Hello, welcome to Verge Cast. This is not a story about a murder. Sure. Yeah. But it's still a pretty good podcast. Sure. I need that to tell. I'm Deeter Bone. I'm Chris Plant. I'm Russell Brannum. Hi, check. Oh, I am Sam Sheffer.

I'm going to bone you. Hello. Hello. Hi. Uh, so you might know that Russell is with us. Russell has been we should just get right into the news. Russell's

writing story after story about what I think is the biggest. Deeter has just been staring at me for the last 15 seconds. I don't even understand. You know, you can't handle 15 seconds of staring. Not for you. I can't look guys. We got it. Like I don't have the capacity to handle like, like, handle like, are we we're going to keep it all out the stick. No, I'll tell you, it was it was so bad today. I think I've been I've been trying to eat better. This is true. Yeah, by putting butter in your coffee, by putting butter in my coffee, not eating coffee.

It's working. You know, it's like I feel good about it in general. I feel healthier, more energy, weight's going down. All that's great. But today, like straight up man, just a to burrito. Just like a can't. My body requires high check burritos. They're great. That's all I'm saying. But that's like where I'm at. Yeah, because a person right now. Like I it's okay to have a burrito. I listen to silly Dan all day. Big deal. I love. Yeah. That's my life. All right. Let's get into the news.

Until it's just. We wanted to talk about the big stories of the year, but I think that we should just we should jump into Sony. I think Sony is the biggest story of the year. I think in terms of things happened in 2014, huh? No, no, I mean, sure, maybe in tech. I would say like if you're looking at the big story of the year, I would say there have been some things that have happened.

Name it. Name it. What is it? I would say police shootings or Ebola probably our bigger story. I would say ISIS is up there too. Yeah. Right. But I think in terms of in our space, one, sure, but in terms of just the massive repercussions that will reverberate about how companies run themselves, how the internet works, how we deal with terrorism. What's the what's up with the first amendment? What you write in your email from now. What you writing, like the way we believe I think will be affected by Sony much more. There we may be

more material effects from Sony across things like the average person does and feels in their life than ISIS. Right, like that's true. It's a weird truth to know like ISIS is more important on a global scale. Ebola is a big deal. But in terms of how we behave, I think Sony will have like immediate material effects on everybody. So Russell, why don't you do just a little bit. You didn't explain her today. Why don't you do it? Do an explainer. So Sony was hacked.

They're, you know, in I was only like November 24th. Yeah, three weeks. It seems like years to me. Yeah. We're getting it so hard. But yeah. So, um, you know, at first, it sort of shut down their computer systems and put a big scary red skeleton on everyone's computer. And then, you know, we started getting more messages from the people behind it. They started leaking out more data. They started making specific demands about the end of they started talking about the interview of the movie.

Um, and so a lot of data that's come out has been, you know, I was sort of doing for the explainer, we were like, well, okay, what were actually the big things that came out. The big stuff was executive email accounts, which is how we, you know, the CEO of Sony Pictures is also a big investor in Snapchat and on the board.

And really like a pretty big L.A. dealmaker sort of above and beyond Sony Pictures. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think like I don't know who his corresponding number like paramount is, but he seems much more. I don't know if they're like,

introducing L.A. Read to people. Right. Um, anyway, so you know, that was a lot of gave us a lot of sort of inside inside into some of the stuff that Snapchat was doing.

We saw a lot of like fights between Hollywood executives. Um, and then we also saw some like legitimately sort of troubling MPAA things, which they're big lies story on Friday.

Basically, everything that the MPA was trying to do with soap, uh, they're still trying to do and sort of figure out a way to shoehorn it in under existing law.

And so they're hiring lawyers to that and they're also hiring lawyers to, uh, you know, actively try to discredit Google on this front, which we're having another story about that that will go up today. Um, and stay tuned. Yeah. Um, so I really want to get into the glia stuff. Yeah.

Should we do that? Do we want to keep looking at the big picture?

There's a hundred questions.

So everything that happened last night. Yeah. It's like so. Like there's so much. Yeah. So it seemed for a while. Like what was just going to happen was this data was going to come out. And then that was going to be it. Yeah.

But that's not what happened because basically. So some combination of one of the data and I'm came with what you would have to describe as a threat saying, listen, cancel this movie. Otherwise, you know, remember the fear of the September 11th of September.

Um, it also seems like there were other threats that were made specifically to Sony Pictures employees. So they got very spooked and we got this very weird. Like dance where. Okay. So they said to theater owner. They kind of stopped promoting it. Like they canceled the New York premiere. They canceled a lot of the Rogan appearances. And the context is like yesterday. Yeah. I just came out and said it was North Korea. Yeah. Right. Like that happened. That that didn't happen before this stuff started happening. Yeah. No, that's what the big.

The context is like we are now definitive that it's North Korea. Yeah, although some people are still sort of carrying the flag. But I think it really has been like every piece of information that has come out and there's been a fairly steady flow has made it sort of more definitive. We haven't really seen any evidence that has come out where someone says it's not. It's just like this person decided to say they don't they're not ready to make an announcement. Yeah. Everything that has come out has moved us closer to that. And like now we're basically like. Yeah. Like in will the week and before like.

A US official goes on TV and like says it. Right. So I mean that's the thing. And also I mean say if it's like a group of teenagers were scrubs. Yeah. No, no. Like I think the canceling the movies and making it. You know, like bread. Once you become definitive that it's North Korea that all the threats to Sony employees. All the threats about showing the movie. They take on a different. I don't know. That's actually. Yeah. So let's just to finish the loop on the movie. So Sony told theaters. Hey, if you decide not to show the movie, we're not going to sue you. And you're we're

not going to hold you to the obligations that like theaters typically hold towards studios when they say they're going to show movie. And then a couple big chains said, yeah, we're not going to do it. And then everybody said, yeah, we're not going to do it. And then Sony's like, okay, we're canceling the movie. Yeah.

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