What exactly is a producer? Well, according to Nick Statt, who is senior producer on The Verge’s Decoder podcast with Nilay Patel, “the word ‘producer’ means a lot of things in a lot of different contexts.” In his case — here at The Verge and in the world of audio — it means he and coproducer Kate Cox run the show’s editorial operations and logistics. “That includes doing the majority of the scheduling and planning, selecting and booking guests, and writing scripts and packaging episodes from the start of a pitch to when it goes out to your podcast player of choice alongside The Verge’s website.”
Prior to working at The Verge, Nick was a writer and reporter for 10 years, covering a variety of different beats — mostly gaming, social media companies, and San Francisco-based startups. But after spending most of the 2010s in California, he says, “I moved back to my hometown of Rochester in western New York at the start of covid, and I’ve been remote ever since. That has meant putting a lot more time and effort into my home setup to make it a space I want to spend time in for the majority of my days.”
We asked Nick more about his setup.
That looks like a really comfortable space. Where in your house is it?
This is our second bedroom in a three-story townhome we rent here in Rochester. My fiancee is a therapist, and she thankfully has a much cozier space she rents nearby for seeing clients, which means I was able to turn this into an office and gaming room. It gets great sunlight in the morning, which my cat (and my plants) love. We live in a pretty sprawling apartment and townhouse complex right near one of Rochester’s biggest parks and away from a lot of busier areas. So it tends to be quiet and peaceful, which is also good for long work sessions and for recording audio.
Could you tell us about the desk itself?
The desk I have is a bamboo Jarvis Fully, which seemed like the best yet most affordable standing desk I could get my hands on in 2020, when everyone went remote. It’s not as large as I’d like; I might upgrade at some point in the future for some more surface area. But I’ve disassembled and reassembled it about five times now, and it’s worked flawlessly for years, so I’m quite happy with it.
It looks like Herman Miller acquired Fully at some point, and a lot of people don’t seem quite as happy with the product as they used to. It also now costs quite a bit more than what I paid for it five years ago. So if I do ever upgrade to a larger standing desk, I’ll have to shop around for some other alternatives.
And your chair?
The chair is a custom Herman Miller Embody, which I ordered at a really generous discount in 2021 from what’s known as a design-and-build company in New York City, thanks to a helpful tip from a friend. These companies effectively act like wholesale retailers of office furniture, and if you email them directly, they’ll sometimes just sell you a one-off item for cheaper than MSRP.
I’m assuming at the height of covid, authorized Herman Miller dealers — architectural and interior design firms and so on — were trying to offload a lot of unused inventory. I was thankfully able to still get the “canyon” color scheme on it, which can be a little bit harder to find (and pricier) if you buy from a consumer retailer or authorized reseller.
I’m extremely happy with it, and I don’t expect to ever have to buy another type of chair. It’s done wonders for some very persistent back pain of mine, and I highly recommend it if you sit too much for a living. I did order a headrest separately as the Embody doesn’t come with one. It’s from the company Atlas Headrest, and that’s been well worth it for longer work sessions.
Tell us about the various tech devices you’re using.
My favorite part of the setup is, of course, the keyboard. It’s a Rama Works M60-A in a Lunar New Year Edition color scheme. I had already begun dabbling in the niche mechanical keyboard community around 2019 for a related Verge project. When the pandemic hit, I needed a few extra indoor hobbies to go deeper on, and this one was right there waiting for me. I spent a lot of time researching what I wanted, and I found that Rama Works really nailed the combination of high build quality and craftsmanship while also having versatility, so I could use it for office work and gaming — though it did take getting used to the 60 percent setup, as you’re missing quite a few keys.
It cost more than I’d like to admit and took forever to arrive, but I’ve used it daily for four years now and still really enjoy it. I’ve done a few customizations, mostly installing NovelKeys Cream switches and quieter stabilizers, and I’ve swapped out the keycaps quite a few times before landing on my most recent ones. I also paired it with a matching red USB-C cable from the peripheral company Glorious.
A lot of my other gear is fairly standard. I use a 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro as my primary work computer, and I pair it with a Logitech M720 wireless mouse. I have a Shure MV7 microphone, Logitech Brio webcam, and Sony MDR-7506 monitor headphones for any audio and recording work, as we mostly record remotely using the platform Riverside, and those really cover most of the bases. I have a TP-Link Deco mesh node that I keep on the desk, which lets me hard wire in my gaming desktop and also gives me pretty stellar wireless in the upstairs of my apartment. (Our townhome has fiber internet, which is a godsend.) I also use an Anker USB-C docking station, which lets me keep a half dozen accessories plugged in at the same time, and a Belkin 3-in-1 wireless charger for my Apple devices.
As for the gaming station, my PC is an older Maingear Vybe, a prebuilt I purchased in 2021 with an Nvidia 3070 Ti and AMD Ryzen 7 5800X. I was really impressed with Maingear’s build quality and customer service, and I don’t do too much intensive PC gaming outside of older multiplayer shooters (like Destiny 2 and now Marvel Rivals), indie games, and the occasional new Game Pass release. So it’s held up well these past few years.
I use a Glorious Model O wireless mouse with it alongside the Halo Infinite-themed Xbox Elite 2 controller and a 27-inch LG QHD UltraGear monitor. I also have a HyperX Cloud wireless headset that I use exclusively for gaming. The only real hitch in the whole setup is having to manually swap the keyboard back and forth when I want to switch stations, though I’m sure there is likely an easier way to handle that.
That’s a great deskpad.
Giant mousepads, or deskpads, as the keyboard hobbyists call them, are definitely a fun way to add a lot more flair to a workstation, and I’ve collected a handful of them since getting deeper into the keyboard community.
This particular one is a Takashi Murakami collaboration with the esports organization Faze Clan. I am not really a Faze fan by any means, but I am a huge Murakami fan. So I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to add some of his art to my desk setup. This deskpad is a modified print of Murakami’s famous “Flowers.” If you’re looking for a deskpad of your own, good places to start are NovelKeys or Omnitype.
Between that, and the chair, and the computer, and the keyboard, that’s a lot of red. (Except, of course, for the rubber ducky…)
I definitely didn’t set out to have a red color scheme going on, but it did happen slowly after I got my hands on my Rama Works keyboard and just really got into the aesthetics of my setup. I found the red PC case from a secondhand seller online, and Maingear was nice enough to let me ship it in to use in my PC build. And of course, the chair and other accessories felt like they would be a nice and natural fit. It also helps that a lot of gaming-centric gear seems to utilize the color red.
The rubber duck is a toy version of the Ōtori-Sama bathhouse spirits from Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away I got as a Christmas gift last year. A good addition to any desk, in my opinion.
So — you play the guitar?
I used to play a lot more guitar and do more bedroom music production, but it’s been a little hard to keep up with these past several years. I still mess around with the Fender Jaguar I have from time to time, but it was a whole lot easier during the pandemic, which is when I bought the Pioneer DJ controller and began to teach myself some production software. Now that I work in audio professionally, I’m considering getting back into it to learn more professional-grade editing apps like Audition and Pro Tools and to practice more recording techniques.
Those are very different pieces of art you have over your desk.
My fiancee and I have collected a great deal of art over the years. I usually like to keep a lot of the sci-fi, gaming, and pop culture art in my office, including one of my favorites: Olly Moss’ Breaking Bad giclee print set, which you can see on the right side of the back wall. I love Olly Moss’ artwork, and I’ve collected quite a few of his pop culture doodle sets like this one. But the Breaking Bad one remains my favorite of the bunch.
I also have some art I’ve collected from some of my favorite artists featured in the mobile game Marvel Snap, including a Dan Hipp print featuring Doctor Doom and other villains. I have an Elden Ring print that I love framed on the right there, and then, of course, some Verge prints I’ve collected from our very talented photography and art teams over the many years I’ve worked here.
And, of course, you must introduce us to your cat.
My cat’s name is General Bean Sprout, which is not a name we chose but is indeed a name we absolutely have grown to appreciate. We call him Sprout for short. We adopted him in the fall of 2023 from an animal shelter here in the Rochester area known as Lollypop Farm, which gave him that name, as little information about his prior living situation was available. He was a terribly scared and anxious cat when we adopted him. Over the course of many months, he’s gone from hiding from the very sight of us in the room to now cuddling with us virtually any chance he can get.
He loves to say hello to me every morning by jumping up on the desk and rubbing his face into mine, and he spends most of his time during the day snoozing in his cat tree facing the window. Thankfully, he does not like to mess with any of the gear on my desk, but he’s quite fond of battling loose hair ties and yarn balls in the middle of the night.