Speaker 1: Back before we called it voicemail, or at least when
Speaker 1: voicemail meant something different and more specific. The world had
Speaker 1: the humble answering machine. We're not right now, but we'll
Speaker 1: call you about if you leave the name and number.
Speaker 1: If you aren't of the age to remember. The answering
Speaker 1: machine was a physical audio recorder that plugged into your
Speaker 1: phone line. You couldn't call into it remotely. You had
Speaker 1: to wait till you got home to check your messages,
Speaker 1: and they were the source for a lot of seinfeldt gas.
Speaker 1: Most answering machines recorded on cassette tape. Your magnetically recorded
Speaker 1: message will be saved until you recorded over it or
Speaker 1: change the cassette. When I was a little kid, my
Speaker 1: family had a different kind of answering machine. It was
Speaker 1: actually tapeless. I think it was a Sony and it
Speaker 1: was digital. That's my dad, a man who's not apt
Speaker 1: to forget a piece of telephone technology. It was like
Speaker 1: a little tower with a big push button on top
Speaker 1: that would blink once you had a message. In addition
Speaker 1: to play and shuttle, it had a record button for
Speaker 1: your greeting. But on this machine you could also record
Speaker 1: your own messages. Directly into it, like a voice mobile
Speaker 1: function on your phone. I think the idea was if
Speaker 1: you were the husband and wife passing, you know, running
Speaker 1: kids around and stuff, that you could leave each other
Speaker 1: messages on it if you were just standing in front
Speaker 1: of it, like you wouldn't have to call it on
Speaker 1: your non existent cell phone, because none of us had
Speaker 1: cell phones back then. I don't think Mom and I
Speaker 1: ever ever used that, but you used it because you
Speaker 1: liked hearing yourself recorded. It sat on top of my
Speaker 1: parents bureau, so I must have had to climb on
Speaker 1: a duel or something. But I spent untold hours talking
Speaker 1: into this device. Um, my voice is going to come
Speaker 1: out all weird and staticky from the spring, recorded it
Speaker 1: and played it many many times. If you recorded multiple
Speaker 1: memos then hit the play button, it would run them
Speaker 1: all back to back in the order in which they
Speaker 1: were created. To a young me, this was absolute magic.
Speaker 1: By this method, and in a spirit of endless experimentation,
Speaker 1: I'd fill the tiny hard drive with recordings structured as
Speaker 1: imaginary shows. I have no idea what about I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I did then, probably just whatever came to mind.
Speaker 1: I've listened through it a hundred times and pieces as
Speaker 1: I built my episode up and a few times over
Speaker 1: as a finished product, and wait for my parents to
Speaker 1: check their messages. I have great parents, so they listened
Speaker 1: through with at least feigned enthusiasm. You eat it, but
Speaker 1: sooner or later we need the space. And with the
Speaker 1: click of a button, it was all gone. This is
Speaker 1: your grandmother? Is anyone there? It's over? Okay? See after
Speaker 1: it's gone, it's all by okay. Soon enough, I'd make another,
Speaker 1: and none of those were saved. This tape I've been
Speaker 1: playing is the closest thing I have left. It was
Speaker 1: actually recorded on micro cassette, which looks just like a
Speaker 1: regular cassette tape, shrunk down to a quarter of the size.
Speaker 1: My next fascination after answering machines. Here I'm wandering around
Speaker 1: my dad's office with his handheld voice recorder. Inside my dad,
Speaker 1: I sound about ten round. I made lots of tapes
Speaker 1: like this, but as far as I can find, this
Speaker 1: is the last one I have left from this early
Speaker 1: in my life. Do I wish more had been saved,
Speaker 1: especially those early answering machine productions, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: guess so it's comparable to a baby picture an old
Speaker 1: yearbook or some other keepsake, maybe the most like a
Speaker 1: Sunday school craft project for Mother's Day. Ragged and potentially embarrassing,
Speaker 1: however sentimental, but it's ephemeral. It's a fleeting moment and
Speaker 1: it's gone. Even though I was young, I knew that
Speaker 1: at the time. It's these moments. This show fixates on
Speaker 1: lost materials, dropped threads, forgotten stories, ephemera in the way
Speaker 1: that it's intertwined in our lives, all those things tangible
Speaker 1: and intangible that you wish you could take just one
Speaker 1: more look at before they vanish into the past. America
Speaker 1: has produced like lots and lots of stuff, just piles
Speaker 1: of stuff, and it's sitting around in storage spaces, and
Speaker 1: we keep making it and buying it, and then what
Speaker 1: do you do with it? And it's got to go somewhere.
Speaker 1: The fact of the matter is is all day long,
Speaker 1: every day, there are warehouses full of stuff getting just
Speaker 1: pushed off a cliff, getting shoved off into the abyss
Speaker 1: and being destroyed all day every day. That's the Nagaski
Speaker 1: who runs the Canary Records label. A friend of mine,
Speaker 1: uh Steve Smolean, who's a record guy like me said
Speaker 1: that what he loves is being the guy standing at
Speaker 1: the edge of the cliff waving his arms going, wait, no,
Speaker 1: let me look at those first before you throw them away.
Speaker 1: I think there might be some good stuff in there,
Speaker 1: there might be some stories. Well, I don't think we
Speaker 1: should throw all those away yet, because museums can't handle it.
Speaker 1: The big cultural institutions can't handle it. There's just too
Speaker 1: much stuff. You know, they're getting donated piles of stuff
Speaker 1: all the time. The fact of the matter is they
Speaker 1: don't always know or care. They're looking for specific things
Speaker 1: that relate to specific narratives, so you always need somebody
Speaker 1: who's looking for a different story. We have a season
Speaker 1: ten episodes of stories from that realm, of things that
Speaker 1: were just barely saved and in some cases not saved
Speaker 1: at all. A bizarre tale of two infamous New Yorkers
Speaker 1: booby trapped their home and turned it into the shield
Speaker 1: fortress of a missing chapter of American music history. There
Speaker 1: hasn't been a guess culturally that they matter, so they
Speaker 1: got thrown in the garbage. A decade's worth of original
Speaker 1: television lost to the airwaves. It's over. You're gonna see
Speaker 1: something else the next second, and nobody's ever going to
Speaker 1: see a piece of music that's defied convention for seventy years.
Speaker 1: I had students write down the sounds they heard during it,
Speaker 1: and one girl said, I never realized there was so
Speaker 1: much to listen to and what could only be called
Speaker 1: an audio mystery. It said nothing on it and it
Speaker 1: clearly had been recorded, which intrigued me. What is this
Speaker 1: going to be? These stories and more given new life,
Speaker 1: if only for a glimpse. There's times I can't help
Speaker 1: but feeling like that little kid again, talking into a
Speaker 1: machine that I'm sure won't save anything I say into it. Also,
Speaker 1: is this podcast a piece of ephemer in the making,
Speaker 1: a forgotten story about forgotten stories? Only time will tell
Speaker 1: the Ephemeral debuts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And
Speaker 1: learn more at Ephemeral, dot show and of Messages