As the year draws to an end, hosts Michael Calore and Lauren Goode have some news to share with listeners. But first, they head over to the pool to unwind and reflect on what they’ll be watching for in the tech space this upcoming year, and what they think should stay behind.
Articles mentioned in this episode:
- OpenAI’s Big Bet That Jony Ive Can Make AI Hardware Work
- Tech CEOs Praise Donald Trump at White House Dinner
You can follow Michael Calore on Bluesky at @snackfight, Lauren Goode on Bluesky at @laurengoode, Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett, and Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer. Write to us at [email protected].
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Transcript
Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Michael Calore: Hey Lauren, how’s it going?
Lauren Goode: It’s going pretty good. How are you?
Michael Calore: Good. The pool is very nice.
Lauren Goode: It is so nice. Well, the pool itself is really cold, but this hot tub?
Michael Calore: Even better.
Lauren Goode: Fantastic. Yeah. Not a bad workday.
Michael Calore: Not a bad workday. It’s a nice way to end the year.
Lauren Goode: Is it the end of the year already?
Michael Calore: It really is.
Lauren Goode: How did we get here? Good lord.
Michael Calore: I know, I know. But I think it’s a good opportunity for us to float and soak and think about the year that was and look forward to next year.
Lauren Goode: We actually have some big news that we’re going to be sharing with people today.
Michael Calore: We do. And the birds have some big news too. The birds are chirping.
Lauren Goode: The birds are in on the pod. What do you call a flock of birds chirping on a podcast?
Michael Calore: I don’t know. The comment section? Should we get going?
Lauren Goode: Yeah, let’s do it.
Michael Calore: All right.
This is WIRED’s Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley. Today, Lauren and I are bringing you our last episode of the show as you know it. But don’t fret, because the show will not be going away. We’re going to continue bringing you all of the best of WIRED’s reporting, analysis, and informed takes of what’s happening in Silicon Valley. But this upcoming year, the show will be entering a new era with our colleagues, Brian Barrett, Zoë Schiffer, and Leah Feiger as the hosts. We’re going to get to hear from them a little bit later. But for now, Lauren and I want to share with you a special round of our WIRED and TIRED picks to take you into the holiday season. I’m Michael Calore, director of consumer tech and culture.
Lauren Goode: And I’m Lauren Goode, senior correspondent.
Michael Calore: OK. So we’re here in the pool, and we are going to reflect on 2025 and talk about what’s happening now and what’s happening in 2026. And we’re going to do it as WIRED and TIRED. And if you know the show, or if you know WIRED as a brand, you know that it’s like the rubric that we use, yes, I said rubric, this is a tech podcast, that we use to sort of talk about the trends that are on the way out and the trends that are on the way in and offer some commentary.
Lauren Goode: I have to say, last night, Mike, in preparation for this pool pod, I went on to one of the social media sites and looked up WIRED and TIRED to see if people were still using this rubric as a meme. And it’s still a thing.
Michael Calore: Oh, totally.
Lauren Goode: People still use WIRED and TIRED, all the time and it really warmed my heart.
Michael Calore: Totally.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. So let’s do it.
Michael Calore: OK.
Lauren Goode: I have to wipe off my glasses from the steam of the pool so I can see the future. OK. All right. I’m ready. Why don’t you go first? What is your first WIRED and TIRED for this year?
Michael Calore: OK. I would say TIRED is voice-activated AI assistance in hardware. So talking to your watch, talking to your pendant, talking to your smart ring, talking to your glasses. And the thing that is WIRED going into the future is silent AI assistance.
Lauren Goode: Wait, OK. Let’s unpack this a little bit, because to hear any pundit or person who’s on the inside of AI talk about it, like multimodal and voice agents are the thing, are the future. And you’re saying, “Nope, that’s TIRED.”
Michael Calore: Yes.
Lauren Goode: And instead it’s—explain this.
Michael Calore: OK. So I think the big dream at the end of this tunnel of despair that we’re in with AI right now is that it’s just going to work ambiently. And people have been trying to do this for a long time. The term ambient computing has been around for a decade at this point, at least. The idea that you walk into your home and your home just reacts to your presence and does all of the things that you want it to do right when you walk in without you having to press a button or say a wake word or even tap the side of your glasses and start talking to Meta AI or whatever it is. There’s no action on your part. It just knows that you’re there, and it does it. And you do this through a combination of sensors and through location and just ambient awareness so your devices can do the thing that they are guessing that you want done.
And I think that we have been on the cusp of that for a long time. And I think we’re going to see devices in the new year that are going to allow you to do that. There’s the big OpenAI mystery project coming that they’re codeveloping with Jony Ive and a bunch of other designers. Meta just poached the two top design people, two of the top design people from Apple to work on new hardware. So I really think that this is the direction that hardware’s going. It’s not going to be stuff that’s just for your body. It’s going to be stuff that is for the home and maybe also your body. And I really do think it’s going to be ambient.
Lauren Goode: What do you think the potential downside is to that?
Michael Calore: Privacy.
Lauren Goode: Of course. I teed you up nicely for that.
Michael Calore: Yeah, privacy. That’s going to be a tricky one. OK. So that’s my first one. What’s your first one?
Lauren Goode: My first WIRED and TIRED. WIRED, IPOs 2026.
Michael Calore: OK.
Lauren Goode: IPOs. And TIRED, tech CEOs are no longer our saviors, and they never should have been, really. Yeah. So for IPOs, there are some highly anticipated or rumored initial public offerings that we’re kind of expecting to see in 2026. Let’s see. We’ve got, Stripe is one. OpenAI, big one. Anthropic, Notion, Databricks.
Michael Calore: I’ve never heard of any of these companies.
Lauren Goode: SpaceX. You’ve definitely heard of SpaceX.
Michael Calore: They’re all going to IPO?
Lauren Goode: This is just rumors. This is possible IPOs in 2026, or companies that have signaled intent before to go public and they obviously haven’t done it by the end of this year. So this would be like a major mega cap liquidity event for tech. It would be huge. I mean, we already know what it’s like living in San Francisco amidst the tech millionaires and billionaires. There are going to be so many more newly minted millionaires running around. And then it’ll be interesting to see how people sort of reinvest into the tech economy from that. But these are all companies that have raised so much money in venture capital funding and other types of funding over the past decade or so, and so they have these massive valuations, and it’s going to be really interesting to see if that is actually sustainable for them once they go public and every quarter they’re reporting their financials and they better have some truly aggressive revenue strategies in place, I think.
Michael Calore: Wow.
Lauren Goode: And we’ll get a closer look as journalists at their financials once they are required to share them four times a year.
Michael Calore: Yeah, that’ll be a big day.
Lauren Goode: So yeah, I think that’s going to be really interesting to see and then also see some of the trickle-down effects of that. And then, I mean, tech CEOs really—at the end of the day, they’re about selling their products. They’re about generating more and more and more users as much as humanly possible. They’re greasing the palms of officials in the administration to get whatever deals done they need to get done. I think for a long time now, we, as WIRED journalists, have known the way this world works and that even back in the days of Steve Jobs, we shouldn’t necessarily have been putting CEOs up in a pedestal, but I think it’s very obvious that we should not be looking to them for any kind of moral guidance at this point. And we just continue to follow the industry as it is and report on it as it is and not how we would like it to be.
Michael Calore: I’m snapping my fingers underwater.
Lauren Goode: Let’s do it.
Michael Calore: Let’s take a quick break while we get out of the pool and then we’re going to come right back.
OK. We’re back in the studio of our San Francisco offices after a fabulous time floating in the pool.
Lauren Goode: It was a lot colder than I expected, but I don’t know why I expected it to be much warmer. It is December.
Michael Calore: Yeah. You’re like, let’s book a pool in December.
Lauren Goode: Well, you know what? We said we were going to do it and we had to do it. And there was a hot tub.
Michael Calore: There was.
Lauren Goode: So we can’t complain too much.
Michael Calore: It all worked out.
Lauren Goode: It all worked out. And right after this, I’m going right back there. I’m retired now.
Michael Calore: Well, now I think we’re ready to introduce the new hosts of Uncanny Valley for the upcoming year, Brian Barrett, Zoë Schiffer, and Leah Feiger. Leah, our fantastic senior editor of politics is out this week, but Brian and Zoë are here to say hi. So hi, Brian and Zoë.
Brian Barrett: Hello.
Zoë Schiffer: Hello. I’m trying not to panic that my best tech culture and many other things reporter just said she was retiring, but I’m here. I’m paying attention. I’m locked in.
Lauren Goode: Thank you. Retirement here in the news is for just about five minutes and then we’re back into it. So don’t worry about that.
Zoë Schiffer: OK, OK. OK, I support that. You’ve earned it. I just want to talk about the retirement plan, if you will.
Brian Barrett: I missed that because I was thinking about the hot tub and how I can get one.
Zoë Schiffer: Brian is also retired. We’re going to be fine, you guys.
Brian Barrett: As soon as I find that hot tub, I’m out.
Michael Calore: So Zoë, I think a lot of our listeners are already familiar with you from our news episodes. You are our director of business and industry here at WIRED, and you always have your finger on the pulse of all the comings and goings around Silicon Valley. So something that listeners may not know, however, is that you wrote a book about Silicon Valley about Elon Musk and his takeover of Twitter. It’s called Extremely Hardcore. Tell us the thing that most surprised you about the book while you were reporting it and writing it.
Zoë Schiffer: Honestly, that was the easiest reporting I’ve ever done in my life in a lot of ways because Elon Musk does so little to get people to remain loyal to him, but he’s constantly creating new sources all the time. And people in that story in particular were really willing to talk. So I think I kind of went into the book. I wrote the book and thought, I guess the rest of my career is like this. I’ve just unlocked some incredible quote. And then in fact, no, it’s much harder now.
Lauren Goode: Did Elon agree to talk to you for the book?
Zoë Schiffer: He responded once to one of my messages with a crying laughing emoji. So I would say close friends, comrades.
Michael Calore: I would say so. I mean, you didn’t get the poop emoji.
Lauren Goode: Right. That’s an upgrade.
Zoë Schiffer: I felt like he probably meant to type the poop emoji and then did crying laughing. But I’ve heard that it’s his most, the crying laughing emoji is his most commonly used emoji.
Lauren Goode: Oh, and haven’t the kids said that that one’s out now? We’re not supposed to be using the crying laughing emoji.
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I use it all the time too, so it’s embarrassing.
Lauren Goode: No, Zoë, I remember earlier this year when we first kicked off the Uncanny Valley podcast and we were talking about DOGE’s takeover within the government, and this was just a few weeks before, so we hadn’t actually seen what was going to happen yet. You correctly predicted that based on Elon Musk’s very chaotic takeover of Twitter, that you thought what would happen within DOGE would look similar. How did that turn out?
Zoë Schiffer: I mean, I do think it turned out similar in a lot of ways. And there’s one key difference that I’ve talked about before, but I’ll say it again here. I mean, in terms of the way that he communicated with people, I think there was a lot of similarity, if not subject lines of emails that appeared to be directly lifted from the Twitter takeover, the zero-based budgeting, the kind of idea that you come in, you slash a budget down to zero and you force the people who work for you to justify every single expense. Those things are kind of textbook Elon Musk. But I think that with Twitter and with Elon’s other companies, the feedback loop for Elon is pretty small. And that’s been beneficial to him because he’s a risk-taker. He’s willing to make decisions on the fly and then he’ll get feedback on those decisions and he’ll pivot again.
And you see that work pretty well for him at his companies, at least historically speaking. In government, that feedback loop is a lot longer. And in fact, I think by the time we’re starting to see the true ramifications of a lot of his decisions on DOGE, he’s already ostensibly taken a step back from that enterprise. And so I think that you’re in a really different position if you’re making those same, what appear to be rash decisions, but you’re not really hearing from people in a timely manner on what happens as a result of that.
Lauren Goode: So does that mean we can expect your next book to be extremely hardcore inside Elon Musk’s DOGE?
Zoë Schiffer: Thank you so much for the question. Absolutely not. No.
Michael Calore: Well, everybody should read your last book either way.
Zoë Schiffer: Thank you. I so appreciate that. I agree.
Michael Calore: OK. So Zoë we all know. The person that we may not know as much about is Brian Barrett.
Brian Barrett: What?
Michael Calore: He is our executive editor here at WIRED. He’s been on the show before, but now he’s going to be sitting in the host chair.
Zoë Schiffer: Operates in the shadows.
Brian Barrett: I’m here every time you talk about Peloton, and that’s what this podcast will be from now on, right?
Lauren Goode: I’m looking to sell mine, Brian. Are you interested?
Brian Barrett: No. No, but I hate that I’m the last true believer.
Michael Calore: So Brian, you oversee all of our coverage here on WIRED.com and you have oversight into everything that we have cooking every day, but you have a long career in journalism. You were previously the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo, and something that many people don’t know is that you spent a couple years as a business reporter for a Japanese newspaper. Please tell us about this.
Brian Barrett: That’s right, the Yomiuri Shimbun. I was a—don’t laugh.
Zoë Schiffer: No, it’s serious. I don’t know why. You just said it in such a delightful way.
Brian Barrett: It’s a delightful paper. At the time, it was the biggest newspaper in the world with a circulation of 14 million. Preemptively, I will say, I don’t speak Japanese and I’ve never been to Japan. I was in the New York Bureau. I know. I was in the New York Bureau of this office and it was very much a reporting job, which I differentiate from a writing job. I did interviews, I did research. I helped my Japanese counterparts prepare for the stories that they were doing. I would write a few stories for the English language edition, but it was really my first job in journalism and a crash course into how to actually stand in front of someone and ask them hard questions and write it down.
Michael Calore: My favorite detail about your years at the Yomiuri Shimbun is their baseball reporting. Can you please share this with our audience?
Brian Barrett: I can. So there were maybe, I think there were five Japanese journalists in the New York office. They were each on a three-year rotation. I think those numbers are roughly right. So there’s a couple of business reporters, a politics reporter, and then two sports reporters. One of the sports reporters, their only job was to cover Hideki Matsui, a slugger who came over from Japan to play for New York Yankees. The other sports reporter, their job was everything else. This is how they broke down. So it’s great. And I think in fairness, I think there was another, there was also a reporter following around each row at the same time because they were playing at the same time, but that was how they divided up coverage.
Lauren Goode: And our listeners may not know, because Brian, you operate in the shadows as we’ve established, but you are one of-
Zoë Schiffer: The shadows of Slack.
Brian Barrett: I write a lot of stories. I’ve been on this podcast a bunch of times.
Lauren Goode: Well, that’s the thing about your story-writing. You are so fast and so whip smart. I swear just last week when OpenAI announced its deal with Disney, I had woken up on the West Coast and was getting through the news release still about it. And then I went to our website and I was like, “Oh, Brian already has this story up on the website that he’s written and is one of the smartest takes on this whole thing.” And that’s standard. That’s just what you do. And so I am delighted to see how this translates into a regular podcast format.
Brian Barrett: Well, thank you, Lauren. I don’t know about smartest, but I try to go fast. I think that is from, I was at Gizmodo, which is part of Gawker Media, which is what it was called back then for five or six years. And those were the days of writing seven or eight stories a day. You always had to be able to find an angle on anything to try to make it interesting. We don’t do that anymore, which is good and healthy, but I do at least—the ability to type fast is something that I have taken from that. And then you hopefully pair it with some reporting and some other experience.
Michael Calore: And we still love a blog here at WIRED.
Lauren Goode: We do.
Brian Barrett: Yeah.
Lauren Goode: We do still love a blog.
Michael Calore: Let’s talk about some of the other things that we loved by going through our recommendations. Over the years, Lauren and I have been sharing our recommendations with listeners, talking about the things that we are enjoying this week. So let’s go around the room and talk about some of the things that us and our new hosts are enjoying. Let’s start with Zoë. What’s your recommendation?
Zoë Schiffer: OK. So I read this photo essay. I was catching up on New York Time magazines over the weekend because I have kids, so there’s like stacks and stacks of magazines everywhere that I don’t actually have time to read when they come out. But I had a little time on Saturday morning and I looked at this photo essay that the New York Times magazine published back in November about people who have fallen in love with AI chatbots. And I really thought it was the most empathetic and honest look at this phenomenon that I’d read so far. I feel like a lot of coverage of this issue wants to be empathetic, but it ends up feeling like you’re laughing at people or othering them in some way because I think to a lot of us, it does sound rather foreign. And this one really didn’t feel like that.
I thought that the mom who’s in the story in particular looked like someone I would be friends with. I totally got her. There were two men in the story who really understood their points of view and why these relationships felt really profound and real to them. So yeah, that’s my recommendation. I loved it. OK. Brian, what about you?
Brian Barrett: Here’s my recommendation this week, everybody. Are you ready for it?
Zoë Schiffer: I’m ready.
Brian Barrett: It’s an up-and-coming band. Yeah, yeah. They’re known as Twin Dimensions. They are a little bit psychedelic, a little bit post-punk. Michael, would you say that’s how—would that be a good way to describe Twin Dimensions?
Michael Calore: Sure. Yes.
Brian Barrett: Yeah. Yeah. So a little bit psychedelic, a little bit post-punk. Their latest EP came out in October. It’s worth a listen. You should run out your record needle. Am I saying that right? We’re on it. Michael, I’m going to check again. And a member of this band is your very own Michael Calore, an-up and-coming musician in the Bay Area.
Zoë Schiffer: Oh my God.
Lauren Goode: Snaps fingers.
Zoë Schiffer: Now I understand.
Brian Barrett: Yeah, they’re great. It’s great music from a great person, and I assume the rest of the band, also great, but I don’t know. I’m not going to vouch for them. I will vouch for Michael Calore. Go check out Twin Dimensions. Go listen to Trans Lunar. Do yourself a favor. Gift it this holiday season by burning a CD of it and giving it to a friend.
Michael Calore: You can download it on Bandcamp.
Lauren Goode: Cool.
Michael Calore: Or you can stream it everywhere. It’s streaming everywhere.
Lauren Goode: I love that. Is it on Spotify?
Michael Calore: Yeah, we’re everywhere.
Lauren Goode: All right.
Michael Calore: Yeah. We’re Trans Lunar on this one.
Lauren Goode: That’s amazing.
Michael Calore: Thanks, Brian.
Brian Barrett: Yeah.
Michael Calore: What do you like about it? What’s your favorite song? Name three songs.
Lauren Goode: Oh no, he didn’t.
Brian Barrett: Just off the new album? I would have to say I enjoy Unwound Inside, Paradise and Klik Klak, but for me, it’s Careening, the lead track off the album that really distills what Twin Dimensions is all about.
Lauren Goode: Now, Brian did say that he types very fast. So I think-
Zoë Schiffer: That man came in ready to go.
Brian Barrett: I think you’ve evolved a lot since Stray Stars, the 2021 EP in ways that I think real Twin Dimensions heads will appreciate. For all the joking, it is genuinely good music, so please go listen to it.
Lauren Goode: It really is.
Michael Calore: All right.
Lauren Goode: It’s delightful.
Michael Calore: Brian and Zoë, thank you so much for being here this week and we look forward to hearing you in the chairs in January.
Zoë Schiffer: Thank you guys so much for having me.
Brian Barrett: Thank you guys so much. This is great.
Lauren Goode: Well, this must be a Michael Calore fan club day because part of my recommendation, actually both of my recommendations are inspired by you.
Michael Calore: Oh no.
Lauren Goode: Well, the first is that you have these cool new boots on. And they’re these Chelsea boots.
Michael Calore: Yep.
Lauren Goode: They look great. I’m looking at them right now.
Michael Calore: Thank you.
Lauren Goode: And you got them at the flea market.
Michael Calore: I did, yeah, for 10 bucks. They’re Thursdays.
Lauren Goode: They’re incredible because they would normally be 20 times that. Does that make sense from a math perspective?
Michael Calore: Yeah, they’re $200.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. OK.
Michael Calore: I got them for 10 bucks.
Lauren Goode: I’m like, we can do math, even though we’re journalists. And so my recommendation would be for the new year, maybe try to be a little more part of the circular economy, like buy secondhand stuff, go to your neighbor’s groups, right? Share freely with neighbors’ groups, buy-nothing groups, all of that. Just there’s so much stuff out there. We don’t need all of it.
Michael Calore: Do you know about the app Lucky Sweater?
Lauren Goode: I do not, but I do now.
Michael Calore: It’s like you can put things that you don’t want to wear anymore into the app and trade them with other people who are interested in them.
Lauren Goode: Love it.
Michael Calore: Yeah.
Lauren Goode: I’m into it. So that would be my first recommendation. And my next recommendation is something that I think is something that maybe not everyone’s going to be able to accomplish, but I would say make a podcast with one of your best friends.
Michael Calore: Oh, that’s great.
Lauren Goode: Because we have had this podcast now for—for me, it’s been nearly eight years doing this with you. You’ve been doing it for a decade.
Michael Calore: Yeah.
Lauren Goode: We talked about this a little bit earlier.
Michael Calore: Yeah.
Lauren Goode: And it has been so fun, even on the weeks when—sometimes it’s not fun to make a thing every single week. Sometimes you have to troubleshoot or something falls through or you’re responding and reacting to some really disturbing news in our job quite often. And just being here with you in studio or remotely during a pandemic has just brightened my days. And I’m so appreciative.
Michael Calore: Well, thank you, Lauren.
Lauren Goode: So thank you for everything Snackfight.
Michael Calore: Thank you. That’s very sweet. I appreciate it.
Lauren Goode: What’s your recommendation?
Michael Calore: Oh, God. Now I just have to say something I just totally wrote.
Lauren Goode: No, you don’t. You don’t have to reciprocate. It’s fine.
Michael Calore: Oh my goodness. I was going to recommend the new American Giant zipper hoodie.
Lauren Goode: Nice.
Michael Calore: Yeah. Because going back to the first year of this podcast was the first year that American Giant put out its hoodie, its famous hoodie that our friend and colleague, Farhad Manjoo over at Slate, wrote a story about it and said, “This is the greatest hoodie ever made.” And it was like this big hyperbolic declaration, but it actually was a really good hoodie and the company sold scads of them. In fact, they’ve sold a million of them to date. And now they’ve completely redesigned it. Well, not completely redesigned it, but it just feels much different.
It’s softer. It fits a little bit looser and it has all of the same durability appointments that you have grown to love. If you like this hoodie, if you’re one of their fans, it has the double-lined hood, it has the elbow patches and it has the big chunky zipper, but it’s just softer and nicer and easier to wear. So that’s my recommendation. If you’ve tried the American Giant Zipper hoodie and you have worn it out, or if you just weren’t satisfied with it, maybe try the new one because it might be a good fit.
Lauren Goode: Good call. Now we know what your retirement sweatshirt is.
Michael Calore: Yeah, I guess so.
Lauren Goode: This is also just very stereotypical, I think of any work wife, work husband, relationship. I’m like, “Oh, I’m going to miss you so much.” And you’re like, “Here’s a sweatshirt.”
Michael Calore: And I’m like, “Buy the hoodie.” Yeah. Go spend $168 on this hoodie.
Lauren Goode: Right on.
Michael Calore: I mean, I wasn’t prepared. I’m sorry. I prepared for just regular recommendation. I didn’t prepare for your heartfelt, lovely recounting of the last-
Lauren Goode: That’s OK. I literally came up with it last second because I needed a recommendation and I saw your boots.
Michael Calore: Well, thanks, Lauren.
Lauren Goode: Anytime.
Michael Calore: It really has been a really wonderful run and it would not have been so wonderful had you not been here, so thank you.
Lauren Goode: Onto new things in the new year.
Michael Calore: Yeah, for sure.
Lauren Goode: And thank you to everyone who has listened to us over the years. You can still find us on wired.com and online generally. We’ll be there.
Michael Calore: We will be.
Thank you for listening to Uncanny Valley. If you’d like what you heard today, make sure to follow our show and rate it on your podcast app of choice. If you’d like to get in touch with us with any questions, comments, or show suggestions, you can write to us at [email protected].
Today’s show was produced by Adriana Tapia. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Kate Osborn is our executive producer, and Katie Drummond is WIRED’s global editorial director.
The post Introducing a New Chapter for ‘Uncanny Valley’ appeared first on Wired.
