TechStuffThe Future of TechStuff (Is So Bright, Karah Has to Wear Shades)
Jonathan has his final episode, but more importantly introduces the new stewards of the podcast, Oz Woloshyn and Karah Preiss. These phenomenal storytellers and journalists explore their plans for the show and how you will be a part of it!
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts. And for the last time from me, y'all, how the tech are you? Yes, it is the Swan song. I'm bowing out, I'm done, I'm tagging out, and I've been teasing it for more than a month. Now it is time for us to meet the intrepid hosts who are going to take tech Stuff into the future and grow it to heights I can only dream of. Welcome back, my friends, Oz Volishin and Cara Price. Welcome to tech Stuff.
Thank you so much, Johnthan, thank you so much for having us back on, and thank you for passing the torch. It's incredibly exciting. I'm not sure we'll scale heights that you can barely dream of, but I hope we'll, you know, do almost as good a job as you've done over an incredible sixteen years.
I think that's the kindest thing you could say to me, considering how decorated the two of you are. For those who are unfamiliar with our now hosts of tech Stuff, Oz and Kara you both have have storied backgrounds in producing for television. I mean there's we talk about things like documentaries. Uh, there's a little book club that Merritt's mentioned. I mean it's pretty phenomenal, like you've achieved so much, so I don't think it's false modesty for me to say I have great expectations Dickensian great expect Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I got I got an English lit background. We can throw down if you like, but uh, yeah no, it's it is Dickensian in nature. Yes, I am a little street rat here, just pleased to see that the show that I have fostered for the better part of two decades is going to a good home. So I have a lot to thank you or for that. That's I'm really excited. I can't wait. I'm going to be a big fan of the show. It's will be a nice change of pace because currently.
Trust us, you don't like listening to yourself?
Oh do you like listening to yourself?
Kara, Absolutely, I'm I'm glad you'll enjoy the show.
Yeah, no, that's I mean, I think anyone who has done any podcasting like when you get to that stage, especially if you're doing your own editing or QA work. It's something you dread because you're just like, oh no, can I just read a transcript please? I don't need to hear me at least that's how I am. So I'm really excited to talk about your vision for tech stuff and where you're taking it in sort of the what you're working with, you know, what's the format of the show going to be like? And over the last couple of weeks, we've been talking a lot on this show about stuff in tech that's happened since we first launched, and it's just kind of funny to see how much has changed in the time that, you know, from June two thousand and eight when we started to now. So the big example I give is, did you know in June two thousand and eight when we started, iTunes had not opened an app store yet, so there were no apps other than the once preloaded up.
What was I doing on iTunes? I guess I was just listening to music on iTunes.
You could listen to podcasts, but there were no other apps, like, other than the stuff that Apple already preloaded. And but then even then, like it would take a couple of years for Apple to really change the world by introducing Apple maps and guiding everybody to drive into rivers and stuff.
Yeah, I was.
I was listening to your Thanksgiving episode and it's crazy now with like data analytics and like immediate you know, user feedback, And am I right in remembering that when you launched tech stuff, you didn't even know if anyone at all was listening to it.
That's true. Yeah, I'm sure that the producers had access. I don't even remember what the We've been through so many different publication platforms. I can't even tell you what it was back in the day. So I'm sure that they had access to analytics, but the show creators, as far as I know, were largely unaware unless it was one of those things that just would make the trades, right, so stuff, you should know. It was an incredible success nearly right out of the gate, because Chuck and Josh are fantastic. They do such a great job and have since they started, And so that we knew because like that would get up there on the top iTunes podcast charts all the time. But beyond that, yeah, you know, you record a show, publish it, and it was like shouting into the void and wondering if anyone could hear you. Yeah, so exciting stuff.
We were planned to do two episodes a week, I think. I mean, it seems like your height, you've done like four or five episodes a week, So we were starting with a level of humility about I mean, your output, Jonathan is insane.
Particular.
I know there have been times when you had a co host and like, yeah, times when you've had guests, but I just I can't believe how much stuff you've covered.
It was a lot. Yeah, yeah, I talked about this on the show, so I'm not shy about talking about it now. But up until just the beginning of twenty twenty four, I was doing really four new episodes a week and then one rerun typically right unbelievable, And each episode usually meant that I was spending around eight hours of researching and writing before I even wrote record, So you're talking about, you know, thirty two hours of research and writing for around four hours of audio than the reruns, and then I would the rest of what little time I had would deal with other stuff. But I found the secret to dealing with that workload is to have a near stroke and be hospitalized and then suddenly you have to change. So I've joked about it, but really that is what told me that I had to make a change, and so we scaled back to three those three new episodes. I didn't do very many reruns this year, unless say or this past year. Keep saying this year, because twenty twenty five doesn't seem real to me yet. But uh yeah, I think two is a great play to really create a foundation, and if you ever build on that, that's fine. But I think two is actually the sweet spot personally. It was one of those things in Tech Stuff where we were performing really well, and so there was always this desire to add to inventory.
Right, I like, by the way, and you well you did the kind of history of Tech Stuff episode kind of explaining the mechanics of how the ad business change and the host red ads and the insertions and stuff. But yes, I mean obviously like inventory is a key sort of driver of the viability of podcasts, right.
Right, Yeah, And I think transparency with your listeners is always a good thing, Like you can feel icky to talk about that sort of stuff, because you know, there's I think of a friend of mine who was an artistic director for a theater here in Atlanta, And I was once talking to him about his job, and I said, what's the toughest thing about your job? And he said, for me, the toughest thing is balancing art and commerce. Because the theater is a business, so you have to treat it as a business, but it's also in the business of fostering and delivering art to an audience. So how do you find that balance where the two can be in harmony and you can do both things well. I think podcasting is very much the same, and that you want to be able to say something that's worth hearing, right. You don't want to just be like you don't want to just be chattering nonsense into a microphone and then pushing it out. You want it to have meaning and for it to be of value. But at the same time, you know, you got to keep the lights on. And so there's a balance there, even for people who are passionate about podcasts and they want to follow it as a passion. If you're going to do it in a way that it's self sustainable, you have to start making these calls, and it's not always.
Easy, absolutely, And I think that because you're in people's ears. I think there's an expectation for honesty, which is something that you know, having listened to some episodes of yours over the years, there's a certain level of just speaking right to the listener. Yeah, and I think that's something that we really like to adopt and that you've done very well.
Yeah. So early on with podcasting, I was listening to podcasts before I was making them. So I was one of the few because I was because I was already a geek before I even started working for house Stuff Works way back in the day. So I was a big fan of There was a show called buzz Out Loud from ce.
Neet and oh my god, it still exists.
Yes, it still exists. Although the people that I listened to all moved on to do other things like tom Merritt is doing his own thing and Molly Wood she's doing her own thing. But these were people who I looked up to and I admired their work ethic and I loved the output they were creating. And so when it came time for me to be able to do a podcast, I jumped on it because I had already been a big fan of the form, and so one of those things that drove me in the early years and stuck with me through the entirety of it. And part of the reason why is there's a sense of intimacy because you're listening, you know, often with headphones on, there's a real sense of intimacy between you and whomever's delivering, whether it's a single host show or it's people, Like, if it's a conversation, it feels like you're in the room as that conversation is unfolding. And transparency and honesty to me are absolutely necessary because in that intimate moment, unless you're a really good social engineer slash liar, people will pick up on insincerity or fibbing or anything you want to call. And I've said over and over again the biggest mistake I find some podcasters making is a drastic underestimation of how smart their audience is. And I'm like, especially when you talk about ads, like, we live in a world inundated with ads. We've all experienced it, so there's no way to tiptoe around ads where people aren't going to be like, well, that.
Passes the smell test right totally.
We're going to take a quick break to thank our sponsors when we come back I'll talk more with our future Tech Stuff hosts Oz and Kara, both about my experiences int and where they planned to take the show next. Stay tuned.
Karen and I have been friends for approaching ten years. Yes, and we became I would say, much closer friends by doing a podcast together Sleepwalker Sleepwalkers. Wish we were on your show to talk about it. Yeah, this show five years ago.
Yes, it's about AI. Y'all did amazing work, Like the Sleepwalkers episodes are to this day very compelling. It's also interesting to see where the conversation is an AI now compared to when you were doing the show, because you know, those conversations y'all were having. It was in days when the mainstream public really, I mean we had all heard AI. We had all heard about it. Maybe we had even gone to see the Steven Spielberg stat slash Stanley Kubrick film, but that was about the extent of it. And you were getting into some of those conversations that now are in mainstream news and are part of like, you know, water cooler conversations because AI has become an inescapable topic just in everyday life.
Yeah, we had the tagline for the show. You may not care about AI, but AI cares about you. Now now I think probably you care about AI as well, but A.
Still cares about yea and more and more, more and more.
Yeah.
But one of my one of my favorite episodes of Sleepwalkers, actually, Jonathan, just because you mentioned, you know, the personal and your health problems, Cara, was actually the episode where we made a fake copy of your voice to try and scam your cousin.
With Liarbird Aier.
Bird AI, which now has become Runway m L which is a multi billion dollar company. But I mean, I thought that that was both fun because we used your voice to trick a family member and it kind of spoke to that thing in podcasting about voice and authenticity and all those things. But then you went on to reflect about you know, losing your father and would you want to interact with a digital version of him, which again now is something which is part of the mainstream conversation. But I was very very moved by that piece of that.
You well, and similar not to talk too much about our show in the episodes, but for those who don't know, you know, we also did an episode that focused more on sort of health and AI healthcare, and I was able to speak to a woman who was an engineer who was also diagnosed with breast cancer. And this was very early on in the conversation about you know, how to train data sets on hundreds of thousands of mammograms, for example, to then be able to recognize what does breast cancer look like in a woman's breast, you know, And these were things that at the time, I think both Oz and I felt very much at the forefront of that conversation, not because we're pioneers, but because these are fairly new conversations unless you're working outside of you know, engineering sci goals and data science programs, and so we're really excited about, I think in terms of one of the things we're really excited about in terms of taking over this or having the baton passed to us digitally.
Taking it overt hostile takeover. He held a bunch of zeros and ones to my throat and I no, no, obviously no.
But I think one of the things we're really excited about is that a lot of what we reported on for Sleepwalkers is evergreen, and the difference now is actually just how much faster processing has become and how the rate of change is even faster than it was when we were reporting, you know however many years ago, and so in a certain sense, like the stories still remain very human. I think it's like the capability of the technology that keeps changing. And I think you, as someone who has been doing this for so long, has probably seen how the rate of change affects the rate of change, right, I mean, sure, GPT is twenty twenty two. Right, Yeah, that's like essentially post main COVID. It's so ubiquitous at this point, like to think that that was three years ago that like most people did not know what chat GPT was. What a year and a half ago? Sure, or two years ago? So, I mean these are the kinds of things that I think we find very exciting as reporters, but also as you know, like you, I think two nerds who are very interested in the ways in which you know, technology intersects both personally and also culturally. It seems to be very important because I think a lot of people lay people whose most people don't know how to dissect this information and don't want to be told what to think, but they do want to be told what to think about Yeah.
Absolutely, I mean like I have been famously rather rather critical about a lot of AI implementations, not because of the issues I have with the technology, but rather the nature of those implementations in some pretty high profile cases, like when you're using AI to do things like image analysis and recognition for things like looking at mammograms to increase the accuracy of diagnoses. I think that is brilliant. I think that's wonderful. I think that's something that we strive for. And it also is a reminder that you can't paint all AI with the same brush. That AI is an enormously broad spectrum of disciplines, and that we often will reduce that down to chad GBT is stealing artists' work and passing it off as their own. But the stuff that tends to make the news tends to fall on that second category. Like occasionally you'll get like a nice optimistic story about how AI could make a positive impact, but a lot of the stories tend to be on the more critical side. So whether it's artists who are worried about their work being used to train up the next generation of the I and then put themselves out of work in the process, or it's a boss of a major tech company saying we're not going to fill those two thousand positions, We're going to let Ai do it, and I envision a future where HR is entirely Ai. Like, those are tough stories to deliver in a way that doesn't come across as somewhat dystopian in nature. So that's why I've often said that tech Stuff's guiding principles have always been critical thinking and compassion. You want to have critical thinking, to ask the questions, to make sure that you have a proper understanding of the story. You want compassion not just for the people who are being impacted by that story, but maybe the people who are making the decisions, so that you can understand where they're coming from. Because it's too easy to paint everything as this is evil fat cat capitalist and they just do evil, fat cat capitalist things because they are a two dimensional villain from a vaudevillian production, and you're like, no, people are a little more complicated that. Maybe not Elon Musk, but everyone else is more complicated than that.
Well, so we actually ask Google Gemini how to how to prepare for this? Prepared for this, and one of the pieces of advice was to be clear with the audience about what to expect going forward. So there's a lot a lot of the advice was obviously, like very was very cliche, but some of it was was relevant as well. So you asked Jonathan, what kind of what people can expect from the show going forward. We're going to do two episodes a week. We're calling the Wednesday episode the Story, and the idea is that it will be a kind of evergreen interview with somebody conversation with me and Kara. Then one or the other of us will will kind of present an interview and then we'll discuss it afterwards, but with somebody who either has an incredible story about the intersection of technology and humanity and culture, or who in some sense is kind of a builder of, you know, the future. And so you mentioned just now this how it's very hard not to be kind of, you know, sound negative about in many cases. One of the interviews we have that we've already done and which we'll be publishing in the next few weeks is with Meredith Whittaker and she as i'm sure you know, led the protest movement at Google and the walkouts having to do with Project Maven and the defense contracting and she now runs Signal, the encrypted messaging app, which is obviously really cool. And one of the things she said was, you know, I often get criticized for being negative or pessimistic, but actually I'm an optimist, and if I wasn't an optimist, I wouldn't bother calling out the bad stuff because the very factor doing that means that I believe in the better future, and I believe that there is some value in continuing to surface places where tech could do better. So I really liked because I think Carrie, you're in general more upbeat than I have, and I'm slightly more cynical, But I like that explanation of how you know to your point about critical thinking and compassion. It kind of for me it captured something about how you can, you know, do critical thinking without being negative per se, and in fact it's because you want something better.
Absolutely, Yeah, I love that that perspective. Honestly, I've also thought of optimism in the same way, about how the pat description of optimism tends to go right along with naivete, like the idea, the idea that the only way you can be an optimist is if you're looking at the world through rose colored glasses. Kara, I can't see what color your glasses are, but I'm pretty sure they're not roses.
They're sort of green. They're sort of green, which is the way I look through the world.
Excellent, Excellent, We're gonna we're getting into more of an alphabet defying gravity situation, you know. By the way, y'all, I'm sorry that you can't see the video version of this, because we did do the whole loathing dance number, as per required in contracts whenever entertainers meet in person. I I like that a lot, though. Yeah, I think that optimists have to be the kind of people who they see the future as it possibly could be and the steps that need to be taken in order to get there, and they're ready to put in the work to make it happen. Whereas you know, often you dismiss people as optimists if you mean, oh, you just expect good things to happen without having to put any work in. That's not to me when optimist is that's a lazy person. An optimist is someone who they have a vision of the future and a vision for getting there, And to me, it also is sort of the difference between the founding principles of open AI and arguably kind of the more recent direction of open AI. Not to say that open AI is necessarily going the wrong way, but certainly like the founding principle was all about responsible and accountable development and deployment of artificial intelligence in a transparent and open way, and that has not been what we've seen over the last couple of years in large part. And so I guess it can be really easy for folks to become cynical because even the people who are saying, hey, we need to do this don't seemed to be following through on their vision, at least from a surface level. But I've never had deep conversations with anyone in Opening I just know the board of directors tried to tried to change things by alting Sam Altman, and then paid for that dearly once he returned.
So actually, one of the other guests we have on in fact, the first guest we're planning for Wednesday, the fifteenth of January, is Jeffrey Hinton, who just won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work as the of the pioneers of AI, and Ilia Sutskeev graduate students and Hinton has just joined the amicus brief filed by a nonprofit who are arguing that open ai shouldn't be allowed to change from a nonprofit to a for profit status. So that should be a super interesting conversation as well. On Fridays, we're going to do something which is more topical. I think you had something called like tax stuff news right for a while.
Yeah, I would do a tech news on Fridays typically where I would grab different headlines and give I would say brief, but you know me, brief is not something I do. But the yes, yes, whether it'sis tediousness of the limbs and not reflourishes or too Yeah, no, I would be as brief as possible, but yes, I would do news on Fridays.
So we're going to do the same. We're going to news on Fridays. We're gonna Karen and I'm going to talk about some headlines and then we're going to have a brief sort of news roundup segment with this company called four or for Media. It's actually a collective. It was the team basically who did Motherboard Advice, and when Vice kind of imploded, they left to start their own thing called for a form media. So I'll be a second segment, and the third segment we're going to do something called.
Just to say when did this become a thing? Is basically my singular obsession, and it can really range, you know, it can run the gamut of you know, different tech innovation. I think most interestingly the things that we encounter in our everyday lives. You know, I think GPT. As I said to you, it's like, when did people start saying, oh, I'm going to use chat ebt to like come up with that wedding speech. Right? When did this become a thing? But also when did it become a thing that I can opt into facial recognition on Delta? You know, when did this become a thing? You know, when did it become a thing that there are you know, digital labels in my clothing because all of a sudden we're trying to invest more in a circular economy. You know, there's a number of touch points I think day to day. I don't know why I always think of airline apps, but like we just are so naturally inclined to accept that there are upgrades to things, whether it be you know, speaking of the app store. It's like there are always just natural upgrades to apps, and we don't ask the question when did this become a thing? Yeah, and so that's really the spirit of this segment. Oz and I I think both self identify as digital natives, although Oz really tries to keep broken technology around for as long as possible. But we're both digital natives, and one of the first things that we're going to explore is when did that become a thing? You know, because certainly gen x I don't think would consider themselves digital natives, even if they knew how to turn the TV on without their parents.
Yeah, as a gen xer, I can I can verify that I turned fifty this year, y'all.
So yeah, congratulations, you look good.
Thanks, thanks, Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, No, I'm fifty years old this year. So yeah, I think that's brilliant because, like I remember getting online and accessing the internet before the web was a thing, you know, I remember how did you do that? So I used tellnet mostly. I would tell them into servers and go to like chatrooms. That's how I met my wife. Honestly, no fun story.
That tracks I mean in the sense of you host text.
Absolutely, yeah, I met my wife. I met my wife on a on chat, a digital chat room, text based chat room.
No picks at that, no picks.
No, there wasn't even an easy way of sharing a pic because digital cameras were really expensive. Now this is like the mid early mid nineties, so you know, a digital camera was an unthinkable expense, like I would be a luxury that I could not even dream of. Usually if I were using a camera, it was one of those cardboard disposable things that you would find it like weddings or whatever. You would actually have to have the film developed.
Then love those.
Yeah, now those are coming back because everyone's addicted to analog again. It's another story.
Well that's a whole episode in itself, right, very much. I mean, I'm definitely like, if you ever.
Want me on it, I'll be on it y because I will talk anytime.
I would love to talk about how the changes in how we access our media have driven this desire to return to physical formats. Because I'm one of those people. I thought I was done with DVDs and Blu rays. I thought I was done with Well, I don't do cassettes or CDs anymore, but I do. I do vinyl. I thought I was done with all that and now I'm like right back into it, So I would I would love to talk about that. I love the idea of when did this become a thing? Like the im media topic that sprung to my mind is when did in game purchases start to become a thing, Because you mean.
When did parents go broke basically, or.
Or gen xers who grew up playing games and never grew out of it. But like, like, like I think about those in game purchases that have become like you know, living games are sometimes what they're refer to, right, these games that are designed to never be sunset because it's an ongoing revenue generator.
I thought that was one of the very interesting points in you in the piece you did about I know you're looking back at each year of tech stuff and in the app store obviously, like I know what the app store is, and I know that's where I get apps. But like the bit about how like Apple like basically charging thirty percent for all in app purchases, I knew as well, but I didn't really put the pieces together until your piece. And obviously the very interesting thing was it doesn't apply to the physical world, which is kind of crazy but makes sense. You know, they didn't charge they wouldn't charge like thirty percent for the delivery of pizza through one of the apps right from that, right, but.
If it were a digital pizza in a game, they would right.
Oh yeah, So there was a class action against Apple from a number like there because there were single families that had found out that kids were spending thousands and thousands of dollars on Minecraft, and all of a sudden, these parents are looking at their Apple bills and seeing, like, you know, a six year old spending ten thousand dollars on an in app purchase. So it's a very interesting story.
Yeah, any service where you have a method of payment tied to that service, you should be very very careful about how that is used by either you or your family because it can quickly lead to those situations and whether it's a child or it's someone who has just sort of that addictive personality where you know, there are games I've played and everyone is familiar with these, the games where like you can you can hit a certain level of advancement and then you're you're hit with an artificial time limitter where it's like, all right, you can't do any more of this until you wait till you know, you know, twelve more hours, or you can pay a dollar and you can play right now. And I'm one of those people who I'm like, no, I got other things can distract me. I can walk away. But there are folks who are like you know that that dopamine release where they're they want to feel that they've had a sense of accomplishment, they'll just pay right into it. And kids, in particular, if they don't have a real understanding of how money works, because I certainly didn't for.
A very long I don't.
Arguably I don't now.
I'm just like, Actually, I bounced around in my in my career doing various things as well as journalism. But for a time I was actually a a consultant and I worked on a project for Google and they were very interested in mobile games and psychology and mobile games, and so I ended up being sent on a world tour to do basically like in home research with like very heavy game players, and I got to go to Taiwan and Japan and Korea. It was just incredible. I mean, it was an incredible experience that basically hang out with like you know all kinds of different people who played mobile games, and it was it was interesting. So some people were like clearly in control and they're like, I have a budget of like X, and I spend it on games and like that's fine.
Oh my good for you.
And some people would like I played for three days and then I had to wait for twenty seven days until my next check comes in from work because I just I can't control it. So I mean it was it was pretty remarkable. I think in Japan they have this thing called gotcha, and it was the idea of like being obsessed with those.
Yeah laws, I'm quite good at them.
Next tip I go to the carnival, I'm taking care of with me.
You should take me on a little keychain. You can fit me on a keychain that you could win in a gotcha machine.
So none of us are at CES this week, sadly.
But I remember.
Sneaking a cigarette with with Cara on the floor of the.
I've quit and I don't vape speaking, this is tech stuff. I don't vape.
Okay, good, you won't be endulsing any company.
But sorry us continue I interrupted you, No.
No, I just I just I just babbling on actually, we need to.
Take a quick break to think our sponsors, but we'll be right back with Kara. And as.
The last part of this second you know, episode per Week that we've been talking about is something that's really near and dear to me as a sort of pop culture fanatic and as someone who's been you know, thinking about how to take over the mantle of tech stuff. Is like, you know, how do we tell technology stories through the lens of culture and every day and it excites me to no end. But like every day there are new culture stories where AI is just kind of thrown in the mix, you know, there's a sort of sprinkle of AI, and so, you know, I think one of the things that I'm really excited to do is to find those stories and then tell people who might not think of said story as a technology story that oh, actually behind this, technology is actually either really affecting this or somehow intersecting, for example, with the lives of the Kardashians in a way that we did not expect. And here's how you.
Did something on the Optimist robot, right, Jonathan.
Yeah, Yeah, I talked about I talked about it briefly. When I want to say it was the because that's the Tesla one, right, Yeah, yeah, I talked about it. I know, I talked about briefly a couple times in news episodes. But when there was the big Tesla press event where they had robots dancing and bartending, I talked about it wasn't that Tesla was trying to pass them off as working entirely autonomously, so I do not wish to cast aspersions upon the company. They never said they're doing that, but it was like, oh yeah, those were often being controlled, you know, just off to the side by someone with a computer or whatever. I'm like, yeah, of course they were. We're not at a point where they could where you're going to be boogying down with a robot just completely autonomously, and like it would be different if they claimed it otherwise, but they never did, so I feel okay about that one.
But we were pretty fascinated. Well, Cara was you know, one of the sort of Kim Kardashian optimist robot posts as it went live. But you know, could you ever imagine, like in two thousand and eight or notthen like that, you know, robotics would become like something which the biggest, most mainstream celebrity in the US was like excite to be associated.
With absolutely not. I remember, okay, so this goes pretech stuff. But one of my first article assignments when I started writing for How Stuff Works was how Asimo works. Asimo being a robot that Honda created, and it was the first humanoid robot that could run. And by run, it means that both feet for a split second lose contact with the ground as it propels itself forward. Now, when it ran, it looked like a little short person having to go to the bathroom because it was this little, weird little squad run. But it could run. And when you start thinking about how complicated that is from a robotics standpoint, and how do you engineer that so that the robot maintains balance, that's really a complex thing. And at the time I was thinking, I might be the only person who's really jazzed about this. And I could never imagine that someone who is famous mostly for being famous, would ever be associated with robots. I thought, Oh, well, geeky people like me, who's you know, my dad wrote Star Trek novels, so like, yeah, I am genetically engineered to be to be a geek who freaks out about robots. But I didn't think it was ever going to become a thing where, you know, one of the most well known celebrities, especially in the influencer world, is associated with them. That just never occurred to me. I did freak out when I got to meet Asimo at Disneyland. That was a high point.
Was he nice to you?
Very taciturn I'd say, but to be fair, he did just drain his battery doing a show.
So I was going to say, to your point, just even about influencers, I don't think you would have you know, kind of seen Lil Mikayla coming either, that there would be actual digital influencers who which is It's funny there are things. I'm sure you've noticed this. I'm not going to get on a tangent because I want to go back to the fact that your father wrote Star Trek novelge.
Sure.
Yeah, but there are things that come and go to that are really interesting that I think are worth mentioning, like web like you know, Web three, you know, like things that people were really excited about. I mean, VR is one of these things that is like we are constantly like climate to you know, how to what extent are people really going to adopt virtual worlds outside of gaming and bluff And you know, I think.
The metaverse really going to be the future of how we interact online.
Yeah, right, exactly. And I think it's our job both to not even critique, but to sort of point out that there's a lot of stuff thrown at the wall, much of it does not stick, and I think it's important to remind people of what doesn't stick. You know, Google X being one of the things that we covered on What was Google?
So you're talking about the Google Social plan.
I like.
You mentioned, like, yeah, you were like in twenty eleven Google Plus launch.
But plus they were early to the Plus though. So your dad wrote Star Trek novels.
My dad.
My dad also wrote and published a lot of graphic novels and novelizations of comics.
So yeah, my excess. My dad's a science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery novelist. He's written probably around eighty books at this point, maybe more. I'd have to ask him. But the Star Trek ones were young adult novels that he wrote that were in the Starfleet Academy series, where he had ones about Kirk and Spock, and he had ones about Picard, so he wrote for those. But he also wrote, I don't know if either of you know this reference, but there used to be a PBS show called Wishbone in which a little Jack Rustle tw you're.
Kidding me, Okay. He was my first crash my dad, and I think.
He was licensed from Britain as well.
Yeah, oh yeah, well Wishbe was so English. Wishman was not an American dog. He had a feather in his cap.
My dad, my dad wrote Wishbone books. If you look up What Deal Wolf, it's the adaptation of Wolf and Salty Dog, which was which was Treasure Island. Dad's favorite novel, Treasure Island. I'm really well, actually I think Dad's favorite novel might be something Wicked This Way comes by Ray Bradbury. But but it's which is a fantastic book. But yeah, it's uh, he's he wrote, He's written lots and lots.
Of stuff, very connected by those things. I was the girl in school who and maybe this sort of I don't know made me destined for this conversation right now. But I was the girl in school who you know, everybody else had the sort of oily stickers with Lisa Franks and I had the I had the Star Trek. What do you call the logo? What is that?
Oh the little emblem?
Yeah, oh yeah, that's what I was trading.
So one of the one of the other upcoming episodes we have recorded for the Wednesday the story episode is with a guy called Nathaniel Rich who wrote an incredible piece of the New York Times magazine about how NASA is simulating Martian colonies on Earth and there are these people who basically a volunteering to spend you know, three hundred and fifty plus days in the Johnston Space Center in these in these Martian colonies, and how it's kind of part of the research efforts to you know, understand exactly what it will take to colonize Mars. But picking up on the rape Bradbury reference that Nathaniel wanted to title his piece Mars is Heaven, but the New York Times came up with can humans with standard psychological torture of Mars?
Which I clicked on more descriptive.
Yeah, this is this is where we're reminded that sometimes writers get don't have the luxury of being able to pick their own headlines. But it's all because it's not because people who are really smart about what makes people click on things are the ones naming those articles as long as the article doesn't give away alex headline doesn't give away that too much, where people just scan it on Facebook and they feel like they read the thing and all they did was read the headline.
In your most Johnathannian way, or actually in in your most Start Treking way. You know, what wisdom do you have to impart on us and what would you like to see in terms of not the you know, the next to steal a Star Trek reference, the next gen of tech stuff or, as my friend likes to call gen Z, the new gen of tech stuff.
Well, in true next generation fashion, I recommend you skipped straight to mid season two because the first season and a half of Star Trek Next Generation is almost unwatchable. There are a couple of good episodes, but man or there's some clunkers in there. Now. More seriously, I think like there's no advice I can give you that you don't already have well at hand. I mean, I think you're both adept at asking questions and I think getting back to things like the web three and the metaverse stuff, and the fact that we have this huge surge in in hype around certain technologies at certain times, asking the questions of why are the people who are pushing this, why are they doing that, why are they excited about it? Is it? Is it because they have a legitimate passion for this thing and that they really believe that this is something that's going to drive the future. Or is it that they have a vested interest in this thing and they're desperately trying to get it to gain traction so that their investment pays off. Like, I feel a lot of crypto communities fall into that second category. Like we all remember the disaster that was the NFT boom and then bust.
I literally forgot about NFTs for like a year.
Yeah, I'm sorry to bring it back, but I feel like NFTs could have been a legitimate thing that had a place, but we're appropriated so quickly and then pushed by a speculative market so hard that for NFTs to recover from that and to become something beyond just being this joke right is going to take way more work than it would have if we just had been able to keep the speculator at Bay for like five more minutes. So I feel like that to me is always the thing is that it's good to be excited about tech. It's good to be passionate about it. Like I love that feeling too. I love hearing about a new gadget that's coming out that I'm just like, I can't wait to get my hands on this and see what it really does. But I think it's also good to take a step back and ask the questions of, well, why is this a thing? Why is this being done in this specific way? Why are these specific people pushing this narrative out? You know, for me, it would be like, why does Zuckerberg want the metaverse to be a thing? As opposed to having the idea that the metaverse is going to be the thing? Like putting that ahead of everything else makes no sense to me, Like you're it's the whole putting the cart before the horse thing, Like you've already presupposed that it's destined to be a thing.
We saw what happened with Google glass.
Yeah, I literally did, because I had a pair.
You got gifted them by Google.
It was a company purchase from How Stuff Works, a company I no longer work.
For and Jonathan you mentioned coming on you know, we would love you know whenever, whenever you want to have you come back on the show, and also to get your notes on, you know, on our early early episodes. We also started a Gmail Today tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com because we love for listeners to write in as well and let us know you know, what we're doing well, but more importantly, what we can do better, how we can continue to honor the spirit of tech Stuff and the reason you know, you guys have been listening to this show for for many years, so you know, do do write us and let us know, because you know, we want this to be continue to be a place where you come once a week, twice a week, as much as five times a week in Jonathan Jonathan's in Jonathan's Craziest Days.
Nice nice back catalog for you to dive into if you want to. Now, I love that so Os and care are doing something that I wish I could have done more of. And I've often talked about how since twenty fourteen, Tech Stuff's been a solo host show and I've been the only person researching, writing, recording the shows. I have a wonderful producer named Tari. Tari does phenomenal work, but everything on the pre production side is on me, and as such, that workload was to a point where I withdrew from social It was too much. It was too much for me. I couldn't be both the creator and runner of the show and also be actively marketing it. It was too heavy a lift, and as a result, I feel my biggest regret is that I didn't do more to foster a community around the show. There is a community around the show. I just was kind of apart from it, and I love that you and your team are taking a concerted effort to foster a community because they're out there. They found ways to get in touch with me, and I'm not easy to get in touch with.
On to be fat, didn't one of the inventors of the world why wide Web write in and tell you that you'd explained it wrong.
Yeah, Vinton Surf. Vint and Surf did that. He was not shy about it either.
Uh, you've had some listener engagement, yeah, I mean part of me both. It's both like a huge compliment in handles.
Like exactly the biggest troll ever.
Well, like like you you feel embarrassed at the same time, you're like freaking inventor of like one of the architects of the Internet listened to my show, which is again getting back to that idea of like, oh wow, people are actually listening. A lot of people do, and uh, I love that you're you're reaching out to them and welcoming them to talk to you, because it's clear like the people who found ways to get in touch with me, and again I'm not easy to get in touch with, they were all giving me very sweet messages, very encouraging thanking me for my time on the show, which I deeply, deeply appreciate. And it just shows to me that your era of tech stuff is going to be phenomenal because you're going to have elements in place that I simply felt unable to do, and you're going to be able to have a collaborative relationship with your audience. And while I feel like my era of tech stuff was more almost more like a lecture in the sense that I was bringing stuff that I found interesting and then synthesizing the information and communicating it to the audience, but it was very one way. It was very rare that I would get feedback because I just didn't make it easy for people to talk to me. And now that I am no longer the host, I can complete my plan and move out into the woods. I found a really nice ditch, just a little bit of a fixer upper.
Can you get Wi Fi and a ditch?
Now you cannot? And that's why I'm happy, No but no more. Seriously, I'm so enthusiastic about where the show is going. Your work speaks for itself, both of you. I mean, you've done incredible work in the past. Like for my listeners who are unfamiliar, look it up. There is a library a phenomenal work in are now hosts of tech stuff in their background. You will not be disappointed. You will find things that are heartbreaking and fascinating and joyful, like the entire spectrum of human experience is represented in the work you guys have made, and for that to be the backbone of tech Stuff moving forward, I couldn't be more excited and I couldn't be more optimistic to bring it back to that perspective about the future of the show and that you'll be having this conversation, ongoing conversation with the audience is phenomenal. This is why I feel confident saying tech stuff's going to reach heights that it couldn't have because I ran up against my physical limitations as a host, Like as much as I possibly could do, I was doing and I could not do more and the show needed more. And you guys are able to do that. So I'm really excited about that.
Well, thank you Johnson. It means the world coming from you. And and yeah, I mean, we're we're, we're. It's having having two of us is great. I think we really encourage each other and so we do annoy each other, but we were why Actually, one of our listeners on Sleepwalkers compared in a very flattering comparison. He said, Sleepwalkers is like a Shelock Combs mystery theater in terms of kind of looking at these technology things and taking a kind of really inquisitive approach. And I told Cara about this, and you immediately said, Sharlock Combs is not a colp.
And I said, well, he was a consultant for Scotland Yard Detective. And I think that the point being is that, like we are not experts, you know, specifically not experts. And I think Oz is probably more of the Sherlock and I'm definitely more of the Watson, which is not to say that I'm going to narrate Oz's lived experience, although maybe who knows, gould be fun. I have an American accent, but no, I think for us, it's about what we have to hope that what we think is interesting will sort of act as a filter to the audience. And in that way we are I mean not to be sort of self aggrandizing it. In that way, we are sort of detectives because we have these big questions that we want answers to and assume that because we want answers to them, that other people are going to want answers to them. And in that way you can also be you know, both optimistic and suspicious.
You know, I think I think I think that's right. I mean, I think we come to this, you know, somewhat as outsiders in the same way that you did originally, Jonathan, Right, And I think a lot of tech journalism we talked about like clickbait headlines, like there is a reward system that comes with hyping tech, and there is a reward system that comes with doomsday headlines. Right, The reward system around like which I think white podcast needs the perfect medium around like consistently asking you know, interesting questions or trying to ask interesting questions and answering them with the most relevant people in a balanced way. Like it doesn't lend itself to like social media based journalism. I think it does lend itself to audio based journalism.
So you know, we say slow food, slow news, but.
We but we also you know, we don't. We don't take the responsibility lightly. Also, Jonathan, we don't take your generosity and grace lightly. One of my favorite media stories, Karen, Jonathan, do you know this one about jay Leno hiding in the closet? So I think when this, I mean that may be not true, So you know, potentially, please Park spare me exactly. But I'm pretty sure that when when they were looking at bringing on Conan, jay Leno actually hid in a closet of a conference room to h to hear the deliberations and try.
And to overhear the conversation.
Exactly and try and make sure that the trans I can't remember exactly what it was. He was not a gracious, graciously passing the baton in the way that in the way that you are, Johnson, So thank you.
Well, and I mean again, like, if it weren't for the fact that you both have proven yourself time and time again with an incredible work. I mean like, I'm talking to award winning journalists here, I'm I'm award adjacent. So so I am fine with generously passing the baton because I feel that it's in very good hands. And and karas you were saying, you know, the approach of talking about things you find interesting in the hopes that the audience find it interesting. That's always been my approach as well, and I think it works because the worst thing that can happen is you talk about something because you feel that you're compelled to talk about it because wagging the yeah again. Listeners are smart. They will know immediately if you're not actually engaged with the material or interested, or even have any inter questions to ask about it. They'll know immediately. Even if you're able to mask it, they'll suss it out. So being able to say, this is something I'm really excited about and you can tell I'm excited about it, and now I'm going to take what I've learned, like I said, synthesize it presented to you have a conversation with someone else who might have a completely different point of view than I do, and then we'll see where the conversation goes. To me, that's like the heart of what tech Stuff started. As you know, from twenty and eight to twenty fourteen, it was a two host show, and I feel like this in some ways is getting back to the roots, but with much more qualified journalists taking the part behind.
I would say, just with very different stories. Although I mean you were really at the forefront of a lot of this stuff. I mean, now it's you know, falling off the trees sing.
I mean, that's exactually right. I mean tech stuff when you started was like a kind of somewhat niche topic area, and now it's like the architecture, the infrastructure which we all are plugged into. And I know you've done this thing where you've kind of talked about each year in tech since you've been doing the show and kind of some of the highlights. But I guess on a more like personal level, like what's the journey been, what is some of the highlights been, and how have you seen technology go from like a product to a system kind of firsthand?
Yeah, I mean it's part of a larger social conversation too, right, because from the same perspective, you could say, like the things that were once associated with being a geek or a nerd, like back in the eighties, where that would be a pejorative our mainstream, right, Like if you like superheroes when I was a kid, then you were that geek who liked superheroes. If you like superheroes, now you're someone who just goes to the cinema, right, because nine movies out of ten are superhero movies.
Yeah.
So I think it was a change that was gradual enough where it's hard to like put a finger on exactly when the tipping point was. But I would argue Steve jobs decline in health and then his passing was probably a real indicator because here was somebody who in the seventies would have been considered a geeky co founder of a personal computer company, back when we didn't even know that personal computers could be a viable business. Like that might have just, you know, imploded on itself if it hadn't been for a lot of people doing very creative things and a hobbyist community that kept it alive until it can find its feet. Then you get down to like two thousand and nine where you start having mainstream media following Steve jobs because he's having these sabbaticals from work and he's being very secretive about his health. And then twenty eleven, of course, when he passed away, and it was huge news, and it was reinforcing the idea that Apple had managed to make things that could have just been stuff for executives and geeks into an item that everybody wanted, like starting with the iPod, actually arguably starting with the iMac, but then the iPod definitely becoming that mainstream consumer product once you get past the Mac only days of the first two generations to the iPhone, which really opened up the doors to the point where even the iPad, something that people like me I talk about all the time. I dismissed the iPad because no one had made a tablet computer that anyone wanted, Like there were tablet computers, but nobody outside of specific jobs like in nursing or whatever, we're using them. I give Apple a hard time. I'm not an Apple person, but at the same time, I can't think of any other company that was as responsible for making tech into this sexy, mainstream consumer idea than Apple. I mean, arguably, social networks kind of did that for the web because they made initially they made it easy for you to connect with your friends or if you were a Facebook, to rate the attractiveness of your student colleagues. Let's never forget that, y'all. Let's never forget that Facebook started off as a way for dude bros. To say how hot they found their female colleagues at school.
And then swayed the outcome of an election. Very interesting. Yeah, the double edged sword.
I think just keeping in mind where people came from is always a good idea. Not to say that people can't change, but just you know, sometimes you know that you get at the heart of who someone is. But yeah, I think those would be the big things I would point at as the stuff that stands out to me was that Apple kind of forging this new appreciation of technology, which is phenomenal. If you look at Apple in the mid nineties, that company was in danger of going out of business. Yeah, so for it to go from that to becoming the definer, the style maker, if you will, of tech, Yeah, phenomenal story. And then flip side the growth, the consolidation, the failure in several cases of social networks. Those would be the two big things that just leap to my mind. If I were to sit down and think about it for forty five minutes, I'd probab they come back to you with like an eight page long list of stuff you know, I love. Like we mentioned VR, Kara, you mentioned VR earlier, and I laughed because you talked about the embrace or the the whether a VR is falling short, whether it's actually getting traction, because I remember those conversations again in the early nineties the first time. Oh yeah, tried to make it, you know, so good time.
And I mean that's the thing. Some of these things are cyclical, you know, and that they don't work, and then it comes back around when the technology gets better around they see if people will adopt them again.
They might get rebranded, they might get you know, a new new code of pain on. But it's the same idea, like Apple Vision. Apple Vision, I still haven't tried one. I mean in there, I hate the eyes on the outside.
It is very weird. It's very wally. Yeah, yeah, it's very strange.
It makes me think of the first time I wore the Google glass out to friends of mine. Everyone was suddenly visibly uncomfortable around me because I was wearing a headset that everyone knew. It had a camera, and it had a microphone and had a screen, and so that immediately made people uncomfortable. And I thought, how interesting, because everyone in this place has a device in their pocket, has all of these elements all the time. But because I'm wearing mine on my face, that's what's making them uncomfortable. Interesting.
Well, it's because Apple designed it. That's fine.
If they designed the thing in the they designed the thing on my face, they'd be like, oh, well this is cool. But all this is really doing is just drag it to your face. Come on.
I think Apple got a gotta find recently because of Siri listening to private conversations. I think it was like ninety five million bucks, which which is like the equivalent of the two million dollar fine Jet Blue got for being consistently late. It's like, guys, this is like.
The Air or the Jordan fine where Michael Jordan was fined every time he wore his sneakers and he covered it.
Oh yeah, he covered it.
Yeah yeah, I know. If you'd just shaken a couch over an Apple, it would cover that, but yeah, and then it ends up going back into that concern people had with smart speakers, right, anything that has a smart speaker in it, like or in my phone. For example, I have an Android phone, and if a song is playing and the phone recognizes it, it'll tell you, you know, what the song title and who's singing it, just like if you were using an app like Shazam. But it does it automatically, which immediately raises the question of wait, that means that the phone's listening even when I'm not actively using it. What else is it doing when it's listening, and those questions like you can be told again and again, oh well, nothing's being sent. You know, it's all native to the phone. It's not actually consulting the cloud or whatever. But you're still thinking, well, yeah, but it could, right because obviously it's doing something like that now even if it's native on the phone, so it could do the things you're saying it's not doing. You're just telling me that you pinky swear it's not doing those things. And whenever those stories pop up, I think, man, you're making my job so much harder. I don't want to be the person immediately jumping to conspiracies, but if all the technology facilitates it, it's hard.
To avoid unless we forget you to give stuff they don't want you to know, or his name.
Right, Yeah, I did, I did? That was that was a fun story too. Yeah. Stuff you Should Know was already out and we were working on a new podcast that was gonna cover fringe theories, conspiracy theories, that kind of thing, and they were workshopping ideas for the name, and I said, why don't you just call it stuff they don't want you to know? Because we already have Stuff you should Know? And everyone's like, oh, that's brilliant. And to this day Ben Bolin, who's one of the hosts, whenever this comes up, he's like, yeah, if we had thought about it for a second, we would say, shut up, Jonathan, that name's too long. We'll never put on any you know, the acronym doesn't make any sense. It has to be an initials. Yeah. So so with great power comes something, something is what we learn.
That's right, all right, y'all?
This conversation ran long. Who would have thunk a conversation with me would go long? And that means we need to take another quick break to think our sponsors, but we'll be right back to conclude our conversation about tech Stuff, and you want to stick around for the end, folks. This has been an epic episode, which is fitting for my last one. But what I want to walk away with in this episode is again, tech Stuff continues. You know, it started with me and Chris Poullette in two thousand and eight. Chris left around twenty thirteen early, you know, twenty twelve at the end of twenty twelve, and Lauren came on until twenty fourteen. You know, we each had our own impact in forging what the show is. To me, this is going to be the exciting future of the show, arguably one of the most transformative. But at the same time, from talking to you, it sounds to me like it's really getting at the heart of what the show was all about from the very beginning, and I could not ask for better Stewards, So thank you for coming onto the show to talk about it, and I cannot wait to listen to Friday's episode.
Thank you. Jonathan be going from fans and listeners to hosts, and you said it was your last episode, I would say it was your last episode as host.
I would like to have you as a guest. As a guest, boy, you're not gonna like it because uh, my writer is super long, so many demands for low sodium snacks you want and believe now.
No, but thank you seriously, and and and thank you to anyone on everyone listening to for giving us a chance as a new host, and please do right into tech Stuff Podcast at gmail dot com with any with any feedback, because I think the most important thing for me and Kara is to honor your time and we're grateful, we're great.
Fans forgiving the ways in which technology intersects with your life. I mean not I don't want any feedback personally.
What I want to know is we are one and the same.
No, I want, I want to know you know the ways. I mean. I think ring camera technology is one of my favorite Just the way that that has unleashed itself onto the world is some of just the great comedy and great darkness that we have in our world. And I use that as an example because I think that people listening to this show who already hopefully think in this way, or maybe don't yet and will in the future. You know, have plenty of day to day interactions that you know should be shared, and you know things that they're thinking in terms of how their life intersects with technology on a daily basis that I think sometimes we just won't think of.
Yeah, I think anytime anyone out there has an interaction with technology or something related to tech and you're left with a question like why is it like this?
Right?
How did it get this way? Right? To textuff podcast at gmail dot com and ask your question, because that will launch an investigation and conversation that will be so entertaining and informative. It will not only answer your question, but it will get you excited about other elements of tech and critical thinking. Like I said, it's not just for technology, that's for every part of your life. The more often you start to engage that skill, the better you will get at it. It will always be something you have to engage. Can't just count on it because like I certainly have fallen victim to more than a few japes, let us say, because of a failure to apply my own critical thinking. But yeah, I absolutely loved all of that. And again, you think of a question, send it their way because it's going to be a wild a wild ride and a fascinating look into technology and how it impacts culture. I also love that you look at it that way. Specifically, I've always said technology does not exist in a vacuum. The one criticism I would receive that I never really paid much mind to was, hey, you're bringing too much you know, politics or culture into this conversation. Like, well, yeah, because tech doesn't exist on its own. Tech exists because we built it, and we built it to do something for us, So we have to take that relationship into consider it or else what are we doing? Like I guess I could tell you how a circuit board works on a very technical level, but you can go take a class in that. That's not an interesting story. So that to me is again the heart of what I tried to do. So I'm always happy to be a guest. I will I promise I'll be as gracious as possible and hopefully less verbose.
Never Thank you, Jonathan, Thank you so much.
Yeah, that's what editors are for. Well, y'all, thank you so much. It has been my honor to host this show for sixteen and a half years. The day this episode goes out January eighth, like I started June eighth, two thousand and eight January eighth, twenty twenty five. What a heck of a run. It has been fantastic. You'll hear my voice again, I'm sure. And usually I would say at the end of an episode, I look forward to talking to you again really soon, but I guess today I'm just going to say, sure, has been nice talking to you. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
