0:00

Lauren. Mike. How

0:03

often do you look at your phone every day? Too

0:07

often, unless I'm sleeping and then

0:09

I'm not looking. Otherwise

0:12

I would say if I can go a full hour

0:14

or two without looking at my phone, like if I'm in

0:16

a yoga class, that is pretty

0:18

notable. What about you?

0:21

I look at it from the moment I wake up

0:23

until the moment I fall asleep with it hitting my face.

0:25

But I would say there's usually

0:28

like a couple of two to three

0:30

hour blocks in the middle of the day when I'm working

0:33

or exercising or playing music where I'm not

0:35

looking at my phone. But

0:37

aren't you working on your phone and playing music

0:39

from your phone? No, I

0:41

mean like playing music with a musical instrument that I'm

0:43

holding in my hands. Oh, oh, the old

0:45

fashioned kind. Okay, got it.

0:48

Well, you also use technologies that are sort

0:50

of designed to get you to look at your screen less, right?

0:52

So you wear smartwatches and you use

0:55

Siri and you test smart glasses

0:57

for your job.

1:00

Define using Siri. I

1:04

do wear a smartwatch. I happen to not

1:06

wear an Apple watch. I wear Garmin

1:08

and I get notifications, but it doesn't

1:10

feel like a little phone, you know? And

1:14

despite all that, I still look at my phone.

1:16

Is there anything technology wise

1:18

that could get you to stop looking at your phone? I could

1:20

throw it in the ocean, except that would be

1:22

bad for the ocean. It'd be very bad. Well,

1:25

you're in luck. Today, we're going to talk

1:27

about an extremely bizarre product that might

1:29

somehow help you look at your phone less. I

1:32

am not convinced, but

1:34

let's do it.

1:43

Hi everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I

1:45

am Michael Kolory. I'm a senior editor at Wired. And

1:47

I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior writer at Wired. We

1:50

are also joined today, once again, by Wired senior writer, Paresh

1:53

Dave. I'm delighted to be back

1:55

so soon. Yes, it's great to have

1:57

you.

1:57

We're thrilled to have you back. Like we said, the last time we

1:59

were- just giving you a 10-month warm-up. Now

2:01

you've been on once, you're gonna be on all

2:04

the time. That sounds wonderful to me.

2:07

Alright, well you've got a smartphone, you've

2:09

got a smartwatch, you've got your smart

2:11

glasses, you've got a sort

2:14

of smart voice assistant living

2:16

inside all of those things. What else could

2:18

you possibly need to get through the day?

2:20

How about an interactive pin?

2:23

Hmm. Today we will be talking about

2:25

a new piece of hardware that clips to your shirt and

2:28

uses tap gestures and voice controls

2:30

to do basic things for you, like answer

2:32

calls, translate speech, count

2:35

calories, capture photos, search the web.

2:38

It's from a company called Humane, a startup

2:40

founded in 2018 by two former Apple employees.

2:44

After five or six years of working on this thing

2:46

in secret, the company has emerged from

2:48

the darkness and demonstrated its wearable device

2:50

to the tech press. It's called the Humane

2:53

AI pin, and Puresh,

2:55

you got to sit in on a demo. Can you tell

2:58

us what you saw? So the demo

3:00

started with a tour of their studio.

3:03

So they're here in San Francisco and they have

3:05

a few office spaces nearby each other,

3:08

one where they do all their engineering, all

3:10

that magical stuff. Wasn't allowed to see

3:12

that. But I went into the

3:14

studio and first they showed off

3:17

the variety of colors. So there's a darker

3:19

version, the lighter version, something in between.

3:21

Then they showed how it sort

3:24

of looks, you know, the pack,

3:26

the box, the packaging, and then once

3:28

you open the packaging, all the different things that

3:30

you would see, you know, they were showing off

3:33

their wonderful little charging cable. They're

3:35

offering a charging brick. And then

3:37

from there I walked into a room

3:39

where they had some

3:42

of these pins set up on like tripods,

3:45

for photo shoots for some reason. But

3:48

I wasn't allowed to take photos of anything. And

3:51

then I was taken into sort of, you

3:53

know, where there's a bunch of desks. And then they had set

3:55

up these very white tables filled

3:58

with different objects and things.

4:01

But first before those tables were these tables

4:03

where they had laid out sort

4:05

of each component of this

4:08

pin. So I was able to touch the raw

4:10

piece of aluminum from which

4:12

they eventually carve out

4:14

this pin. I was able to touch the

4:16

different sensors that are in it. And

4:19

then finally got

4:21

around to these demos. So one of the

4:23

most basic things that they showed me is you

4:26

can get it to answer questions. So it has AI built

4:29

into it just like chat GPT. So it

4:31

answered a question about the World Series.

4:33

It answered a question about

4:37

who the president was in 1900 here in

4:39

the US. It told me all

4:41

about French president,

4:43

Manuel Macron's background. It

4:46

was pretty useful, but

4:49

sort of what you'd expect from anything

4:51

that has that kind of capability at this point.

4:54

Then they showed demos of translations.

4:58

So me saying something in Spanish

5:00

and it translating it to English

5:03

for the other person. Same with Japanese.

5:06

We also did this thing where

5:08

you

5:10

show it

5:11

a bowl of almonds and

5:13

say, you know,

5:16

how many grams of almond should I be eating a day?

5:18

How many calories are them? Sort of ask these sort

5:20

of food related questions. And

5:23

it's able to track

5:25

how much you're consuming if you're activating the

5:27

camera while doing so. And as a result,

5:30

it was able to tell the demo

5:32

where that he had had about, you know, five

5:34

grams of almonds today. And

5:37

humane expects health to be a key thing

5:42

in their service going forward, it sounds like.

5:44

I see. So you weren't you

5:46

were not allowed to wear it. Somebody else was wearing it.

5:48

You were talking to this person and watching them

5:51

use it. Correct. But

5:53

my voice was used as the input at times.

5:55

Right. Also saw them make

5:57

a phone call.

5:59

speaker I thought was

6:02

sort of crystal clear for the phone call even

6:04

better than the the music that was

6:06

demoed coming out of it. So

6:09

I would say I can see how people

6:12

would want to use this as a phone but

6:14

this would mean talking aloud in

6:16

public a lot although it does support

6:18

headphones.

6:20

Presh, there was supposed to be some kind of interaction where

6:22

it like projects onto your skin. Did

6:26

you get to see that? What is that like?

6:28

Yeah so that's one of the main

6:30

things that you should know about this device. One,

6:32

it's standalone. You don't

6:35

need to pair it to a phone. In

6:37

fact you can't even really pair it to

6:39

a phone. It has LTE

6:42

connectivity and there's

6:45

a touchpad on the pin so

6:47

you can kind of tap on it to activate

6:49

the microphone or activate the camera. It's

6:51

not a screen you can't really look at anything

6:54

there. So what they did is they put

6:56

a laser projector into the pin.

6:58

You hold your hand out and it projects

7:01

what they call laser ink onto

7:04

your your hand. Which is just lasers.

7:08

It's sort of a to me it looked bluish

7:11

green as I guess I would describe the color

7:14

and you do a variety of gestures so

7:16

if you want to go back

7:19

to see sort of like a menu you

7:22

push your hand out. If you want to click on a

7:24

button say the pause button

7:26

or the play button while you're listening to

7:29

music you pinch your index finger

7:31

and thumb together. When you want to go to the

7:34

the home screen you clasp your hand

7:36

together. So they've invented these these

7:38

gestures and they've made it

7:41

one-handed which was one of the big sort

7:44

of debates that they had as a company was

7:46

whether to make it something where you

7:49

use your finger to on your

7:51

other hand to tap on it and

7:53

they decided that gestures

7:56

and one-handed was the way to go to make it feel

7:58

sort of quick and lightweight. and easy. I

8:01

see.

8:02

So they've taken some of the core components of a phone,

8:05

they've offloaded it onto a pen that's

8:07

on your body, and then instead of using

8:10

a touchscreen for input, you're basically using some

8:12

kind of skin put on the palm

8:14

of your hand. I'm just curious,

8:17

was this dreamed up at Burning

8:19

Man? Did a

8:22

bunch of Apple employees, after

8:25

toiling away an infinite loop for years and years

8:27

and being siloed in secrecy, get

8:29

to go to Burning Man one year and we're like, you

8:32

know what?

8:33

What if we just put it on your

8:35

skin?

8:37

Well it's not just that, you can also use

8:39

your voice, and they do expect people

8:42

to use voice command a lot. What if you could

8:44

talk to it? But we do that with our devices

8:46

today, so that's not

8:48

too different. What if

8:49

it had artificial intelligence

8:52

that's creeping towards general

8:54

artificial intelligence?

8:55

I'm sorry, please

8:58

continue. I think the main thing to keep

9:00

in mind is that there were companies trying to do this with

9:02

smart glasses already, right? You use these sort

9:04

of projector systems like

9:06

Magic Leap to put a screen in front

9:08

of your face, and Humane

9:11

is trying to say that there's no humanity in that,

9:13

that we don't want to have

9:17

screens in front of us all day long,

9:19

and can't really, right

9:21

now, get smart glasses to last

9:24

all day long because they require

9:26

so much batteries, and then you end up having something like

9:28

Apple's Vision Pro with this battery pack or whatever.

9:31

So the idea

9:33

here is it's lightweight enough, it's

9:36

low powered enough that it can hopefully

9:39

kind of last you through the day for the most part, and

9:42

it takes away that screen, which is

9:44

sort of Humane's founding principle.

9:46

Right, and in all seriousness,

9:48

did you find it compelling when you

9:50

were seeing it? Like were you thinking, I wish I

9:52

had this instead of my phone?

9:56

I don't know. The AI smarts are

9:58

coming to our phones. There's

10:00

been rumors that Google with their next Pixel

10:03

phone, certainly Apple with an iPhone

10:05

somewhere in the near future, will have

10:07

a much better Google Assistant,

10:10

will have a much better Siri that

10:12

have a lot more capabilities that we've

10:14

become accustomed to with Chat GPT.

10:17

So from that angle, these AI smarts

10:19

are coming to other devices, so that

10:21

doesn't feel like a compelling sell.

10:25

And there's watches that do a

10:27

lot of what this device

10:30

already does. I appreciate

10:32

the hands-free nature of it for

10:35

many uses, but

10:39

I don't know. I can't see where it fits into my

10:41

life just yet. What do we know about pricing

10:43

and availability? Well, that's one of the reasons why

10:45

I don't know where it fits into my life. It'll

10:47

cost you at least $699. And

10:53

that's just the start of it, because

10:56

for that LTE connection, and

10:58

you'll get a phone number with it,

11:01

it'll also get you access to all these AI

11:04

services and other sort of apps.

11:07

They're not calling them apps, but services that are going to be built

11:09

into the pen, that'll cost you $24 a month.

11:13

So that's a big investment. I mean, it's basically

11:16

like adding a cell phone to your cell

11:18

phone plan. Yeah. So

11:20

yeah, it's like you're adding another phone to your life,

11:22

but a phone that you wear in your shirt with

11:24

a camera that's always facing out. What's

11:28

the vibe like when you're standing in front of somebody who's

11:31

wearing it and there's a camera pointing at you? Is there a

11:33

light that comes on? Is there any indication

11:35

that the camera is on or off? There

11:38

is. So there's what they call it, what

11:40

Humane calls a truss light. The

11:42

lights have different colors depending on what

11:44

mode it's in. So it does tell people

11:47

around you when it's recording. It tells people

11:49

around you when it's filming. So

11:53

from the very beginning, Humane made this

11:56

promise that they wanted to build a more

12:01

trustworthy device than exists today. They

12:03

wanted those elements because right now when you're

12:05

holding up a phone it's never sort of clear

12:07

whether someone's recording you or not, right? But

12:10

I would say it is a bit jarring

12:12

when you walk into their office and everyone is wearing

12:15

one of these pins. I

12:18

mean, that is that's a lot. But

12:20

there are elements of it that sort of make it

12:23

sneaky and sort of fall back into

12:25

the world in a way, because the

12:27

speaker can be tuned so

12:29

quietly that they say that people use

12:31

it in the office to listen to music or whatever and

12:34

the person next to them can't really hear it. So

12:36

there are things like that that are kind of nice,

12:38

but also could be sneaky.

12:41

But the main thing is that that light, that

12:43

trust light is designed to be tamper

12:45

resistant. The device becomes inoperable

12:48

if someone tries to mess with that. So

12:50

it is important to note that they've

12:52

tried to build privacy in from

12:54

the very beginning. Right. But still

12:57

walking around with camera on your lapel

12:59

is not necessarily a privacy forward

13:02

business plan. Correct. And

13:04

they have

13:07

angled the camera such that it actually

13:10

does conform to various

13:12

body types and will sort of film what

13:14

you kind of is in front of you rather

13:16

than filming the sky because you can

13:18

imagine if something is sitting on your chest,

13:20

it will kind of point upwards. So

13:22

they've designed this curvature to

13:25

address that. So it can take pretty

13:27

good photos. I was able to see some

13:30

of the photos taken by it. They weren't too bad. It's

13:32

a 13 megapixel resolution

13:35

that comes off and you can

13:37

preview the photos in this weird

13:39

laser ink on your hands. I wouldn't

13:41

say it's too clear, but

13:45

from a user perspective,

13:48

that's probably good because you don't have

13:50

to deal with any shoulder surfers. Right.

13:52

Right. All right.

13:54

Let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk more

13:56

about humane and its AI

13:59

pin.

14:00

Hi,

14:02

I'm Adam Grant,

14:05

and you may know me from the podcast Work Life. As

14:07

an organizational psychologist, I know that sometimes

14:10

the best way to solve a problem is to question

14:12

the way we've always done. And my new

14:14

show with the TED Audio Collection, Rethinking,

14:17

talks to some of today's greatest minds about how

14:19

they see the world. From scientists

14:21

to artists, people from Brene Brown

14:24

to Lin-Manuel Miranda to Mark Cuban,

14:26

can explore the assumptions they challenge and the

14:28

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14:31

Rethinking wherever you listen.

14:33

Hey, Wired listeners and gear aficionados.

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quarterly.

15:15

We've been hearing about Humane for years.

15:17

The company has been taking meetings around Silicon

15:20

Valley and speaking vaguely about this

15:22

technology since before the pandemic.

15:25

Then in April of 2023,

15:27

one of the co-founders got on stage at

15:29

TED and gave a proto demo similar

15:33

to what you saw this week. That

15:36

was a long journey

15:38

to get from the first inklings of this

15:40

device to something that works.

15:43

Now here we are several months later with

15:45

something that actually works and is ready for the world.

15:48

What took the company so long to

15:50

get this device out? They

15:53

say they've gone through a lot of user testing.

15:55

So first they had to figure out that that

15:57

curvature needed to be designed into the system.

16:00

to allow it to capture images

16:02

properly, figure

16:04

out how it could work with a lot of different body

16:06

shapes. They had to do drop

16:09

testing, this is sort of a ground

16:11

up device. So they say that

16:13

took a lot of time to rethink what a phone

16:15

can look like in that shape. And

16:18

then it took a long time to miniaturize the technology.

16:21

So they say they spent about 18 months once

16:23

they had sort of all these components to

16:25

make them as small as possible. So that's

16:27

a considerable amount of time. And they've

16:29

been testing the device that

16:31

you see sort of today for about a year and

16:33

a half with employees

16:36

and sort of other early testers.

16:39

So I think that plays into it as well.

16:41

How much funding have they raised?

16:44

They've raised about $230 million, including $100 million that they announced raising

16:46

earlier this

16:50

year. So that's a substantial

16:54

chunk of money and they're reportedly

16:57

valued at about $850 million as

17:00

well. And this money comes from a

17:02

lot of big technology companies,

17:04

a lot of partners that they've used or

17:07

the partners that they've worked with to help develop this

17:09

technology like Qualcomm

17:12

and LG and

17:14

Microsoft and Volvo. There's

17:18

also a very notable investor in

17:20

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who's

17:23

one of Humane's earliest investors.

17:26

And he is reportedly working on an

17:28

AI hardware product

17:30

with Apple's former head of

17:32

design, Johnny Ive, right? Yes,

17:34

there's been rumors about that. So I think

17:37

Humane's take on it is that it's great that there's

17:40

excitement in the space that people are trying

17:42

to rethink what a smartphone can

17:44

look like. There's

17:46

ideas out there about necklaces,

17:49

different form factors like that, things may be

17:51

similar to a smartwatch. But

17:54

the idea is it's sort of like an AI first product.

17:57

You can probably wear an AI pin as

17:59

a necklace if you want.

17:59

on to.

18:01

You could. I don't think it has any

18:03

place you can easily strap it on. But

18:06

it is magnetic, so the way that it straps

18:08

onto your clothing is through a magnet

18:10

on the other side.

18:11

And then maybe it would make some of that projection

18:14

technology, the laser tech, a little bit more

18:16

awkward, as opposed to pinning it in a place

18:18

where it very clearly shoots

18:20

the lasers at your hand. But

18:22

we're going to have to try

18:25

this when we can actually get our hands on this

18:27

thing. Yes, but they do include

18:30

a clasp that you can use to pin

18:32

the pin onto a bag, for example. And

18:34

they say that's sort of like a normal use

18:36

case, because they are trying

18:38

to make this into a product that works

18:41

for everyone, and that is kind of fashion forward.

18:44

Right, and they did debut it, I

18:46

believe, this version was debuted

18:49

at Paris Fashion Week. Is

18:51

that right, New York Fashion Week? Yeah, they've done a couple

18:53

fashion shows. I don't

18:56

see the fashion in this myself. The

18:59

first thing I think about when I see a device

19:02

like this is the body-worn cameras

19:04

that police officers wear. It

19:06

is not as clunky as one of those,

19:10

but it's still

19:12

not something I can imagine being worn

19:17

at a very fancy cocktail party.

19:20

I

19:22

think our big boss here at Condé Nast

19:24

would have to be the arbiter of whether

19:27

or not this is fashion forward. Would

19:30

be curious to hear her thoughts. But, Parash,

19:32

I'm wondering

19:33

if there are any broader market forces here

19:36

that are making hardware

19:38

any more appealing than it typically is,

19:40

because the thing that we hear from hardware startups

19:42

a lot is that hardware is hard.

19:44

It's hard to imagine.

19:47

It's hard to build an engineer.

19:49

It's hard to prototype. It's hard to launch. It's

19:51

hard to get the funding for it. Even then,

19:54

there's a lot of opportunity for things to go wrong.

20:00

It's hard right? It's hard on like all levels

20:03

and so I'm wondering when you like see something

20:05

like this You talk to the folks at humane or

20:07

you hear that Sam Altman who? Presumably

20:10

doesn't really like really need to do much

20:13

beyond like what he's currently working on at

20:16

open AI with chat GPT and and

20:18

like making you know, the next powerful

20:20

iterations of that like what is the appeal

20:23

of making hardware right now a

20:26

Few things to say on that one the

20:29

humane co-founders Husband

20:31

and wife duo came from from

20:33

Apple where they worked on things like the Apple

20:35

keyboard and a lot of software projects as

20:37

well But they come from this hardware backgrounds,

20:40

you know working at this giant hardware company

20:43

so Having that expertise

20:46

helps a little bit and why humane

20:48

wants to take this on and why others, you

20:50

know From hardware backgrounds are taking this

20:52

on to The

20:55

AI revolution, you know what we've seen over the past

20:57

year with chat GPT There's

21:00

a lot of excitement about having

21:02

the ability now to have way

21:05

more information and knowledge at

21:07

our fingertips and how do we

21:09

deliver it and how do we get it to sort

21:12

of normal people and One

21:15

of the things that's available now is these really

21:17

robust voice interfaces that you

21:20

know, when has good 12 months ago

21:23

Until these large language models

21:26

came around there So

21:29

there's an opportunity to really think

21:32

things through from the ground up And that's part

21:34

of why you see this excitement right now and

21:36

the investment coming through

21:38

Right

21:41

we should have more choices when

21:43

it comes to buying hardware products that can fit into

21:45

our lives that come from companies that are

21:47

not trillion dollar companies Necessarily,

21:50

but it sounds like what you're saying is that actually it's the developments

21:52

in software that are happening right now They're driving

21:55

more interest in this space.

21:57

I would think so as certainly some

21:59

of the experts spoken to say

22:01

that they give humane a lot

22:03

of credit for trying something different. Everyone

22:06

for the last, you two probably

22:08

know better, but let's say five years have been talking

22:11

a lot about smart glasses and virtual

22:13

reality headsets, things

22:16

that still take you kind of out

22:18

of this world and

22:20

don't really allow you to interact

22:23

naturally. I wouldn't say

22:25

that the pin gets you quite

22:27

there. You know, it's still this thing

22:29

that's kind of in the way. When you're translating,

22:32

you kind of have to wait for it. They

22:34

did this demo where they sent a

22:37

text message, and it still reads the text message back

22:39

to you the same way that

22:41

a voice assistant on your

22:43

phone does. It's not like you can

22:46

trust the AI completely, right? I would love

22:48

to get to the point where I say, send a message to

22:50

Michael that we need to record the show, and

22:53

I can just trust to send it off without

22:55

reading it back to me and asking for sort

22:57

of my okay. And we're just not

22:59

there yet. So I think they have a ways

23:02

to go, but that's sort of part

23:04

of the appeal and why they're trying at

23:06

it and why people give them credit for

23:08

trying. And you can see where

23:11

they're going with this, right? The name of the

23:13

company is Humane. It conjures,

23:15

for people who are familiar with the technology industry

23:18

of recent years, it conjures a lot of the conversation

23:20

around humane

23:22

technologies, technologies that don't try

23:24

to suck you into an app and keep

23:26

you there for as long as possible, right? Technologies

23:30

that allow you to gain back a little bit of your brain

23:32

and a little bit of your waking hours. So

23:35

how much of that is in their

23:38

product messaging? How much of that is in the design

23:40

of this thing? How much is it sort of

23:42

encouraging you to not carry

23:45

your phone when you walk out of the house? It's

23:47

a huge part of the messaging. I don't think they're

23:49

quite at the point where they're saying, don't carry your smartphone

23:52

out of the house as well. The

23:54

same way we haven't all ditched laptops

23:56

completely for work

23:58

purposes, laptops. you know, tend

24:01

to be useful for a lot of workers out there. In

24:04

that same way, that's why

24:06

they've created this complement for the time

24:09

being. I do like the fact

24:11

that it's complementary to your phone and is not reliant

24:13

on your phone because it means that it's

24:15

platform agnostic. I can use

24:17

it with an iPhone or I can use it with an Android

24:19

phone. Good for us Android users.

24:23

But it's also notable that

24:26

the foundation for the software

24:28

is the Android operating system for the

24:30

humane AI pin, which

24:33

for some reason they lowercase the

24:35

I in AI just to let you know. So

24:38

it's like I? I mean it's

24:40

not AI pin but it's lowercase. They're really into

24:42

that. So

24:45

yeah, it's based on Android which should make it easier

24:47

for sort of the Instagrams and Spotify's

24:50

the world to develop connections

24:52

to the AI pin. It

24:54

won't be super easy because there's these

24:56

gestures and all these new input types.

24:59

But it does mean that at least

25:02

developers out there won't have to be starting

25:04

from complete scratch, which is important

25:07

to sort of creating this ecosystem

25:09

which could be a pretty significant driver of

25:12

revenue for humane, assuming

25:14

that they're taking a cut of some of these services

25:16

that they'll be offering. Yeah, and

25:19

assuming they sell millions of them. They

25:21

could get there. All

25:24

right, well that seems like a good place to end. Let's

25:26

take a quick break and we'll come right back with our recommendations.

25:34

And

25:52

the picture.

25:59

review podcast, we talk about new music

26:02

and dig deeper into our reviews with the critics

26:04

who wrote them. And we also interview

26:06

some of our favorite artists. It's

26:09

a big emotion that people can take

26:11

in and relate to, but it's also powerlessly.

26:13

So it's palatable,

26:14

like anger would

26:16

be more powerful, but angry

26:19

girl music kind of gets cast

26:21

as like horny. Make sure to

26:23

follow the pitchfork review wherever

26:25

you listen.

26:31

Okay, this is the third part of our show where

26:33

we go around the table and

26:36

ask everybody to recommend something our listeners

26:38

might like. Puresh, as our guest,

26:41

you get to go first. What's your recommendation? Man,

26:43

putting me on the spot right off the bat. I

26:46

would say my

26:49

recommendation is Kim's Convenience, which

26:51

is a show that

26:53

was broadcast on Canadian television, made its

26:55

way over to Netflix a few years

26:57

ago. So it's been around a while, but just

26:59

been catching up on it in the

27:02

house. And I would say, you know,

27:04

it's the portrayal of like a Korean

27:06

convenience store and the family behind it.

27:09

It's, you know, it's very wholesome.

27:12

It's very nice to see. I would say that

27:14

since

27:16

it's aired and since it came out

27:18

and since it got sort of like canceled, people

27:20

involved have raised concerns about

27:23

problematic behavior on the set

27:26

and some racist stereotypes

27:28

that were, you know, in the storylines

27:31

and later seasons. But I

27:33

think those are important things to

27:35

keep in mind, but still watch the show

27:38

because sort of teaches you to think

27:41

critically about what you're watching and the

27:43

jokes being made and sort of those

27:45

portrayals and what that says about

27:48

different groups' representation in the media. And

27:51

at the end of the day, you know, with

27:53

the heightened conflict that's happening in the world right now,

27:55

not to get too deep, I

27:57

think it's important to sort of watch shows like this.

28:00

that expose yourself to other

28:02

cultures. And while we're on Canadian

28:05

shows, there's also another

28:07

old Canadian show, Burn of Truth, that aired

28:09

in the US on CW that I

28:11

also enjoyed back in the day. Nice. And

28:14

where can you watch Kim's Convenience Now and Netflix you've seen?

28:17

Available on Netflix, at least in the US. Awesome.

28:20

All right, thanks for that. Lauren, what's

28:23

your recommendation?

28:24

My recommendation is Oppenheimer.

28:28

It's a book. We've already talked about the

28:30

movie on this show back in July.

28:33

And then I said, you know what? I'm going to read the book,

28:35

American Prometheus by Kybert

28:38

and Martin Sherwin, which is the

28:40

giant tome that the film

28:42

was largely based on. And

28:46

folks, it is months later. It

28:49

is now November. I

28:51

first picked up the book in July. I've

28:55

worked through a few other books in

28:57

that time. And now I'm finally

28:59

in the final portion of this

29:02

giant book about J. Robert

29:04

Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. It

29:07

is an incredibly thoroughly researched

29:10

book. The primary author spent

29:12

something like 25 years on it, writing

29:15

it. So

29:19

many sources, so many documents,

29:21

so much thought went into reporting

29:23

out this book. And it's really not just

29:26

about the invention of the atomic bomb,

29:28

but the political climate in which it

29:30

was invented. And the

29:33

fallout from that on Oppenheimer,

29:36

who was basically targeted as a communist

29:39

during the Red Scare because of

29:41

some of the political activity that he was involved

29:43

in in his younger years. And

29:46

how after doing this thing that was

29:48

seen as heroic on behalf of the US

29:50

government, was then effectively

29:52

torn down by that same government

29:55

for his political affiliations. And

29:59

it's just a fear. It's a fascinating book.

30:03

And if you're at all interested in the topic

30:05

to begin with, I recommend it. Like

30:07

if you just, if you, if you're like, you know,

30:09

I'm not really interested in learning about that, but I'm going

30:12

to try to get through this 600 page book, like

30:14

you're not going to enjoy it. But it's

30:16

because it's, it's a lot of broccoli, but it's,

30:20

it's,

30:20

yeah, it's great. I have a lot of admiration

30:23

for the authors of this book and the book itself.

30:25

So that's my recommendation. Have you guys read

30:27

it?

30:28

No, it's far too long for me to read.

30:31

I have not. And the

30:33

types back, it's really small. This

30:35

book that I've got.

30:36

It's,

30:38

yeah, those of you who follow me

30:40

on Instagram now, I've been Instagramming it lately.

30:43

Like this is endless. This just

30:44

keeps going. Well, I was going,

30:46

but I, but I'm enjoying it. I'm a

30:48

glutton for punishment.

30:49

I, I think that you

30:52

have to finish it before the end of the year. And if you don't,

30:54

then you make finishing the book your 2024 New Year's

30:56

resolution.

30:57

I'm

31:00

definitely going to finish it before the end of the year. I actually feel confident

31:02

I'll finish it before the end of this week. All

31:04

right. So yeah, that is

31:06

my recommendation. Mike, what's yours?

31:09

I'm going to recommend a piece of hardware.

31:11

It's a, it's a cool little piece of hardware. I actually

31:14

have it here. And since this is

31:16

an audio medium, I will

31:18

describe it to you. It

31:21

is the FM3 Buddha machine,

31:24

also just known as the Buddha machine. It's,

31:26

what would you say, Prash? It's about the size of a pack of smokes.

31:29

Pretty much. It's a little bigger

31:31

than a pin. It's a little bit bigger than

31:33

a pin. It's a plastic box. It

31:36

has a speaker on it and two

31:38

buttons and a headphone jack and that's it. And

31:42

it's an audio device stored on

31:44

the Buddha machine are a bunch of ambient

31:47

sound loops that were

31:49

created by a couple of artists,

31:51

an artist from Europe and an artist from

31:53

China about, about 20 years ago. And

31:58

FM3 Buddha machine. went

32:01

out into the world and I snatched one

32:03

up a very long time ago. It has

32:05

since stopped working. So I was thrilled

32:08

to see that somebody

32:12

has officially re-released the

32:14

original Buddha machine and updated the

32:17

internals and the audio and the case and everything about

32:19

it. Still looks the same, it functions

32:21

a little bit nicer, and it sounds

32:24

a little bit better. So

32:26

yeah, it's the 2023 edition

32:28

of the OG

32:29

Buddha machine.

32:31

How did you find out that this went

32:33

on sale? I subscribed

32:35

to a newsletter, my friend Mark Wiedebaum, it's

32:38

called Disquiet, and he was like,

32:40

hey the Buddha machine is back and posted a link and it

32:42

was an immediate buy. So

32:45

I would say that if you have any like weirdo

32:47

sound art friends or musician

32:49

friends or friends who like to meditate and

32:52

use white noise machines and things like that, it

32:54

makes a great gift.

32:55

It's strong.

32:56

Awesome, it's so cute.

32:58

It is very cute. There's

33:01

so many different colors. Do

33:03

you want to hear what it sounds like?

33:04

Yeah, how long does the battery live? It's two AA batteries,

33:06

how long does it last

33:07

for? Oh years. It lasts

33:09

years. At least the old one did, the old one lasted

33:12

years. Let me turn it on.

33:25

And it has a bunch of different loops.

33:38

Alright, so yeah, it just plays loops and

33:40

you just you turn it on and

33:42

you set it down, you send the loop you like and

33:44

you can either put headphones in or you can just leave it sitting

33:47

on your desk and it just makes noise and it's very

33:49

calming. It's very

33:51

calming. I love that about it. Yeah,

33:53

it's really neat. Sorry, did you say how much it

33:55

was? It's like after

33:57

tax and shipping it's about four.

33:59

I think

34:02

it's like 3-132 something like that. It's

34:05

an under $40 gift pick. I

34:08

don't know how much normal white noise machines cost.

34:11

This is no normal

34:14

white noise machine. It's a beautiful piece

34:16

of art.

34:19

Mike, I kind of want that for Christmas.

34:21

Okay, noted.

34:22

Can you make it happen?

34:24

I can, yeah, sure. Cool.

34:28

All right, well, that is our show for this week. Excellent

34:30

picks, everybody. Puresh, thanks

34:32

for coming on and telling us about this new

34:35

radical computing device.

34:37

It was quite Pinteresting. Pinteresting.

34:40

Puresh, if you just buy a $37 Buddha

34:42

machine and you pin it to your

34:44

chest, is that essentially the same thing as the humane

34:47

pin?

34:48

Probably not quite. I think you're missing about $500

34:51

worth of sensors. Okay.

34:54

No cameras, no cameras, everybody. All

34:57

right, and thank you all for listening.

35:00

If you had feedback, you can find all of us on the social

35:02

medias. Just check the show notes to find our handles.

35:05

Our producer is Boone Ashworth. We

35:08

will be back next week with a new show, and until then.

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