Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from house Stuff.
Speaker 1: What Guten tug mine Freunden. Hi there, guys, it's jovin
Speaker 1: Strickland from tech Stuff and I am joining with my
Speaker 1: wonderful co host in this great endeavor we call a podcast.
Speaker 1: That co host is Lauren vocal Bomb. Hey. How you doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just fine. I have zero zero German for you,
Speaker 1: aside from vocal bomb, which means bird tree by the way. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we've already learned something and we haven't even gotten
Speaker 1: on to our topic yet. Today we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about digital pets. This actually comes to us courtesy of
Speaker 1: a listener suggestion. Uh, and digital pets, virtual pets. This
Speaker 1: is an idea that that really kind of got it's
Speaker 1: it's heyday in the nineties, especially in the United States.
Speaker 1: But we wanted to talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: rise of digital pets and then the fall of digital pets,
Speaker 1: and and sort of some other are surrounding topics that
Speaker 1: that tie into what all of this digital pet malarchy means. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and Uh, before we get into specifics, I want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about some general features that you
Speaker 1: would expect in a virtual pet. Now, first of all,
Speaker 1: it's it's virtual. It's non actual living thing, right right.
Speaker 1: It's sometimes called digital pets rather than virtual pets because
Speaker 1: you know, they don't necessarily have to be. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are web applications that where digital pets live, but
Speaker 1: some of them are physical three dimensional objects. Yeah, yea.
Speaker 1: And so we kind of we've been very very loose
Speaker 1: with our definition in the sense that we feel there
Speaker 1: are some toys and uh products out there that have
Speaker 1: influenced the process of virtual pets, uh and the evolution
Speaker 1: of virtual pets. So some of the stuff we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about today, they aren't really a virtual pet in
Speaker 1: the strictest definition, but it's important as far as the
Speaker 1: development goes. In general, a virtual pet tends to have
Speaker 1: certain features that uh that lent it seem kind of
Speaker 1: similar to an actual real life pet. For instance, it
Speaker 1: usually will respond to you calling for it. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: some sort of command that you use to call it,
Speaker 1: whether it's vocal or it's a button you press on
Speaker 1: a on a game controller or on a on a
Speaker 1: little physical device that brings it to you. You have
Speaker 1: to care for it. You have to feed it and
Speaker 1: clean up after it. If it falls sick, you have
Speaker 1: to you have to take care of it, right. Usually
Speaker 1: you can train it to do various things. It maybe
Speaker 1: to perform a trick, or it might be to eviscerate
Speaker 1: someone else's virtual pet in the case of certain games
Speaker 1: that will cover Also, there's usually some form of way
Speaker 1: to reward the pet, either with treats or toys. Sometimes, uh,
Speaker 1: the element that allows you to give treats or toys
Speaker 1: is an extra element within the whole virtual pet where
Speaker 1: that you pay real money to get access to virtual treats,
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, you know a lot lots of these
Speaker 1: virtual pets are one time purchase kind of thing. You
Speaker 1: either buy the hardware or you pay for a subscription
Speaker 1: for a life subscription, and you get that thing for
Speaker 1: you know, as long as you care to play with it.
Speaker 1: And others are yeah, monthly subscription, or you have to
Speaker 1: continue buying into various little accessories and other products in
Speaker 1: order to continue. Yeah, yeah, you're you're really building out
Speaker 1: the the pets life. It's very similar to the way
Speaker 1: a lot of games are are running now, where you
Speaker 1: have an in game purchase to to give your character
Speaker 1: either a different look or sometimes an actual advantage. And gameplay. Uh,
Speaker 1: many of those ideas really got their start in the
Speaker 1: virtual pet world. Um. Also, they usually have uh, some
Speaker 1: sort of a feature there that allows you to have
Speaker 1: your pet meet other pets. Right, yeah, yeah, that that's
Speaker 1: a relatively i guess, relatively recent as of you know,
Speaker 1: Save two thousand and five. But yeah, but right, the
Speaker 1: earliest onelopment, exactly the rear last ones didn't necessarily have
Speaker 1: that that feature in them. You couldn't get a a
Speaker 1: some pets to meet other pets until we started to
Speaker 1: build in that that capability, either in the hardware or
Speaker 1: in the software. But it usually meant that you could
Speaker 1: have your pet make friends with another person's virtual pet.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you could have your virtual pets breed, and then
Speaker 1: you would get little tiny versions of your virtual pet
Speaker 1: that would have features of both the mommy and the
Speaker 1: daddy virtual pet. Jon Strickland explaining how the birds and
Speaker 1: the bees, the virtual birds and the virtual beads bees work. Look,
Speaker 1: when a virtual dog and another virtual dog virtually love
Speaker 1: one another, it's very special. They trade some code and
Speaker 1: then you get virtual puppy. Yeah. Anyway, these are all
Speaker 1: basic features that you would find in virtual pets. So
Speaker 1: so that that's sort of the the overall kind of definition.
Speaker 1: But to really understand the development we have go back
Speaker 1: always and and Lauren, you you have an interesting place
Speaker 1: you wanted to start. Yeah, I want to talk about
Speaker 1: pet rocks. I think that that would be a very
Speaker 1: early I mean clearly analog not digital virtual pet Those
Speaker 1: debuted in nineteen seventy five at pop which is approximately
Speaker 1: sixteen dollars in the current economy, which is actually what
Speaker 1: is say, for example, Tom go Chi cost. So I
Speaker 1: thought that was pretty interesting. So essentially sixteen dollars in
Speaker 1: our current currency to buy a rock, to buy I rock.
Speaker 1: And this this was created by Gary Doll, who was
Speaker 1: a California ad executive and brilliant sold more than five
Speaker 1: million of these critters in less than six months. It's
Speaker 1: like a rock with googly eyes. So, so, Lauren, you
Speaker 1: remember those days, right? Oh? Yeah, that was seven years
Speaker 1: before I was born, Okay, so I was around nineteen five.
Speaker 1: Was also the year a little movie called Jaws came out,
Speaker 1: a fantastic documentary. Uh. It's also when a certain tech
Speaker 1: stuff podcaster arrived on the scene. That would be me
Speaker 1: so not not not me. So I don't really remember
Speaker 1: I just know I was there anyway. Yeah, pet rocks.
Speaker 1: So so there we go. There's there's a a non
Speaker 1: living pet, and it was mostly a gag gift kind
Speaker 1: of thing, but it lays the groundwork for this idea
Speaker 1: of a pet that's not really alive. Yeah. I also
Speaker 1: wanted to point out actually that in a V seven
Speaker 1: that was when K nine debut on Dr Who, which
Speaker 1: I think is also probably an important reference in the
Speaker 1: entire I mean, especially if you've seen an eyebo, I
Speaker 1: think that they're pretty obviously inspired by the canine bucket
Speaker 1: of bolts. So so yeah, So so the idea about
Speaker 1: this kind of course in science fiction, stuff like this
Speaker 1: has been talked about for you know, since the days
Speaker 1: of of Asimov's robot stuff stories. And I seen the
Speaker 1: body electric stuff like that. So yeah, and now do
Speaker 1: Android stream of electric sheet. So uh yeah, these are
Speaker 1: again the building blocks that will lead to virtual pets.
Speaker 1: In a company called Worlds of Wonder introduced a toy
Speaker 1: that was, depending upon how you played with it, very
Speaker 1: entertaining or terrifying. That would be Teddy Ruxman. I firmly
Speaker 1: found them terrifying as a child, sexually Teddy Teddy Ruxman,
Speaker 1: it was an interesting idea. It was a toy that
Speaker 1: would read, quote unquote read stories to children. The stories
Speaker 1: would be on a cassette tape. Some of you may
Speaker 1: not know what a cassette tape is. I remember them,
Speaker 1: but a cassette tape, all right, So it's it's magnetic tape.
Speaker 1: And usually, like on a regular audio cassette tape, you
Speaker 1: have two tracks on either side of this this tape,
Speaker 1: and it's usually used for stereo, one tracks for the
Speaker 1: left speaker and once for the right Now with Teddy
Speaker 1: Ruxman instead, one track was audio and the other track
Speaker 1: was a series of directions for the animay Teddy Bear, Well,
Speaker 1: it's really just the mouth. The limbs didn't really move,
Speaker 1: but the mouth would move in time with whatever was playing,
Speaker 1: So that way it would follow the directions and seemingly
Speaker 1: talk to you and read out the story. Uh. This
Speaker 1: meant that if you wanted to do something a little wacky,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, put your Black Sabbath cassette tape
Speaker 1: in Teddy Ruxben, he would not suddenly start rocking out
Speaker 1: because the mouth there was no directions for the mouth
Speaker 1: to follow. Okay, so the mouth wouldn't move. He would
Speaker 1: still play. Oh no, you could play. You play Black
Speaker 1: Sabbath through a teddy Ruxpan. There's nothing stopping you. You
Speaker 1: essentially have a teddy Ruxpan shaped boom box. But but
Speaker 1: it wouldn't like start screaming out. Okay, well that's I
Speaker 1: guess that's I mean, I'm you know, Lord knows I
Speaker 1: tried um. But yeah, yeah, that was again teddy Ruxman.
Speaker 1: Not a virtual pet, necessarily, not in the same sense
Speaker 1: that we're talking about, but again lays the groundwork this
Speaker 1: idea of a a a synthetic creature providing some form
Speaker 1: of companionship and that appears to be autonomous, right right,
Speaker 1: and again very loose illusion in this case. You you
Speaker 1: pick up pretty quickly that it's following a very specific
Speaker 1: uh script which was based upon whatever was on that cassette.
Speaker 1: Um Worlds of Wonder, by the way, ended up going
Speaker 1: bankrupt I think in nineteen ninety the h The ownership
Speaker 1: of teddy Ruxpan has passed through several hands, including Hasbro,
Speaker 1: so it was one of those toys that kept on
Speaker 1: going even after the company that launched it went away. Now,
Speaker 1: the next year in Night six, we get our first
Speaker 1: actual virtual pet, and this was for a computer platform
Speaker 1: called the Macintosh. So yeah, two years after the Macintosh launches,
Speaker 1: remember they had that amazing nine eight four commercial that
Speaker 1: was in the Super Bowl that really really amazing, one
Speaker 1: of the best commercials ever made. In my opinion. I
Speaker 1: never owned a Macintosh, but I love the commercial anyway.
Speaker 1: The the Macintosh program, Puppy Love debuts in nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Six is Tom Snyder Productions release, and Puppy Love was
Speaker 1: essentially a little a little animated puppy dog that you
Speaker 1: could play with on your Macintosh. Very limited uh features
Speaker 1: on that, but again was one of the first examples
Speaker 1: of a virtual pet. Now we go ahead of year
Speaker 1: to nineteen seven and the Nintendo Entertainment System gets a
Speaker 1: release of a Japanese role playing game, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to butcher the pronunciation. I apologize to Lauren, who actually
Speaker 1: knows how to pronounce Japanese words. But Macgami Tense was
Speaker 1: the RPG, and it included a game play element where
Speaker 1: you could capture demons and then you could train those
Speaker 1: demons to fight for you so that you could use
Speaker 1: the ones that you've captured to help protect you in
Speaker 1: other battles. Uh. This is a gameplay element that we
Speaker 1: would end up seeing used in other types of virtual
Speaker 1: pets in the future, and in lots of other games
Speaker 1: as well. I wouldn't necessarily count something like Pokemon is
Speaker 1: a virtual pet application, but it definitely has that game element. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I include Pokemon mostly because, again it has some elements
Speaker 1: of a virtual pet. Although if you're mostly looking to
Speaker 1: try and maximize your uh, your your group of of
Speaker 1: Pokemon so that you can have the best chance of
Speaker 1: winning any particular battle, that's not a great message for
Speaker 1: a person who wants to own a real pet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like vic message that's no, that's that, it's not That
Speaker 1: is not what the s p c A I think
Speaker 1: would would want to write. But then again, virtual pets
Speaker 1: let us do these sort of things. I mean, these
Speaker 1: are all cartoony, like the Pokemon or these cartoony creatures
Speaker 1: that don't necessarily have a a counterpart in real life.
Speaker 1: Some of them are obviously modeled after real animals, but others,
Speaker 1: if it's modeled after a real animal, I have not
Speaker 1: seen it. Yeah, I don't think I want to see
Speaker 1: some of the real animals that those things are modeled
Speaker 1: on right. Well. Then inwo we had the game Dragon
Speaker 1: Quest five Hand of the Heavenly Bride, and that also
Speaker 1: allowed players to capture monsters and use them to fight
Speaker 1: in their battles. So again that same sort of gameplay element,
Speaker 1: it's starting to starting to become pretty popular. It was
Speaker 1: an interesting idea, UM, but it's still not really a
Speaker 1: virtual pet in the sense that we think of, where
Speaker 1: it's just really the whole purpose is to take care
Speaker 1: of an artificial creature. Uh. But in a company called
Speaker 1: p F Magic hits the scene and releases a program
Speaker 1: called Dogs That's d O g Z. They would a
Speaker 1: year later release Cats see a t Z and then
Speaker 1: eventually release Pets pe t Z and UH. And this
Speaker 1: was really where the virtual pet idea started to blossom,
Speaker 1: where we started to see some of those elements we
Speaker 1: talked about the top of the show. The things that
Speaker 1: really make a virtual pet, what it is, what kind
Speaker 1: of platform with Windows Originally it was originally a Windows
Speaker 1: based thing. So if you for those of you who
Speaker 1: remember Windows back in UH, there there were people who
Speaker 1: would have like this little dog would wander onto your
Speaker 1: screen and start to play with your cursor, and things
Speaker 1: like that it was very cute and um. But this
Speaker 1: was an actual full program where you would be able
Speaker 1: to adopt a puppy or later on a kitten, and
Speaker 1: after a few days of real time, so you know,
Speaker 1: you check on your little puppy your kitten each day.
Speaker 1: After a few days, maybe three or four days, the
Speaker 1: puppy your kitten would grow into a fully formed adult
Speaker 1: version of whatever animal it was, and you would continue
Speaker 1: taking care of it, so you would play with it,
Speaker 1: you could train it, and you could even breed your
Speaker 1: animal with other animals starting with I think it was
Speaker 1: Pets three, because you know they released updates as they
Speaker 1: as they built out the game locally on your own
Speaker 1: computer assumed or was this over email email? You could
Speaker 1: email a copy of your pet to someone else and
Speaker 1: you would still keep yours. This is like you suddenly
Speaker 1: cloned your pet. But you could email a copy of
Speaker 1: your pet to someone else and then they could say, oh,
Speaker 1: this dog, he's very cute, FIEFI is gonna love him,
Speaker 1: and see if Fifi and the other dog would you know,
Speaker 1: have a little puppy love going on, and then you
Speaker 1: end up with a litter of virtual puppies. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: like you do that's like like it happens. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So originally these were all designed on hand drawn uh
Speaker 1: kind of designs, like like that's the line drawing style. Uh.
Speaker 1: So they weren't photo realistic or anything like that, but cartoony.
Speaker 1: But it meant that if you wanted to, you could
Speaker 1: actually really tweak the look of your pet, because it
Speaker 1: wasn't outside the realm of most people's abilities to go
Speaker 1: and draw in a new shape for their pets body
Speaker 1: or a different coloration. But eventually, as that as time
Speaker 1: went on, and we'll get back into the timeline in
Speaker 1: a minute, but by two thousand and six, uh, the
Speaker 1: the company had abandoned the line drawing approach and went
Speaker 1: for a more quote unquote realistic look where you could
Speaker 1: end up changing textures, but you couldn't remodel your pet.
Speaker 1: It was gonna always be the same basic shape, but
Speaker 1: you could tweak it a little bit, just not as
Speaker 1: much as you could in earlier versions of the program.
Speaker 1: But this is where we see the idea of the
Speaker 1: virtual pet really take off, and it ended up being
Speaker 1: fairly popular. A few million copies sold, so not not
Speaker 1: like a crazy excess, but it showed that there was
Speaker 1: a market there that people were interested in getting a
Speaker 1: virtual companion. Kind of a weird idea at the time.
Speaker 1: Some would say a weird idea today that it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily something that has has gained widespread acceptance. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but there's yeah, there's there's, As we will talk about later,
Speaker 1: there are certainly enough different models of this kind of
Speaker 1: thing out there that there's you know, and and they've
Speaker 1: they've done medical research about stuff. You know, people who
Speaker 1: are perhaps lonely and don't have so much access to
Speaker 1: as much human interaction as they as they need. There
Speaker 1: are lots of robots meant for keeping people companion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in fact, we'll talk a little bit about them. I
Speaker 1: have some information about one of those robots, but we'll
Speaker 1: we'll save that for towards the end of the discussion
Speaker 1: because that that really it ends up building on a
Speaker 1: lot of these concepts we're talking about early on, and
Speaker 1: we're about to tackle the biggest name I think as
Speaker 1: far as virtual pets go. It's the name I always
Speaker 1: think of whenever I think of virtual or digital pets.
Speaker 1: But before we get into that, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: moment to thank our sponsor. Okay, now, Lauren. When I
Speaker 1: say digital pet, is there a particular brand name that
Speaker 1: leaps to mind? Tom There you go, Tomagochi, launched by
Speaker 1: Bandai in nine in Japan. That is correct, and from
Speaker 1: what I understand, tomagochi is the correct spelling. I always
Speaker 1: heard it as tamagotchi when I was a kid, but
Speaker 1: I think that that's probably just because we had no
Speaker 1: idea what we were talking about. It's an americanis pronunciation. Sure, Sure,
Speaker 1: the word does come from from a much mca portmanteau
Speaker 1: of the words tomago, which means egg in Japanese and
Speaker 1: the English were I'm familiar with it from sushi. From sushi, yes, well,
Speaker 1: and in sushi it's usually meant to um, meant as
Speaker 1: a shortened form of tamaga yucki, which is that sweet
Speaker 1: egg omelet. But look at the brain on Lauren. Wow,
Speaker 1: she did not know I was gonna say she either.
Speaker 1: All right, Okay, so tamago, what's the other one? And
Speaker 1: the English word watch, which when you kind of translate
Speaker 1: into the Japanese foreign loan word alphabet kata kana, it
Speaker 1: sounds a lot more like oachi. Alright, so it's egg watch,
Speaker 1: which I would immediately assume would be an egg timer,
Speaker 1: not a digital pet, not at all. But it is
Speaker 1: a digital pet. But but they but they were egg
Speaker 1: shaped and they did the origin of these little creatures
Speaker 1: would be would look like a little egg. So so
Speaker 1: you would go out and you would buy this essentially
Speaker 1: look like a key chain that had an egg shaped
Speaker 1: plastic case there with a little screen on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, that would allow you to hatch your virtual
Speaker 1: your digital pet. So you have a little egg on
Speaker 1: there that you would have to uh, you know, press
Speaker 1: a button which essentially started a timer that would let
Speaker 1: the the Toma gauchi. No, hey, there's a player. It's
Speaker 1: time to start creating a pet for this person to
Speaker 1: interact with. And then um, you would end up using
Speaker 1: I think it was like three buttons. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: little three button interaction. So you would use those three
Speaker 1: buttons to do various commands depending upon what your pet
Speaker 1: needed and whether or not you were a good person,
Speaker 1: because it would be things like, you know, feed your
Speaker 1: pet or clean up after your pet, because they would
Speaker 1: leave little digital poos. They would get upset if you
Speaker 1: if you didn't. And I say all this hypothetically because
Speaker 1: I never actually owned When did you ever actually on
Speaker 1: I did not own. I didn't own one. Did you
Speaker 1: mistreat someone else's Tamaguchi? I'm taking the fifth mostly because
Speaker 1: I can't remember. No, I'm not the kind of guy
Speaker 1: who would ever. I I can't. I can't mistreat creatures
Speaker 1: in a video game, right, Like if there's a video
Speaker 1: game s all right, tangential. I I apologize for the tangent.
Speaker 1: But this is an example of how I think the
Speaker 1: game Red Dead Redemption. You're you're playing a cowboy in
Speaker 1: the waning era of the cowboy era, right in days
Speaker 1: the train is taking over, the cars are starting to happen,
Speaker 1: so the the Day of the Cowboys. At an end um,
Speaker 1: there's an achievement you could get for killing all the
Speaker 1: buffalo in the game. There was a certain number of buffalo,
Speaker 1: and after you killed a certain number, you would get
Speaker 1: this achievement. That was the last achievement I got because
Speaker 1: I could not bring myself for the original Buffalo. But
Speaker 1: we'll get into the discussion about that about actually, uh
Speaker 1: developing an emotional attachment to a digital creation, which is
Speaker 1: kind of crazy when you think about it, like just
Speaker 1: from a like crazy from the sense of that's so
Speaker 1: like I would never have imagined it until it happened. Sure,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, you know, as as a kid,
Speaker 1: I mean I had I had a whole stable full
Speaker 1: of my Little Ponies, Okay, I was. I was that
Speaker 1: guy when I was like six and um, and they
Speaker 1: all had very individual personalities, and I was extraordinarily attached
Speaker 1: to these toys. So you know, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: just building on that if if, if and those things,
Speaker 1: those things didn't move except my imaginations, right, I can
Speaker 1: see how something that does move to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: does I mean that? That being said? In fable, I'm
Speaker 1: the guy who kicks all the chickens so well, okay,
Speaker 1: I've been their annoying. I've kicked a chicken or two,
Speaker 1: you know. Also, also, it's very possible, Lauren, that some
Speaker 1: of our listeners out there could be Brownies, and maybe
Speaker 1: they also have their own collections that could rival your
Speaker 1: own childhood one. They probably could. By the way, I'm
Speaker 1: not speaking down to anyone who likes My Little Pony
Speaker 1: that was created. The latest version my Little Pony Friendship
Speaker 1: is Magic was created by the same people who created
Speaker 1: Powerpuff Girls, which I love, which is awesome. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: no judgment here. Yeah, yeah, getting back to yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you could, you could feed them, you could clean
Speaker 1: up after them. If you didn't clean up after them,
Speaker 1: they could actually get sick, and then you would have
Speaker 1: to really take care of them. And also Toma got
Speaker 1: she unlike a lot of other other digital pets, the
Speaker 1: digital pet in tamagotchies could die. Yeah you didn't take
Speaker 1: care of them, or I think in the American version
Speaker 1: it was they sort of turned into little digital angels
Speaker 1: and kind of flew back to their home planet because
Speaker 1: they were aliens or or yeah, they went into a
Speaker 1: little digital ufo and flew away. But but the point
Speaker 1: was that if you didn't take care of them, they
Speaker 1: would leave. And and in fact that became something of
Speaker 1: a problem because it took you had to take care
Speaker 1: of him about twice a day, sure, and in the
Speaker 1: early stages way more often than that, about once every
Speaker 1: six hours or so. I think, so, yeah, you've got
Speaker 1: this thing, and it could make noise, it would beat
Speaker 1: at you when it was really not doing so well
Speaker 1: or not happy. Happy being a weird term because we're
Speaker 1: talking about following a certain protocol, which meant that kids
Speaker 1: would have to whip these things out and take care
Speaker 1: of them throughout the day, and then if they were
Speaker 1: in school, which became a problem in the United States certainly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so in the US you had stories of schools
Speaker 1: that would ban these things out right and say, don't
Speaker 1: bring them to school because they are a distraction. You're
Speaker 1: not learning, you are instead paying attention to a little
Speaker 1: digital pet, and you need to have your attention directed
Speaker 1: towards your schoolwork and um. And in fact, a lot
Speaker 1: of sources that I've read have essentially credited the fact
Speaker 1: that the United States school systems often outright banned these
Speaker 1: things for the downfall of the virtual pet industry in
Speaker 1: the US, that that virtual pets, digital pets didn't really
Speaker 1: become as big a deal as they could have because
Speaker 1: the school systems banned them. So, uh, there you go.
Speaker 1: I Tomagotchi what not only was the genesis of the
Speaker 1: digital pet craze, but in the United States at least,
Speaker 1: was also the death of it. But but moving on,
Speaker 1: there are other ones to talk about besides Tamagotchi. Also
Speaker 1: in two thousand five, they updated the line because it
Speaker 1: had pretty much gone forgotten. But there were a lot
Speaker 1: of people who had nostalgic fondness for the Tamagotchi line.
Speaker 1: It never really went away. Actually there there there have
Speaker 1: been a several several generation updates here and there. I mean,
Speaker 1: they were still pretty big in Japan from what I understand,
Speaker 1: so um, but but yeah, they came back with a
Speaker 1: with an infrared yes connector port. Yeah, the Tamagotchi connection. This,
Speaker 1: this is what allowed the Tomagotchi version to have interactions
Speaker 1: with other people's tomagotchis. Because before it was pretty much
Speaker 1: just you know, your pet was confined to its own egg,
Speaker 1: to its own egg, that was the extent of its universe.
Speaker 1: But then with the infrared UH feature, it would allow
Speaker 1: your pet to visit other pets and it could get
Speaker 1: out of the egg once in a while. And eventually
Speaker 1: around two thousand eleven two twelve um Toma Go which
Speaker 1: introduced these little separate figures that you can plug into
Speaker 1: here Tomagotchi UH those those were introduced, and also Tomma Town,
Speaker 1: which was a website thing, which as of February six
Speaker 1: has shut down. So so again the struggle for the
Speaker 1: digital pet continues. I just wanted to mention some of
Speaker 1: the characters that you could have in tamagotchi. Keeping mind, uh,
Speaker 1: your your digital pet would go through stages in its life,
Speaker 1: so there'd be uh a young stage, teen stage, and
Speaker 1: then an adult stage. So these kind of apply to
Speaker 1: different stages. But you could have Matuchi, which was a
Speaker 1: spoiled brat who would like to roll around a lot.
Speaker 1: There was Kinakmachi, which like to jump around a lot,
Speaker 1: and the picture I saw of it had a giant
Speaker 1: bump on its head with a little bruise marks, so
Speaker 1: apparently that not very safe when he jumps around. There
Speaker 1: was Itchy Gotchi, who was a dancing maniac. There was Mimici,
Speaker 1: which was apparently the most popular of all the tamagotchis.
Speaker 1: Supposedly had a genius i Q of two hundred. I
Speaker 1: loved math and writing. Uh. There was Tarakacci, who was naughty,
Speaker 1: impatient and chatty and goals a Rucci who wants to
Speaker 1: be in ninja. I like your Japanese pronunciation. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, as as of the height of their popularity, um,
Speaker 1: they're supposed to have sold one per second in Japan
Speaker 1: and over seventy eight millions sold as so, so certainly
Speaker 1: thing as also a recent news for for Tamaguchi um
Speaker 1: As a Valentine's Day this year, to celebrate sixteen years
Speaker 1: of business, the company announced a free Android app called
Speaker 1: Temacochi Life, which stands for Love is Fun Everywhere. Of course,
Speaker 1: it's an acronym life. No, No, that would be ridiculous,
Speaker 1: don't be silly. Um so yeah, so so so Tamagochi
Speaker 1: lives on. Wow. Alright, well, moving on to some of
Speaker 1: the other virtual pets, right, yeah, because because around the
Speaker 1: same time, you know, everyone was this was such a
Speaker 1: craze that everyone had to jump on. Yeah. There were
Speaker 1: some people who criticized Bandai, saying that they Tomagotchi really
Speaker 1: catered more to a female audience to boys, which is
Speaker 1: where digital monsters released by Bandai digimon uh similar life
Speaker 1: cycle to Tomagotchi, but they were also designed so that
Speaker 1: you would raise them, train them, and battle them with
Speaker 1: other other people's digimon. So there you go, there's the
Speaker 1: boy right the So apparently girls want to nurture and
Speaker 1: raise a pet and boys want to train a killer monster.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I could, if I could get
Speaker 1: a really cute little little Tomagochi and and fight it
Speaker 1: with other really cute Tomagochi that sounds like the best
Speaker 1: game to me. Really really cute deadly fights. I have
Speaker 1: nothing to say about. That would be great. We see
Speaker 1: the introduction of a toy that made people go bonkers
Speaker 1: when it came out, the Furby. Now, um Ferbie is
Speaker 1: not not a digital pet in the sense of these
Speaker 1: other ones that are software software. This is a This
Speaker 1: is more like a kind of a robot, so closer
Speaker 1: to the Teddy Ruxpin model than the Tamagotchi model. And
Speaker 1: the original one would speak in this language called Furbish
Speaker 1: and would gradually learn quote unquote learn English. It would
Speaker 1: really just incorporate English into its vocabulary over a set
Speaker 1: amount of time. But later models introduced in like two
Speaker 1: thousand five and two thousand and eleven had uh more
Speaker 1: features that would let it converse with people. There was
Speaker 1: some voice recognition stuff that was introduced, um and they
Speaker 1: had they had motion sensors. They could tell when you
Speaker 1: were touching them or when you picked them up and
Speaker 1: moved them around. Right, Yeah, yeah, there were I remember
Speaker 1: when they came out because I remember how people went
Speaker 1: went really bonkers over them. Like there's certain toys that
Speaker 1: I can remember people really going crazy. For the first
Speaker 1: one I can remember with that happening would be cabbage
Speaker 1: Patch Kids. So that's the classic from my childhood was
Speaker 1: cabbage Patch Kids. And then you had things like uh
Speaker 1: Furby Teddy Ruxman actually was really popular when it first
Speaker 1: came out. Furby another great example. UM. And of course
Speaker 1: there's always Beanie Babies, right. But getting back to virtual pets,
Speaker 1: n that's when we get to a web based virtual pet.
Speaker 1: That's neopets, right, yes, neo pets. There is a virtual
Speaker 1: pet website, so you would go in, you would create
Speaker 1: an account, you would adopt a virtual pet, and you
Speaker 1: could buy virtual items for your pet using virtual currency.
Speaker 1: And you could earn currency through participating in various things
Speaker 1: on the website, whether it was a game like a
Speaker 1: Quest or something, or you could actually purchase virtual currency
Speaker 1: using real, cold, hardcash, as many thirteen to seventeen year
Speaker 1: old certainly certainly have on the internet. In um and
Speaker 1: this this was actually created by two British students, originally
Speaker 1: just for other students, and it was picked up by
Speaker 1: a market research expert who then sold it to MTV
Speaker 1: Viacom for a hundred and sixty million dollars. Not a
Speaker 1: bad turn, Yeah, and it was. They originally thought it
Speaker 1: up in n but took about two years of research
Speaker 1: and development to really build out the capabilities of the site,
Speaker 1: which launched in nine nine. Um and it let you
Speaker 1: customize pets. You could choose you had like up to
Speaker 1: I think there was something like fifty four different pet
Speaker 1: types you could choose from, and then once you chose
Speaker 1: the type, you could actually customize the pet further. You
Speaker 1: could compete in the battle dome if that was your desire,
Speaker 1: or you could do little quests and games. Um and
Speaker 1: Neil Pets still going Yeah. Yeah. The last numbers I
Speaker 1: have out it were from two thousand and six, at
Speaker 1: which point it claimed over a hundred million users and
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty million individual pets. Yeah, kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: Um and uh. I think that Neo Pets was also
Speaker 1: one of the first ones that really incorporated advertising into
Speaker 1: since it was web based, it could have you know,
Speaker 1: a McDonald's quest or or you know, or you could
Speaker 1: you could purchase branded food or or toy items for
Speaker 1: your digital toy items for your digital pet. Yeah. Originally
Speaker 1: they used banner ads on their website, but then they
Speaker 1: were that was one of the first instances of in
Speaker 1: game advertising, where the advertisements were worked, like you said,
Speaker 1: into the virtual world Neiopia, as I recall, yes and
Speaker 1: uh and yeah, you could end up encountering stuff that
Speaker 1: was specifically branded for a particular company. You could even
Speaker 1: purchase stuff like you were saying, um, yeah and as
Speaker 1: I recall, Neo Pets even got some flak for that,
Speaker 1: about the fact that they were using branded stuff within
Speaker 1: the world of Neo Pets. But the response was everything
Speaker 1: that is branded is clearly marked as an AD. It's
Speaker 1: not being uh, it's not being presented as just an
Speaker 1: element of the game. All right, Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think the part of the controversy was that for
Speaker 1: for a while, you know, it would have this this
Speaker 1: little tag at the bottom of a page like this
Speaker 1: page contains advert editorial content, and but every page had
Speaker 1: that morning. So, you know, especially when you're dealing with
Speaker 1: young kids who don't know the differences between an AD
Speaker 1: and content, it's that's not a problem just with kids.
Speaker 1: You're you're very correct. I yes, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: say any more sentences on that. Let's move on to nineteen.
Speaker 1: Another thing that happened in my favorite virtual pet of
Speaker 1: all time. I didn't own this virtual pet, but poly Kell.
Speaker 1: What a weird concept. The Sagad Dreamcast releases a special
Speaker 1: game called c Man. Extremely special. This this game and
Speaker 1: I don't have any notes on this, so I'm I'm
Speaker 1: just speaking from the kindness of my heart. Um. This
Speaker 1: game was narrated by Leonard Nimoy. Um. Uh you know
Speaker 1: a k A Spock and um it was a classic
Speaker 1: spot Zachary Quinto Spock right right, Zachary Quinto is an
Speaker 1: entirely separate human person um. But so so you would
Speaker 1: you would have this little fish thing, larva egg, and
Speaker 1: it would it would spawn and kind of developed this
Speaker 1: weirdly human face, and it would talk back to you
Speaker 1: like it was. It was like a little fish teenager.
Speaker 1: It would it would say, really very angry, Leonard, need
Speaker 1: more things than you and and and the Dreamcast, if
Speaker 1: you don't remember, had a little port that you could
Speaker 1: plug various things into on the controller, like, for example,
Speaker 1: in this case, a microphone, so you could talk to
Speaker 1: to your c Man. Right, yeah, you could. You could. Uh.
Speaker 1: It would actually ask you when your birthday was, and
Speaker 1: you would tell it when your birthday was. And it
Speaker 1: would give you information about other things that happened on
Speaker 1: that day in history. So you get a little trivia
Speaker 1: with your c man and and you would you were
Speaker 1: supposed to interact with your ce man at least once
Speaker 1: a day, or else it would die and if you
Speaker 1: continue to interact with it, it would possibly like you.
Speaker 1: But it always was a little snarky. It was pretty snarky. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even even if the c man wasn't outright hostile, it
Speaker 1: would still be a little Most of mine were hostile,
Speaker 1: but I but I don't think that I took care
Speaker 1: of mine nearly as opposition because they remind me of
Speaker 1: terrifying love crafty and horror. I think we've established what
Speaker 1: your your your your capacity to care is already in
Speaker 1: this podcast, so it's no surprise that your seaman went bad. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, as you would care for the seaman, h
Speaker 1: it could meet other seamen, that's a terrible thing to say,
Speaker 1: And then they would end up spawning and you would
Speaker 1: have evolving seaman where eventually it would turn into like
Speaker 1: this frog like thing and be still with the creepy human. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fantastic. Um. Yeah. Seaman Too was actually released in
Speaker 1: Japan in two thousand seven. Can't imagine why it didn't
Speaker 1: make its way over here. That was for the PlayStation two. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the Dreamcast was long different. Sad about that. We we
Speaker 1: will have to do a full episode about the Dreamcast
Speaker 1: at one point, but yeah, it would. You know, that's
Speaker 1: kind of crazy virtual pet thing. It was weird because
Speaker 1: it had an attitude. I mean, it wasn't like cute
Speaker 1: and cuddley. It was weird to look at and it
Speaker 1: acted in a very bizarre way. So it was like,
Speaker 1: how do you nurture something that is that unusual? Unusually? Uh,
Speaker 1: the appearance is unusual and then its behavior is inexplicable. Also,
Speaker 1: none of I mean not you know, I don't have
Speaker 1: any children, but I suspect that if I do, none
Speaker 1: of them will sound quite so much like Lennard Nimoy
Speaker 1: right off the bat. Yeah, probably not. You have to
Speaker 1: really train them for that, so the next I have.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are other virtual pets that that came
Speaker 1: out around that era, But two thousand five was the
Speaker 1: next fairly big success. That was when Nintendo released in
Speaker 1: ten Dogs, right, Yeah, was that originally for the DS?
Speaker 1: It was for the the d S. Yeah, Nintendo. I was,
Speaker 1: I know, I butchered that one. I was so confident
Speaker 1: going in and then it just fell apart as it
Speaker 1: was leaving my lips anyway. So yeah, you use the
Speaker 1: touch screen interface and the actual built in microphone on
Speaker 1: the d S two in act with your virtual dog,
Speaker 1: so you could give it commands of verbally and it
Speaker 1: would follow them. Well, if it was a well behaved dog,
Speaker 1: it would follow them, well trained dog, it would follow.
Speaker 1: You would have to scold it if it did not right,
Speaker 1: And you could link the ds with other other ds is,
Speaker 1: so if other people hadn't intend dogs, you could you know,
Speaker 1: have your dog visit other dogs. So again it really
Speaker 1: went back into this whole model that we were talking about.
Speaker 1: And there are other examples as well. You had one
Speaker 1: that was an upcoming example, and yeah, there's well, you know,
Speaker 1: there's still a lot of a lot of web application
Speaker 1: virtual pets out there. Webkins are tremendously popular. These are
Speaker 1: stuffed animals that have access codes. So you go online
Speaker 1: and you interact with a digital version of your stuffed
Speaker 1: animal UM and it's it's pretty ingenious and evil actually
Speaker 1: because it sells um not only virtual accessories for this thing.
Speaker 1: But when you buy physical accessories for your physical toy,
Speaker 1: you can plug the codes into the Internet and get
Speaker 1: virtuals off too. So it's it's terrific marketing actually. Um,
Speaker 1: stuff like that food Pets Sue beta in back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six was a big thing. UM. I
Speaker 1: may or may not come back to that later because
Speaker 1: we have an awesome note about virtual pet zombies. Um.
Speaker 1: But the interesting one that I had what Hatch, Hatch,
Speaker 1: Thank you Hatch. Yes, this is this is an upcoming
Speaker 1: iPhone app. Um. You can sign up for the beta.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's supposed to come out spring sometime. We
Speaker 1: are recording this in February, and as of right now,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have a date. And as of now, if
Speaker 1: you go to the Hatch website, you can just pick
Speaker 1: which little egg you want and and it'll send you
Speaker 1: an email with a with a certificate of adoption. I
Speaker 1: know this because I've done this, Okay, So I don't
Speaker 1: have an iOS device that I could use with this.
Speaker 1: Otherwise I would hope secretly that mine would turn into
Speaker 1: the clover Field Monster. Because I love that documentary. That
Speaker 1: that is a terrific documentary. I'm not sure that I
Speaker 1: want to hang out with you anymore and want to
Speaker 1: control that. That makes two Abrams documentaries that I've I've
Speaker 1: I've mentioned in one podcast preteen It's gonna be hard
Speaker 1: not to mention a documentary. He will rule the Key Universe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I I actually, out of all these virtual pets,
Speaker 1: the only thing that I ever owned that was similar
Speaker 1: to this. There there are these toys called the Cube
Speaker 1: World Digital stick People. Yeah. Yeah, So they are these
Speaker 1: plastic cubes. They have magnetic contacts on on four sides
Speaker 1: of the cube. Uh, the forward facing side is a
Speaker 1: screen that has a little digital stick figure in it
Speaker 1: that behaves a certain way depending upon that that figures
Speaker 1: occupation or main hobby. So for example, you might have
Speaker 1: one that has a dog, and so all the activities
Speaker 1: the stick figure does involves a dog in some way.
Speaker 1: You might have one that's an office worker or a
Speaker 1: janitor or whatever. And the interesting thing was not only
Speaker 1: would they behave a particular way within their cube, and
Speaker 1: you could pick the cube up and shake it and
Speaker 1: that would actually make the figure follow over like there
Speaker 1: was an earthquake, or you could turn it on its
Speaker 1: side that make the figure slide because gravity had changed terrific.
Speaker 1: You could also put two of these cubes together with
Speaker 1: their magnetic context, and then the two different stick figures
Speaker 1: could visit with interact. Yeah, more often than not they
Speaker 1: would fight, but sometimes I get along and you could
Speaker 1: actually stack I think it was up to it was
Speaker 1: three or four, It might be four. I think you
Speaker 1: could stack up to four together, uh, and how in
Speaker 1: in either horizontally or vertically and have them interact with
Speaker 1: each other. And then you could even make blocks of
Speaker 1: these cubes like grab a whole bunch, and then you'd
Speaker 1: have like essentially an apartment of these little stick figures,
Speaker 1: all behaving in various ways. They were pretty limited in
Speaker 1: what they would do, and you could play games with
Speaker 1: them as well. The games were usually pretty limited, but
Speaker 1: it was a cute idea. And so yeah, I had
Speaker 1: four of those, and they they're a little wacky, not
Speaker 1: not terribly sophisticated compared to some of the other virtual
Speaker 1: pets we talked about. But this this kind of led
Speaker 1: to this um this uh market of creating virtual creatures
Speaker 1: for people to have real companionship, things like the ludo bots,
Speaker 1: which are play robots that's artificial human companions. Things like
Speaker 1: Ibo or Pleio, the little robotic dinosaur. We have an
Speaker 1: article about how Pleio works on how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: It includes pictures of a Pleio that has been slightly
Speaker 1: taking apart. I believe it was kind of traumatic for
Speaker 1: all of us. Tracy actually wrote that. Our our site director,
Speaker 1: Tracy Wilson wrote that article, and I remember hearing gleeful
Speaker 1: cackles and seeing lightning and hearing thunder all from her
Speaker 1: office as she was working on that article. True story.
Speaker 1: H Then there's also Pero, which is a therapeutic seal robot.
Speaker 1: I saw this at I want to say it was
Speaker 1: a c e S several years ago, and I also
Speaker 1: saw it at Japan Fest in UH in Atlanta, Georgia
Speaker 1: one year. But it's a robotic seal that's meant as
Speaker 1: a companion for senior citizens because in Japan in particular,
Speaker 1: they have a rising problem of an aging population. People
Speaker 1: are having fewer children, which means that the population is
Speaker 1: growing older. The percentage of population entering their their senior
Speaker 1: years is growing each year and UH and there's a
Speaker 1: very real problem of how do you provide companionship for
Speaker 1: those people so that they have a positive outlook and
Speaker 1: the pero therapeutic seal robot is kind of a way
Speaker 1: of doing that, and it builds within it a lot
Speaker 1: of these concepts of the virtual pet that so it
Speaker 1: responds to you. It uh, it purrs or moves in
Speaker 1: very nice little ways, and it's it's it's an absolutely
Speaker 1: adorable robot. I mean, you look at this thing and
Speaker 1: you can't help but that that looks cuddly. But yeah,
Speaker 1: before we sign off, I want to talk about this
Speaker 1: zombie thing. I want to hear or about the zombie thing,
Speaker 1: right right, so so on, I have no idea how
Speaker 1: to pronounce this, either sue beta or soap beta. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a website thing. Um. They had back
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine. It was on Valentine's Day, they
Speaker 1: had a love epidemic and when players signed on on
Speaker 1: on this particular Valentine Today, they found out that every
Speaker 1: every little critter in this universe had been infected by
Speaker 1: some kind of love virus, which if anyone else here
Speaker 1: seeing the documentary Stacy, which is a Japanese horror film, um,
Speaker 1: you will you will perhaps have have already ideas about this.
Speaker 1: But yeah, uh and and this virus would slowly turn
Speaker 1: these creatures into into these kind of gory, undead zombie things,
Speaker 1: and and people wound up really digging it. They wound
Speaker 1: up keeping their characters as zombies. You could you could
Speaker 1: eventually cure it by by applying something called lamurrisyllum, which
Speaker 1: which I am I am enchanted by. I think that
Speaker 1: is terrific um. But but yeah, so you know, there's
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of a darkness to a little
Speaker 1: little dark corner there, which again I think that I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, you know, some of the stuff
Speaker 1: is so cute. While I was doing research, I ran
Speaker 1: across um a couple of pages for the current Tomaguchi line,
Speaker 1: and I was honestly terrified by the sheer cute level.
Speaker 1: And I know that I'm not in the demographic anymore,
Speaker 1: so so I get that it's not aimed at me,
Speaker 1: but but just the amount of giant eyes with sparkles
Speaker 1: in them, why why did they sparkle? So that's what
Speaker 1: it is, and look it up. It's it's all. It's
Speaker 1: all very strange to me, you know. It's there's when
Speaker 1: when they were doing some initial research with ferbies Um
Speaker 1: up at M I t I think that M I
Speaker 1: T helped develop the furbies, or kids at MT helped
Speaker 1: develop it, and so so a lot of the research
Speaker 1: around it was done by those folks. But you know,
Speaker 1: kids kids said that they realized that the Ferbie wasn't alive,
Speaker 1: but but that it was a little bit alive in
Speaker 1: a furby kind of way, not in a human way,
Speaker 1: not in an animal way, but in a ferbie way.
Speaker 1: So it was like a new definition for life in
Speaker 1: the sense of well, it's it's more than something that's inert,
Speaker 1: but it's not something that's organically living, right, right. And
Speaker 1: one of the Frederick Kaplan, who's worked with the IBO
Speaker 1: team at Sony in Paris, was saying that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: these creatures paradoxically are not designed to respect asimov second
Speaker 1: law of robotics, which is that a robot must obey
Speaker 1: human beings orders. They're designed to be autonomous and to
Speaker 1: have their own goals, their own wants, their own needs,
Speaker 1: and to disobey you sometimes because that's real pet, Like
Speaker 1: a real pet would Yeah, yeah, because I mean with
Speaker 1: those behaviors, you end up developing this relationship. If it
Speaker 1: always did everything you said, that would probably become fairly
Speaker 1: boring fairly quickly. You know. It's it's that that process
Speaker 1: of teaching your pet and nurturing your pet that ends
Speaker 1: up being so rewarding from UH an owner perspective. Sure,
Speaker 1: there has to be a positive feedback loop of you
Speaker 1: doing something that has an impact on the pet's life
Speaker 1: and the pet therefore having an impact on yours. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting, and you know, they're like we said,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of scholarship on the matter, although to
Speaker 1: be fair, the scholarship did kind of died down simply
Speaker 1: because the trend didn't really you know, sustain itself in
Speaker 1: the United States anyway. But I expect we'll probably see
Speaker 1: more of that. I mean, especially as you talk about
Speaker 1: the development of things like artificial intelligence. We're going to
Speaker 1: see more toys that are incorporating some form of AI
Speaker 1: in them, and they'll probably follow a lot of the
Speaker 1: same features that digital pets established. So yeah, it's an interesting,
Speaker 1: interesting subject. I mean, ultimately, these virtual pets are following
Speaker 1: fairly simple protocols. That's it's an algorithms that have them
Speaker 1: behave a certain way. There's some quasi randomization about when
Speaker 1: they do certain actions, but it's really pretty simple. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, if if can and we really love
Speaker 1: something that that isn't alive, that can't die, you know,
Speaker 1: if more mortality is a condition of life, can we
Speaker 1: love something? I think that Vampire Slayer taught us that
Speaker 1: we can and that ultimately that decision is going to
Speaker 1: hurt us, but it's okay because it will create a
Speaker 1: spin off series it's much better than the original, or
Speaker 1: at least of equivalent quality until it reaches season four.
Speaker 1: All right. So um, that that I think wraps up
Speaker 1: our discussion on digital pets. So guys, that was a
Speaker 1: great suggestion. It was interesting, was something that I never
Speaker 1: would have thought to cover on my own, So definitely,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for that suggestion. Listeners, if you
Speaker 1: have any other suggestions for our topics we should cover
Speaker 1: in future episodes of tech Stuff, please get in touch
Speaker 1: with us. You can send us an email or an
Speaker 1: address is tech Stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop
Speaker 1: us a line on Facebook or Twitter or handle at
Speaker 1: both of those locations. Is tech Stuff, H. S. W
Speaker 1: and Lauren and I will taught to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com