The geek's guide to running faster

The Vergecast

Vox Media Podcast Network

News, Tech News, Technology

4.4 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's a holiday week for many of us, which means a lot of Turkey Trots and a lot of TV. We have something for both in this episode! First, Nick Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic and author of the new book, The Running Ground, joins the show to talk about his lifelong journey as a runner, and all the tech — from smartwatch to shoes to custom GPTs — he uses in training. After that, The Verge's John Higgins makes his first Vergecast appearance to help us understand how motion smoothing works, why you should turn it off, and all the other ways you can improve your TV watching experience this holiday season. Finally, David follows up on a question on the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email [email protected]!) with some recommendations on inexpensive earbuds worth cranking up the volume on. Further reading: Nick Thompson's book, The Running Ground From The Atlantic: Why I Run TV manufacturers unite to tackle the scourge of motion smoothing Dear Roku, you ruined my TV How to turn off motion smoothing on your high-definition TV Samsung’s Frame TV is finally getting the knockoffs it deserves Samsung announces The Frame Pro: could this be the perfect TV? 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 [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of using AI to run really, really, really fast.
0:07.8	I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am in New York. I'm in, I believe it's called Podcast 2 in our office, in downtown New York, a room I have literally never been in before in my life, I don't think.
0:19.1	But it's nice in here. It's a podcast studio.
0:21.8	So I'm here.
0:24.3	We are here making season two of version history.
0:37.9	We're having a ton of fun making these episodes, and I cannot wait for you to hear them. But none of that is what we're here to talk about today. Today, we are here to talk about two things. First, I'm going to interview Nick Thompson, who is the CEO of the Atlantic and my old boss back when I used to work at Wired, about a book that he wrote about running, and more specifically, what he's like
0:42.7	as a runner. We've talked a lot about exercise on this podcast, and he does it real differently,
0:47.7	so we're going to talk about it. Then I'm going to talk to The Verges, John Higgins. He's our new
0:51.6	AV reviewer, and he has a lot of thoughts about TVs.
1:13.1	And this is a big week in the world of TVs for lots of us buying them and changing them and watching them. So we're going to talk TVs. All of that is coming up in just a second. But first, I have to figure out how to steal all those fake plants out of this room. Wish me luck. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. It's time for Black Friday at Dell Technologies.
1:12.5	Save big on PCs like the del 16 plus featuring Intelcore ultra processors shop now at
1:18.7	dell dot codea EK forward slash black Friday support for today's show comes from dark trace
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1:34.9	across email, clouds, networks, and more. With the power to see across your entire attack surface,
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1:47.4	now have the ability to stop zero days before day zero. The world needs defenders. Defenders
1:54.1	need Darktrace. Visit darktrace.com slash defenders for more information.
2:06.0	Support for this show comes from MongoDB.
2:08.7	You're a developer who wants to innovate.
2:12.9	Instead, you're stuck fixing bottlenecks and fighting legacy code.
2:14.5	MongoDB can help.
	...

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