The Vergecast

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

Further reading:

⁠The fight for tech accountability starts now ⁠

⁠Tech is about to get hammered in Congress⁠

Forbes: ⁠Elon Musk Deletes Midterm Posts After Stunning Election Losses⁠

⁠Data centers lost the midterms ⁠

⁠Democrats leaned into Big Tech and AI opposition this cycle. ⁠

⁠Not even $200 million could help Elon Musk buy Texas ⁠

⁠OpenAI says ChatGPT is catching up to Google in search ⁠

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

⁠Uber only fulfilled 4 rides from AI agents last quarter ⁠⁠

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

⁠Apple is reportedly lowering AI usage budgets.⁠

⁠Brendan Carr plans to let prisons jam cellphone signals⁠

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

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

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

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

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0:00 Bezos Hair Transplant Hoax

01:15 Midterms Shockwave Begins

02:00 Corruption And Data Center Backlash

06:53 AI Products Not Worth It

09:26 What Democrats Can Do Now

11:15 Congress Investigations Lawyer Up

13:15 Hype Reels Take Over Politics

15:42 X Bubble Versus Real Life

22:47 Microblogging Decline And AI Regulation

23:56 Ossoff Speech And AI Doomerism

27:35 Google Then Versus OpenAI Now

33:35 Back From Break

33:42 OpenAI Search Claims

35:19 Google Moat Erodes

38:02 Monetizing AI Overviews

42:52 Ads Break Trust

45:49 Google Zero Spiral

47:43 Agents Reality Check

50:41 Token Spending Pullback

52:50 Muse Novelty Wears Off

01:00:16 Brendan Carr is a Dummy

01:02:00 FCC Heat On Carr

01:07:04 MacBook Pro Touchscreen

01:09:09 Touchscreen Love Hate

01:10:25 Dynamic Island Reality Check

01:11:17 Best Touch Use Cases

01:11:58 App Support And Optimization

01:14:10 MacBook Pro Verdict

01:14:27 Speakers And Trade Ins

01:15:42 Sales And Upgrade Timing

01:17:11 SpaceX Boost Mobile Drama

01:22:05 Ram Altman Cloud Take

01:29:31 AI Photo Editing Panic

01:37:13 Wrap Up And Plugs
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Morgann Book reads a lot of books. And, as a literary creator and podcaster, makes a lot of content about books. She joins the show to explain why BookTok loves all things romance and romantasy, why physical books are an important balance to digital life, and why she's not worried at all about the future of reading.

Further reading:

Bookish Media

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

Further reading:

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

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

We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11.
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It's Election Day in the United States, and data centers have become a core issue in some of the country's most important midterm races. The Verge's Adi Robertson explains why people are uniting against data centers, why they've become a proxy for all kinds of other fights, and how this year's results might change the AI industry going forward.

Further reading:

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

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

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

Midterm elections 2026: all the news

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

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

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We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11.

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

Further reading:

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

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

More European supermarkets are getting their freezers hacked | The Verge

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

We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11.
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