The movie and TV tech we actually want to use
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Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of flying cars that you will never fly. I'm your friend David Pierce, and if you're seeing this or hearing it, it means I'm already dead. No, I'm just kidding. It just means I'm out on parental leave. I'm going to be gone through the rest of the summer. Nilay Patel, my co-host, is going to be gone probably sometime after me, but he's going to be gone for the summer too. We're going to be back this fall, and we're going to be so excited to hang out with all of you and talk tech again.

after talking about just baby stuff for months. We're very excited, but in the meantime, you are in exceptionally good hands. Jake Castronakis on our team is going to be taking over the Friday show for the summer, and we have four guest hosts who are going to be with you all summer on the Tuesday show. And they are also my four guests today.

V-Song, Allison Johnson, Jen Tuohy, and Miyasato are going to be hosting the show, and they have some big ideas about all the different kinds of stories that they're gonna tell you. They've been working on some really fun stuff. We're gonna have some stuff about all whatever chaotic news happens this summer

They're going to have a blast, and I think you're going to have a blast. So I invited the four of them for my last episode here this summer to come with me and do something I've been wanting to do for a long time, which is look through the annals of movies and TV shows and all of the technology in all of them and try to decide what we would actually want in our life. So we're going to do a bit of a draft today. The five of us, we're going to pick five things each, and it's going to be chaos, and we're

in our real lives. All that is coming up in just a sec. But first, we got to take a quick break because presumably I got to go do some kid stuff. I don't know. This is The Verge Cast. We'll be right back.

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Welcome back. It's draft time. I am joined by the squad that is taking over the Verge cast this summer. The four of you are going to just absolutely run me out of a job, and I literally could not be more excited about it. In the order in which I see you, Allison Johnson's here. Hi, Allison. Hello. Jen Toohey, also here with very cool lights in the background. Hi, Jen. Always, always cool stuff in my house. Hi, David. The song, I believe, in a phone booth in our office. Yes.

Hell yeah. And I brought my podcast mic with me to the office. So that's dedication. Nothing more fun than a long podcast in a phone booth. This is going to be great. Mia Sato is also here. Hi, Mia. Hello. You got the most TikTok-y podcast setup of all of us. So congratulations. Oh, my God. You're lucky I don't have my like AirPod mic. You know what I mean? Or the new thing that they're doing, they're clipping like a Rode mic onto a tube of lip gloss and then holding the lip gloss. I actually should have done that.

You should have done it. There was a real... We, like, honest to God, had a conversation about, like, what if all of David's recordings for the Verge cast were with the tiny little lavalier mic. So good. And I just couldn't do it. I'm 20 years too old to be able to pull that off. Okay, so here is how this draft is going to work. The concept is essentially...

things that are in movies, TV shows, and I believe we said yes to video games, that we would like to lift out of those things and place in the real world. And I think the way I've come to see it is it's like, it's not just one that's for you, but it's also not like everyone on earth has it. It's at like, I would say like Mac Pro levels of adoption, right? Where like, if you see one, you're not like, oh, weird, I've never seen that before. But you also like, don't assume that everyone you've ever met has one. Does that make sense? Okay. Yeah.

Price is no object. None of these things cost anything in these movies anyway. So they're just it's just we're taking it out and putting it into our real lives. There are only, I would say, three rules that I have for you. One is no weapons, which is just like, don't don't be weird. We don't need that energy here. Thing number two is you can't draft a concept. So you can't like draft time travel or like.

I don't know, cure all diseases. It's like not, you just can't, you can't have that, even though that is like a thing that exists in the fiction of some of these things. If there is a gadget through which you can time travel, knock yourself out. But you can't just have the concept of time travel. And the third thing is a rule that we just decided on earlier today, which is you're not allowed to try and make the world a better place. I was looking through and the reason none of us should have

thought about doing that at all. No, not at all. Which I love very much. But the reason this came up is I was looking through a bunch of stuff to make my own list for this draft. And there's this thing in the movie Elysium, which I have never seen, where

called the MedBay, I believe. And its thing is it can diagnose and cure like all diseases ever in history. And I immediately had this moment of being like, oh, well, I should draft this because that's great. Wouldn't it be good? And then I was like, that's stupid and boring. So you're not allowed to make the world a better place. And if that is your argument, you will be summarily rejected from your draft.

We're going to do five rounds. So we're each going to pick five things, 25 things in total, which is actually kind of a large number. And we're going to do it in sort of snake draft order. So if you draft last at the end of the first round, you will then immediately draft again to start the second round and we just go back and forth. That's basically it. Any questions before we go? Anything I forgot? Everybody feel good? Ready to go? How do we win?

Oh, terrific point. When this show goes live, we will have a post on TheVerge.com with all of our picks laid out, and we will do some kind of poll. And I don't know if The Verge is... We use WordPress. Maybe WordPress lets us do a poll, and I will be the first person to do that on TheVerge.com. Maybe we'll figure out some other way to do it. But we will do a poll, and whoever wins...

I don't know. I'll send you a Mac Pro. I won't. I won't do that. Mac Pro. You heard it here, ladies. Mac Pro. David Pierce. Mac Pro. Now, he's not specified the year of Mac Pro, which is the little loophole. I'm going to send you a trash can and you're going to love it. OK, so, Jen Tui, first overall pick. OK, I know what I'm going to start with. Going to my roots here in case anyone can't tell I'm

So I'm going with the TARDIS from Doctor Who. Very good. Very good. It's called the TARDIS. It can travel anywhere in time, space and its mind.

As a kid, actually, is probably the first piece of tech I remember and just loving. That and the Daleks, but I'm not going to choose the Daleks. So can you explain for people who have not watched Doctor Who, what is the TARDIS and why did you pick it? OK, so the TARDIS is the Time and Relative Dimension in Space vehicle from the show TARDIS.

Doctor Who, long-running show, older than me, had recent revival, which I haven't actually watched much of. But the reason I would like the TARDIS is because you can travel across space and time and fabrics and all the kind of cool space sci-fi. I mean, it's just the coolest device, transportation device, you could possibly have. And it is, like...

as large as you want it to be, but it is also a telephone booth, which is just the best concept in the world. So the other thing I thought about picking, and if I'd lost this one, I would have gone for, would have been the Bill and Ted's telephone booth that travels through time. But the TARDIS is way cooler. I agree. The TARDIS is a home too. It is. You can live in it. You go wherever you like. We're in it. It's a translation machine. It's like, it is all the tech.

that you could possibly need packed into a telephone booth. There are a few of these in this draft that are just kind of cheating because it's like, oh, I get to draft this and then I have everything that has ever existed for everyone ever. It's going to be great. My question is, where would you go? You get in the TARDIS the first time. What do you do?

The first time I would go, well, you see, I love history. So going back in time is my kind of, and those episodes were always the fun ones. I don't know if they do that so much in the new series, but in the old series, that was always the fun stuff. And I'm a huge Elizabethan history nerd.

Tudor and all that kind of stuff. So I would go back into Tudor history and find out all sorts of cool stuff that I desperately would love to know the real story about rather than having to piece through historical books and figure it out. That was when everybody was beheading everybody. Yeah, it was when everyone was killing each other. Yeah, it was really interesting times. Oh,

I like this for you. All right, V, what's your first pick? My first pick is Capsules from Dragon Ball Z. No need to live outside like savages. I have my dino caps, remember? I don't like those magic witch bombs. Grandpa said never to use magic unless it's to help someone. Oh, well, I am going to help someone, silly. Here it goes. There we go. Now, doesn't that...

They are, listen, okay, they are a genius invention. And like TARDISes, they are bigger on the inside than the outside. That is the coolest thing. If you've never watched Dragon Ball Z, they're these tiny little capsules. And that's like what Bulma's family is actually famous for. But they're little capsules and you can stick anything in them. You can stick a motorcycle in them. You can stick a vacation home in them. And they fit in.

into a tiny little pill-sized thing that you stick in your pocket. And it's so convenient in that world, it makes them gazillionaires. And so I want that for me because I am tired of carrying all my shit around in a backpack in New York City, getting like real back pain carrying a laptop, this podcast mic and everything. How do you deploy it? Is it like Pokemon where you throw it? Yeah, kind of. You like press a button and you throw it and your vacation home is there. I like that. Cool. Awesome. Yeah.

Your motorcycle is there. Awesome. You know, like parking costs a fuck ton in New York City. So why not just go like, oh, am I done with my car? No, no parking problems. Like, amazing. Love that for me. Oh.

Okay, I didn't like this. I was going to make fun of you for basically having all of the options in the world and choosing I don't want to carry a purse anymore. I'm just going to tell everyone. I'm going to set the table stakes here. Every single one of my picks is selfish. As it should be. It's selfish. It helps my life get easier and truly reveals all the ways in which I'm lazy. Is there a limit to how many capsules one can have at a time? You know, I don't.

I think so. Just like how much you can carry. Like Bulma has like vests, I think, where she's just like, look at my cap, you know, like the trench coat with the watch clocks. And she's like, look at my capsules. I don't actually think there's an episode where she does that, but I imagine that's what you can do. Whatever you can fit in your pocket. Capsules. I like this more and more the more I think about it. I'm now thinking of all the things I would just start carrying with me. This actually makes a lot of sense. Mia, you're up next. What's your first pick?

Okay, my first pick was going to be in the similar vein, so you can tell me if I can't. It might be even lazier than V's choice, which is like, I want the giant pockets of Animal Crossing. Because I don't even want to carry the capsules. I don't want to lose my car. I don't want to lose my wallet. I don't want to lose my tree that I'm carrying around for some reason. I just wanted all of my pockets. I want endless deep pockets that I can carry like 20 sharks and a peach. You know, that's

That's why I won. So is that too close or do I have to pick something else? No, I'm good with it. It's different. What I'm just blown away by is Jen is like, I would like to travel through space and time. And you're just like, I'd like to have a peach with me. What if I just had a peach? There's a theme, though, to all of these picks so far in that it's larger on the inside. Yes, that's true. But also just like I'm tired is a real vibe I'm getting from all of you. It's just like I don't want to like I had to walk a lot of places with bags. And what if I just didn't have to do that anymore?

I'm so sick of it. Also, like my I know that it's not a technology, but on the Animal Crossing subject, my second pick would have been a raccoon landlord that lets me pay off my apartment in zero interest loans and builds like a beautiful house for me and wears a Hawaiian shirt. So I'm guessing I can't draft Tom Nook. Where's Tom Nook? Where is Tom Nook? And where is that stock market that actually, you know, lets people get rich? Yeah.

Yeah, Tom Nook, animal crossing pockets are almost, I think, a violation of the it has to be technology and not magic rule, but I'll allow it. Amazing. Really, I did not expect this to just be how do I move things around in the first round. Listen, you are talking to four women and we have this, they don't give us pant pockets. I'm also realizing my first pick fits perfectly into this theme. So this is going to be great. Allison, you're up next. What's your first pick?

Okay, I'm going to pick the one that I'm worried someone else might pick. It's not necessarily like my favorite one, but I think it would come in handy.

In Men in Black, the little, like, little blinky light thing. Is it called the Neuralizer? The Neuralizer. All right. I want it specifically. I don't want to, like, do crimes. I just want it for my social anxiety. So if I, like, say something stupid, I can be like, wait, wait, wait. Let me do that over again. Yeah. That's what I got. Okay. So...

This is a good time to bring up something that we probably should have talked about with the TARDIS in particular, which is the societal implications. Because what happens here is it and there I went through this a bunch with a bunch of the things that I'm actually not going to pick as a result of this. But like you, Allison, I trust to have a neuralyzer. I think that would be fine. Right. But if we're going to just sort of randomly sprinkle neuralyzers on people around the earth, right.

Potential problems. A lot could go wrong. Are we sure we want to bring this into existence? What if we can only use them on ourselves?

Okay, but... No, but that would be worse because then my social anxiety says, oh my God, what did I say to other people that I don't even remember now? No, no, no. What have I neuralized out of myself? No, it's like a neuralizer light. You can't use it for any like serious, like heavy memories. Like forget about your whole life and your wife or whatever it is. It's just like, I...

Bend over at the bookstore and it was quiet and I farted. And I'm just going to like a flash this thing. No one will ever know. Yeah. Rewind for a few, just a few seconds. It's like a neural, like a low stakes neuralyzer. Low stakes only. Okay. Mia, is this a good idea? Should we allow, do we want this in the world? Yeah.

I just worry about if many people have it and everyone's forgetting the embarrassing thing they did, then that kind of disrupts the equilibrium of the world. Everybody becomes too confident. Yeah, everyone becomes a little too confident. Everyone becomes a little too polished. And frankly, like, I am fine doing embarrassing things because I've seen a million people do really embarrassing things in public. Yeah.

You know what I mean? It's kind of like social media that way. Yeah. Well, I think that even if people had the Neuralizer, they would not stop posting embarrassing things. So people would still be idiots online. So maybe it's fine. The Neuralizer would make the real world weird and not change social media one tiny bit. The internet would not change at all. At all. In fact, they would be crazier online because you have no other outlet.

That's true. That's pretty good. All right. I get two now. Because I get two, I'm going to pick the one that I don't think is like the thing I should pick first, but is the one I want the most out of everything, which is the hoverboard from Back to the Future 2. He's on a hoverboard!

Which is just and the beauty of this is it's not just that I have one. It's that lots of people have one. So we've now normalized this as a transportation system and a way that to get around that is like what if bird scooters, but like much cooler, which turns out to be like precisely the aesthetic I'm going for. And this is the true hoverboard that actually hovers. It seems to be very light.

It's pink. It's very important to me that they're all pink. And you can just you can ride around in the air. You can do all kinds of cool, sick tricks. It's a way to get places. It's a way to get in fights. This just feels like if I could just pick up a thing and be like, I'm going to instantly make everyone's life more fun to get around.

I think I'm doing a great service to society with the hoverboard. Don't we already have hoverboards? Yeah, but they light on fire. And they blow up in people's garages. They're not real. Like, they don't actually hover. They're just like stupid things with wheels on them. To be fair, I was also a big fan of those hoverboards. Oh, no. Like, they were a good idea, except for the whole, like, they exploded and were impossible to ride thing. But I was in on that. Did you have one?

I still might have one somewhere. Ride it now. Do it now. I feel like we're going to need some traffic laws, though, because we've seen with the scooters and e-bikes and everything that's out there today, these pedestrian-type vehicles that move fast and break things can be quite awful and dangerous. If you want the privilege of a hoverboard, you have to go to the DMV and get a hoverboard license because...

Otherwise, you're just a fucking menace, a traffic menace. Yeah, to be fair, I think people should have to do that with scooters. So I'm actually fine. It should be much harder to get one of these things on the street. But I kind of like to think of it like there's a very powerful hoverboard lobby that has made it so that they just coexist with cars now. And everybody's fine with this. I like that we're just writing fan fiction. This is great. I've solved a lot of problems here. All right. So that's my first pick.

I think for my second pick, I'm just going to take Jarvis from Iron Man. Oh, lost two already. Darn it. Micro repeater implanting sequence complete. As you wish, sir. I've also prepared a safety briefing for you to entirely ignore. Which I will. All right, let's do this. Sir, may I remind you that you've been awake for nearly 72 hours.

I'm not going to take another of the like all purpose do everything machines that let me travel back through time. This is the closest one to just like my all purpose AI helper that makes me sick at everything. And I think of all of them,

Jarvis is the best. V, you and I talk a lot about Jarvis. Like, is Jarvis the best one? I think Jarvis is the best one. Or, like, if you want to get nitty gritty, you could have, like, Friday or the other ones that Tony Stark has made. But, like, an AI that Tony Stark has made that is, like, with the power of science fiction, capable of doing all the things that the AI of today cannot actually do in a way that actually is natural language. And it's like, oh, you know...

I could deal with Paul Bettany in my ear telling me sassy little things and like reminders. I do worry that Jarvis would find me very unimpressive. That like, this is what I worry about with Jarvis. It's like, I don't want the suit. I don't want to like do cool stuff. I just want to be like, Jarvis, where did I leave my wallet?

And for Jarvis to be like, it's in the stroller where it always is. And like this, this is the extent of what I require. And I do like that Jarvis keeps Tony humble. He's just like, oh, you idiot. It's over there. Like I want I need like a degree of that in my life. It's just like, oh, you dingbat.

It's right where you left it. And it is important that it's Paul Bettany. You're right about that. Yes, it's very important that it's Paul Bettany. It has to have an English accent. That's the important part. Yeah, 100%. So those are my two. I feel very good about this. I think I have accomplished some things here. I have a way to get around and I have just like my non-terrifying AI buddy to hang out with all day. Round two, Allison, you're up.

All right. I'm going to go with the holodeck from Star Trek. Solid choice. Yeah. Like, and I have no problem with everybody else having this too. We can all have our little like, you know what? I'm going to peace out. I'm going to go sit on a mountain for 20 minutes. Wait, can you explain what it is? Because I've never seen Star Trek. Okay. So does she, is she allowed to work at the Verge? No, I'm not. Okay.

Wait, literally no. I'm gonna back you up, Mia. I've only seen the Star Trek movies, so we're good. Yeah. And I just, I just saw Star Wars for the first time in my entire life. Oh my goodness, Mia, you might need to stop. Okay. Okay. You know, Star Trek, the one was fine, but two, both of those. But you know what? No, no, no, no. She's seen it. She's seen it now, guys. She's seen it now. I've seen one now. I've seen one. Which one? Um,

Which one? The first one? Question mark? That's a loaded question. Yeah, if you like accidentally watch Phantom Menace, we have a real problem. Was Jar Jar Binks there? No. Okay, so it's the chronological first one, not the story first one. We're going to pause this podcast. Mia's going to go watch all the Star Wars and then we will resume. No, don't make her watch all of them. Some of them are not worth... Yeah, there's like five of them you should watch. It'll be all right. But wait, Allison, explain the holodeck.

Okay, holodeck. It's like a medium-sized room that is just like pixels or something. And there's a little control panel on the outside. And if you want to go to like a rainforest or see a waterfall, you go like boop, boop, boop, boop. And you put it on the control panel and the room turns into wherever you want to go.

And I think that's perfect. And I want one. That sounds great. Don't we already have that with the Vision Pro? Okay, I knew someone was going to say Vision Pro. God damn it. No. Absolutely not. This is not the same thing. The holodeck? Yeah. Comfy. Vision Pro? Not comfy. I want to like, you can interact with stuff in the holodeck. Like, it's like semi-real, you know? Like, if there's a waterfall, then there's...

Maybe real water? I don't know. Let's not get too... You experience it like it's real, I think. Yeah, yeah. But it's not, which is very important. Right. I honestly believe the world would be a much better place if there were holodecks everywhere. Wouldn't it be so good? Most importantly, you don't have to wear anything. Yes. Like, that's my big thing. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was interesting how it changed throughout the seasons. It became...

an entire like world that you would go into and like have entire stories and act out dreams and ideas. And I remember they used to go, there was a lot of Westerns. That's the dude holodeck. Every dude wants to go into a Western. I'm just like, yeah. What is, what would be your ideal holodeck experience? I think it would be the top of a mountain because I,

It takes a long time to drive to a mountain and hike all the way to the top. And I love doing that. And I do that from time to time. But sometimes you want to like microdose top of mountain experience. And I could just like hang out for a little bit and come back and like deal with my three-year-old and be chill.

That's what I want. I do think we need strict time limits on holodeck usage. Yeah, you can't like go live in the holodeck. Right. We're talking like a 60 minute a day kind of experience. Yeah, yeah. But with some time limit, I sincerely believe the world would be a much better place if we all had access to holodecks. I think it would. And you could just go...

Like get out of your system or experience whatever you need to over there. Yeah. And then it's and then come back to reality. I thought we weren't trying to make the world a better place with our kids. It's a byproduct. I want my world to be a better place. Yeah. Yeah. That's a that's a very good one. That was the next one on my list. And I'm sort of sad I didn't pick it. Mia, you're up.

Okay, just strategically, I think I need to grab The Clueless Closet. Yeah, surprised it took this long, honestly. It's classic. It is so fun. I just rewatched the clip twice.

a little bit ago, I will say I'm like halfway there. Not to brag, but I have, it's not as pretty, but I do have a mega spreadsheet that is an inventory of every single piece of clothing I own. And then the season and the color and where it is in my apartment, like where it's being stored, whether it's vintage, whether it's from my mom, like any tags, like keywords that

So I will say like this would this would visualize an insane thing that I'm already doing. Can you describe how the clueless closet works for anyone who hasn't seen the movie? So it kind of it like pulls in all of Cher's articles of clothing and then on her computer she can kind of scroll through them and it matches. She combines a top and a bottom and then the computer will be like wrong. Yeah.

ugly or it will be like good cute and it's sort of like in a way like I feel like a lot of these AI like outfit things are trying to harness that but it's the the clueless one is so cute it looks so fun it has that very like a really good like late 90s early 2000s aesthetic like it's just so good um and

And yeah, I have a lot of clothes. I have a lot of clothes and I need it.

Are you sure your spreadsheet isn't enough? You're like one column of photos away from just having completely solved this problem. I know. Well, actually, I've seen online some people will like photograph themselves wearing every article of clothing and then cut their body in half and make like a flip book of the closet, which is really a really cute idea. But I just do not have the patience for that. Also, there is no three ring binder that is even close to big enough for me to put all my clothes in.

Would you update anything from the Clueless Closet is my main question. It's it's because that's a that's an older idea about this stuff. But I think back and I'm like, they actually it was sort of perfect. I don't I don't need any features that it didn't have. Yeah, don't overcomplicate it like top and bottom. That's pretty much I mean, that's kind of the basis of every outfit unless you're wearing like a dress or something.

but don't make it too complicated. I just want, just like generate an idea for me or tell me if my idea is bad. I would, mostly it's like visualizing it. Like you can see it before you put it on your body and then have to take it off and hang it back up and fold it or whatever. So yeah, not, I would not change a single thing. I want it as is. It's a good one. I like it. All right, V, you're up.

Okay, so this is going to make me sound like a total anime nerd, but once again, I am taking from the world of Dragon Ball Z, and I want scouters. So if you've never watched Dragon Ball Z... V, am I going to have to make a rule that you can't pick all your things from one? No, I literally only had two. I literally only had the two. So the scouters from Dragon Ball Z are like these little...

heads-up display, augmented reality type situations where it fits over one part of your eye. If you have been online in the last 20 years, you've probably heard, it's over 9,000! Which is just Vegeta screaming because Goku's power level is over 9,000. Vegeta, what's wrong with you? Tell me what his power level is! It's over 9,000! What? 9,000? You've got to be kidding me!

The idea is that it can bio scan like life forms and tell you what their power level is. And I just think that this would be really great for my social anxiety if I can go into a meeting or anything and just put this on and go like, oh, my power level is over that of random executive. Cool. I can just relax now.

Like, if I, you know, I just think it would be great for people if they were going into job interviews and they could put a little scouter on their face and go like, oh, the schmuck, this HR rep, this schmuck is like 2000 power levels below me. I'm good. I'm cool. I'm Gucci.

What if it tells you something you're not prepared to know about? Well, then you're allowed to panic. But then, you know, at least you have your mindset going like, oh, I need to be on top of my game. Like you can calibrate what you're... Then you have your motorcycle in a capsule and you just ride away. Then you have my motorcycle in a capsule and I'm like, bye-bye. Oh, your power level is over 9,000? Okay, motorcycle in a capsule, bye-bye. I'm good. So like that's my... I just want scouters and I want it...

Like in my ideal world, you could tweak it to whatever you want. So, oh, you're going on a date? Calibrate it to Riz. Like how much charisma does this person that you're going on a date have with? Oh, their Riz level is 9,000? Okay, now you can be on alert for every lie that comes out of their mouth. It's the ultimate like read the room machine. Read the room machine. You just go, you go read the room and you go, oh, oh, oh, oh. And if I ever got to meet Tim Cook, I would be able to be like,

Oh, cool. Is it like a, I still don't quite get what it is. Does it let you read their mind kind of thing? No.

No, no. It's just like, so like in their world, everyone has something called ki. So it's like their power level. It's like how powerful they are. So it doesn't read their mind. It just like assigns like this person is really powerful. So you're just kind of getting a vibe from them kind of. Yes. Kind of like a numerical, you know, I'm the wearable lady. So of course you get a metric level of some person's specific attribute that

So you can like my ideal version of it, you just be like, oh, I would like to see what someone's friendliness level is when I go into like a group of people I've never met before. Scanning who is the friendliest person. OK, this person will give me the least anxiety to talk to, like that sort of thing. Or, you know, it could be used for evil. It could be like, who is the most manipulable person in this room? Like, so there's.

We love quantifying humans. Yeah, that's literally my job. Except usually I quantify myself. So like this is just...

You know, it's kind of like in Allison's vein of the neuralyzer, which was also going to be one of my picks. Damn you, Allison. But it's just like a way of managing social anxiety is how I view it. You, I know, just knowing you, I'm sure you have 38 wearables on right now. You would just wear this thing all the time. Do you think most people wear this all the time? Like, is this just a fixture on everybody's heads forever now?

Uh, no. And I actually wouldn't wear it all the time. I would mostly wear it in like social situations where I'm just trying to like

get a sense of my bearings and like what I need to to be aware of going into a room because like, I don't know, like my I don't really have an internal monologue, but I do have stress levels shoot through the roof when I have to meet a bunch of people or just be around more than two humans at a time. I just go like. So that's my way of solving that. OK, I like this. I'm not

this ends up being a good idea. Oh, it's an absolute horrible idea, but I like it. I'm telling you, all of my picks are selfish, so there we go. Yeah, I love this for you. Who cares what happens to everybody else? Yeah. Jen, you're up. You get two now. I'm going, I'm afraid I'm going for some more big splashy tech this time. My next few are a little less splashy, but...

I'm not sure that three quarters of the room is going to remember this one, but I'm going to start with the theme song and we'll see. I want, I want Kit.

Explain. Kit, I know. Three girls. Kit was on my list. Oh, okay. Kit was on my list. I admit I am more familiar with Kit than I am with Knight Rider. So I left you hanging unintentionally there. But Kit is a very good pick. Explain to the unknown in the room. To the young people in the room. To the youths of America. Yes. So Kit is...

an acronym. So KITT is Knight Industries 2000, and it is a smart car. And I mean, a really smart car. It's basically like a Jarvis in a car and in a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, in fact, which was not a fact I knew until I researched for this because I'm not a motorhead. But yes, it is a black car that has a smart assistant inside, you know, and the smart home

lady here so I needed my smart assistant but it's on wheels which doesn't get much better it can do everything like literally I don't think there's anything that Kit didn't do during the however many seasons there were of Knight Rider which were many starring David Hasselhoff

pre-Baywatch and such a good show. They revived it. I don't think I watched any of that. They did it recently, I think. You didn't miss anything. No. And it's basically a self-aware computer in a car and

David Knight, who is David Hasselhoff, has a watch and he can call, you kind of need both pieces of tech, but he can call Kit to him when he's in danger. And so like he uses the watch to communicate and Kit would like just come to the rescue and like,

blow through walls and rescue him. And he has all sorts of like sense. I mean, he, he has, he's a self-driving car to start with. And he has senses that can like means that he, I'm sorry, it, I should not amplify the AI, but it has senses that can smell, feel like scanners that can see inside buildings. So like when David Hasselhoff, David Knight, was it David Knight?

I get my David's confused. One of the reasons I'm getting my David's confused is because, sidebar, my uncle, David Darling, was the stuntman for Knight Rider. What? Very cool. So, yeah, that was kind of cool. That was one of the reasons I watched it. I'm even happier that you get this one now. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's an AI. You know, today, it's basically, as I said, a Jarvis in a car with...

every kind of technology you could possibly want and every sort of scenario Knight Rider got himself into the car could come to the rescue and it was also I think the thing I liked most about Kit which is sort of what you mentioned about Jarvis too is that it was very funny and dry witted and would kind of you know sort of say David you're being stupid.

to investigate to investigate what well if I knew that I wouldn't have to investigate now what you call that logic you got a better idea how would you like to hear a little music

Yeah, Kit's a good pick because it's also... Or Michael. Michael. It was Michael Knight. Sorry. That's right. David Hasselhoff played Michael Knight. Michael, you're being stupid. Sorry. All my names getting mixed up here. This is a good one. But yes. It was also just a sick car. It could do everything a car you needed to do. It could go in the water. It looked awesome. It would go really fast. It was just like you would want it just as a car. Yes. But then also it was also like a cool kind of obnoxious A.

AI best friend. Very obnoxious, but very cool. And there was the gold pendant, which is the other really cool thing. So, so 80s. But he had the gold pendant. He could just like if he was in real danger, he could just press the gold pendant and it would come. Oh, it was so cool. And I think all this comes with the car, right? Like when you buy the car, the dealership is definitely like throwing in the watch and the pendant as the accessories. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, paired with my TARDIS, I mean, I'm like, I'm set for life. I can do everything I need to go anywhere I want and have my AI companion come to my rescue when I'm in those awkward situations that my neural eyes is not going to help me with. Yeah.

Can Kit fit in the TARDIS? By the rules of the TARDIS, can you bring Kit with you? Yes, I think you can. Okay. You can borrow a capsule just to fit Kit in the TARDIS. Fit Kit into my pocket. Capsule and then fit him into the TARDIS. You can put the capsule in my giant pockets. Yeah, and have even more room. Everything can go in Mia's pockets. Mia ends this the most powerful just by virtue of having giant pockets. That's definitely how this ends.

All right, Jen, you're up next. But first, let's take a break. And then we're going to do that's two rounds. We got three more to do. We're coming right back to you, Jen. We'll be right back. Support for The Verge Cast comes from Shopify. When it comes to growing your business, you need a partner you can count on. A partner like Shopify.

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I'm Julia Longoria, and this week on Unexplainable, things get a little personal. With morning sickness. What I saw in television shows and movies, people saying, ha, ha, ha, she's pregnant. She's been barfing for an hour. When I woke up, I ran to the bathroom and I sort of laughed after thinking, this is morning sickness, ha, ha.

But within a week, I realized that it was not very funny. And it got bad really fast. I just was like, okay, I have to work on this because there's nothing out there and I need the answers. Follow Unexplainable for new episodes every Monday and Wednesday.

What do President Biden's two senior most national security advisors think of the U.S. strikes on Iran? The longer tail of the threat from Iran remains and will have to be taken seriously. I'm Preet Bharara, and this week, Jake Sullivan and John Feiner join me on my podcast, Stay Tuned with Preet, to discuss the U.S. military action in Iran and what comes next for the Middle East. The episode is out now. Search and follow Stay Tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts. ♪

All right, we're back. Round three. Jen, you're up again. How do you feel? You ready? You got this one? I think I'm going to have to go with Rosie. Okay. Just because. I know. Just because. You're doing the old head picks here. I love this for you.

Yeah, that's, you know, Kit and Rosie and Star Trek were all, you know, that's why I became a tech journalist. So got to follow the theme. And I would have gone for Jarvis because I wanted Jarvis to be my housekeeper, not Rosie. Just because I want to buck the societal trends here. I don't think Rosie should necessarily have to be a woman as a household robot. And Jarvis is just a bit hotter too. Yeah.

I mean, I did get Paul Bettany. So like, I got that going for me. Explain Rosie's deal for folks who have not seen the Jetsons. Okay, so Rosie is a household robot. And actually in the early sort of days of the Jetsons, it was rather, it wasn't that good. In fact, one of the stories around it was that

They couldn't afford the more expensive fancy model, so they had the older model. But still, Rosie can do a lot. Rosie's basically a humanoid robot on wheels that can kind of roll around the house and act.

act like a housekeeper, maid, nanny, doing all the chores that you might need. Because I've spent a lot of time with robots in my home over the last few years. And the one thing I've realized that a robot really does need is some form of arms and limbs to do things for you. If you're going to have a humanoid type robot in your home that's going to fold your laundry or

empty your dishwasher, you need limbs. And Rosie has little claw-like limbs. This is why I wanted Jarvis because, you know, it looks like an actual person as opposed to, Rosie does kind of look like pieces of scrap metal put together. But still, it works. It gets the job done. And that's what I need. I want something to, you know, do the laundry and

put the clothes away and empty the dishwasher because I have not yet figured out how to get anyone else in my house to do that for me. So some version of a Rosie I would like in my future, although I am slightly terrified of the as much as I find the appendages useful, I'm also slightly terrified of them. Yeah. So I'm curious in your in your day to day as a smart home reporter, how often would you say Rosie the robot comes up?

Because I feel like Rosie is one of the like canonical smart home things that everybody is always trying to build. Yeah, it is. It's very and it's kind of tired from that perspective. It's like it's what we're holding so much up against. But it's also I mean, we've had so much technology from TV and movies and popular culture come to reality because it actually does have.

help push people forward and invent things. And I feel like there's a lot of things we have in our homes today because of Rosie, because people are trying to make Rosie. That's why we have robot vacuum cleaners. You know, I'm not, I mean, I'm sure, I know for a fact that that's like some of the idea behind the original robot vacuum was we want to make something that's going to be helpful like a Rosie. So in that respect, I think, you know, she is in the Smart Home Hall of Fame and always will be. Yeah.

V you're up next. What, what Dragon Ball Z thing are you going to subject us to this time? It's not, it's not Dragon Ball Z this time. Uh,

But I do think the rest of my picks are a bit more obscure. Okay. So I'm going to go with the one that I think is least obscure, and it is the babblefish from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It feeds on brainwave energy, absorbing unconscious frequencies and excreting a matrix of conscious frequencies to the speech centers of the brain.

The practical upshot of which is that if you stick one in your ear, you instantly understand anything said to you in any language.

Because I spent a lot of my life studying various languages, and V's brain, it hurdy. It tired. There's no room for anything besides English now. So I would like a little fish, little fish friend that translates everybody for me so that when I go on a plane and decide to torture myself on the way to WWDC watching Emilia Perez, I don't have to squint my eyes reading the horrible translations, you know, even though...

Maybe I shouldn't have known what was being sung in that horrible-ass movie. That's my review of Amelia Perez. Why? I don't know why I decided. I don't. I don't. I can't tell you why. I got the full recap from V after she saw it on our walk to Dunkin' Donuts.

I was on a street reenacting the film for Allison and having a meltdown while doing it. But that's when Allison decided she wanted the neuralyzer. She's like, I can't. I'm done with this. Basically. Yeah. No, I was watching a bunch of movies on the plane that were foreign language. I don't know why I decided. Actually, I do know why, because my husband does not like reading subtitles.

So this is very, like I said, all my picks are selfish. I want to be able to watch movies and not have him complain about subtitles and just have the direct translation.

Because I wanted to watch Eczema, a Korean horror movie, last year. And I had to do it on a plane. And I kept getting interrupted by the pilot giving safety information. Like, just let me die if the plane crashes. And interrupting plot stuff. So I would have really liked a babblefish at that point in time. So, okay, wait. Let me just quickly make sure I understand the case you're making here. You would like...

This thing, which if Memory Serves from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a literal fish you shove into your ear. Yes, correct. That real time translates all languages to all languages, right? Yes. Okay. A literal fish that you shove in your ear.

You want it so you can watch horrible Netflix movies without subtitles. That's your whole deal here. That's one use case. Also, talking to my family, because I am the Korean Chewbacca in my family, I speak English, they speak Korean, and somehow we understand each other, except there's always a word or two that I'm like, context can't

Can't math out that meaning. So I would like that for those situations. And I'd like it for when I travel to other places in which I have not studied the language and have no intention to Duolingo my ass into any form of Donde Esta La Biblioteca-ing or whatever. And, like, I would keep Fred in his own little tank and we would be friends. And, you know, I would have a very equitable life.

for Fred. Like, I just don't want an AI because, like, the appeal of the babblefish is that he's going to be able to translate my cousin's kid when she says skibbity toilet as to what the fuck that means. So, and that can be translated into all languages because the problem with current AI translators is that they're shit at

And so it is, I want to talk to the teenagers in all these different languages and be like, please, brain dump upon me your horrors. I would love to learn more about them. And the language barrier is, they continually contort language into new ways. And I need the babblefish to do that for me. All right. Fair enough. Weird that it's a fish. Like, it's a real bummer that all of us now have to shove a fish in our ears to make this work. Listen. But sure. Listen.

Whatever works for you. Yeah, I like it. Mia, you're up. Okay, I have an old head pick, so you guys will appreciate it. My pick are... I'm also not that young, so I don't know why I said that. We're all in our 70s. It's important to know, except for Mia. Yeah, my emotional age is very old. My pick are the...

from They Live, if anyone has seen that movie. They are sort of like glasses that have been created...

When you put them on, you see which of the people around you are aliens with evil goals. And all, like, ads or magazines, like, it wakes you up to big advertising and, like, propaganda. So you'll look at an ad. You'll put the glasses on and you'll look at an ad and it says, like, Obey. That's actually where the Obey streetwear logo comes from. Or...

It will, you know, you'll look at like a magazine and it says like no independent thought. And I don't need the glasses. I think other people need them. So I would get a bunch of glasses and give them to people. And actually, if I can brag for a second, the reason I picked the glasses is...

is because I did a story last year about all the ways that people like change their websites to appease Google. And it was like a step-by-step here are all the reasons. And the novelist Colson Whitehead shared my story and said reading this was like putting on the They Live glasses. Nice. So I'm chasing that high all the time.

And yeah, I'm giving these glasses out to a lot of people. Let's just say that. I like them as glasses because it also implies you can take them off and go back to living in like blissful ignorance, which feels important. Like, yes, I both do and don't want to know how the world really works. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's like sometimes I do. And then sometimes I would like to just go home. Yeah. I mean, I would like I would like them to tell me who is lying. Yeah.

in a way. Like, this is so nerdy. I want to know what is, like, unidentified spawn con. Yeah.

This is so boring. What if you put these glasses on and it turns out that like all of the conspiracy theories that we've made fun of on the internet actually turn out to be true? It could be. Good to know. Yeah, you just put them on and it's just instantly like the Illuminati's everywhere and you're like, oh my God, they were right. Yeah, it could be. I'm willing to take that chance. But like I said, I don't think I'll be wearing them that much. I'm going to give them to people who need them. Sure.

It's like media literacy in a wearable form factor. Yeah, you're like a pastor on a street corner, but you're handing out glasses, basically. Not sketchy at all. No. Yeah, here, wear these. You'll see the truth. Like, that's going to go great for everybody. No, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. Okay. I like this. Allison, you're up next. All right. I'm going to stay in the realm of film and go with dinosaur embryos. But...

Only the ones that eat plants. So Jurassic Park could be... Hold on. Is this technology? Are we going to allow this as technology? Because it's the... Here's the exact technology. David, thank you for asking. It's the barbosol can that Dennis Nedry has that has the embryos inside of it. So if you have that, I mean, you have to like...

I don't know how to turn a dinosaur embryo into a baby dinosaur. I'll pay someone to figure that out. So I'm starting with the barbosalchian. And I'm going to take out the embryos for the velociraptors and the T-Rex. I'm going to throw those away. We don't need that chaos. And we're just going to have the nice dinosaurs. And they can live in the zoo. And it'll be great.

I feel like famously that's not great. You're just describing the first act of Jurassic Park and then it all goes wrong. If you forget, I'm going to use the neuralyzer on myself. Forget everything I learned from Jurassic Park.

Just have the cute, nice dinosaurs. Maybe I'll make them a little smaller. They don't need to be so big. I mean... This is how it starts, Allison. They have feathers. I mean, they'll have feathers. They'll be cute. They might be cute. It looks like we just got a bunch of new birds. Like new kinds of chickens. Oh, I'd much rather have dinosaurs than... What are the rats? The woolly mammoth rats they've just recreated? Let's bring back dinosaurs. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's bring back dinosaurs. I'm with Allison on this one. I want dinosaurs. I want chicken dinosaurs. Chicken dinosaurs. I'm only for like chicken sized or like if we can have them in miniature. Maybe we could put a size limit on it. I think like if you can't hold it in two hands, it's too big. Life will find a way, Allison. Yes, exactly.

Yeah, we just, this is the beginning of Jurassic Park. We just did it, everybody. It's gonna be great. Jeff Goldblum is gonna be here any minute. Yeah. Be good to go. We're gonna make a lot of money and then it's all gonna fall apart. And I think that's fine. We're gonna get really rich along the way. Yep.

Wow, that is not what I expected. You just, okay, this is good. All right, I get two now. I spent a lot of time, I don't know if this is a thing any of you spent time thinking about. I spent a lot of time thinking about contact lenses because this is a thing that comes up in a lot of movies and TV shows. They like skip past, you know, AR glasses and they go right to contact lenses to do various things. I have landed on

The contact lenses from the movie Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, which is not the best of the Mission Impossible movies. But basically, these contact lenses have two features that I like very much. One is facial recognition, which frankly, I could take or leave like,

And Nilay always says that his great thing for AR glasses is like, tell him who everybody is. That's fine. He can have that. What I want is the other feature, which is essentially just a text scanner camera for photographing documents in your day-to-day life. And I'm just thinking for me as someone with a truly god-awful memory of

I just I'm just I'm just running around taking pictures of everything forever. This is like this is the greatest camera I've ever had. I can remember all the documents that I see. I'd have to spend a lot less time like transcribing stuff out of my camera roll. This is purely like a work device for me. That is just my text scanner for everything all the time.

And then I'm going to just pipe it into Apple Reminders and just remember everything that ever happened to me. We're so boring. That was my crazy question. Like when you want to recall it, what do you see? Does it appear in front of your eyes or what?

That's a good question. I think I just tell Jarvis. This is what I do. I'm curious why the contact lens form factor, because ostensibly one of the many smart glasses across many franchises of sci-fi would also be able to do this for you. Like, why the contact lenses? I just... So as somebody who does not wear glasses or contacts...

I feel like I would get used to contacts faster than I would get used to glasses. And please disabuse me of this notion if I am wrong. But I think the idea of like, I'm just going to have this sort of on and with me all day. I think contact lenses would annoy me less, which is my whole reason for choosing this. Your eyes gonna get so dry.

Yeah, by the end of the day. It's so dry. They're going to be so dry. You're going to be wishing you had glasses. Yeah. I'm going to like beta test one of these and go blind is basically what's going to happen. But you might be right. Is this like photographic memory, though? It's essentially photographic memory. Because that I'm definitely down with. Yeah. Recallable photographic memory is essentially what these give you. And I'm extremely here for it. Did most of us not covet the neuralyzer because remembering everything is painful?

It's a curse. Yeah. Yeah. But in this world, I get to have a neuralyzer anyway. So I'm just I'm just constantly calibrating, remembering and forgetting everything as I want to. So I'm taking that one. And then there's a lot there's a lot more possibilities here. I'm going to take for my next pick the portal gun from Rick and Morty.

I don't know if any of you have watched Rick and Morty, but basically the portal gun opens up portals to parallel universes. And sometimes they know where they're going and sometimes they don't. And it's pure chaos. It is just like a nonstop adventure machine. And you have the gun that can get you to another parallel universe, but also you can use a portal to get back. And I just think as somebody who spends a lot of time sitting here in my basement,

on Google Meet talking to people, it would be really nice to just be able to like turn around and just like hit up a parallel universe for 20 minutes between meetings. And that feels great. There's a lot of us want to escape. Yeah, I was going to say. I think we need a vacation. Just go to the beach. Yeah. And it's, you know, I can see some stuff, broaden my horizons, try new things, but then I can always come back. There's just a, I just open up a portal right here in the basement. Nobody even knows I'm gone.

But you might go somewhere scary. You don't know. Sometimes it is scary. And sometimes that's... I think I also probably have to have Rick with me for this. So I think I'm like bringing the portal gun, but I'm also hiring Rick, who is like an insane alcoholic grandpa, to come accompany me on these adventures. I'm signing up to be Morty in all of these adventures is what I'm realizing as I say this. What a choice.

I am the like pathetic sidekick who almost dies over and over, but always has an adventure. And I think I'm ready for that. Oh, geez, Rick. It's just you the entire time. That's me. Yeah. This is the life I'm after. So yeah, I'm taking the portal gun.

I think I don't want to... Like, time travel has, like, too many consequences for me, I think. Like, if we're opening up the TARDIS, just send me to a parallel universe. I can't cause any trouble in a parallel universe. It's fine. But, yeah. But what are you getting out of this? Adventures. Okay. That's it. That's the beauty of it. He wants to feel alive. I'm going to learn things. I'm going to see new creatures. I'm going to try new stuff. But fundamentally, then I feel like I get to come back and I have...

I haven't. If I went back to like the Tudors with you and the TARDIS, I'm going to be like, well, I can't do anything or else I might screw up the future forever. I don't want to do that. I get to just go to some weird cartoon universe and then come back. No stakes. Oh, it's all cartoons. Well, in Rick and Morty, it's all cartoons. Presumably my version of it would be real. I don't know. I don't know if you can make that call. Maybe it is all cartoons. If it's all cartoons, I'm even more in and I should have picked this sooner. They're going to be rules. Yeah.

Yeah. This could go horribly wrong, but I feel good about it. I'm taking this pick. Allison, you're up. Okay. In the vein of like little buddies, I guess, I'm picking the movie theater from Mystery Science Theater 3000. And what that entails is my little robot friends, you know,

Daisy, Gypsy, Tom Servo, all those guys, we're going to sit and watch movies and have a good time. And it's like you could go there when you want and like watch a bad old movie with your robot friends and then leave, which is not part of the premise of Mystery Science Theater 3000. You were stuck there forever. But in my version, you can come and go.

This is so wholesome. Yeah. You're just like, I just want to watch movies with my robot friends. I want to hang out with my robot buddies. I have so many good memories of MST. Yeah. Are you on the show by virtue of being in the theater? I think you're just kind of along for the ride. Like, you don't have to make any jokes or anything. Okay. You're just listening to the jokes, and it's fun and nice.

And then there's a project. They always do like a weird little thing in between segments where they're like, now we're doing a craft or whatever. It sounds like preschool. And I guess I just want to go back to preschool. Again, with the escapism, like you can go anywhere, anywhere but here. You want big pockets and the ability to go anywhere. That's basically it.

Yeah, I love it. I have no notes on this. This is the lowest stakes one yet by a mile. And I'm very happy about this. This causes no societal problems. Nothing bad happens. You've just created like a new movie theater for a bunch of people to go to that is slightly more fun. And there's a lot there. Most importantly for me. I love it. This is great. Mia, you're up. Okay. A lot of people are going to be mad at me because I think this could be vetoed.

I would like the doorknob that Josie Packer in Twin Peaks gets stuck in. Wow. No part of that went where I thought it was going to. For those of us who have not seen Twin Peaks. What is this doorknob? Please explain it yet. Have people seen Twin Peaks? Okay. In Twin Peaks, there is like the wealthy wife of a mill owner. And she...

gets stuck in a doorknob and it's just never really resolved she's just in there and it's a doorknob at like a random i don't think there's anything special about the doorknob but her face is in there and i think the last we see of her is she's kind of like i'm in

I'm in the doorknob. And like, you know, let me out. But I would use it to trap my enemies. I'm going to be so for real. I'm there's nothing deeper. I'm putting I'm putting you bitches in the doorknob. I don't know if I can say that on this podcast. You absolutely can't. That might be the title of this podcast. What did we do? Not you guys, but my my enemies. You know what I mean? And trust me right now, a lot of people would be in that doorknob. You know what? I trust Mia's judgment.

I give her full authority to just trap her enemy because I feel like Mia's enemies, by and large, are humanity's enemies. So I fully trust her to trap these bitches in the door now. Yeah.

I don't know if it's a technology. I'm going to say it is. That was going to be my question because I did watch some of Twin Peaks, but I don't remember the doorknob. And how did we know how she got in there? Like, was there technology involved in putting her in there or was it? I mean, there was no rhyme nor reason to Twin Peaks really. This is such a good edge case because you're it both isn't technology and is also completely unexplainable by any other means. Yeah. So I think I have to give this to you because I can't.

refute it. Yeah, someone had to invent the doorknob eventually. Like the doorknob generally, I would say, is a technology. I mean, that's, boy, that's a

That's a great case. I'm into it. Thank you. Also, can we just like quickly psychoanalyze Mia for a second here? In two consecutive picks has said, I'm going to fix society by giving them real glasses and I'm going to trap bitches in a doorknob. Do you have some thoughts about the public we should talk about here? No, I contain multitudes. I believe in everyone's ability to be better. And some people need to be in a timeout in a doorknob. This is the smart door lock that we need.

I was going to go there, but yeah. Yeah. And if it existed now, you know Ring doorbell would be integrating that shit immediately. Oh, yeah. Immediately. You go in the doorknob, Ring calls the cops. Yeah, people would want it for like the people who steal Amazon packages. You know what I mean? Like people would be up in arms being like Amazon package thieves into the doorknob. You get sucked into the doorknob if you steal packages. Yeah.

All right. We'll allow it. It's sketchy, but we'll allow it. V, you're up next. It's extremely hard to follow up the doorknob jail, but I think I'm going to go with the sonic screwdriver from Doctor Who. Awesome. Good choice.

This is also kind of a cheaty device in the sense that it is a plot hole filler. Doctor Who's kind of lazy this way, I'm discovering. They're just like, here's some stuff that can do everything. You figure it out. But here's how the laziness suits me and I think society at large. Because so like if you've never watched Doctor Who, the Doctor has a bunch of little doodads and gadgets. And one of them is the sonic screwdriver. It is like it's like a pen with a little light out in the end. It goes beep.

And any time the writers have written him into a plot corner, he uses the sonic screwdriver and it gets him out of it. Such that, so like, a door's locked, sonic screwdriver opens the door. Gadget broke, oh, it's fixed again. Oh, I don't know, I don't know what's happening. There you go. So it's sort of like a diagnostic tool and a Swiss Army nice fix-it gun. Not like, or like, you know, it has like...

spiritually, I think it's very close to a Tide pen in that like, oh no, here's this thing that's horrible. Let me just pull out this little pen thing. Oh, it's fixed again. So like if you can imagine like spiritually a digital Tide pen, but instead of being limited to stains, it can like

It can diagnose what's wrong with your computer. It can fix a lock that's broken. It can just like I hate home maintenance. So I would love to take my little screwdriver and go and be like, tell me what's wrong with my toilet. I don't know.

The thing, I'm not a plumber. I don't know what's wrong with the fucking toilet. That's what plumbers say. The thing is broken and then you just point at it again and go, all my toilet's fixed. Save $2,000 in plumbing bills. Like this is what I want, a little diagnostic fix-it tool. It's also small, which I really appreciate about the Sonic screwdriver. It's not, I don't have to figure out where to put a phone booth in my house. This is just like a thing I have in a drawer that solves all my problems. Yeah.

I think it's a good one. I like it very much. All right, Jen, back to you. You get two in a row. Oh, my goodness. But these are your last two. So don't blow this, Jen. So I have one very obvious one and one not so obvious one. And they're quite connected. So I'm happy about this. This I'm going with because I couldn't not do a Star Trek pick. I am going with the Replicator. Yeah.

That was going to be my last pick. And for Mia, I would explain... Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. For the youngs. Because I don't think anyone else listening to this podcast will need the explanation. Sorry. But the Star Trek Replicator is a computer that on Star Trek spaceships, these are because Star Trek's set in space, where you can...

Create pretty much anything you like. So you go up to Replicator, you say infamously, Tea Earl Grey hot. Tea Earl Grey hot. Tea Earl Grey hot. Earl Grey tea hot. And you get tea hot Earl Grey. You can also create anything you need, any inanimate matter, as long as it was in the computer's brain.

And it's programming. So food, basically, this is how they ate on ships. And it create anything you wanted. So I have my robot helper and then I have my replicator in my kitchen that can just basically do anything I need. I no longer need to go to the shops. No grocery shopping for me. I can just get whatever I need from my replicator. Is there anything it can't make? Yeah, so it can create. It's limited to what it knows about inside.

its machine memory. And it couldn't make like some things that were going to save the ship so that there was a plot line. Like when they needed like some kind of weird material, it would be something that the, you know, to save the ship to like, so Scotty could fix the engines that he needed. And it couldn't replicate that because then there would be no plot left.

But it also, what was very cool about it is that it could recycle, it recycled things. So it recycled matter already on the ship into what you created, what you asked it for. So that was, I mean, a little gross, depending on what is recycling and what you're eating, but very eco-friendly, which I think is a good feature for our new tech.

I think one of the things it did was like provide air, right? That it was like it's that you get infinite breathable air out of the replicator. It's like...

We might need that. We do need that right now. Like a 3D printer on steroids. Yes, it is a 3D printer on steroids. So yeah, the replicator, it's a predictable one, I'm afraid, but we can't not have it. I was going to pick it. I was hoping I would get it last in the draft because, you know, all these losers don't even know what Star Trek is. So what can you do? All right. We're going to get to the very last round, but let's take one more break before we do. We'll be right back.

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Roy told me about using AI to cruise his way through every assignment. I had to stop him and say, like, why would you go through so much effort to get into an elite school like Columbia and then just not do the work? And he said, I'm here to find a co-founder and a wife. This week on The Gray Area, is AI changing the college experience? Listen to The Gray Area with me, Sean Illing. New episodes every Monday, available everywhere.

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You know, if you have to pivot because prices have went up for tariffs, if you don't have the money to increase your budget, don't. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com slash Your Rich BFF. All right, we're back. Jen, you again. Okay. Last round.

So my replicator was my last pick. And then to round out my perfect kitchen and home with my smart car and my robot. You are just building the ultimate smart home for yourself. I'm realizing this now.

What if my job as a reporter was done? Yes, exactly. Fixed all the problems. This one, I think it's like a glimpse in the movie. It's only there very briefly. But this is the fruit dispenser in Back to the Future 2.

Oh, yeah. It comes out from the ceiling and has freshly grown fruit that you can eat at any time. I love that. And yeah, so I would want that. Like if that's the one thing I if my kitchen could do for me, just give me fresh fruit because, you know, that's great.

I love it. It's like having a living wall, but it's fruit in your house. Yes, exactly. No gross bananas. Right. Nothing's gone bad or rotten. You know, your strawberries aren't moldy. Your bananas aren't

inhabitating fruit flies, which is what happens a lot where I live. I live in the South, so there's so much gross stuff that happens to fruit and I have to eat it within the day I get it. And then, you know, I've eaten it all and there's no fruit left by the end of the week. So I actually saw at CES four or five, no, maybe even six years ago, GE had like a futuristic growing garden kitchen like this. It didn't have fruit, but like everything was sort of growing in the kitchen using like recycled materials

water from the dishwasher and composting, all doing it inside the kitchen. And this kind of felt like the sort of the culmination of that, where you could just press a little button and down from the ceiling comes your freshly grown fruit. So yes, that's my last piece of my ultimate sort of smart home, smart car puzzle that I've put together here. I'm coming over for your fruit.

For the fruit. Yeah. That's fine. We can all go over to Jen's house. Everything is taken care of. So Jen's just going to be mega chill about it. I know. It's not even a problem to have lots of people over. This is great. Very true. I like this very much. Jen, I have a really important question. Do you think matter makes all of this stuff work together over time? Or like,

Like Matter 2.6 is the one that really makes kit and the fruit dispenser perfectly integrated. Is that what's going to happen? What did you say? Matter 2.6? Matter 2.6. Is that too ambitious, maybe? That might be. All right. I love it. V, what's your last one? Oof. I had so many backups that now I have to decide between my selfish technology picks because...

Yeah.

You do know how this movie ends, right? You're doing a real Jurassic Park thing where it's like, oh, in Act 1, this seems like a really good idea. And then I turned off the movie. No, I would exclusively... First of all, I haven't seen the movie. I just know of this from the trailers. Whatever. Just the concept of being able to fast forward through the worst parts of my meetings, basically. Because I am an anti-meeting person.

Mainly, this is going to be my soapbox, because 90% of the meetings that I have to sit through ain't worth it. There's like a preamble. There's usually someone coming up and going, let me explain points A through Z when really you only need points, like,

Y and Z. And then it's just like, oh, Jesus Christ. And like, you know, maybe this is just journalist specific. It feels important at this moment to tell everyone watching and listening that the context here is that V had a two hour long meeting this morning that she traveled to that 100% should have been an email and has been complaining about it all day. 1000% should have been an email. And if I, it was one of those gotcha meetings where it's like they, they're like, yeah, you're going to want to know about the thing. And it's like, oh,

I guess I do want to know about the thing. And then you show up and they're like, here's the thing at the very end. And it's like you're just low hum screaming. This could have been an email in your brain. And you get why they wanted you to come out. They wanted everybody have a little fun, get to know everybody. And that's great.

But not for me. Not for me specifically. I would have liked to just go press the little button, go droop. And I was like, oh, magically I'm done. I'm at the end of the meeting and they're emailing me all the salient points anyway. So I really haven't missed anything. I just basically would love to fast forward through the most painful parts of this.

I just want to go through the parts of life where it's just like this could have been an email. All the times that you sit there and you go, this could have been an email. Just done. Jen, Allison, Mia, have any of you seen? I've seen the movie and I remember how it ends badly. But I've forgotten exactly what happens in the end. So, David, you have to enlighten us all. I would say not to spoil this movie for anyone who hasn't seen it. It's actually very good. People should watch it. It's in the...

Like, oeuvre of Adam Sandler movies that are surprisingly pretty good. Punch Drunk Love, also a good movie. Anyway. So good. The point of Click is that actually living your life is good, I would say. And I think...

This is not the group to say that to. I believe that. I'm not I'm not trying to neuralize my life out of anything. I am just saying in the context of useless meetings where we all wish we could just be out of the meeting room sooner, like I will sit through meetings that are important. So you're thinking like, how do we take the click remote and turn it into like B2B software?

Yeah.

To make sure that no one does this in the future, they'll go, oh, we got to revolutionize how we do meetings every now and then. There's going to be strict agendas, a 30-minute cap. And then, you know, I just think the threat of pulling out the remote will make people think twice about how they're wasting your time. It's preventative. All right, Mia, what's your last pick?

Okay, I had a hard time picking because Spy Kids to me was like a formative text. I watched those movies all the time and everything is cool and everything looks great in those movies. But in the end, I went with the most boring thing, which is the microwave that just makes food out of like a packet. I actually don't know if it's like the microwave that I want or the food packets. Like I'm not sure which is creating it.

I think I'll allow you to have both because if one exists, somebody's going to make the other. So I think we can will both into existence here. Okay. Yeah. So it looks like a package of popcorn, like microwave popcorn, and you put it in and like hit the button. And one second later, it's like a full meal on a plate and it looks really good. And I hate cooking. The worst part of my week that I have to do like

Every single week is plan my lunch. And I like this because like I feel like a lot of sci-fi like meal replacement things are like you're taking a pill. Right. And it's like the your food. I do want to eat food. I like to eat. That's a normal thing to like. And I don't want to take a pill. I would like to spy kids food. Right.

You don't want the soylent life. This does exist. Sort of. Does it? Really? Well, I guess like microwave dinners a little bit. So there's this, and I did review this, that it's not quite as futuristic as, but the Tavala oven that I reviewed a while back, which is like an oven that you have a subscription service and they send you pre-packaged meals and you put them in the oven, but it doesn't cook it like a microwave oven. It cooks it all like an oven oven.

cook meal and it tastes so much better than a microwave meal. It's not quite as whiz bang as like the freeze dried becomes like a whole four course meal. But it's kind of cool. I liked it. It's expensive though. Not the oven, but the food. Right. I also, I worry about having like a subscription to my oven because that seems like the type of thing that would like my oven would be secretly mining Bitcoin or something. You know what I mean? I'm just like...

I'm just like, I don't want to deal with this. But I do like this because in this world...

Like 7-Eleven will sell you a bunch of these food packs you can go to. If I remember right, in Spy Kids, one of the things they make is like a McDonald's meal. They get like a Big Mac out of the thing. So you can just, everywhere that will sell you food will also sell you a packet. And then you can just redo it yourself at home. Yeah. I like this. I just want everything from Spy Kids. Like the little dragonfly submarine thing.

Oh, I wanted that so much when I was a kid. Now I'm afraid. Spy Kids was awesome. Yeah. Now I'm afraid of submarines, but that I want an army of thumbs that will do my bidding. I need that. That's where I'm escaping to. That's where I'm taking the TARDIS to. Just the world of Spy Kids. You can come. I'll do the portal gun to the Spy Kids world and we'll just go hang out there together and it'll be awesome. I love that. Allison, what's your last pick?

My last pick is just a chaos pick, which is the transmogrifier from Calvin and Hobbes. And let me tell you what the transmogrifier was. It was a cardboard box. It's the invention of Calvin, who's like five or six or seven. And it has a dial on the side.

And it's a little arrow and you turn the arrow to the thing you would like to, you put something in the box, close it, turn the dial and it transforms into the thing the arrow is pointing at. So the given examples are like baboon, eel. I don't think I would go for those. Calvin transforms himself into a tiger. Yeah.

But then he's just like a cute little version of Hobbes, which was a funny bit. I think it would be funny. I think I would turn like...

If I like was going to put on a pair of shoes, I'm like, oh, these don't look quite right. Put them in the transmogrifier, change them to the shoes I want. Or like maybe it would work for food if I'm like, oh, this isn't this meal didn't come out the way I wanted. I could transmogrify it to the one I did want.

So there's just a lot of possibilities, and I'm willing to accept the chaos that goes along with it. Also very simple because it's just a cardboard box and a knob, and you just kind of write on the side. You write in, yeah, there's room to write in what you want. So in addition to eel and baboon...

You just get a Sharpie out and write it. That's pretty good. You have, by definition, between this and Jurassic Park, you have very possibly ruined the world forever. I could probably take over the world just between the two of those. You absolutely could. Cute little dinosaurs and a transmogrifier. Yeah. You're going to be essentially unstoppable. Yeah. I think so. That's pretty good. I like this for you. All right. I have a lot to choose from in my last pick, but I think my last pick is...

is actually going to be fairly straightforwardly the dog collar from Up that lets you understand what your dog is saying. Speak! Hi there. Did that dog just say hi there? Oh, yes. My name is Doug. I have just met you, and I love you. My master made me this collar. He is a good and smart master, and he made me this collar so that I may talk. Squirrel!

Which just is a thing. Like I have always said, like if a genie showed up and gave me three wishes, one of them for sure would be like, I just want to know what my dog is thinking about. It's all I think about all the time. Would it work for cats too? Let's say yeah. I feel like by the time if we have one of these for dogs, somebody is going to like reverse engineer it and figure it out for cats. So sure. But I also feel like cats are just like,

This guy sucks. That's all cats are up to. We already know what they're thinking. Yeah. I think we'd like cats less if we knew what they were thinking, I think. Whereas like I would love to be able to just like hang out with my dog, see what he's up to. She's got a lot of thoughts, wandering around, looking at stuff, sleeping out there. It'd be great to just be like, how you doing? She's just like, I'm good. Kicking it. This is all I want.

Be delightful. I love it. That's so sweet. It would also be really great when they're not feeling well and you'd be like, what hurts? Why? And they could just tell you. Like, well, I ate rocks earlier. I think this is one of those tech ideas that the concept and the idea is probably better than the reality. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I already know. Pablo's going to be like, give up. Yeah. My dog would just be like, I'm tired.

All the time. That would be it. Not great conversation lists, probably. No, probably not. But it would make me happy. I would probably just have it for like a day and then be like, all right, I get it. We're done with this. But it would be a great day. So that's my last pick. Before we wrap up and get out of here, any honorable mentions anybody want to throw out? There are a bunch of very obvious things that did not get picked. Nothing from Ready Player One got picked.

None of the her stuff got picked. V, I thought you were going to pick the video conferencing glasses from Kingsman that we talk about all the time. Those didn't get picked. I, you know, they were on my list. I almost picked they were on there, but I just decided to go full selfish. But my my honorable full selfish mentioned pick, which was not that.

is the sonic showers from the Star Wars comics and books. I don't know. Because, yeah, no, no, they're not in the movies because ain't nobody poops or takes a shower in Star Wars in the movies. But in the books and the comics where they do have to, you know, deal with the ephemera of life, you basically go into a stall and...

sound vibrates all the dirt off of you and then you can go on your day. And I was like, you know, sometimes I don't have time. Like you can take a shower if you want to with the water and all that nonsense. But like if you're in space, you're in a hurry, you can't use all that water. Sound will vibrate all the dirt off of you and you're good to go.

Will it wash your hair? Because washing and drying my hair is the bane of my existence. No, it vibrates the dirt and the oil off of your hair and you're good to go. I'm in. Yeah, you should have picked this. That's a good one. Yeah, you're good to go. Listen, the click remote. They would either do this or the click remote. I skip meetings. Yeah.

V has her priorities straight. Any other honorable mentions we should mention? Any other favorites that didn't get picked? I almost picked the helicopter hat from Inspector Gadget. Oh my god, that's a such a good one. But once I got the hoverboard, I didn't need that anymore. I had a lot of, like, how David gets around things that turned out to be very important to me, but I got the hoverboard, so it was fine. Yeah. I almost, I did want to pick, but it didn't really fit exactly well with the minority report. Yeah.

interface, the computer. Like, I feel like we're really close to that, too. It's so much work. It just seems like a lot of work. I have to, like... You have to stand there and go like this for, like, 15... Like, I'd be so tired at the end of the workday. I don't know. I feel like the next level of that... Because the whole kind of disk thing was a bit much. But I feel like...

Just being able to touch the air and have things happen is what I want. That's what I want to happen in my smartphone. I will say, I've talked to a lot of XR developers and whatnot. And one thing they'll say is like they've tried making that. But the thing that people don't anticipate is how much your arms hurt from doing that all the time. It's like an arm Pilates workout. And they're like, oh, shit, no. Yeah, like Tom Cruise can do it. I cannot. I don't have a nine to five of just twisting my arms around in me.

All right. Well, I think I'm glad nobody picked her. I was really excited to pick a fight with anybody who picked Samantha from her. I will say there is one computer in that thing where he just sits down and like talks to his iMac with no mouse or keyboard. He just sort of chats with it about his email that I kind of like. I'm good at getting rid of all of that. It seems fun.

This is where I have to admit that I've never seen that movie, isn't it? It is a terrific movie and everyone should watch it. It's so good. It held up amazingly. It really did. I just was on like a Joaquin Phoenix band for a while and then like... I'm still on that. And so then it was just like, oh, damn, people say that one's good. I can understand that, but that movie is excellent and it holds up. But also...

dystopia like I don't I just it's act one seems so good watch the rest of the movie that's like if there's one lesson to learn from all of these it's watch the rest of the movie because because sometimes it doesn't turn out so great that's that's where it goes uh all right we should get out of here the four of you so by the time anybody hears this or sees this I will be gone uh and the four of you will be in charge of all things forever and ever

You're going to have so much fun this summer. It's going to be weird. It's going to be delightful. I'm very excited for the four of you. Do you have a cool crew name yet? Hot Girl Vergecast Summer. Ha ha ha!

Okay. So when you are hearing this as of this moment, Hot Girl Verge cast summer has officially begun. That's right. And it may never end. It may never end. It's never going to end. It's endless summer. Endless Hot Girl Verge cast summer. Love it. It's a state of mind. It's beautiful. All right. Well, thank you all for doing this. This was delightful. We will put all of our picks and a poll of some kind in the show notes when this episode goes live. So go vote. Tell us who won.

figure out something to do for him. Thank all four of you for doing this. This was incredibly fun. We're going to have to do this again sometime because there's like a shocking amount of stuff left to talk about. So we will, we will do this again. Thank you all. This was great.

All right, that is it for the Verge cast today. Thank you so much to V and Allison and Jen and Mia for being here and for taking over the show this summer. Again, you are in incredibly good hands. And thank you, as always, for listening. If you think of stuff that we missed on the show or just have ideas or thoughts, if you think we should probably do another one of these drafts, because I think we should too, because that was very fun,

Tell us. Call the hotline 866-VERGE11. Send us an email, vergecastsatheverge.com. We absolutely love hearing from you. I may pop up in the feed once or twice this summer, but for the most part, I'm going to be out for the next couple of months and I will see you again September or so. I am very much looking forward to it. I will miss all of you terribly, but you're going to have an awesome, awesome summer here on The Verge Cast.

This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Will Poore. The Verge Cast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Jake and the gang and Nilay and who knows, some people will be here for some shows all summer. You're going to have a blast, and I can't wait to be back with you soon. Until then, we'll see you then. Rock and roll.