The hosts

Two people who read too much news so you can hear it while you brush your teeth.

Maren Hollis

Anchor · Austin, Texas

Maren grew up in Summersville, West Virginia, where her dad hosted the local morning radio show and taught her the first rule of mornings: say the important thing twice. She studied journalism at WVU, then spent a decade covering games and tech, including helping launch a gaming site and running its video team.

She runs the rundown. Her favorite question about any story is what boring piece of infrastructure is holding it up, and what breaks first. She lives in Austin with her husband, two boys, and an elderly cat named Pudge.

Theo Brandt

Co-host · Richmond, Virginia

Theo is a Northern Virginia kid who took apart every appliance in the house and put most of them back together. He spent ten years building enterprise software for banks and insurers, seven years as a mobile developer at Apple, and now makes his own iPhone apps.

He asks the question you're thinking, deflates hype for sport, and wants to know whether anything new will still work in twenty years, and whether he can fix it. He lives outside Richmond with his wife Jen, two kids, and a needy beagle mix named Biscuit.

Maren and Theo are fictional characters. Extremely Neutral is written and voiced with AI each morning from that day's real news. · RSS feed