The World Cup is the most watched sporting event globally and is played every four years.
FIFA, the international governing body of soccer, mandates that the game is played on real grass pitches. The maintenance of real grass fields can be a logistic and scientific feat, but turf grass specialists are up to the task.
With an increasingly globalized world, new standards and mandates make it increasingly confusing to complete your pre-trip checklists.
It is hard to keep all your travel information in one place—or at least it used to be.
Smart glasses are becoming increasingly stylish and affordable. Maybe the next pair of sunglasses you buy will be able to take videos and let you listen to music.
Americans now spend more than $1,300 on subscriptions annually. Xbox is raising prices again due to a global memory shortage.
We're talking about all these topics on this week's Tech Tuesday.
Guests:
- John Sorochan, distinguished professor, plant sciences, University of Tennessee
- Cara Laban, creator, TravelReddi app
- Russell Holly, Director of Commerce Content, CNET
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology, and the future of our environment. The World Cup is the most watched sporting event globally and is played every four years. FIFA, the international governing body of soccer, mandates that soccer must be played on real grass, not artificial turf.
This poses a major logistical challenge to be able to grow and maintain grass pitches for game day. But scientists specializing in turf grass are up to the challenge. Joining us now is John Sorochan, professor of turf grass science at the University of Tennessee. Welcome to All Sides, John.
John Sorochan: Hi, Amy, thanks for having me.
Juravich: So first things first, what is turf grass?
Sorochan: Turfgrass science is the discipline where you study grasses, whether it's for sports fields or it's natural grass, and you study it for sports fields, golf courses, your home lawns, sod production, cemeteries, roadsides, everything. Anywhere you would have grass that you would mow, that's turf grass.
Juravich: Okay, so even though it has the word turf in it, it's real grass.
Sorochan: Yeah. And so it's kind of a redundant term because turf actually is natural grass. And the synthetic turf world has stolen the word for word turf from football. They say, oh, they're playing on turf and they're insinuating that it's synthetic turf or artificial turf, not natural turf. And then I don't know why way back when we call it turf grass, it's kind of like a redundant turn because they're both the same thing.
Juravich: All right, grass grass. I got it. So whenever, but when I'm talking about what some football fields are made out of, that's artificial turf. Is that what am I saying?
Sorochan: That's the correct way to say it, artificial or synthetic turf. Okay.
Juravich: All right, so back to the grass. The World Cup is responsible for making 16 soccer pitches in three separate countries, all feel the same. What are some qualities that turf grass scientists like you look out for to create the perfect pitch every time?
Sorochan: Yeah, so the key is to have consistency and uniformity. And you think of just having one pitch, having that pitch being consistent and uniform wherever you're running step on the field for the ball to bounce, roll, the player to run and cut from that very first match to, say, if we look at Dallas, who has nine matches, the most of any stadium, host stadium, you want it to be the same.
At the end of the ninth matches, it was the first match. And so that consistency uniformity is a challenge. And then now taking it over 16 stadiums, over three countries, knowing that we're in different five dome stadiums where in different climatic regions in Miami, where it's a tropical hot, it's going to be a different kind of grass that's going in Boston, for instance.
So that's we've looked, that'll do a lot with the management to get those grasses to be the same, even though they're different kinds of grasses for the everything to be, the same a lot of testing, a lot of research has gone into it. And You know, that part of the challenge is to do that consistency uniformity for sure. And FIFA has requirements that they want them constructed like to help with that.
Juravich: What sort of tests does your team run? Do you simulate players on the field to make sure that it holds up to the cleats and everything?
Sorochan: Absolutely. There's a, there's a device we developed here at the University of Tennessee called the flex testing device. And it actually simulates a foot strike of a foot hitting the surface. And it's a 3d printed foot that has, you can put different cleats on it.
And we, we simulate the strike of, a, we're in a standard soccer cleat of 168 pound athlete. And that's the average weight of the last two men's world cups of the players. And we can now test different surfaces and try to get them to play the same of what the how many millimeters that cleat is going to move through the surface to what the forces are being put back on the
Juravich: Wow. Okay. So, so what have you been hearing? You know, we're going through the World Cup here. Is the turf or the grass, is it holding up?
Sorochan: Yes. Yes. I mean, this is, it's been tremendous. You know, I've always said, and it's always kind of a funny thing in our world is if you're a sports field manager, you know, the best thing that could happen is they don't talk about your pitch or your field after the game. Because, you know it wasn't a problem. But if it's, you, know, if someone won and did well, they want to talk about how great the game was and how good they were as individual athletes potentially.
So this is the first time that they've actually raved about the quality of pitches saying these are, you know. One of the announcers said this is immaculate, maybe too good. And so that's been really the positive news has been wonderful for us.
Juravich: Wow, yeah, I mean, I'm thinking back to games I've watched, and I guess if I haven't noticed anything weird looking on the field, that's a good thing, right? You would notice if there was clumps of grass missing.
Sorochan: Absolutely. I'm hoping I'm ruining it for you now when you watch the rest of the World Cup. You're going to actually be looking at the grass as well as the game. Yeah. So.
Juravich: Many of the stadiums that the World Cup is being played in, they're built for artificial turf, the synthetic or plastic stuff or whatever it's made out of. The stadiums, they block out sunlight, they have little airflow because they don't need to grow grass. How does your team create those conditions and still get real grass to be healthy?
Sorochan: Yeah, so there are five of the 16 stadiums, eight of them are currently synthetic or are synthetic turf stadiums. And of those eight, five of them or indoor dome stadiums so we had to put all those to grass and figure out how to keep it alive and grow and what to do. And that started with the investment that FIFA made in wanting evidence-based research and started with Alan Ferguson, who's the senior pitch management manager for FIFA.
He . Got hired on in 2018 when they brought everything in house for FIFA and he had the vision of putting science behind what they need. And so FIFA in turn has built a 5,000 square foot simulator building that's a controlled environment where we have grow lights in it, climate control, and we can grow grass inside and do all of our experiments to see how we can keep grass alive for two months for the tournament. And we've been able to keep grass live for two years. So we can keep it alive for perpetuity or. And it's all about the investment that FIFA has put into this. Absolutely is where it started.
Juravich: Wow, okay, so some of those dome stadiums, you have artificial lights and you make it rain inside.
Sorochan: Yes. So every dome stadium has grow lights. Dallas was the real unique one, is they actually lower them from the ceiling and then open them up, grow the grass. You can work underneath them, then they close them back up, take them back to the ceiling for the games and then lower them back down again.
The other ones, they roll them out onto the pitch, but they've built a full field above the synthetic turf that's deep enough with sand that it would be like a conventional natural construction build that you would have it. Say what they have in Philadelphia and Miami and Kansas City, which are already natural grass stadiums. And they've got irrigation systems in them and everything. So it's unbelievable.
Juravich: Do you know why, you might not know this, why is FIFA so against artificial turf?
Sorochan: So I don't know why they're there. I wouldn't say they're against it. It's it's it what they are is there the play of the game and the beauty of Soccer or football as they call it is is you can't play it on synthetic turf like you can natural grass the way the ball comes in and bounces that Synthetic turf is what we call Visi elastic. It absorbs a lot of the energy and pushes it back And so the ball is gonna bounce too high So when they switch fields and they kick it across the ball's gonna come in instead of it bouncing to the guys or knee where they can trap it or lower, it's going to bounce high and they might have to try to stop it with their chest or their head before it goes out of bounds.
That also gives the other team a chance to get onto it. The ball rolls too fast across those surfaces also. So those are a couple of things why it's, it just, it, it a lot better to play on grass for the play, the beauty of the game for passing, how the ball performs, cause it's a ball on surface sport. And then the players like it better The players like to play on grass, they like the feel of it. When they play a 90 minute game, they don't get as fatigued on natural grass. And that's what they like. And when they score goals, they like to go do a knee slide and it's a lot easier to slide on wet grass than it is something that's gonna exfoliate.
Juravich: Oh, yeah. Okay. So we got it. We have to keep the players of the most beautiful game happy and with beautiful grass.
Sorochan: Yes, absolutely.
Juravich: This is Tech Tuesday from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the World Cup soccer pitches with John Sorokin, Professor of Turfgrass Science at the University of Tennessee. So creating 16 pitches that all feel the same is no small feat. When did preparation begin for the World cup? How long have you been working on this?
Sorochan: You know, I started working on this initially back in, you know, before I even knew I got tapped to lead this from FIFA was back in 2016, 2017. I had a graduate student wanting to do it and I was doing MLS stuff. He actually did an internship with Cincinnati and the SC and he actually works for Cincinnati SC now. But we did a ball interaction test way back then. Trajectories.
But the real research came in 2018 when Alan Ferguson, I had tea with him in East London Cafe. We had tea and biscuits. He came up from Ipswich when he just took in the job. And he said, John, I want evidence-based research for the 26th World Cup. It's going to be the biggest one ever. It is probably going to have indoor stadiums. It will be a big geography. So there's going be a lot of a la carte stadiums that we have to make homogeneous as close to possible, and he goes, I'd like you to lead that. My sleepless nights probably started in October, 2018. I got time for this.
Juravich: Oh, wow, 2018. That's a long time to be thinking about the World Cup in 2026. So now that it's here and you're looking at your grass in action, I mean, I'm assuming you're watching the game, but you're more so watching the players feet on the field, I bet, right? What do you think? How's it going?
Sorochan: Yeah, well, yeah, fortunately, I can do two things at once. I think so. I won't chew gum, but I'm watching the game and I'm much in the field all the time. And yeah, it's kind of a surreal feeling. Yes. You know, I, I did watch the game, the first knockout game with Canada and in South Africa and me being Canadian, I was actually for maybe the first time I was more into the game than I was the field.
I've seen the field, they played on that field. I know it's great. Um, I was more into the game, but yeah, I'm always looking at both for sure. And it's, it's just, it, it an unbelievable feeling knowing I know everything that went into each of those stadiums and I had a, I, I was a part of the team that did that.
Juravich: Yeah, do you get to go to any of the games and actually touch the grass? Yeah.
Sorochan: Yeah, I've been to two games so far and I've been down on the pitches before and after the matches. I picked my family to the Canada-Switzerland game in Vancouver and you know the plan is to go to the last game of each of the five dome stadiums and go give an assessment of the fields and see what's how they've held up after all of their games and then Going to the final, hopefully.
Juravich: All right. Okay. But grass is just one part of the picture, because there's stuff below the grass, right? We have a land of sand. We have some gravel. I'm assuming soil is involved, right.
Sorochan: Well, they're constructed out of all sand. So they're sand root zones and they vary anywhere from 12 inches to 8 inches in depth. And they're above either a gravel or a plastic waffle drainage layer below that. And the irrigation system's down at that interface of the drainage and the depth of the sand.
And FIFA has these requirements. It has to be a sand-based root zone because they drain well and you can get oxygen into them. Have to be natural grass in a sand root zone, which is what you build a golf course putting green out of and sports fields out of all the time. The Cleveland Browns natural grass in their stadium, it's built out of 12 inches of sand. Same thing.
When you look at those, it has to have the irrigation. It has to a hybrid reinforcement. So they put in plastic fibers. They stitch them in every little less than one inch, 20 millimeters, and act like rebar to stabilize that sand. And they barely stick up above the surface so that when you're on it, it's all grass that you see and you play on in the field.
And then they have a vacuum ventilation system that if it's raining really heavy, which we've had happen for several of these matches already this year, they can be pulling the moisture out of that so you don't get standing water on the pitch. And then, they have grow lights, whether they're indoors or outdoors, because the stadiums are so spectator comfort and have such high luxury boxes and all these different things. There's a lot of shadows, so they have growth lights that they could put on to help the grass grow, even in outdoor stadiums. And those are the requirements.
Juravich: Wow. Okay, I'm learning so much. I had no idea there was no soil involved. Sand only. I got it. Duly noted. Okay, but what about the where you had to put grass where it was actually an artificial turf field? Are those stadiums gonna go back to their artificial turf or do they gonna keep the grass?
Sorochan: Yeah, the eight stadiums will after the World Cup will convert back to natural grass or to synthetic turf for their respective NFL seasons or in Vancouver. It's a CFL season up there, Canadian football.
Juravich: Okay, okay. So the plan is they're not going to keep your grass. What does the tear down process look like? They just tear it out?
Sorochan: Yeah, they just go in and they start to rip it out and start and just remove it all. So we're talking, there's some talks, some of the stadiums looking at donating some of the pitches to local parks or things like that if they can. But a lot of times it's really hard to and it's just, you know, they'll go compost it and put it in a compost pile.
Juravich: Hmm. I mean, does that make you a little sad? Do you wish they would keep it?
Sorochan: Yeah, I would love to see it going. We've done some really cool research where we showed that it's not being used for these World Cups, but it's been used last year and first demoed in 2024 in September. We developed what's called a shallow pitch profile. And so we've made these stadiums that are multi, they're not just football stadiums. They got Taylor Swift, they got truck and tractor poles, they've got convention centers. So they're multi-use.
We found a way that we could bring in a portable natural grass field and have it installed in less than 48 hours and have removed in seven hours and it's ready to play on immediately. And it's only, you know, we're only looking at a four inch profile, three inches of a drainage layer of geotextile and a little less than two inches of sod that's been grown on plastic. And the athletes wouldn't know any different if they're on a concrete or I mean, sorry, over 12 inches of sand. That's a legacy that I think we might start seeing in the future for stadiums, but you know, it's not happening now, but I'd like to see it going in the future for sure.
Juravich: Um, I have read that there are some American football players, um, NFL players who want to play on real grass and are wondering why their stadiums are accommodating grass for soccer players, but not for them. Do you know anything about that?
Sorochan: Yeah, I, I do. Um, you know, I have a hat that I wear for the players association, but for this time, I'm only speaking to FIFA, but you know players, NFL players, if you look at the, it's online, you can see it, their surveys, they're, they are 92 to 94% would like to play on grass. And that's just their preference. The players prefer.
Juravich: Okay. So I mean, you can't speak to what, you know, what these stadiums do. So that's just the players preference and you're the grass guy, right? Yes. All right. Well, I guess, um, just to end on for our listeners who are going to watch the remaining games of the world cup, um what should they be looking for? Just paying attention to the beautiful grass.
Sorochan: Yeah, absolutely. Watch, look at the plot. Look at just how well the ball rolls and plays on that surface. And, you know, enjoy the games because they've been exciting, really good matches. You know, when they expanded from a 32 to 48 team field, they thought, well, there's going be a lot of blowouts. And there really haven't been, there've been almost all the games and some upsets that you'd never expected. So.
Juravich: Has there been any instance in all the games that have been played so far where like a player dug their foot in weird and you did have to like fix the grass or anything like that?
Sorochan: We have, fortunately that's what that hybrid reinforcement is for. We haven't had any major blowouts and that reduces big blowouts from happening. Um, but you know, it's, it, it it's an education to the players because sometimes they're, they're only used to playing on a cool season grass.
When they go play on a warm season grass, the way it grows, it is a little different. So it could be the same top. The shoes could look the same, but they might change what the cleat patterns are on the bottom. Going from screw ins on the cool season studs to a molded one on the Bermuda grass. When they go play on that. And that's, so we want to educate them that they're, that's gonna be, so it's the same feel of foot and performance for them.
Juravich: Okay, so they need to adapt their shoes to the type of grass they're playing on.
Sorochan: And it's just like a car. If you're an F1 car, you got three different tires for dry conditions and rain tires. You got four tires. These are elite athletes. And they should realize what tires they're wearing on what surface to give them the best performance and still be safe.
Juravich: We've been talking about the World Cup soccer pitches with John Sorokin, professor of turfgrass science at the University of Tennessee. Thank you so much for your time today, John.
Sorochan: Yes, thank you, Amy. It's been a pleasure.
Juravich: Coming up, we're going to talk about an app that will help ease your confusion and some of your worries when you're planning a trip abroad. That's when Tech Tuesday from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology, and the future of our environment. Traveling is an opportunity to step out of your usual routine and explore how other cultures live. Cultural differences can make travel interesting, but also can take time to adjust to.
Additionally, with an increasingly globalized world, new standards and mandates make it increasingly confusing to complete your pre-trip checklist. It is hard to keep all your travel information in one place, or at least it used to be. We're talking about travel apps today with Cara Laban, the creator of the Travel Ready app. Welcome to All Sides, Cara. Thank you so much for having me, Amy. So how did you come up with the idea for the Travel Ready app? I guess maybe start by telling people the mission of your app, like what does it do?
Cara Laban: So the mission is to help people prepare for their trip. So we focus on the logistical side of preparation, not so much the planning, the itinerary. I find that there really is not a lot of information online about the prep, about entry requirements, what apps you need, cultural etiquette, tipping norms, so many things, public restrooms, stuff like that is not so out there these days. And there are things that you find out too late Often times. So I'm trying to solve that issue.
Juravich: Okay, and so you decided to name it Travel Ready. Tell me where that name came from, because also you decided to spell ready not the typical way. Yeah, so the name.
Laban: Wanted to sound exactly like what it does. So when people ask what is travel ready do is like it does what it says you makes you ready for travel. The honest answer as to why it's spelled R E D D I is that travel ready that read normal way was not available when I was looking for it.
Juravich: Okay, so the the travel ready spelled the normal way is not helping anyone, but it's taken by someone is that
Laban: It's helping. I think they do luggage or something.
Juravich: Okay. All right. Fine. You know, that's fine. So for our listeners, if you're looking for an app to help you prepare for upcoming travel, look up travel, T-R-A-V-E-L, ready, R-E D-D-I. Okay. So how did you figure out basically how to make an app? Are you an app developer? Is that what you went to school for?
Laban: I'm not an app developer. I did go to school initially for engineering, so I took some coding classes back then, but that's not my main thing. I do come from a family of developers, and one of my siblings recommend I look into Vibe coding to learn how to build an app. So there's so many platforms out there that help you with Vibe Coding, which is basically you explain what you want to create, and it codes it for you. You have to have a little knowledge. Of technology to do that, but not so much. And that's where I started. Okay, and is travel ready free for people to use? Travel ready is 100% free and I hope to keep it that way forever. You just log in, you don't even have to create a login. You put in your destination, your passport country, we're not trying to take your whole passport and we'll create a custom guide that's specific to you and your needs.
Juravich: Where do you get all the information that is in your app to make sure that it stays up to date and everything? Because I mean, I'm sure things are constantly changing. So where do you source your information from?
Laban: Yeah, most things aren't changing too often. The thing that changes most are going to be entry requirements. Already this year, we've had so many different entry requirements happen. And that is being checked every 24 hours. There's something called an API, where you link up to other sources, like government sources. And so we're checking that every day when you go in to check. Everything else stays pretty much the same. And we're going to running quarterly check. We're still pretty new. So everything is new and up to date as of now. And to keep it up to day, we'll run quarterly checks on things that might be changing regularly.
Juravich: How many countries for someone from the United States to travel to do you have in your system right now?
Laban: I think we're around 40, I think it's 42 countries, including the U.S., and I hope to also include states. So the U S is a big place. A lot of people travel domestically and every state has their own culture and different rules and stuff like that. So I hope you include that as well.
Juravich: Wow, all right, you have lots of plans. Now, I will say that I used your app for a bit because I went to Paris a few weeks ago. But unfortunately, I did not know your app existed until about a week before we left. And the whole point of your app is to get travel ready, you know, to prepare. So I didn't have much time to work with it ahead of time. So just using that caveat. But tell me how you recommend people actually use it, like someone. Unlike me, who only found out it existed a week before. Tell me about the pre-planning. When should someone start using it?
Laban: Even a week before is helpful because you can prepare for entry requirements. So if you do need a visa or an ESTA, ETA, I do recommend doing that more than a week ahead of time, but that's usually enough time to apply and get approved. So even if you only have a week, I say go and we walk you through every single step. So just go through each thing. You could check different categories. So if you don't care about the cultural etiquette, or you know about the culture etiquette you could go ahead and skip those sections.
If you don, I highly recommend you read those sections I do recommend you fill in the onboarding form. You could skip that if you want but we will give you more customized information. So you could tell us if you're traveling with kids because there's extra steps you need to take. You need to make sure their passports are up to date. You need make sure you're Accommodation can accommodate your whole family, certain other things you need to do if you have kids. So I recommend just as soon as you know you're taking that trip, you start with travel ready. We accommodate for if you already have your flights booked or not, if you your accommodation booked, we recommend safe neighborhoods, what might be within your budget, what's family friendly, what's more for going out. So as soon you have an idea of where you wanna go, I would start using travel ready
Juravich: Yeah, and just to give listeners an example, some things I did learn from your app, even though I only started it a week before, is you informed me about paid bathrooms, paid public bathrooms in France. So I was prepared for that. I knew that some bathrooms were gonna be paid and some were gonna free. And you also informed me about some kid-friendly things. And you gave me ideas of apps to use for directions. That was very helpful as well. Tell me some of the other things that people find helpful that maybe they didn't know because Well, I guess you could tell your story of why you started this you were you were trying to get an uber, right? And you were failing at that. So tell that story. Yes, so
Laban: I was, I can't remember where in Spain I was but I know I was in Spain and I didn't set up my eSIM ahead of time. So I really highly recommend you set up any data before you go anywhere. And I ordered an Uber while I was in the wifi area. I walked out of the wifi And because I was already connected to my Uber, so I took a screenshot of the license plate and the car type and I was waiting and waiting and no car ever came.
And it was so hot this day. I was like, I don't know what to do. So I had to take all of my stuff. I was living out of my suitcase and a backpack. So my suitcase was huge. I had a drag it back into the wifi area, connect to the wifi only to learn that there were. There were like no Ubers in this area. That wasn't the main app. Uber is available sometimes in Spain, but it's not the main one. So then I had to figure out what app to use, download it, connect to my credit card. And it was so stressful. I was like, I was gonna start crying in the middle of this train station, bus station, wherever it was. And in that moment I was, like, there's gotta be an easier way because I'm so type A. And I was why don't I know? That there are other apps to download. I should have known to have this already downloaded with my credit card put in. So that was like one of the first things that happened.
Juravich: This is Tech Tuesday From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News, and we're talking about travel apps with Kara Laban, the creator of the Travel Ready app. And for looking that up, ready is spelled R-E-D-D I. So there are questions like, if a country is safe for a female traveler traveling alone, something like that is generally unanswered from the travel industry. Or they'll say something like, you'll be fine, have fun. How did you determine things like that on the app?
Laban: I'm honestly going through a lot of like Reddit threads using my personal experiences. I have been a digital nomad for the last 10 years. So I have a huge digital nomads community as well. And we use the word friendly or like how I don't love the word safe because a lot of it is anecdotal. So one place you might feel safe and not, but it's more the general sense and general consensus from female travelers. Who are posting about it online. That's the best we can do.
Juravich: And I got an alert that your app recently did some updates. Are there any features, new features in the apps, new update that you wanted to highlight?
Laban: Well, the app itself is new. It's only been out for two months. I do keep improving how the flow works. I added a safety guide for how to deal with getting robbed abroad. So before you ever get robbed, just like what you can do to prepare before you travel, and then what to do directly after, should you get your phone or wallet stolen, how to handle that, and how to make sure it doesn't ruin your trip.
Juravich: Where do you find the information about the customs and how to fit in? Because I found that part interesting whenever I was looking up information for Paris. Your app told me to make sure you always say bonjour when you walk in, and to not send food back, that's considered rude, things like that. Where do get that information from?
Laban: So again, a lot of this is being scraped from Reddit and we're choosing the top recommendations because of course we could probably write a whole book about etiquette for one country. So we're picking the top things to make sure that you're not gonna stand out in a negative way and respect the culture for where you are. And I'm also sending the guides once I have them created to locals to make that it's accurate and they're giving feedback as to what to add and remove. Mostly add because they've said it's pretty accurate I would just add this one thing or that one thing.
Juravich: And you mentioned that you have 40 locations. Are they mostly main cities, you know, like your Paris, your Rome, London, that kind of thing? Are you doing country cities? Tell me about what you have in there.
Laban: Yeah, right now, you search based on a country. But within that country, we list the top cities that you might visit for that country. So if you go to the app and you're going to Paris, search France, and then we'll cover Paris within that guide. I do plan to expand to city-specific so that you could search for the city and have even more details per city.
The reason I'm doing it this way is just because There are so many cities in the world. And I'm actually a one-woman show right now. So I'm doing it as I come. And I am doing it based on the most popular tourist destinations for Americans at this point. That's how I chose the top 40. The next country up is Switzerland. I have a lot of requests for Switzerland. So that's coming soon.
Juravich: Tell me about being a one-woman show, an app creator, an app developer, an App Improver, expanding. What's that like for you?
Laban: Well, not just all of that. I'm also doing all of the marketing, the PR, the research, everything that comes along in a business. It's stressful, but I'm really enjoying it. Before I started doing this, I thought I was like lazy and I would never really be successful. And I think what it was was that I just didn't find an idea that lit me up the way that this does. And I'm working more than I ever thought I'd be. Said I wanted to and I'm totally okay with it because I'm having a blast really, but it's a lot of work.
Juravich: Do you have any tips in there for how people can avoid scams? There's always the problem with you know Buying scam tickets getting scammed out of your money, you know picking the wrong place for to tell me about that Yeah, so we have it
Laban: common scam section and it will tell you what the common scam is and what you can do to avoid it or what you could do if it's happening to you because sometimes there's really no way around it. For example, a lot of places in Europe they'll come and tie a friendship bracelet around your wrist and then demand money once they do. They say it's free and then they demand money and don't leave you alone.
So if you could just try to like walk through those crowds quickly any crowded places not make eye contact. And if they do it, just kind of keep walking and don't stop to talk to them. They might get angry for a second. They're most likely not going to do much. So every country has a section for common scams. And I really, really like that's one of my favorite sections on there because getting scammed is the worst.
Juravich: What is your ultimate goal for travel ready? Like, where do you see yourself? I mean, you're so new. Where do you say yourself one to five years from now?
Laban: I have a few directions I'd like to take it. I just want this to become a household name where anytime anyone is taking a trip, it's I got to get travel ready or somebody asks, did you check travel ready? It's just, everybody knows it. Like something like TripAdvisor or Yelp, you know, it's up there with those names. That is really where I see this going.
And then eventually I would love to also integrate with big companies. So imagine FIFA. I know we were just talking about Fifon here before. FIFA has some information already, but it's not hyper specific to the person who's coming to visit. So we would work with the FIFA app or the Olympics to make sure that people are prepared for their country and the FIFA organization or Olympics could give their specific information that they wanna include as well.
Juravich: Well, good luck with that. And when you expand and become gigantic, you'll have to come back and tell us about it. We have been talking about travel apps with Kara Laban, the creator of the Travel Ready app, and ready is spelled R-E-D-D I. Thank you so much for your time today.
Laban: Thank you, so much, for having me, Amy. And coming up, we're gonna talk about Meta's newest vision for smart glasses. They are sunglasses, and surprisingly, they look like something you might actually want to wear. That is when Tech Tuesday from all sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology, and the future of our environment. First, smart glasses are becoming increasingly stylish and affordable. Maybe the next pair of sunglasses you buy will be able to take videos and let you listen to music.
And then, it's so easy to fall into the trap of getting a free trial for a subscription and then forgetting to cancel it and ending up having to pay for it. We're gonna talk about what Americans are spending on subscriptions. And finally, Xbox consoles are subject to a price increase. We are talking about streaming, meta glasses and the Xbox prices with Russell Holly, Director of Commerce, Content for CNET. Thanks for joining us, Russell.
Russell Holly: Thank you for having me.
Juravich: Let's start with Meta's newest and very fashionable smart sunglasses. What are the new features? And tell me about the latest launch of these new sunglasses. I think your reviewer said you will actually want to wear them.
Holly: Yeah. So, you know, smart glasses have been a thing for a couple of years now. And the one thing that they all have in common is that they're pretty boring looking because, you know a lot of the engineering work goes into making sure that the computer can be hidden in the you know stems of the glasses so that they can rest over your ears and not have all that weight on your nose. You know, which you know causes a bunch of other problems for wearing them on a day-to-day basis.
Meta has gotten the closest over the last couple of with their partnership with Ray-Ban and Oakley. Last year in releasing their smart glasses, and they have now expanded with Kylie Jenner herself, getting in and saying, hey, these are really cool, but they look bad. So they released a set in partnership with Kylie Jenner, and existing glasses that were out last year also got a little bit of a a bump in what they're supposed to look like, and, you know, true to form, it would be pretty difficult at first glance to tell that some of these glasses were smart glasses.
Juravich: And my understanding is that these specific ones from Meta are actually cheaper than other glasses too. There was like a price drop. Can you talk about that?
Holly: Yeah, so Meta has two different kinds of smart glasses right now. There is the kind of smart glass that have been around for about two years now, which don't have a screen. It is entirely a microphone and a computer and a camera with a set of speakers in the stems, and they connect to your phone. Your phone does all the thinking there. So there must be a Bluetooth connection to something for all of those instructions, and that's what keeps it kind of lightweight.
That's what these glasses are. So they've gotten a design upgrade, but they're also coming down a little bit in price. Starting at around $2.99 for some of these glasses, but they get up as high as $500, depending on if you're getting the ones from Ray-Ban or Blazer Optics that have some fancy stuff on the lenses themselves. Meta also makes a set of smart glasses that are much newer and far more expensive, that have a display hidden in the lens of the glass, that'll provide you with a little bit of information. Those haven't gotten this visual refresh. So those still look like the kind of glasses that I would have worn in college.
Juravich: And now back to back to Kylie Jenner for a minute. Did I read in the article that Kylie Jenna also is a part of the AI system in the glasses so she can talk to you or something like that?
Holly: Yes, Kylie Jenner's voice is one of the options that you can choose very much in the same way that your home AI assistant you can chose voices for. If you specifically have what are called the Starfire edition glasses, then one of the audio options is Kylie's voice.
Juravich: Oh, so fun. Okay. Another thing that the reviewer for CNET wrote is that these new glasses don't come with any additional privacy protections. What changes is it that you would like to see on the AI and privacy front with meta glasses that's not available in these?
Holly: Sure. So I mean, like everything that Meta does, this is all connected inexorably to your Facebook account. So whether you are just an Instagram user, or a Threads user, a Facebook user, regardless of your Meta platform of choice, all of that data is stored with Meta. It's not stored locally the same way that you would see with something from Apple or from Google.
Facebook has been quite clear. They are in this for the data. That is kind of their primary benefit. That company has never been a hardware, hardware has never the thing that they make the most money off of. It is the services and accessories that come along with that. So for folks who want the convenience of smart glasses, but maybe don't want an AI assistant that's listening to every word or for photos that you take to pass through Facebook servers before they're available to you. In the event that a picture gets taken accidentally, or something like that, there are no solutions for any of those edge cases. OK.
Juravich: And I guess since these are sunglasses, is Metta hoping you buy the regular glasses and then these are sunglasses, which you only wear outside when it's sunny. Like, you're not, you know, is that the idea?
Holly: There are a couple options you can choose from. There are some that have prescription lenses in them that will transition if you choose to go that route. And yeah, the ones that are the Kylie Jenner model, they start as sunglasses. And I think that that's the idea, is that you're not wearing them when you're at home, you're just wearing them when you are on the go.
Juravich: All right. So maybe where Kylie Jenner is, it's sunny more than in other parts of the country.
Holly: Yes, I think Southern California is known for its sunshine.
Juravich: This is Tech Tuesday from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about streaming, meta glasses, and Xbox prices this hour with Russell Holly, Director of Commerce Content with CNET. Okay, so let's move on to subscriptions. CNET did a subscription service analysis and found that Americans now spend more than $1,300 a year on subscriptions. And this includes used and unused subscriptions. So on average, how much How much of that is unused subscriptions that are costing Americans? So if they're spending $1,300, what ones do they not even realize they have?
Holly: Yeah, so in the polling we did, it was found that US adults waste an average of $21 a month or $252 annually on unused subscriptions. This can be subscriptions that you have signed up for and forgotten about, like a streaming service that had a show on it that you watched two episodes of and then never went back to. Or it could be a trial subscription that came with a but a credit card or something like that that just never got turned off.
One of the really common ones is DoorDash, where folks will sign up for the DoorDish premium and then forget that it's there, or they canceled it at one point, but when they went to order something else, it re-attached it, like re-lit up the subscription because you didn't read the fine printer or something. There are a lot of different reasons for it these days.
Juravich: And how many times do you find that people end up with a subscription by accident because they sign up for the free trial? They promise themselves they're going to cancel it and then they don't.
Holly: It is surprisingly common, you know, those platforms, you know the most popular things that people are still paying subscription for are mostly entertainment. So, you now 61% are video and music subscriptions are 35% and then, you membership platforms like Amazon and Costco and things like that end up being kind of that middle ground there. So not as many. Uh, kind of accidental trial things, cause, cause you know, the, the bulk of those are, are kind of active use subscriptions, but they happen all the time.
Juravich: Yeah. And there's also subscriptions for, I mean, there's a subscription for basically everything. I mean you mentioned streaming platforms, but there's food, there store dash, there are books, music, you know. How does one manage? Does CNET have recommendations for how you manage and figure out what you're subscribed to?
Holly: There are a couple of different ways that you can manage them on a regular basis. I think the most common one is to go through your credit card statement and kind of write them all down and take a look yourself and see which ones you actually need and which ones don't. Take a look at all of your subscriptions and go through and if you're really not sure, like if you are not sure that you're going to use it in a month, then go ahead and cancel it 90% of the time.
An entertainment-based subscription, the first time you go to cancel We'll just give you a free month. To try and keep you on that service. So that is a really great way to see what it is that you're doing. There are services, financial services, Rocket Money being one of them, that will more proactively monitor those things. Although I think hilariously that is also a subscription service. So a subscription surface to get rid of subscription services isn't my favorite way of solving problems, but it is something that is quite popular.
Juravich: With so many different streaming platforms, has CNET or you come up with a solution to be able to affordably watch what you want to watch? Has anyone figured out the best way?
Holly: Yeah, so we know that on average, the average U.S. Household hold has two and a half streaming subscriptions per home. You know, and it's getting harder to share those subscriptions with people not in your household as some of these services get a little smarter about tracking that sort of thing and automatically billing you in the case of Netflix in the event that you're using your subscription in more than one household. I think when it comes to streaming stuff, my preferred method is to pick a thing for a month and watch the stuff that I'm interested in watching for that month and then move on to another streaming service and just go that way.
Juravich: Okay, so if you have it, so say you want to watch the pit, you'll subscribe to HBO, you'll watch what you want watch and then keep it for a month or two and then cancel it until you want to watch something again.
Holly: That works really well for me. I do this quite a bit with some of the smaller services like the National Theater streaming service and like Brit Box. Those are kind of things that I'll pick up for like a month or two at a time and then move on to another one to enjoy that stuff.
Juravich: It can be tricky to cancel though. Do you have advice for making sure you cancel properly?
Holly: Oh yeah, anytime you want to cancel anything, don't do it from your phone. Grab a laptop, go to the actual website for the service, log into the website for this service, and go to cancel that way.
Juravich: Oh, you need big internet to be able to cancel. That's exactly right.
Holly: That's exactly right. You need to use your big internet for that, not your small internet.
Juravich: Why is that?
Holly: I think a lot of the phone-based things, there are visual ways that some of the fine print can be hidden in ways that are just unregulated. And having a mechanism for that is just a lot harder on larger screens, where the web browser experience is not something that that is kind of optimized for.
Juravich: Hmm, interesting. All right, well, finally, before we run out of time, we're gonna move on to Xbox. Microsoft plans to increase the price of the Xbox, again, citing a memory shortage and the high cost associated with paying for memory. Almost all tech is facing this issue. Why is Xbox having such a problem with their consoles that they have to raise the price again?
Holly: Uh, the biggest thing that Microsoft is facing right now is storage. Storage is getting more and more expensive as AI data centers get built and companies cannot produce storage fast enough. Uh, so the, you know, the supplier that Microsoft was working with for their hard drives to go in these consoles, those prices went up really considerably and Microsoft makes like any other gaming company makes very, very little money on the actual hardware.
They make all of their money on software and services. Uh for for these kind of things or like accessories and things like that uh so you know these are these are kind of razor thin margins to begin with and when the cost of the hard drive that goes in the system increases by you know 10x That cost gets passed on to the consumer. Unfortunately, Microsoft has raised prices on this console three times since it was first released. The original Xbox Series X was available for $550. That same console, when you go to buy it after August 1st, will be $750. The cost of the actual physical storage has increased to a high enough level that the two terabyte version of the Xbox series, X will actually stop being available after August because that hard drive is too difficult for Microsoft to source.
Juravich: Oh, they're not even gonna make it anymore. They can't keep it. That's exactly right. What about Switch and PlayStation? Are they raising prices to?
Holly: Nintendo and Sony both released prices in different ways earlier in the year, as some of the other costs went up. Nintendo chose to increase costs on the first version of the Switch and the accessories around it and not play with the price of the current Nintendo Switch, and that remains the same. Those prices are the same as they were the day the console was released. Sony has increased the cost of its consoles and it has made an announcement that more increases are likely before the end of the year, but not nearly to the extent that we have seen Microsoft go.
Juravich: Is this gonna just keep happening? I mean, is there a solution? They gotta make chips faster or something?
Holly: Yeah, the solution is, unfortunately, for AI to stop consuming every single electronic resource that is available, because the manufacturers that produce this hardware just are not going to be able to keep up with that demand. So if we see something really unfortunate, like an AI bubble bursting, it is incredibly likely that the price of hardware like this will come down quite quickly after. But that will have a lot of other economic problems.
Juravich: Yes, that would be a bigger problem. And just quickly, in the minute we have left, I missed Xbox did announce there, because they're increasing their price, they're offering a payment plan option. So they're going to, they want you to buy it. So they'll let you pay for it in increments now.
Holly: Yes, there will be a way to buy a console on kind of a monthly thing. It's not that they haven't released all of the details around this yet, or if it's something that's going to mandate a service be attached to it, which is not terribly different from something that Microsoft has done in the past. So it may be that you have to have Xbox Live if you buy their payment plan through that sort of thing. We'll see as we get closer to August 1st what the kind of fine print around that is going to look like.
Juravich: Okay, it sounds like another subscription to me, maybe.
Holly: It sure is.
Juravich: All right. We have been talking about streaming, meta glasses, and Xbox prices with Russell Holly, the Director of Commerce Content at CNET. Thank you for joining us today, Russell.
Holly: Thanks for having me.
Juravich: And if you missed any part of today's show, listen back at our website. That's wosu.org slash All Sides. Subscribe to our podcast. Every episode is available to listen to in our mobile app. And be sure to like All Sides on Facebook and follow the show on Instagram as well. Our Instagram handle is at All Sides WOSU. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Amy Juravich on 89.7 NPR News.