Your emails talk back now

gm legends. welcome back to yet another fine issue of the Leaderboard. In today's digest: turn every link into a podcast, VR for making your gym more tolerable, and an AI agent that can use your apps.

Podpod turns articles and newsletters into podcast episodes. Add podpod.me/ before a URL or forward a newsletter to your Podpod email. It shows up in your podcast app, read and riffed on by two AI hosts.

🔥 Our take: There’s something oddly intimate about hearing an article talked through like a podcast. It’s not just text-to-speech, it feels like a conversation you didn’t ask for but maybe needed. And the best part? No guilt when you archive the newsletter. It already talked back.

Gym Spatial is a Vision Pro app that turns your treadmill or bike session into something slightly less miserable. Choose between gym mode or virtual tracks. Three immersive environments for now, more on the way.

🔥 Our take: It’s not trying to trick you into exercising. It just makes running in place feel less like prison. Pop on a headset, pick your setting, and forget you’re sweating next to a guy blasting Pitbull on speaker.

Vy doesn’t sit in a chat box pretending to help. It runs on your Mac, watches your screen, understands what you’re doing, and just does it, with your apps, in real time.

🔥 Our take: Everyone else is building agents that act like users. Vy acts like someone who already knows how your setup works and doesn’t need a tour. It’s not a prompt. It’s not a demo. It’s your computer, with better instincts.

Nika kicked off this thread after spotting ChatGPT’s latest move: adding shopping features. Not summaries, not links. Actual recommendations. And if you're already using it instead of browsing, you're not alone.

So what happens when AI takes over Google’s turf? Some folks think a deal’s coming. Others say OpenAI might build its own browser. A few are just here to watch the chaos.

Either way, the ground under search is starting to shift.