The Vergecast Vergecast, 2026 edition
4/21/20261 hr 24 min
We get a lot of questions about how we make The Vergecast. And why we make The Vergecast. And how we make money, and journalism, and everything. So every once in a while, we try to answer those questions! In this episode, David and Nilay are joined by The Verge's publisher, Helen Havlak, to talk about video podcasts, ads, subscriptions, Nilay's jackets, and much more. Curious about those video podcasts we discussed? Check us out on YouTube. Jealous of those Verge subscriptions we discussed? Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters and our ad-free podcast feed. Have more questions for us? We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11. --EPISODE RUNDOWN-- (Timestamps are approximate.) 00:00:00 David's late night stroll 00:02:00 Today's Vergecast is about The Vergecast 00:03:00 New verge.com website just dropped 00:09:00 Following feature insights 00:13:00 Open Social Web plans 00:25:00 Verge audience demographics 00:31:00 Monetization 00:48:00 Audio vs. video podcasts 00:54:00 Supporting The Verge 01:00:00 Old Verge video style 01:07:00 Verge alumni 01:12:00 Why is it called Brendan Carr is a Dummy? 01:14:00 Nilay's jackets 01:21:00 How has gadget blogging changed? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsDavid Pierce· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Welcome to "The Vergecast," the flagship podcast of podcasts. I'm your friend David Pierce. It's like ten twenty-five at night, and I'm out for a walk. So I work in my house, and I work in the basement of my house, which means there are a lot of days I get to, like, bedtime about now and realize I haven't really been outside all day. Plus, I've been doing all this research into the incredible effects of walking on your creativity, on your health, on your brain, on your problem-solving ability. One of the best things you can do in almost any situation is just get out and walk for a while. This is a thing I know intellectually and don't do nearly often enough, so I'm trying to follow the correct advice a little more. Anyway, today on "The Vergecast," we're gonna do something we've done a couple of times before, which is talk all about "The Vergecast." We're gonna do a whole episode about The Verge and "The Vergecast" and the future of media and video podcasts and advertising, all kinds of questions you guys have been asking us about The Verge. I grabbed Helen Havlak, our publisher, and Nilay Patel, my co-host and our editor-in-chief, and we're just gonna answer as many of your questions as we possibly can. Thank you to everybody who sent in questions. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna catch my breath, and then we're gonna make a podcast. This is "The Vergecast." We'll be right back.
Speaker 11:18
[upbeat music] Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct-taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together,