The Switch 2 exists. We know that for sure. It’s bigger — seems like we know that too. But what else do we know about the sequel to one of Nintendo’s most innovative and best-selling consoles? Maybe not as much as you might think.

On this episode of The Vergecast, we run down everything we know, and don’t know, about the Switch 2. The Verge’s Richard Lawler, Ash Parrish, and Andrew Webster join the show to explain all the new stuff we saw in Nintendo’s trailer, all the things we’re still wondering about, and why exactly Nintendo chooses to launch its consoles this way. It’s all a little odd, but let’s be honest: it’s the Switch 2. What else did you need to know?

After that, The Verge’s Adi Robertson joins the show to talk about the week’s whipsawing policy news. The TikTok ban — or non-ban, or later-ban, or kinda-sorta-ban — is closer than ever, and there’s another tech-related case in front of the Supreme Court that could prove just as consequential. We debate whether Elon Musk might save TikTok, whether anything at all is likely to happen on Sunday, and whether RedNote and Lemon8 are the future of anything.

Finally, in the lightning round, Richard and David run down some of the week’s other news, from the ousting of Sonos CEO Patrick Spence to the first successful Blue Origin launch. There’s also some news about the iPhone 17 Air being a thing, a new streaming destination for the Super Bowl, and some Drake updates.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with the Switch 2:

• Nintendo Switch 2 announcement: all the news on the next console
• The Nintendo Switch 2 has officially been announced
• Everything we know about the Switch 2’s Joy-Con controllers
• The Nintendo Switch 2 supports original Switch cartridges
• Nintendo teases a new Mario Kart for the Switch 2
• Nintendo announces Switch 2 Direct for Apri
• The Switch 2 is boring — and that’s exactly what Nintendo needs
• The Switch 2’s bigger screen is just what I wanted

And on TikTok and the Supreme Court:

• TikTok reportedly plans ‘immediate’ Sunday shutdown in the US if it’s banned
• TikTok ban: Sen. Markey tries to give a 270 day extension
• TikTok says it’s planning for ‘various scenarios’ ahead of possible US ban
• Elon Musk is reportedly trying to save TikTok
• Donald Trump is reportedly considering an executive order to delay the TikTok ban.
• Duolingo is the real winner in the TikTok ban.
• What is RedNote? The Chinese app gaining popularity as TikTok ban approaches
• RedNote: what it’s like using the Chinese app TikTokers are flocking to

And in the lightning round:

• Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch
• Sonos’ interim CEO hits all the right notes in first letter to employees
• The iPhone Air could be coming later this year
• Super Bowl LIX will stream for free on Tubi
• Drake sues his label, UMG, saying ‘Not Like Us’ is defamatory
• Bezos’ Blue Origin successfully launches SpaceX rival

• We lived in Quincy, Massachusetts, for 12 years and enjoyed being in Boston's neighboring city.
• We didn't love our housing or school options there, so we relocated to Norwell.
• Now, we're happy to have a more suburban home with access to good schools and more space.

I've had the privilege of living in and around Boston for at least 12 years.

After renting for years, my husband and I bought our first house in Quincy, a city in the greater Boston area, in 2018.

Buying in this city felt tough with just our budget, so we split a two-family home with two 800-square-foot units with a friend for $598,000.

We loved having a house on the subway line and living in a city minutes from Boston. Our front door was steps away from a pretty harborfront restaurant, a small beach, and lots of nearby activities in the historic downtown.

I figured Quincy would be an ideal long-term home base for us. Unfortunately, this feeling didn't last.

We began finding it hard to picture raising a family in this city

In 2020, we found out we were pregnant.

Although I couldn't get enough of Quincy's foodie scene, cultural events, parks, and waterfront, I began wondering if this would be an affordable and practical place for us to raise a family.

At times, the city felt a little overwhelming and crowded with its tens of thousands of residents.

Our current home seemed like it would be too small for us, our dog, and our newborn — and we weren't sure if we could afford a bigger one here on our own. Plus, we weren't thrilled with the ratings of the public schools nearby.

So, we took advantage of the seller-favored housing market at the time and sold our place for $715,000.

We moved an hour south to my parents' house in Plymouth and spent the next few months saving and looking for our next home.

Eventually, we set our sights on a different part of Massachusetts

After some research, I set my sights on Norwell, which is about 20 minutes south of Quincy. It's a small town next to a coastal enclave of beautiful New England-style communities such as Hingham and Cohasset.

It feels less trendy (and slightly more affordable) than those because it's landlocked and smaller, but it's still minutes from the beaches and harborfronts.

We searched for about a year until settling on a three-bedroom, 2,300-square-foot home with a gorgeous sunroom for $830,000. Being able to save for a year while living with family made this purchase possible.

To be honest, Norwell isn't much cheaper in Quincy. Houses generally sell for more money, although the median price per square footage of listings in Norwell is $87 less than listings in Quincy, according to data from Realtor.com.

Although this home was more expensive than our last place, we felt we were getting more space with our investment. Plus, we feel we get more value for our money here.

Our property taxes are higher, for example, but we now live near some of the best public schools in Massachusetts. We no longer wonder if we should spend thousands sending our kids to private schools.

Norwell is quieter than Quincy, but we have access to everything we need

It's felt pretty nice and peaceful to go from living in one of the biggest cities in Massachusetts to Norwell, which has about 11,000 residents.

Although our town doesn't have much happening, major shopping and dining spots are just a few minutes' drive away.

Several grocery stores and other conveniences are very close by, and we found a wonderful preschool down the road for our oldest daughter, where she gets to be out in nature most of the day.

We're also just 15 to 20 minutes from a beach and five minutes from the highway that can fairly easily get us into Boston.

Although I miss living in Quincy and the buzz of a city sprawl, we're happy in our woodsy town of Norwell and have enjoyed two great years so far as residents.

The best part is that Boston is still less than an hour away by car or ferry whenever we feel like visiting a trendy restaurant or concert.

• Many Americans seem to be tuning out of mainstream media after the election, a sign of news fatigue.
• The shift is especially evident on the left after Kamala Harris' defeat.
• Newsrooms are shifting gears to regain audiences amid declining trust in some corners.

Are people checking out of mainstream media?

After a year of Americans seemingly being transfixed by politics, early signs suggest they're exhausted and tuning out of the news.

A big question in media circles has been whether there would be another "Trump bump." The term refers to the traffic surge many media outlets saw from covering scandals under Donald Trump's first term.

They shouldn't count on it.

The early indications are that the road ahead could be hard, especially for mainstream and left-leaning media.

Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN got big ratings boosts in 2024, with Fox topping the ratings charts. But viewership of the latter two fell off after the election as liberals licked their wounds following Kamala Harris' defeat.

Many news sites showed similar postelection dropoffs. The New York Times, CNN, and Fox News each saw double-digit declines in traffic from October to December, according to data from SimilarWeb.

On social media, where many people are increasingly finding news, news publishers' engagement on Facebook and X generally dropped off sharply after the election, according to NewsWhip data. The data looked at a sample of about a dozen top news publishers including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NBC News, MSNBC, and Fox News.

And the fatigue may have set in even before the election ended.

Overall, the 2024 general election drew less readership than the previous one. Chartbeat data from nearly 100 publishers showed 2024 election-day traffic among news publishers was about a third of what it was in 2020 when outlets benefited from COVID-related lockdowns.

Fatigue on the left

With Democrats facing a second Trump administration, news fatigue appears stronger on the left.

About two-thirds of American adults said they recently felt the need to limit media consumption about politics and government because of overload, according to a December survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. More Democrats (72%) than Republicans (59%) felt that way.

Howard Polskin, founder of The Righting, an outlet that reports on right-leaning sites with a critical eye, said a significant number of his newsletter readers unsubscribed after November 5. He said readers told him they just wanted to tune out Trump news.

"They also said, 'It's not just you, it's The New York Times, it's The Atlantic,'" he said.

A changing landscape for media

The dropoff comes as some mainstream and left-leaning newsrooms are in flux.

MSNBC faces an uncertain future under a new leader as it prepares to be hived off from NBCUniversal, along with other declining cable networks, into a new company. Mark Thompson's remaking of Warner Bros. Discovery's CNN is still underway. The Washington Post is facing internal discontent and big-name defections.

More broadly, newsrooms are fighting for limited subscribers and digital ad dollars, leading some to lay off staff.

Some newsrooms are making moves to capture the audiences they're missing. The Washington Post just unveiled a new mission statement underscoring a desire to reach "all of America." The Los Angeles Times' owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, recently said he wants to introduce moderate and conservative columnists in an effort to broaden its reach.

One Post staffer said that, with politics in the outlet's DNA, some think the answer is to double down on politics reporting, but others worry the audience is burned out.

"There's a real difference in opinion," said the staffer, who, like some others in the story, asked for anonymity to freely discuss company strategy. Their identity is known to BI.

Is it a blip or something larger?

One key question is whether the decline is temporary or part of a more sustained downturn. It's common for audience numbers to drop off in some fashion after the general election.

Internally, MSNBC sees some early signs of viewership recovering from the post-election dip, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Hannah Poferl, assistant managing editor and director of audience for The New York Times, said the paper takes confidence in its subscriber base that reads consistently, regardless of the news cycle. She pointed to strong readership since November for news about the Los Angeles wildfires, Jimmy Carter, and more.

"Our news audience has been largely stable, despite the studies that suggest news fatigue, and our subscribers are consuming more pieces across the total report than in the past," Poferl said in a statement. "Beyond this, we're also seeing increases in time spent engaging with us, beyond just page visits."

CNN similarly downplayed to BI its reliance on political news, pointing out that its top story of 2024 was an entertainment story on Sean "Diddy" Combs.

That said, established news outlets are also facing competition from influencers, podcasters, and others. Almost half of adults under 30 get their political fix from social media, twice as many as those ages 30 to 49, according to Pew Research. And newsrooms continue to face declining trust in some corners.

"The challenge for the business is explaining why it's different to get news on NBC versus from a creator who's also a bartender but has funny hot takes on TikTok," a news talent agent told BI.

If you’ve ever owned a Galaxy device, you’ve likely heard Samsung’s “Over the Horizon” song as a part of the default ringtone on your device. For 2025 and just in time for the Galaxy S25 launch, Samsung is giving “Over the Horizon” a jazzy reimagining.

Some smartphone users are being welcomed into the new year with Verizon price raises of up to $15 per month on multi-line plans …