Episode 437: Goodbye and good luck

Rather than dedicating the final installment to dissecting the day’s heavy breaking headlines—such as Arm’s highly anticipated and widely discussed planned initial public offering, fresh display hardware options from Brilliant, or Leviton’s rollout of next-generation smart circuit breakers and whole-home energy management tools—the swan song takes a more reflective approach. Instead, the hosts used the final broadcast to share their personal reasons for stepping back from the weekly grind of production, outline where their professional journeys are heading next, and pass the torch to a new generation of media resources for listeners who rely on consistent coverage of the Internet of Things.

To help the dedicated community of listeners stay informed long after the final credits roll, the hosts curated a comprehensive list of their favorite ongoing industry resources, publications, and podcasts. For those seeking audio content that matches the cadence and depth of the concluding show, recommendations included the Mr. Beacon Show and The IoT Podcast. For daily reading and breaking developments across the consumer tech landscape, the hosts pointed audiences toward prominent outlets such as The Verge, TechHive, The Ambient, and The Journal of Innovation, a specialized publication produced by the Industrial IoT Consortium.

Community discussions also played a vital role in the podcast’s ecosystem over the years, prompting the hosts to highlight online hubs like Reddit’s r/smarthome and r/homeautomation as essential destinations for troubleshooting, peer advice, and real-world consumer feedback. For industrial IoT news and enterprise-level deployments, James Blackman’s rigorous reporting over at RCR Wireless was singled out as a must-read. To keep tabs on venture capital, funding rounds, mergers, and acquisitions within the tech sector, the hosts recommended the Axios Pro Rata newsletter authored by Dan Primack. Furthermore, Iskander Smit’s newsletter, Target is New, was highlighted for offering deeply thoughtful perspectives intersecting the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and human-centric design. While acknowledging that numerous other valuable outlets exist within the sprawling technology landscape, the hosts kept the curated list concise to avoid extending an already bittersweet goodbye episode.

To bring a sense of closure to the long-running audio venture, the final segment of the podcast addressed a final listener question touching upon a philosophical and practical query: what defines a truly complete smart home? The hosts shared their long-term perspectives on the industry, discussing the overarching architectural visions and future innovations that they believe will continue to push the connected home sector forward, moving past fragmented gadgets into more cohesive, reliable systems.

Providing a fitting capstone to the final episode, the show featured Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, a prominent technology journalist from The Verge, as the final guest. Having covered the smart home beat across a variety of respected publications for nearly a decade, Tuohy brought a wealth of historical perspective and analytical depth to the conversation. Known for her hands-on approach to testing virtually every gadget she writes about, Tuohy joined the show to evaluate the current state of the smart home ecosystem, the evolving adoption and practical realities of the cross-platform Matter standard, and the elusive business models that are most likely to sustain connected home hardware companies in a competitive market.

During the discussion, Tuohy offered exclusive insights into upcoming initiatives planned by the Connectivity Standards Alliance, shared her expert analysis on the ongoing tension between underlying home infrastructure versus standalone consumer devices, and detailed her own personal smart home setup. Her pragmatic, deeply experienced outlook on where the industry has been and where it is headed provided the ideal, forward-looking note on which to conclude eight years of broadcasting.