Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff. I'm as Volocian here with Cara Prices.
Speaker 2: Has social media ever made you feel superstitious or paranoid?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean I've dipped my toe into the world of
Speaker 1: social media Instagram. I'm getting push notifications about being bold
Speaker 1: and about being depressed. I know I'm bold, am I
Speaker 1: depressed too? That makes me feel a bit paranoid that
Speaker 1: the algorithm may know more about me than I know
Speaker 1: about myself.
Speaker 2: I similarly get fed things that I've searched for that
Speaker 2: I don't want to know about myself. Why do you ask, Well,
Speaker 2: I feel like this is kind of a universal state.
Speaker 2: This tech induce paranoia, like most people can relate to it.
Speaker 4: Nobody would be like, yeah, you know, I just think
Speaker 4: social media is just such a fun, clear place to
Speaker 4: rest my head. And I actually spoke about this feeling
Speaker 4: with Amanda Hess, who is a writer at large for
Speaker 4: The New York Times covering technology and internet culture.
Speaker 1: She actually she wrote a fascinating column in the last
Speaker 1: couple of weeks actually about somebody who live streamed their
Speaker 1: birth on Twitch. So I'm very interested in her in
Speaker 1: her take in general. In the story, she finds.
Speaker 2: She's super smart, and I would definitely check out her
Speaker 2: book if you haven't checked it out. It's called Second Life,
Speaker 2: Having a Child in the Digital Age. And she said
Speaker 2: that even though she's normally really rational, getting pregnant changed
Speaker 2: her relationship to technology and kind of fed into a
Speaker 2: lot of superstitious feelings that I think most women feel
Speaker 2: went pregnant.
Speaker 3: Pregnancy is such a time of imagination and conjecture, and
Speaker 3: I had never been pregnant before. I didn't have many
Speaker 3: close friends who had undergone pregnancy, and so I was
Speaker 3: just turning to the Internet for everything, Like I ate
Speaker 3: a piece of turkey that tasted bad, Like what's going
Speaker 3: to happen? Like do I need to make myself throw up?
Speaker 3: Do I need to go to the hospital? I was
Speaker 3: like constantly googling stuff like that.
Speaker 2: And Amanda's superstitions were complicated by the fact that her
Speaker 2: pregnancy actually became complex.
Speaker 3: When I was about seven months pregnant, I had a
Speaker 3: routine ultrasound where my doctor, as he put it, saw
Speaker 3: something he didn't like, and at first my doctors didn't
Speaker 3: know what it was, but he suggested that he thought
Speaker 3: it might be a genetic syndrome called beck with Weedaman syndrome,
Speaker 3: which to me was like a jumble of nonsense sounds when.
Speaker 1: He said that, well, that's the doctor meeting that nobody
Speaker 1: wants to have. And also how brave of Amanda to
Speaker 1: write about this and share it on the podcast. But
Speaker 1: what is beck with Weedaman syndrome?
Speaker 2: So Amanda said that b to BUS is a genetic
Speaker 2: disorder where hearts of your body grow faster or bigger
Speaker 2: than is typical. It's very rare, and it actually took
Speaker 2: a month for her doctor to confirm that her son
Speaker 2: did in fact have b TOWS and during that time,
Speaker 2: like you can imagine all the googling she was doing.
Speaker 2: And that's where I wanted to start my conversation with Amanda,
Speaker 2: reflecting on that moment of uncertainty right after her son's diagnosis.
Speaker 3: Even before my pregnancy was complex, it was like a
Speaker 3: very trying experience for me. You have to like sacrifice
Speaker 3: a lot and endure a lot during pregnancy, and I
Speaker 3: found myself thinking.
Speaker 5: About what my child was going to be like. And so.
Speaker 3: When I got this possible diagnosis for my son, I
Speaker 3: immediately googled it as well, and I found that like
Speaker 3: the prospect of my son having a genetic condition potentially
Speaker 3: having like a catastrophic complication where I needed to make
Speaker 3: decisions about my pregnancy and I needed to start to
Speaker 3: imagine him differently, imagine myself differently, imagine my role as
Speaker 3: a parent differently.
Speaker 2: It so.
Speaker 3: Limited my imagination around what my son was going to
Speaker 3: be like and what our life was going to be like.
Speaker 3: And the first way I did that was just like
Speaker 3: showing me pictures of kids who have BWS. When you
Speaker 3: meet them in person, they're like human beings and their
Speaker 3: kids and.
Speaker 5: They're beautiful and really cute.
Speaker 3: And when you meet them online, it's like pictures that
Speaker 3: have been taken from medical journals. So the kid is
Speaker 3: sort of like in this like very medicalized environment, hooked
Speaker 3: up to like wires and stuff. My son was born
Speaker 3: with a very large tongue, so you would see kids
Speaker 3: with their tongue just like stuck out as far as
Speaker 3: they could make it stick out for the doctor to
Speaker 3: take a photo, like their.
Speaker 5: Eyes blacked out.
Speaker 3: And then photos from tabloid reporting. I found a lot
Speaker 3: of photos from the Daily Mail, and so I was
Speaker 3: like absorbing all of this new like imagine nation fodder
Speaker 3: from the Internet that was from the medical world. Or
Speaker 3: it was from the tabloid world, or it was from Reddit,
Speaker 3: where they were just like teenagers speculating about bws and
Speaker 3: like seeing pictures of babies with bws and giving their
Speaker 3: thoughts about whether they thought they should be born. And
Speaker 3: it was only like after my son was born and
Speaker 3: I met him as like a person, as opposed to
Speaker 3: this idea that was inside of me, that I realized
Speaker 3: I had just like bathed my brain and all of
Speaker 3: these distortions and lies about what he would be like
Speaker 3: and what our life would be like. And that was
Speaker 3: really when I started to think about just how influential
Speaker 3: and damaging that experience.
Speaker 5: Had been for me.
Speaker 2: You know, it's almost like the Internet immediately turns into
Speaker 2: a Ripley's believe it or not when you go looking
Speaker 2: for something, and it's never the sort of tempered, middle
Speaker 2: of the road version of the thing that you're looking for.
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, like the first time I
Speaker 3: googled bws and I found an article in the Daily Mail,
Speaker 3: I was like, well, my child is going to have
Speaker 3: something so rare and alarming to other people that you
Speaker 3: could write a newspaper article about it, And that I
Speaker 3: think really affected how I started to think about it.
Speaker 3: But then I realized later as I was like fact
Speaker 3: checking and researching the book, that they do like publish
Speaker 3: this article like every year about a different kid who
Speaker 3: has BWS. So once you see all of them, there's
Speaker 3: like fifteen or twenty articles, and you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: it's actually, in fact, there are so many children in
Speaker 3: the world that it's not quite so odd. And once
Speaker 3: I got an actual diagnosis for my son before he
Speaker 3: was born, I was able to join like Facebook groups
Speaker 3: for people who have BWS and their families, and there
Speaker 3: are like thousands of people in these groups, and so
Speaker 3: eventually I was able to navigate to a part of
Speaker 3: the internet that was comforting and helpful and helped me
Speaker 3: realize there are many children.
Speaker 5: Like my son. I was not alone. There's so much
Speaker 5: support there, and.
Speaker 3: There's such a diversity of people who are in these groups,
Speaker 3: which made me feel like it alleviated some of the
Speaker 3: guilt I had about feeling like I had done something
Speaker 3: by not eating the right leafy green, or by drinking
Speaker 3: a glass of wine, or by having a tablet of
Speaker 3: an anti anxiety medication, that I had caused this somehow
Speaker 3: by just the kind of person I am, but at
Speaker 3: first it was a really horrifying experience to google it.
Speaker 2: But it is interesting that the thing that could make
Speaker 2: you so miserable is also the thing that provided you
Speaker 2: a safe harbor. Social media has that sort of double
Speaker 2: edged nature.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think if you're someone who's dealing
Speaker 3: with something that is rare, or at least like feels
Speaker 3: rare in your community, the internet can be such a lifeline.
Speaker 3: But it's also most helpful as something that is like
Speaker 3: a supplement to my real human life. And when I
Speaker 3: was pregnant, my son didn't present as a human yet.
Speaker 3: It was as if I was experiencing him only through
Speaker 3: the Internet, which is a terrifying way to experience another person,
Speaker 3: especially someone who's going to be like so important to
Speaker 3: you and who you are, You're the most important person
Speaker 3: to them when they're born. And so I ultimately felt
Speaker 3: like sad that my first encounter or like perceived encounter
Speaker 3: with him was this of like fear and judgment, and
Speaker 3: so it took me a while to sort of like
Speaker 3: untangle myself from those feelings.
Speaker 2: What are some of the other ways that you felt
Speaker 2: pregnancy technology was priming you to see surveillance as something normal,
Speaker 2: and what do you think are the consequences of that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think The first real pregnancy tech
Speaker 3: that I was spending time with was Flow, my period tracker,
Speaker 3: which when I was using it as a.
Speaker 5: Period tracker, I loved it.
Speaker 3: It was such a great app I'm just such a
Speaker 3: forgetful person that, like I would just have no idea
Speaker 3: when my period was coming, and so having this alert
Speaker 3: in my phone that was like just so you know,
Speaker 3: if you feel uncomfortable and sad and angry in the
Speaker 3: next day, maybe it's because of this. But then as
Speaker 3: I started to think about getting pregnant, I realized that
Speaker 3: it was also telling me when it thought that I
Speaker 3: was at my most fertile, and so it became this
Speaker 3: kind of like biological clock very quickly for me, something
Speaker 3: that I have always thought of as like this sexist
Speaker 3: and corny idea that there's like this ticking clock in
Speaker 3: the back of women's minds, but it really it made
Speaker 3: it real for me. It's like here, it is in
Speaker 3: your hand. And then I used it to get pregnant,
Speaker 3: and I was like very lucky and that I got
Speaker 3: pregnant immediately, So I was like, wow, I think really works.
Speaker 3: You know, I've been avoiding pregnancy all my life, and
Speaker 3: I tried a couple of times and the app told
Speaker 3: me like just what.
Speaker 5: To do and it was right.
Speaker 3: So I think at that point I had conferred this
Speaker 3: power onto the app that maybe I wasn't realizing. And
Speaker 3: then when I was pregnant, I realized that this app
Speaker 3: that I had been using once a month, I was
Speaker 3: now opening ten times a day. And it wasn't because
Speaker 3: there was any new information in there necessarily, it was
Speaker 3: because my mind had started to associate it with my
Speaker 3: future baby, and so I was like thinking about that
Speaker 3: all the time. I wasn't telling all of my family
Speaker 3: members or friends or colleagues about it yet because it
Speaker 3: was so early, And so it became this like outlet
Speaker 3: for me to have this perosocial relationship with a fetus.
Speaker 3: And it showed me this like floating peachy cgi representation
Speaker 3: of what the baby looked like at that particular time.
Speaker 3: And it was also like anthropomorphizing the embryo and the
Speaker 3: fetus in this way that's like, this is how many
Speaker 3: brain neurons or whatever your baby is accumulating by the hour,
Speaker 3: Like it's getting so smart. Your baby's getting so smart
Speaker 3: and it was like nine weeks gestation or whatever.
Speaker 2: Did you feel as though you were interfacing with a
Speaker 2: medical product when you were using Flow or were you
Speaker 2: aware of the fact that it was basically a way
Speaker 2: to capture your data and keep you on an app.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't think I thought of it as
Speaker 3: either of those. I think if you had asked me,
Speaker 3: journalist me, what are you doing, I would have said, Oh,
Speaker 3: I'm interfacing with this app that is taking all of
Speaker 3: this personal data from me and is kat asking me
Speaker 3: to like upgrade the service or whatever like every day.
Speaker 5: But if you ask the me that exists beneath.
Speaker 3: Rational me, the feeling me, it would have been like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is the time that I'm spending with my baby.
Speaker 3: I'm like opening it, seeing what it looks like, looking
Speaker 3: as it transforms. But I think what I didn't realize
Speaker 3: at first was I was absorbing what the app thought
Speaker 3: was normal, what a normal mother does, what a normal
Speaker 3: baby looks like. And at a certain point, once the
Speaker 3: fetus gets aged enough, it has a face and it's
Speaker 3: always kind of like peacefully smiling in there. And it
Speaker 3: wasn't until I had this abnormal ultrasound that was the
Speaker 3: first time really that I realized on an emotional level
Speaker 3: that the picture in flow was not a picture of
Speaker 3: my baby, and it was not actually a representation of
Speaker 3: what my baby's face looked like.
Speaker 5: And that made me feel betrayed.
Speaker 3: Which sounds nuts, But I had spent the first part
Speaker 3: of my pregnancy relating to this thing, and now I
Speaker 3: realized that it's not really showing me anything, So I
Speaker 3: don't know anything.
Speaker 2: Part of what I think you're talking about is this
Speaker 2: instinct that we have to like offload our meaning making
Speaker 2: onto apps, right that, like, I'm going to make meaning
Speaker 2: of my life by creating data of myself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think for me, I don't know
Speaker 3: that the app was helping me, but it got me
Speaker 3: used to this idea of like tracking myself and my baby,
Speaker 3: even though there was no like achievement that I really
Speaker 3: needed to make. But there a bunch of pregnancy apps
Speaker 3: like create things that they hope that you achieve, like
Speaker 3: that you'll be doing pelvic floor exercises every day, or
Speaker 3: that you'll get your like thirty minutes of exercise, and
Speaker 3: like yoga doesn't count.
Speaker 5: For me.
Speaker 3: It was more just like this drum beat of getting
Speaker 3: the information and giving the information back. That felt like
Speaker 3: something I was compelled to do. You know, women are
Speaker 3: used to that, just the sense of being surveilled by
Speaker 3: who knows what and participating in it. But I think
Speaker 3: this specifically trains parents to start being the surveilling force
Speaker 3: of their kid, and once their baby is born, to
Speaker 3: consider all of these products that tell you if your
Speaker 3: baby is sleeping normally, if your baby is developing normally,
Speaker 3: if they're growing normally, or whatever, when it's just not
Speaker 3: necessary in most cases. And also this idea of normalcy,
Speaker 3: it's not a real thing. There's no real normal, average person.
Speaker 3: That's like an idea that we have. But for me,
Speaker 3: as the parent of a kid who ended up having
Speaker 3: a disability, I think it can be destructive because there's
Speaker 3: a suggestion beneath all of it that what we really
Speaker 3: all want is like a normal kid. And I found later,
Speaker 3: like after my kid was born, that wasn't really what
Speaker 3: I wanted, but it's what I felt that I wanted.
Speaker 2: A long time ago, I reported on a story about
Speaker 2: this woman called Gillian Bruckell who was served adoption ads
Speaker 2: after her still birth, and one of the kind of
Speaker 2: conclusions that she came to was the idea that, like Facebook,
Speaker 2: ads were not programmed to understand any alternative for a childbirth.
Speaker 2: You know, there are no variables that are engineered into
Speaker 2: the way we are marketed to as expected mothers.
Speaker 3: I'm always, I feel like in my work, like struggling
Speaker 3: to understand whether technology if it knows so much about us,
Speaker 3: or if it really knows nothing. It's just so easy
Speaker 3: to like project ourselves onto this stuff. But I yeah,
Speaker 3: I found with Flow it made a lot of ass
Speaker 3: about how a person felt about their pregnancy, whether it
Speaker 3: was something that they wanted to continue or not. There
Speaker 3: was a point in my pregnancy where I got an
Speaker 3: ultrasound from a doctor who is an expert in fetal brains,
Speaker 3: and she told me that she saw something.
Speaker 5: Unusual in my fetus's brain, but that I would.
Speaker 3: Need to get an MRI in order to confirm the results.
Speaker 3: And I needed to wait a week to get that MRI.
Speaker 3: And once I got THERI, the MRI doctor said the
Speaker 3: brain was perfectly normal looking. But for that week, I
Speaker 3: was like, this was a wanted pregnancy, But now I
Speaker 3: have to prepare for the possibility that I am carrying
Speaker 3: a baby who's not going to survive or who I
Speaker 3: would need to consider the possibility of having an abortion.
Speaker 3: And meanwhile I was opening Flow and it was like,
Speaker 3: your baby's almost here, Like your baby is almost gonna
Speaker 3: be bought, Like your baby is crying in the womb,
Speaker 3: just like it's gonna cry on the outside.
Speaker 1: And I was so.
Speaker 3: Shaken and offended that this the app was like assuming
Speaker 3: all of these things that I felt like, at least
Speaker 3: for that week, we're no longer things that I could assume.
Speaker 5: But yeah, it really it knew my do date and
Speaker 5: that was it.
Speaker 2: After the break, the blurry line between pregnancy tech and
Speaker 2: eugenics stayed with us. One of the most surprising things
Speaker 2: about the book to me was the kind of rabbit
Speaker 2: hole you go down, connecting eugenics in Silicon Valley to
Speaker 2: genetic screening startups and then how it all shockingly ties
Speaker 2: into feminist theory. So how did you end up making
Speaker 2: these connections and what were some of your big takeaways
Speaker 2: from this section.
Speaker 5: Of the book.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think at first I was using Flow
Speaker 3: and I was just trying to understand, like who started
Speaker 3: tracking periods, Like how were people tracking periods before apps?
Speaker 3: Before feminist books in the nineteen seventies, and there's a
Speaker 3: bunch of different theories about what the origins are.
Speaker 5: Like there are people who believe that they are.
Speaker 3: Like notches on an ancient whalebone that represent like a
Speaker 3: women's cycle. But like what I came to understand was,
Speaker 3: for most of human history, like women's cycles were so
Speaker 3: irregular that it wouldn't have made sense to track a
Speaker 3: period just because the level of nutrition or whatever, like
Speaker 3: food security of human beings was not what it is today.
Speaker 3: But then I found this woman, Marie Stops, who was
Speaker 3: like an early proponent of tracking women's cycles, and she
Speaker 3: was doing it in this proto feminist way in the
Speaker 3: early nineteen hundreds. There was a lot of like fascination
Speaker 3: at this time about menstrual cycles, whether they meant that
Speaker 3: like women shouldn't be able to work because they were
Speaker 3: like laid out for like several days a month or whatever.
Speaker 3: And she started tracking her cycle on paper and then
Speaker 3: tracking basically like how horny she was at various parts
Speaker 3: in the cycle to prove that like this horniness that
Speaker 3: she was experiencing was natural, it was normal, and that
Speaker 3: it didn't have anything to do with her husband. And
Speaker 3: it really reminded me of flow because there were so
Speaker 3: many things that she was charting that I could chart
Speaker 3: in my flow app And then I found out that
Speaker 3: she was like a huge proponent of eugenics, which at
Speaker 3: the time was very popular as it is now again today,
Speaker 3: I think, but there was a way in which her
Speaker 3: eugenics intersected with this data tracking that she was doing,
Speaker 3: where she was establishing what was normal in a reproductive sense,
Speaker 3: and she was also arguing that people who fall outside
Speaker 3: of the bounds of normal, which for her was Northern European, white,
Speaker 3: heterosexual whatever.
Speaker 5: Should not be allowed to reproduce.
Speaker 3: And so I became interested in like where eugenics was
Speaker 3: like sort of coursing through our modern technologies too. And
Speaker 3: I do think there's this drumbeat of normal that they
Speaker 3: try to establish often that carries on some of the
Speaker 3: ideologies of that movement. But as I went on writing
Speaker 3: the book, I found many more Silicon Valley startups that
Speaker 3: are just self consciously eugenic, Like they wouldn't say that
Speaker 3: their eugenics, but they are trying to improve the stock
Speaker 3: of human babies.
Speaker 5: I have a kid who has an.
Speaker 3: Overgrowth disorder, which means that he is a higher risk
Speaker 3: of having pediatric cancer than most kids. And so when
Speaker 3: I read a lot of the advertisements for these testing companies,
Speaker 3: these embryo testing companies, I find that, like the first
Speaker 3: thing they often say is pediatric cancer. They're basically like
Speaker 3: claiming they can like cure cancer by weeding it out genetically.
Speaker 3: And then after that they're introducing other stuff like maybe
Speaker 3: someday we could have like an IQ score, or you
Speaker 3: could optimize for a baby who was tall and who
Speaker 3: had great coordination and maybe they'd be like very good
Speaker 3: at playing sports or whatever. But I always found that
Speaker 3: it was sort of like taken as non controversial that
Speaker 3: you would want to like eradicates associated with pediatric cancer,
Speaker 3: which I find interesting because like, that's that's my son, right,
Speaker 3: and I certainly don't want to eliminate him, and I
Speaker 3: think he has a life worth living.
Speaker 5: And all of these things, I think, you know, have been.
Speaker 3: Coming out and are endorsed by tech political leaders who
Speaker 3: are at the same time slashing research for pediatric cancer
Speaker 3: or like getting rid of welfare.
Speaker 5: And I see all.
Speaker 3: The time like comments under these companies ads that are
Speaker 3: like this is really going to reduce the amount of
Speaker 3: money that we have to pay for healthcare. And so
Speaker 3: when I was first starting to look at this stuff,
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, like deep within this stuff, there's
Speaker 3: sort of like hints of eugenics. And then at the
Speaker 3: end of writing the book, you know, now that it's
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, it's it's not a hint anymore.
Speaker 2: Do you have advice for parents or people who are
Speaker 2: planning on becoming parents and are overwhelmed with figuring out
Speaker 2: what role technology should play in parenting? Do you have
Speaker 2: any sensible takeaways?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think the most sensible advice that
Speaker 3: I give people is like, try not to buy anything
Speaker 3: before your kid is born.
Speaker 2: Which defies conventional wisdom.
Speaker 3: I know, once the algorithms like figure out you're pregnant,
Speaker 3: they're going to be trying to sell you all of
Speaker 3: this stuff.
Speaker 5: And it's like a.
Speaker 3: Five hundred dollars video monitor that like uploads a three
Speaker 3: D representation of your child to the cloud that's like
Speaker 3: watched to see if they are like breathing normally or whatever.
Speaker 3: I was so stressed during pregnancy, and I felt so
Speaker 3: unprepared that I it's not that I bought everything, but
Speaker 3: I bought stuff that I didn't end up needing and
Speaker 3: now I have like a fifteen dollars audio monitor, which
Speaker 3: would have been perfectly acceptable with a newborn as well.
Speaker 2: And was acceptable for many decades.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it was helpful to me to
Speaker 3: like see the way that these audio monitors were advertised
Speaker 3: when they first came out, like in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 3: There's so much fear mongering in the ads, and it's like,
Speaker 3: you need this two way radio to hear if somebody
Speaker 3: is going to enter your home and snatch your baby away.
Speaker 3: And they call them like the radio nurse or whatever,
Speaker 3: and their estyle is like so much more reliable than
Speaker 3: a real baby nurse because it's not a person you
Speaker 3: could steal a baby. And so to me, like just
Speaker 3: seeing the stoking of the fear like transforms through the
Speaker 3: generations where now it's like your baby may stop breathing
Speaker 3: in the night and never breathe again, and that's true,
Speaker 3: like that could happen, But none of these devices are
Speaker 3: FDA approved for preventing SIDS.
Speaker 2: What is the craziest thing related to parenting or motherhood
Speaker 2: that you have seen online?
Speaker 3: There's this genre of parenting video that's like a video
Speaker 3: of the person's child making all of their food in
Speaker 3: a tiny kitchen themselves. But it's because the parent is
Speaker 3: like such a good parent that they've already trained their
Speaker 3: two year old to like empty the dishwasher and like
Speaker 3: boil water or whatever, like make pasta, like put their
Speaker 3: cereal in a bowl from the cereal dispenser, and they're
Speaker 3: like such a good parent that their child is this
Speaker 3: like beautiful miniature kitchen or whatever. And then the comments
Speaker 3: on it are like finding fault with the best parent ever,
Speaker 3: and like that.
Speaker 5: Apple slice is too big.
Speaker 3: Yeah, cereal isn't real food, Like have your child prepare
Speaker 3: real food for themselves.
Speaker 5: I mean, I.
Speaker 3: Think there's so much content.
Speaker 5: You know, I have toddlers.
Speaker 3: Now I have like two year old and a four
Speaker 3: year old, and so I'm aware of a bunch of
Speaker 3: content around lunch packing or whatever. And it's styled as
Speaker 3: like advice, Like I know, you're so out of ideas
Speaker 3: of like what to pack for lunch here like all
Speaker 3: of these ideas about what to put in the bento box.
Speaker 3: And like I started out being like I don't think
Speaker 3: I should know what somebody else feeds their child. Now
Speaker 3: my kids are in public school, I'm like I don't
Speaker 3: want to know what they eat, Like I don't want
Speaker 3: to know what they're being fed at school. My mind
Speaker 3: is like blissfully free of this information, and it's so great,
Speaker 3: and I feel like there are all of these accounts
Speaker 3: that like exist to like try to make you do
Speaker 3: work that's like not actually necessary, and like having my
Speaker 3: kids like eat school lunch just basically the one way
Speaker 3: I'm able to access this ideal society where like we
Speaker 3: actually share things and like we eat the same thing
Speaker 3: instead of sharing advice on how you can make the
Speaker 3: same fancy omelet that.
Speaker 5: I've paid for my kid.
Speaker 3: I think just this idea of like trading actual support
Speaker 3: with advice is like such a bad trade off.
Speaker 5: It's such an awful trade off.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for joining me, Amanda.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me for tech stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Kara Price Namas Valoshian.
Speaker 4: This episode was.
Speaker 2: Produced by Eliza Dennis, Melissa Slaughter, and Tyler Hill. It
Speaker 2: was executive produced by me Ozwalashan, Julia Nutter, and Kate
Speaker 2: Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvelle for iHeart Podcasts. Jack
Speaker 2: Insley mixed this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song.
Speaker 1: Join us on Friday for the Weekend Tech when Karen
Speaker 1: I will run through the tech headlines you may have missed.
Speaker 2: Please rate, review, and reach out to us at tech
Speaker 2: Stuff Podcast at gmail dot com.