i've never done laundry ever in my life. Um i'll just toss a pod in the little compartment that they have in the washing machines. But i've learned recently that you're not supposed to do that.

Why is that? IT totally depends on the washing machine, but the way the dispenser work is that water goes through the whole thing. And if it's not a very strong stream, you can be very hard for the pot. That is all basically, you need the water to be strong enough to pierce the pin and start and start everything moving go.

Yeah right.

Doing IT really. okay. You talk a little bit earlier about temperature and earlier that you actually be using cold butter, but is there any time that you should be using warm water or hot water?

I would say hot water only if you're sanitizing something like if you had sheet from someone who is sick or if the kids are .

about to party train.

for instance. We'll see now peace stain that would say you could do in cold water because you're in is pretty terrell.

But like a virus or yeah something like .

that yeah exactly. I would say hot water is appropriate then um but you know one thing, people always think they see blood and they assume or I should wash in hot water and that's actually a great way to stain you're clothing more. Absolutely cold war for removing blood oil stains need warm .

water to milt the fat.

Yeah, exactly. The warm water motifs IT right. yeah. Live said.

what about like preserving? I I mean, I know because I I wash a lot of fabric to so with, and I know that like I sometimes washed stuff in hot water. But i'm wondering, does that do anything to the color long term? If you you, if you do wash and warm or hot water.

warm and hot water can definitely degrade and fade dies faster. I since i've switched to doing cold water washing, I don't see fading on my clothing in the same way that I did before.

What about older? Like I just I know that you're saying like p is okay, even blood is okay, but I just feel like the warm water will take away that smell as I totally wrong.

Um no, that's not wrong. And that's why we recommend what we do because the liquid detergents we recommend removed older, even in cold water.

I see.

how do you do the testing?

Well, first, my informal auto removal testing is having teenage sun.

Yes.

but if formally, what we did is a, we burned bacon and use burned bacon, greece, which really smells, really smells terrible. And we stained t shirts with that, and then had a panel of people decide which ones removed with the most and which ones smell the worst. And in testing the the pigs we made all removed that OTA really well, if not entirely.

okay. Now that we have fully graduated, we almost are at P H. D level here with with stain fighting under i'm curious, you know if if somebody y's just really concerned about the environmental impacts of what are doing in their home and they want to make Better choices about their laundry, like what are the things that they should be doing?

H, that's great. I the number one thing I would say to anyone is to washing cold water when you can. Cold water is just a Better choice in terms of energy efficiency.

So washing machines have internal heaters that warm the water. And when you washing hot water, almost all of the energy that's being used in that wash cycle is to heat the water. So when you washing cold water, you don't use that energy.

So that's problem. That that's probably the best thing you can do. I would say air dry when you can, so get a drying rack pretreated stained so that clothing last longer. And I would use less detergent when .

you say less to yeah how much you mean you know this .

is it's interesting. This is tough question because now so many laundry detergent companies are coming out with type er concentrated detergent. But I won't say two table spoons for like a big load if you if it's not heavily stained, yes.

you know how they give you those caps with a little measuring thing on top.

And it's like literally a cup in college.

I think I was putting two.

two and a half cup. Yes, why is my clothing sliming?

Ah, yeah, that is what I would be here.

Yeah, yeah. You'll get resident and you just don't need that much. It's just unnecessary in that is how you get our juice. It'll be right up against your .

skin long you detergent sheet.

No, kay, they didn't clean well, you mind as well. Just wash with water.

Got IT waste. okay. But what i'm .

taking from this .

is that essentially the best things that you can do from a sustainability lens are also kind of just what's good for your longer in general. It's going be the stuff that you know get stands out the best. It's the stuff that I will keep your clothing nice for a longer. Um and so it's all of like what's good for your laundry is good for the environment in that way. Yes.

I would agree with that. And the deterrence is this with army, I fe the for everything in cold water.

Under IT. This has been great. Thank you so much for coming. Before we go, we got one more question and we're going to ask this of all of our guests. What's one thing that you've recently bought that .

you really love? IT has nothing to do with laundry, but I jays other .

interest. Guy.

no, you you're bringing my heart.

I thought my husband that the girl rescue girl brush that's recommended by our kitchen team and he really loves this glow brush. And because he loves that, I would say it's the coolest thing I ve bought recently.

Ah that's really nice. Do you like that?

I'd love IT.

Thank you so much. This has been so great.

Thank you so much for having me.

Guys, I feel like there are so many takeaway as from the segment. I for one going to go on the hunt for some powder deterrent.

Oh yeah, I I actually ordered some amazon. I think.

no, that's great. Okay, cool.

O I think my takeaway .

was washing cold because apparently i've been baking my cat puk directly into my bedding yeah in that .

argument with my husband because he's been doing that. So that's a win. Um but to that point, I also think like you don't need to hunt around for like eco friendly detergents necessarily if you're trying to be more earth friendly, it's really just like energy is kind of the biggest environmental impact. So washington called also solves totally.

And then like you don't have to go out and hunt for a fancy pretreatment like you allowed you to turn that you already .

have will do just fine. You you got cold. Yeah.

that's right. I think that like you really can just get like to essentially a liquid and a powder and you're probably like ninety five .

percent of the way there. perfect.

Andrew was a star.

He was amazing. I really hope that I can apply this when I have a machine in my apartment again.

I really hope I can get the dirt stains out of my kids club.

Finally, god feeding my friends, and that's IT for her. This week, if you want to find out more about wirecutters coverage on laundry, did hergert snack the products we recommended today got A N Y time stop com back slash wire cutter, or find a link in the show notes.

So if you like the world Peter show, which we all hope you do, right? Uh, I think people are actually to listen to this.

I hope so. I hope people are listing ing right now. And if they're listening.

maybe they follow yeah or we holly one read .

the reviews .

even if it's mean I yes.

IT also helps other people find the show for sure yeah.

Thank you for listening either way.

The wire cutters show is executive produced by rosy geron and produced abbia al kill editing by abbia al kill engineering support from mattia cello and nick pitman. Today's episode was mixed by Daniel remiremont, original music by dan power marine lizana alesia a youtube and dan wong wired cutter's deputy publisher in interm general manager is Cliff levy. Benton man is wirecutters editor in chief, special thanks to a neil chetham po policeman, nala m so me, harvard, jane poyet, jefferey maranda, sam donc, Julia bush and Kitty clean. Can we rotate .

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