0:02

It's too on the planet

0:05

Neptune and you're listening to Night

0:07

Call. Hey

0:16

everyone, welcome back to Night Call. I'm

0:18

Molly Lambert and with me today

0:20

are my colleagues Test Lynch

0:23

and and I'm Emily Yoshida in

0:25

New York with our first ever Night

0:27

Called guest, Claire Evans. Welcome

0:30

Claire, and please remember

0:33

always to leave us a message with

0:35

a Night Call at two four oh four

0:37

six night or

0:40

shoot us an email at Night Call podcast

0:43

at gmail dot com with all

0:45

of your queries. Claire's

0:47

with us this week because she has

0:49

written an amazing book called

0:51

Broadband, The Untold History

0:54

of the Women who Created the Internet, and it's

0:56

really great and everybody should check it out. We're going

0:58

to talk about it in a little bit, but we

1:00

wanted to talk about a couple of important robots

1:02

first, or like two or

1:04

three important straight robots first, then

1:07

women. Well

1:10

that's the hierarchy of the future. Look

1:12

that there's there's the bread and the condiments

1:15

and then there's the meat. Here, so's just

1:19

classic sandwich order. I'm very confused,

1:21

bread then

1:23

meat. I'm eating a sandwich before. Clearly

1:25

this is an open face podcast. Um,

1:29

but yeah, it's it's little. This might

1:31

be a little bit of old news by the time this

1:34

podcast reaches your ears, but we

1:36

were very transfixed by um

1:39

news from the fashion

1:41

week in Milan recently of the drone,

1:45

the drone models floating down the

1:47

runway. Models they were

1:49

carrying purses. Yeah, Dulan

1:51

Obana had a fashion show for Milan

1:53

Fashion Week where they let

1:56

some drones carry some purses down the runway

1:59

and then we watched it

2:01

and it's really funny and scary.

2:05

This is although part of a bigger I mean, it's

2:07

been like kind of a big week for

2:10

robots. It's been a week for robots for

2:12

and uh for robots glitching out because

2:15

one thing we were all very into this week

2:17

was this thing about Alexa,

2:20

the robot that you order things from Amazon

2:22

with. Is that what it is? Or control your home

2:24

or control your home? I love, I love

2:26

that we have no idea because we are all

2:29

absolutely uninterested in having one

2:31

of these things in our So you have an ELEA had

2:33

one. You had one,

2:36

and I was so freaked out

2:38

by it being in my home. I used it only

2:40

there was like a sort of text adventure

2:42

game you could play via speech with it. Really

2:45

Yeah, they have that sounds cool. Alexa

2:47

what they call skills, which I think is a rude

2:49

word, but uh, it

2:52

can do all kind of stuf. I play Jeopardy on it. And then

2:54

there was like a yeah, sort of an adventure game

2:56

where it would be like you're standing in a wood and then you'd

2:58

be like, go left, Alexa, go left,

3:00

and then she'd tell you about gnomes and trolls and stuff,

3:03

and uh, you would go on

3:05

on a verbal adventure. But then she would start

3:07

like this what happened? Um?

3:10

You know it's like you. I would be watching TV

3:12

and then you know, in the other room, the Alexa

3:14

would just like suddenly awaken with some

3:17

you know, having misheard something, and she'd just be randomly

3:19

yelling into the kitchen. And it just the idea that she

3:21

was constantly listening. I should have known. I mean,

3:23

yeah, I actually was not. My boyfriend bought

3:26

the Alexa, and I convinced him after enough

3:28

of those incidents had transpired that it was time

3:30

for us to sell her on eBay, which we did. You

3:33

know, I feel like we've all been known to sometimes

3:35

lean into the constantly listening and be

3:37

like, hey, we know everything's listening. Already,

3:40

let's just like purchase devices and

3:42

give them permission to listen. I mean,

3:45

there's something about omniscience that's kind of comforting,

3:47

right, Like maybe ultimately in the

3:49

future the n s A becomes god because

3:51

at least we know that someone is always watching over us.

3:55

There's that meme people do about like the FBI

3:57

agent assigned to watch me all the time? Do

4:00

you guys know what I'm talking about? Sorry, I

4:02

feel like I've seen It's

4:04

like people do this joke about like that

4:06

you're you just have an FBI agent

4:09

who's assigned to like watch you through your

4:11

phone all the time, and they're just like doing

4:13

some nice things from an FBI agent

4:15

today to watch um,

4:19

which I also think that's sweet. Cute

4:21

people, but like, oh, it's cute that I'm

4:23

being followed and monitored all the time.

4:25

Somebody cares well until it starts

4:28

laughing. Until as

4:31

of yesterday, the news came out that Alexa

4:33

this is this is a this is the

4:35

what day is it the eighth that we're recording

4:37

this today, So maybe this has been totally resolved by

4:39

the time you're having is and maybe they've locked up

4:41

all the alexas or or discourage

4:44

them from laughter. Enjoy punished

4:46

her for laughing. Clearly, they're going to throw

4:48

out all the Alexas and replace them with a

4:50

new one, and then all the old Alexas will just

4:52

be in like an Alexa graveyard, just like laughing.

4:57

Those are the Halloween Alexas. They're

4:59

being saved until the fall. What

5:02

is it like like the last Black Mirror

5:04

episode or the Girls and the Woman's

5:06

trapped in the Teddy Beer. Alex

5:09

is a real person, a spirit that

5:11

is trapped in a machine, and

5:14

the laughing is her way of trying to

5:16

tell you to set her free. And

5:18

you can only set her free by like drilling a hole

5:21

into your skull. I think, don't

5:24

do that, don't tast it's not advocating

5:26

for that. Just throw your Alexo away and burn

5:28

it and a fire. Um. The thing about the

5:30

Alexei laughing is that it's the most human sound

5:32

she makes. It sounds like a recording

5:34

of a woman laughing. I was not synths scarier.

5:37

Yeah, I thought that it sounded like tests

5:39

a little bit, which

5:42

was which was very troubled because because

5:44

then it's on top of it sounding like a human, it sounds like

5:46

a human I know for people who haven't heard

5:48

it, can you imitate the laugh because you guys just

5:50

watched videos of this, it's

5:57

like it's more of a cackle. It's what's weird

5:59

about it, Like it's totally a satisfied capital

6:01

It's like or

6:06

like that's right. It's like it's like a little

6:08

bit. It's like it's like

6:11

a trickster laugh. It is not

6:14

heat No, that would be very

6:17

bad. It's very generous because

6:19

I was imagining like a t it's

6:22

not. It's like, I'm

6:24

scared of all feminized robots.

6:27

Why because it's scary if people want

6:29

why scarier because they're servile,

6:31

because they're like, oh, she's so knowledgeable

6:34

about every but she's still like your sister. She's

6:37

your servant, keeping keeping

6:39

a phone just too much. My mom

6:41

my mom changed all of her like

6:44

serie voice or her maps voice

6:46

or whatever to be the British man voice. Yeah

6:48

that Alex

6:52

Alexa and serious Serie. Just make

6:54

it like a genderless robot. This is one of

6:56

our big topics is that roboster

6:58

not gendered, so don't give them

7:01

genders. While there is a maybe

7:03

gendered robot. If you pronounce the sea

7:05

and Simon or Kimon the floating

7:08

space We found

7:10

a mate for Alexa Simon.

7:13

Simon is a space computer. It's spelled c

7:16

I M O N and it stands

7:18

for computer interface something something.

7:20

Something looks like come on, come on

7:24

um. But the face does look like the logo

7:26

for that tutoring company come

7:29

on, yeah, exactly. And it looks

7:31

like a little flat face like it

7:33

looks like that Apple two SI logo. It's

7:35

like a flatty face on a computer screen.

7:38

And it's going to float around in a spaceship

7:41

with astronauts and help them like

7:43

an Alexa. It'll be like Alexa, like

7:45

close the pod doors or whatever. That's

7:49

like Michael Fastbender and the

7:52

more recent Alien movie. It'll be

7:55

does that roboco rogue? I bet it does? Uh

7:57

No, it doesn't go rogue at all. It's

8:00

mostly does normal stuff and hang out. He just

8:02

says what he wants. I mean, is it going rogue when a robot

8:05

does what they want? Not going? But you know by there

8:07

they're also like British guy robots, because

8:09

that's the other like traditional like butlers.

8:12

It's like, you know, who serves people like butlers

8:14

and women. So that's what will make robots

8:16

be like ask Jeeves um,

8:19

but Simon. What made Simon sound

8:21

especially scary it was that they were like, they're

8:23

giving it tapes of the astronauts voices

8:26

to learn from and recognize,

8:28

and pictures of their faces there to study

8:31

them too. I mean, he, I think, isn't part

8:33

of the purpose of his presence on the spaceship

8:35

is to kind of like observe

8:38

and try to improve on what's going

8:40

on, which sounds so scary,

8:42

super scary that he's going to turn

8:44

into a Darren Brown on this. That's

8:47

what I also shout out to our last step. That's

8:49

what I was also thinking about. Alexo and

8:51

Claire just said Alexa tells you to do things.

8:53

I was totally like, oh, yeah, Alexa is going to

8:56

be like, oh, I totally wrote a social

8:58

experiment. Yeah, I wrote a short

9:00

film once or a GPS gets you to

9:02

murder someone. Oh

9:05

no, wonder you had us watch that show? You

9:08

know, people just do what they're told,

9:10

especially if like an all knowing robot

9:13

is just like, no, you have to do this, turn

9:15

left, turn left. I

9:19

think I speak for all of us when I say that we

9:21

are incredibly

9:23

excited to tell everybody about

9:26

Song Finch. Songfinch is a

9:28

personalized gifting company that brings

9:30

stories, feelings, and memories

9:33

to life through one of the kind songs.

9:36

So I've told a couple of people in my life about

9:38

song Finch recently since it's come to

9:40

our attention, and they're like, oh, it's an

9:42

algorithm that writes a song for you. No,

9:45

a person writes a song for you. This is like

9:47

bringing back like musical

9:50

telegrams. It's great. I've

9:52

never been more excited to receive

9:55

anything in my life. Almost.

9:57

This was something where we all kind of couldn't bel

10:00

that we got to do this because it was so

10:03

I've ever heard we're upset, Well, we

10:05

should tell people about the process right that

10:07

we we went through, which was Emily took

10:09

the reins and did a great job with

10:11

this. So there are two different kind of

10:13

services they have. UM one is

10:16

making a song kind of from a preset

10:18

template and that's ninety nine dollars

10:20

and then there's a uh and then there's

10:23

two one where they

10:25

build a song from scratch. And so we had a song

10:27

built from scratch and the process

10:29

is very intuitive. You basically

10:32

UM go through and answer a few questions about

10:34

what the occasion is for the song, what kind

10:36

of genre you want for the song? You

10:38

know, any other kind of influences or

10:40

artists that you like and um,

10:42

and then you just kind of get to freeform, share

10:45

your story and say, I want to make sure you

10:47

mentioned this event or this special memory

10:49

or this you know factorid about a person.

10:51

And so we asked for a song

10:54

about Nightcall, and

10:56

we had a song written for us called Nightcall.

10:59

So get really hight for the premiere of

11:01

Nightcall, written by our song finished

11:04

songwriter Rich Low, who

11:06

is a genius. He also performed it. Um,

11:09

here it is. We're

11:32

back like we never lived. We never

11:34

lived like we never lived, never lived

11:38

to the best.

11:41

We have a nank

11:45

God. We thank

11:50

God that's

11:53

doing research. Yeah, and

11:55

she's gonna plan for disasters. Molly

11:58

love the Valley, send your water because of you out

12:00

Emily at Diramacy from

12:02

a music critic, could vocans

12:06

vocal libra. We

12:09

just tell it like it's gonna be so

12:13

yeah, that's our song. You get

12:15

it, and it's clear that someone very talented

12:17

put like a ton of time into it. And

12:19

then you can read the artists bio

12:22

that you get a specific U R L where you can download

12:24

your song, read the lyrics, read about your artist.

12:27

It was just kind of like a really fun experiment.

12:30

I think I'm gonna definitely do it again. It's

12:32

a great personalized gift idea

12:34

for people that you don't know necessarily

12:36

what to get them. Everybody is happy to get

12:38

a song that is a personal

12:40

life phone. We were psyched to endorse it. Also,

12:42

Songfinch is offering our listeners ten percent

12:45

off of the personalized song from scratch

12:47

options. So you can visit songfinch dot

12:49

com and use promo code call

12:52

for ten percent off your personalized song

12:54

from scratch. So, yeah, that's

12:56

song Finch. Check him

12:58

out, tell him we sent you, and

13:01

you can find our song Finch song

13:03

Nightcall at songfinch

13:05

dot com. Slash Stories, Slash,

13:08

Molly Dash, Test Dash

13:10

and Dash Emily. You

13:12

can hear the full version there, which you

13:14

definitely want to do. So.

13:19

Yeah, Claire Evans is with us today.

13:22

Maybe some old fans of Girls and Hoodies.

13:26

Yeah, she's some multiple guests, maybe the I

13:29

don't know if you were whatever the highest

13:32

number of times club that you were that

13:34

you could be on hit three. I think you were

13:36

on three times. I think it was like two plus a call you

13:39

were you were an ancillary girl in

13:41

Hoodie would say that I couldn't

13:43

deserve such a thing. I

13:45

was like a girl with a crew neck. Um.

13:49

But Claire h yeah, Claire just

13:52

had a book published called

13:54

Broadband, and it's really

13:57

interesting. I just did a um Q

13:59

and a with at a bookstore here

14:01

in Brooklyn. But now it

14:03

is available to pick up at any local bookstore

14:06

and you're neighborhood

14:08

and if you live and you can command Alexa to order

14:10

it. Yeah. In fact, I mean I don't

14:12

condone that, but I think it would be very fun

14:14

to do at least once. Well, if you go to a bookstore

14:17

in uh in the New York

14:19

or Manhattan area, there might be an autograph

14:21

in it. I'm very self conscious about

14:24

just promoting the book in general. I mean, I just feels

14:26

so weird to just be like, I did this thing. Buy it

14:28

please on a hardcover for twe

14:31

many nine cents, but also buy it

14:33

on everybody, go by it, please,

14:36

god by it please much for a book

14:38

you wrote a whole book? Yeah,

14:41

thank you guys. Hopefully it comes

14:43

out to like a really good hourly rate for however, many

14:46

zillions of hours. Don't think about it that way

14:49

anyway. My editor was like, go to bookstores

14:51

in New York and sign copies of

14:54

the book, because once you signed it, they can't

14:56

return it to the publisher. It's like it's kind of an

14:58

inside baseball publishing thing. Smart,

15:00

but it's so awkward to walk into a bookstore

15:02

and say hello, I'm an author, Mary, please do it

15:04

like face. Yeah. No, you're

15:07

supposed to tell them you go, you go in,

15:09

and then you like slip secret messages in like phantom

15:11

tread. You write a little like I'm watching

15:14

you right now, look outside. It's

15:16

the thing authors do. And I

15:19

feel very tempted to just walk into a bookstore and

15:21

say I'm you know whatever likes say

15:23

I'm

15:26

I'm here to size. Maybe

15:29

maybe we should be kind of your soldiers and Molly

15:32

and I can go sign your books in

15:34

l A and then they have returned

15:36

to the publisher and we will have signed them with your

15:38

blessing. Um. Yes, of course,

15:40

I'm happy to franchise my signature. I have a very

15:42

I redesigned my autograph recently

15:44

for simplicity and style. It's

15:47

very it's a very graphical. It's yeah, I

15:49

am we are Claire Evans, we are legion. Yeah,

15:53

it's like it's like Prince Yeah, thanks

15:56

guys, Yeah, that'd be great. I mean, my favorite stuff

15:58

in the book, Um, the stuff I like

16:00

most about it was the stuff about all like the early communities.

16:03

Like, so, I guess after the Internet exists,

16:06

but before the web. She

16:08

marred an interesting distinction about

16:11

well, people don't know. I was just on I

16:13

was talking to someone. I went on a PBS

16:15

show the other day and the guy didn't know the difference between the web

16:17

and the Internet, and he was he was talking and asking me all

16:19

these questions and I was like, couldn't get past it. I was

16:21

like, the web is a different thing. Yeah,

16:23

there's a lot of there's a lot of difference, and

16:25

there's what are the different networks? That's an idiot

16:28

who's asking, you know, Um,

16:33

the Internet is the infrastructure but underlies,

16:35

you know, our connected world. The Web is

16:38

like the visual hyperlinked pages

16:40

that sit on top of it. So it's they're related,

16:42

Like the Web is built on the Internet, but the Internet is

16:45

Internet is the bones and the Web is

16:47

the face. The Internet has

16:50

been around a lot longer than the

16:52

Web. Most of most I think the

16:54

reason that a lot of people don't know is because most

16:56

people's first experience that the Internet

16:59

was with the Web and not with especially

17:01

you know, maybe our generation was

17:04

right at that time when you might have done both, but

17:07

definitely kids who are younger than us. And it's all this in

17:09

between stuff too. I mean BBS is and

17:11

like commercial online services, those aren't

17:13

really the Internet or the Web. They're like this in weird

17:15

and between anything where you're calling into commercial

17:17

services or you're calling into people's home

17:20

servers and posting messages.

17:22

So there's a lot, you know, it's a it's a big,

17:24

complex, interconnected system of uh,

17:27

lots of you know, lots has changed

17:30

since it feels we'd even talking about the web now because he

17:32

was even on the web anymore. Yeah, I

17:34

mean, I'm on the information

17:36

super Highway. I don't know about you, Okay, wherever

17:39

it makes up, I'm riding it all

17:41

the way. I think my favorite

17:43

like kind of section of the book is about

17:46

UM this community, like this paid

17:48

um BBS community

17:51

called Echo that was It stood for the

17:53

East Coast Hangout UM and

17:55

it was run by a woman, Stacy Horne,

17:58

who seemed totally fascinating and it is

18:00

she had been a member. She had checked out

18:02

this West Coast like

18:04

similar community called the Well that

18:07

was very like hippieish and had a lot of deadheads

18:09

in it, and like kind of realized it

18:11

wasn't her scene and decided to start like a New York

18:14

version of it, which I just love to

18:16

think about. There being like coastal

18:18

internet. Yeah, it used to be expensive

18:21

to call the West Coast Internet if you're on the

18:23

East Coast, Like it was literally

18:25

more expensive to dial one

18:27

of those services, and there were most of this A lot of

18:29

the services were on the West Coast in those days, So starting

18:31

her own service was the only way for

18:34

her to connect with people online. And then yeah,

18:36

like how cool is it to have an online

18:38

community that's so specifically localized

18:40

that everybody on it is someone that you stand a chance

18:42

of meeting in real life and that maybe you

18:45

also are less likely to patroll and

18:47

harass and be awful too because

18:49

you know them or you could know them, And yeah,

18:51

um, yeah, I think that's really cool. A lot

18:53

of network culture was localized in that way for a long

18:56

time, for like ten fifteen years, So

18:58

it was they're saying, I'm both

19:00

missed the times in our lives where we're

19:03

using the Internet, and it was like an

19:05

intermediary thing to like keep like

19:07

it was more like a thing to keep in touch with people you knew

19:09

in real life, as opposed to like this huge abstract

19:12

thing or like a way that you kept up

19:14

with gossip or whatever. I don't know. I also

19:16

enjoyed the like talking to people across the

19:18

world aspect of it a lot, And I very

19:21

naively always felt like, Wow,

19:23

everyone's going to be so tolerant because of the

19:25

Internet, because they're going to like see that, you

19:27

know, talking that you can talk to people about

19:29

whatever you're interested in and people everywhere

19:32

are the same. Uh. And then

19:34

instead fascism was what the

19:36

Internet turned out

19:38

to also be good for, which you know,

19:41

also makes sense, but definitely

19:43

I was a Internet utopian

19:46

list and now maybe less of one. Maybe

19:49

geography was one form of creating like

19:51

you know, chill and okay communities,

19:54

and then you know, interest specific connection

19:57

was the other one, like you could connect with I think it's

19:59

mostly about maybe eyes, like the size of a community

20:01

and when you when you feel accountable to other

20:03

people because either you share something that

20:06

you're passionate about like whatever Star Trek

20:08

or Weezer, which are the main thing

20:11

maintooth obviously

20:14

we all know or you

20:16

or you know that you could you could live close

20:18

to them. Those are the those are the things. Yeah,

20:20

you're right, well I was. I was just gonna say, like it

20:22

was cool to read about

20:24

this like early internet community

20:27

run by this woman on echo that

20:29

was like, what what would happen if the entire

20:32

community or like the ecosystem online

20:34

was run by a woman, and like who was

20:36

conscientious of like you know, possible

20:39

pitfalls where there might be like if

20:41

there's a conflict or if there's harassment or something,

20:43

like what am I going to do about it? And like put in all

20:45

these safeguards Like these much

20:47

much bigger communities that are

20:50

you know, susceptible to a lot

20:52

more bad stuff happening, they

20:54

don't have that stuff. They don't

20:56

she do to make

20:58

it safer and more generous space.

21:01

So, I mean, the crazy thing about

21:03

it is that she started this thing in inteen eighty nine and

21:05

at that time, the entire Internet

21:07

slash like network culture community

21:09

which includes BBS, was like ten

21:12

female. I mean, it's not really good statistics, but that's ballpark

21:15

and her service was like she had pretty

21:17

much almost perfect parody and it's because

21:19

she tried, you know, like she actually made an effort to court

21:21

women online and like also

21:24

like in real life too, like going to bars

21:26

and like galleries and stuff, asked

21:29

them why they weren't on the internet and like explain how

21:31

to use it, and like she taught classes on how to like do

21:33

unix in her apartment in Greenwich Village and

21:36

then she made membership in her

21:38

service free for women. She the

21:40

main thing that she did that I think is really smart and hasn't

21:42

been really done since, is she made sure

21:44

that every single one of the conferences, which is

21:46

like this, the individual subject threads

21:48

on the message board were had moderators

21:51

and one moderator would be mail and one moderator would be female.

21:53

And it was like that was just part of the service that

21:55

there would always be a woman in charge

21:57

and every conversation that you were in. So if you

21:59

signed end up and you saw a woman leading

22:01

the conversation, you would feel less

22:03

shy about participating, you know, you wouldn't you would

22:05

be less likely to lurk. And that's like

22:07

a super simple thing, but it

22:10

worked. It just worked, like everyone was

22:12

pretty much cool to each other. She also made private

22:15

spaces available, so there was like a woman's only area

22:17

in a men's only area, and um,

22:19

she was I mean, it was small enough that people would like call

22:21

her on the phone to verify that they

22:23

were male or female for these individual like

22:26

message board threads, which opened up

22:28

a whole question about what do you do if you're a trans

22:31

user, which is like all thing I explore in the book. It's

22:33

a really interesting story also. And you

22:36

know, but they were having conversations about you know, identity,

22:38

gender, personhood, etcetera

22:41

online years and not in

22:43

a way, as far as I could tell from your telling

22:45

of it, like devolved into

22:47

people screaming at each other. It was like it

22:50

was like they were just trying to figure it out, just to

22:52

figure it out. They were talking through it, you know, and

22:54

they had they had a no ad hominem attack rule,

22:56

which is something that we, you know, people often

22:58

invoke when we're having arguments online, but no one

23:01

actually holds to. But you know, they didn't

23:03

insult each other. They always insulted the idea.

23:05

And they were totally like, I mean, there were New Yorkers, they

23:07

were very cynical and they would argue all the time, and they were

23:09

very like self deprecating and funny, and uh

23:12

it was okay because they all sort of respected

23:14

each other. So what happened to this amazing

23:17

community? It's still yes,

23:21

you can you can join, but the only way you

23:23

can access it is through the terminal in your

23:25

computer and you'd like dial via telnt

23:27

into Stacy's home server. It's

23:29

like super super super I

23:32

say, millennial proof, like it's

23:34

old school. I've

23:37

been obsessed when starting wanting to start a BBS.

23:39

If you guys are into like a little bit

23:42

of a learning curve, I think it's worth exploring.

23:44

Um, I feel like a night call BBS actually

23:46

the most we don't

23:49

go that far into the past. It's a straight up

23:51

message board would be so fun, I think, Man,

23:54

I bet you guys were all big live journal people, Like I

23:56

read live journal every day because I read did

23:58

it, which is like the last I journal community

24:01

alive. But they're great.

24:03

They report really accurately on

24:05

sexual harassment and assault scandals in a way that

24:08

like a lot of other places don't, and everybody

24:10

in it is cool. All the

24:13

posters are cool, and they purge people that are they

24:15

purge trolls a lot. Do you think that the platform,

24:18

the way that live journal works, supports

24:20

that like this? Is there something about the platform that makes

24:22

it possible for that kind of dialogue. I

24:26

think it's just old, and I think it's just whittled

24:28

down to only the people that care enough

24:30

to stay involved. It's like one of the mods just

24:32

retired and he was like had been a mod

24:35

there for like ten years or something. You know,

24:37

like the people that are left on it.

24:39

It's not necessarily attracting new people

24:41

at this point, but it does feel this like this very

24:43

sort of like the last samee

24:45

corner of the Internet. UM so

24:48

interesting. I keep meaning to download

24:50

my live journal, but I made the mistake

24:52

when I was a teenager of making all of the

24:54

UM navigation link colors

24:56

black on black. It's

24:59

really had to like get to each individual

25:01

page and download the material. What

25:04

were your guys favorite UM

25:06

message board communities there you were

25:08

on prior to social media. I don't want to

25:10

outline because it still exists. Molly

25:14

started the secrets so carefully. I've

25:16

been on a message board for like a really

25:18

long time at this point. I guess since I was a teenager

25:21

that's right, I think I remember you talking about I also

25:23

meet people in real life sometimes that

25:25

I know from the message board. I was hanging out

25:28

with my friend Roxy yesterday and I was like,

25:30

oh, we like technically knew

25:32

each other on this message board and then met in

25:34

real life, and then realized at a certain point of knowing

25:36

each other in real life that we had also already

25:38

communicated on a message board, which is always

25:40

fun. I definitely like started

25:43

out with like x filed BBS was

25:45

my my introduction

25:47

to the Internet, and definitely I

25:50

think I started with Prodigy. I was always

25:52

just very chatty person. I

25:54

just went right for the chatting and not so

25:56

much for the message boards. My parents did have to

25:58

like disabled a message boards though. When

26:01

I was in sixth grade, I think,

26:03

and I was using my dad's Prodigy

26:05

account to lurk on hamster

26:08

boards

26:12

like animals. I had acquired

26:14

a hamster, and I was a very obsessive

26:17

kid, so every time there was like

26:19

an interest, which at this point was hamsters,

26:21

I would go like really deep. And so I was

26:24

on these message boards about like how to

26:26

build these different tunnels

26:28

and structures for hamsters, and I ended

26:30

up eventually talking with this woman

26:32

who was like in her fifties and

26:35

lived in I think Ohio, and she really

26:37

wanted to talk on the phone. And it didn't seem

26:39

strange to me when

26:42

the home phone rang at like nine o'clock

26:45

at night and my parents were like, who

26:47

are you talking to? It was like a woman named Pat

26:49

who was like grandmother and they

26:52

were like no, no, um.

26:55

So I was cut off for a bit. Night

26:57

Call listeners, if you want to tell us what

26:59

you your favorite message

27:02

board community or any kind of

27:04

pre social media community was back

27:06

in the day, you can give us a call at

27:08

two four oh four six night or

27:11

send us an email at night Call Podcast at gmail

27:13

dot com and tell us all about

27:15

it. We'd love to hear about some internet

27:18

memory lane.

27:22

Speaking of I think we

27:24

have an email this week that we wanted

27:27

to read. So this email comes from

27:29

Charlie Heller, and he wrote in to say,

27:31

hey y'all. First, I'm super psyched

27:33

that the pod has returned, and it's really great to hear

27:35

every week again. Thanks for all the great Yeah,

27:38

thanks Charlie, Please tell all your friends.

27:41

Second, after the fashion episode, I

27:43

thought you might enjoy this compilation I

27:45

did a few months ago for food and wine after

27:47

I stumbled on Amazon's trope of extremely

27:50

specific and bizarre, algorithmically

27:52

generated food shirts. I

27:55

can't even fathom what kind of algorithm

27:57

would lead to some of these terms being chosen.

28:00

Are there that many people searching for fen

28:02

you Greek or Egyptian

28:05

bean? But they're really hilarious.

28:07

I can only include one of each style, but if

28:09

you go to any of the links, there are tons more

28:12

equally incredible ones, especially the

28:14

one with the Pepsi logo that just says lettuce.

28:17

It may not have become quite the fashion sensation

28:19

I had been secretly hoping for, but I guess

28:21

that's just life in the old fashioned slash

28:23

algorithm slash net art intersection

28:26

Best Charlie. So Charlie

28:28

had some links in here that hopefully we can

28:30

attach to the podcast so that you guys can

28:32

take a look, because it's like he has an

28:34

amazing look

28:38

so incredible. Let's just read some of

28:40

the shirts out loud. This one is a Pepsi

28:42

logo and it just says hard boiled eggs.

28:46

There are a lot of companies like this that just have

28:48

like shirts that we plugs in

28:51

whatever it's you know, only real glorious.

28:53

No. Yes, I

28:55

always get to serve those outs on Facebook. Yeah, because

28:58

they know that you're the kind of person who might buy that shirt. It's

29:00

like only a player will understand

29:03

that. I mean that is true. Oh yeah, feed me

29:06

ar boreo rice and tell me I'm pretty?

29:08

Is one shirt to drugs? Say yes

29:10

to water chestnuts always?

29:13

Is there like a keep calm and ven

29:16

Green says, soy

29:18

mayonnaise doesn't ask questions, soy

29:20

Mayonnaise understands. I

29:23

was imagining when when when we got

29:25

this email, I was it was envisioning something

29:27

like those phonecases where it was like

29:29

like a Google image search of like you

29:31

know, yeah yeah like xmr

29:34

or or Fennel, whichevereever

29:36

your interest lies. But these

29:38

are these are even weirder because they're like trying

29:40

to be memes, which

29:43

is fascinating, and they're

29:45

pudding. It has the thing that we like where it

29:48

is like it's like a slightly garbled take

29:50

on something that makes sense, so it like no

29:52

longer makes sense and your brain is trying to piece

29:54

it together. Um like

29:56

the one that says I run because I like Egyptian.

30:00

It's just the one, Thank you

30:02

very much, Charlie for this

30:05

email and we will share the

30:07

link to your list on all of

30:09

our social media platforms and or pbs

30:11

as Uh. It's amazing. Thank

30:13

you and you definitely

30:16

understand us, Charlie, thank you.

30:18

This is very us. So.

30:24

Um, we we kind of had as

30:26

a perennial topic we wanted to get to at some point

30:29

just astrology as

30:31

a word, astrology

30:33

in general. But I feel like to it. We

30:35

started talking about it. You

30:37

were saying something about being you were going to clean and

30:40

you like, maybe I really am a Virgo.

30:43

I don't know. It's just like I get in these conversations

30:45

a lot though with people where it's like, oh, we all know

30:47

everything about astrology and like what a virgo

30:49

is, and we're all like, you know, very

30:52

women are very like intellectual,

30:55

intellectual type jobs, and you know, we're

30:58

not maybe necessarily with people who would traditionally

31:00

think we would think of being uh subscribers

31:03

to with astrology. But here

31:06

I don't think there's to it. I don't subscribe

31:08

to it because I have such a boring

31:10

sign. Virgo is my favorite

31:12

sign. No it is, and also you

31:14

are not a totally atypical Virgo. Well

31:17

I've also heard

31:19

this before, that there are more virgos than any other

31:21

sign because people have New Year's babies

31:25

sex on New Years. And then I heard

31:28

that it was libras because of Valentine's

31:30

dare I think these are all apocryphal

31:32

and I just repeat them like one might repeat

31:35

on astrological thing. Um.

31:38

Yeah, I don't know. I'm skeptical of astrology.

31:40

But I also get mad when people like hate

31:42

on it because it's usually dudes being like women

31:44

are idiots they believe in this, and I'm like, you

31:46

fucking watch sports, like come on, Yeah,

31:49

magical thinking is a thing, and

31:51

it's fine as long as you don't invest

31:54

everything in it. I guess. I guess I get

31:57

upset when people start spending money on it. And

31:59

more on that a minute, because there are two

32:01

of my favorite stories from the past five years have

32:03

involved people being screwed out of a

32:05

ton of money by psychic that's true.

32:07

Well, Um, when I was an editor

32:09

at The Verge, UM,

32:12

I had a freelance writer due a profile of

32:14

um of Susan Miller Um

32:17

and it was, you know, a long considered

32:20

piece of writing, like four thousand words

32:22

on her. She met her up like a

32:24

couple of her conferences and had

32:27

many phone conversations with her, and

32:30

you know, say what you will about

32:32

the veracity of what she practices,

32:34

but she is a fascinating woman and like a fascinating

32:37

Internet personality also, which

32:39

was sort of the pitch of the of

32:42

the piece. And so this piece

32:44

is on the verge and uh

32:46

Claire also has some experiences with this recently.

32:49

Verst commenters are like so

32:52

literal minded in a way that just makes you wanna

32:54

like take a nap for five years in um

32:58

and they were so mad ad about us, you know,

33:01

even having the possibility

33:03

of lionizing somebody who practices a

33:05

pseudo science. It's just like you're missing

33:07

the point of this spiece. Also, it's

33:09

okay, I was telling you guys that, like I

33:12

think Tess also had we had our charts

33:14

done by our math teacher. Did you have Mr

33:16

G? I had Mr Greg. I was also it

33:18

was I hate to use this word, but it was dumb

33:20

math. It was we both got bumped down to

33:23

remedial to remedial math. And our math

33:25

teacher, even though he was a math teacher, he was also

33:28

really into astrology and he was kind

33:30

of great. He was totally like a like

33:32

a Scoot McNary uh in Halt

33:34

and Catcher, you know my heart. So

33:36

when we found out that he was into astrology,

33:38

it was like a very fun twist of like you

33:41

would not have expected that. And then he

33:43

did everyone's charts in the class as like an

33:45

end of the year thing. It was a treat It was

33:47

a treat um. But I also

33:50

hate when people are like, oh, I'm

33:52

a whatever, so I'm like very

33:54

whatever, a superior or an astrological

33:56

superiority complex, yeah, or

33:59

or an excuse to get out of things where it's

34:01

like you can't depend on me, I'm a Gemini.

34:03

I hate that. Would also try to be a good person,

34:06

right, I hate when people are like, I'm gonna

34:09

like use this as an excuse for like bad

34:11

traits of mine that are related to

34:13

astrological sense. But I also think people

34:15

that are astrologers, like Susan Miller are

34:18

kind of just like confidence men confidence

34:21

women like Darren Brown,

34:23

for example, she's an artist. She's not a

34:25

scientist, an artist, but it's like to look

34:27

someone in their eyes. And we were talking

34:29

about this recently in terms of people that

34:31

are like really seductive to everyone. You

34:33

know, but just like a lot of like actors

34:36

and actresses. It's just like someone who like looks

34:38

you in the eye, asks you a lot of

34:40

questions about yourself. Your

34:42

name periodically makes you yeah,

34:45

like makes you feel understood. Like the

34:47

ability to con people into

34:49

believing that you know something about them

34:52

is like really valuable because people will

34:54

pay for that. Wait, so we know Molly's a

34:56

virgo, Emily, you are a Libra. Do you

34:58

know you're rising? Yeah,

35:00

it's I'm a tourist rising, which

35:03

I didn't even realize until like semi recently.

35:05

And I

35:07

again all with a cream of salt,

35:10

but I feel like it explains a lot of my frustrations

35:12

in life. Wait, what is what clear? What?

35:15

We don't even know where to begin with you? What's your deal?

35:17

I'm a I'm a scorpio. Cut

35:20

I'm the last day of Scorpio. Although I met someone at

35:23

a party yesterday who claims she was the last day of Scorpio,

35:25

but her birthday is the day after mine, so one of us

35:27

is lying. I mean, maybe I have like a moon sign

35:29

or a rising or something that I'm not. I don't know. I haven't

35:31

yet acknowledged and internalized and Emily

35:33

has a Melcher for tourist rising, but I

35:37

for tourists, right. I

35:41

often read my horoscope like, oh, I

35:43

wish you know it's always like you

35:46

are You're a saucy mix and no one can

35:48

get enough of you and blah blah blah, Like that's

35:50

not but I wish

35:52

it sounds more fun to think about than

35:54

like Virgo, which is like you might clean your

35:57

bathroom today. Do you have any least

35:59

favorite sign? Wait, test,

36:01

we didn't ask you. You You gotta we gotta get to your sign. Still,

36:03

you're avoiding evading like a

36:05

true Capricorn. You

36:08

know we're up front. It's

36:10

no secret on a cap what's your rising sign?

36:14

That also makes sense, But again, okay, here's

36:16

my thing with astrology is I feel like if you just list

36:19

enough emotional traits, everybody

36:22

is like, I'm all those things totally

36:25

well. I think if somebody told me I was a cancer,

36:27

I'd be like, yeah, right, this is totally fake.

36:29

I think that would be one where I'd be like this, this, this

36:31

is a fake. That's how I feel about being a Virgo.

36:34

I'm like, literally, the only thing about

36:36

Virgos is that their neat because

36:38

you're loyal, stubborn. Right,

36:41

these are so you're the

36:44

virgin woman,

36:48

I know, but it's like all the other signs are like sexy

36:50

and passionate and like water and lobby,

36:52

I'm a goat and like dirt. I'm a goat supposed

36:54

to be dirt, but it's Saturday nine,

36:57

so you're I'm a bug. But I'd really like to

36:59

do and maybe callers can help us do this

37:01

is establish an alternate astrology

37:04

system. I think constellations are really

37:06

cool. I think the Z is really

37:08

cool. Obviously, um, I think there

37:10

are like weird spooky things that happened in my

37:12

life sometimes that I feel like there

37:15

are weird spooky things that can happen,

37:17

you know, like a like something

37:19

with an ensemble cast of twelve? Is

37:22

there like a star trek maybe? What about likes

37:24

and vegetables? Like a lot of people

37:26

who are like it's a fake. So it's like I would

37:28

I don't believe we shouldn't, you know, pay any money

37:31

to these people or let them have columns. Are people who like totally

37:33

invest all of their energy into the Myers

37:35

Briggs and

37:38

the psychology I believe in. I

37:40

think Israel. But that's also why I like Darren

37:42

Brown's the Push, and you guys did not because

37:45

I was like, but it's also like test

37:48

you take yourself. You can answer it any way you want,

37:50

right, and nobody who would answer

37:52

it. Isn't that the sociopath test

37:54

where it's like anyone who is a real sociopath

37:56

would know how to pass the sociopath test.

37:59

Right. The other reason I wanted

38:01

to talk about astrology, um, was

38:03

that something actually astrology related

38:06

happened to me in my life recently, which

38:08

was that my longtime favorite

38:11

astrologer that I read on the

38:13

internet quit the game. And

38:15

I was unexpectedly very

38:18

deeply Um,

38:20

I don't I don't want to say upset, but it

38:23

really like shook me in a way that

38:25

I wasn't expecting. Well, it did kind

38:27

of feel like somebody

38:30

reaching a breaking point, or like when

38:32

you kind of realize that this person you've just been

38:34

interfacing with because of their

38:36

their public facing persona and the use

38:38

that they present to like on the Internet,

38:41

that there was actually like so much more going on

38:43

with him, right, that they're not the person you think they

38:45

are on the internet. Yeah, or like

38:47

a robot that gives you things every month, Yeah, yeah,

38:49

and he's been providing this service like every

38:52

week without fail for you

38:54

know, fifteen years or something

38:56

like that. And he

38:58

wrote this like final essay on his site.

39:00

Um. The site is astroberry

39:03

dot com. He's like a total Bay

39:05

Area like just like a total

39:07

sweetheart. Like I don't know

39:09

what you think he was on those deadhead BBS

39:11

boards back in the day. It's very possible.

39:14

I'm gonna go ahead. Yeah, he's like

39:16

I think he's in his forty maybe he's in his

39:18

late forties or something. I feel like he could have been around

39:20

for that scene. He definitely, like I

39:23

think the thing that happened with him because he in addition to

39:25

the horoscopes, he would write his

39:27

um just like kind of monthly musings

39:29

on you know, the planets and his own life

39:31

and stuff like that. And um, he

39:34

got I think he got priced out recently of

39:36

the Bay Area and like had to leave

39:38

and he had been living there for a really long time

39:40

and it was like very emotional for him. He

39:42

wrote his final essay about or his final

39:45

piece was just like my

39:47

my computer broke down and I lost my

39:50

last horoscopes that I was going to post,

39:52

and like something to me just snapped, and I was like, I'm

39:54

not doing this anymore. Do you think he's hot

39:56

coming though? I don't know. He's

39:59

not a site gig, he's in the stronger

40:02

Well he did. He did kind of put it in astrological

40:04

context in a way, but like kind of

40:06

how like we were reaching

40:09

some sort of end of some kind of cycle

40:11

or another. I couldn't repeat it. Uh,

40:13

it was just like a bummer or read because

40:16

I realized that I had really was it like Southland

40:18

Tales? Was he just like, well, the apocalypse is

40:20

starting? And no,

40:22

it wasn't so doomsday. It was more just like

40:24

him making a personal decision for his well

40:26

being and his like, you know, of his

40:29

own you know, need for self care. I

40:31

guess um. There

40:33

of course plenty of people that we only like

40:35

we feel like we have a relationship with online

40:38

that we don't even contact or like

40:40

you know, get in touch with in any way, uh,

40:43

and don't know who we are, but it still feels

40:45

like a relationship and not even like big celebrities

40:47

or something. This is just like a astrologer blogger.

40:50

Yeah. I feel that way about Adrian,

40:52

my YouTube yoga teacher who my

40:55

imagine every best friend that I love, but I'm also

40:57

like, I'm not I don't know this person

41:00

and the way they present themselves in yoga videos

41:02

is like a sweet, wonderful, nice

41:05

person who you would want to teach you yoga. Uh

41:08

is not a full person. And

41:11

it's very easy to feel close to someone, especially

41:14

when they're like doing being

41:16

a yoga teacher or an astrologer, someone who

41:18

you're like, I come to you for council important

41:21

to acknowledge that work. You know, like every

41:23

once in a while, just drop an email to those

41:26

people online that you admire that are doing

41:28

things for you that you're not paying. I

41:31

think that's the thing I did, you guys. I

41:33

know we talked about how we don't we shouldn't get can by

41:35

astrologers, but I totally did pay for

41:37

astroberries like yearly reports,

41:40

um. And it was like this total honor system

41:42

thing because it was just a PDF that he would

41:44

email you and you could obviously share it with whoever

41:47

you wanted, but he was just like he would send it out and

41:49

be like hey, you know, like I know you can

41:51

you can technically send this to everybody, but like, if

41:54

you like it, please just ask your friends to buy

41:56

it, and so I bought it like a few years

41:58

and he stopped doing it a few years ago, but

42:01

like I should. It did make me

42:03

feel bad that I had never just like

42:05

like I've never followed him on Twitter or anything like that. It

42:07

felt like so separate from how I interfeed,

42:09

like my rest of the rest of my Internet activity.

42:12

Do you think he was on Twitter? He was. I don't

42:14

know if he's going to be doing it, you know,

42:16

I should send him

42:18

a link to the podcast podcast.

42:22

Um yeah, it's like miss Connections. But with

42:24

astrologers, um

42:28

test. Have you ever paid for it? No? I well,

42:31

no I have, but not

42:33

not online. I go for the real

42:35

deal and I used to do it a lot in high

42:37

school. There was you paid for psychics

42:39

more right, yeah, psychics. But I've also done

42:41

astrologers. I've done astrological readings

42:43

of the psychic I they have like a

42:46

psychic zone and then they also do

42:48

some like you know, charts and stuff like that.

42:50

So I've done that before, but I

42:53

don't know. For me, it's like the kind of thing

42:55

where I like to get the tools to do it myself.

42:58

You know, I'm like a d I fire because I feel

43:01

like I don't know that

43:03

much about charts, but there's so

43:05

many resources where if you want to spend

43:07

like six hours and stay up all night figuring

43:10

out you know, all your stuff,

43:12

all your planets and stuff, you can.

43:15

Um, I'm very of too much. If you make

43:17

a mistake, you'll never know you could

43:19

be based on your life decisions on some miscalculation.

43:22

Sorry, I'm I'm totally more

43:24

of like a you know, I guess I'm

43:26

more of a skeptic. Well, I um,

43:28

it's different because it's psychics. But

43:31

there were just like these stories. One of them was in the New York

43:33

Times and I sent it to Molly and Emily about

43:36

a man named Nile Rice who

43:38

was scammed out of hundreds

43:40

of that like seven hundred thousand dollars

43:43

or something like that by a psychic. And

43:45

he he was like having a tough time in life.

43:47

He was like using drugs

43:50

and drinking a lot, really depressed,

43:52

and he went to rehab, met a woman, fell

43:55

in love, and then they left rehab

43:57

and dated briefly, and then she went back

43:59

to rehab um and broke

44:01

up with him, and he was heartbroken. So he

44:03

saw this psychic and she was like, oh, we'll get

44:05

her back. It just it devolved

44:08

into this thing where the woman died

44:10

sadly and the guy was still seeing

44:12

the psychic, and the psychic was like, oh, she's she's dead,

44:14

but that's okay, you can still make it

44:16

work with her. She'll be reincarnated as

44:18

another woman. And meanwhile, taking all of

44:21

his money. He met a girl, started

44:23

dating her, believed she was the reincarnated

44:26

ex girlfriend. Eventually his

44:28

new partner realized this and was like whoa,

44:31

no way, broke up with it, like

44:34

it was crazy. And then then

44:36

there was another article, I think in Reader's

44:39

Digest about a romance novelist

44:41

named Jude Devereaux. I think she

44:43

gave a psychic seventeen million

44:45

dollars. It was like her whole, her

44:47

whole life savings. She gave like you

44:50

know these psychics that was like a whole family of psychics

44:52

who had storefronts in New York and

44:54

then also in Florida, and they

44:56

the woman Rose Marks, I think it was her name,

44:59

who was heading the operation just got she got ten

45:01

years in prison, but I think that the investigation

45:03

was called Operation Crystal ball Um.

45:06

But she would just take money from people and be like,

45:08

oh, it's your money's like dirty,

45:10

it has like bad jujue on it. I'm going to cleanse

45:12

it and then it'll come back to you later. And everyone

45:14

was like okay, yeah. Like on the one

45:16

hand, I'm like, oh, don't give astrologers all your

45:19

money, but then I'm like proud of the

45:21

astrologers for taking again. In

45:23

the same way, I'm like, is it really the astrologer's

45:26

ball at that point? I mean, yeah, it's I mean I

45:28

think it's usually defended as being like therapy,

45:31

but therapists can't can't

45:33

kind of make it like I'll fix yourn. You know,

45:35

they can't make false promises. They can only

45:38

it's just the point in Nightcall where

45:40

we decided to start a religion the

45:43

nightcall, Yeah, or

45:46

like a law practice that that defends

45:48

psychics.

45:56

Well, we should take what our one final nightcall

45:58

from this week, which comes

46:00

to us from Lauren. And

46:03

this is yet another a

46:06

story. I have not heard anything like this

46:08

yet about as far as apps spying on

46:10

us, but let's let's give it a listen. Time

46:13

is Lauren and I have a podcast

46:16

called podcast Podcast. It's a podcast

46:18

about podcast and I love your

46:20

podcast. Um, I

46:23

was listening to you talk about how whether or not our

46:25

phones are listening to us, and I have,

46:28

like, I mean, I think this is a pretty standard

46:30

weird story where I had my

46:32

phone in my pocket and we were talking about the rent

46:35

the Runways new like description

46:38

service, and I went back to my desk

46:40

and in my computer it's all

46:42

the adds I've seen. I feel like everyone has a story

46:44

like that, but I something weird

46:46

happened. I haven't heard anyone else talk about. I

46:49

bought my husband a super Nintendo,

46:51

like an old one for Christmas,

46:54

and my Spotify list of

46:57

suggested song the

46:59

week after there was all like

47:01

I don't know a lot of hip hop, but it was all like I can't

47:03

think of any examples right now, but it was like hip hop

47:06

songs with like super Nintendo

47:08

noises and themes. I've

47:11

never heard of that before. Like I bought the the

47:14

Superintendo console on Amazon and

47:16

then I opened Spotify and there's

47:18

all these Nintendo songs and they've never

47:20

played again, I don't know. And even though

47:22

there were so many hip hop Nintendo

47:25

themed songs, but I don't

47:28

know if you've ever heard of anybody with there's

47:30

a story like that where Spotify is beating

47:32

put was based on history.

47:37

Um think, uh, keep up the great

47:39

work. I love the show. God. Algorithms

47:41

are so dumb in a way. It's

47:44

like this. I mean, it's if

47:46

if that is true, if the Spotify algorithm

47:49

and the Amazon algorithm are working hand in hand to oppress

47:51

this woman. The assumption that

47:53

just because you like Nintendo, you also like Nintendo

47:56

music, you just like Nintendo

47:58

across all all media

48:00

is so acquired.

48:04

Yeah, I mean, I'm assuming that's what she's saying here,

48:06

is that these are like like rap songs

48:08

that have like some production that sounds like chip

48:10

tune. That's That's what I'm feeling,

48:13

Like this must be it her chip

48:15

music, and it was like you like chip

48:17

music. Yeah,

48:20

Like see, that's what the robot

48:22

voice should be like. It should being like a nerd

48:25

nerd voice, Rosie the robot

48:27

or yeah, not like

48:32

just as like guys. Thing though, like she decided

48:35

to buy the Nintendo and then maybe

48:37

because it was just in the air that,

48:40

you know, I think there's something a little bit more unquantifiable

48:42

that sometimes happens, or she just noticed it really

48:45

more, you know, But they make those ads,

48:47

they do it like the way the machines

48:49

all work together to make you feel crazy and like

48:52

you're in a Philip Kiddeck story. Is

48:54

that they make it all like plausibly deniable.

48:57

They're all like, oh, maybe,

49:00

just maybe it wasn't listening to

49:02

me. I just was doing this and then also

49:04

doing this, and it happened to know that, you

49:06

know, well, she bought the Super

49:09

Supernintendo for her husband, like had she

49:11

been searching for Supernintendo's online

49:14

and then there was her search history for that, but

49:16

then it doesn't make any sense for her search history.

49:18

That's less that's less scary, yeah, but

49:21

but then for it to actually like start affecting

49:23

it after she they start playing with the

49:25

Supernintendo. I mean it feels like a really jangkie

49:28

and poorly conceived, sort

49:30

of like voluntary Shazam.

49:34

I could see some kind of usefulness for it,

49:36

because I have the thing all the time of like there

49:39

was a song playing at this restaurant and it was

49:41

killing me. I can't remember what it is. And then like

49:43

if you start trying to find it

49:46

in whatever way, it pops up a little

49:48

more easily. But this is not anything

49:50

anybody's asking for, and it's

49:52

just like it thinks it's helping

49:54

you, but it just wants to help you buy stuff.

49:57

It's like it's not another

50:00

a Nintendo. Like, once you've gotten to

50:02

the point where the Nintendo music is playing in your Spotify,

50:04

like, what are you gonna go back to Amazon to buy a second

50:07

Nintendo? Give me more sounds,

50:10

You're gonna find Nintendo's until your house is nothing

50:12

but Nintendo. They can't harmonize with just

50:15

one. If you want the harmonies, then you've

50:17

got to Nintendos, Crosby

50:20

Stills, Alexa like

50:23

Barbershop Alexa quartet, to

50:25

go back to Alexa to take it full circle,

50:27

but with the sound thing. I never

50:30

want to have an Alexa. But like at

50:32

the same time, before all this stuff started

50:34

coming onto the market, the only thing I

50:36

thought I would ever want, as far as like a personal

50:38

robot or like one of these things that you have in your

50:40

house, I envisioned like a floating

50:43

orb that would follow behind me and

50:45

just like play music whenever I request. That's

50:50

kind of what Simon is. Yeah, yeah, he's a

50:52

floating space. If you look up Simon or Kiman.

50:55

What about a roomba, a roomba that's like an

50:57

iPod did

50:59

I had a rumba and I had the roomba that sprays

51:01

water. But they break

51:04

and then you're like what do I do? And it's really hard

51:06

to get them fixed. They just want you to buy another room,

51:08

but and then the room just dying. It's like, help

51:10

me, you know. The rumor that is dying is just

51:12

like this immensely heavy frisbee.

51:15

This was. I had a room ba now twelve

51:17

years ago. It was huge, and it was very

51:20

confused by boundaries and stairs

51:22

and yeah, and then they break and it's and at

51:24

that time it was impossible to get it

51:26

fixed. It was you know, they really wanted you to troubleshoot

51:29

yourself and you're like, I don't know where to begin

51:31

with fixing this thing. I'm just going to buy a swiffer,

51:33

which I did. Well. Thank you very much Lauren for

51:35

your call and giving us another thing to um

51:39

check our preferences on. And

51:42

thank you Claire for being

51:44

on this this night piece and being our

51:46

inaugural guest. Oh, I'm so honored.

51:48

Was fun and everybody should go check out broadband

51:51

the Untold by

51:54

my book. If you're listening to this night call,

51:56

maybe Alexa will start ordering

51:58

suggesting the book. Yeah,

52:00

yeah, I like that. I like to test to see if things

52:03

are listening to yelling the name of a product into

52:05

my phone. Like I just like to yell leggings at my phone

52:07

a bunch to see if I get leggings.

52:10

But that that doesn't For this week's Night

52:12

Call, as always, you can give

52:14

us a call at two four oh for six

52:17

night leave us your calls about your

52:19

favorite bbs, is your

52:23

what else? Your your thoughts on astrology?

52:25

Ghost stories? I want ghost stories,

52:28

Coho stories. Yeah, give us some ghost stories.

52:30

Yeah. And you can also find send us an email

52:32

at Night Call Podcast at gmail dot

52:34

com, follow us on Twitter at Nightcall

52:37

Pod, Facebook, Nightcalled

52:39

Podcast, Instagram, and Nightcall

52:41

Podcast boom. I did them all. I remembered

52:43

all of them, I wonder. Also,

52:46

if you're enjoying the podcast, please rate,

52:48

review, and subscribe to help us

52:50

continue to make podcasts for you. We'll

52:52

see you next much. You'll see you next week.

53:03

Say all wrong