The robots, phones, and Lego of CES 2026
The robots, phones, and Lego of CES 2026

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show is only just getting into full swing, and we’ve already seen a deluge of gadget announcements. There are the staples, of course: gigantic TVs, smart home sensors, phone accessories, weirdly elaborate ways to charge your devices. Wouldn’t be CES without them. But this year in Las Vegas, there are also […]

The wild, intense rise and fall of Flappy Bird
The wild, intense rise and fall of Flappy Bird

Flappy Bird was almost preposterously simple. If you ever played the game, even once, you surely remember how it worked, but here’s a summary just in case. You were a bird. Your job was to fly, left to right, for as long as possible without crashing into the green Mario-ish pipes coming from both the […]

The terrible Nintendo controller that helped make VR happen
The terrible Nintendo controller that helped make VR happen

The Nintendo Power Glove was not good. It’s important that you know that. The Power Glove was ambitious, impressive, even important – one of the very first mainstream devices that let you control a game using your body instead of just your thumbs – but it was not good. In some ways, its not-good-ness is […]

The Vergecast RAM Holiday Spec-tacular
The Vergecast RAM Holiday Spec-tacular

Happy Holidays! As we like to do on The Vergecast, we take this time of year to see our families, relax and recharge, and go extremely deep into a specific technology that matters right now. This year, we picked the tiny chip in all your devices that is suddenly a precious and expensive commodity: RAM. […]

Threads is about to become a hub of podcast chatter

Meta wants Threads to be the place where podcast fans and creators meet. With native episode previews and growing creator involvement, podcast conversations may soon live directly in your feed.
The post Threads is about to become a hub of podcast chatt…

It’s finally time to retire the word ‘podcast’
It’s finally time to retire the word ‘podcast’

According to YouTube’s 2025 Recap feature, the podcast I consumed the most on its platform was Seth Meyers’ recurring segment “A Closer Look” on his show Late Night. Last year, I would have argued that this is not a podcast. That it is, in fact, a clip of a TV show. But in 2025, with […]

How AIM taught the internet to chat
How AIM taught the internet to chat

If you were an internet user around the turn of the century, there’s a good chance I could play a one-second long sound of a door opening and memories would immediately come flooding back. Memories of running home from school and logging onto AOL Instant Messenger to chat with your friends or your crush. Maybe […]

Brendan Carr is a dummy
Brendan Carr is a dummy

All year on The Vergecast, we’ve been tracking the many bizarre and problematic actions of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. There has been a lot to discuss! Then, this week, ahead of one of our last episodes of the year, Carr appeared in front of the Senate Commerce Committee and spent three hours explaining how he […]

‘All chaos and panic’: Nilay answers your burning Decoder questions
‘All chaos and panic’: Nilay answers your burning Decoder questions

Welcome to our end-of-year Decoder special! Senior producers Kate Cox and Nick Statt here. We’ve had a big year, including nearly 100 episodes, a new YouTube channel, an ad-free podcast feed, and a slate of great guest hosts while Nilay was on parental leave. It’s been a lot. We’ve also had a lot of great […]