The Ose CES Controversy

That's right. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, thank you for literally sitting still in the studio after just recording an episode of Stuff Mom Never Told You and letting me come in here and record tech Stuff. It's kind of like it's my job or something. I was very excited to have this opportunity to have this conversation with you, and also, um, yeah, be beyond tech stuff. Awesome. Well, I'm glad you can slum it. Stuff Mom Never Told You It was a phenomenal show and has been ever

since its inception. I remember actually being there on the pitch meetings for that show. So it's been fantastic seeing that show grow over the years and evolved. It's been a phenomenal. And again, before we jump into this topic, one thing I want to say at the outset for everybody. This is gonna be a very special episode of tech Stuff. It's gonna be We're gonna deal with some mature themes, uh, some adult themes. These are all euphemisms. We're gonna be

talking about sexuality. We're gonna talk about gender bias. We're gonna talk about double standards. We're gonna be talking specifically about a product that is a sex toy. We're gonna be talking about this frankly and honestly because I think it's a very important subject for many reasons. But I wanted to make that clear at the outset just in case there are any listeners out there who are not comfortable with this subject matter. Uh, they feel like that's inappropriate.

I'm not passing any judgment whatsoever. I completely understand. So this is a fair warning if you do find those sort of topics uncomfortable, I totally understand. However, I do stress that you should check out stuff Mom never told you, because you will learn very quickly to become comfortable with the subjects because they are important ones, and you'll realize, oh, okay, I get it. But I realized that for Tech Stuff audience, that might be asking a lot right of the gate.

So now that that's out of the way, what did what brought us here together today? So I went to see E S two thousand nineteen in Las Vegas, Nevada, which I have learned is pronounced Nevada, not not Nevada. No, no, I've been making that mistake for you years, you and most of the country. But the people of the fine state of Nevada will tell you, yes, that you are incorrect.

When I went there, one of the stories that popped up was about a product called ose o s E with an accent uh and oh excellent, My my French is not parfit. Unfortunately, that was be good though I think, I think and blame, but Francai not so well. So at the c E S there was this ose product, which some people have described as a vibrator, although the creators would quickly point out that that is far too simple simple a name for this thing. But it's specifically

a sex toy marketed for women, designed by women. And they had submitted this product to the Consumer Technology Association, that's the organization that throws c E s for consideration for what is called an innovation award. They got one. Then they got a letter saying, just kidding, we're not going to give you that award, we're taking it back.

And then also, oh and by the way, you aren't allowed to show this product at c E S. And that brought up this enormous conversation about what actually happened. Who's in the wrong? Was this say about the not just the technology, but the attitudes towards sexuality, specifically women's sexuality? Um? Are there double standards in play? And so we're gonna suss all that out. Annie, And I asked you on here because I wanted someone who has credibility to be

on this show for once. Well, thank you, thank you, I appreciate that. UM, I have never been to see yes, and I know you're kind of old hat with it. Um was this something because from what I understand, they found out like a month later that the award had been rescinded. Right They submitted the the application earlier in UH in two thousands, two thousand eighteen, So this process takes a long time. Obviously, UH companies typically submit these

products to the Consumer Technology Association. They, in theory anyway, go through and screen all the products and then all the ones that at least past the initial screening go to an independent review board. They assign a score. Any product that gets a certain score or higher meets a threshold gets the designation of Honoree. Whichever product gets the highest score in its category gets a Best of Innovation award. So there is no limit to the number of honorees.

The limit is only based upon the quality of the products that they get. UH. And the companies that submit these no no well ahead of time because they need to be able to market the product as a Best of c E S or an Honoree or whatever. UM. So they had known all the way back in October two thousand eighteen that this was gonna be an Honoree product, But then they got the letter in October That was like a month after they had found out the the award.

So I guess they technically learned to the award in September two tho eighteen, get the letter in October two thousand eighteen saying loll just kidding, we're taking it back and uh. And so the news didn't break immediately then, which some people would argue was kind of a publicity stunt, but I would argue that's absolutely what was needed um. The news broke during the show itself because they did show off the OZ at an event called show Stoppers.

So CS is this huge, huge event, and there are a lot of little spinoff events that are some of which are directly connected to c e S and some of which are not at all endorsed or sponsored by c e S, but are always part of it, and show Stoppers is one of them. It's an opportunity for some of the smaller exhibitors to get together and show off their products and be seen. And so while OSE was banned from ce S because show Stoppers was not an official ce S event, they still could exhibit there.

So they did go there, and that's where the story really started to get traction because this was the OS is the very first product from the company Laura Dick de Carlo, which is that that's the name of the company that produces it. Um It's the first product they've ever made, so they didn't have a lot of press

attention leading into this. This is kind of in a way you could argue ultimately it's probably the best thing that could have happened for that company because it brought so much attention to it and there it's the subject of eight patents, right, like any robotics and bioimicry. Because obviously the team at De Carlo wanted to know what reason are you sending this award? Yeah, And they got

a couple of different responses, uh, one of which was infuriating. Um, well, both of them, I would argue are infuriating, but the first one in the initial letter that was sent to them that told them that the award had been rescinded. There's a passage. I'll quote it directly because I want to make sure I get it right. This is what the ct A wrote back. They said, entries deemed by c t A in their soul discretion to be immoral, obscene, indecent, profane, or not in keeping with c t a s image

will be disqualified. C TA reserves the right and its sole discretion to disqualify any entry at any time which, in c t a's opinion, endangers the safety or well being of any person or fails to comply with these official rules. End quote. That is a loaded statement if I ever heard one. Right. So, women's sexual pleasure is either immoral, profane, yeah, or not in keeping with CTIAS image, which I would argue is probably the one that is

the most true. But in a way that is is me passing judgment on C t A, not on women's sexuality. So let's let's get a little broader picture here for a second. Um, C E S and sexuality are not separate things and never the twain shall meet. In fact, it is totally not the case. From the nineteen eighties until two thousand eleven, the two the C S event happened in conjunction with another big event in Las Vegas, the Adult Video Network Awards or an Adult Video a

v N show. So this was a show in which adult content, essentially pornography if you prefer that term, was going on and frequently you if you had a badge to one, if you had a badge specifically to C E S, it would get you entry into the other conference as well. And there were lots of comments about this about how the target audience for both conferences tended to be the same, which was mostly straight dudes, um and that. But anyway that there was no real there

was no real shying away from that. It's not like they weren't officially handshaking being buddy buddy about the two conferences, but they also weren't shying away from it at all. And the only reason the two conferences went their separate ways and now are scheduled at different times of the year or different times in January is because they were

just running out of space. It wasn't so much that it was oh no, we can't be associated with them, as opposed to well the adult video guys were saying, the real problem is that c S is jacking up all the prices of all the hotel rooms in all of Las Vegas, so people can't afford to come to our conference. So we're gonna hold it a different time where the hotel rates will be back down to normal. So I had nothing to do with being obscene or profane. So the question then is why is this product viewed

as that? Especially if you were to walk around c e S. Especially if you were to walk around and really pay attention, you would find that there was a meeting room off the main hall and c e S where Naughty America was showing off a virtual reality application in which you could view pornography and virtual reality, and they were giving live demonstrations of this. At CES. There was so Lerna, which was a sex robot meant for men,

essentially a very advanced sex doll um. And there are other aids as well that mostly you could argue, even those that are intended to be used by women are done so in a way that kind of reflects back toward men. Yeah, those all seemed to be fine. They were all allowed to be shown. The OZ was not right. And I know that CS until pretty recently, right had the not that this is exactly on the same level, but they had booth babes. Oh yes, yeah, in fact they still do, but it's not it's not nearly as

prevalent as it used to be. But yes, that used to be that if you walked in. When I first went to ce S in two thousand eight, it was a very common practice to employ women, usually models, typically wearing revealing clothing um for really just the purpose of

enticing people into the booth a slee men. Yes, and it was it was typically these women would have at least, you know, kind of a bird's eye overview of what was in the booth, so that they could at least give a very shallow spiel of what was happening there. But rarely was it the case that they were informed enough to really talk about the products, so they were there almost like set decoration. Uh. It was very much

an objectification kind of thing. Uh. There were exceptions. There were some people who employed what would folks would refer to as booth babes, and they were incredibly well informed and good on them, fantastic. Still was a little weird that they're using women in revealing clothing to try and

get people to come into a booth. Um. I can't tell you how many times I was trying to get from point A to point B in a conference center and couldn't get through the hall that I was in because there was just an enormous crowd stopped to taking so they can take photos of booth abes posing. Um, I know this will shock you. The ed Hardy booth one year was particularly bad about that. Um. But yeah,

that that is less prevalent today. There are still booths that use women uh to try and entice people to come in, but it's not nearly as overt and it's not nearly as prevalent. So that's largely been cut back, but it's still something you see occasionally and in in these are current times. UM. Well, one I probably hear from listeners so much about this UM tech company ABC has done X y Z sexist thing. UM. The culture

is hostile towards women and i'n binary folks. UM forces them out and it's infuriating because it is a self fulfilling prophecy. It maintains this tatus quo so many stories and technology and entertainment gone. Yeah, but also CS because of this climate we're in where you will get called out for this stuff now, Like they in sen they had an all male lineup of keynote speakers UM, and that led to the hashtag CS so male and also

these terms like programmer and bro topia. So in your experience, is it I'm sure there's probably data somewhere, but is it mostly men? Okay? Let me put to you this way. Okay. One of the long standing jokes, and it's not really a joke, but it's kind of like the trope is that ce S is a conference where it's one of the few places where you're going to have an enormous group of people and there's always a line for the

men's room and not one for the ladies room. So you get immediately what that means, right, immediately understand you're thinking, oh, yeah, no, that tells me what's happening here is like and you'll I remember talking with so Press gets real chummy chummy at CES, you know, because we all end up working in the same media rooms, so we end up talking

with each other. I talked with a lot of women impress over the last twelve years of covering C E S and I remember multiple times where they said, like, the one thing I like about this show is I never have to wait if I need to go to the bathroom. I just there's never a line like that's

the one good thing. And I'm thinking, you know, I was like ha ha ha at the time, and then as time has gone on and I've become more as the kids say, woke, I thought, hole, that was more of a warning red flag that I should have really paid attention to. That wasn't so much a you know, here's something funny about the show, but rather uh this is this literally is one of the few positive things I can say about this experience from from the perspective

of a woman. And the more I paid attention and the more I stepped outside of who I am as just a boring straight white dude. Uh, the more I began to appreciate that, but it does require that you take if you're like me, it does require that you take yourself out of that. The state of Georgia is still a state where as far as I know, where sex toys have to still be called adult novelties. Yeah, obscenity laws, Yeah, I think it was. It prevented storage from selling sex toys until a few years ago they

sold novelty items. Or I think this is really telling marital aids. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's the state I grew up in, So you know, it's it's it's taking a long personal journey of growth for me to get to the point where I can have at least an appreciation of what is happening. Not it's still not directly affecting me um in that sense, which again is a reason why I wanted to have somebody else on this

show to talk about this topic. Hey, it's Jonathan from the Future breaking into Jonathan from the past, and I'm interrupting, probably me, but possibly Annie. Either way, We're going to be right back with more of this conversation. But first,

let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Another thing that kind of gears back into this is, uh, you know, I said that the initial response was saying this obscenity thing, and obviously that needed to be walked back on right away or else that was going to be the worst optics in the world. And not like I mean, you can't you can never unsay stuff, so it's still really bad optics. But there was a subsequent letter that came from Gary Shapiro, who's the president of

c T A and UM. One of the executive vice presidents, Karen ch I believe, wrote a letter and they said in that one not that this was an obscene or profane product, but rather the reason that they rescinded the award was because the product did not meet the qualifications of the category to which it had been submitted, Because there are twenty eight, at least in nineteen there were twenty eight different categories for Innovation Awards, and Ose was

submitted in the Robotics and Drone category, which, when you first think about it, you know, if you if you're told the oversimplified story of this is a vibrator that was submitted to Robotics and Drone, your first thought is like well, yeah, that doesn't that doesn't seem to fit. But in fact, one, it's far more complicated than a vibrator. It doesn't vibrate. It has all these motions that are

meant to mimic human motions. The one of the purpose, the stated purpose of the OSE is to create a blended orgasm, and in fact that the founder of Laura de Carlos, says that she's very up front. She says, I'm working to perfect the female orgasm. That's what I'm looking to do. And this is to be a product where you don't have to use your hands. It's mimicking human motion. It's meant to mimic up partner. It's supposed to UH. It has all these complicated things like it has.

It has a high end it, it's got uh, it's got high tech materials in it, it's got robotics all through the design of this product. They have a PhD in robotics who worked on this, so they said that it obviously should qualify. And I actually went back and looked at earlier recipients of the Robotics and Drone honorees, and in one of those honorees was a lidar sensor, which in itself is not a robot. It's not a drone. It's a component. Now it's it's an important component. Light.

Our sensors allow robots to detect the range between them and other objects, and they can do it very very quickly. It's what autonomous cars use as part of their systems to detect the environment around them. So very important. But it's not a robot, it's not a drone. It's a component. And yet this other device, which you would argue this seems to fit in robotics way more than a sensor would,

is somehow disqualified. So it still doesn't seem to be a satisfactory reason for and it certainly doesn't seem to be a satisfactory reason to say, not only were we taking your reward away, we aren't allowing you to to exhibit at c S right. And I mean they went through, like you said, they had to go through this panel of judges and they all said, oh, yeah, it qualifies. And like I said earlier, it's the subject of eight pending patents for robotics, biomimicry, and engineering. That doesn't seem

like it's something that is just a simple device. And you know ce s is no shortage of the same thing a billion times over. And simple gadgets. I mean you see them everywhere, and some of them still are considered honorease because they fall into whatever the category is. I would argue, if in fact they genuinely think that this doesn't fit in robotics and drone, that perhaps what needs to happen. First of all, I disagree that that

isn't a valid answer. I reject that, But if you have to go with that, I would say there's a very real need to create a category specifically for health and sexuality that is called for that. I think because these products do exist on the show floor, like again, mostly geared with men in mind at least at some in some way, shape or form, and if they're if those are allowed, I cannot understand what the justification is

for denying this other one. Right, And this kind of gets to that bigger issue that's not This isn't a tech issue. This is a culture issue of viewing women's sexuality and sexual pleasure as being taboo. Yeah, this is huge, It is huge. I have a kind of joined universe of horror movies that almost all of them are male writers, struggling with their fear of female sexuality. Oh sure, yeah, I mean I love to talk about that one one day.

That would be I wish I could talk about that on this show, Different past, it's a different podcast, but as someone who loves horror movies and also loves the social commentary that is in there, yeah, like, and I think of ones that try to treat it in a way how I'm going off on attention, but we'll get

back to it, don't worry. But I think of ones to try and treat in a way that is more aware, like it follows, I would argue, is a little closer to being more aware because it's treating this, uh, this idea of sexuality and almost like treating like a like a paranormal um entity as almost like a sexually transmitted disease. I think that that one is probably a little better than say things like car which I think still is not the worst the worst. Uh Why am I trying

to say it's not. It's not the absolute worst version of viewing women's sexuality as being this kind of related to this kind of thing of of either being unclean or being taboo. But it's closer because you know, you've got the whole menstruation aspect of carry that's in there. Anyway, back to this other topic. So this is something that is clearly think it's clearly seen beyond tech and for

women this is not a surprise. For for men like me, you might think like, oh, yeah, I never really thought of it that way, because again, it never directly affected me. But this is this is something that is getting more and more attention as women are able to assert themselves more and more, and we're starting to see that trend change where that we're seeing less suppression of that voice I got. I would say that we're seeing more of this despite to men, as opposed to because men are

giving women space. It's more that it's because women are taking space, which is good but also sad that it has to happen. Sad in the sense that you know, guys like me aren't aren't making more room. But um yeah,

let's talk about that a bit. So the implication to me is that if if a device is ultimately intended to enhance the sexual pleasure of a man, that's fine, yes, But if it was only for a woman, which you could also says, since the message if it's to eliminate the man's role in in providing sexual pleasure to a woman. That's not cool. Yeah. That founder of DeCarlo, Laura Haddock, she said, you cannot pretend to be unbiased if you allow a sex robot in shape of an unrealistic female body,

but not a vagina focused robotic massager for blended orgasm. Yeah. I think that's yeah, And I think that's pretty clear now to be totally fair to all parties. Uh, the ct A has not really commented on this very much. In fact, I tried looking a lot to see about any follow up from this, because there was a lot of media attention in the immediate uh fall out of the the announcement that oh, by the way, we were invited,

but then they revoked our invitation and I couldn't find anything. Um, So, if there are any truly ethical or legitimate complaints on the part of c t A, they have not been shared publicly. So we are left to lean what we can from the letters that were sent to Laura de Carlo, and those are the ones that seem pretty damning with this, And UM, I'm curious, what when I asked you to do this and you started looking into it. What were

some of your reactions, Oh, not surprised. Um, it's so much of in the words of past stuff I've never told you co host host Caroline, the female orgasm is more regulated in this country than almost anything, um, and that we have a long history of that. Until like the early nineteen hundreds, doctors and men in general in Europe and the US thought women did not experience sexual

desires or pleasure. Yeah, that's recent, and that's where the whole hysteria, genital massage UM, doctors complaining of cramped hands. That's the only reason we have vibrators is because male doctors we're tired of giving genital massages. UM. And at the time masturbation was called self abuse, so you didn't really have any other option. And you can argue that a lot of these topics are still very largely taboo.

I mean, it's this is one of those things where I think, only recently I would be able to have this conversation with you and not feel like I was doing something wrong. Um. And it wasn't because of any intrinsic thing with the subject. It was rather this cultural belief that has been instilled in me. You know, I'm I'm a generation older, well not quite a generation, but

I'm older than you are any significantly older. Because we had a conversation earlier that that were I had been married for several years and you were talking about being in middle school and I was like, well, okay, but I come from a generation where it is still kind of it's a foreign thought to me to be able to have these sort of conversations frankly and uh and not feel like I'm doing something wrong. But I've been

seeing that growing trend where people are embracing sexuality. They're embracing this and there's sex positivity has become an enormously powerful movement, and it still has a long way to go, obviously, but it's miles beyond what it was when I was your age. And uh, So this has been a sort of a transformative experience that I've I've managed to to witness in my own lifetime. I also, outside of my

work here at how stuff works. I'm a medievalist. So for me, I think back to the rise of the Puritanical era, which you know, you have had Catholicism, you had the Protestantism, then you had the outgrowth of Puritanism. From Protestantism and the Puritans. The Puritanical view was essentially anything anything related to pleasure was considered a distraction from your devotion to God and that therefore was sinful. And a lot of that has gone into becoming the groundwork

for American morality and American social mores. Because again, the Puritans, a lot of them were the people who fled England from from persecution in England because everyone in England got fed up with them, so they fled to America, to the New World. And so while I wouldn't think that American culture today is particularly Puritanical, there's still a lot of holdovers in that in our culture. And I would say that this particular story really played that out on

a specific stage, the tech stage. Yeah. So um yeah, not to be t m I, but I didn't know women could masturbate until college college, so we don't talk about it, we're embarrassed to bring it up. But one third of American women own a vibrator. And again, the device that we're talking about is not a vibrator, but it does have to do with sexual pleasure for female non binary folks. So you can kind of extrapolate the

conversations we have around vibrators to this. Um. But if you look at so going back to that whole marital aid thing. Okay, so back in the eighteen and early nineteen hundreds, sex toys, which by itself, if you think about that term already says that this is kind of a frivolous, wasteful activity, that this is not in any way inherent to someone's health. Right, And you would hear from more recent authority that sexual pleasure and health are

very much they're they're all part of the same umbrella. Yeah, and not not like, oh, this is just for fun times, like this doesn't mean anything, This doesn't contribute to your well being in any meaningful way. Yeah. And I am a huge advocate for sex education, such a huge advocate, but I do think that the little sex education we do get in this country, or at least in most of the country, UM, it's focused on fearmongering. Of these are the diseases you could get, you could get pregnant.

We should be talking about when it's when sex is done well and people consent and your adults, it's pleasurable. It should be pleasurable. We never talked about I can't imagine hearing that, Yeah, that's what it's gotten to the

point where it's so taboo. I mean, it's not gone to the point it's been this way for for decades, for centuries, but it's it's at the point where if you try and imagine that scenario, like you you first, I'm sure you put yourself in your own shoes back when you were in middle school or high school, and you think, all right, well, I'm in health class and we're hitting that sex said block of content, and you imagine what your reaction would have been like had that

discussion started up. And the first thing you think is everyone being immature and giggling and not being able and blushing and not being able to like just wanting to be anywhere else than where you were. And that's because we have this cultural taboo against sexuality. It's not again, it's not inherent in the subject itself that if we were able, if we were able to change that, uh, that set of more rais and beliefs and values and our perceptions, that we could get to a point where

you could have this conversation. And I'm sure there's always going to be someone who's from a household that is more conservative or more restrictive or whatever. That still feels like this is an inappropriate or uncomfortable topic. But we could get to a point where you can have that

sort of conversation. I think it's a very important conversation in the in the wake of all the stories we hear, many of them the text fear of harassment and worse, a lot of that deals you could trace that right back to a lack of education, which leads also to a lack of empathy. And uh, you get this this

uh reinforced sense of entitlement, especially among straight dudes. You know, they everything in our society establishes the straight dude as the norm, and then everything else is a deviation from the norm, and the norm gets everything and the more deep you deviate from the norm, the less you get. So as the norm, you have an expectation for sexual pleasure, You have an expectation to get it when you want it, from who you want it. This is me making like

the most extreme case for that. But that that that's kind of the problem we have to tackle, and again one that ends up being illustrated by this case we're talking about. I know that we're arranging why and follow for tech stuff. But the important thing for me is one it relates back to the specific story and what happened to It relates back to the concept of inclusion and diversity in technology in general. We want more women

to get into those fields. Everyone benefits when you get a more diverse level of expertise and perspectives into any industry, not just technology. UM and that I know that there are a lot of women who listen to tech stuff, and I want them to know that, like, I'm totally on this particular train, like I am not. I don't want anyone to get any mistaken belief about where I stand on this um, which means that I'm going to get a billion tweets telling me that I'm preachy again.

But that's okay. I don't mind. I don't mind being preachy about this. Yeah. I think this is a good topic to get those kind of tweets about. Yeah yeah, as opposed to some of the other ones that I mean, like when I get real mad about Android versus Apple. That's that's kind of kind of minor in comparison. Jonathan from the Future again, jet packs are awesome. It's time to take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Now what do you think what do you think ct A

should do? Let's say that you you're brought on as a as an advisor, like they're a consultant. C t A brings you in there, like Annie, we're in a mess. We we did the stuff. The optics are terrible. Everyone is is saying that we're sexist and misogynist and there there's gender bias. What should we do to fix it? Well, I assume there's no time machine invented, though if it had been, I'm sure would have gotten a best of innovation.

That's true, that's true. I feel like at this point, since CS is over, they're going to have to think about what they're going to do, the steps are going to take for that is wild that we're talking about, Um, what what can they do to get not only more women to come to the conference, but more female or

non binary companies or technologies to exhibit there. And like you were saying, I think that's a great idea for health and sexuality to have its own right um, But I do think on top of that there needs to be some kind of public because, like you said, we don't really know where c t A stand UM, so make some kind of public statement saying we were wrong to do this, or either this is why we did this, this is why we thought we should this is a thing that we should have done, some kind of clarity

around it. Here are the steps we're going to take so that we can be more inclusive and we can be an environment that does welcome innovation from everyone. Yeah. I think if you don't do that, then the danger you run into is saying, oh, all this inclusion that you're talking about, this fifty fifty split of keynote speakers, it's all for show and you don't actually mean it, Like you're responding to the perception but not to the

actual problem. And doing what you're suggesting shows that, oh, no, we recognize that there are there are hurdles to overcome, and we are dedicating ourselves to actually doing that. I agree entirely. I think I think they need to say either we were in the wrong or we don't believe we were in the wrong, but we do believe we

did it the wrong way. Right, Like, here's here's what here's also leave why we made the decision we made, but the way that it was communicated and the way it uh it unfolded was wrong, and we are responsible for that. You cannot blame Laura de Carlo for their reaction because they got an award and then they got it taken away. That is listen, that's that's Charlie Brown going to kick the football and the football gets pulled away. Right,

you don't do that. It's not cool. And and beyond that, the denial to exhibit like that's still to me, that's like the thing that I can't get past the most. Like the award I think is bull hockey. What what word am I going to use? Um? I think that's nonsense. I think the I think resending the award is nonsense. Uh, but I think the denial of exhibiting at all is like I can't understand unless you go with that initial response they gave where they think it's up seen, and

that's what has to change. Yeah. So, um, I'm glad that we're able to have this conversation. I am sad that it is necessary. Yeah, I mean that's generally, I mean, come listen to stuff I've never told your listeners. So that's kind of what I can't believe we have to talk about this right now, But we do yeah, well, I can't even imagine, like I've had this. Actually, this also tells me that I should have had you on numerous times before because I've covered other topics like I've

covered topics. Google had the infamous sexual harassment issue that that you where you had women organizing so that they could do a walk out and protest because of this stuff. And and you know, for the longest time, Google was looked at as a fairly benevolent company. That has obviously changed over the last i'd say five years, but you know, for a long time their official model was do no do no evil, or do not don't be evil. I

think was specifically was don't be evil. By the way, that has not been their motto for at least five years exactly. So I will definitely reach out to you to talk about these kind of things in the future. But yeah, I agree entirely. This is something that there there's an opportunity here to address a problem and to make an improvement and to set up twenty twenty so that these these sort of products can take their rightful place.

I mean, I also read a great interview where they were talking with Laura Haddock about the possibility what if c e S were to create a show space where all the the sex toys and and marital aids could exist and maybe it's apart from everything else. And she said, well, we have those already. We have those kind of trade shows.

Those trade shows exist. What we're asking for is a seat at the consumer electronics table where we're not treating this as a taboo subject or something that needs to be behind closed doors or that that you know, oh you have to go behind the curtain at the video store to go check that out, like because that, again, it already sets the stage that this is a taboo thing, right, Um,

so I agree with that. I think I don't think I'm ever going to reach a point of maturity where I'll be able to walk through the show floor without maybe blushing quite a bit. But that's because of my own personal hang ups and the fact that I went way too long before getting uh semi woke. But that's my own personal failing, not anyone else's sure. I do want to throw in here that sex toys are estimated to be worth about thirty billion dollars. That's a lot

of money. Yeah, that's a lot of money to pretend like no one does it. It is yeah, to put it behind the curtain, yea, to sit there and and and say like like, well, I mean, come on, how how important could this industry be? Look, when you're starting to throw around billion with a B, you're talking, you're talking a serious industry. So um, thank you Annie for agreeing to be on the show and to have this conversation with me. I greatly appreciate it. I was. I was.

I remember when I first walked up to you and I wanted to approach you about the subject, and I literally I was like, I have no idea how this conversation and Annie, to your credit, you were like, totally, let's talk about it. Thank you very much for asking me. I've this has been a great conversation. I could, Um, I could talk about this a lot. And that's perhaps why I am on a podcast that does that. Yeah, and I hope that if you guys over at stuff

Mom never told you cover topics like this. I can't wait to hear them because I want I really want to hear your full perspective. UH that show obviously you you've developed your own uh structure and tone, and it's it's a very special show. A very important show. And you know you're able to balance rage and humor in a way that I greatly admire. Thank you. It's a skill. Yeah, I know, the fact that you aren't just constantly going around and punching everybody is a phenomenon to me. I'm

I'm amazed. Thank you, You're welcome. I don't get complimented on not punching people enough. I also just want to say thank you because I like my face not punched. Annie. So where can people find all of your work? In case they are not familiar. You can find me over on Stuff I've Never told you, And you can also find me on Saver, which is a podcast about food and travels a little bit lighter but not always formally

called food stuff formally called food stuff. Yes, um, and I'm assuming that most people who listen to this are pretty uh they know what to do in technologically. Well, yeah, so you can. You can find it on Google. Um, you find on the I Heart radio app. I think we're legally obligated to say that, are we need to get the time, but yeah, come on over. We have

conversations like this all the time. Fantastic Annie, Thank you so much, And guys, if you have any questions, maybe have follow up questions about this episode, Maybe you have suggestions for other topics. Maybe you heard this and you thought this was really interesting. I want to hear more on this line of topics. Then let me know. Even if it's not something that tech Stuff should tackle. I can certainly hand it over to Annie so that she can look into that, or maybe who knows. You never

know what will become the next mini series episode. That's true. Thing like, we are constantly on the lookout for possible podcast topics that may not fit in any existing show but might be a great, let's say, ten episode series. So if you have something where you're like, I really want to hear, maybe like a full series about the history of the inner section between sexuality and technology, that could be phenomenal. I am not the right person to do that because I will at some point just end

up blushing so hard I pass out. I'll come back anytime. Yeah, I'll be happy to hand the baton to you. But that might be an excellent mini series. But if there's anything else along those lines, you should send me an email. Let me know the addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com. You can check out the website that's tech Stuff Podcast dot com. You can find all the archives there, as well as other ways to get in

touch with me. Don't forget to pop over to the merchandise store that's t public dot com slash tech stuff. Every purchase he make goes to help the show, and we greatly appreciate it. And I'll talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com. Two