Welcome to the Birchcast, the flagship podcast of year-end podcasts.

I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am actually kind of ahead of the game in my holiday

shopping this year. I did a lot of stuff on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I have at least

ideas of what I want to buy for basically everybody in my life.

And granted, it's already December. So I think in a lot of people's minds, that does not make me

ahead of the game. But for me, someone who is very good at getting to like December 21st and then

scrambling to find things that will two-day ship to me, this feels like a huge

victory. So I'm sitting here shopping. Everything is going well. And this just means that if I

don't buy you a gift, it's not because I didn't think about it. It's just because I forgot about

you entirely. Anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about on this episode of the Vergecast.

Here, we are going to do the first of our two annual year-end episodes. For this one, we're going to talk through some of the biggest stories of 2025, but we're going to do it a little differently, not just run down the big stories. We're going to try to identify some of the biggest moments, biggest trends, best, worst, everything. Joanna Stern and Eli Patel are going to be here to do this with me. This is one of my favorite things to do every year, so I think we're going to have a lot of fun. All that's coming up in just a second, but I did just remember that I have to add my parents to my gift list. This is maybe I'm not doing as well as I think I am.

Anyway, we'll see.

This is the Vergecast.

We'll be right back.

Support for this show comes from Atlassium.

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