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The Vergecast

Your smart home questions, answered

The Vergecast

Vox Media Podcast Network

News, Tech News, Technology

4.4 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Here at The Vergecast, we get a lot of questions. Questions from you, which we love! Questions that, for some reason, often tend to be about the smart home and why it's often not so very smart. So on this episode, the first in a two-part series, The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy helps us answer a whole bunch of your questions. Questions like: what's Apple's deal with the smart home? Are there any good smart faucets? And what's about to happen to my robot vacuum cleaner? Jen helps us wade through all that and more. We also go on a long diversion about smart smoke detectors, which are pretty awesome. Further reading: My smart kitchen: the good, the bad, and the future Moen’s Smart Faucet with Motion Control is totally hands free, and works with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant The future of the Roomba, and the best robot vacuums This smart smoke alarm could be a worthy Nest Protect replacement Home Assistant’s next era begins now Apple’s plan for AI could make Siri the animated center of your smart home What’s in a smart home reviewer’s backyard How Matter works, where it’s headed, and why it matters The problems with AI in the smart home and how Amazon and Google plan to fix them 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 light switches. The ones just like over there on the wall that you just go over to and you flip it up and the light goes on and you flip it down and the light goes off.

0:13.5

Unbelievable technology. We love it very much. I'm your friend David Pierce and we are here today to talk about the smart home. So we have the Vergecast hotline 8 866, Virgin11, call us and ask us all your questions. We have an email inbox, Vergecast at the verge.com. We're all on social, and we get tons of questions about everything all the time. But I think the number one subject people call and write in about is the smart home. People have product questions. They have big philosophical questions. A lot of people are like, why do I need a smart home in general? So we're going to spend this whole episode just answering your questions. Jen Tuwee on our team is going to come on and she is going to help me. We're going to go through as many questions as we can and just try to figure out some smart home stuff here on the show together. This is the first episode and a two-part

0:55.8

series that we're doing. Next week, Jen is going to help me personally, specifically, figure out a

1:00.9

bunch of stuff at my new house. If you're watching this on YouTube, this is only going to be my

1:05.0

background for another couple of weeks. And then I'm moving and I need some serious smart home help

1:09.2

in the new place.

1:13.2

All of that is coming this week and next week.

1:28.5

We're going to get to Jen in just a second. But first, I'm going to go flip that late switch a bunch because it makes me feel good. And a lot of smart home technology does not make me feel good. So I'm going to go flip light switches because it works. This is the verge cast. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from the Home Depot.

1:28.5

This holiday season, you can take advantage of holiday This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from the Home Depot.

1:33.7

This holiday season, you can take advantage of holiday savings on a wide selection of top smart home security products from the brands you can trust.

1:36.7

And you can do it at the Home Depot.

1:39.0

The Home Depot has everything you need to make your home smarter with the latest technology

1:42.9

and products that let you control and automate your home. So you can protect your peace of mind, whether you're

1:48.2

away or at home this season. The Home Depot. Smart homes start here.

1:56.7

All right. We're back. As promised, Gen 2 is here. Hi, Jen. Hi, David. I'm very excited.

2:03.8

I'm like, I'm having a lot of feelings about the smart home today. Yeah. Yeah. Is that because you're moving into a new home?

2:09.8

I'm moving into a house, which is just an awful process that no one should do. And also, we've been, we've been compiling these questions over the last few days and the number of people

2:18.9

who basically are just like why am I doing any of this is all of this just a total insane process

2:25.6

that is designed to make me hate myself is like it's been very validating to me personally I can

2:31.0

sympathize yeah you you have to live this harder than anybody. Like,

2:35.0

anybody who is like, Jen is just a true believer in this born home and thinks it's wonderful.

2:38.9

Like, no, no, no. You have not spent any time talking to Jen about her house setup.

...

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