Ford Taurus Rising with Claire Evans

gmail dot com with all of your queries. Claire's with us this week because she has written an amazing book called Broadband, The Untold History of the Women who Created the Internet, and it's really great and everybody should check it out. We're going to talk about it in a little bit, but we wanted to talk about a couple of important robots first, or like two or three important straight robots first, then women. Well that's the hierarchy of the future. Look that there's there's the bread and the

condiments and then there's the meat. Here, so's just classic sandwich order. I'm very confused, bread then meat. I'm eating a sandwich before. Clearly this is an open face podcast. Um, but yeah, it's it's little. This might be a little bit of old news by the time this podcast reaches your ears, but we were very transfixed by um news from the fashion week in Milan recently of the drone, the drone models floating down the runway. Models they were

carrying purses. Yeah, Dulan Obana had a fashion show for Milan Fashion Week where they let some drones carry some purses down the runway and then we watched it and it's really funny and scary. This is although part of a bigger I mean, it's been like kind of a big week for robots. It's been a week for robots for and uh for robots glitching out because one thing we were all very into this week was this thing about Alexa, the robot that you order things from Amazon with.

Is that what it is? Or control your home or control your home? I love, I love that we have no idea because we are all absolutely uninterested in having one of these things in our So you have an ELEA had one. You had one, and I was so freaked out by it being in my home. I used it only there was like a sort of text adventure game you could play via speech with it. Really Yeah, they have that sounds cool. Alexa what they call skills, which I think is a rude word, but uh, it

can do all kind of stuf. I play Jeopardy on it. And then there was like a yeah, sort of an adventure game where it would be like you're standing in a wood and then you'd be like, go left, Alexa, go left, and then she'd tell you about gnomes and trolls and stuff, and uh, you would go on on a verbal adventure. But then she would start like this

what happened? Um? You know it's like you. I would be watching TV and then you know, in the other room, the Alexa would just like suddenly awaken with some you know, having misheard something, and she'd just be randomly yelling into the kitchen. And it just the idea that she was constantly listening. I should have known. I mean, yeah, I actually was not. My boyfriend bought the Alexa, and I convinced him after enough of those incidents had transpired that it was time for us to sell her on eBay,

which we did. You know, I feel like we've all been known to sometimes lean into the constantly listening and be like, hey, we know everything's listening. Already, let's just like purchase devices and give them permission to listen. I mean, there's something about omniscience that's kind of comforting, right, Like maybe ultimately in the future the n s A becomes god because at least we know that someone is always

watching over us. There's that meme people do about like the FBI agent assigned to watch me all the time? Do you guys know what I'm talking about? Sorry, I feel like I've seen It's like people do this joke about like that you're you just have an FBI agent who's assigned to like watch you through your phone all the time, and they're just like doing some nice things from an FBI agent today to watch um, which I

also think that's sweet. Cute people, but like, oh, it's cute that I'm being followed and monitored all the time. Somebody cares well until it starts laughing. Until as of yesterday, the news came out that Alexa this is this is a this is the what day is it the eighth that we're recording this today, So maybe this has been totally resolved by the time you're having is and maybe they've locked up all the alexas or or discourage them

from laughter. Enjoy punished her for laughing. Clearly, they're going to throw out all the Alexas and replace them with a new one, and then all the old Alexas will just be in like an Alexa graveyard, just like laughing. Those are the Halloween Alexas. They're being saved until the fall. What is it like like the last Black Mirror episode or the Girls and the Woman's trapped in the Teddy Beer. Alex is a real person, a spirit that is trapped in a machine, and the laughing is her way of

trying to tell you to set her free. And you can only set her free by like drilling a hole into your skull. I think, don't do that, don't tast it's not advocating for that. Just throw your Alexo away and burn it and a fire. Um. The thing about the Alexei laughing is that it's the most human sound she makes. It sounds like a recording of a woman laughing.

I was not synths scarier. Yeah, I thought that it sounded like tests a little bit, which was which was very troubled because because then it's on top of it sounding like a human, it sounds like a human I know for people who haven't heard it, can you imitate the laugh because you guys just watched videos of this, it's like it's more of a cackle. It's what's weird about it, Like it's totally a satisfied capital It's like or like that's right. It's like it's like a little bit.

It's like it's like a trickster laugh. It is not heat No, that would be very bad. It's very generous because I was imagining like a t it's not. It's like, I'm scared of all feminized robots. Why because it's scary if people want why scarier because they're servile, because they're like, oh, she's so knowledgeable about every but she's still like your sister. She's your servant, keeping keeping a phone just too much.

My mom my mom changed all of her like serie voice or her maps voice or whatever to be the British man voice. Yeah that Alex Alexa and serious Serie. Just make it like a genderless robot. This is one of our big topics is that roboster not gendered, so don't give them genders. While there is a maybe gendered robot. If you pronounce the sea and Simon or Kimon the floating space We found a mate for Alexa Simon. Simon is a space computer. It's spelled c I M O

N and it stands for computer interface something something. Something looks like come on, come on um. But the face does look like the logo for that tutoring company come on, yeah, exactly. And it looks like a little flat face like it looks like that Apple two SI logo. It's like a flatty face on a computer screen. And it's going to float around in a spaceship with astronauts and help them like an Alexa. It'll be like Alexa, like close the

pod doors or whatever. That's like Michael Fastbender and the more recent Alien movie. It'll be does that roboco rogue? I bet it does? Uh No, it doesn't go rogue at all. It's mostly does normal stuff and hang out. He just says what he wants. I mean, is it going rogue when a robot does what they want? Not going? But you know by there they're also like British guy robots, because that's the other like traditional like butlers. It's like,

you know, who serves people like butlers and women. So that's what will make robots be like ask Jeeves um, but Simon. What made Simon sound especially scary it was that they were like, they're giving it tapes of the astronauts voices to learn from and recognize, and pictures of

their faces there to study them too. I mean, he, I think, isn't part of the purpose of his presence on the spaceship is to kind of like observe and try to improve on what's going on, which sounds so scary, super scary that he's going to turn into a Darren Brown on this. That's what I also shout out to our last step. That's what I was also thinking about. Alexo and Claire just said Alexa tells you to do things. I was totally like, oh, yeah, Alexa is going to

be like, oh, I totally wrote a social experiment. Yeah, I wrote a short film once or a GPS gets you to murder someone. Oh no, wonder you had us watch that show? You know, people just do what they're told, especially if like an all knowing robot is just like, no, you have to do this, turn left, turn left. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we are incredibly excited to tell everybody about Song Finch.

Songfinch is a personalized gifting company that brings stories, feelings, and memories to life through one of the kind songs. So I've told a couple of people in my life about song Finch recently since it's come to our attention, and they're like, oh, it's an algorithm that writes a song for you. No, a person writes a song for you. This is like bringing back like musical telegrams. It's great. I've never been more excited to receive anything in my life. Almost.

This was something where we all kind of couldn't bel that we got to do this because it was so I've ever heard we're upset, Well, we should tell people about the process right that we we went through, which was Emily took the reins and did a great job with this. So there are two different kind of services they have. UM one is making a song kind of from a preset template and that's ninety nine dollars and then there's a uh and then there's two one where

they build a song from scratch. And so we had a song built from scratch and the process is very intuitive. You basically UM go through and answer a few questions about what the occasion is for the song, what kind of genre you want for the song? You know, any other kind of influences or artists that you like and um, and then you just kind of get to freeform, share your story and say, I want to make sure you mentioned this event or this special memory or this you

know factorid about a person. And so we asked for a song about Nightcall, and we had a song written for us called Nightcall. So get really hight for the premiere of Nightcall, written by our song finished songwriter Rich Low, who is a genius. He also performed it. Um, here it is. We're back like we never lived. We never lived like we never lived, never lived to the best. We have a nank God. We thank God that's doing research. Yeah,

and she's gonna plan for disasters. Molly love the Valley, send your water because of you out Emily at Diramacy from a music critic, could vocans vocal libra. We just tell it like it's gonna be so yeah, that's our song. You get it, and it's clear that someone very talented put like a ton of time into it. And then you can read the artists bio that you get a specific U R L where you can download your song, read the lyrics, read about your artist. It was just

kind of like a really fun experiment. I think I'm gonna definitely do it again. It's a great personalized gift idea for people that you don't know necessarily what to get them. Everybody is happy to get a song that is a personal life phone. We were psyched to endorse it. Also, Songfinch is offering our listeners ten percent off of the personalized song from scratch options. So you can visit songfinch dot com and use promo code call for ten percent

off your personalized song from scratch. So, yeah, that's song Finch. Check him out, tell him we sent you, and you can find our song Finch song Nightcall at songfinch dot com. Slash Stories, Slash, Molly Dash, Test Dash and Dash Emily. You can hear the full version there, which you definitely want to do. So. Yeah, Claire Evans is with us today.

Maybe some old fans of Girls and Hoodies. Yeah, she's some multiple guests, maybe the I don't know if you were whatever the highest number of times club that you were that you could be on hit three. I think you were on three times. I think it was like two plus a call you were you were an ancillary girl in Hoodie would say that I couldn't deserve such a thing. I was like a girl with a crew neck. Um. But Claire h yeah, Claire just had a book published

called Broadband, and it's really interesting. I just did a um Q and a with at a bookstore here in Brooklyn. But now it is available to pick up at any local bookstore and you're neighborhood and if you live and you can command Alexa to order it. Yeah. In fact, I mean I don't condone that, but I think it would be very fun to do at least once. Well, if you go to a bookstore in uh in the New York or Manhattan area, there might be an autograph in it. I'm very self conscious about just promoting the

book in general. I mean, I just feels so weird to just be like, I did this thing. Buy it please on a hardcover for twe many nine cents, but also buy it on everybody, go by it, please, god by it please much for a book you wrote a whole book? Yeah, thank you guys. Hopefully it comes out to like a really good hourly rate for however, many zillions of hours. Don't think about it that way anyway. My editor was like, go to bookstores in New York and sign copies of the book, because once you signed it,

they can't return it to the publisher. It's like it's kind of an inside baseball publishing thing. Smart, but it's so awkward to walk into a bookstore and say hello, I'm an author, Mary, please do it like face. Yeah. No, you're supposed to tell them you go, you go in, and then you like slip secret messages in like phantom tread. You write a little like I'm watching you right now,

look outside. It's the thing authors do. And I feel very tempted to just walk into a bookstore and say I'm you know whatever likes say I'm I'm here to size. Maybe maybe we should be kind of your soldiers and Molly and I can go sign your books in l A and then they have returned to the publisher and we will have signed them with your blessing. Um. Yes, of course, I'm happy to franchise my signature. I have a very I redesigned my autograph recently for simplicity and style.

It's very it's a very graphical. It's yeah, I am we are Claire Evans, we are legion. Yeah, it's like it's like Prince Yeah, thanks guys, Yeah, that'd be great. I mean, my favorite stuff in the book, Um, the stuff I like most about it was the stuff about all like the early communities. Like, so, I guess after the Internet exists, but before the web. She marred an interesting distinction about well, people don't know. I was just

on I was talking to someone. I went on a PBS show the other day and the guy didn't know the difference between the web and the Internet, and he was he was talking and asking me all these questions and I was like, couldn't get past it. I was like, the web is a different thing. Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of difference, and there's what are the different networks? That's an idiot who's asking, you know, Um, the Internet is the infrastructure but underlies, you know, our

connected world. The Web is like the visual hyperlinked pages that sit on top of it. So it's they're related, Like the Web is built on the Internet, but the Internet is Internet is the bones and the Web is the face. The Internet has been around a lot longer

than the Web. Most of most I think the reason that a lot of people don't know is because most people's first experience that the Internet was with the Web and not with especially you know, maybe our generation was right at that time when you might have done both, but definitely kids who are younger than us. And it's all this in between stuff too. I mean BBS is and like commercial online services, those aren't really the Internet

or the Web. They're like this in weird and between anything where you're calling into commercial services or you're calling into people's home servers and posting messages. So there's a lot, you know, it's a it's a big, complex, interconnected system of uh, lots of you know, lots has changed since it feels we'd even talking about the web now because he was even on the web anymore. Yeah, I mean,

I'm on the information super Highway. I don't know about you, Okay, wherever it makes up, I'm riding it all the way. I think my favorite like kind of section of the book is about UM this community, like this paid um BBS community called Echo that was It stood for the East Coast Hangout UM and it was run by a woman, Stacy Horne, who seemed totally fascinating and it is she

had been a member. She had checked out this West Coast like similar community called the Well that was very like hippieish and had a lot of deadheads in it, and like kind of realized it wasn't her scene and decided to start like a New York version of it, which I just love to think about. There being like

coastal internet. Yeah, it used to be expensive to call the West Coast Internet if you're on the East Coast, Like it was literally more expensive to dial one of those services, and there were most of this A lot of the services were on the West Coast in those days, So starting her own service was the only way for

her to connect with people online. And then yeah, like how cool is it to have an online community that's so specifically localized that everybody on it is someone that you stand a chance of meeting in real life and that maybe you also are less likely to patroll and harass and be awful too because you know them or you could know them, And yeah, um, yeah, I think

that's really cool. A lot of network culture was localized in that way for a long time, for like ten fifteen years, So it was they're saying, I'm both missed the times in our lives where we're using the Internet, and it was like an intermediary thing to like keep like it was more like a thing to keep in touch with people you knew in real life, as opposed to like this huge abstract thing or like a way that you kept up with gossip or whatever. I don't know.

I also enjoyed the like talking to people across the world aspect of it a lot, And I very naively always felt like, Wow, everyone's going to be so tolerant because of the Internet, because they're going to like see that, you know, talking that you can talk to people about

whatever you're interested in and people everywhere are the same. Uh. And then instead fascism was what the Internet turned out to also be good for, which you know, also makes sense, but definitely I was a Internet utopian list and now

maybe less of one. Maybe geography was one form of creating like you know, chill and okay communities, and then you know, interest specific connection was the other one, like you could connect with I think it's mostly about maybe eyes, like the size of a community and when you when you feel accountable to other people because either you share something that you're passionate about like whatever Star Trek or Weezer, which are the main thing maintooth obviously we all know

or you or you know that you could you could live close to them. Those are the those are the things. Yeah,

you're right, well I was. I was just gonna say, like it was cool to read about this like early internet community run by this woman on echo that was like, what what would happen if the entire community or like the ecosystem online was run by a woman, and like who was conscientious of like you know, possible pitfalls where there might be like if there's a conflict or if there's harassment or something, like what am I going to

do about it? And like put in all these safeguards Like these much much bigger communities that are you know, susceptible to a lot more bad stuff happening, they don't have that stuff. They don't she do to make it safer and more generous space. So, I mean, the crazy thing about it is that she started this thing in inteen eighty nine and at that time, the entire Internet slash like network culture community which includes BBS, was like

ten female. I mean, it's not really good statistics, but that's ballpark and her service was like she had pretty much almost perfect parody and it's because she tried, you know, like she actually made an effort to court women online and like also like in real life too, like going to bars and like galleries and stuff, asked them why they weren't on the internet and like explain how to use it, and like she taught classes on how to like do unix in her apartment in Greenwich Village and

then she made membership in her service free for women. She the main thing that she did that I think is really smart and hasn't been really done since, is she made sure that every single one of the conferences, which is like this, the individual subject threads on the message board were had moderators and one moderator would be mail and one moderator would be female. And it was like that was just part of the service that there would always be a woman in charge and every conversation

that you were in. So if you signed end up and you saw a woman leading the conversation, you would feel less shy about participating, you know, you wouldn't you would be less likely to lurk. And that's like a super simple thing, but it worked. It just worked, like

everyone was pretty much cool to each other. She also made private spaces available, so there was like a woman's only area in a men's only area, and um, she was I mean, it was small enough that people would like call her on the phone to verify that they were male or female for these individual like message board threads, which opened up a whole question about what do you do if you're a trans user, which is like all thing I explore in the book. It's a really interesting

story also. And you know, but they were having conversations about you know, identity, gender, personhood, etcetera online years and not in a way, as far as I could tell from your telling of it, like devolved into people screaming at each other. It was like it was like they were just trying to figure it out, just to figure

it out. They were talking through it, you know, and they had they had a no ad hominem attack rule, which is something that we, you know, people often invoke when we're having arguments online, but no one actually holds to. But you know, they didn't insult each other. They always insulted the idea. And they were totally like, I mean, there were New Yorkers, they were very cynical and they would argue all the time, and they were very like self deprecating and funny, and uh it was okay because

they all sort of respected each other. So what happened to this amazing community? It's still yes, you can you can join, but the only way you can access it is through the terminal in your computer and you'd like dial via telnt into Stacy's home server. It's like super super super I say, millennial proof, like it's old school. I've been obsessed when starting wanting to start a BBS. If you guys are into like a little bit of

a learning curve, I think it's worth exploring. Um, I feel like a night call BBS actually the most we don't go that far into the past. It's a straight up message board would be so fun, I think, Man, I bet you guys were all big live journal people, Like I read live journal every day because I read did it, which is like the last I journal community alive.

But they're great. They report really accurately on sexual harassment and assault scandals in a way that like a lot of other places don't, and everybody in it is cool. All the posters are cool, and they purge people that are they purge trolls a lot. Do you think that the platform, the way that live journal works, supports that like this? Is there something about the platform that makes it possible for that kind of dialogue. I think it's just old, and I think it's just whittled down to

only the people that care enough to stay involved. It's like one of the mods just retired and he was like had been a mod there for like ten years or something. You know, like the people that are left on it. It's not necessarily attracting new people at this point, but it does feel this like this very sort of like the last samee corner of the Internet. UM so interesting.

I keep meaning to download my live journal, but I made the mistake when I was a teenager of making all of the UM navigation link colors black on black. It's really had to like get to each individual page and download the material. What were your guys favorite UM message board communities there you were on prior to social media. I don't want to outline because it still exists. Molly started the secrets so carefully. I've been on a message board for like a really long time at this point.

I guess since I was a teenager that's right, I think I remember you talking about I also meet people in real life sometimes that I know from the message board. I was hanging out with my friend Roxy yesterday and I was like, oh, we like technically knew each other on this message board and then met in real life, and then realized at a certain point of knowing each other in real life that we had also already communicated

on a message board, which is always fun. I definitely like started out with like x filed BBS was my my introduction to the Internet, and definitely I think I started with Prodigy. I was always just very chatty person. I just went right for the chatting and not so much for the message boards. My parents did have to like disabled a message boards though. When I was in sixth grade, I think, and I was using my dad's

Prodigy account to lurk on hamster boards like animals. I had acquired a hamster, and I was a very obsessive kid, so every time there was like an interest, which at this point was hamsters, I would go like really deep. And so I was on these message boards about like how to build these different tunnels and structures for hamsters, and I ended up eventually talking with this woman who was like in her fifties and lived in I think Ohio,

and she really wanted to talk on the phone. And it didn't seem strange to me when the home phone rang at like nine o'clock at night and my parents were like, who are you talking to? It was like a woman named Pat who was like grandmother and they were like no, no, um. So I was cut off

for a bit. Night Call listeners, if you want to tell us what you your favorite message board community or any kind of pre social media community was back in the day, you can give us a call at two four oh four six night or send us an email at night Call Podcast at gmail dot com and tell us all about it. We'd love to hear about some internet memory lane. Speaking of I think we have an email this week that we wanted to read. So this email comes from Charlie Heller, and he wrote in to say,

hey y'all. First, I'm super psyched that the pod has returned, and it's really great to hear every week again. Thanks for all the great Yeah, thanks Charlie, Please tell all your friends. Second, after the fashion episode, I thought you might enjoy this compilation I did a few months ago for food and wine after I stumbled on Amazon's trope of extremely specific and bizarre, algorithmically generated food shirts. I can't even fathom what kind of algorithm would lead to

some of these terms being chosen. Are there that many people searching for fen you Greek or Egyptian bean? But they're really hilarious. I can only include one of each style, but if you go to any of the links, there are tons more equally incredible ones, especially the one with

the Pepsi logo that just says lettuce. It may not have become quite the fashion sensation I had been secretly hoping for, but I guess that's just life in the old fashioned slash algorithm slash net art intersection Best Charlie. So Charlie had some links in here that hopefully we can attach to the podcast so that you guys can take a look, because it's like he has an amazing look so incredible. Let's just read some of the shirts out loud. This one is a Pepsi logo and it

just says hard boiled eggs. There are a lot of companies like this that just have like shirts that we plugs in whatever it's you know, only real glorious. No. Yes, I always get to serve those outs on Facebook. Yeah, because they know that you're the kind of person who might buy that shirt. It's like only a player will understand that. I mean that is true. Oh yeah, feed me ar boreo rice and tell me I'm pretty? Is one shirt to drugs? Say yes to water chestnuts always?

Is there like a keep calm and ven Green says, soy mayonnaise doesn't ask questions, soy Mayonnaise understands. I was imagining when when when we got this email, I was it was envisioning something like those phonecases where it was like like a Google image search of like you know, yeah yeah like xmr or or Fennel, whichevereever your interest lies. But these are these are even weirder because they're like trying to be memes, which is fascinating, and they're pudding.

It has the thing that we like where it is like it's like a slightly garbled take on something that makes sense, so it like no longer makes sense and your brain is trying to piece it together. Um like the one that says I run because I like Egyptian. It's just the one, Thank you very much, Charlie for this email and we will share the link to your list on all of our social media platforms and or pbs as Uh. It's amazing. Thank you and you definitely

understand us, Charlie, thank you. This is very us. So. Um, we we kind of had as a perennial topic we wanted to get to at some point just astrology as a word, astrology in general. But I feel like to it. We started talking about it. You were saying something about being you were going to clean and you like, maybe

I really am a Virgo. I don't know. It's just like I get in these conversations a lot though with people where it's like, oh, we all know everything about astrology and like what a virgo is, and we're all like, you know, very women are very like intellectual, intellectual type jobs, and you know, we're not maybe necessarily with people who would traditionally think we would think of being uh subscribers to with astrology. But here I don't think there's to it.

I don't subscribe to it because I have such a boring sign. Virgo is my favorite sign. No it is, and also you are not a totally atypical Virgo. Well I've also heard this before, that there are more virgos than any other sign because people have New Year's babies sex on New Years. And then I heard that it was libras because of Valentine's dare I think these are all apocryphal and I just repeat them like one might repeat on astrological thing. Um. Yeah, I don't know. I'm

skeptical of astrology. But I also get mad when people like hate on it because it's usually dudes being like women are idiots they believe in this, and I'm like, you fucking watch sports, like come on, Yeah, magical thinking is a thing, and it's fine as long as you don't invest everything in it. I guess. I guess I

get upset when people start spending money on it. And more on that a minute, because there are two of my favorite stories from the past five years have involved people being screwed out of a ton of money by psychic that's true. Well, Um, when I was an editor at The Verge, UM, I had a freelance writer due a profile of um of Susan Miller Um and it was, you know, a long considered piece of writing, like four

thousand words on her. She met her up like a couple of her conferences and had many phone conversations with her, and you know, say what you will about the veracity of what she practices, but she is a fascinating woman and like a fascinating Internet personality also, which was sort of the pitch of the of the piece. And so this piece is on the verge and uh Claire also

has some experiences with this recently. Verst commenters are like so literal minded in a way that just makes you wanna like take a nap for five years in um and they were so mad ad about us, you know, even having the possibility of lionizing somebody who practices a pseudo science. It's just like you're missing the point of this spiece. Also, it's okay, I was telling you guys that, like I think Tess also had we had our charts done by our math teacher. Did you have Mr G?

I had Mr Greg. I was also it was I hate to use this word, but it was dumb math. It was we both got bumped down to remedial to remedial math. And our math teacher, even though he was a math teacher, he was also really into astrology and he was kind of great. He was totally like a like a Scoot McNary uh in Halt and Catcher, you know my heart. So when we found out that he was into astrology, it was like a very fun twist

of like you would not have expected that. And then he did everyone's charts in the class as like an end of the year thing. It was a treat It was a treat um. But I also hate when people are like, oh, I'm a whatever, so I'm like very whatever, a superior or an astrological superiority complex, yeah, or or an excuse to get out of things where it's like you can't depend on me, I'm a Gemini. I hate that.

Would also try to be a good person, right, I hate when people are like, I'm gonna like use this as an excuse for like bad traits of mine that are related to astrological sense. But I also think people that are astrologers, like Susan Miller are kind of just like confidence men confidence women like Darren Brown, for example, she's an artist. She's not a scientist, an artist, but it's like to look someone in their eyes. And we were talking about this recently in terms of people that

are like really seductive to everyone. You know, but just like a lot of like actors and actresses. It's just like someone who like looks you in the eye, asks you a lot of questions about yourself. Your name periodically makes you yeah, like makes you feel understood. Like the ability to con people into believing that you know something about them is like really valuable because people will pay for that. Wait, so we know Molly's a virgo, Emily,

you are a Libra. Do you know you're rising? Yeah, it's I'm a tourist rising, which I didn't even realize until like semi recently. And I again all with a cream of salt, but I feel like it explains a lot of my frustrations in life. Wait, what is what clear? What? We don't even know where to begin with you? What's your deal? I'm a I'm a scorpio. Cut I'm the

last day of Scorpio. Although I met someone at a party yesterday who claims she was the last day of Scorpio, but her birthday is the day after mine, so one of us is lying. I mean, maybe I have like a moon sign or a rising or something that I'm not. I don't know. I haven't yet acknowledged and internalized and Emily has a Melcher for tourist rising, but I for tourists, right.

I often read my horoscope like, oh, I wish you know it's always like you are You're a saucy mix and no one can get enough of you and blah blah blah, Like that's not but I wish it sounds more fun to think about than like Virgo, which is like you might clean your bathroom today. Do you have any least favorite sign? Wait, test, we didn't ask you. You You gotta we gotta get to your sign. Still, you're avoiding evading like a true Capricorn. You know we're up front.

It's no secret on a cap what's your rising sign? That also makes sense, But again, okay, here's my thing with astrology is I feel like if you just list enough emotional traits, everybody is like, I'm all those things totally well. I think if somebody told me I was a cancer, I'd be like, yeah, right, this is totally fake. I think that would be one where I'd be like this, this, this is a fake. That's how I feel about being a Virgo. I'm like, literally, the only thing about Virgos

is that their neat because you're loyal, stubborn. Right, these are so you're the virgin woman, I know, but it's like all the other signs are like sexy and passionate and like water and lobby, I'm a goat and like dirt. I'm a goat supposed to be dirt, but it's Saturday nine, so you're I'm a bug. But I'd really like to do and maybe callers can help us do this is establish an alternate astrology system. I think constellations are really cool.

I think the Z is really cool. Obviously, um, I think there are like weird spooky things that happened in my life sometimes that I feel like there are weird spooky things that can happen, you know, like a like something with an ensemble cast of twelve? Is there like a star trek maybe? What about likes and vegetables? Like a lot of people who are like it's a fake. So it's like I would I don't believe we shouldn't, you know, pay any money to these people or let

them have columns. Are people who like totally invest all of their energy into the Myers Briggs and the psychology I believe in. I think Israel. But that's also why I like Darren Brown's the Push, and you guys did not because I was like, but it's also like test you take yourself. You can answer it any way you want, right, and nobody who would answer it. Isn't that the sociopath test where it's like anyone who is a real sociopath

would know how to pass the sociopath test. Right. The other reason I wanted to talk about astrology, um, was that something actually astrology related happened to me in my life recently, which was that my longtime favorite astrologer that I read on the internet quit the game. And I was unexpectedly very deeply Um, I don't I don't want to say upset, but it really like shook me in

a way that I wasn't expecting. Well, it did kind of feel like somebody reaching a breaking point, or like when you kind of realize that this person you've just been interfacing with because of their their public facing persona and the use that they present to like on the Internet, that there was actually like so much more going on with him, right, that they're not the person you think

they are on the internet. Yeah, or like a robot that gives you things every month, Yeah, yeah, and he's been providing this service like every week without fail for you know, fifteen years or something like that. And he wrote this like final essay on his site. Um. The site is astroberry dot com. He's like a total Bay Area like just like a total sweetheart. Like I don't know what you think he was on those deadhead BBS boards back in the day. It's very possible. I'm gonna

go ahead. Yeah, he's like I think he's in his forty maybe he's in his late forties or something. I feel like he could have been around for that scene. He definitely, like I think the thing that happened with him because he in addition to the horoscopes, he would write his um just like kind of monthly musings on you know, the planets and his own life and stuff

like that. And um, he got I think he got priced out recently of the Bay Area and like had to leave and he had been living there for a really long time and it was like very emotional for him. He wrote his final essay about or his final piece was just like my my computer broke down and I lost my last horoscopes that I was going to post, and like something to me just snapped, and I was like, I'm not doing this anymore. Do you think he's hot coming though? I don't know. He's not a site gig,

he's in the stronger Well he did. He did kind of put it in astrological context in a way, but like kind of how like we were reaching some sort of end of some kind of cycle or another. I couldn't repeat it. Uh, it was just like a bummer or read because I realized that I had really was it like Southland Tales? Was he just like, well, the apocalypse is starting? And no, it wasn't so doomsday. It was more just like him making a personal decision for his well being and his like, you know, of his

own you know, need for self care. I guess um. There of course plenty of people that we only like we feel like we have a relationship with online that we don't even contact or like you know, get in touch with in any way, uh, and don't know who we are, but it still feels like a relationship and not even like big celebrities or something. This is just

like a astrologer blogger. Yeah. I feel that way about Adrian, my YouTube yoga teacher who my imagine every best friend that I love, but I'm also like, I'm not I don't know this person and the way they present themselves in yoga videos is like a sweet, wonderful, nice person who you would want to teach you yoga. Uh is

not a full person. And it's very easy to feel close to someone, especially when they're like doing being a yoga teacher or an astrologer, someone who you're like, I come to you for council important to acknowledge that work. You know, like every once in a while, just drop an email to those people online that you admire that are doing things for you that you're not paying. I

think that's the thing I did, you guys. I know we talked about how we don't we shouldn't get can by astrologers, but I totally did pay for astroberries like

yearly reports, um. And it was like this total honor system thing because it was just a PDF that he would email you and you could obviously share it with whoever you wanted, but he was just like he would send it out and be like hey, you know, like I know you can you can technically send this to everybody, but like, if you like it, please just ask your friends to buy it, and so I bought it like a few years and he stopped doing it a few

years ago, but like I should. It did make me feel bad that I had never just like like I've never followed him on Twitter or anything like that. It felt like so separate from how I interfeed, like my rest of the rest of my Internet activity. Do you think he was on Twitter? He was. I don't know if he's going to be doing it, you know, I should send him a link to the podcast podcast. Um yeah, it's like miss Connections. But with astrologers, um test. Have you ever paid for it? No? I well, no I have,

but not not online. I go for the real deal and I used to do it a lot in high school. There was you paid for psychics more right, yeah, psychics. But I've also done astrologers. I've done astrological readings of the psychic I they have like a psychic zone and then they also do some like you know, charts and stuff like that. So I've done that before, but I don't know. For me, it's like the kind of thing where I like to get the tools to do it myself.

You know, I'm like a d I fire because I feel like I don't know that much about charts, but there's so many resources where if you want to spend like six hours and stay up all night figuring out you know, all your stuff, all your planets and stuff, you can. Um, I'm very of too much. If you make a mistake, you'll never know you could be based on your life decisions on some miscalculation. Sorry, I'm I'm totally more of like a you know, I guess I'm

more of a skeptic. Well, I um, it's different because it's psychics. But there were just like these stories. One of them was in the New York Times and I sent it to Molly and Emily about a man named Nile Rice who was scammed out of hundreds of that like seven hundred thousand dollars or something like that by a psychic. And he he was like having a tough

time in life. He was like using drugs and drinking a lot, really depressed, and he went to rehab, met a woman, fell in love, and then they left rehab and dated briefly, and then she went back to rehab um and broke up with him, and he was heartbroken. So he saw this psychic and she was like, oh,

we'll get her back. It just it devolved into this thing where the woman died sadly and the guy was still seeing the psychic, and the psychic was like, oh, she's she's dead, but that's okay, you can still make it work with her. She'll be reincarnated as another woman. And meanwhile, taking all of his money. He met a girl, started dating her, believed she was the reincarnated ex girlfriend. Eventually his new partner realized this and was like whoa, no way, broke up with it, like it was crazy.

And then then there was another article, I think in Reader's Digest about a romance novelist named Jude Devereaux. I think she gave a psychic seventeen million dollars. It was

like her whole, her whole life savings. She gave like you know these psychics that was like a whole family of psychics who had storefronts in New York and then also in Florida, and they the woman Rose Marks, I think it was her name, who was heading the operation just got she got ten years in prison, but I think that the investigation was called Operation Crystal ball Um. But she would just take money from people and be like, oh, it's your money's like dirty, it has like bad jujue

on it. I'm going to cleanse it and then it'll come back to you later. And everyone was like okay, yeah. Like on the one hand, I'm like, oh, don't give astrologers all your money, but then I'm like proud of the astrologers for taking again. In the same way, I'm like, is it really the astrologer's ball at that point? I mean, yeah, it's I mean I think it's usually defended as being like therapy, but therapists can't can't kind of make it

like I'll fix yourn. You know, they can't make false promises. They can only it's just the point in Nightcall where we decided to start a religion the nightcall, Yeah, or like a law practice that that defends psychics. Well, we should take what our one final nightcall from this week, which comes to us from Lauren. And this is yet another a story. I have not heard anything like this yet about as far as apps spying on us, but let's let's give it a listen. Time is Lauren and

I have a podcast called podcast Podcast. It's a podcast about podcast and I love your podcast. Um, I was listening to you talk about how whether or not our phones are listening to us, and I have, like, I mean, I think this is a pretty standard weird story where I had my phone in my pocket and we were talking about the rent the Runways new like description service, and I went back to my desk and in my

computer it's all the adds I've seen. I feel like everyone has a story like that, but I something weird happened. I haven't heard anyone else talk about. I bought my husband a super Nintendo, like an old one for Christmas, and my Spotify list of suggested song the week after there was all like I don't know a lot of hip hop, but it was all like I can't think of any examples right now, but it was like hip hop songs with like super Nintendo noises and themes. I've

never heard of that before. Like I bought the the Superintendo console on Amazon and then I opened Spotify and there's all these Nintendo songs and they've never played again, I don't know. And even though there were so many hip hop Nintendo themed songs, but I don't know if you've ever heard of anybody with there's a story like that where Spotify is beating put was based on history. Um think, uh, keep up the great work. I love the show. God. Algorithms are so dumb in a way.

It's like this. I mean, it's if if that is true, if the Spotify algorithm and the Amazon algorithm are working hand in hand to oppress this woman. The assumption that just because you like Nintendo, you also like Nintendo music, you just like Nintendo across all all media is so acquired. Yeah, I mean, I'm assuming that's what she's saying here, is that these are like like rap songs that have like

some production that sounds like chip tune. That's That's what I'm feeling, Like this must be it her chip music, and it was like you like chip music. Yeah, Like see, that's what the robot voice should be like. It should being like a nerd nerd voice, Rosie the robot or yeah,

not like just as like guys. Thing though, like she decided to buy the Nintendo and then maybe because it was just in the air that, you know, I think there's something a little bit more unquantifiable that sometimes happens, or she just noticed it really more, you know, But they make those ads, they do it like the way the machines all work together to make you feel crazy and like you're in a Philip Kiddeck story. Is that they make it all like plausibly deniable. They're all like, oh, maybe,

just maybe it wasn't listening to me. I just was doing this and then also doing this, and it happened to know that, you know, well, she bought the Super Supernintendo for her husband, like had she been searching for Supernintendo's online and then there was her search history for that, but then it doesn't make any sense for her search history. That's less that's less scary, yeah, but but then for it to actually like start affecting it after she they

start playing with the Supernintendo. I mean it feels like a really jangkie and poorly conceived, sort of like voluntary Shazam. I could see some kind of usefulness for it, because I have the thing all the time of like there was a song playing at this restaurant and it was killing me. I can't remember what it is. And then like if you start trying to find it in whatever way,

it pops up a little more easily. But this is not anything anybody's asking for, and it's just like it thinks it's helping you, but it just wants to help you buy stuff. It's like it's not another a Nintendo. Like, once you've gotten to the point where the Nintendo music is playing in your Spotify, like, what are you gonna go back to Amazon to buy a second Nintendo? Give me more sounds, You're gonna find Nintendo's until your house is nothing but Nintendo. They can't harmonize with just one.

If you want the harmonies, then you've got to Nintendos, Crosby Stills, Alexa like Barbershop Alexa quartet, to go back to Alexa to take it full circle, but with the

sound thing. I never want to have an Alexa. But like at the same time, before all this stuff started coming onto the market, the only thing I thought I would ever want, as far as like a personal robot or like one of these things that you have in your house, I envisioned like a floating orb that would follow behind me and just like play music whenever I request. That's kind of what Simon is. Yeah, yeah, he's a

floating space. If you look up Simon or Kiman. What about a roomba, a roomba that's like an iPod did I had a rumba and I had the roomba that sprays water. But they break and then you're like what do I do? And it's really hard to get them fixed. They just want you to buy another room, but and then the room just dying. It's like, help me, you know. The rumor that is dying is just like this immensely heavy frisbee. This was. I had a room ba now

twelve years ago. It was huge, and it was very confused by boundaries and stairs and yeah, and then they break and it's and at that time it was impossible to get it fixed. It was you know, they really wanted you to troubleshoot yourself and you're like, I don't know where to begin with fixing this thing. I'm just going to buy a swiffer, which I did. Well. Thank you very much Lauren for your call and giving us

another thing to um check our preferences on. And thank you Claire for being on this this night piece and being our inaugural guest. Oh, I'm so honored. Was fun and everybody should go check out broadband the Untold by my book. If you're listening to this night call, maybe Alexa will start ordering suggesting the book. Yeah, yeah, I like that. I like to test to see if things are listening to yelling the name of a product into

my phone. Like I just like to yell leggings at my phone a bunch to see if I get leggings. But that that doesn't For this week's Night Call, as always, you can give us a call at two four oh for six night leave us your calls about your favorite bbs, is your what else? Your your thoughts on astrology? Ghost stories? I want ghost stories, Coho stories. Yeah, give us some

ghost stories. Yeah. And you can also find send us an email at Night Call Podcast at gmail dot com, follow us on Twitter at Nightcall Pod, Facebook, Nightcalled Podcast, Instagram, and Nightcall Podcast boom. I did them all. I remembered all of them, I wonder. Also, if you're enjoying the podcast, please rate, review, and subscribe to help us continue to make podcasts for you. We'll see you next much. You'll see you next week. Say all wrong