David Pierce

Editor-at-Large

David Pierce is The Verge’s Editor-at-Large. In previous lives he worked at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired. He owns all the phones. Want to get in touch? You can email david@theverge.com, or send a message to @davidpierce.xyz on Bluesky or davidpierce.11 on Signal.

David PierceJul 23

A unifying theory of the podcast sound.

Our friends over at Switched on Pop just did a fun episode about the history of the way podcasts sound. The Grateful Dead is in there, as is the infamous Breakmaster Cylinder, who wrote the theme for every podcast ever. Including ours! It’s fascinating — and a good combo listen with this Vergecast episode from last year. It also might have ruined podcast jingles for me, forever.

All podcast themes sound the same — why?

[Switched on Pop]