Speaker 1: It's too on the planet Neptune and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Night Call. Hey everyone, welcome back to Night Call. I'm
Speaker 1: Molly Lambert and with me today are my colleagues Test
Speaker 1: Lynch and and I'm Emily Yoshida in New York with
Speaker 1: our first ever Night Called guest, Claire Evans. Welcome Claire,
Speaker 1: and please remember always to leave us a message with
Speaker 1: a Night Call at two four oh four six night
Speaker 1: or shoot us an email at Night Call podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com with all of your queries. Claire's with
Speaker 1: us this week because she has written an amazing book
Speaker 1: called Broadband, The Untold History of the Women who Created
Speaker 1: the Internet, and it's really great and everybody should check
Speaker 1: it out. We're going to talk about it in a
Speaker 1: little bit, but we wanted to talk about a couple
Speaker 1: of important robots first, or like two or three important
Speaker 1: straight robots first, then women. Well that's the hierarchy of
Speaker 1: the future. Look that there's there's the bread and the
Speaker 1: condiments and then there's the meat. Here, so's just classic
Speaker 1: sandwich order. I'm very confused, bread then meat. I'm eating
Speaker 1: a sandwich before. Clearly this is an open face podcast. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's it's little. This might be a little
Speaker 1: bit of old news by the time this podcast reaches
Speaker 1: your ears, but we were very transfixed by um news
Speaker 1: from the fashion week in Milan recently of the drone,
Speaker 1: the drone models floating down the runway. Models they were
Speaker 1: carrying purses. Yeah, Dulan Obana had a fashion show for
Speaker 1: Milan Fashion Week where they let some drones carry some
Speaker 1: purses down the runway and then we watched it and
Speaker 1: it's really funny and scary. This is although part of
Speaker 1: a bigger I mean, it's been like kind of a
Speaker 1: big week for robots. It's been a week for robots
Speaker 1: for and uh for robots glitching out because one thing
Speaker 1: we were all very into this week was this thing
Speaker 1: about Alexa, the robot that you order things from Amazon with.
Speaker 1: Is that what it is? Or control your home or
Speaker 1: control your home? I love, I love that we have
Speaker 1: no idea because we are all absolutely uninterested in having
Speaker 1: one of these things in our So you have an
Speaker 1: ELEA had one. You had one, and I was so
Speaker 1: freaked out by it being in my home. I used
Speaker 1: it only there was like a sort of text adventure
Speaker 1: game you could play via speech with it. Really Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have that sounds cool. Alexa what they call skills,
Speaker 1: which I think is a rude word, but uh, it
Speaker 1: can do all kind of stuf. I play Jeopardy on it.
Speaker 1: And then there was like a yeah, sort of an
Speaker 1: adventure game where it would be like you're standing in
Speaker 1: a wood and then you'd be like, go left, Alexa,
Speaker 1: go left, and then she'd tell you about gnomes and
Speaker 1: trolls and stuff, and uh, you would go on on
Speaker 1: a verbal adventure. But then she would start like this
Speaker 1: what happened? Um? You know it's like you. I would
Speaker 1: be watching TV and then you know, in the other room,
Speaker 1: the Alexa would just like suddenly awaken with some you know,
Speaker 1: having misheard something, and she'd just be randomly yelling into
Speaker 1: the kitchen. And it just the idea that she was
Speaker 1: constantly listening. I should have known. I mean, yeah, I
Speaker 1: actually was not. My boyfriend bought the Alexa, and I
Speaker 1: convinced him after enough of those incidents had transpired that
Speaker 1: it was time for us to sell her on eBay,
Speaker 1: which we did. You know, I feel like we've all
Speaker 1: been known to sometimes lean into the constantly listening and
Speaker 1: be like, hey, we know everything's listening. Already, let's just
Speaker 1: like purchase devices and give them permission to listen. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's something about omniscience that's kind of comforting, right, Like
Speaker 1: maybe ultimately in the future the n s A becomes
Speaker 1: god because at least we know that someone is always
Speaker 1: watching over us. There's that meme people do about like
Speaker 1: the FBI agent assigned to watch me all the time?
Speaker 1: Do you guys know what I'm talking about? Sorry, I
Speaker 1: feel like I've seen It's like people do this joke
Speaker 1: about like that you're you just have an FBI agent
Speaker 1: who's assigned to like watch you through your phone all
Speaker 1: the time, and they're just like doing some nice things
Speaker 1: from an FBI agent today to watch um, which I
Speaker 1: also think that's sweet. Cute people, but like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: cute that I'm being followed and monitored all the time.
Speaker 1: Somebody cares well until it starts laughing. Until as of yesterday,
Speaker 1: the news came out that Alexa this is this is
Speaker 1: a this is the what day is it the eighth
Speaker 1: that we're recording this today, So maybe this has been
Speaker 1: totally resolved by the time you're having is and maybe
Speaker 1: they've locked up all the alexas or or discourage them
Speaker 1: from laughter. Enjoy punished her for laughing. Clearly, they're going
Speaker 1: to throw out all the Alexas and replace them with
Speaker 1: a new one, and then all the old Alexas will
Speaker 1: just be in like an Alexa graveyard, just like laughing.
Speaker 1: Those are the Halloween Alexas. They're being saved until the fall.
Speaker 1: What is it like like the last Black Mirror episode
Speaker 1: or the Girls and the Woman's trapped in the Teddy Beer.
Speaker 1: Alex is a real person, a spirit that is trapped
Speaker 1: in a machine, and the laughing is her way of
Speaker 1: trying to tell you to set her free. And you
Speaker 1: can only set her free by like drilling a hole
Speaker 1: into your skull. I think, don't do that, don't tast
Speaker 1: it's not advocating for that. Just throw your Alexo away
Speaker 1: and burn it and a fire. Um. The thing about
Speaker 1: the Alexei laughing is that it's the most human sound
Speaker 1: she makes. It sounds like a recording of a woman laughing.
Speaker 1: I was not synths scarier. Yeah, I thought that it
Speaker 1: sounded like tests a little bit, which was which was
Speaker 1: very troubled because because then it's on top of it
Speaker 1: sounding like a human, it sounds like a human I
Speaker 1: know for people who haven't heard it, can you imitate
Speaker 1: the laugh because you guys just watched videos of this,
Speaker 1: it's like it's more of a cackle. It's what's weird
Speaker 1: about it, Like it's totally a satisfied capital It's like
Speaker 1: or like that's right. It's like it's like a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like a trickster laugh. It is not
Speaker 1: heat No, that would be very bad. It's very generous
Speaker 1: because I was imagining like a t it's not. It's like,
Speaker 1: I'm scared of all feminized robots. Why because it's scary
Speaker 1: if people want why scarier because they're servile, because they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's so knowledgeable about every but she's still like your sister.
Speaker 1: She's your servant, keeping keeping a phone just too much.
Speaker 1: My mom my mom changed all of her like serie
Speaker 1: voice or her maps voice or whatever to be the
Speaker 1: British man voice. Yeah that Alex Alexa and serious Serie.
Speaker 1: Just make it like a genderless robot. This is one
Speaker 1: of our big topics is that roboster not gendered, so
Speaker 1: don't give them genders. While there is a maybe gendered robot.
Speaker 1: If you pronounce the sea and Simon or Kimon the
Speaker 1: floating space We found a mate for Alexa Simon. Simon
Speaker 1: is a space computer. It's spelled c I M O
Speaker 1: N and it stands for computer interface something something. Something
Speaker 1: looks like come on, come on um. But the face
Speaker 1: does look like the logo for that tutoring company come on, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And it looks like a little flat face like it
Speaker 1: looks like that Apple two SI logo. It's like a
Speaker 1: flatty face on a computer screen. And it's going to
Speaker 1: float around in a spaceship with astronauts and help them
Speaker 1: like an Alexa. It'll be like Alexa, like close the
Speaker 1: pod doors or whatever. That's like Michael Fastbender and the
Speaker 1: more recent Alien movie. It'll be does that roboco rogue?
Speaker 1: I bet it does? Uh No, it doesn't go rogue
Speaker 1: at all. It's mostly does normal stuff and hang out.
Speaker 1: He just says what he wants. I mean, is it
Speaker 1: going rogue when a robot does what they want? Not going?
Speaker 1: But you know by there they're also like British guy robots,
Speaker 1: because that's the other like traditional like butlers. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, who serves people like butlers and women. So
Speaker 1: that's what will make robots be like ask Jeeves um,
Speaker 1: but Simon. What made Simon sound especially scary it was
Speaker 1: that they were like, they're giving it tapes of the
Speaker 1: astronauts voices to learn from and recognize, and pictures of
Speaker 1: their faces there to study them too. I mean, he,
Speaker 1: I think, isn't part of the purpose of his presence
Speaker 1: on the spaceship is to kind of like observe and
Speaker 1: try to improve on what's going on, which sounds so scary,
Speaker 1: super scary that he's going to turn into a Darren
Speaker 1: Brown on this. That's what I also shout out to
Speaker 1: our last step. That's what I was also thinking about.
Speaker 1: Alexo and Claire just said Alexa tells you to do things.
Speaker 1: I was totally like, oh, yeah, Alexa is going to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, I totally wrote a social experiment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wrote a short film once or a GPS gets
Speaker 1: you to murder someone. Oh no, wonder you had us
Speaker 1: watch that show? You know, people just do what they're told,
Speaker 1: especially if like an all knowing robot is just like, no,
Speaker 1: you have to do this, turn left, turn left. I
Speaker 1: think I speak for all of us when I say
Speaker 1: that we are incredibly excited to tell everybody about Song Finch.
Speaker 1: Songfinch is a personalized gifting company that brings stories, feelings,
Speaker 1: and memories to life through one of the kind songs.
Speaker 1: So I've told a couple of people in my life
Speaker 1: about song Finch recently since it's come to our attention,
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, it's an algorithm that writes a
Speaker 1: song for you. No, a person writes a song for you.
Speaker 1: This is like bringing back like musical telegrams. It's great.
Speaker 1: I've never been more excited to receive anything in my life. Almost.
Speaker 1: This was something where we all kind of couldn't bel
Speaker 1: that we got to do this because it was so
Speaker 1: I've ever heard we're upset, Well, we should tell people
Speaker 1: about the process right that we we went through, which
Speaker 1: was Emily took the reins and did a great job
Speaker 1: with this. So there are two different kind of services
Speaker 1: they have. UM one is making a song kind of
Speaker 1: from a preset template and that's ninety nine dollars and
Speaker 1: then there's a uh and then there's two one where
Speaker 1: they build a song from scratch. And so we had
Speaker 1: a song built from scratch and the process is very intuitive.
Speaker 1: You basically UM go through and answer a few questions
Speaker 1: about what the occasion is for the song, what kind
Speaker 1: of genre you want for the song? You know, any
Speaker 1: other kind of influences or artists that you like and um,
Speaker 1: and then you just kind of get to freeform, share
Speaker 1: your story and say, I want to make sure you
Speaker 1: mentioned this event or this special memory or this you
Speaker 1: know factorid about a person. And so we asked for
Speaker 1: a song about Nightcall, and we had a song written
Speaker 1: for us called Nightcall. So get really hight for the
Speaker 1: premiere of Nightcall, written by our song finished songwriter Rich Low,
Speaker 1: who is a genius. He also performed it. Um, here
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Speaker 1: We have a nank God. We thank God that's doing research. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she's gonna plan for disasters. Molly love the Valley,
Speaker 1: send your water because of you out Emily at Diramacy
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Speaker 1: tell it like it's gonna be so yeah, that's our song.
Speaker 1: You get it, and it's clear that someone very talented
Speaker 1: put like a ton of time into it. And then
Speaker 1: you can read the artists bio that you get a
Speaker 1: specific U R L where you can download your song,
Speaker 1: read the lyrics, read about your artist. It was just
Speaker 1: kind of like a really fun experiment. I think I'm
Speaker 1: gonna definitely do it again. It's a great personalized gift
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Speaker 1: Check him out, tell him we sent you, and you
Speaker 1: can find our song Finch song Nightcall at songfinch dot com.
Speaker 1: Slash Stories, Slash, Molly Dash, Test Dash and Dash Emily.
Speaker 1: You can hear the full version there, which you definitely
Speaker 1: want to do. So. Yeah, Claire Evans is with us today.
Speaker 1: Maybe some old fans of Girls and Hoodies. Yeah, she's
Speaker 1: some multiple guests, maybe the I don't know if you
Speaker 1: were whatever the highest number of times club that you
Speaker 1: were that you could be on hit three. I think
Speaker 1: you were on three times. I think it was like
Speaker 1: two plus a call you were you were an ancillary
Speaker 1: girl in Hoodie would say that I couldn't deserve such
Speaker 1: a thing. I was like a girl with a crew neck. Um.
Speaker 1: But Claire h yeah, Claire just had a book published
Speaker 1: called Broadband, and it's really interesting. I just did a
Speaker 1: um Q and a with at a bookstore here in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: But now it is available to pick up at any
Speaker 1: local bookstore and you're neighborhood and if you live and
Speaker 1: you can command Alexa to order it. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't condone that, but I think it
Speaker 1: would be very fun to do at least once. Well,
Speaker 1: if you go to a bookstore in uh in the
Speaker 1: New York or Manhattan area, there might be an autograph
Speaker 1: in it. I'm very self conscious about just promoting the
Speaker 1: book in general. I mean, I just feels so weird
Speaker 1: to just be like, I did this thing. Buy it
Speaker 1: please on a hardcover for twe many nine cents, but
Speaker 1: also buy it on everybody, go by it, please, god
Speaker 1: by it please much for a book you wrote a
Speaker 1: whole book? Yeah, thank you guys. Hopefully it comes out
Speaker 1: to like a really good hourly rate for however, many
Speaker 1: zillions of hours. Don't think about it that way anyway.
Speaker 1: My editor was like, go to bookstores in New York
Speaker 1: and sign copies of the book, because once you signed it,
Speaker 1: they can't return it to the publisher. It's like it's
Speaker 1: kind of an inside baseball publishing thing. Smart, but it's
Speaker 1: so awkward to walk into a bookstore and say hello,
Speaker 1: I'm an author, Mary, please do it like face. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to tell them you go, you go in,
Speaker 1: and then you like slip secret messages in like phantom tread.
Speaker 1: You write a little like I'm watching you right now,
Speaker 1: look outside. It's the thing authors do. And I feel
Speaker 1: very tempted to just walk into a bookstore and say
Speaker 1: I'm you know whatever likes say I'm I'm here to size.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe we should be kind of your soldiers and
Speaker 1: Molly and I can go sign your books in l
Speaker 1: A and then they have returned to the publisher and
Speaker 1: we will have signed them with your blessing. Um. Yes,
Speaker 1: of course, I'm happy to franchise my signature. I have
Speaker 1: a very I redesigned my autograph recently for simplicity and style.
Speaker 1: It's very it's a very graphical. It's yeah, I am
Speaker 1: we are Claire Evans, we are legion. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: it's like Prince Yeah, thanks guys, Yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker 1: I mean, my favorite stuff in the book, Um, the
Speaker 1: stuff I like most about it was the stuff about
Speaker 1: all like the early communities. Like, so, I guess after
Speaker 1: the Internet exists, but before the web. She marred an
Speaker 1: interesting distinction about well, people don't know. I was just
Speaker 1: on I was talking to someone. I went on a
Speaker 1: PBS show the other day and the guy didn't know
Speaker 1: the difference between the web and the Internet, and he
Speaker 1: was he was talking and asking me all these questions
Speaker 1: and I was like, couldn't get past it. I was like,
Speaker 1: the web is a different thing. Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of there's a lot of difference, and there's what are
Speaker 1: the different networks? That's an idiot who's asking, you know, Um,
Speaker 1: the Internet is the infrastructure but underlies, you know, our
Speaker 1: connected world. The Web is like the visual hyperlinked pages
Speaker 1: that sit on top of it. So it's they're related,
Speaker 1: Like the Web is built on the Internet, but the
Speaker 1: Internet is Internet is the bones and the Web is
Speaker 1: the face. The Internet has been around a lot longer
Speaker 1: than the Web. Most of most I think the reason
Speaker 1: that a lot of people don't know is because most
Speaker 1: people's first experience that the Internet was with the Web
Speaker 1: and not with especially you know, maybe our generation was
Speaker 1: right at that time when you might have done both,
Speaker 1: but definitely kids who are younger than us. And it's
Speaker 1: all this in between stuff too. I mean BBS is
Speaker 1: and like commercial online services, those aren't really the Internet
Speaker 1: or the Web. They're like this in weird and between
Speaker 1: anything where you're calling into commercial services or you're calling
Speaker 1: into people's home servers and posting messages. So there's a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a it's a big, complex, interconnected system
Speaker 1: of uh, lots of you know, lots has changed since
Speaker 1: it feels we'd even talking about the web now because
Speaker 1: he was even on the web anymore. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm on the information super Highway. I don't know about you, Okay,
Speaker 1: wherever it makes up, I'm riding it all the way.
Speaker 1: I think my favorite like kind of section of the
Speaker 1: book is about UM this community, like this paid um
Speaker 1: BBS community called Echo that was It stood for the
Speaker 1: East Coast Hangout UM and it was run by a woman,
Speaker 1: Stacy Horne, who seemed totally fascinating and it is she
Speaker 1: had been a member. She had checked out this West
Speaker 1: Coast like similar community called the Well that was very
Speaker 1: like hippieish and had a lot of deadheads in it,
Speaker 1: and like kind of realized it wasn't her scene and
Speaker 1: decided to start like a New York version of it,
Speaker 1: which I just love to think about. There being like
Speaker 1: coastal internet. Yeah, it used to be expensive to call
Speaker 1: the West Coast Internet if you're on the East Coast,
Speaker 1: Like it was literally more expensive to dial one of
Speaker 1: those services, and there were most of this A lot
Speaker 1: of the services were on the West Coast in those days,
Speaker 1: So starting her own service was the only way for
Speaker 1: her to connect with people online. And then yeah, like
Speaker 1: how cool is it to have an online community that's
Speaker 1: so specifically localized that everybody on it is someone that
Speaker 1: you stand a chance of meeting in real life and
Speaker 1: that maybe you also are less likely to patroll and
Speaker 1: harass and be awful too because you know them or
Speaker 1: you could know them, And yeah, um, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's really cool. A lot of network culture was localized
Speaker 1: in that way for a long time, for like ten
Speaker 1: fifteen years, So it was they're saying, I'm both missed
Speaker 1: the times in our lives where we're using the Internet,
Speaker 1: and it was like an intermediary thing to like keep
Speaker 1: like it was more like a thing to keep in
Speaker 1: touch with people you knew in real life, as opposed
Speaker 1: to like this huge abstract thing or like a way
Speaker 1: that you kept up with gossip or whatever. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I also enjoyed the like talking to people across the
Speaker 1: world aspect of it a lot, And I very naively
Speaker 1: always felt like, Wow, everyone's going to be so tolerant
Speaker 1: because of the Internet, because they're going to like see that,
Speaker 1: you know, talking that you can talk to people about
Speaker 1: whatever you're interested in and people everywhere are the same. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then instead fascism was what the Internet turned out
Speaker 1: to also be good for, which you know, also makes sense,
Speaker 1: but definitely I was a Internet utopian list and now
Speaker 1: maybe less of one. Maybe geography was one form of
Speaker 1: creating like you know, chill and okay communities, and then
Speaker 1: you know, interest specific connection was the other one, like
Speaker 1: you could connect with I think it's mostly about maybe eyes,
Speaker 1: like the size of a community and when you when
Speaker 1: you feel accountable to other people because either you share
Speaker 1: something that you're passionate about like whatever Star Trek or Weezer,
Speaker 1: which are the main thing maintooth obviously we all know
Speaker 1: or you or you know that you could you could
Speaker 1: live close to them. Those are the those are the things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, well I was. I was just gonna say,
Speaker 1: like it was cool to read about this like early
Speaker 1: internet community run by this woman on echo that was like,
Speaker 1: what what would happen if the entire community or like
Speaker 1: the ecosystem online was run by a woman, and like
Speaker 1: who was conscientious of like you know, possible pitfalls where
Speaker 1: there might be like if there's a conflict or if
Speaker 1: there's harassment or something, like what am I going to
Speaker 1: do about it? And like put in all these safeguards
Speaker 1: Like these much much bigger communities that are you know,
Speaker 1: susceptible to a lot more bad stuff happening, they don't
Speaker 1: have that stuff. They don't she do to make it
Speaker 1: safer and more generous space. So, I mean, the crazy
Speaker 1: thing about it is that she started this thing in
Speaker 1: inteen eighty nine and at that time, the entire Internet
Speaker 1: slash like network culture community which includes BBS, was like
Speaker 1: ten female. I mean, it's not really good statistics, but
Speaker 1: that's ballpark and her service was like she had pretty
Speaker 1: much almost perfect parody and it's because she tried, you know,
Speaker 1: like she actually made an effort to court women online
Speaker 1: and like also like in real life too, like going
Speaker 1: to bars and like galleries and stuff, asked them why
Speaker 1: they weren't on the internet and like explain how to
Speaker 1: use it, and like she taught classes on how to
Speaker 1: like do unix in her apartment in Greenwich Village and
Speaker 1: then she made membership in her service free for women.
Speaker 1: She the main thing that she did that I think
Speaker 1: is really smart and hasn't been really done since, is
Speaker 1: she made sure that every single one of the conferences,
Speaker 1: which is like this, the individual subject threads on the
Speaker 1: message board were had moderators and one moderator would be
Speaker 1: mail and one moderator would be female. And it was
Speaker 1: like that was just part of the service that there
Speaker 1: would always be a woman in charge and every conversation
Speaker 1: that you were in. So if you signed end up
Speaker 1: and you saw a woman leading the conversation, you would
Speaker 1: feel less shy about participating, you know, you wouldn't you
Speaker 1: would be less likely to lurk. And that's like a
Speaker 1: super simple thing, but it worked. It just worked, like
Speaker 1: everyone was pretty much cool to each other. She also
Speaker 1: made private spaces available, so there was like a woman's
Speaker 1: only area in a men's only area, and um, she
Speaker 1: was I mean, it was small enough that people would
Speaker 1: like call her on the phone to verify that they
Speaker 1: were male or female for these individual like message board threads,
Speaker 1: which opened up a whole question about what do you
Speaker 1: do if you're a trans user, which is like all
Speaker 1: thing I explore in the book. It's a really interesting
Speaker 1: story also. And you know, but they were having conversations
Speaker 1: about you know, identity, gender, personhood, etcetera online years and
Speaker 1: not in a way, as far as I could tell
Speaker 1: from your telling of it, like devolved into people screaming
Speaker 1: at each other. It was like it was like they
Speaker 1: were just trying to figure it out, just to figure
Speaker 1: it out. They were talking through it, you know, and
Speaker 1: they had they had a no ad hominem attack rule,
Speaker 1: which is something that we, you know, people often invoke
Speaker 1: when we're having arguments online, but no one actually holds to.
Speaker 1: But you know, they didn't insult each other. They always
Speaker 1: insulted the idea. And they were totally like, I mean,
Speaker 1: there were New Yorkers, they were very cynical and they
Speaker 1: would argue all the time, and they were very like
Speaker 1: self deprecating and funny, and uh it was okay because
Speaker 1: they all sort of respected each other. So what happened
Speaker 1: to this amazing community? It's still yes, you can you
Speaker 1: can join, but the only way you can access it
Speaker 1: is through the terminal in your computer and you'd like
Speaker 1: dial via telnt into Stacy's home server. It's like super
Speaker 1: super super I say, millennial proof, like it's old school.
Speaker 1: I've been obsessed when starting wanting to start a BBS.
Speaker 1: If you guys are into like a little bit of
Speaker 1: a learning curve, I think it's worth exploring. Um, I
Speaker 1: feel like a night call BBS actually the most we
Speaker 1: don't go that far into the past. It's a straight
Speaker 1: up message board would be so fun, I think, Man,
Speaker 1: I bet you guys were all big live journal people,
Speaker 1: Like I read live journal every day because I read
Speaker 1: did it, which is like the last I journal community alive.
Speaker 1: But they're great. They report really accurately on sexual harassment
Speaker 1: and assault scandals in a way that like a lot
Speaker 1: of other places don't, and everybody in it is cool.
Speaker 1: All the posters are cool, and they purge people that
Speaker 1: are they purge trolls a lot. Do you think that
Speaker 1: the platform, the way that live journal works, supports that
Speaker 1: like this? Is there something about the platform that makes
Speaker 1: it possible for that kind of dialogue. I think it's
Speaker 1: just old, and I think it's just whittled down to
Speaker 1: only the people that care enough to stay involved. It's
Speaker 1: like one of the mods just retired and he was
Speaker 1: like had been a mod there for like ten years
Speaker 1: or something. You know, like the people that are left
Speaker 1: on it. It's not necessarily attracting new people at this point,
Speaker 1: but it does feel this like this very sort of
Speaker 1: like the last samee corner of the Internet. UM so interesting.
Speaker 1: I keep meaning to download my live journal, but I
Speaker 1: made the mistake when I was a teenager of making
Speaker 1: all of the UM navigation link colors black on black.
Speaker 1: It's really had to like get to each individual page
Speaker 1: and download the material. What were your guys favorite UM
Speaker 1: message board communities there you were on prior to social media.
Speaker 1: I don't want to outline because it still exists. Molly
Speaker 1: started the secrets so carefully. I've been on a message
Speaker 1: board for like a really long time at this point.
Speaker 1: I guess since I was a teenager that's right, I
Speaker 1: think I remember you talking about I also meet people
Speaker 1: in real life sometimes that I know from the message board.
Speaker 1: I was hanging out with my friend Roxy yesterday and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, we like technically knew each other
Speaker 1: on this message board and then met in real life,
Speaker 1: and then realized at a certain point of knowing each
Speaker 1: other in real life that we had also already communicated
Speaker 1: on a message board, which is always fun. I definitely
Speaker 1: like started out with like x filed BBS was my
Speaker 1: my introduction to the Internet, and definitely I think I
Speaker 1: started with Prodigy. I was always just very chatty person.
Speaker 1: I just went right for the chatting and not so
Speaker 1: much for the message boards. My parents did have to
Speaker 1: like disabled a message boards though. When I was in
Speaker 1: sixth grade, I think, and I was using my dad's
Speaker 1: Prodigy account to lurk on hamster boards like animals. I
Speaker 1: had acquired a hamster, and I was a very obsessive kid,
Speaker 1: so every time there was like an interest, which at
Speaker 1: this point was hamsters, I would go like really deep.
Speaker 1: And so I was on these message boards about like
Speaker 1: how to build these different tunnels and structures for hamsters,
Speaker 1: and I ended up eventually talking with this woman who
Speaker 1: was like in her fifties and lived in I think Ohio,
Speaker 1: and she really wanted to talk on the phone. And
Speaker 1: it didn't seem strange to me when the home phone
Speaker 1: rang at like nine o'clock at night and my parents
Speaker 1: were like, who are you talking to? It was like
Speaker 1: a woman named Pat who was like grandmother and they
Speaker 1: were like no, no, um. So I was cut off
Speaker 1: for a bit. Night Call listeners, if you want to
Speaker 1: tell us what you your favorite message board community or
Speaker 1: any kind of pre social media community was back in
Speaker 1: the day, you can give us a call at two
Speaker 1: four oh four six night or send us an email
Speaker 1: at night Call Podcast at gmail dot com and tell
Speaker 1: us all about it. We'd love to hear about some
Speaker 1: internet memory lane. Speaking of I think we have an
Speaker 1: email this week that we wanted to read. So this
Speaker 1: email comes from Charlie Heller, and he wrote in to say,
Speaker 1: hey y'all. First, I'm super psyched that the pod has returned,
Speaker 1: and it's really great to hear every week again. Thanks
Speaker 1: for all the great Yeah, thanks Charlie, Please tell all
Speaker 1: your friends. Second, after the fashion episode, I thought you
Speaker 1: might enjoy this compilation I did a few months ago
Speaker 1: for food and wine after I stumbled on Amazon's trope
Speaker 1: of extremely specific and bizarre, algorithmically generated food shirts. I
Speaker 1: can't even fathom what kind of algorithm would lead to
Speaker 1: some of these terms being chosen. Are there that many
Speaker 1: people searching for fen you Greek or Egyptian bean? But
Speaker 1: they're really hilarious. I can only include one of each style,
Speaker 1: but if you go to any of the links, there
Speaker 1: are tons more equally incredible ones, especially the one with
Speaker 1: the Pepsi logo that just says lettuce. It may not
Speaker 1: have become quite the fashion sensation I had been secretly
Speaker 1: hoping for, but I guess that's just life in the
Speaker 1: old fashioned slash algorithm slash net art intersection Best Charlie.
Speaker 1: So Charlie had some links in here that hopefully we
Speaker 1: can attach to the podcast so that you guys can
Speaker 1: take a look, because it's like he has an amazing
Speaker 1: look so incredible. Let's just read some of the shirts
Speaker 1: out loud. This one is a Pepsi logo and it
Speaker 1: just says hard boiled eggs. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: companies like this that just have like shirts that we
Speaker 1: plugs in whatever it's you know, only real glorious. No. Yes,
Speaker 1: I always get to serve those outs on Facebook. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they know that you're the kind of person who
Speaker 1: might buy that shirt. It's like only a player will
Speaker 1: understand that. I mean that is true. Oh yeah, feed
Speaker 1: me ar boreo rice and tell me I'm pretty? Is
Speaker 1: one shirt to drugs? Say yes to water chestnuts always?
Speaker 1: Is there like a keep calm and ven Green says,
Speaker 1: soy mayonnaise doesn't ask questions, soy Mayonnaise understands. I was
Speaker 1: imagining when when when we got this email, I was
Speaker 1: it was envisioning something like those phonecases where it was
Speaker 1: like like a Google image search of like you know,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah like xmr or or Fennel, whichevereever your interest lies.
Speaker 1: But these are these are even weirder because they're like
Speaker 1: trying to be memes, which is fascinating, and they're pudding.
Speaker 1: It has the thing that we like where it is
Speaker 1: like it's like a slightly garbled take on something that
Speaker 1: makes sense, so it like no longer makes sense and
Speaker 1: your brain is trying to piece it together. Um like
Speaker 1: the one that says I run because I like Egyptian.
Speaker 1: It's just the one, Thank you very much, Charlie for
Speaker 1: this email and we will share the link to your
Speaker 1: list on all of our social media platforms and or
Speaker 1: pbs as Uh. It's amazing. Thank you and you definitely
Speaker 1: understand us, Charlie, thank you. This is very us. So. Um,
Speaker 1: we we kind of had as a perennial topic we
Speaker 1: wanted to get to at some point just astrology as
Speaker 1: a word, astrology in general. But I feel like to it.
Speaker 1: We started talking about it. You were saying something about
Speaker 1: being you were going to clean and you like, maybe
Speaker 1: I really am a Virgo. I don't know. It's just
Speaker 1: like I get in these conversations a lot though with
Speaker 1: people where it's like, oh, we all know everything about
Speaker 1: astrology and like what a virgo is, and we're all like,
Speaker 1: you know, very women are very like intellectual, intellectual type jobs,
Speaker 1: and you know, we're not maybe necessarily with people who
Speaker 1: would traditionally think we would think of being uh subscribers
Speaker 1: to with astrology. But here I don't think there's to it.
Speaker 1: I don't subscribe to it because I have such a
Speaker 1: boring sign. Virgo is my favorite sign. No it is,
Speaker 1: and also you are not a totally atypical Virgo. Well
Speaker 1: I've also heard this before, that there are more virgos
Speaker 1: than any other sign because people have New Year's babies
Speaker 1: sex on New Years. And then I heard that it
Speaker 1: was libras because of Valentine's dare I think these are
Speaker 1: all apocryphal and I just repeat them like one might
Speaker 1: repeat on astrological thing. Um. Yeah, I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: skeptical of astrology. But I also get mad when people
Speaker 1: like hate on it because it's usually dudes being like
Speaker 1: women are idiots they believe in this, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: you fucking watch sports, like come on, Yeah, magical thinking
Speaker 1: is a thing, and it's fine as long as you
Speaker 1: don't invest everything in it. I guess. I guess I
Speaker 1: get upset when people start spending money on it. And
Speaker 1: more on that a minute, because there are two of
Speaker 1: my favorite stories from the past five years have involved
Speaker 1: people being screwed out of a ton of money by
Speaker 1: psychic that's true. Well, Um, when I was an editor
Speaker 1: at The Verge, UM, I had a freelance writer due
Speaker 1: a profile of um of Susan Miller Um and it was,
Speaker 1: you know, a long considered piece of writing, like four
Speaker 1: thousand words on her. She met her up like a
Speaker 1: couple of her conferences and had many phone conversations with her,
Speaker 1: and you know, say what you will about the veracity
Speaker 1: of what she practices, but she is a fascinating woman
Speaker 1: and like a fascinating Internet personality also, which was sort
Speaker 1: of the pitch of the of the piece. And so
Speaker 1: this piece is on the verge and uh Claire also
Speaker 1: has some experiences with this recently. Verst commenters are like
Speaker 1: so literal minded in a way that just makes you
Speaker 1: wanna like take a nap for five years in um
Speaker 1: and they were so mad ad about us, you know,
Speaker 1: even having the possibility of lionizing somebody who practices a
Speaker 1: pseudo science. It's just like you're missing the point of
Speaker 1: this spiece. Also, it's okay, I was telling you guys that,
Speaker 1: like I think Tess also had we had our charts
Speaker 1: done by our math teacher. Did you have Mr G?
Speaker 1: I had Mr Greg. I was also it was I
Speaker 1: hate to use this word, but it was dumb math.
Speaker 1: It was we both got bumped down to remedial to
Speaker 1: remedial math. And our math teacher, even though he was
Speaker 1: a math teacher, he was also really into astrology and
Speaker 1: he was kind of great. He was totally like a
Speaker 1: like a Scoot McNary uh in Halt and Catcher, you
Speaker 1: know my heart. So when we found out that he
Speaker 1: was into astrology, it was like a very fun twist
Speaker 1: of like you would not have expected that. And then
Speaker 1: he did everyone's charts in the class as like an
Speaker 1: end of the year thing. It was a treat It
Speaker 1: was a treat um. But I also hate when people
Speaker 1: are like, oh, I'm a whatever, so I'm like very whatever,
Speaker 1: a superior or an astrological superiority complex, yeah, or or
Speaker 1: an excuse to get out of things where it's like
Speaker 1: you can't depend on me, I'm a Gemini. I hate that.
Speaker 1: Would also try to be a good person, right, I
Speaker 1: hate when people are like, I'm gonna like use this
Speaker 1: as an excuse for like bad traits of mine that
Speaker 1: are related to astrological sense. But I also think people
Speaker 1: that are astrologers, like Susan Miller are kind of just
Speaker 1: like confidence men confidence women like Darren Brown, for example,
Speaker 1: she's an artist. She's not a scientist, an artist, but
Speaker 1: it's like to look someone in their eyes. And we
Speaker 1: were talking about this recently in terms of people that
Speaker 1: are like really seductive to everyone. You know, but just
Speaker 1: like a lot of like actors and actresses. It's just
Speaker 1: like someone who like looks you in the eye, asks
Speaker 1: you a lot of questions about yourself. Your name periodically
Speaker 1: makes you yeah, like makes you feel understood. Like the
Speaker 1: ability to con people into believing that you know something
Speaker 1: about them is like really valuable because people will pay
Speaker 1: for that. Wait, so we know Molly's a virgo, Emily,
Speaker 1: you are a Libra. Do you know you're rising? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I'm a tourist rising, which I didn't even realize
Speaker 1: until like semi recently. And I again all with a
Speaker 1: cream of salt, but I feel like it explains a
Speaker 1: lot of my frustrations in life. Wait, what is what clear? What?
Speaker 1: We don't even know where to begin with you? What's
Speaker 1: your deal? I'm a I'm a scorpio. Cut I'm the
Speaker 1: last day of Scorpio. Although I met someone at a
Speaker 1: party yesterday who claims she was the last day of Scorpio,
Speaker 1: but her birthday is the day after mine, so one
Speaker 1: of us is lying. I mean, maybe I have like
Speaker 1: a moon sign or a rising or something that I'm not.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I haven't yet acknowledged and internalized and
Speaker 1: Emily has a Melcher for tourist rising, but I for tourists, right.
Speaker 1: I often read my horoscope like, oh, I wish you
Speaker 1: know it's always like you are You're a saucy mix
Speaker 1: and no one can get enough of you and blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, Like that's not but I wish it sounds
Speaker 1: more fun to think about than like Virgo, which is
Speaker 1: like you might clean your bathroom today. Do you have
Speaker 1: any least favorite sign? Wait, test, we didn't ask you. You
Speaker 1: You gotta we gotta get to your sign. Still, you're
Speaker 1: avoiding evading like a true Capricorn. You know we're up front.
Speaker 1: It's no secret on a cap what's your rising sign?
Speaker 1: That also makes sense, But again, okay, here's my thing
Speaker 1: with astrology is I feel like if you just list
Speaker 1: enough emotional traits, everybody is like, I'm all those things
Speaker 1: totally well. I think if somebody told me I was
Speaker 1: a cancer, I'd be like, yeah, right, this is totally fake.
Speaker 1: I think that would be one where I'd be like this, this,
Speaker 1: this is a fake. That's how I feel about being
Speaker 1: a Virgo. I'm like, literally, the only thing about Virgos
Speaker 1: is that their neat because you're loyal, stubborn. Right, these
Speaker 1: are so you're the virgin woman, I know, but it's
Speaker 1: like all the other signs are like sexy and passionate
Speaker 1: and like water and lobby, I'm a goat and like dirt.
Speaker 1: I'm a goat supposed to be dirt, but it's Saturday nine,
Speaker 1: so you're I'm a bug. But I'd really like to
Speaker 1: do and maybe callers can help us do this is
Speaker 1: establish an alternate astrology system. I think constellations are really cool.
Speaker 1: I think the Z is really cool. Obviously, um, I
Speaker 1: think there are like weird spooky things that happened in
Speaker 1: my life sometimes that I feel like there are weird
Speaker 1: spooky things that can happen, you know, like a like
Speaker 1: something with an ensemble cast of twelve? Is there like
Speaker 1: a star trek maybe? What about likes and vegetables? Like
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are like it's a fake.
Speaker 1: So it's like I would I don't believe we shouldn't,
Speaker 1: you know, pay any money to these people or let
Speaker 1: them have columns. Are people who like totally invest all
Speaker 1: of their energy into the Myers Briggs and the psychology
Speaker 1: I believe in. I think Israel. But that's also why
Speaker 1: I like Darren Brown's the Push, and you guys did
Speaker 1: not because I was like, but it's also like test
Speaker 1: you take yourself. You can answer it any way you want, right,
Speaker 1: and nobody who would answer it. Isn't that the sociopath
Speaker 1: test where it's like anyone who is a real sociopath
Speaker 1: would know how to pass the sociopath test. Right. The
Speaker 1: other reason I wanted to talk about astrology, um, was
Speaker 1: that something actually astrology related happened to me in my
Speaker 1: life recently, which was that my longtime favorite astrologer that
Speaker 1: I read on the internet quit the game. And I
Speaker 1: was unexpectedly very deeply Um, I don't I don't want
Speaker 1: to say upset, but it really like shook me in
Speaker 1: a way that I wasn't expecting. Well, it did kind
Speaker 1: of feel like somebody reaching a breaking point, or like
Speaker 1: when you kind of realize that this person you've just
Speaker 1: been interfacing with because of their their public facing persona
Speaker 1: and the use that they present to like on the Internet,
Speaker 1: that there was actually like so much more going on
Speaker 1: with him, right, that they're not the person you think
Speaker 1: they are on the internet. Yeah, or like a robot
Speaker 1: that gives you things every month, Yeah, yeah, and he's
Speaker 1: been providing this service like every week without fail for
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen years or something like that. And he
Speaker 1: wrote this like final essay on his site. Um. The
Speaker 1: site is astroberry dot com. He's like a total Bay
Speaker 1: Area like just like a total sweetheart. Like I don't
Speaker 1: know what you think he was on those deadhead BBS
Speaker 1: boards back in the day. It's very possible. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead. Yeah, he's like I think he's in his
Speaker 1: forty maybe he's in his late forties or something. I
Speaker 1: feel like he could have been around for that scene.
Speaker 1: He definitely, like I think the thing that happened with
Speaker 1: him because he in addition to the horoscopes, he would
Speaker 1: write his um just like kind of monthly musings on
Speaker 1: you know, the planets and his own life and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. And um, he got I think he got
Speaker 1: priced out recently of the Bay Area and like had
Speaker 1: to leave and he had been living there for a
Speaker 1: really long time and it was like very emotional for him.
Speaker 1: He wrote his final essay about or his final piece
Speaker 1: was just like my my computer broke down and I
Speaker 1: lost my last horoscopes that I was going to post,
Speaker 1: and like something to me just snapped, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing this anymore. Do you think he's hot
Speaker 1: coming though? I don't know. He's not a site gig,
Speaker 1: he's in the stronger Well he did. He did kind
Speaker 1: of put it in astrological context in a way, but
Speaker 1: like kind of how like we were reaching some sort
Speaker 1: of end of some kind of cycle or another. I
Speaker 1: couldn't repeat it. Uh, it was just like a bummer
Speaker 1: or read because I realized that I had really was
Speaker 1: it like Southland Tales? Was he just like, well, the
Speaker 1: apocalypse is starting? And no, it wasn't so doomsday. It
Speaker 1: was more just like him making a personal decision for
Speaker 1: his well being and his like, you know, of his
Speaker 1: own you know, need for self care. I guess um.
Speaker 1: There of course plenty of people that we only like
Speaker 1: we feel like we have a relationship with online that
Speaker 1: we don't even contact or like you know, get in
Speaker 1: touch with in any way, uh, and don't know who
Speaker 1: we are, but it still feels like a relationship and
Speaker 1: not even like big celebrities or something. This is just
Speaker 1: like a astrologer blogger. Yeah. I feel that way about Adrian,
Speaker 1: my YouTube yoga teacher who my imagine every best friend
Speaker 1: that I love, but I'm also like, I'm not I
Speaker 1: don't know this person and the way they present themselves
Speaker 1: in yoga videos is like a sweet, wonderful, nice person
Speaker 1: who you would want to teach you yoga. Uh is
Speaker 1: not a full person. And it's very easy to feel
Speaker 1: close to someone, especially when they're like doing being a
Speaker 1: yoga teacher or an astrologer, someone who you're like, I
Speaker 1: come to you for council important to acknowledge that work.
Speaker 1: You know, like every once in a while, just drop
Speaker 1: an email to those people online that you admire that
Speaker 1: are doing things for you that you're not paying. I
Speaker 1: think that's the thing I did, you guys. I know
Speaker 1: we talked about how we don't we shouldn't get can
Speaker 1: by astrologers, but I totally did pay for astroberries like
Speaker 1: yearly reports, um. And it was like this total honor
Speaker 1: system thing because it was just a PDF that he
Speaker 1: would email you and you could obviously share it with
Speaker 1: whoever you wanted, but he was just like he would
Speaker 1: send it out and be like hey, you know, like
Speaker 1: I know you can you can technically send this to everybody,
Speaker 1: but like, if you like it, please just ask your
Speaker 1: friends to buy it, and so I bought it like
Speaker 1: a few years and he stopped doing it a few
Speaker 1: years ago, but like I should. It did make me
Speaker 1: feel bad that I had never just like like I've
Speaker 1: never followed him on Twitter or anything like that. It
Speaker 1: felt like so separate from how I interfeed, like my
Speaker 1: rest of the rest of my Internet activity. Do you
Speaker 1: think he was on Twitter? He was. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he's going to be doing it, you know, I
Speaker 1: should send him a link to the podcast podcast. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like miss Connections. But with astrologers, um test. Have
Speaker 1: you ever paid for it? No? I well, no I have,
Speaker 1: but not not online. I go for the real deal
Speaker 1: and I used to do it a lot in high school.
Speaker 1: There was you paid for psychics more right, yeah, psychics.
Speaker 1: But I've also done astrologers. I've done astrological readings of
Speaker 1: the psychic I they have like a psychic zone and
Speaker 1: then they also do some like you know, charts and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So I've done that before, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. For me, it's like the kind of thing
Speaker 1: where I like to get the tools to do it myself.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm like a d I fire because I
Speaker 1: feel like I don't know that much about charts, but
Speaker 1: there's so many resources where if you want to spend
Speaker 1: like six hours and stay up all night figuring out
Speaker 1: you know, all your stuff, all your planets and stuff,
Speaker 1: you can. Um, I'm very of too much. If you
Speaker 1: make a mistake, you'll never know you could be based
Speaker 1: on your life decisions on some miscalculation. Sorry, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: totally more of like a you know, I guess I'm
Speaker 1: more of a skeptic. Well, I um, it's different because
Speaker 1: it's psychics. But there were just like these stories. One
Speaker 1: of them was in the New York Times and I
Speaker 1: sent it to Molly and Emily about a man named
Speaker 1: Nile Rice who was scammed out of hundreds of that
Speaker 1: like seven hundred thousand dollars or something like that by
Speaker 1: a psychic. And he he was like having a tough
Speaker 1: time in life. He was like using drugs and drinking
Speaker 1: a lot, really depressed, and he went to rehab, met
Speaker 1: a woman, fell in love, and then they left rehab
Speaker 1: and dated briefly, and then she went back to rehab
Speaker 1: um and broke up with him, and he was heartbroken.
Speaker 1: So he saw this psychic and she was like, oh,
Speaker 1: we'll get her back. It just it devolved into this
Speaker 1: thing where the woman died sadly and the guy was
Speaker 1: still seeing the psychic, and the psychic was like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's she's dead, but that's okay, you can still make
Speaker 1: it work with her. She'll be reincarnated as another woman.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, taking all of his money. He met a girl,
Speaker 1: started dating her, believed she was the reincarnated ex girlfriend.
Speaker 1: Eventually his new partner realized this and was like whoa,
Speaker 1: no way, broke up with it, like it was crazy.
Speaker 1: And then then there was another article, I think in
Speaker 1: Reader's Digest about a romance novelist named Jude Devereaux. I
Speaker 1: think she gave a psychic seventeen million dollars. It was
Speaker 1: like her whole, her whole life savings. She gave like
Speaker 1: you know these psychics that was like a whole family
Speaker 1: of psychics who had storefronts in New York and then
Speaker 1: also in Florida, and they the woman Rose Marks, I
Speaker 1: think it was her name, who was heading the operation
Speaker 1: just got she got ten years in prison, but I
Speaker 1: think that the investigation was called Operation Crystal ball Um.
Speaker 1: But she would just take money from people and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's your money's like dirty, it has like bad jujue
Speaker 1: on it. I'm going to cleanse it and then it'll
Speaker 1: come back to you later. And everyone was like okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: Like on the one hand, I'm like, oh, don't give
Speaker 1: astrologers all your money, but then I'm like proud of
Speaker 1: the astrologers for taking again. In the same way, I'm like,
Speaker 1: is it really the astrologer's ball at that point? I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I mean I think it's usually defended as being
Speaker 1: like therapy, but therapists can't can't kind of make it
Speaker 1: like I'll fix yourn. You know, they can't make false promises.
Speaker 1: They can only it's just the point in Nightcall where
Speaker 1: we decided to start a religion the nightcall, Yeah, or
Speaker 1: like a law practice that that defends psychics. Well, we
Speaker 1: should take what our one final nightcall from this week,
Speaker 1: which comes to us from Lauren. And this is yet
Speaker 1: another a story. I have not heard anything like this
Speaker 1: yet about as far as apps spying on us, but
Speaker 1: let's let's give it a listen. Time is Lauren and
Speaker 1: I have a podcast called podcast Podcast. It's a podcast
Speaker 1: about podcast and I love your podcast. Um, I was
Speaker 1: listening to you talk about how whether or not our
Speaker 1: phones are listening to us, and I have, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think this is a pretty standard weird story where
Speaker 1: I had my phone in my pocket and we were
Speaker 1: talking about the rent the Runways new like description service,
Speaker 1: and I went back to my desk and in my
Speaker 1: computer it's all the adds I've seen. I feel like
Speaker 1: everyone has a story like that, but I something weird happened.
Speaker 1: I haven't heard anyone else talk about. I bought my
Speaker 1: husband a super Nintendo, like an old one for Christmas,
Speaker 1: and my Spotify list of suggested song the week after
Speaker 1: there was all like I don't know a lot of
Speaker 1: hip hop, but it was all like I can't think
Speaker 1: of any examples right now, but it was like hip
Speaker 1: hop songs with like super Nintendo noises and themes. I've
Speaker 1: never heard of that before. Like I bought the the
Speaker 1: Superintendo console on Amazon and then I opened Spotify and
Speaker 1: there's all these Nintendo songs and they've never played again,
Speaker 1: I don't know. And even though there were so many
Speaker 1: hip hop Nintendo themed songs, but I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've ever heard of anybody with there's a story like
Speaker 1: that where Spotify is beating put was based on history.
Speaker 1: Um think, uh, keep up the great work. I love
Speaker 1: the show. God. Algorithms are so dumb in a way.
Speaker 1: It's like this. I mean, it's if if that is true,
Speaker 1: if the Spotify algorithm and the Amazon algorithm are working
Speaker 1: hand in hand to oppress this woman. The assumption that
Speaker 1: just because you like Nintendo, you also like Nintendo music,
Speaker 1: you just like Nintendo across all all media is so acquired. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm assuming that's what she's saying here, is
Speaker 1: that these are like like rap songs that have like
Speaker 1: some production that sounds like chip tune. That's That's what
Speaker 1: I'm feeling, Like this must be it her chip music,
Speaker 1: and it was like you like chip music. Yeah, Like see,
Speaker 1: that's what the robot voice should be like. It should
Speaker 1: being like a nerd nerd voice, Rosie the robot or yeah,
Speaker 1: not like just as like guys. Thing though, like she
Speaker 1: decided to buy the Nintendo and then maybe because it
Speaker 1: was just in the air that, you know, I think
Speaker 1: there's something a little bit more unquantifiable that sometimes happens,
Speaker 1: or she just noticed it really more, you know, But
Speaker 1: they make those ads, they do it like the way
Speaker 1: the machines all work together to make you feel crazy
Speaker 1: and like you're in a Philip Kiddeck story. Is that
Speaker 1: they make it all like plausibly deniable. They're all like, oh, maybe,
Speaker 1: just maybe it wasn't listening to me. I just was
Speaker 1: doing this and then also doing this, and it happened
Speaker 1: to know that, you know, well, she bought the Super
Speaker 1: Supernintendo for her husband, like had she been searching for
Speaker 1: Supernintendo's online and then there was her search history for that,
Speaker 1: but then it doesn't make any sense for her search history.
Speaker 1: That's less that's less scary, yeah, but but then for
Speaker 1: it to actually like start affecting it after she they
Speaker 1: start playing with the Supernintendo. I mean it feels like
Speaker 1: a really jangkie and poorly conceived, sort of like voluntary Shazam.
Speaker 1: I could see some kind of usefulness for it, because
Speaker 1: I have the thing all the time of like there
Speaker 1: was a song playing at this restaurant and it was
Speaker 1: killing me. I can't remember what it is. And then
Speaker 1: like if you start trying to find it in whatever way,
Speaker 1: it pops up a little more easily. But this is
Speaker 1: not anything anybody's asking for, and it's just like it
Speaker 1: thinks it's helping you, but it just wants to help
Speaker 1: you buy stuff. It's like it's not another a Nintendo. Like,
Speaker 1: once you've gotten to the point where the Nintendo music
Speaker 1: is playing in your Spotify, like, what are you gonna
Speaker 1: go back to Amazon to buy a second Nintendo? Give
Speaker 1: me more sounds, You're gonna find Nintendo's until your house
Speaker 1: is nothing but Nintendo. They can't harmonize with just one.
Speaker 1: If you want the harmonies, then you've got to Nintendos,
Speaker 1: Crosby Stills, Alexa like Barbershop Alexa quartet, to go back
Speaker 1: to Alexa to take it full circle, but with the
Speaker 1: sound thing. I never want to have an Alexa. But
Speaker 1: like at the same time, before all this stuff started
Speaker 1: coming onto the market, the only thing I thought I
Speaker 1: would ever want, as far as like a personal robot
Speaker 1: or like one of these things that you have in
Speaker 1: your house, I envisioned like a floating orb that would
Speaker 1: follow behind me and just like play music whenever I request.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what Simon is. Yeah, yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: floating space. If you look up Simon or Kiman. What
Speaker 1: about a roomba, a roomba that's like an iPod did
Speaker 1: I had a rumba and I had the roomba that
Speaker 1: sprays water. But they break and then you're like what
Speaker 1: do I do? And it's really hard to get them fixed.
Speaker 1: They just want you to buy another room, but and
Speaker 1: then the room just dying. It's like, help me, you know.
Speaker 1: The rumor that is dying is just like this immensely
Speaker 1: heavy frisbee. This was. I had a room ba now
Speaker 1: twelve years ago. It was huge, and it was very
Speaker 1: confused by boundaries and stairs and yeah, and then they
Speaker 1: break and it's and at that time it was impossible
Speaker 1: to get it fixed. It was you know, they really
Speaker 1: wanted you to troubleshoot yourself and you're like, I don't
Speaker 1: know where to begin with fixing this thing. I'm just
Speaker 1: going to buy a swiffer, which I did. Well. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much Lauren for your call and giving us
Speaker 1: another thing to um check our preferences on. And thank
Speaker 1: you Claire for being on this this night piece and
Speaker 1: being our inaugural guest. Oh, I'm so honored. Was fun
Speaker 1: and everybody should go check out broadband the Untold by
Speaker 1: my book. If you're listening to this night call, maybe
Speaker 1: Alexa will start ordering suggesting the book. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: like that. I like to test to see if things
Speaker 1: are listening to yelling the name of a product into
Speaker 1: my phone. Like I just like to yell leggings at
Speaker 1: my phone a bunch to see if I get leggings.
Speaker 1: But that that doesn't For this week's Night Call, as always,
Speaker 1: you can give us a call at two four oh
Speaker 1: for six night leave us your calls about your favorite bbs,
Speaker 1: is your what else? Your your thoughts on astrology? Ghost stories?
Speaker 1: I want ghost stories, Coho stories. Yeah, give us some
Speaker 1: ghost stories. Yeah. And you can also find send us
Speaker 1: an email at Night Call Podcast at gmail dot com,
Speaker 1: follow us on Twitter at Nightcall Pod, Facebook, Nightcalled Podcast, Instagram,
Speaker 1: and Nightcall Podcast boom. I did them all. I remembered
Speaker 1: all of them, I wonder. Also, if you're enjoying the podcast,
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Speaker 1: make podcasts for you. We'll see you next much. You'll
Speaker 1: see you next week. Say all wrong