Ever wonder where the internet stops and IRL begins? Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor. From internet trends to AI slop to the politics of memes, Close All Tabs covers it all.
How will AI change our jobs and lives? Is the government watching what I post? Is there life beyond TikTok? Host Morgan Sung pulls from experts, the audience, and history to add context to the trends and depth to the memes. And she’ll wrestle with as many browser tabs as it takes to explain the cultural moment we’re all collectively living.
Episodes
The Pink Pill Pipeline and the Online War Against Birth Control
The Pink Pill Pipeline and the Online War Against Birth Control
Support for Close All Tabs comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund.
Close All Tabs Team
Morgan Sung
Host
Morgan Sung is a tech journalist whose work covers the range of absurdity and brilliance that is the internet. Her beat has evolved into an exploration of social platforms and how they shape real-world culture. She has written for TechCrunch, NBC News, Mashable, BuzzFeed News and more. Morgan Sung is represented by SAG-AFTRA.
Maya Cueva
Producer
Maya is the Producer for Close All Tabs, as well as an award winning director from Berkeley. She specializes in documentary, radio, and audio production. She was a Netflix Nonfiction Director and Producer fellow was also listed on DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 Filmmakers, co-presented by HBO Documentary Films. Maya’s work has been featured on The New Yorker, NPR’s All Things Considered, Latino USA, The Atlantic, Teen Vogue, and National Geographic. She received a student Emmy for her short film, The Provider, and her feature film, On the Divide, premiered in the documentary competition at Tribeca Film Festival in 2021 and was broadcast on POV on PBS in Spring 2022. Maya Cueva is represented by SAG-AFTRA.
Chris Egusa
Senior Editor
Chris Egusa is the Senior Editor for Close All Tabs, as well as composer and sound designer. His reporting on disability and healthcare inequities has earned accolades from the Public Media Journalists Association, the Society of Professional Journalists NorCal, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Webby Awards, and more. Chris’ background includes audio documentary production, filmmaking, and nonprofit strategy. He holds degrees from SJSU and Northwestern University’s Medill School. Chris is more online than he cares to admit, appreciates a good clicky mechanical keyboard, and definitely owns too many pairs of hi-fi headphones.
Chris Hambrick
Editor
Chris is an editor for KQED Podcasts and loves holding the big picture vision for shows. Previously they were a producer for Spooked Podcast from Snap Judgment Studios, host for The Tracklist on KGPC, as well as White Rabbit Story Hour podcast. They have contributed to KALW, KQED’s Bay Curious, and facilitated for national oral history project, StoryCorps. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can catch her telling stories on the Mortified, SFLitCrawl or Moth stages.
Jen Chien
Director of Podcasts
Jen Chien is Director of Podcasts at KQED and co-founder of the Editors Collective and Edit Mode. Previously, she was Executive Editor for LWC Studios, Senior Radio Editor at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and Managing Editor for Crosscurrents and KALW News. Awards recognitions include Third Coast, Peabody, Gracies, ONA/OJA, and SPJ Sigma Delta Chi. She holds a BA in American Studies from Smith College, and an MA in Interdisciplinary Performance from New College of California.
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It starts with aspirational lifestyle content about “embracing your femininity,” but ends with alt-right ideology and conspiracy theories about reproductive care. This is the pink pill pipeline — one of the primary ways young women are radicalized online today. Seemingly innocuous content about dating advice, wellness tips, and pop culture leads to increasingly conservative and extremist talking points about how birth control is causing the fertility crisis or how women don’t need to vote. It’s all wrapped up in a glossy veneer of feminine empowerment. Reporter Kylie Cheung joins to discuss how seemingly apolitical content online is shifting the cultural narrative around reproductive rights through coordinated misinformation campaigns, and how to spot pink pill content for what it is.\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-megaphone wp-block-embed-megaphone\">\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\nhttps://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC5702825517\n\u003c/div>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest: \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://substack.com/@kylietcheung?utm_source=about-page\">Kylie Cheung\u003c/a>, staff reporter at \u003cem>Abortion, Every Day\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://jessica.substack.com/p/how-celebrity-smear-campaigns-are\">How Celebrity Smear Campaigns are Inspiring Attacks on Birth Control\u003c/a> — Kylie Cheung, \u003cem>Abortion, Every Day\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/far-right-birth-control-conspiracy-theories/\">Far right coming for women’s autonomy; birth control on chopping block\u003c/a> — Cassie Miller, \u003cem>Southern Poverty Law Center\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://jessica.substack.com/p/princess-treatment-trend-conservative-pipeline\">We Need to Talk About the Pink-Pill Pipeline\u003c/a> — Jessica Valenti, \u003cem>Abortion, Every Day\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://emilyinyourphone.substack.com/p/i-caught-a-secret-right-wing-influence\">I Caught a Secret Right-Wing Influence Operation Running In My Feed\u003c/a> — Emily Amick, \u003cem>Emily In Your Phone\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://revealnews.org/podcast/the-long-campaign-to-turn-birth-control-into-the-new-abortion/\">The Long Campaign to Turn Birth Control Into the New Abortion\u003c/a> — Katharine Mieszkowski, \u003cem>Reveal\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/09/inside-anti-abortion-groups-campaign-to-sell-women-on-unreliable-birth-control-alternatives/\">Inside Anti-Abortion Groups’ Campaign to Sell Women on Unreliable Birth Control “Alternatives”\u003c/a> — Kiera Butler, \u003cem>Mother Jones\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/04/25/birth-control-maha-abortion-trump-00889738\">Trump Is Going After Birth Control. Here’s Why. \u003c/a>— Mary Ziegler, \u003cem>Politico\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://theintercept.com/2026/07/10/rfk-jr-pronatalism-birth-control/\">The Trump Administration Is Overhauling Birth Control Access for the Pronatalist Movement\u003c/a> — Jessica Washington, \u003cem>The Intercept\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> Hello. Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. And tell your friends! Post about it on Instagram, Blue Sky, X, Discord, Reddit, the comments of whatever random recipe blog you’re starting arguments in. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Okay, let’s get to the show. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you’re a young woman online, you may have seen posts from Evie Magazine. It has a chic millennial pink logo and taglines like “helping women harness their feminine energy.” Its website features glossy, aspirational photo shoots of women modeling gauzy dresses on the Mediterranean coast, women doing yoga in coordinated pastel workout sets, and women riding horseback through arid Southwestern grasslands. They’re paired with articles like, “What the It Girls Are Wearing in Italy This Summer,” and “Is Your Bra Making You Sick?” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>You probably would not suspect that there’s anything like, quote unquote “political” about this publication at all. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>This is Kylie Cheung, the staff reporter for the newsletter, Abortion, Every Day. She’s been covering reproductive health care and women’s rights for years, working at Jezebel and Salon. At first glance, Evie Magazine’s content doesn’t appear that different from the coverage of the publications where Kylie used to work. But push past the surface, and something else emerges. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>You might see their presence on, say, Instagram if you like see a post about celebrity news, then you might follow them or you might go back to their website, and then slowly but surely start to see more content that’s really pushing motherhood, young motherhood, like anti-birth control messages. They describe themselves as like a magazine for celebrating true womanhood and femininity, and as we know all of that has increasingly become kind of this right-wing dog whistle. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>If you dig a little deeper into Evie’s website, you’ll find articles on why Love Island actually makes a case against casual sex, how Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie is quote, “The Most Pro-American Show in Years,” and coverage of celebrities who’ve denounced birth control. In fact, Evie publishes at least one anti-birth control article per month, filled with of birth control causing strokes, depression, hormonal chaos, and… bisexuality?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>That is such a good one. I remember in like 2022, I was reporting on this influx of TikToks about conspiracy theories that like, my birth control made me gay or this or that. And it’s just like, maybe you were, maybe you’re just gay, which is like, totally cool and everything. And then if something is seen as like unsafe or dangerous that contributes to… a consensus that there should be more restrictions or it should be harder to access, and that is ultimately a right-wing political goal. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Evie Magazine has been hailed as the “conservative Cosmo.” In addition to the digital and print content, Evie also hosts live events and sells raw milkmaid dresses — a play on the far-right raw milk craze and the cottagecore trend that dominated the early 2020s fashion cycle. Oh, and there’s Evie’s FemTech debut — a period-tracking app funded by Peter Thiel that promises to help women wean off of birth control in favor of “natural cycle tracking.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>If you just say we need to like ban birth control, that isn’t really on its face going to be a popular message, but colluding with kind of this whole “MAHA” and like alternative health scene of pushing for this idea that any amount of like quote unquote “chemicals” and putting this or that in your body, that that is kind of what you might see at a website. Like Evie, that claims to be like an apolitical female lifestyle brand that, you know, isn’t going to overtly say, “We think birth control should be banned,” but is going to kind of push these messages, really questioning and kind of contributing to like, lessening the popularity of birth control. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Welcome to the pink pill pipeline. This is the way young women are radicalized online — through seemingly innocuous content about dating advice, wellness tips, and pop culture — which steers them toward influencers who assure them that giving up their career is an empowering choice… and that caring about politics is for the boys, anyway. And soon enough, extremist talking points about how birth control is causing the fertility crisis, or how women don’t need to vote, don’t feel extreme at all. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And that content, of course, is wrapped in a glossy veneer of feminine empowerment. Today, we’re exploring how seemingly apolitical content online is actually shifting the cultural narrative around reproductive rights — through coordinated misinformation campaigns and aspirational lifestyle posts. And let me tell you, it’s a lot easier to get sucked in than you might think. Ready? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You know how this goes. Let’s open our first tab. What is the pink pill pipeline? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think like, end of 2024, when we were seeing all of these conversations come up about how the quote unquote “Manosphere” helped Trump win the election by like, connecting with young men and how he’d gone on all of these like Manosphere-y podcasts. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of President Trump on Logan Paul’s podcast from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>Biden is just so bad. He’s the worst president in the history of our country. You should make a diss track on him. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of President Trump on Theo Von’s podcast from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>Is cocaine a stronger, uh, up? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cocaine will turn you into a damn owl, homie, you know what I’m saying? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of President Trump on Adin Ross’s stream from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>Well, today is going to be the most important stream I’ve ever done. Right in the living room of Mar-a-Lago. And we’ll have a little fun today. Let’s do it. My son Barron says hello, but he’s a big fan of yours. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Many of them, they’ll have interviewed or endorsed Trump, but they won’t call themselves political. It’s because they draw in and radicalize so many young men precisely by presenting as apolitical, where first, young men might be drawn to their content that’s dating advice, or stuff about MMA fighting, or any number of things that aren’t inherently political, but then just because of how algorithms work, or as you continue to watch their videos or content — eventually they just start saying pretty misogynistic or racist things. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>This is an alt-right ideology known as the red pill: the belief that men are disadvantaged in modern society — and that it’s feminism’s fault. Taking the red pill is a nod to this scene in The Matrix — when Neo learns that his entire life is a simulation. Morpheus offers him a choice. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of The Matrix from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Incels and self-described “men’s rights activists” have used the metaphor of the red pill to describe “waking up” to their victimhood and resisting “progressive” notions like… women having any agency at all. The manosphere calls for a return to the patriarchal glory of the past. Today, red-pilling is used to describe the way people are radicalized into far-right ideology. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Manosphere content can be wildly misogynistic — but the way young men fall into these online circles is through lifestyle content that appears apolitical: weightlifting, dating advice, style tips. The pink pill pipeline is the other side of this coin. The phrase was coined by journalist Lois Shearing. Her 2025 book, “Pink-pilled,” examines how women are lured into far-right ideology. Just like with red-pilling, pink-pilling also starts with seemingly apolitical lifestyle content. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Many of these creators or influencers will not overtly identify as Republican agents. They will, in fact, probably reel in young women through content or short-form videos where they talk about celebrity gossip, or maybe they’ll talk about health advice, and eventually get to disparaging and pushing misinformation about birth control. If you’re a young woman and you hate your job, they might give you advice about how to start dating like, a rich man and how you can achieve something akin to like a tradwife lifestyle. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>We talked about tradwives in our episode on Mormon momfluencers. They’re women who’ve rejected a modern career path and rely on their husbands to be the breadwinners. Tradwives are supposed to manage the household, do all the chores, take care of the kids, and lead their family’s return to traditional gender roles. Hence, tradwife. Tradwife content was pretty trendy for a while. Videos of baking bread from scratch, homeschooling children, and performing motherhood. But, as it turns out, being a stay-at-home mom, taking care of an entire family on a single income, is not glamorous — it’s hard. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>As more horror stories have emerged about the economic precarity of this reality, the tradwife lifestyle has started to lose its appeal. In fact, the most prominent pink pill figures have shifted their messaging away from promoting the tradwife lifestyle — because they know it’s unpopular. Like Emma Waters. She’s a researcher for the Heritage Foundation, the far-right think tank behind Project 2025. Emma Waters has been promoting a middle ground between tradwives and girlboss feminists. But still promoting motherhood above all. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Emma Waters for Fox News from TikTok]: \u003c/strong>How can we structure what career success and the career trajectory of mothers looks like first, and then build in our career and education to complement that? So maybe women won’t work full-time. About 60% of women say that they would actually prefer to be a homemaker. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>But that kind of rhetoric is still divisive. It’s certainly not the soft on-ramp to conservative ideology that lifestyle content is. Celebrity news, for one, is a much more palatable entry point. Take Candace Owens, the far-right political commentator, podcaster, and conspiracy theorist. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>There’s a reason why Candace Owens has her own news platform that’s dedicated to celebrity news when she is like, a politics person. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Candace Owens from TikTok] \u003c/strong>Personally, I’m starting to wonder if Cynthia is about to steal Ariana from Ethan Slater, which would be some great justice. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Where you can reel someone in with your cultural takes and eventually build like, this cultural consensus to like a right-wing agenda. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The pink pill pipeline often starts with dating advice. It’s very aspirational. Other young women showing off their luxurious lifestyles paid for by their boyfriends or husbands. You’ll hear buzzwords like “soft life” and “feminine energy” and “princess treatment.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Earth Angel Ariana]: \u003c/strong>I used to be a tomboy and play basketball, tackle football, and now I just feel like a princess wifey. I just feel like life is so soft and feminine, like men do everything for me. My boyfriend gives me princess treatment all the time. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Laila Hakim]:\u003c/strong> Your man should wanna not only take care of you, but those around you, too. And he’s gonna do without hesitation. That man gets up so fucking fast, like, you won’t even be able to blink before he’s up. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Andele Lara]:\u003c/strong> Girl, I’m in Chicago with my man, and I didn’t book a flight, hotel, or schedule anything. Because a real provider is always going to make time for you. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>If you’re a young woman, who’s been grinding in your career and still struggling to make ends meet — much less afford any of these luxuries — and on top of that, dating sucks… then this kind of content is alluring. It’s very easy to get sucked in. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think that the success of these different buzzwords and seemingly apolitical trends is that, you know, they spring from these very specific and very real frustrations. A lot of us were just like, set up to be screwed over by the economy as it exists. And I think that in traditional American politics, you hear all the time about frustrated working class men. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But then, I think there is a lot of frustration among the demographic of young women who are also just very exploited as workers and really getting the short end of the stick economically. So that tends to then be catered to in a different way of this content that’s geared toward like, “You could have an amazing life if you just quit your terrible job. Um, your job mistreats and exploits you and all of this is exploitation. And it would actually be empowering if you just quit and married someone and had kids and took care of your kids.” And like, there is a real appeal there. If you hate your job, or if you’re struggling and you’re frustrated in that way. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The word “empowering” is used a lot in pink pill content. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>A lot of these female lifestyle influencers who might not present as anti-feminist, they really will like, couch their specific choices in this performatively feminist language. You could even just see this with something slightly unrelated, but also very related of like vaccine skepticism. It’s like so couched in like, my body, my choice language. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>On its face, aspirational dating content doesn’t seem to be anti-feminist or regressive, especially when compared to the overt tradwife videos. But it also opens the door for a quieter, more insidious erosion of women’s agency and relationships. There is this Mormon influencer, Courtney Palmer, who went mega-viral last year for her videos on how to get the “princess treatment.” She talks about how her husband always opens the door for her, and how she rarely ties her own shoes because her husband will do it for her. And how do you secure the so-called provider? Well, Courtney has some advice: \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Courtney Palmer from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>I’m at a restaurant with my husband, I do not talk to the hostess, I do not open any doors, and I do not order my own food. You’re just letting your husband lead and be masculine. He made the reservation, let him do the logistics, you’re just being a princess. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>This messaging is particularly effective on young women, because it’s coming from their peers. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>They’re not like, Ted Cruz. They’re not like, you know, these Republican politicians. They’re, like, female lifestyle influencers, they’re young women. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Courtney Palmer from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>If the waiter addresses you first, I will simply just look at my husband and my husband will order. You don’t need to over speak, over exert yourself. You can be feminine and soft and quiet. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So to recap, here’s how the pink pill pipeline works: you’re a woman in your 20s — you might stumble across a post on Instagram about why Zendaya wants to be a mother. Celebrity news and pop culture is eye-catching. You follow the account. Then, you go on TikTok and see a video from a woman whose life seems so much easier and so much more luxurious than yours. Her fiance pays for everything. She doesn’t have to lift a finger. Who wouldn’t want that? You’re trying to be more active, so you go on YouTube and look up instructional videos for pilates at home. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Then, your social media algorithms start feeding you more content — based on what you’ve already engaged with. More about the soft life. More tips for finding a provider boyfriend. YouTube shorts about the values of young motherhood. Instagram reels about holistic health, and clean living, and detoxifying your diet — which will make you hotter and increase your chances of finding a provider boyfriend. TikToks about why your birth control might be making you sick. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>There are people who aren’t kind of traditionally associated with going after reproductive rights or going after women’s rights. It looks a lot more organic if they’re just seemingly naturally talking about the connections between like, birth control causing infertility, which is not true and is not backed up by anything. And that’s supposedly meaning, giving way to like, the quote unquote, like, “IVF industry” of like, of now that so many women lost their fertility from using birth control, they now need IVF. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Wait, what? Once you’re sucked into the pink pill pipeline, this conspiracy is everywhere. We’re going to get into that in a new tab — after this break. But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going. You can support us by becoming a member at donate dot kqed dot org slash podcast. Okay. After the break, the link between the pink pill, misinformation, and the war on birth control. Stick around. Let’s open a new tab: does birth control make you infertile? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Ugh, I mean no, there’s just like, no… evidence of this whatsoever. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>On the internet, there’s this pervasive conspiracy theory that long-term hormonal birth control use leads to infertility, which is somehow funding the modern IVF industry. Like Kylie said, there is zero clinical evidence of this. This is a pretty extreme conspiracy theory, but anti-birth control content is on the rise. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A 2025 study, published in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, analyzed 100 of the top TikTok videos related to contraception, between August and September 2023. The videos had a collective 4.85 billion views — they were brimming with misinformation about hormonal birth control. Over half of the videos explicitly rejected hormonal birth control, and over a third of the videos recommended natural cycle tracking, without disclosing the limits of it. Only 10% of the videos were created by medical professionals. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This stuff is everywhere online. Here’s what the conversation around birth control looks like right now — and this is on mainstream social media. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Casiah West]: \u003c/strong>Your gynecologist isn’t really telling you how bad birth control is. What’s ironic is, the leading cause of death in women is heart disease. Is it that women are dying from heart disease because of birth control? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user The Workout Witch]:\u003c/strong> Birth control is one of the most damaging things you can put in your body, specifically for your body’s biological stress response. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Whatever Pod from TikTok]:\u003c/strong> If you actually look at the birth control usage rates and divorce rates, they actually perfectly coincide with like a three-year delay. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Jay Shetty]:\u003c/strong> So we’re changing the hormone balance in women in a way that may not be completely reversible. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Pretty Politics 101]:\u003c/strong> Girls that I know who had like the implant in their arm or who have been on the pill for over 10 years cannot get pregnant. Almost like that was the entire point and plan in the first place. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>These sensational claims flatten a reality that is complex and nuanced. It’s true that people have wildly different experiences with birth control. Many women have been dismissed, mistreated, and discriminated against by the medical system. Medical misogyny is real, and the history of birth control is steeped in it. The pill was tested on Puerto Rican women, and doctors did dismiss reports of side effects as “psychosomatic.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Today, a lot of women are still not offered adequate pain management for IUD insertions. There’s no “one-size-fits-all” birth control option, so figuring out what actually works for your body can take a bit of trial and error, which can be especially discouraging when your doctors aren’t listening. I, myself, have had mixed experiences with birth control. Kylie has too. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think that you’d be hard-pressed to talk to any woman or any person who uses or has used at different points hormonal birth control, and hear that they had an absolutely flawless, perfect, pain-free experience. Their bodies might not react that well to like, hormonal-birth control pills or any number of different methods. And I think that that is all incredibly valid and can’t be, you know, pushed under the rug. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I think there are just a lot of… difficult realities with our healthcare system, how our medical system treats the experiences and bodies of women or people who use birth control. I think that what you’ll kind of see on social media are kind of these narratives that really tend to flatten that, or just capitalize on the fact that we have these negative experiences to push these different messages about the safety, or effectiveness of birth control, even though… you know, medically speaking, birth control is very safe and very effective. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It’s just that we, as different people with different bodies will have different experiences with it. But I think that, you know, that there’s no room for that kind of nuance in like the kinds of social media posts, and what ends up happening is that like, a lot of storytelling can be taken out of context and then fed into like this right-wing political agenda. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The existing negative experiences that many people have had with reproductive health care means that the cultural discourse is primed to be co-opted by far-right political movements. Like pink-pill dating advice, there are certain buzzwords that raise red flags for Kylie — especially words like “natural” and “cycle tracking.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Cycle tracking is a perfectly valid form of contraception. Lots of people can’t take hormonal birth control for health reasons and have successfully relied on cycle tracking. But when influencers disparage other forms of contraception and insist on the “natural element” without disclosing that it’s one of the least effective forms of birth control? Red flags. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>What we have is this very, very regressive agenda, but really packaged in kind of this feminist way. And like, if you really, if you like, squint or if you aren’t that educated in these issues yourself, like, sure, it might even sound like it makes sense. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>It’s only in the last few years that anti-birth control sentiments have gained so much momentum. We need to talk about when this uptick started. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I really started noticing and reporting on it specifically around like, 2022, which coincidentally, you know, was the year that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>With Roe v. Wade overturned, many far-right religious groups and anti-abortion organizations have a new mission: to make birth control the new abortion. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Dasha Burns for NBC News from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>In the months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Maggie Olivia went to the pharmacy to pick up her birth control prescription. The pharmacists denied her prescription because they were unsure if it was legal, which it was. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Let’s open one more tab: the war on birth control. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Make America Healthy Again — this is the Trump administration’s health initiative, spearheaded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. Health Secretary and notorious anti-vaxxer. The “MAHA” movement is fueled by skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry. Practices and medications under scrutiny include: childhood vaccine schedules, Tylenol during pregnancy, antidepressants, ADHD drugs. And now, hormonal birth control. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Amna Nawaz for PBS News Hour]: \u003c/strong>Earlier this year, the Trump administration scrubbed CDC guidance on birth control from government websites and froze $65 million in funding to family planning clinics that provide free or low-cost contraception. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The Department of Health and Human Services just overhauled Title X (ten). This is a federal grant program originally designed to help low-income Americans access birth control and other reproductive health care. Kylie said this program has always had bipartisan support, going all the way back to when Nixon signed it into law, over 50 years ago. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But now, according to a funding notice published at the beginning of July, grants funded through the program will, quote, “build body literacy, address infertility, plan and space pregnancies, and navigate reproductive health conditions such as endometriosis.” Contraception is not mentioned, except in a section about “over-medicalization.” Clinics that receive Title X (ten) funding are instructed to promote fertility awareness-based methods — like, natural cycle tracking. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Some really concerning things have been like, the State Department equating certain forms of birth control and labeling them as abortifacient — and we’ve seen that a couple of times coming directly from this administration, and the goal then being to ban certain birth control or birth control more broadly, in the same way that abortion is banned. We’ve also seen the defunding of Planned Parenthood where like, what the language of that is is to suggest that reproductive healthcare and like, the provision of contraceptives and such isn’t actually health care — is kind of like the language. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Conservatives were not always this critical of birth control. In fact, many were pro-birth control. Back in 2015, Republicans actually introduced a bill to make it even more accessible — by incentivizing drug companies to sell over-the-counter birth control.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think that there just has been this very sharp right-wing cultural pivot where a lot of this deeply pro-natalist language of human civilization and white Western society is in serious trouble if we don’t have a lot more babies really quick, like a lot of the Elon Musk rhetoric. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Pro-natalism is an ideology that pushes for higher birth rates to combat the supposed “decline of civilization.” Anything that causes people to have more babies is on the table. Can you explain the link between this pro-natalist fear-mongering around falling birth rates and then white supremacist conspiracy theories? What is the great replacement theory that everyone’s freaking out about? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think that there is just this inherent link between, you know, panics about the birth rate and racial panics, even though obviously, you know sometimes it’ll be couched in this race-neutral language of just like the human race and declining birth rates there, or the fact that like abortion bans or denying people birth control access will affect people of all races and people of all races might then be forced to like move forward with a pregnancy they don’t want or whatnot. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>It’s impossible to separate this panic from its racist roots. It started with fears of declining birth rates among white women. Kylie said the decline isn’t statistically significant. Experts say it’s likely due to declining teen pregnancy rates. But some extremists on the right claim that birth control is used to suppress white birth rates, in an attempt to replace white Americans as the racial majority. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>There is just this deep tie between pronatalism and white nationalism in that way, just specifically because of how much white nationalism has like embraced pronatalism for its agenda. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>In 2022, just months after Roe v. Wade was overturned, UC Berkeley, Mother Jones, and Reveal teamed up for a massive reporting project. They uncovered a years-long social media campaign from anti-abortion groups — to capitalize on wellness trends, promote cycle tracking, and sow distrust in hormonal birth control. Conservative influencers have continued to push birth control skepticism online— often citing outdated or inconclusive research studies to back up their claims. Birth control misinformation continues to thrive on social media. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Pretty Politics 101]: \u003c/strong>Does anybody else find it just a teensy bit coincidental that they pushed birth control on Millennial and Gen Z teenagers so heavily and so early? And now, look at how booming IVF is? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That video has nearly identical wording to countless others. This year, political analyst Emily Amick published a three-part Substack series on the influencer campaign against birth control. She found dozens of Instagram posts from various lifestyle influencers that all had the same caption. They all said, and I quote, “I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the birth control pill was given out like candy to every female millennial at age 15. And now IVF is a $50 billion industry.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Abortion is very politically popular, and so I think even now it’s very interesting that you’ll see the Trump administration has refrained from taking certain moves to directly go after abortion, but has taken all of these many different moves to go after birth control and family planning. And I’ve read certain legal experts suspect as well, is that birth control in some ways is more vulnerable — because it’s increasingly less popular because of how much misinformation there is about it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Over the last four years, there have been anecdotal reports of young women who’ve discontinued hormonal birth control because of what they see online. This is backed up by a 2024 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation. 49% of women between 18 and 25 have been served content about birth control on social media. 14% said they made a change to their birth control method or considered a change because of something they heard online. Kylie said, it’ll be decades until we understand the long-term effects of the online campaign against birth control. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It’s easy to dismiss lifestyle content as frivolous and inconsequential. You might see a TikTok from a woman who brags about how her boyfriend pays all of their bills, and think… “It’s not that deep.” You might come across an influencer who questions the safety of IUDs and promotes natural cycle tracking — and it’s tempting to think… “That’s just her choice!” But the pink pill pipeline is real. Content targeted at women is rapidly becoming a vehicle for extremist ideology. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Since Trump’s re-election, concerns about the manosphere have dominated the political conversation. For all of the hand-wringing about bro-y podcasts radicalizing young men, there’s very little discussion about the young women buying into their own oppression. Content aimed at girls is just not taken seriously. That’s part of what makes the pink pill pipeline so effective. It’s the lack of awareness. There’s a political undercurrent to all of these girlish lifestyle videos, but it’s very easy to miss if you’re not already looking for it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But now, you know what to look for. Before you like a video, or follow an influencer, it’s worth taking a moment to really consider the agenda behind this content. Are they sharing a personal experience with one specific type of birth control? Or are they insisting that all birth control is bad — and that only the method they recommend is natural and healthy? Sure, the romantic date night content is cute, but… is the person posting it also telling you that you need to make yourself quiet and submissive if you want to find a man who’ll pick up the check? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The point is, you don’t have to engage with this content. But, if it comes across your feed, you should be ready to see it for what it is — and then you can keep scrolling. That’s it for our deep dive — but as usual, stick around after the credits for bonus content. And if you’re dying to go further down this rabbit hole, we’ll link to some further reading in our show notes. Until next week, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional production help from our intern, Lauren Yoon. The Close All Tabs team also includes editor Chris Hambrick and audio engineer, Brendan Willard. Additional music by APM. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This episode includes clips and archive tape from Impaulsive, This Past Weekend with Theo Von, Adin Ross, The Matrix, Fox News, NBC News, PBS Newshour, and TikTok creators @earthangelariana, @ulovelailahakim, @theandelelara, Courtney Palmer, @casiahwest, @theworkoutwitch, @whateverpod, @jayshetty, and @prettypolitics101. Thanks for listening. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Yeah! Oh my God, now that I’m remembering it, I mean like in 2022, there was just like a viral moment of like a lot of different people theorizing that like, birth control makes you gay. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I saw your “birth control makes people a lesbian rumor” piece and I was like, “That’s crazy,” because every lesbian I know says the complete opposite, that they went off the pill and they were like, “I don’t even like men.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>So fair, yeah. \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>It starts with aspirational lifestyle content about “embracing your femininity,” but ends with alt-right ideology and conspiracy theories about reproductive care. This is the pink pill pipeline — one of the primary ways young women are radicalized online today. Seemingly innocuous content about dating advice, wellness tips, and pop culture leads to increasingly conservative and extremist talking points about how birth control is causing the fertility crisis or how women don’t need to vote. It’s all wrapped up in a glossy veneer of feminine empowerment. Reporter Kylie Cheung joins to discuss how seemingly apolitical content online is shifting the cultural narrative around reproductive rights through coordinated misinformation campaigns, and how to spot pink pill content for what it is.\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>It starts with aspirational lifestyle content about “embracing your femininity,” but ends with alt-right ideology and conspiracy theories about reproductive care. This is the pink pill pipeline — one of the primary ways young women are radicalized online today. Seemingly innocuous content about dating advice, wellness tips, and pop culture leads to increasingly conservative and extremist talking points about how birth control is causing the fertility crisis or how women don’t need to vote. It’s all wrapped up in a glossy veneer of feminine empowerment. Reporter Kylie Cheung joins to discuss how seemingly apolitical content online is shifting the cultural narrative around reproductive rights through coordinated misinformation campaigns, and how to spot pink pill content for what it is.\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://substack.com/@kylietcheung?utm_source=about-page\">Kylie Cheung\u003c/a>, staff reporter at \u003cem>Abortion, Every Day\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://substack.com/@kylietcheung?utm_source=about-page\">Kylie Cheung\u003c/a>, staff reporter at \u003cem>Abortion, Every Day\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"How Celebrity Smear Campaigns are Inspiring Attacks on Birth Control — Kylie Cheung, Abortion, Every Day",
"Far right coming for women’s autonomy; birth control on chopping block — Cassie Miller, Southern Poverty Law Center",
"We Need to Talk About the Pink-Pill Pipeline — Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day",
"I Caught a Secret Right-Wing Influence Operation Running In My Feed — Emily Amick, Emily In Your Phone",
"The Long Campaign to Turn Birth Control Into the New Abortion — Katharine Mieszkowski, Reveal",
"Inside Anti-Abortion Groups’ Campaign to Sell Women on Unreliable Birth Control “Alternatives” — Kiera Butler, Mother Jones",
"Trump Is Going After Birth Control. Here’s Why. — Mary Ziegler, Politico",
"The Trump Administration Is Overhauling Birth Control Access for the Pronatalist Movement — Jessica Washington, The Intercept"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://jessica.substack.com/p/how-celebrity-smear-campaigns-are\">How Celebrity Smear Campaigns are Inspiring Attacks on Birth Control\u003c/a> — Kylie Cheung, \u003cem>Abortion, Every Day\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://jessica.substack.com/p/how-celebrity-smear-campaigns-are\">How Celebrity Smear Campaigns are Inspiring Attacks on Birth Control\u003c/a> — Kylie Cheung, \u003cem>Abortion, Every Day\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/far-right-birth-control-conspiracy-theories/\">Far right coming for women’s autonomy; birth control on chopping block\u003c/a> — Cassie Miller, \u003cem>Southern Poverty Law Center\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/far-right-birth-control-conspiracy-theories/\">Far right coming for women’s autonomy; birth control on chopping block\u003c/a> — Cassie Miller, \u003cem>Southern Poverty Law Center\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://jessica.substack.com/p/princess-treatment-trend-conservative-pipeline\">We Need to Talk About the Pink-Pill Pipeline\u003c/a> — Jessica Valenti, \u003cem>Abortion, Every Day\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://jessica.substack.com/p/princess-treatment-trend-conservative-pipeline\">We Need to Talk About the Pink-Pill Pipeline\u003c/a> — Jessica Valenti, \u003cem>Abortion, Every Day\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://emilyinyourphone.substack.com/p/i-caught-a-secret-right-wing-influence\">I Caught a Secret Right-Wing Influence Operation Running In My Feed\u003c/a> — Emily Amick, \u003cem>Emily In Your Phone\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://revealnews.org/podcast/the-long-campaign-to-turn-birth-control-into-the-new-abortion/\">The Long Campaign to Turn Birth Control Into the New Abortion\u003c/a> — Katharine Mieszkowski, \u003cem>Reveal\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/09/inside-anti-abortion-groups-campaign-to-sell-women-on-unreliable-birth-control-alternatives/\">Inside Anti-Abortion Groups’ Campaign to Sell Women on Unreliable Birth Control “Alternatives”\u003c/a> — Kiera Butler, \u003cem>Mother Jones\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/04/25/birth-control-maha-abortion-trump-00889738\">Trump Is Going After Birth Control. Here’s Why. \u003c/a>— Mary Ziegler, \u003cem>Politico\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/04/25/birth-control-maha-abortion-trump-00889738\">Trump Is Going After Birth Control. Here’s Why. \u003c/a>— Mary Ziegler, \u003cem>Politico\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://theintercept.com/2026/07/10/rfk-jr-pronatalism-birth-control/\">The Trump Administration Is Overhauling Birth Control Access for the Pronatalist Movement\u003c/a> — Jessica Washington, \u003cem>The Intercept\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> Hello. Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. And tell your friends! Post about it on Instagram, Blue Sky, X, Discord, Reddit, the comments of whatever random recipe blog you’re starting arguments in. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Okay, let’s get to the show. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> Hello. Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. And tell your friends! Post about it on Instagram, Blue Sky, X, Discord, Reddit, the comments of whatever random recipe blog you’re starting arguments in. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Okay, let’s get to the show. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If you’re a young woman online, you may have seen posts from Evie Magazine. It has a chic millennial pink logo and taglines like “helping women harness their feminine energy.” Its website features glossy, aspirational photo shoots of women modeling gauzy dresses on the Mediterranean coast, women doing yoga in coordinated pastel workout sets, and women riding horseback through arid Southwestern grasslands. They’re paired with articles like, “What the It Girls Are Wearing in Italy This Summer,” and “Is Your Bra Making You Sick?” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>If you’re a young woman online, you may have seen posts from Evie Magazine. It has a chic millennial pink logo and taglines like “helping women harness their feminine energy.” Its website features glossy, aspirational photo shoots of women modeling gauzy dresses on the Mediterranean coast, women doing yoga in coordinated pastel workout sets, and women riding horseback through arid Southwestern grasslands. They’re paired with articles like, “What the It Girls Are Wearing in Italy This Summer,” and “Is Your Bra Making You Sick?” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>You probably would not suspect that there’s anything like, quote unquote “political” about this publication at all. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>You probably would not suspect that there’s anything like, quote unquote “political” about this publication at all. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>This is Kylie Cheung, the staff reporter for the newsletter, Abortion, Every Day. She’s been covering reproductive health care and women’s rights for years, working at Jezebel and Salon. At first glance, Evie Magazine’s content doesn’t appear that different from the coverage of the publications where Kylie used to work. But push past the surface, and something else emerges. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>This is Kylie Cheung, the staff reporter for the newsletter, Abortion, Every Day. She’s been covering reproductive health care and women’s rights for years, working at Jezebel and Salon. At first glance, Evie Magazine’s content doesn’t appear that different from the coverage of the publications where Kylie used to work. But push past the surface, and something else emerges. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>You might see their presence on, say, Instagram if you like see a post about celebrity news, then you might follow them or you might go back to their website, and then slowly but surely start to see more content that’s really pushing motherhood, young motherhood, like anti-birth control messages. They describe themselves as like a magazine for celebrating true womanhood and femininity, and as we know all of that has increasingly become kind of this right-wing dog whistle. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>You might see their presence on, say, Instagram if you like see a post about celebrity news, then you might follow them or you might go back to their website, and then slowly but surely start to see more content that’s really pushing motherhood, young motherhood, like anti-birth control messages. They describe themselves as like a magazine for celebrating true womanhood and femininity, and as we know all of that has increasingly become kind of this right-wing dog whistle. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>If you dig a little deeper into Evie’s website, you’ll find articles on why Love Island actually makes a case against casual sex, how Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie is quote, “The Most Pro-American Show in Years,” and coverage of celebrities who’ve denounced birth control. In fact, Evie publishes at least one anti-birth control article per month, filled with of birth control causing strokes, depression, hormonal chaos, and… bisexuality?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>If you dig a little deeper into Evie’s website, you’ll find articles on why Love Island actually makes a case against casual sex, how Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie is quote, “The Most Pro-American Show in Years,” and coverage of celebrities who’ve denounced birth control. In fact, Evie publishes at least one anti-birth control article per month, filled with of birth control causing strokes, depression, hormonal chaos, and… bisexuality?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>That is such a good one. I remember in like 2022, I was reporting on this influx of TikToks about conspiracy theories that like, my birth control made me gay or this or that. And it’s just like, maybe you were, maybe you’re just gay, which is like, totally cool and everything. And then if something is seen as like unsafe or dangerous that contributes to… a consensus that there should be more restrictions or it should be harder to access, and that is ultimately a right-wing political goal. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>That is such a good one. I remember in like 2022, I was reporting on this influx of TikToks about conspiracy theories that like, my birth control made me gay or this or that. And it’s just like, maybe you were, maybe you’re just gay, which is like, totally cool and everything. And then if something is seen as like unsafe or dangerous that contributes to… a consensus that there should be more restrictions or it should be harder to access, and that is ultimately a right-wing political goal. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Evie Magazine has been hailed as the “conservative Cosmo.” In addition to the digital and print content, Evie also hosts live events and sells raw milkmaid dresses — a play on the far-right raw milk craze and the cottagecore trend that dominated the early 2020s fashion cycle. Oh, and there’s Evie’s FemTech debut — a period-tracking app funded by Peter Thiel that promises to help women wean off of birth control in favor of “natural cycle tracking.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Evie Magazine has been hailed as the “conservative Cosmo.” In addition to the digital and print content, Evie also hosts live events and sells raw milkmaid dresses — a play on the far-right raw milk craze and the cottagecore trend that dominated the early 2020s fashion cycle. Oh, and there’s Evie’s FemTech debut — a period-tracking app funded by Peter Thiel that promises to help women wean off of birth control in favor of “natural cycle tracking.” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>If you just say we need to like ban birth control, that isn’t really on its face going to be a popular message, but colluding with kind of this whole “MAHA” and like alternative health scene of pushing for this idea that any amount of like quote unquote “chemicals” and putting this or that in your body, that that is kind of what you might see at a website. Like Evie, that claims to be like an apolitical female lifestyle brand that, you know, isn’t going to overtly say, “We think birth control should be banned,” but is going to kind of push these messages, really questioning and kind of contributing to like, lessening the popularity of birth control. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>If you just say we need to like ban birth control, that isn’t really on its face going to be a popular message, but colluding with kind of this whole “MAHA” and like alternative health scene of pushing for this idea that any amount of like quote unquote “chemicals” and putting this or that in your body, that that is kind of what you might see at a website. Like Evie, that claims to be like an apolitical female lifestyle brand that, you know, isn’t going to overtly say, “We think birth control should be banned,” but is going to kind of push these messages, really questioning and kind of contributing to like, lessening the popularity of birth control. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Welcome to the pink pill pipeline. This is the way young women are radicalized online — through seemingly innocuous content about dating advice, wellness tips, and pop culture — which steers them toward influencers who assure them that giving up their career is an empowering choice… and that caring about politics is for the boys, anyway. And soon enough, extremist talking points about how birth control is causing the fertility crisis, or how women don’t need to vote, don’t feel extreme at all. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Welcome to the pink pill pipeline. This is the way young women are radicalized online — through seemingly innocuous content about dating advice, wellness tips, and pop culture — which steers them toward influencers who assure them that giving up their career is an empowering choice… and that caring about politics is for the boys, anyway. And soon enough, extremist talking points about how birth control is causing the fertility crisis, or how women don’t need to vote, don’t feel extreme at all. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And that content, of course, is wrapped in a glossy veneer of feminine empowerment. Today, we’re exploring how seemingly apolitical content online is actually shifting the cultural narrative around reproductive rights — through coordinated misinformation campaigns and aspirational lifestyle posts. And let me tell you, it’s a lot easier to get sucked in than you might think. Ready? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And that content, of course, is wrapped in a glossy veneer of feminine empowerment. Today, we’re exploring how seemingly apolitical content online is actually shifting the cultural narrative around reproductive rights — through coordinated misinformation campaigns and aspirational lifestyle posts. And let me tell you, it’s a lot easier to get sucked in than you might think. Ready? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>You know how this goes. Let’s open our first tab. What is the pink pill pipeline? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>You know how this goes. Let’s open our first tab. What is the pink pill pipeline? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think like, end of 2024, when we were seeing all of these conversations come up about how the quote unquote “Manosphere” helped Trump win the election by like, connecting with young men and how he’d gone on all of these like Manosphere-y podcasts. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think like, end of 2024, when we were seeing all of these conversations come up about how the quote unquote “Manosphere” helped Trump win the election by like, connecting with young men and how he’d gone on all of these like Manosphere-y podcasts. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of President Trump on Logan Paul’s podcast from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>Biden is just so bad. He’s the worst president in the history of our country. You should make a diss track on him. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of President Trump on Logan Paul’s podcast from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>Biden is just so bad. He’s the worst president in the history of our country. You should make a diss track on him. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of President Trump on Theo Von’s podcast from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>Is cocaine a stronger, uh, up? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cocaine will turn you into a damn owl, homie, you know what I’m saying? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of President Trump on Theo Von’s podcast from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>Is cocaine a stronger, uh, up? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cocaine will turn you into a damn owl, homie, you know what I’m saying? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of President Trump on Adin Ross’s stream from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>Well, today is going to be the most important stream I’ve ever done. Right in the living room of Mar-a-Lago. And we’ll have a little fun today. Let’s do it. My son Barron says hello, but he’s a big fan of yours. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of President Trump on Adin Ross’s stream from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>Well, today is going to be the most important stream I’ve ever done. Right in the living room of Mar-a-Lago. And we’ll have a little fun today. Let’s do it. My son Barron says hello, but he’s a big fan of yours. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Many of them, they’ll have interviewed or endorsed Trump, but they won’t call themselves political. It’s because they draw in and radicalize so many young men precisely by presenting as apolitical, where first, young men might be drawn to their content that’s dating advice, or stuff about MMA fighting, or any number of things that aren’t inherently political, but then just because of how algorithms work, or as you continue to watch their videos or content — eventually they just start saying pretty misogynistic or racist things. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Many of them, they’ll have interviewed or endorsed Trump, but they won’t call themselves political. It’s because they draw in and radicalize so many young men precisely by presenting as apolitical, where first, young men might be drawn to their content that’s dating advice, or stuff about MMA fighting, or any number of things that aren’t inherently political, but then just because of how algorithms work, or as you continue to watch their videos or content — eventually they just start saying pretty misogynistic or racist things. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>This is an alt-right ideology known as the red pill: the belief that men are disadvantaged in modern society — and that it’s feminism’s fault. Taking the red pill is a nod to this scene in The Matrix — when Neo learns that his entire life is a simulation. Morpheus offers him a choice. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>This is an alt-right ideology known as the red pill: the belief that men are disadvantaged in modern society — and that it’s feminism’s fault. Taking the red pill is a nod to this scene in The Matrix — when Neo learns that his entire life is a simulation. Morpheus offers him a choice. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of The Matrix from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of The Matrix from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Incels and self-described “men’s rights activists” have used the metaphor of the red pill to describe “waking up” to their victimhood and resisting “progressive” notions like… women having any agency at all. The manosphere calls for a return to the patriarchal glory of the past. Today, red-pilling is used to describe the way people are radicalized into far-right ideology. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Incels and self-described “men’s rights activists” have used the metaphor of the red pill to describe “waking up” to their victimhood and resisting “progressive” notions like… women having any agency at all. The manosphere calls for a return to the patriarchal glory of the past. Today, red-pilling is used to describe the way people are radicalized into far-right ideology. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Manosphere content can be wildly misogynistic — but the way young men fall into these online circles is through lifestyle content that appears apolitical: weightlifting, dating advice, style tips. The pink pill pipeline is the other side of this coin. The phrase was coined by journalist Lois Shearing. Her 2025 book, “Pink-pilled,” examines how women are lured into far-right ideology. Just like with red-pilling, pink-pilling also starts with seemingly apolitical lifestyle content. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Manosphere content can be wildly misogynistic — but the way young men fall into these online circles is through lifestyle content that appears apolitical: weightlifting, dating advice, style tips. The pink pill pipeline is the other side of this coin. The phrase was coined by journalist Lois Shearing. Her 2025 book, “Pink-pilled,” examines how women are lured into far-right ideology. Just like with red-pilling, pink-pilling also starts with seemingly apolitical lifestyle content. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Many of these creators or influencers will not overtly identify as Republican agents. They will, in fact, probably reel in young women through content or short-form videos where they talk about celebrity gossip, or maybe they’ll talk about health advice, and eventually get to disparaging and pushing misinformation about birth control. If you’re a young woman and you hate your job, they might give you advice about how to start dating like, a rich man and how you can achieve something akin to like a tradwife lifestyle. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Many of these creators or influencers will not overtly identify as Republican agents. They will, in fact, probably reel in young women through content or short-form videos where they talk about celebrity gossip, or maybe they’ll talk about health advice, and eventually get to disparaging and pushing misinformation about birth control. If you’re a young woman and you hate your job, they might give you advice about how to start dating like, a rich man and how you can achieve something akin to like a tradwife lifestyle. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>We talked about tradwives in our episode on Mormon momfluencers. They’re women who’ve rejected a modern career path and rely on their husbands to be the breadwinners. Tradwives are supposed to manage the household, do all the chores, take care of the kids, and lead their family’s return to traditional gender roles. Hence, tradwife. Tradwife content was pretty trendy for a while. Videos of baking bread from scratch, homeschooling children, and performing motherhood. But, as it turns out, being a stay-at-home mom, taking care of an entire family on a single income, is not glamorous — it’s hard. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>We talked about tradwives in our episode on Mormon momfluencers. They’re women who’ve rejected a modern career path and rely on their husbands to be the breadwinners. Tradwives are supposed to manage the household, do all the chores, take care of the kids, and lead their family’s return to traditional gender roles. Hence, tradwife. Tradwife content was pretty trendy for a while. Videos of baking bread from scratch, homeschooling children, and performing motherhood. But, as it turns out, being a stay-at-home mom, taking care of an entire family on a single income, is not glamorous — it’s hard. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>As more horror stories have emerged about the economic precarity of this reality, the tradwife lifestyle has started to lose its appeal. In fact, the most prominent pink pill figures have shifted their messaging away from promoting the tradwife lifestyle — because they know it’s unpopular. Like Emma Waters. She’s a researcher for the Heritage Foundation, the far-right think tank behind Project 2025. Emma Waters has been promoting a middle ground between tradwives and girlboss feminists. But still promoting motherhood above all. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>As more horror stories have emerged about the economic precarity of this reality, the tradwife lifestyle has started to lose its appeal. In fact, the most prominent pink pill figures have shifted their messaging away from promoting the tradwife lifestyle — because they know it’s unpopular. Like Emma Waters. She’s a researcher for the Heritage Foundation, the far-right think tank behind Project 2025. Emma Waters has been promoting a middle ground between tradwives and girlboss feminists. But still promoting motherhood above all. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Emma Waters for Fox News from TikTok]: \u003c/strong>How can we structure what career success and the career trajectory of mothers looks like first, and then build in our career and education to complement that? So maybe women won’t work full-time. About 60% of women say that they would actually prefer to be a homemaker. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Emma Waters for Fox News from TikTok]: \u003c/strong>How can we structure what career success and the career trajectory of mothers looks like first, and then build in our career and education to complement that? So maybe women won’t work full-time. About 60% of women say that they would actually prefer to be a homemaker. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>But that kind of rhetoric is still divisive. It’s certainly not the soft on-ramp to conservative ideology that lifestyle content is. Celebrity news, for one, is a much more palatable entry point. Take Candace Owens, the far-right political commentator, podcaster, and conspiracy theorist. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>But that kind of rhetoric is still divisive. It’s certainly not the soft on-ramp to conservative ideology that lifestyle content is. Celebrity news, for one, is a much more palatable entry point. Take Candace Owens, the far-right political commentator, podcaster, and conspiracy theorist. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>There’s a reason why Candace Owens has her own news platform that’s dedicated to celebrity news when she is like, a politics person. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>There’s a reason why Candace Owens has her own news platform that’s dedicated to celebrity news when she is like, a politics person. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Candace Owens from TikTok] \u003c/strong>Personally, I’m starting to wonder if Cynthia is about to steal Ariana from Ethan Slater, which would be some great justice. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Candace Owens from TikTok] \u003c/strong>Personally, I’m starting to wonder if Cynthia is about to steal Ariana from Ethan Slater, which would be some great justice. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Where you can reel someone in with your cultural takes and eventually build like, this cultural consensus to like a right-wing agenda. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Where you can reel someone in with your cultural takes and eventually build like, this cultural consensus to like a right-wing agenda. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The pink pill pipeline often starts with dating advice. It’s very aspirational. Other young women showing off their luxurious lifestyles paid for by their boyfriends or husbands. You’ll hear buzzwords like “soft life” and “feminine energy” and “princess treatment.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The pink pill pipeline often starts with dating advice. It’s very aspirational. Other young women showing off their luxurious lifestyles paid for by their boyfriends or husbands. You’ll hear buzzwords like “soft life” and “feminine energy” and “princess treatment.” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Earth Angel Ariana]: \u003c/strong>I used to be a tomboy and play basketball, tackle football, and now I just feel like a princess wifey. I just feel like life is so soft and feminine, like men do everything for me. My boyfriend gives me princess treatment all the time. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Earth Angel Ariana]: \u003c/strong>I used to be a tomboy and play basketball, tackle football, and now I just feel like a princess wifey. I just feel like life is so soft and feminine, like men do everything for me. My boyfriend gives me princess treatment all the time. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Laila Hakim]:\u003c/strong> Your man should wanna not only take care of you, but those around you, too. And he’s gonna do without hesitation. That man gets up so fucking fast, like, you won’t even be able to blink before he’s up. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Laila Hakim]:\u003c/strong> Your man should wanna not only take care of you, but those around you, too. And he’s gonna do without hesitation. That man gets up so fucking fast, like, you won’t even be able to blink before he’s up. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Andele Lara]:\u003c/strong> Girl, I’m in Chicago with my man, and I didn’t book a flight, hotel, or schedule anything. Because a real provider is always going to make time for you. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Andele Lara]:\u003c/strong> Girl, I’m in Chicago with my man, and I didn’t book a flight, hotel, or schedule anything. Because a real provider is always going to make time for you. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>If you’re a young woman, who’s been grinding in your career and still struggling to make ends meet — much less afford any of these luxuries — and on top of that, dating sucks… then this kind of content is alluring. It’s very easy to get sucked in. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>If you’re a young woman, who’s been grinding in your career and still struggling to make ends meet — much less afford any of these luxuries — and on top of that, dating sucks… then this kind of content is alluring. It’s very easy to get sucked in. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think that the success of these different buzzwords and seemingly apolitical trends is that, you know, they spring from these very specific and very real frustrations. A lot of us were just like, set up to be screwed over by the economy as it exists. And I think that in traditional American politics, you hear all the time about frustrated working class men. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think that the success of these different buzzwords and seemingly apolitical trends is that, you know, they spring from these very specific and very real frustrations. A lot of us were just like, set up to be screwed over by the economy as it exists. And I think that in traditional American politics, you hear all the time about frustrated working class men. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But then, I think there is a lot of frustration among the demographic of young women who are also just very exploited as workers and really getting the short end of the stick economically. So that tends to then be catered to in a different way of this content that’s geared toward like, “You could have an amazing life if you just quit your terrible job. Um, your job mistreats and exploits you and all of this is exploitation. And it would actually be empowering if you just quit and married someone and had kids and took care of your kids.” And like, there is a real appeal there. If you hate your job, or if you’re struggling and you’re frustrated in that way. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But then, I think there is a lot of frustration among the demographic of young women who are also just very exploited as workers and really getting the short end of the stick economically. So that tends to then be catered to in a different way of this content that’s geared toward like, “You could have an amazing life if you just quit your terrible job. Um, your job mistreats and exploits you and all of this is exploitation. And it would actually be empowering if you just quit and married someone and had kids and took care of your kids.” And like, there is a real appeal there. If you hate your job, or if you’re struggling and you’re frustrated in that way. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The word “empowering” is used a lot in pink pill content. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The word “empowering” is used a lot in pink pill content. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>A lot of these female lifestyle influencers who might not present as anti-feminist, they really will like, couch their specific choices in this performatively feminist language. You could even just see this with something slightly unrelated, but also very related of like vaccine skepticism. It’s like so couched in like, my body, my choice language. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>A lot of these female lifestyle influencers who might not present as anti-feminist, they really will like, couch their specific choices in this performatively feminist language. You could even just see this with something slightly unrelated, but also very related of like vaccine skepticism. It’s like so couched in like, my body, my choice language. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>On its face, aspirational dating content doesn’t seem to be anti-feminist or regressive, especially when compared to the overt tradwife videos. But it also opens the door for a quieter, more insidious erosion of women’s agency and relationships. There is this Mormon influencer, Courtney Palmer, who went mega-viral last year for her videos on how to get the “princess treatment.” She talks about how her husband always opens the door for her, and how she rarely ties her own shoes because her husband will do it for her. And how do you secure the so-called provider? Well, Courtney has some advice: \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>On its face, aspirational dating content doesn’t seem to be anti-feminist or regressive, especially when compared to the overt tradwife videos. But it also opens the door for a quieter, more insidious erosion of women’s agency and relationships. There is this Mormon influencer, Courtney Palmer, who went mega-viral last year for her videos on how to get the “princess treatment.” She talks about how her husband always opens the door for her, and how she rarely ties her own shoes because her husband will do it for her. And how do you secure the so-called provider? Well, Courtney has some advice: \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Courtney Palmer from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>I’m at a restaurant with my husband, I do not talk to the hostess, I do not open any doors, and I do not order my own food. You’re just letting your husband lead and be masculine. He made the reservation, let him do the logistics, you’re just being a princess. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Courtney Palmer from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>I’m at a restaurant with my husband, I do not talk to the hostess, I do not open any doors, and I do not order my own food. You’re just letting your husband lead and be masculine. He made the reservation, let him do the logistics, you’re just being a princess. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>This messaging is particularly effective on young women, because it’s coming from their peers. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>This messaging is particularly effective on young women, because it’s coming from their peers. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>They’re not like, Ted Cruz. They’re not like, you know, these Republican politicians. They’re, like, female lifestyle influencers, they’re young women. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>They’re not like, Ted Cruz. They’re not like, you know, these Republican politicians. They’re, like, female lifestyle influencers, they’re young women. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Courtney Palmer from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>If the waiter addresses you first, I will simply just look at my husband and my husband will order. You don’t need to over speak, over exert yourself. You can be feminine and soft and quiet. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Courtney Palmer from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>If the waiter addresses you first, I will simply just look at my husband and my husband will order. You don’t need to over speak, over exert yourself. You can be feminine and soft and quiet. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So to recap, here’s how the pink pill pipeline works: you’re a woman in your 20s — you might stumble across a post on Instagram about why Zendaya wants to be a mother. Celebrity news and pop culture is eye-catching. You follow the account. Then, you go on TikTok and see a video from a woman whose life seems so much easier and so much more luxurious than yours. Her fiance pays for everything. She doesn’t have to lift a finger. Who wouldn’t want that? You’re trying to be more active, so you go on YouTube and look up instructional videos for pilates at home. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So to recap, here’s how the pink pill pipeline works: you’re a woman in your 20s — you might stumble across a post on Instagram about why Zendaya wants to be a mother. Celebrity news and pop culture is eye-catching. You follow the account. Then, you go on TikTok and see a video from a woman whose life seems so much easier and so much more luxurious than yours. Her fiance pays for everything. She doesn’t have to lift a finger. Who wouldn’t want that? You’re trying to be more active, so you go on YouTube and look up instructional videos for pilates at home. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Then, your social media algorithms start feeding you more content — based on what you’ve already engaged with. More about the soft life. More tips for finding a provider boyfriend. YouTube shorts about the values of young motherhood. Instagram reels about holistic health, and clean living, and detoxifying your diet — which will make you hotter and increase your chances of finding a provider boyfriend. TikToks about why your birth control might be making you sick. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Then, your social media algorithms start feeding you more content — based on what you’ve already engaged with. More about the soft life. More tips for finding a provider boyfriend. YouTube shorts about the values of young motherhood. Instagram reels about holistic health, and clean living, and detoxifying your diet — which will make you hotter and increase your chances of finding a provider boyfriend. TikToks about why your birth control might be making you sick. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>There are people who aren’t kind of traditionally associated with going after reproductive rights or going after women’s rights. It looks a lot more organic if they’re just seemingly naturally talking about the connections between like, birth control causing infertility, which is not true and is not backed up by anything. And that’s supposedly meaning, giving way to like, the quote unquote, like, “IVF industry” of like, of now that so many women lost their fertility from using birth control, they now need IVF. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>There are people who aren’t kind of traditionally associated with going after reproductive rights or going after women’s rights. It looks a lot more organic if they’re just seemingly naturally talking about the connections between like, birth control causing infertility, which is not true and is not backed up by anything. And that’s supposedly meaning, giving way to like, the quote unquote, like, “IVF industry” of like, of now that so many women lost their fertility from using birth control, they now need IVF. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Wait, what? Once you’re sucked into the pink pill pipeline, this conspiracy is everywhere. We’re going to get into that in a new tab — after this break. But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going. You can support us by becoming a member at donate dot kqed dot org slash podcast. Okay. After the break, the link between the pink pill, misinformation, and the war on birth control. Stick around. Let’s open a new tab: does birth control make you infertile? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Wait, what? Once you’re sucked into the pink pill pipeline, this conspiracy is everywhere. We’re going to get into that in a new tab — after this break. But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going. You can support us by becoming a member at donate dot kqed dot org slash podcast. Okay. After the break, the link between the pink pill, misinformation, and the war on birth control. Stick around. Let’s open a new tab: does birth control make you infertile? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Ugh, I mean no, there’s just like, no… evidence of this whatsoever. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Ugh, I mean no, there’s just like, no… evidence of this whatsoever. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>On the internet, there’s this pervasive conspiracy theory that long-term hormonal birth control use leads to infertility, which is somehow funding the modern IVF industry. Like Kylie said, there is zero clinical evidence of this. This is a pretty extreme conspiracy theory, but anti-birth control content is on the rise. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>On the internet, there’s this pervasive conspiracy theory that long-term hormonal birth control use leads to infertility, which is somehow funding the modern IVF industry. Like Kylie said, there is zero clinical evidence of this. This is a pretty extreme conspiracy theory, but anti-birth control content is on the rise. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>A 2025 study, published in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, analyzed 100 of the top TikTok videos related to contraception, between August and September 2023. The videos had a collective 4.85 billion views — they were brimming with misinformation about hormonal birth control. Over half of the videos explicitly rejected hormonal birth control, and over a third of the videos recommended natural cycle tracking, without disclosing the limits of it. Only 10% of the videos were created by medical professionals. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>A 2025 study, published in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, analyzed 100 of the top TikTok videos related to contraception, between August and September 2023. The videos had a collective 4.85 billion views — they were brimming with misinformation about hormonal birth control. Over half of the videos explicitly rejected hormonal birth control, and over a third of the videos recommended natural cycle tracking, without disclosing the limits of it. Only 10% of the videos were created by medical professionals. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This stuff is everywhere online. Here’s what the conversation around birth control looks like right now — and this is on mainstream social media. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>This stuff is everywhere online. Here’s what the conversation around birth control looks like right now — and this is on mainstream social media. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Casiah West]: \u003c/strong>Your gynecologist isn’t really telling you how bad birth control is. What’s ironic is, the leading cause of death in women is heart disease. Is it that women are dying from heart disease because of birth control? \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Casiah West]: \u003c/strong>Your gynecologist isn’t really telling you how bad birth control is. What’s ironic is, the leading cause of death in women is heart disease. Is it that women are dying from heart disease because of birth control? \u003c/p>\n"
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"blockName": "core/paragraph",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user The Workout Witch]:\u003c/strong> Birth control is one of the most damaging things you can put in your body, specifically for your body’s biological stress response. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user The Workout Witch]:\u003c/strong> Birth control is one of the most damaging things you can put in your body, specifically for your body’s biological stress response. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Whatever Pod from TikTok]:\u003c/strong> If you actually look at the birth control usage rates and divorce rates, they actually perfectly coincide with like a three-year delay. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Whatever Pod from TikTok]:\u003c/strong> If you actually look at the birth control usage rates and divorce rates, they actually perfectly coincide with like a three-year delay. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Jay Shetty]:\u003c/strong> So we’re changing the hormone balance in women in a way that may not be completely reversible. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Jay Shetty]:\u003c/strong> So we’re changing the hormone balance in women in a way that may not be completely reversible. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Pretty Politics 101]:\u003c/strong> Girls that I know who had like the implant in their arm or who have been on the pill for over 10 years cannot get pregnant. Almost like that was the entire point and plan in the first place. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Pretty Politics 101]:\u003c/strong> Girls that I know who had like the implant in their arm or who have been on the pill for over 10 years cannot get pregnant. Almost like that was the entire point and plan in the first place. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>These sensational claims flatten a reality that is complex and nuanced. It’s true that people have wildly different experiences with birth control. Many women have been dismissed, mistreated, and discriminated against by the medical system. Medical misogyny is real, and the history of birth control is steeped in it. The pill was tested on Puerto Rican women, and doctors did dismiss reports of side effects as “psychosomatic.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>These sensational claims flatten a reality that is complex and nuanced. It’s true that people have wildly different experiences with birth control. Many women have been dismissed, mistreated, and discriminated against by the medical system. Medical misogyny is real, and the history of birth control is steeped in it. The pill was tested on Puerto Rican women, and doctors did dismiss reports of side effects as “psychosomatic.” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Today, a lot of women are still not offered adequate pain management for IUD insertions. There’s no “one-size-fits-all” birth control option, so figuring out what actually works for your body can take a bit of trial and error, which can be especially discouraging when your doctors aren’t listening. I, myself, have had mixed experiences with birth control. Kylie has too. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Today, a lot of women are still not offered adequate pain management for IUD insertions. There’s no “one-size-fits-all” birth control option, so figuring out what actually works for your body can take a bit of trial and error, which can be especially discouraging when your doctors aren’t listening. I, myself, have had mixed experiences with birth control. Kylie has too. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think that you’d be hard-pressed to talk to any woman or any person who uses or has used at different points hormonal birth control, and hear that they had an absolutely flawless, perfect, pain-free experience. Their bodies might not react that well to like, hormonal-birth control pills or any number of different methods. And I think that that is all incredibly valid and can’t be, you know, pushed under the rug. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think that you’d be hard-pressed to talk to any woman or any person who uses or has used at different points hormonal birth control, and hear that they had an absolutely flawless, perfect, pain-free experience. Their bodies might not react that well to like, hormonal-birth control pills or any number of different methods. And I think that that is all incredibly valid and can’t be, you know, pushed under the rug. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>I think there are just a lot of… difficult realities with our healthcare system, how our medical system treats the experiences and bodies of women or people who use birth control. I think that what you’ll kind of see on social media are kind of these narratives that really tend to flatten that, or just capitalize on the fact that we have these negative experiences to push these different messages about the safety, or effectiveness of birth control, even though… you know, medically speaking, birth control is very safe and very effective. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>I think there are just a lot of… difficult realities with our healthcare system, how our medical system treats the experiences and bodies of women or people who use birth control. I think that what you’ll kind of see on social media are kind of these narratives that really tend to flatten that, or just capitalize on the fact that we have these negative experiences to push these different messages about the safety, or effectiveness of birth control, even though… you know, medically speaking, birth control is very safe and very effective. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>It’s just that we, as different people with different bodies will have different experiences with it. But I think that, you know, that there’s no room for that kind of nuance in like the kinds of social media posts, and what ends up happening is that like, a lot of storytelling can be taken out of context and then fed into like this right-wing political agenda. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>It’s just that we, as different people with different bodies will have different experiences with it. But I think that, you know, that there’s no room for that kind of nuance in like the kinds of social media posts, and what ends up happening is that like, a lot of storytelling can be taken out of context and then fed into like this right-wing political agenda. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The existing negative experiences that many people have had with reproductive health care means that the cultural discourse is primed to be co-opted by far-right political movements. Like pink-pill dating advice, there are certain buzzwords that raise red flags for Kylie — especially words like “natural” and “cycle tracking.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The existing negative experiences that many people have had with reproductive health care means that the cultural discourse is primed to be co-opted by far-right political movements. Like pink-pill dating advice, there are certain buzzwords that raise red flags for Kylie — especially words like “natural” and “cycle tracking.” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Cycle tracking is a perfectly valid form of contraception. Lots of people can’t take hormonal birth control for health reasons and have successfully relied on cycle tracking. But when influencers disparage other forms of contraception and insist on the “natural element” without disclosing that it’s one of the least effective forms of birth control? Red flags. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Cycle tracking is a perfectly valid form of contraception. Lots of people can’t take hormonal birth control for health reasons and have successfully relied on cycle tracking. But when influencers disparage other forms of contraception and insist on the “natural element” without disclosing that it’s one of the least effective forms of birth control? Red flags. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>What we have is this very, very regressive agenda, but really packaged in kind of this feminist way. And like, if you really, if you like, squint or if you aren’t that educated in these issues yourself, like, sure, it might even sound like it makes sense. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>What we have is this very, very regressive agenda, but really packaged in kind of this feminist way. And like, if you really, if you like, squint or if you aren’t that educated in these issues yourself, like, sure, it might even sound like it makes sense. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>It’s only in the last few years that anti-birth control sentiments have gained so much momentum. We need to talk about when this uptick started. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>It’s only in the last few years that anti-birth control sentiments have gained so much momentum. We need to talk about when this uptick started. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I really started noticing and reporting on it specifically around like, 2022, which coincidentally, you know, was the year that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I really started noticing and reporting on it specifically around like, 2022, which coincidentally, you know, was the year that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>With Roe v. Wade overturned, many far-right religious groups and anti-abortion organizations have a new mission: to make birth control the new abortion. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>With Roe v. Wade overturned, many far-right religious groups and anti-abortion organizations have a new mission: to make birth control the new abortion. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Dasha Burns for NBC News from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>In the months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Maggie Olivia went to the pharmacy to pick up her birth control prescription. The pharmacists denied her prescription because they were unsure if it was legal, which it was. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Dasha Burns for NBC News from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>In the months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Maggie Olivia went to the pharmacy to pick up her birth control prescription. The pharmacists denied her prescription because they were unsure if it was legal, which it was. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Let’s open one more tab: the war on birth control. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Let’s open one more tab: the war on birth control. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Make America Healthy Again — this is the Trump administration’s health initiative, spearheaded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. Health Secretary and notorious anti-vaxxer. The “MAHA” movement is fueled by skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry. Practices and medications under scrutiny include: childhood vaccine schedules, Tylenol during pregnancy, antidepressants, ADHD drugs. And now, hormonal birth control. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Make America Healthy Again — this is the Trump administration’s health initiative, spearheaded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. Health Secretary and notorious anti-vaxxer. The “MAHA” movement is fueled by skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry. Practices and medications under scrutiny include: childhood vaccine schedules, Tylenol during pregnancy, antidepressants, ADHD drugs. And now, hormonal birth control. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Amna Nawaz for PBS News Hour]: \u003c/strong>Earlier this year, the Trump administration scrubbed CDC guidance on birth control from government websites and froze $65 million in funding to family planning clinics that provide free or low-cost contraception. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Amna Nawaz for PBS News Hour]: \u003c/strong>Earlier this year, the Trump administration scrubbed CDC guidance on birth control from government websites and froze $65 million in funding to family planning clinics that provide free or low-cost contraception. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The Department of Health and Human Services just overhauled Title X (ten). This is a federal grant program originally designed to help low-income Americans access birth control and other reproductive health care. Kylie said this program has always had bipartisan support, going all the way back to when Nixon signed it into law, over 50 years ago. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The Department of Health and Human Services just overhauled Title X (ten). This is a federal grant program originally designed to help low-income Americans access birth control and other reproductive health care. Kylie said this program has always had bipartisan support, going all the way back to when Nixon signed it into law, over 50 years ago. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But now, according to a funding notice published at the beginning of July, grants funded through the program will, quote, “build body literacy, address infertility, plan and space pregnancies, and navigate reproductive health conditions such as endometriosis.” Contraception is not mentioned, except in a section about “over-medicalization.” Clinics that receive Title X (ten) funding are instructed to promote fertility awareness-based methods — like, natural cycle tracking. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But now, according to a funding notice published at the beginning of July, grants funded through the program will, quote, “build body literacy, address infertility, plan and space pregnancies, and navigate reproductive health conditions such as endometriosis.” Contraception is not mentioned, except in a section about “over-medicalization.” Clinics that receive Title X (ten) funding are instructed to promote fertility awareness-based methods — like, natural cycle tracking. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Some really concerning things have been like, the State Department equating certain forms of birth control and labeling them as abortifacient — and we’ve seen that a couple of times coming directly from this administration, and the goal then being to ban certain birth control or birth control more broadly, in the same way that abortion is banned. We’ve also seen the defunding of Planned Parenthood where like, what the language of that is is to suggest that reproductive healthcare and like, the provision of contraceptives and such isn’t actually health care — is kind of like the language. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Some really concerning things have been like, the State Department equating certain forms of birth control and labeling them as abortifacient — and we’ve seen that a couple of times coming directly from this administration, and the goal then being to ban certain birth control or birth control more broadly, in the same way that abortion is banned. We’ve also seen the defunding of Planned Parenthood where like, what the language of that is is to suggest that reproductive healthcare and like, the provision of contraceptives and such isn’t actually health care — is kind of like the language. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Conservatives were not always this critical of birth control. In fact, many were pro-birth control. Back in 2015, Republicans actually introduced a bill to make it even more accessible — by incentivizing drug companies to sell over-the-counter birth control.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Conservatives were not always this critical of birth control. In fact, many were pro-birth control. Back in 2015, Republicans actually introduced a bill to make it even more accessible — by incentivizing drug companies to sell over-the-counter birth control.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think that there just has been this very sharp right-wing cultural pivot where a lot of this deeply pro-natalist language of human civilization and white Western society is in serious trouble if we don’t have a lot more babies really quick, like a lot of the Elon Musk rhetoric. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think that there just has been this very sharp right-wing cultural pivot where a lot of this deeply pro-natalist language of human civilization and white Western society is in serious trouble if we don’t have a lot more babies really quick, like a lot of the Elon Musk rhetoric. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Pro-natalism is an ideology that pushes for higher birth rates to combat the supposed “decline of civilization.” Anything that causes people to have more babies is on the table. Can you explain the link between this pro-natalist fear-mongering around falling birth rates and then white supremacist conspiracy theories? What is the great replacement theory that everyone’s freaking out about? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Pro-natalism is an ideology that pushes for higher birth rates to combat the supposed “decline of civilization.” Anything that causes people to have more babies is on the table. Can you explain the link between this pro-natalist fear-mongering around falling birth rates and then white supremacist conspiracy theories? What is the great replacement theory that everyone’s freaking out about? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think that there is just this inherent link between, you know, panics about the birth rate and racial panics, even though obviously, you know sometimes it’ll be couched in this race-neutral language of just like the human race and declining birth rates there, or the fact that like abortion bans or denying people birth control access will affect people of all races and people of all races might then be forced to like move forward with a pregnancy they don’t want or whatnot. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think that there is just this inherent link between, you know, panics about the birth rate and racial panics, even though obviously, you know sometimes it’ll be couched in this race-neutral language of just like the human race and declining birth rates there, or the fact that like abortion bans or denying people birth control access will affect people of all races and people of all races might then be forced to like move forward with a pregnancy they don’t want or whatnot. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>It’s impossible to separate this panic from its racist roots. It started with fears of declining birth rates among white women. Kylie said the decline isn’t statistically significant. Experts say it’s likely due to declining teen pregnancy rates. But some extremists on the right claim that birth control is used to suppress white birth rates, in an attempt to replace white Americans as the racial majority. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>It’s impossible to separate this panic from its racist roots. It started with fears of declining birth rates among white women. Kylie said the decline isn’t statistically significant. Experts say it’s likely due to declining teen pregnancy rates. But some extremists on the right claim that birth control is used to suppress white birth rates, in an attempt to replace white Americans as the racial majority. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>There is just this deep tie between pronatalism and white nationalism in that way, just specifically because of how much white nationalism has like embraced pronatalism for its agenda. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>There is just this deep tie between pronatalism and white nationalism in that way, just specifically because of how much white nationalism has like embraced pronatalism for its agenda. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>In 2022, just months after Roe v. Wade was overturned, UC Berkeley, Mother Jones, and Reveal teamed up for a massive reporting project. They uncovered a years-long social media campaign from anti-abortion groups — to capitalize on wellness trends, promote cycle tracking, and sow distrust in hormonal birth control. Conservative influencers have continued to push birth control skepticism online— often citing outdated or inconclusive research studies to back up their claims. Birth control misinformation continues to thrive on social media. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>In 2022, just months after Roe v. Wade was overturned, UC Berkeley, Mother Jones, and Reveal teamed up for a massive reporting project. They uncovered a years-long social media campaign from anti-abortion groups — to capitalize on wellness trends, promote cycle tracking, and sow distrust in hormonal birth control. Conservative influencers have continued to push birth control skepticism online— often citing outdated or inconclusive research studies to back up their claims. Birth control misinformation continues to thrive on social media. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Pretty Politics 101]: \u003c/strong>Does anybody else find it just a teensy bit coincidental that they pushed birth control on Millennial and Gen Z teenagers so heavily and so early? And now, look at how booming IVF is? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Pretty Politics 101]: \u003c/strong>Does anybody else find it just a teensy bit coincidental that they pushed birth control on Millennial and Gen Z teenagers so heavily and so early? And now, look at how booming IVF is? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That video has nearly identical wording to countless others. This year, political analyst Emily Amick published a three-part Substack series on the influencer campaign against birth control. She found dozens of Instagram posts from various lifestyle influencers that all had the same caption. They all said, and I quote, “I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the birth control pill was given out like candy to every female millennial at age 15. And now IVF is a $50 billion industry.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That video has nearly identical wording to countless others. This year, political analyst Emily Amick published a three-part Substack series on the influencer campaign against birth control. She found dozens of Instagram posts from various lifestyle influencers that all had the same caption. They all said, and I quote, “I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the birth control pill was given out like candy to every female millennial at age 15. And now IVF is a $50 billion industry.” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Abortion is very politically popular, and so I think even now it’s very interesting that you’ll see the Trump administration has refrained from taking certain moves to directly go after abortion, but has taken all of these many different moves to go after birth control and family planning. And I’ve read certain legal experts suspect as well, is that birth control in some ways is more vulnerable — because it’s increasingly less popular because of how much misinformation there is about it. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Abortion is very politically popular, and so I think even now it’s very interesting that you’ll see the Trump administration has refrained from taking certain moves to directly go after abortion, but has taken all of these many different moves to go after birth control and family planning. And I’ve read certain legal experts suspect as well, is that birth control in some ways is more vulnerable — because it’s increasingly less popular because of how much misinformation there is about it. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Over the last four years, there have been anecdotal reports of young women who’ve discontinued hormonal birth control because of what they see online. This is backed up by a 2024 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation. 49% of women between 18 and 25 have been served content about birth control on social media. 14% said they made a change to their birth control method or considered a change because of something they heard online. Kylie said, it’ll be decades until we understand the long-term effects of the online campaign against birth control. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Over the last four years, there have been anecdotal reports of young women who’ve discontinued hormonal birth control because of what they see online. This is backed up by a 2024 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation. 49% of women between 18 and 25 have been served content about birth control on social media. 14% said they made a change to their birth control method or considered a change because of something they heard online. Kylie said, it’ll be decades until we understand the long-term effects of the online campaign against birth control. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>It’s easy to dismiss lifestyle content as frivolous and inconsequential. You might see a TikTok from a woman who brags about how her boyfriend pays all of their bills, and think… “It’s not that deep.” You might come across an influencer who questions the safety of IUDs and promotes natural cycle tracking — and it’s tempting to think… “That’s just her choice!” But the pink pill pipeline is real. Content targeted at women is rapidly becoming a vehicle for extremist ideology. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>It’s easy to dismiss lifestyle content as frivolous and inconsequential. You might see a TikTok from a woman who brags about how her boyfriend pays all of their bills, and think… “It’s not that deep.” You might come across an influencer who questions the safety of IUDs and promotes natural cycle tracking — and it’s tempting to think… “That’s just her choice!” But the pink pill pipeline is real. Content targeted at women is rapidly becoming a vehicle for extremist ideology. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Since Trump’s re-election, concerns about the manosphere have dominated the political conversation. For all of the hand-wringing about bro-y podcasts radicalizing young men, there’s very little discussion about the young women buying into their own oppression. Content aimed at girls is just not taken seriously. That’s part of what makes the pink pill pipeline so effective. It’s the lack of awareness. There’s a political undercurrent to all of these girlish lifestyle videos, but it’s very easy to miss if you’re not already looking for it. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Since Trump’s re-election, concerns about the manosphere have dominated the political conversation. For all of the hand-wringing about bro-y podcasts radicalizing young men, there’s very little discussion about the young women buying into their own oppression. Content aimed at girls is just not taken seriously. That’s part of what makes the pink pill pipeline so effective. It’s the lack of awareness. There’s a political undercurrent to all of these girlish lifestyle videos, but it’s very easy to miss if you’re not already looking for it. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But now, you know what to look for. Before you like a video, or follow an influencer, it’s worth taking a moment to really consider the agenda behind this content. Are they sharing a personal experience with one specific type of birth control? Or are they insisting that all birth control is bad — and that only the method they recommend is natural and healthy? Sure, the romantic date night content is cute, but… is the person posting it also telling you that you need to make yourself quiet and submissive if you want to find a man who’ll pick up the check? \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>But now, you know what to look for. Before you like a video, or follow an influencer, it’s worth taking a moment to really consider the agenda behind this content. Are they sharing a personal experience with one specific type of birth control? Or are they insisting that all birth control is bad — and that only the method they recommend is natural and healthy? Sure, the romantic date night content is cute, but… is the person posting it also telling you that you need to make yourself quiet and submissive if you want to find a man who’ll pick up the check? \u003c/p>\n"
],
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The point is, you don’t have to engage with this content. But, if it comes across your feed, you should be ready to see it for what it is — and then you can keep scrolling. That’s it for our deep dive — but as usual, stick around after the credits for bonus content. And if you’re dying to go further down this rabbit hole, we’ll link to some further reading in our show notes. Until next week, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>The point is, you don’t have to engage with this content. But, if it comes across your feed, you should be ready to see it for what it is — and then you can keep scrolling. That’s it for our deep dive — but as usual, stick around after the credits for bonus content. And if you’re dying to go further down this rabbit hole, we’ll link to some further reading in our show notes. Until next week, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/p>\n"
],
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"attrs": [],
"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional production help from our intern, Lauren Yoon. The Close All Tabs team also includes editor Chris Hambrick and audio engineer, Brendan Willard. Additional music by APM. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional production help from our intern, Lauren Yoon. The Close All Tabs team also includes editor Chris Hambrick and audio engineer, Brendan Willard. Additional music by APM. \u003c/p>\n"
],
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/p>\n"
],
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. \u003c/p>\n"
],
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"attrs": [],
"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This episode includes clips and archive tape from Impaulsive, This Past Weekend with Theo Von, Adin Ross, The Matrix, Fox News, NBC News, PBS Newshour, and TikTok creators @earthangelariana, @ulovelailahakim, @theandelelara, Courtney Palmer, @casiahwest, @theworkoutwitch, @whateverpod, @jayshetty, and @prettypolitics101. Thanks for listening. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Yeah! Oh my God, now that I’m remembering it, I mean like in 2022, there was just like a viral moment of like a lot of different people theorizing that like, birth control makes you gay. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Yeah! Oh my God, now that I’m remembering it, I mean like in 2022, there was just like a viral moment of like a lot of different people theorizing that like, birth control makes you gay. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I saw your “birth control makes people a lesbian rumor” piece and I was like, “That’s crazy,” because every lesbian I know says the complete opposite, that they went off the pill and they were like, “I don’t even like men.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I saw your “birth control makes people a lesbian rumor” piece and I was like, “That’s crazy,” because every lesbian I know says the complete opposite, that they went off the pill and they were like, “I don’t even like men.” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>So fair, yeah. \u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It starts with aspirational lifestyle content about “embracing your femininity,” but ends with alt-right ideology and conspiracy theories about reproductive care. This is the pink pill pipeline — one of the primary ways young women are radicalized online today. Seemingly innocuous content about dating advice, wellness tips, and pop culture leads to increasingly conservative and extremist talking points about how birth control is causing the fertility crisis or how women don’t need to vote. It’s all wrapped up in a glossy veneer of feminine empowerment. Reporter Kylie Cheung joins to discuss how seemingly apolitical content online is shifting the cultural narrative around reproductive rights through coordinated misinformation campaigns, and how to spot pink pill content for what it is.\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-megaphone wp-block-embed-megaphone\">\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\nhttps://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC5702825517\n\u003c/div>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest: \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://substack.com/@kylietcheung?utm_source=about-page\">Kylie Cheung\u003c/a>, staff reporter at \u003cem>Abortion, Every Day\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://jessica.substack.com/p/how-celebrity-smear-campaigns-are\">How Celebrity Smear Campaigns are Inspiring Attacks on Birth Control\u003c/a> — Kylie Cheung, \u003cem>Abortion, Every Day\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/far-right-birth-control-conspiracy-theories/\">Far right coming for women’s autonomy; birth control on chopping block\u003c/a> — Cassie Miller, \u003cem>Southern Poverty Law Center\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://jessica.substack.com/p/princess-treatment-trend-conservative-pipeline\">We Need to Talk About the Pink-Pill Pipeline\u003c/a> — Jessica Valenti, \u003cem>Abortion, Every Day\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://emilyinyourphone.substack.com/p/i-caught-a-secret-right-wing-influence\">I Caught a Secret Right-Wing Influence Operation Running In My Feed\u003c/a> — Emily Amick, \u003cem>Emily In Your Phone\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://revealnews.org/podcast/the-long-campaign-to-turn-birth-control-into-the-new-abortion/\">The Long Campaign to Turn Birth Control Into the New Abortion\u003c/a> — Katharine Mieszkowski, \u003cem>Reveal\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/09/inside-anti-abortion-groups-campaign-to-sell-women-on-unreliable-birth-control-alternatives/\">Inside Anti-Abortion Groups’ Campaign to Sell Women on Unreliable Birth Control “Alternatives”\u003c/a> — Kiera Butler, \u003cem>Mother Jones\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/04/25/birth-control-maha-abortion-trump-00889738\">Trump Is Going After Birth Control. Here’s Why. \u003c/a>— Mary Ziegler, \u003cem>Politico\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://theintercept.com/2026/07/10/rfk-jr-pronatalism-birth-control/\">The Trump Administration Is Overhauling Birth Control Access for the Pronatalist Movement\u003c/a> — Jessica Washington, \u003cem>The Intercept\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> Hello. Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. And tell your friends! Post about it on Instagram, Blue Sky, X, Discord, Reddit, the comments of whatever random recipe blog you’re starting arguments in. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Okay, let’s get to the show. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you’re a young woman online, you may have seen posts from Evie Magazine. It has a chic millennial pink logo and taglines like “helping women harness their feminine energy.” Its website features glossy, aspirational photo shoots of women modeling gauzy dresses on the Mediterranean coast, women doing yoga in coordinated pastel workout sets, and women riding horseback through arid Southwestern grasslands. They’re paired with articles like, “What the It Girls Are Wearing in Italy This Summer,” and “Is Your Bra Making You Sick?” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>You probably would not suspect that there’s anything like, quote unquote “political” about this publication at all. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>This is Kylie Cheung, the staff reporter for the newsletter, Abortion, Every Day. She’s been covering reproductive health care and women’s rights for years, working at Jezebel and Salon. At first glance, Evie Magazine’s content doesn’t appear that different from the coverage of the publications where Kylie used to work. But push past the surface, and something else emerges. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>You might see their presence on, say, Instagram if you like see a post about celebrity news, then you might follow them or you might go back to their website, and then slowly but surely start to see more content that’s really pushing motherhood, young motherhood, like anti-birth control messages. They describe themselves as like a magazine for celebrating true womanhood and femininity, and as we know all of that has increasingly become kind of this right-wing dog whistle. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>If you dig a little deeper into Evie’s website, you’ll find articles on why Love Island actually makes a case against casual sex, how Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie is quote, “The Most Pro-American Show in Years,” and coverage of celebrities who’ve denounced birth control. In fact, Evie publishes at least one anti-birth control article per month, filled with of birth control causing strokes, depression, hormonal chaos, and… bisexuality?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>That is such a good one. I remember in like 2022, I was reporting on this influx of TikToks about conspiracy theories that like, my birth control made me gay or this or that. And it’s just like, maybe you were, maybe you’re just gay, which is like, totally cool and everything. And then if something is seen as like unsafe or dangerous that contributes to… a consensus that there should be more restrictions or it should be harder to access, and that is ultimately a right-wing political goal. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Evie Magazine has been hailed as the “conservative Cosmo.” In addition to the digital and print content, Evie also hosts live events and sells raw milkmaid dresses — a play on the far-right raw milk craze and the cottagecore trend that dominated the early 2020s fashion cycle. Oh, and there’s Evie’s FemTech debut — a period-tracking app funded by Peter Thiel that promises to help women wean off of birth control in favor of “natural cycle tracking.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>If you just say we need to like ban birth control, that isn’t really on its face going to be a popular message, but colluding with kind of this whole “MAHA” and like alternative health scene of pushing for this idea that any amount of like quote unquote “chemicals” and putting this or that in your body, that that is kind of what you might see at a website. Like Evie, that claims to be like an apolitical female lifestyle brand that, you know, isn’t going to overtly say, “We think birth control should be banned,” but is going to kind of push these messages, really questioning and kind of contributing to like, lessening the popularity of birth control. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Welcome to the pink pill pipeline. This is the way young women are radicalized online — through seemingly innocuous content about dating advice, wellness tips, and pop culture — which steers them toward influencers who assure them that giving up their career is an empowering choice… and that caring about politics is for the boys, anyway. And soon enough, extremist talking points about how birth control is causing the fertility crisis, or how women don’t need to vote, don’t feel extreme at all. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And that content, of course, is wrapped in a glossy veneer of feminine empowerment. Today, we’re exploring how seemingly apolitical content online is actually shifting the cultural narrative around reproductive rights — through coordinated misinformation campaigns and aspirational lifestyle posts. And let me tell you, it’s a lot easier to get sucked in than you might think. Ready? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You know how this goes. Let’s open our first tab. What is the pink pill pipeline? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think like, end of 2024, when we were seeing all of these conversations come up about how the quote unquote “Manosphere” helped Trump win the election by like, connecting with young men and how he’d gone on all of these like Manosphere-y podcasts. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of President Trump on Logan Paul’s podcast from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>Biden is just so bad. He’s the worst president in the history of our country. You should make a diss track on him. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of President Trump on Theo Von’s podcast from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>Is cocaine a stronger, uh, up? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cocaine will turn you into a damn owl, homie, you know what I’m saying? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of President Trump on Adin Ross’s stream from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>Well, today is going to be the most important stream I’ve ever done. Right in the living room of Mar-a-Lago. And we’ll have a little fun today. Let’s do it. My son Barron says hello, but he’s a big fan of yours. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Many of them, they’ll have interviewed or endorsed Trump, but they won’t call themselves political. It’s because they draw in and radicalize so many young men precisely by presenting as apolitical, where first, young men might be drawn to their content that’s dating advice, or stuff about MMA fighting, or any number of things that aren’t inherently political, but then just because of how algorithms work, or as you continue to watch their videos or content — eventually they just start saying pretty misogynistic or racist things. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>This is an alt-right ideology known as the red pill: the belief that men are disadvantaged in modern society — and that it’s feminism’s fault. Taking the red pill is a nod to this scene in The Matrix — when Neo learns that his entire life is a simulation. Morpheus offers him a choice. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of The Matrix from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Incels and self-described “men’s rights activists” have used the metaphor of the red pill to describe “waking up” to their victimhood and resisting “progressive” notions like… women having any agency at all. The manosphere calls for a return to the patriarchal glory of the past. Today, red-pilling is used to describe the way people are radicalized into far-right ideology. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Manosphere content can be wildly misogynistic — but the way young men fall into these online circles is through lifestyle content that appears apolitical: weightlifting, dating advice, style tips. The pink pill pipeline is the other side of this coin. The phrase was coined by journalist Lois Shearing. Her 2025 book, “Pink-pilled,” examines how women are lured into far-right ideology. Just like with red-pilling, pink-pilling also starts with seemingly apolitical lifestyle content. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Many of these creators or influencers will not overtly identify as Republican agents. They will, in fact, probably reel in young women through content or short-form videos where they talk about celebrity gossip, or maybe they’ll talk about health advice, and eventually get to disparaging and pushing misinformation about birth control. If you’re a young woman and you hate your job, they might give you advice about how to start dating like, a rich man and how you can achieve something akin to like a tradwife lifestyle. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>We talked about tradwives in our episode on Mormon momfluencers. They’re women who’ve rejected a modern career path and rely on their husbands to be the breadwinners. Tradwives are supposed to manage the household, do all the chores, take care of the kids, and lead their family’s return to traditional gender roles. Hence, tradwife. Tradwife content was pretty trendy for a while. Videos of baking bread from scratch, homeschooling children, and performing motherhood. But, as it turns out, being a stay-at-home mom, taking care of an entire family on a single income, is not glamorous — it’s hard. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>As more horror stories have emerged about the economic precarity of this reality, the tradwife lifestyle has started to lose its appeal. In fact, the most prominent pink pill figures have shifted their messaging away from promoting the tradwife lifestyle — because they know it’s unpopular. Like Emma Waters. She’s a researcher for the Heritage Foundation, the far-right think tank behind Project 2025. Emma Waters has been promoting a middle ground between tradwives and girlboss feminists. But still promoting motherhood above all. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Emma Waters for Fox News from TikTok]: \u003c/strong>How can we structure what career success and the career trajectory of mothers looks like first, and then build in our career and education to complement that? So maybe women won’t work full-time. About 60% of women say that they would actually prefer to be a homemaker. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>But that kind of rhetoric is still divisive. It’s certainly not the soft on-ramp to conservative ideology that lifestyle content is. Celebrity news, for one, is a much more palatable entry point. Take Candace Owens, the far-right political commentator, podcaster, and conspiracy theorist. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>There’s a reason why Candace Owens has her own news platform that’s dedicated to celebrity news when she is like, a politics person. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Candace Owens from TikTok] \u003c/strong>Personally, I’m starting to wonder if Cynthia is about to steal Ariana from Ethan Slater, which would be some great justice. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Where you can reel someone in with your cultural takes and eventually build like, this cultural consensus to like a right-wing agenda. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The pink pill pipeline often starts with dating advice. It’s very aspirational. Other young women showing off their luxurious lifestyles paid for by their boyfriends or husbands. You’ll hear buzzwords like “soft life” and “feminine energy” and “princess treatment.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Earth Angel Ariana]: \u003c/strong>I used to be a tomboy and play basketball, tackle football, and now I just feel like a princess wifey. I just feel like life is so soft and feminine, like men do everything for me. My boyfriend gives me princess treatment all the time. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Laila Hakim]:\u003c/strong> Your man should wanna not only take care of you, but those around you, too. And he’s gonna do without hesitation. That man gets up so fucking fast, like, you won’t even be able to blink before he’s up. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Andele Lara]:\u003c/strong> Girl, I’m in Chicago with my man, and I didn’t book a flight, hotel, or schedule anything. Because a real provider is always going to make time for you. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>If you’re a young woman, who’s been grinding in your career and still struggling to make ends meet — much less afford any of these luxuries — and on top of that, dating sucks… then this kind of content is alluring. It’s very easy to get sucked in. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think that the success of these different buzzwords and seemingly apolitical trends is that, you know, they spring from these very specific and very real frustrations. A lot of us were just like, set up to be screwed over by the economy as it exists. And I think that in traditional American politics, you hear all the time about frustrated working class men. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But then, I think there is a lot of frustration among the demographic of young women who are also just very exploited as workers and really getting the short end of the stick economically. So that tends to then be catered to in a different way of this content that’s geared toward like, “You could have an amazing life if you just quit your terrible job. Um, your job mistreats and exploits you and all of this is exploitation. And it would actually be empowering if you just quit and married someone and had kids and took care of your kids.” And like, there is a real appeal there. If you hate your job, or if you’re struggling and you’re frustrated in that way. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The word “empowering” is used a lot in pink pill content. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>A lot of these female lifestyle influencers who might not present as anti-feminist, they really will like, couch their specific choices in this performatively feminist language. You could even just see this with something slightly unrelated, but also very related of like vaccine skepticism. It’s like so couched in like, my body, my choice language. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>On its face, aspirational dating content doesn’t seem to be anti-feminist or regressive, especially when compared to the overt tradwife videos. But it also opens the door for a quieter, more insidious erosion of women’s agency and relationships. There is this Mormon influencer, Courtney Palmer, who went mega-viral last year for her videos on how to get the “princess treatment.” She talks about how her husband always opens the door for her, and how she rarely ties her own shoes because her husband will do it for her. And how do you secure the so-called provider? Well, Courtney has some advice: \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Courtney Palmer from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>I’m at a restaurant with my husband, I do not talk to the hostess, I do not open any doors, and I do not order my own food. You’re just letting your husband lead and be masculine. He made the reservation, let him do the logistics, you’re just being a princess. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>This messaging is particularly effective on young women, because it’s coming from their peers. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>They’re not like, Ted Cruz. They’re not like, you know, these Republican politicians. They’re, like, female lifestyle influencers, they’re young women. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Courtney Palmer from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>If the waiter addresses you first, I will simply just look at my husband and my husband will order. You don’t need to over speak, over exert yourself. You can be feminine and soft and quiet. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So to recap, here’s how the pink pill pipeline works: you’re a woman in your 20s — you might stumble across a post on Instagram about why Zendaya wants to be a mother. Celebrity news and pop culture is eye-catching. You follow the account. Then, you go on TikTok and see a video from a woman whose life seems so much easier and so much more luxurious than yours. Her fiance pays for everything. She doesn’t have to lift a finger. Who wouldn’t want that? You’re trying to be more active, so you go on YouTube and look up instructional videos for pilates at home. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Then, your social media algorithms start feeding you more content — based on what you’ve already engaged with. More about the soft life. More tips for finding a provider boyfriend. YouTube shorts about the values of young motherhood. Instagram reels about holistic health, and clean living, and detoxifying your diet — which will make you hotter and increase your chances of finding a provider boyfriend. TikToks about why your birth control might be making you sick. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>There are people who aren’t kind of traditionally associated with going after reproductive rights or going after women’s rights. It looks a lot more organic if they’re just seemingly naturally talking about the connections between like, birth control causing infertility, which is not true and is not backed up by anything. And that’s supposedly meaning, giving way to like, the quote unquote, like, “IVF industry” of like, of now that so many women lost their fertility from using birth control, they now need IVF. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Wait, what? Once you’re sucked into the pink pill pipeline, this conspiracy is everywhere. We’re going to get into that in a new tab — after this break. But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going. You can support us by becoming a member at donate dot kqed dot org slash podcast. Okay. After the break, the link between the pink pill, misinformation, and the war on birth control. Stick around. Let’s open a new tab: does birth control make you infertile? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Ugh, I mean no, there’s just like, no… evidence of this whatsoever. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>On the internet, there’s this pervasive conspiracy theory that long-term hormonal birth control use leads to infertility, which is somehow funding the modern IVF industry. Like Kylie said, there is zero clinical evidence of this. This is a pretty extreme conspiracy theory, but anti-birth control content is on the rise. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A 2025 study, published in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, analyzed 100 of the top TikTok videos related to contraception, between August and September 2023. The videos had a collective 4.85 billion views — they were brimming with misinformation about hormonal birth control. Over half of the videos explicitly rejected hormonal birth control, and over a third of the videos recommended natural cycle tracking, without disclosing the limits of it. Only 10% of the videos were created by medical professionals. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This stuff is everywhere online. Here’s what the conversation around birth control looks like right now — and this is on mainstream social media. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Casiah West]: \u003c/strong>Your gynecologist isn’t really telling you how bad birth control is. What’s ironic is, the leading cause of death in women is heart disease. Is it that women are dying from heart disease because of birth control? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user The Workout Witch]:\u003c/strong> Birth control is one of the most damaging things you can put in your body, specifically for your body’s biological stress response. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Whatever Pod from TikTok]:\u003c/strong> If you actually look at the birth control usage rates and divorce rates, they actually perfectly coincide with like a three-year delay. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Jay Shetty]:\u003c/strong> So we’re changing the hormone balance in women in a way that may not be completely reversible. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Pretty Politics 101]:\u003c/strong> Girls that I know who had like the implant in their arm or who have been on the pill for over 10 years cannot get pregnant. Almost like that was the entire point and plan in the first place. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>These sensational claims flatten a reality that is complex and nuanced. It’s true that people have wildly different experiences with birth control. Many women have been dismissed, mistreated, and discriminated against by the medical system. Medical misogyny is real, and the history of birth control is steeped in it. The pill was tested on Puerto Rican women, and doctors did dismiss reports of side effects as “psychosomatic.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Today, a lot of women are still not offered adequate pain management for IUD insertions. There’s no “one-size-fits-all” birth control option, so figuring out what actually works for your body can take a bit of trial and error, which can be especially discouraging when your doctors aren’t listening. I, myself, have had mixed experiences with birth control. Kylie has too. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think that you’d be hard-pressed to talk to any woman or any person who uses or has used at different points hormonal birth control, and hear that they had an absolutely flawless, perfect, pain-free experience. Their bodies might not react that well to like, hormonal-birth control pills or any number of different methods. And I think that that is all incredibly valid and can’t be, you know, pushed under the rug. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I think there are just a lot of… difficult realities with our healthcare system, how our medical system treats the experiences and bodies of women or people who use birth control. I think that what you’ll kind of see on social media are kind of these narratives that really tend to flatten that, or just capitalize on the fact that we have these negative experiences to push these different messages about the safety, or effectiveness of birth control, even though… you know, medically speaking, birth control is very safe and very effective. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It’s just that we, as different people with different bodies will have different experiences with it. But I think that, you know, that there’s no room for that kind of nuance in like the kinds of social media posts, and what ends up happening is that like, a lot of storytelling can be taken out of context and then fed into like this right-wing political agenda. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The existing negative experiences that many people have had with reproductive health care means that the cultural discourse is primed to be co-opted by far-right political movements. Like pink-pill dating advice, there are certain buzzwords that raise red flags for Kylie — especially words like “natural” and “cycle tracking.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Cycle tracking is a perfectly valid form of contraception. Lots of people can’t take hormonal birth control for health reasons and have successfully relied on cycle tracking. But when influencers disparage other forms of contraception and insist on the “natural element” without disclosing that it’s one of the least effective forms of birth control? Red flags. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>What we have is this very, very regressive agenda, but really packaged in kind of this feminist way. And like, if you really, if you like, squint or if you aren’t that educated in these issues yourself, like, sure, it might even sound like it makes sense. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>It’s only in the last few years that anti-birth control sentiments have gained so much momentum. We need to talk about when this uptick started. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I really started noticing and reporting on it specifically around like, 2022, which coincidentally, you know, was the year that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>With Roe v. Wade overturned, many far-right religious groups and anti-abortion organizations have a new mission: to make birth control the new abortion. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Dasha Burns for NBC News from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>In the months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Maggie Olivia went to the pharmacy to pick up her birth control prescription. The pharmacists denied her prescription because they were unsure if it was legal, which it was. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Let’s open one more tab: the war on birth control. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Make America Healthy Again — this is the Trump administration’s health initiative, spearheaded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. Health Secretary and notorious anti-vaxxer. The “MAHA” movement is fueled by skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry. Practices and medications under scrutiny include: childhood vaccine schedules, Tylenol during pregnancy, antidepressants, ADHD drugs. And now, hormonal birth control. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Amna Nawaz for PBS News Hour]: \u003c/strong>Earlier this year, the Trump administration scrubbed CDC guidance on birth control from government websites and froze $65 million in funding to family planning clinics that provide free or low-cost contraception. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The Department of Health and Human Services just overhauled Title X (ten). This is a federal grant program originally designed to help low-income Americans access birth control and other reproductive health care. Kylie said this program has always had bipartisan support, going all the way back to when Nixon signed it into law, over 50 years ago. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But now, according to a funding notice published at the beginning of July, grants funded through the program will, quote, “build body literacy, address infertility, plan and space pregnancies, and navigate reproductive health conditions such as endometriosis.” Contraception is not mentioned, except in a section about “over-medicalization.” Clinics that receive Title X (ten) funding are instructed to promote fertility awareness-based methods — like, natural cycle tracking. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Some really concerning things have been like, the State Department equating certain forms of birth control and labeling them as abortifacient — and we’ve seen that a couple of times coming directly from this administration, and the goal then being to ban certain birth control or birth control more broadly, in the same way that abortion is banned. We’ve also seen the defunding of Planned Parenthood where like, what the language of that is is to suggest that reproductive healthcare and like, the provision of contraceptives and such isn’t actually health care — is kind of like the language. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Conservatives were not always this critical of birth control. In fact, many were pro-birth control. Back in 2015, Republicans actually introduced a bill to make it even more accessible — by incentivizing drug companies to sell over-the-counter birth control.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think that there just has been this very sharp right-wing cultural pivot where a lot of this deeply pro-natalist language of human civilization and white Western society is in serious trouble if we don’t have a lot more babies really quick, like a lot of the Elon Musk rhetoric. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Pro-natalism is an ideology that pushes for higher birth rates to combat the supposed “decline of civilization.” Anything that causes people to have more babies is on the table. Can you explain the link between this pro-natalist fear-mongering around falling birth rates and then white supremacist conspiracy theories? What is the great replacement theory that everyone’s freaking out about? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>I think that there is just this inherent link between, you know, panics about the birth rate and racial panics, even though obviously, you know sometimes it’ll be couched in this race-neutral language of just like the human race and declining birth rates there, or the fact that like abortion bans or denying people birth control access will affect people of all races and people of all races might then be forced to like move forward with a pregnancy they don’t want or whatnot. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>It’s impossible to separate this panic from its racist roots. It started with fears of declining birth rates among white women. Kylie said the decline isn’t statistically significant. Experts say it’s likely due to declining teen pregnancy rates. But some extremists on the right claim that birth control is used to suppress white birth rates, in an attempt to replace white Americans as the racial majority. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>There is just this deep tie between pronatalism and white nationalism in that way, just specifically because of how much white nationalism has like embraced pronatalism for its agenda. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>In 2022, just months after Roe v. Wade was overturned, UC Berkeley, Mother Jones, and Reveal teamed up for a massive reporting project. They uncovered a years-long social media campaign from anti-abortion groups — to capitalize on wellness trends, promote cycle tracking, and sow distrust in hormonal birth control. Conservative influencers have continued to push birth control skepticism online— often citing outdated or inconclusive research studies to back up their claims. Birth control misinformation continues to thrive on social media. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok user Pretty Politics 101]: \u003c/strong>Does anybody else find it just a teensy bit coincidental that they pushed birth control on Millennial and Gen Z teenagers so heavily and so early? And now, look at how booming IVF is? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That video has nearly identical wording to countless others. This year, political analyst Emily Amick published a three-part Substack series on the influencer campaign against birth control. She found dozens of Instagram posts from various lifestyle influencers that all had the same caption. They all said, and I quote, “I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the birth control pill was given out like candy to every female millennial at age 15. And now IVF is a $50 billion industry.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Abortion is very politically popular, and so I think even now it’s very interesting that you’ll see the Trump administration has refrained from taking certain moves to directly go after abortion, but has taken all of these many different moves to go after birth control and family planning. And I’ve read certain legal experts suspect as well, is that birth control in some ways is more vulnerable — because it’s increasingly less popular because of how much misinformation there is about it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Over the last four years, there have been anecdotal reports of young women who’ve discontinued hormonal birth control because of what they see online. This is backed up by a 2024 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation. 49% of women between 18 and 25 have been served content about birth control on social media. 14% said they made a change to their birth control method or considered a change because of something they heard online. Kylie said, it’ll be decades until we understand the long-term effects of the online campaign against birth control. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It’s easy to dismiss lifestyle content as frivolous and inconsequential. You might see a TikTok from a woman who brags about how her boyfriend pays all of their bills, and think… “It’s not that deep.” You might come across an influencer who questions the safety of IUDs and promotes natural cycle tracking — and it’s tempting to think… “That’s just her choice!” But the pink pill pipeline is real. Content targeted at women is rapidly becoming a vehicle for extremist ideology. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Since Trump’s re-election, concerns about the manosphere have dominated the political conversation. For all of the hand-wringing about bro-y podcasts radicalizing young men, there’s very little discussion about the young women buying into their own oppression. Content aimed at girls is just not taken seriously. That’s part of what makes the pink pill pipeline so effective. It’s the lack of awareness. There’s a political undercurrent to all of these girlish lifestyle videos, but it’s very easy to miss if you’re not already looking for it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But now, you know what to look for. Before you like a video, or follow an influencer, it’s worth taking a moment to really consider the agenda behind this content. Are they sharing a personal experience with one specific type of birth control? Or are they insisting that all birth control is bad — and that only the method they recommend is natural and healthy? Sure, the romantic date night content is cute, but… is the person posting it also telling you that you need to make yourself quiet and submissive if you want to find a man who’ll pick up the check? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The point is, you don’t have to engage with this content. But, if it comes across your feed, you should be ready to see it for what it is — and then you can keep scrolling. That’s it for our deep dive — but as usual, stick around after the credits for bonus content. And if you’re dying to go further down this rabbit hole, we’ll link to some further reading in our show notes. Until next week, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional production help from our intern, Lauren Yoon. The Close All Tabs team also includes editor Chris Hambrick and audio engineer, Brendan Willard. Additional music by APM. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This episode includes clips and archive tape from Impaulsive, This Past Weekend with Theo Von, Adin Ross, The Matrix, Fox News, NBC News, PBS Newshour, and TikTok creators @earthangelariana, @ulovelailahakim, @theandelelara, Courtney Palmer, @casiahwest, @theworkoutwitch, @whateverpod, @jayshetty, and @prettypolitics101. Thanks for listening. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>Yeah! Oh my God, now that I’m remembering it, I mean like in 2022, there was just like a viral moment of like a lot of different people theorizing that like, birth control makes you gay. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I saw your “birth control makes people a lesbian rumor” piece and I was like, “That’s crazy,” because every lesbian I know says the complete opposite, that they went off the pill and they were like, “I don’t even like men.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kylie Cheung: \u003c/strong>So fair, yeah. \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>"
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"title": "How the Furry Fandom Says Goodbye (Reload)",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Anthrocon, the largest gathering of furries in the world, just celebrated its 20th anniversary in July — so we’re re-airing one of our favorite episodes yet. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Furries are a community often known for wearing full-body animal suits at conventions, but the characters they inhabit, called “fursonas,” are much more than costumes. They’re deeply personal expressions of identity and creativity.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So when someone in the furry fandom dies, how does the community say goodbye? In some cases, they take to VR. Since 2020, a furry named Changa Husky has been running the \u003ca href=\"https://vrchat.com/home/launch?worldId=wrld_8b9be9e0-f4f3-4f3e-b671-0a0714fa262a\">Furry Family Ofrenda\u003c/a>, a virtual memorial space inspired by the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos. It’s a place where furries gather to remember and celebrate the people — and fursonas — who have passed. In this episode, Morgan steps into that virtual world to explore what it means for a community to grieve both a person and the character they brought to life.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-megaphone wp-block-embed-megaphone\">\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\nhttps://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC1428041683\n\u003c/div>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest: \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/changa.gay\">Changa Husky\u003c/a>, furry Vtuber and video producer\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://dogpatch.press/author/patchofurr/\">Patch O’Furr\u003c/a>, founder and writer, \u003cem>Dogpatch Press\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://thespinoff.co.nz/internet/11-01-2022/who-runs-the-internet-furries\">Who runs the internet? Furries\u003c/a> — Dylan Reeve, \u003cem>The Spinoff \u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://dogpatch.press/2024/02/22/remembering-mark-merlino/\">Remembering Mark Merlino (1952-2024), a founder and soul of furry fandom \u003c/a>— Patch O’Furr, \u003cem>Dogpatch Press \u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv0QaTW3kEY\">The Fandom: A Furry Documentary\u003c/a> — Ash Coyote, \u003cem>YouTube\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqOFuRic3KU\">Never Ending Song – Doggo Edition \u003c/a>— Changa Husky, \u003cem>YouTube\u003c/em> \u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://vrchat.com/home/launch?worldId=wrld_8b9be9e0-f4f3-4f3e-b671-0a0714fa262a\">Visit the Furry Family Ofrenda\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>\u003cem>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hello! Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show! And tell your friends! Post about it! Look, we don’t have a clipping army or bot farms to astroturf virality, so it would be a huge help to get the word out. All I’m saying is, we would not be opposed if you want to start a Close All Tabs stan account. Ok, let’s get to the show.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Earlier this month, the US was ablaze with fireworks for our country’s 250th anniversary. But in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the weekend of the Fourth of July is a big deal every year. That’s when the furries take over. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Every July, crowds of anthropomorphic animals descend upon downtown Pittsburgh — a huge boost to the local economy. You might see a cluster of attendees at the local cafe, dressed in regular clothes — but holding their lattes between gloves that look like furry paws. You’ll probably catch a few milling about the city in fuzzy fox ears and clip on tails. But at the convention center itself, out of the blazing summer heat, is another world of fantastical, otherworldly beasts. That’s where you’ll find the crowds in full fursuits, covered head to toe so they don’t look human and all. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This is Anthrocon, the world’s largest get together for furries. This year, the convention drew over 20,000 attendees for workshops, artist markets, charity events, meet and greets, and of course, the big fursuit parade. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Just over a year ago, just in time for Anthrocon, we aired a very special episode about furry funerals — what it means to grieve a version of someone that the rest of the world might not see. And how furries, being incredibly tech adept, have used virtual reality to memorialize their loved ones. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Among the Close All Tabs team, this is one of our favorite episodes of the show — and genuinely, maybe one of my favorite stories that I’ve ever worked on in my entire journalistic career. So in honor of Anthrocon’s big 20th anniversary this year, we’re re-airing this very special episode. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And if you’re like, wait, what the hell are furries? What does any of this have to do with your whole thing of “how the digital world shapes our real lives?” Well … stick around. This is \u003cem>How the Furry Fandom Says Goodbye. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I’m standing under a black sky with cobalt blue clouds. In front of me looms an Aztec pyramid. There are trees in the distance with puffs of fuchsia and chartreuse leaves. And there’s a massive tree growing in the center of the pyramid too. The steps leading to the top are lined with candles, as well as an array of offerings like food and sugar skulls. Strung throughout the space are vibrant paper flags featuring intricate designs of cartoon animals. A variety of creatures appear and then disappear around me. Foxes, dragons, and beings that look like more ethereal versions of Sonic the Hedgehog. And my guide to this mystical place?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> I’m Changa Husky. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa is an anthropomorphic, animated husky dog. He has gray fur that’s lighter around his muzzle and a tuft of black hair on top of his head. His eyes are icy blue behind gold-rimmed glasses and his brown ears move as his facial expressions change. He and I are together in this virtual world, but I’m talking to him through the screen of my laptop. And yes, there is a real person under his virtual costume. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> I am a furry of an older variety. I’ve been in the fandom for decades since at least the early to mid-90s, and I’m here to talk about, well, this world I built in virtual reality. We call this the Furry Family Ofrenda. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> This VR world is inspired by the Day of the Dead, the Mexican holiday dedicated to honoring the lives of those who have passed away. Families welcome back spirits of their loved ones with altars called “ofrendas,” adorned with photos, candles, flowers, and offerings of the departed’s favorite foods. This isn’t a holiday for mourning, but for celebrating. Changa shows me how this virtual world is dotted with altars, each one with a framed photo, candles and a plaque. They’re all dedicated to the fursonas of people who have passed away. Fursona is a portmanteau of fur and persona, essentially an alter ego. And just a note, in this episode, we’ll be referring to a few people, including Changa, by their “fursona” names. Furries are often the targets of harassment and bullying, so many of them are publicly known only by their pseudonyms to maintain their safety and privacy. Beyond that, fursonas are kind of like a drag persona. It’s how a lot of furries express themselves. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> A lot of drag personas are just that person exploring their identity. To be able to put on a mask and amplify your personality. It ends up being a way of exploring your identity and yourself. And not in those cliches of, “oh, I identify as blah, blah, blah.” It’s like, no, I know I’m human. But there are ways you can explore who you are and how you interact with the world and friends, through the lens of um like an anthropomorphic creature. It’s very much a medium. It’s like a medium of expression. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa stops at one particular altar with a framed photo of an older man, a human person, to be clear. He’s got glasses and he’s smiling from under his gray mustache. And he’s wearing a baseball cap with two fluffy auburn ears sticking out of it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> His fursona was a mustelid, a pine martin, a kind of tree weasel, and he was, well, very much the weasel persona. They have to be a little fearless, you know, tiny little carnivore. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> This pine martin was named Sy Sable, also known as Mark Merlino. He passed away a year ago, and he was Changa’s life partner. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> This project was his idea. So it was beautiful but painful that I had to add him in here. I was with him for close to 30 years before he passed. I mean, many marriages do not last that long. And here we are a polycule. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Mark Merlino and Mark’s other partner, Rodney O’Reilly, are known as the grandfathers of the furry fandom. Their house, where Changa also lives, has been a home base for the fandom for decades. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> Mark and Rodney, the founders of the first furry convention, were a bisexual couple, openly. And they started the convention in 1989, which was not the greatest time period to be very openly queer. Let’s be real, much less running a convention. And that became a safe space for a lot of people. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Now outsiders might only know the subculture as a weird kink for dressing up as animals. And because of that stigma, a lot of furries aren’t open about being furries to people outside of the fandom. And that means grieving, for furries, might look a little different. Even if someone wasn’t open about being a furry to the rest of the world, the furry community remembers that person’s fursona as much as their real-life presence. And then there’s the fandom’s technical aptitude. There’s a long running joke online that if a plane full of furries goes down, then Silicon Valley will crumble because furries built the modern IT industry. The furry fandom evolved with the internet and since the 80s, furries have always been pioneers of emerging tech. They’ve incorporated it into their costuming and conventions and even memorials. So what does a furry funeral look like? What does it mean to memorialize an aspect of someone’s life that may not have been part of their bodily form, but was still a part of the identity? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> We’ll come back to Changa and the Furry Family Ofrenda. But first, we need to understand this fandom. You know how this goes: we open a new tab. What does it mean to be a furry? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Look, I may be chronically online, but I’m still an outsider when it comes to this fandom. So to explain furries, I reached out to someone who’s actually part of the community. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Patch O’Furr:\u003c/strong> I’m Patch. I go by Patch O’Furr online. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Patch runs the furry news site, Dogpatch Press. The site covers furry conventions, the furry economy, and has even investigated furry crimes. But before all that, Patch was brand new to San Francisco and exploring the city’s nightlife. Back in 2012, he stumbled across a furry party at a gay bar within walking distance of his apartment. Out of curiosity, he stopped by. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Patch O’Furr:\u003c/strong> So I showed up and um you know I’m walking down a dark street and here’s this club in front of me with you know some muffled beats and some light coming in through the cracks and uh I walk up to the door and there’s like this beckoning werewolf paw pulling me in. And I walked into this just magical experience. It was being transported to another dimension. I went over towards the dance floor. This was a famous dive bar with like a little postage stamp of a dance floor and I was kind of lurking on the edge and then I saw this amazing sight. There was this six foot cartoon otter who came out from behind a curtain and it just gave me this urge to ask him to dance. And, you know, this is a cartoon character and it’s very loud. So we’re using kind of body language and he just pulls me in and we’re dancing. And I’m just sort of like, wow, this is a cartoon character, but I can actually hug him. And right there I decided I have to be one of these characters. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> The otter that Patch met was wearing a “fur suit.” Picture something like a mascot at a theme park. Some people build their own fur suits, which is pretty labor intensive and requires a lot of technical sewing skills. Others commission their fur suits from artists, but that can cost upwards of a couple thousand dollars. Patch ended up finding his fur suit on an auction site. There was one dog suit, a husky to be specific, that jumped out at him. He won the bid, and it arrived just in time for a local furry convention. Patch decided to debut the character that weekend. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Patch O’Furr:\u003c/strong> And there at the hotel when I put it on, it was a very strange feeling for the first 30 minutes. You’re completely immersed. There’s no skin, your senses are sort of muffled, you have tunnel vision. But then, you start to feel this connection with the people who are around you. They’re seeing you as somebody who’s different and kind of magical, and it’s a very addictive feeling. You know, it’s getting out of yourself, but it’s also making a new version of yourself. You can kind of be reborn with this one life that you’re given. And it’s really special to be able to do that and be validated by everybody else who’s doing that. There’s a strong overlap between queer communities and furry communities. And it’s not necessarily that furry is an identity itself. The more accurate definition is um we’re talking about expressing identity. So furry is queer as, you know, so is musical theater or disco or other things that are attached to the queer community, you now, drag. Drag is not always practiced by queer people, but it’s very strongly allied. So the same is true with furries. So they are adopting a fursona so they can be themselves more. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa, the husky we talked to earlier, pointed out that there are also a lot of neurodivergent people who gravitate toward the furry fandom. Putting on a fursona can be like masking. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> I mean, people like in this community can have a lot of social anxiety. Um, I mean we are a very neurodiverse, uh, community. We’re very queer, we’re very neurodiverse. And so this community, people will like put on these masks to like actually tell more truth about themselves. Cause I mean let’s be real, real, everybody out there in the real world is always wearing a mask. You’ve got your work persona. You have who you are at the grocery store or at church or what have you, um, you know even to family members and being able to put on say, I don’t know, a doggy persona and just explore that way and be seen that way is a way of interacting with friends and family, um or even just yourself in ways that are actually kind of therapeutic. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> So for a lot of furries, the fandom has provided a space to be queer and neurodivergent without judgment. Changa actually found the fandom after watching Lion King. Yes, that’s the 1994 Disney animated movie, Lion King. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> There’s always um like a piece of media that was the inflection point for a lot of furries. Classically, it was Disney’s Robin Hood, you know, something about those foxes. Let’s be real. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> But it was Lion King for you. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> Lion King. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> This was the early 90s at the peak of the AIDS epidemic. It was dangerous to be openly gay, especially in Kansas, where Changa lived at the time. He found solace online in animation role-playing discussion boards. And that’s where he met Mark, who was also obsessed with Disney animation. They hit it off and started talking on the phone. After visiting Mark in California once, Changa decided to move. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> And this is how I knew Mark was a keeper. He dropped everything, drove to Kansas and helped me move cross country. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Mark and Rodney had an extra room, so Changa ended up moving in and, over time, joined this queer furry polycule. Their house, which is known as the Prancing Skilltaire, is a base for a lot of the fandom. Since the 80s, the Prancing Skilltaire has hosted monthly furry parties, furry convention staff meetings, and other furry get-togethers. They’ve also taken in young queer people who were kicked out of their homes, and once even hosted an impromptu wedding. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>They’re over there doing their vows. And I just leaned over to Rodney going, “wait, wait. Are they trans? They’re trans.” And it’s like, “yeah, yeah.” It’s, like, “did we just have a trans wedding in our backyard?” He’s like, “yeah.” Like, huh, okay, cool. Um and that was like, oh God, that was more than a decade ago. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> The Prancing Skilltaire is just one hub for the furry community. The fandom has evolved into a widespread, thriving subculture, and as furries have passed on over the decades, the community has come up with unique ways to honor them. Some choose to pass their costume on to a loved one after they die, and let the character they embodied live a second life. Patch said that this also celebrates the artist who made the fursuit. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Patch O’Furr:\u003c/strong> Another way people can be remembered is they can just have their costume displayed. I know that there are people who have their costumes placed on like a dummy and it’s kept in a certain place in their house. So you can go and say hi to the person again and just have that experience of them having a presence, a physical presence still. There’s also ways that people set up having their costume worn by friends at special occasions, maybe once a year, just so they’re present again. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> That idea of coming back to visit the living really stuck with Mark Merlino, too. He had seen a lot of his peers in the fandom age and pass away, and wanted to honor their memory somehow. Changa said that Mark was obsessed with the Disney Pixar movie Coco, which is about spirits returning home on the day of the dead. In 2018, Mark built an ofrenda display at PAWCon, a furry convention that happened to take place during the holiday. It was just a small room at the event with a single decorated table, but people loved it. They left notes and offerings and photos. So the next year, Mark built another one. He wanted to make it an annual tradition. But then in 2020, the pandemic shut down conventions. It shut down everything else too. Life moved to the internet and so did grieving. That’s a new tab, but first a quick break. Okay, we’re back. Time to open a new tab. And for this one, we’re jumping back into VR. The Furry Family Ofrenda. You made it in one piece? We’re back in VR chat, in this world that Changa and Mark built with the Aztec pyramid, candles, and altars. Right now, Changa is showing me how users can leave offerings. He’s placing a virtual meatball sub on Mark’s ofronda. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Did he like meatball subs? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>Uh, yeah, actually he did. Um, we only have so much limited space. Um, I mean, all of this has to be downloaded and rendered on people’s, um, video cards. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I know Mark had built that small a friend at this real life in person convention. But can you tell me about this move to VR? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>At the time, of course, we’re all locked in in 2020. And this platform, VRChat, had existed already. And then I saw on Twitter at the time people posting pictures from this virtual convention, Furality. And when I went in there it was like, “this is the vibe of a real convention.” This was the real community that I knew. And there was something amazing about slipping on an avatar like this and actually seeing yourself the way you would internally think about yourself. Well, it’s like fursuiting only, well, I won’t say cheaper, good lord, the amount of computer upgrades and technology just keep up in here. But it’s, like, wearing a fursuit without suffocating. Hell, I had my midlife crisis and went canine. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> That’s when Mark had an idea. Instead of building a single physical ofrenda, why not build a VR world where each furry could have their own? He didn’t have the technical skills to make it happen, but Changa did. So, Changa started digging through a site called WikiFur, which is like Wikipedia for furries. He started adding ofrendas for each furry listed as deceased on WikiFur. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>And it just kind of blew up from there. Now it’s just more of a matter of trying to keep up as people pass. Which is, oh god, well I would really hope people would kind of stop doing that. That would be, that would be great. It’s not as bad as it was in 2020. 2020 was traumatic. You’re really changing when you’re sitting there counting the dead within your own community. And this actually gave a lot of people a space to kind of mourn, given that we weren’t able to really, like, be together in person. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> The original Furry Family Ofrenda was pretty basic. Changa had to work with pre-made assets and none of them were made for the Day of the Dead. It definitely wasn’t culturally accurate. In 2021, the Furry Family Ofrenda got a makeover with the help of a Mexican furry convention called Confuror. The event is based in Guadalajara, Mexico, but during the pandemic lockdown, it was entirely on VRChat, and they wanted to host part of it in the Furry Family Ofrenda. The event organizers hired Mexican artists to design new 3D assets for the space so that it could look more like a real Day of the Dead festival. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>I’m not from the culture that this celebration came comes from, but they helped immensely. I’m glad it’s the kind of culture that that was shareable, you know, it’s because it’s a beautiful way of dealing with mourning. Because I mean a lot of mourning is like sitting around crying and I know Mark preferred the idea of like joyfully talking about people that passed and remembering them, you know bring out the food celebrate, talk, and all that. And it was really wonderful to be able to bring a piece of that into a virtual space. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> In the five years since Changa built it, the Furry Family Ofrenda has memorialized countless furries. Some of the altars feature photos of people’s real faces, but many of them honor their fursona too, which may not be acknowledged in any real-life memorials. You don’t need a whole VR setup. You can access it from any computer or mobile app. That’s why it’s become an important gathering spot for the community. That connection to the larger community became really important to the Prancing Skilltaire household during the pandemic lockdowns. And then again, when Mark got sick. Let’s talk about that in a new tab. Remembering Sy Sable. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>When he went sick, I mean, both me and Rodney were like breaking. Let’s be real. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Mark had a stroke in December 2023, but was stable enough to come home in time for Christmas. Then he got sicker during that holiday week. After seven hospitals, an ICU stay, and a stint in a rehab center, Mark was diagnosed with stage four terminal liver cancer. That news shook the furry community. Once word got out, furries put together a GoFundMe to cover his medical bills. People who had attended Prancing Skilltaire parties or crashed on their sofa when they were kicked out for being gay, showed up to help with Mark’s hospice care. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>So there was a lot of outpouring of love. And I mean, when you have, you know, young, like early 20-year-old kid showing up at your door with a covered dish while, you know, your partner’s hospicing, it says a lot. That is community. That is, you know, the found family. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> And those who couldn’t help out in person kept him company in VR. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>We were bringing in, you know, had a tablet for Mark, where he could talk over Discord with various friends that he’d gotten to know on VR. And so he was able, from his deathbed, to, you now, have conversations with various friends that we were scheduling. He could, essentially on a tablet, get to talk with people who are still presenting themselves with avatars and the way they saw themselves and the way he saw them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Mark passed away in his home at the Prancing Skilltaire last February. Changa and Rodney knew that Mark didn’t want a traditional somber funeral. Remember that bit about furries building the tech industry as we know it? Changa and Rodney incorporated that into Mark’s funeral too. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>We were both kind of agreement that it should be a big blow-out party. We would celebrate him and so we rented out a hall and given the virtual reality community that both he and I were involved in and close to the staff, the convention Furality decided to help us with some resources and they built a VR portal so that people could show up and give their respects virtually. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Furality is the virtual reality convention that initially got Mark and Changa into using VRChat. A VR portal is a massive screen that acts as a window between the real world and VR for people who can’t make it to events in person. Usually conventions, but in this case, a funeral. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>They rented out the equipment and we had to scout out how good the internet was because our requirements, just a little off the beaten path of normally. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> So the physical funeral was beamed into a virtual room that Furality had built for the event. Meanwhile, that virtual room was beamed into the funeral. People took turns speaking about Mark. They either spoke from the real life podium or from a huge screen that displayed the VR portal. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>We did have also several hundred people actually at the event, and there was that level of chaos that um, technical chaos that just keeps me focused. Like, “okay, we need to string cable.” Really what it came down to is it really felt like every other community social convention sort of situation that we’d been trained for, that like we essentially took all the stuff we would have done setting up at a hotel for a convention, just really concentrated in a hurry, in a hall. We had drawing pads where people were sketching, little tribute sort of things. I brought in a little portable TV from the 80s, and it was playing media that was related to Sy, some of his stuff he’d shot. So there’s like all this mix of kind of like technology, retro technology, art, and of course junk food. We actually had fursuiters. People got into fursuit too. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I mean, it doesn’t sound like any funeral I’ve ever seen or been to. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>Oh, that’s probably the case. Yeah, it was like a mini party convention. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I mean, aside from huge technical feat, which is very cool, it also sounds like it was a real community event. What was it like to add him to the ofrenda? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>That was painful, that was by myself. I did not grieve at the memorial, I was just too busy, I kept myself distracted. But adding him to the ofrenda was just, oh, oh, that’s was a painful upload. I never prepared for that, but it was kind of fitting that he would end up getting put into the thing that he, well he spurned on. It was like the project that he put on to me, and now I have to keep that torch going for him. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa actually hasn’t visited Mark’s altar much since uploading it. He says he’s been avoiding it. This interview, where he showed me around, was one of the first times he’s back. Like his funeral itself, many of the memorials and tributes honoring Mark are really for the greater furry community to pay their respects. Changa said he struggles to grieve at these community spaces. Like last year, Furality wanted to honor Mark during the convention’s closing ceremony. So they asked Changa for a photo of Mark’s VR avatar. Since there weren’t any good ones available, Changa had to put on Mark’s fursona in VR. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>I had to get into his avatar with a photographer and kind of do a shoot. And that was painful. You know, it’s like, I really wanted to get that over with. Yeah, well, yeah, get slipping into your dead partner’s body, essentially. But it was a beautiful tribute when they actually did it. It was lovely. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Instead of these public tributes, Changa has his own way of honoring Mark’s memory. And of course, it involves virtual reality. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>I’m a good video editor and I was doing a whole bunch of very nostalgic stuff with modern music, you know, where I’m like putting people in original like movie footage — doing that scene from Risky Business, you now where they slide in, except it’s a werewolf. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa and his friends record the footage using tracking rigs. They dance and lip sync to the music, and then Changa composites their fursonas over movie scenes. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>And the first one I worked on was from The Birdcage. It’s that iconic scene on the park bench with the boat going by the harbor. And that was the moment where Robin Williams and Nathan Lane’s characters are sitting down and it’s kind of the, you know, “I’m 50 whatever and you’re my family. You’re the only person I wanna spend the rest of my life with.” It is iconic queer media. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Robin Williams: \u003c/strong>What does it matter? Take it all. I’m 50 years old. There’s only one place in the world I call home, and it’s because you’re there. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> The birdcage scene in Changa’s music video is just a few seconds long. It has Changa as big, gray, husky fursona sitting on the bench, dressed in red pinstripe pants and rose-tinted glasses. It’s just like the outfit Nathan Lane wore in the movie. Changa lip syncs a line from the song, and then the music video shifts to another movie. But before the scene flashes by, you might catch a glimpse of Mark’s fursana, the mustelid called Sy Sable perched on the bench next to Changa. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>I just hope he could see it wherever he is. I don’t think they have YouTube. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Like we said at the top, this episode first aired a year ago. We recently caught up with Changa over email. He said he’s actually planning a rebuild of the Furry Family Ofrenda, with the help of a larger development team (of fellow furries, of course) and better technology. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>His hope is that it’ll be easier to find individual altars in this revamped world, and implement a better system for submitting information for each memorial. Basically, streamlining the whole process so this world is easier to manage, and is more accessible.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Although he spends a lot of time maintaining the Furry Family Ofrenda, Changa hadn’t been to Mark’s altar much since his passing — except for our interview last year. But a few months later, on Dia de los Muertos, Changa finally sat down at Mark’s memorial, and took in the world they built together.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Over email, he said: “Dealing with loss can really be such a slow burn.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We’ll be back next week with another deep dive. For now, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Chris Egusa and edited by Jen Chien, who is our Director of Podcasts. The Close All Tabs team also includes producer Maya Cueva, editor Chris Hambrick, and audio engineer Brendan Willard. Our intern is Lauren Yoon. Additional music by APM.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K-84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches. If you like these deep dives and want to support public media, become a member at donate dot KQED dot org slash podcasts! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Thanks for listening! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Anthrocon, the largest gathering of furries in the world, just celebrated its 20th anniversary in July — so we’re re-airing one of our favorite episodes yet. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Furries are a community often known for wearing full-body animal suits at conventions, but the characters they inhabit, called “fursonas,” are much more than costumes. They’re deeply personal expressions of identity and creativity.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Furries are a community often known for wearing full-body animal suits at conventions, but the characters they inhabit, called “fursonas,” are much more than costumes. They’re deeply personal expressions of identity and creativity.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So when someone in the furry fandom dies, how does the community say goodbye? In some cases, they take to VR. Since 2020, a furry named Changa Husky has been running the \u003ca href=\"https://vrchat.com/home/launch?worldId=wrld_8b9be9e0-f4f3-4f3e-b671-0a0714fa262a\">Furry Family Ofrenda\u003c/a>, a virtual memorial space inspired by the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos. It’s a place where furries gather to remember and celebrate the people — and fursonas — who have passed. In this episode, Morgan steps into that virtual world to explore what it means for a community to grieve both a person and the character they brought to life.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So when someone in the furry fandom dies, how does the community say goodbye? In some cases, they take to VR. Since 2020, a furry named Changa Husky has been running the \u003ca href=\"https://vrchat.com/home/launch?worldId=wrld_8b9be9e0-f4f3-4f3e-b671-0a0714fa262a\">Furry Family Ofrenda\u003c/a>, a virtual memorial space inspired by the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos. It’s a place where furries gather to remember and celebrate the people — and fursonas — who have passed. In this episode, Morgan steps into that virtual world to explore what it means for a community to grieve both a person and the character they brought to life.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-megaphone wp-block-embed-megaphone\">\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\nhttps://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC1428041683\n\u003c/div>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-megaphone wp-block-embed-megaphone\">\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\nhttps://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC1428041683\n\u003c/div>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"Changa Husky, furry Vtuber and video producer",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/changa.gay\">Changa Husky\u003c/a>, furry Vtuber and video producer\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/changa.gay\">Changa Husky\u003c/a>, furry Vtuber and video producer\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://dogpatch.press/author/patchofurr/\">Patch O’Furr\u003c/a>, founder and writer, \u003cem>Dogpatch Press\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"Who runs the internet? Furries — Dylan Reeve, The Spinoff ",
"Remembering Mark Merlino (1952-2024), a founder and soul of furry fandom — Patch O’Furr, Dogpatch Press ",
"The Fandom: A Furry Documentary — Ash Coyote, YouTube",
"Never Ending Song – Doggo Edition — Changa Husky, YouTube ",
"Visit the Furry Family Ofrenda"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://thespinoff.co.nz/internet/11-01-2022/who-runs-the-internet-furries\">Who runs the internet? Furries\u003c/a> — Dylan Reeve, \u003cem>The Spinoff \u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://thespinoff.co.nz/internet/11-01-2022/who-runs-the-internet-furries\">Who runs the internet? Furries\u003c/a> — Dylan Reeve, \u003cem>The Spinoff \u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://dogpatch.press/2024/02/22/remembering-mark-merlino/\">Remembering Mark Merlino (1952-2024), a founder and soul of furry fandom \u003c/a>— Patch O’Furr, \u003cem>Dogpatch Press \u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://dogpatch.press/2024/02/22/remembering-mark-merlino/\">Remembering Mark Merlino (1952-2024), a founder and soul of furry fandom \u003c/a>— Patch O’Furr, \u003cem>Dogpatch Press \u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv0QaTW3kEY\">The Fandom: A Furry Documentary\u003c/a> — Ash Coyote, \u003cem>YouTube\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqOFuRic3KU\">Never Ending Song – Doggo Edition \u003c/a>— Changa Husky, \u003cem>YouTube\u003c/em> \u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqOFuRic3KU\">Never Ending Song – Doggo Edition \u003c/a>— Changa Husky, \u003cem>YouTube\u003c/em> \u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://vrchat.com/home/launch?worldId=wrld_8b9be9e0-f4f3-4f3e-b671-0a0714fa262a\">Visit the Furry Family Ofrenda\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://vrchat.com/home/launch?worldId=wrld_8b9be9e0-f4f3-4f3e-b671-0a0714fa262a\">Visit the Furry Family Ofrenda\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>\u003cem>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hello! Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show! And tell your friends! Post about it! Look, we don’t have a clipping army or bot farms to astroturf virality, so it would be a huge help to get the word out. All I’m saying is, we would not be opposed if you want to start a Close All Tabs stan account. Ok, let’s get to the show.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hello! Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show! And tell your friends! Post about it! Look, we don’t have a clipping army or bot farms to astroturf virality, so it would be a huge help to get the word out. All I’m saying is, we would not be opposed if you want to start a Close All Tabs stan account. Ok, let’s get to the show.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Earlier this month, the US was ablaze with fireworks for our country’s 250th anniversary. But in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the weekend of the Fourth of July is a big deal every year. That’s when the furries take over. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Earlier this month, the US was ablaze with fireworks for our country’s 250th anniversary. But in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the weekend of the Fourth of July is a big deal every year. That’s when the furries take over. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Every July, crowds of anthropomorphic animals descend upon downtown Pittsburgh — a huge boost to the local economy. You might see a cluster of attendees at the local cafe, dressed in regular clothes — but holding their lattes between gloves that look like furry paws. You’ll probably catch a few milling about the city in fuzzy fox ears and clip on tails. But at the convention center itself, out of the blazing summer heat, is another world of fantastical, otherworldly beasts. That’s where you’ll find the crowds in full fursuits, covered head to toe so they don’t look human and all. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Every July, crowds of anthropomorphic animals descend upon downtown Pittsburgh — a huge boost to the local economy. You might see a cluster of attendees at the local cafe, dressed in regular clothes — but holding their lattes between gloves that look like furry paws. You’ll probably catch a few milling about the city in fuzzy fox ears and clip on tails. But at the convention center itself, out of the blazing summer heat, is another world of fantastical, otherworldly beasts. That’s where you’ll find the crowds in full fursuits, covered head to toe so they don’t look human and all. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This is Anthrocon, the world’s largest get together for furries. This year, the convention drew over 20,000 attendees for workshops, artist markets, charity events, meet and greets, and of course, the big fursuit parade. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>This is Anthrocon, the world’s largest get together for furries. This year, the convention drew over 20,000 attendees for workshops, artist markets, charity events, meet and greets, and of course, the big fursuit parade. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Just over a year ago, just in time for Anthrocon, we aired a very special episode about furry funerals — what it means to grieve a version of someone that the rest of the world might not see. And how furries, being incredibly tech adept, have used virtual reality to memorialize their loved ones. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Just over a year ago, just in time for Anthrocon, we aired a very special episode about furry funerals — what it means to grieve a version of someone that the rest of the world might not see. And how furries, being incredibly tech adept, have used virtual reality to memorialize their loved ones. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Among the Close All Tabs team, this is one of our favorite episodes of the show — and genuinely, maybe one of my favorite stories that I’ve ever worked on in my entire journalistic career. So in honor of Anthrocon’s big 20th anniversary this year, we’re re-airing this very special episode. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Among the Close All Tabs team, this is one of our favorite episodes of the show — and genuinely, maybe one of my favorite stories that I’ve ever worked on in my entire journalistic career. So in honor of Anthrocon’s big 20th anniversary this year, we’re re-airing this very special episode. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And if you’re like, wait, what the hell are furries? What does any of this have to do with your whole thing of “how the digital world shapes our real lives?” Well … stick around. This is \u003cem>How the Furry Fandom Says Goodbye. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And if you’re like, wait, what the hell are furries? What does any of this have to do with your whole thing of “how the digital world shapes our real lives?” Well … stick around. This is \u003cem>How the Furry Fandom Says Goodbye. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I’m standing under a black sky with cobalt blue clouds. In front of me looms an Aztec pyramid. There are trees in the distance with puffs of fuchsia and chartreuse leaves. And there’s a massive tree growing in the center of the pyramid too. The steps leading to the top are lined with candles, as well as an array of offerings like food and sugar skulls. Strung throughout the space are vibrant paper flags featuring intricate designs of cartoon animals. A variety of creatures appear and then disappear around me. Foxes, dragons, and beings that look like more ethereal versions of Sonic the Hedgehog. And my guide to this mystical place?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I’m standing under a black sky with cobalt blue clouds. In front of me looms an Aztec pyramid. There are trees in the distance with puffs of fuchsia and chartreuse leaves. And there’s a massive tree growing in the center of the pyramid too. The steps leading to the top are lined with candles, as well as an array of offerings like food and sugar skulls. Strung throughout the space are vibrant paper flags featuring intricate designs of cartoon animals. A variety of creatures appear and then disappear around me. Foxes, dragons, and beings that look like more ethereal versions of Sonic the Hedgehog. And my guide to this mystical place?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> I’m Changa Husky. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> I’m Changa Husky. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa is an anthropomorphic, animated husky dog. He has gray fur that’s lighter around his muzzle and a tuft of black hair on top of his head. His eyes are icy blue behind gold-rimmed glasses and his brown ears move as his facial expressions change. He and I are together in this virtual world, but I’m talking to him through the screen of my laptop. And yes, there is a real person under his virtual costume. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa is an anthropomorphic, animated husky dog. He has gray fur that’s lighter around his muzzle and a tuft of black hair on top of his head. His eyes are icy blue behind gold-rimmed glasses and his brown ears move as his facial expressions change. He and I are together in this virtual world, but I’m talking to him through the screen of my laptop. And yes, there is a real person under his virtual costume. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> I am a furry of an older variety. I’ve been in the fandom for decades since at least the early to mid-90s, and I’m here to talk about, well, this world I built in virtual reality. We call this the Furry Family Ofrenda. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> I am a furry of an older variety. I’ve been in the fandom for decades since at least the early to mid-90s, and I’m here to talk about, well, this world I built in virtual reality. We call this the Furry Family Ofrenda. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> This VR world is inspired by the Day of the Dead, the Mexican holiday dedicated to honoring the lives of those who have passed away. Families welcome back spirits of their loved ones with altars called “ofrendas,” adorned with photos, candles, flowers, and offerings of the departed’s favorite foods. This isn’t a holiday for mourning, but for celebrating. Changa shows me how this virtual world is dotted with altars, each one with a framed photo, candles and a plaque. They’re all dedicated to the fursonas of people who have passed away. Fursona is a portmanteau of fur and persona, essentially an alter ego. And just a note, in this episode, we’ll be referring to a few people, including Changa, by their “fursona” names. Furries are often the targets of harassment and bullying, so many of them are publicly known only by their pseudonyms to maintain their safety and privacy. Beyond that, fursonas are kind of like a drag persona. It’s how a lot of furries express themselves. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> This VR world is inspired by the Day of the Dead, the Mexican holiday dedicated to honoring the lives of those who have passed away. Families welcome back spirits of their loved ones with altars called “ofrendas,” adorned with photos, candles, flowers, and offerings of the departed’s favorite foods. This isn’t a holiday for mourning, but for celebrating. Changa shows me how this virtual world is dotted with altars, each one with a framed photo, candles and a plaque. They’re all dedicated to the fursonas of people who have passed away. Fursona is a portmanteau of fur and persona, essentially an alter ego. And just a note, in this episode, we’ll be referring to a few people, including Changa, by their “fursona” names. Furries are often the targets of harassment and bullying, so many of them are publicly known only by their pseudonyms to maintain their safety and privacy. Beyond that, fursonas are kind of like a drag persona. It’s how a lot of furries express themselves. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> A lot of drag personas are just that person exploring their identity. To be able to put on a mask and amplify your personality. It ends up being a way of exploring your identity and yourself. And not in those cliches of, “oh, I identify as blah, blah, blah.” It’s like, no, I know I’m human. But there are ways you can explore who you are and how you interact with the world and friends, through the lens of um like an anthropomorphic creature. It’s very much a medium. It’s like a medium of expression. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> A lot of drag personas are just that person exploring their identity. To be able to put on a mask and amplify your personality. It ends up being a way of exploring your identity and yourself. And not in those cliches of, “oh, I identify as blah, blah, blah.” It’s like, no, I know I’m human. But there are ways you can explore who you are and how you interact with the world and friends, through the lens of um like an anthropomorphic creature. It’s very much a medium. It’s like a medium of expression. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa stops at one particular altar with a framed photo of an older man, a human person, to be clear. He’s got glasses and he’s smiling from under his gray mustache. And he’s wearing a baseball cap with two fluffy auburn ears sticking out of it. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa stops at one particular altar with a framed photo of an older man, a human person, to be clear. He’s got glasses and he’s smiling from under his gray mustache. And he’s wearing a baseball cap with two fluffy auburn ears sticking out of it. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> His fursona was a mustelid, a pine martin, a kind of tree weasel, and he was, well, very much the weasel persona. They have to be a little fearless, you know, tiny little carnivore. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> His fursona was a mustelid, a pine martin, a kind of tree weasel, and he was, well, very much the weasel persona. They have to be a little fearless, you know, tiny little carnivore. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> This pine martin was named Sy Sable, also known as Mark Merlino. He passed away a year ago, and he was Changa’s life partner. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> This pine martin was named Sy Sable, also known as Mark Merlino. He passed away a year ago, and he was Changa’s life partner. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> This project was his idea. So it was beautiful but painful that I had to add him in here. I was with him for close to 30 years before he passed. I mean, many marriages do not last that long. And here we are a polycule. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> This project was his idea. So it was beautiful but painful that I had to add him in here. I was with him for close to 30 years before he passed. I mean, many marriages do not last that long. And here we are a polycule. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Mark Merlino and Mark’s other partner, Rodney O’Reilly, are known as the grandfathers of the furry fandom. Their house, where Changa also lives, has been a home base for the fandom for decades. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Mark Merlino and Mark’s other partner, Rodney O’Reilly, are known as the grandfathers of the furry fandom. Their house, where Changa also lives, has been a home base for the fandom for decades. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> Mark and Rodney, the founders of the first furry convention, were a bisexual couple, openly. And they started the convention in 1989, which was not the greatest time period to be very openly queer. Let’s be real, much less running a convention. And that became a safe space for a lot of people. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> Mark and Rodney, the founders of the first furry convention, were a bisexual couple, openly. And they started the convention in 1989, which was not the greatest time period to be very openly queer. Let’s be real, much less running a convention. And that became a safe space for a lot of people. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Now outsiders might only know the subculture as a weird kink for dressing up as animals. And because of that stigma, a lot of furries aren’t open about being furries to people outside of the fandom. And that means grieving, for furries, might look a little different. Even if someone wasn’t open about being a furry to the rest of the world, the furry community remembers that person’s fursona as much as their real-life presence. And then there’s the fandom’s technical aptitude. There’s a long running joke online that if a plane full of furries goes down, then Silicon Valley will crumble because furries built the modern IT industry. The furry fandom evolved with the internet and since the 80s, furries have always been pioneers of emerging tech. They’ve incorporated it into their costuming and conventions and even memorials. So what does a furry funeral look like? What does it mean to memorialize an aspect of someone’s life that may not have been part of their bodily form, but was still a part of the identity? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Now outsiders might only know the subculture as a weird kink for dressing up as animals. And because of that stigma, a lot of furries aren’t open about being furries to people outside of the fandom. And that means grieving, for furries, might look a little different. Even if someone wasn’t open about being a furry to the rest of the world, the furry community remembers that person’s fursona as much as their real-life presence. And then there’s the fandom’s technical aptitude. There’s a long running joke online that if a plane full of furries goes down, then Silicon Valley will crumble because furries built the modern IT industry. The furry fandom evolved with the internet and since the 80s, furries have always been pioneers of emerging tech. They’ve incorporated it into their costuming and conventions and even memorials. So what does a furry funeral look like? What does it mean to memorialize an aspect of someone’s life that may not have been part of their bodily form, but was still a part of the identity? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> We’ll come back to Changa and the Furry Family Ofrenda. But first, we need to understand this fandom. You know how this goes: we open a new tab. What does it mean to be a furry? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> We’ll come back to Changa and the Furry Family Ofrenda. But first, we need to understand this fandom. You know how this goes: we open a new tab. What does it mean to be a furry? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Look, I may be chronically online, but I’m still an outsider when it comes to this fandom. So to explain furries, I reached out to someone who’s actually part of the community. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Look, I may be chronically online, but I’m still an outsider when it comes to this fandom. So to explain furries, I reached out to someone who’s actually part of the community. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Patch O’Furr:\u003c/strong> I’m Patch. I go by Patch O’Furr online. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Patch O’Furr:\u003c/strong> I’m Patch. I go by Patch O’Furr online. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Patch runs the furry news site, Dogpatch Press. The site covers furry conventions, the furry economy, and has even investigated furry crimes. But before all that, Patch was brand new to San Francisco and exploring the city’s nightlife. Back in 2012, he stumbled across a furry party at a gay bar within walking distance of his apartment. Out of curiosity, he stopped by. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Patch runs the furry news site, Dogpatch Press. The site covers furry conventions, the furry economy, and has even investigated furry crimes. But before all that, Patch was brand new to San Francisco and exploring the city’s nightlife. Back in 2012, he stumbled across a furry party at a gay bar within walking distance of his apartment. Out of curiosity, he stopped by. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Patch O’Furr:\u003c/strong> So I showed up and um you know I’m walking down a dark street and here’s this club in front of me with you know some muffled beats and some light coming in through the cracks and uh I walk up to the door and there’s like this beckoning werewolf paw pulling me in. And I walked into this just magical experience. It was being transported to another dimension. I went over towards the dance floor. This was a famous dive bar with like a little postage stamp of a dance floor and I was kind of lurking on the edge and then I saw this amazing sight. There was this six foot cartoon otter who came out from behind a curtain and it just gave me this urge to ask him to dance. And, you know, this is a cartoon character and it’s very loud. So we’re using kind of body language and he just pulls me in and we’re dancing. And I’m just sort of like, wow, this is a cartoon character, but I can actually hug him. And right there I decided I have to be one of these characters. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Patch O’Furr:\u003c/strong> So I showed up and um you know I’m walking down a dark street and here’s this club in front of me with you know some muffled beats and some light coming in through the cracks and uh I walk up to the door and there’s like this beckoning werewolf paw pulling me in. And I walked into this just magical experience. It was being transported to another dimension. I went over towards the dance floor. This was a famous dive bar with like a little postage stamp of a dance floor and I was kind of lurking on the edge and then I saw this amazing sight. There was this six foot cartoon otter who came out from behind a curtain and it just gave me this urge to ask him to dance. And, you know, this is a cartoon character and it’s very loud. So we’re using kind of body language and he just pulls me in and we’re dancing. And I’m just sort of like, wow, this is a cartoon character, but I can actually hug him. And right there I decided I have to be one of these characters. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> The otter that Patch met was wearing a “fur suit.” Picture something like a mascot at a theme park. Some people build their own fur suits, which is pretty labor intensive and requires a lot of technical sewing skills. Others commission their fur suits from artists, but that can cost upwards of a couple thousand dollars. Patch ended up finding his fur suit on an auction site. There was one dog suit, a husky to be specific, that jumped out at him. He won the bid, and it arrived just in time for a local furry convention. Patch decided to debut the character that weekend. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> The otter that Patch met was wearing a “fur suit.” Picture something like a mascot at a theme park. Some people build their own fur suits, which is pretty labor intensive and requires a lot of technical sewing skills. Others commission their fur suits from artists, but that can cost upwards of a couple thousand dollars. Patch ended up finding his fur suit on an auction site. There was one dog suit, a husky to be specific, that jumped out at him. He won the bid, and it arrived just in time for a local furry convention. Patch decided to debut the character that weekend. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Patch O’Furr:\u003c/strong> And there at the hotel when I put it on, it was a very strange feeling for the first 30 minutes. You’re completely immersed. There’s no skin, your senses are sort of muffled, you have tunnel vision. But then, you start to feel this connection with the people who are around you. They’re seeing you as somebody who’s different and kind of magical, and it’s a very addictive feeling. You know, it’s getting out of yourself, but it’s also making a new version of yourself. You can kind of be reborn with this one life that you’re given. And it’s really special to be able to do that and be validated by everybody else who’s doing that. There’s a strong overlap between queer communities and furry communities. And it’s not necessarily that furry is an identity itself. The more accurate definition is um we’re talking about expressing identity. So furry is queer as, you know, so is musical theater or disco or other things that are attached to the queer community, you now, drag. Drag is not always practiced by queer people, but it’s very strongly allied. So the same is true with furries. So they are adopting a fursona so they can be themselves more. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Patch O’Furr:\u003c/strong> And there at the hotel when I put it on, it was a very strange feeling for the first 30 minutes. You’re completely immersed. There’s no skin, your senses are sort of muffled, you have tunnel vision. But then, you start to feel this connection with the people who are around you. They’re seeing you as somebody who’s different and kind of magical, and it’s a very addictive feeling. You know, it’s getting out of yourself, but it’s also making a new version of yourself. You can kind of be reborn with this one life that you’re given. And it’s really special to be able to do that and be validated by everybody else who’s doing that. There’s a strong overlap between queer communities and furry communities. And it’s not necessarily that furry is an identity itself. The more accurate definition is um we’re talking about expressing identity. So furry is queer as, you know, so is musical theater or disco or other things that are attached to the queer community, you now, drag. Drag is not always practiced by queer people, but it’s very strongly allied. So the same is true with furries. So they are adopting a fursona so they can be themselves more. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa, the husky we talked to earlier, pointed out that there are also a lot of neurodivergent people who gravitate toward the furry fandom. Putting on a fursona can be like masking. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa, the husky we talked to earlier, pointed out that there are also a lot of neurodivergent people who gravitate toward the furry fandom. Putting on a fursona can be like masking. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> I mean, people like in this community can have a lot of social anxiety. Um, I mean we are a very neurodiverse, uh, community. We’re very queer, we’re very neurodiverse. And so this community, people will like put on these masks to like actually tell more truth about themselves. Cause I mean let’s be real, real, everybody out there in the real world is always wearing a mask. You’ve got your work persona. You have who you are at the grocery store or at church or what have you, um, you know even to family members and being able to put on say, I don’t know, a doggy persona and just explore that way and be seen that way is a way of interacting with friends and family, um or even just yourself in ways that are actually kind of therapeutic. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> I mean, people like in this community can have a lot of social anxiety. Um, I mean we are a very neurodiverse, uh, community. We’re very queer, we’re very neurodiverse. And so this community, people will like put on these masks to like actually tell more truth about themselves. Cause I mean let’s be real, real, everybody out there in the real world is always wearing a mask. You’ve got your work persona. You have who you are at the grocery store or at church or what have you, um, you know even to family members and being able to put on say, I don’t know, a doggy persona and just explore that way and be seen that way is a way of interacting with friends and family, um or even just yourself in ways that are actually kind of therapeutic. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> So for a lot of furries, the fandom has provided a space to be queer and neurodivergent without judgment. Changa actually found the fandom after watching Lion King. Yes, that’s the 1994 Disney animated movie, Lion King. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> So for a lot of furries, the fandom has provided a space to be queer and neurodivergent without judgment. Changa actually found the fandom after watching Lion King. Yes, that’s the 1994 Disney animated movie, Lion King. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> There’s always um like a piece of media that was the inflection point for a lot of furries. Classically, it was Disney’s Robin Hood, you know, something about those foxes. Let’s be real. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> There’s always um like a piece of media that was the inflection point for a lot of furries. Classically, it was Disney’s Robin Hood, you know, something about those foxes. Let’s be real. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> But it was Lion King for you. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> But it was Lion King for you. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> Lion King. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> Lion King. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> This was the early 90s at the peak of the AIDS epidemic. It was dangerous to be openly gay, especially in Kansas, where Changa lived at the time. He found solace online in animation role-playing discussion boards. And that’s where he met Mark, who was also obsessed with Disney animation. They hit it off and started talking on the phone. After visiting Mark in California once, Changa decided to move. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> This was the early 90s at the peak of the AIDS epidemic. It was dangerous to be openly gay, especially in Kansas, where Changa lived at the time. He found solace online in animation role-playing discussion boards. And that’s where he met Mark, who was also obsessed with Disney animation. They hit it off and started talking on the phone. After visiting Mark in California once, Changa decided to move. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> And this is how I knew Mark was a keeper. He dropped everything, drove to Kansas and helped me move cross country. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> And this is how I knew Mark was a keeper. He dropped everything, drove to Kansas and helped me move cross country. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Mark and Rodney had an extra room, so Changa ended up moving in and, over time, joined this queer furry polycule. Their house, which is known as the Prancing Skilltaire, is a base for a lot of the fandom. Since the 80s, the Prancing Skilltaire has hosted monthly furry parties, furry convention staff meetings, and other furry get-togethers. They’ve also taken in young queer people who were kicked out of their homes, and once even hosted an impromptu wedding. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Mark and Rodney had an extra room, so Changa ended up moving in and, over time, joined this queer furry polycule. Their house, which is known as the Prancing Skilltaire, is a base for a lot of the fandom. Since the 80s, the Prancing Skilltaire has hosted monthly furry parties, furry convention staff meetings, and other furry get-togethers. They’ve also taken in young queer people who were kicked out of their homes, and once even hosted an impromptu wedding. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>They’re over there doing their vows. And I just leaned over to Rodney going, “wait, wait. Are they trans? They’re trans.” And it’s like, “yeah, yeah.” It’s, like, “did we just have a trans wedding in our backyard?” He’s like, “yeah.” Like, huh, okay, cool. Um and that was like, oh God, that was more than a decade ago. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>They’re over there doing their vows. And I just leaned over to Rodney going, “wait, wait. Are they trans? They’re trans.” And it’s like, “yeah, yeah.” It’s, like, “did we just have a trans wedding in our backyard?” He’s like, “yeah.” Like, huh, okay, cool. Um and that was like, oh God, that was more than a decade ago. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> The Prancing Skilltaire is just one hub for the furry community. The fandom has evolved into a widespread, thriving subculture, and as furries have passed on over the decades, the community has come up with unique ways to honor them. Some choose to pass their costume on to a loved one after they die, and let the character they embodied live a second life. Patch said that this also celebrates the artist who made the fursuit. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> The Prancing Skilltaire is just one hub for the furry community. The fandom has evolved into a widespread, thriving subculture, and as furries have passed on over the decades, the community has come up with unique ways to honor them. Some choose to pass their costume on to a loved one after they die, and let the character they embodied live a second life. Patch said that this also celebrates the artist who made the fursuit. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Patch O’Furr:\u003c/strong> Another way people can be remembered is they can just have their costume displayed. I know that there are people who have their costumes placed on like a dummy and it’s kept in a certain place in their house. So you can go and say hi to the person again and just have that experience of them having a presence, a physical presence still. There’s also ways that people set up having their costume worn by friends at special occasions, maybe once a year, just so they’re present again. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Patch O’Furr:\u003c/strong> Another way people can be remembered is they can just have their costume displayed. I know that there are people who have their costumes placed on like a dummy and it’s kept in a certain place in their house. So you can go and say hi to the person again and just have that experience of them having a presence, a physical presence still. There’s also ways that people set up having their costume worn by friends at special occasions, maybe once a year, just so they’re present again. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> That idea of coming back to visit the living really stuck with Mark Merlino, too. He had seen a lot of his peers in the fandom age and pass away, and wanted to honor their memory somehow. Changa said that Mark was obsessed with the Disney Pixar movie Coco, which is about spirits returning home on the day of the dead. In 2018, Mark built an ofrenda display at PAWCon, a furry convention that happened to take place during the holiday. It was just a small room at the event with a single decorated table, but people loved it. They left notes and offerings and photos. So the next year, Mark built another one. He wanted to make it an annual tradition. But then in 2020, the pandemic shut down conventions. It shut down everything else too. Life moved to the internet and so did grieving. That’s a new tab, but first a quick break. Okay, we’re back. Time to open a new tab. And for this one, we’re jumping back into VR. The Furry Family Ofrenda. You made it in one piece? We’re back in VR chat, in this world that Changa and Mark built with the Aztec pyramid, candles, and altars. Right now, Changa is showing me how users can leave offerings. He’s placing a virtual meatball sub on Mark’s ofronda. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> That idea of coming back to visit the living really stuck with Mark Merlino, too. He had seen a lot of his peers in the fandom age and pass away, and wanted to honor their memory somehow. Changa said that Mark was obsessed with the Disney Pixar movie Coco, which is about spirits returning home on the day of the dead. In 2018, Mark built an ofrenda display at PAWCon, a furry convention that happened to take place during the holiday. It was just a small room at the event with a single decorated table, but people loved it. They left notes and offerings and photos. So the next year, Mark built another one. He wanted to make it an annual tradition. But then in 2020, the pandemic shut down conventions. It shut down everything else too. Life moved to the internet and so did grieving. That’s a new tab, but first a quick break. Okay, we’re back. Time to open a new tab. And for this one, we’re jumping back into VR. The Furry Family Ofrenda. You made it in one piece? We’re back in VR chat, in this world that Changa and Mark built with the Aztec pyramid, candles, and altars. Right now, Changa is showing me how users can leave offerings. He’s placing a virtual meatball sub on Mark’s ofronda. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Did he like meatball subs? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Did he like meatball subs? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>Uh, yeah, actually he did. Um, we only have so much limited space. Um, I mean, all of this has to be downloaded and rendered on people’s, um, video cards. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>Uh, yeah, actually he did. Um, we only have so much limited space. Um, I mean, all of this has to be downloaded and rendered on people’s, um, video cards. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I know Mark had built that small a friend at this real life in person convention. But can you tell me about this move to VR? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I know Mark had built that small a friend at this real life in person convention. But can you tell me about this move to VR? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>At the time, of course, we’re all locked in in 2020. And this platform, VRChat, had existed already. And then I saw on Twitter at the time people posting pictures from this virtual convention, Furality. And when I went in there it was like, “this is the vibe of a real convention.” This was the real community that I knew. And there was something amazing about slipping on an avatar like this and actually seeing yourself the way you would internally think about yourself. Well, it’s like fursuiting only, well, I won’t say cheaper, good lord, the amount of computer upgrades and technology just keep up in here. But it’s, like, wearing a fursuit without suffocating. Hell, I had my midlife crisis and went canine. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>At the time, of course, we’re all locked in in 2020. And this platform, VRChat, had existed already. And then I saw on Twitter at the time people posting pictures from this virtual convention, Furality. And when I went in there it was like, “this is the vibe of a real convention.” This was the real community that I knew. And there was something amazing about slipping on an avatar like this and actually seeing yourself the way you would internally think about yourself. Well, it’s like fursuiting only, well, I won’t say cheaper, good lord, the amount of computer upgrades and technology just keep up in here. But it’s, like, wearing a fursuit without suffocating. Hell, I had my midlife crisis and went canine. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> That’s when Mark had an idea. Instead of building a single physical ofrenda, why not build a VR world where each furry could have their own? He didn’t have the technical skills to make it happen, but Changa did. So, Changa started digging through a site called WikiFur, which is like Wikipedia for furries. He started adding ofrendas for each furry listed as deceased on WikiFur. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> That’s when Mark had an idea. Instead of building a single physical ofrenda, why not build a VR world where each furry could have their own? He didn’t have the technical skills to make it happen, but Changa did. So, Changa started digging through a site called WikiFur, which is like Wikipedia for furries. He started adding ofrendas for each furry listed as deceased on WikiFur. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>And it just kind of blew up from there. Now it’s just more of a matter of trying to keep up as people pass. Which is, oh god, well I would really hope people would kind of stop doing that. That would be, that would be great. It’s not as bad as it was in 2020. 2020 was traumatic. You’re really changing when you’re sitting there counting the dead within your own community. And this actually gave a lot of people a space to kind of mourn, given that we weren’t able to really, like, be together in person. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>And it just kind of blew up from there. Now it’s just more of a matter of trying to keep up as people pass. Which is, oh god, well I would really hope people would kind of stop doing that. That would be, that would be great. It’s not as bad as it was in 2020. 2020 was traumatic. You’re really changing when you’re sitting there counting the dead within your own community. And this actually gave a lot of people a space to kind of mourn, given that we weren’t able to really, like, be together in person. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> The original Furry Family Ofrenda was pretty basic. Changa had to work with pre-made assets and none of them were made for the Day of the Dead. It definitely wasn’t culturally accurate. In 2021, the Furry Family Ofrenda got a makeover with the help of a Mexican furry convention called Confuror. The event is based in Guadalajara, Mexico, but during the pandemic lockdown, it was entirely on VRChat, and they wanted to host part of it in the Furry Family Ofrenda. The event organizers hired Mexican artists to design new 3D assets for the space so that it could look more like a real Day of the Dead festival. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> The original Furry Family Ofrenda was pretty basic. Changa had to work with pre-made assets and none of them were made for the Day of the Dead. It definitely wasn’t culturally accurate. In 2021, the Furry Family Ofrenda got a makeover with the help of a Mexican furry convention called Confuror. The event is based in Guadalajara, Mexico, but during the pandemic lockdown, it was entirely on VRChat, and they wanted to host part of it in the Furry Family Ofrenda. The event organizers hired Mexican artists to design new 3D assets for the space so that it could look more like a real Day of the Dead festival. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>I’m not from the culture that this celebration came comes from, but they helped immensely. I’m glad it’s the kind of culture that that was shareable, you know, it’s because it’s a beautiful way of dealing with mourning. Because I mean a lot of mourning is like sitting around crying and I know Mark preferred the idea of like joyfully talking about people that passed and remembering them, you know bring out the food celebrate, talk, and all that. And it was really wonderful to be able to bring a piece of that into a virtual space. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>I’m not from the culture that this celebration came comes from, but they helped immensely. I’m glad it’s the kind of culture that that was shareable, you know, it’s because it’s a beautiful way of dealing with mourning. Because I mean a lot of mourning is like sitting around crying and I know Mark preferred the idea of like joyfully talking about people that passed and remembering them, you know bring out the food celebrate, talk, and all that. And it was really wonderful to be able to bring a piece of that into a virtual space. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> In the five years since Changa built it, the Furry Family Ofrenda has memorialized countless furries. Some of the altars feature photos of people’s real faces, but many of them honor their fursona too, which may not be acknowledged in any real-life memorials. You don’t need a whole VR setup. You can access it from any computer or mobile app. That’s why it’s become an important gathering spot for the community. That connection to the larger community became really important to the Prancing Skilltaire household during the pandemic lockdowns. And then again, when Mark got sick. Let’s talk about that in a new tab. Remembering Sy Sable. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> In the five years since Changa built it, the Furry Family Ofrenda has memorialized countless furries. Some of the altars feature photos of people’s real faces, but many of them honor their fursona too, which may not be acknowledged in any real-life memorials. You don’t need a whole VR setup. You can access it from any computer or mobile app. That’s why it’s become an important gathering spot for the community. That connection to the larger community became really important to the Prancing Skilltaire household during the pandemic lockdowns. And then again, when Mark got sick. Let’s talk about that in a new tab. Remembering Sy Sable. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>When he went sick, I mean, both me and Rodney were like breaking. Let’s be real. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>When he went sick, I mean, both me and Rodney were like breaking. Let’s be real. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Mark had a stroke in December 2023, but was stable enough to come home in time for Christmas. Then he got sicker during that holiday week. After seven hospitals, an ICU stay, and a stint in a rehab center, Mark was diagnosed with stage four terminal liver cancer. That news shook the furry community. Once word got out, furries put together a GoFundMe to cover his medical bills. People who had attended Prancing Skilltaire parties or crashed on their sofa when they were kicked out for being gay, showed up to help with Mark’s hospice care. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Mark had a stroke in December 2023, but was stable enough to come home in time for Christmas. Then he got sicker during that holiday week. After seven hospitals, an ICU stay, and a stint in a rehab center, Mark was diagnosed with stage four terminal liver cancer. That news shook the furry community. Once word got out, furries put together a GoFundMe to cover his medical bills. People who had attended Prancing Skilltaire parties or crashed on their sofa when they were kicked out for being gay, showed up to help with Mark’s hospice care. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>So there was a lot of outpouring of love. And I mean, when you have, you know, young, like early 20-year-old kid showing up at your door with a covered dish while, you know, your partner’s hospicing, it says a lot. That is community. That is, you know, the found family. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>So there was a lot of outpouring of love. And I mean, when you have, you know, young, like early 20-year-old kid showing up at your door with a covered dish while, you know, your partner’s hospicing, it says a lot. That is community. That is, you know, the found family. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> And those who couldn’t help out in person kept him company in VR. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> And those who couldn’t help out in person kept him company in VR. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>We were bringing in, you know, had a tablet for Mark, where he could talk over Discord with various friends that he’d gotten to know on VR. And so he was able, from his deathbed, to, you now, have conversations with various friends that we were scheduling. He could, essentially on a tablet, get to talk with people who are still presenting themselves with avatars and the way they saw themselves and the way he saw them. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>We were bringing in, you know, had a tablet for Mark, where he could talk over Discord with various friends that he’d gotten to know on VR. And so he was able, from his deathbed, to, you now, have conversations with various friends that we were scheduling. He could, essentially on a tablet, get to talk with people who are still presenting themselves with avatars and the way they saw themselves and the way he saw them. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Mark passed away in his home at the Prancing Skilltaire last February. Changa and Rodney knew that Mark didn’t want a traditional somber funeral. Remember that bit about furries building the tech industry as we know it? Changa and Rodney incorporated that into Mark’s funeral too. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Mark passed away in his home at the Prancing Skilltaire last February. Changa and Rodney knew that Mark didn’t want a traditional somber funeral. Remember that bit about furries building the tech industry as we know it? Changa and Rodney incorporated that into Mark’s funeral too. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>We were both kind of agreement that it should be a big blow-out party. We would celebrate him and so we rented out a hall and given the virtual reality community that both he and I were involved in and close to the staff, the convention Furality decided to help us with some resources and they built a VR portal so that people could show up and give their respects virtually. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>We were both kind of agreement that it should be a big blow-out party. We would celebrate him and so we rented out a hall and given the virtual reality community that both he and I were involved in and close to the staff, the convention Furality decided to help us with some resources and they built a VR portal so that people could show up and give their respects virtually. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Furality is the virtual reality convention that initially got Mark and Changa into using VRChat. A VR portal is a massive screen that acts as a window between the real world and VR for people who can’t make it to events in person. Usually conventions, but in this case, a funeral. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>They rented out the equipment and we had to scout out how good the internet was because our requirements, just a little off the beaten path of normally. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> So the physical funeral was beamed into a virtual room that Furality had built for the event. Meanwhile, that virtual room was beamed into the funeral. People took turns speaking about Mark. They either spoke from the real life podium or from a huge screen that displayed the VR portal. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>We did have also several hundred people actually at the event, and there was that level of chaos that um, technical chaos that just keeps me focused. Like, “okay, we need to string cable.” Really what it came down to is it really felt like every other community social convention sort of situation that we’d been trained for, that like we essentially took all the stuff we would have done setting up at a hotel for a convention, just really concentrated in a hurry, in a hall. We had drawing pads where people were sketching, little tribute sort of things. I brought in a little portable TV from the 80s, and it was playing media that was related to Sy, some of his stuff he’d shot. So there’s like all this mix of kind of like technology, retro technology, art, and of course junk food. We actually had fursuiters. People got into fursuit too. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>We did have also several hundred people actually at the event, and there was that level of chaos that um, technical chaos that just keeps me focused. Like, “okay, we need to string cable.” Really what it came down to is it really felt like every other community social convention sort of situation that we’d been trained for, that like we essentially took all the stuff we would have done setting up at a hotel for a convention, just really concentrated in a hurry, in a hall. We had drawing pads where people were sketching, little tribute sort of things. I brought in a little portable TV from the 80s, and it was playing media that was related to Sy, some of his stuff he’d shot. So there’s like all this mix of kind of like technology, retro technology, art, and of course junk food. We actually had fursuiters. People got into fursuit too. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I mean, it doesn’t sound like any funeral I’ve ever seen or been to. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>Oh, that’s probably the case. Yeah, it was like a mini party convention. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>Oh, that’s probably the case. Yeah, it was like a mini party convention. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I mean, aside from huge technical feat, which is very cool, it also sounds like it was a real community event. What was it like to add him to the ofrenda? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I mean, aside from huge technical feat, which is very cool, it also sounds like it was a real community event. What was it like to add him to the ofrenda? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>That was painful, that was by myself. I did not grieve at the memorial, I was just too busy, I kept myself distracted. But adding him to the ofrenda was just, oh, oh, that’s was a painful upload. I never prepared for that, but it was kind of fitting that he would end up getting put into the thing that he, well he spurned on. It was like the project that he put on to me, and now I have to keep that torch going for him. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>That was painful, that was by myself. I did not grieve at the memorial, I was just too busy, I kept myself distracted. But adding him to the ofrenda was just, oh, oh, that’s was a painful upload. I never prepared for that, but it was kind of fitting that he would end up getting put into the thing that he, well he spurned on. It was like the project that he put on to me, and now I have to keep that torch going for him. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa actually hasn’t visited Mark’s altar much since uploading it. He says he’s been avoiding it. This interview, where he showed me around, was one of the first times he’s back. Like his funeral itself, many of the memorials and tributes honoring Mark are really for the greater furry community to pay their respects. Changa said he struggles to grieve at these community spaces. Like last year, Furality wanted to honor Mark during the convention’s closing ceremony. So they asked Changa for a photo of Mark’s VR avatar. Since there weren’t any good ones available, Changa had to put on Mark’s fursona in VR. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa actually hasn’t visited Mark’s altar much since uploading it. He says he’s been avoiding it. This interview, where he showed me around, was one of the first times he’s back. Like his funeral itself, many of the memorials and tributes honoring Mark are really for the greater furry community to pay their respects. Changa said he struggles to grieve at these community spaces. Like last year, Furality wanted to honor Mark during the convention’s closing ceremony. So they asked Changa for a photo of Mark’s VR avatar. Since there weren’t any good ones available, Changa had to put on Mark’s fursona in VR. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>I had to get into his avatar with a photographer and kind of do a shoot. And that was painful. You know, it’s like, I really wanted to get that over with. Yeah, well, yeah, get slipping into your dead partner’s body, essentially. But it was a beautiful tribute when they actually did it. It was lovely. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>I had to get into his avatar with a photographer and kind of do a shoot. And that was painful. You know, it’s like, I really wanted to get that over with. Yeah, well, yeah, get slipping into your dead partner’s body, essentially. But it was a beautiful tribute when they actually did it. It was lovely. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Instead of these public tributes, Changa has his own way of honoring Mark’s memory. And of course, it involves virtual reality. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Instead of these public tributes, Changa has his own way of honoring Mark’s memory. And of course, it involves virtual reality. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>I’m a good video editor and I was doing a whole bunch of very nostalgic stuff with modern music, you know, where I’m like putting people in original like movie footage — doing that scene from Risky Business, you now where they slide in, except it’s a werewolf. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>I’m a good video editor and I was doing a whole bunch of very nostalgic stuff with modern music, you know, where I’m like putting people in original like movie footage — doing that scene from Risky Business, you now where they slide in, except it’s a werewolf. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa and his friends record the footage using tracking rigs. They dance and lip sync to the music, and then Changa composites their fursonas over movie scenes. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa and his friends record the footage using tracking rigs. They dance and lip sync to the music, and then Changa composites their fursonas over movie scenes. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>And the first one I worked on was from The Birdcage. It’s that iconic scene on the park bench with the boat going by the harbor. And that was the moment where Robin Williams and Nathan Lane’s characters are sitting down and it’s kind of the, you know, “I’m 50 whatever and you’re my family. You’re the only person I wanna spend the rest of my life with.” It is iconic queer media. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>And the first one I worked on was from The Birdcage. It’s that iconic scene on the park bench with the boat going by the harbor. And that was the moment where Robin Williams and Nathan Lane’s characters are sitting down and it’s kind of the, you know, “I’m 50 whatever and you’re my family. You’re the only person I wanna spend the rest of my life with.” It is iconic queer media. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Robin Williams: \u003c/strong>What does it matter? Take it all. I’m 50 years old. There’s only one place in the world I call home, and it’s because you’re there. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Robin Williams: \u003c/strong>What does it matter? Take it all. I’m 50 years old. There’s only one place in the world I call home, and it’s because you’re there. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> The birdcage scene in Changa’s music video is just a few seconds long. It has Changa as big, gray, husky fursona sitting on the bench, dressed in red pinstripe pants and rose-tinted glasses. It’s just like the outfit Nathan Lane wore in the movie. Changa lip syncs a line from the song, and then the music video shifts to another movie. But before the scene flashes by, you might catch a glimpse of Mark’s fursana, the mustelid called Sy Sable perched on the bench next to Changa. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> The birdcage scene in Changa’s music video is just a few seconds long. It has Changa as big, gray, husky fursona sitting on the bench, dressed in red pinstripe pants and rose-tinted glasses. It’s just like the outfit Nathan Lane wore in the movie. Changa lip syncs a line from the song, and then the music video shifts to another movie. But before the scene flashes by, you might catch a glimpse of Mark’s fursana, the mustelid called Sy Sable perched on the bench next to Changa. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>I just hope he could see it wherever he is. I don’t think they have YouTube. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>I just hope he could see it wherever he is. I don’t think they have YouTube. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Like we said at the top, this episode first aired a year ago. We recently caught up with Changa over email. He said he’s actually planning a rebuild of the Furry Family Ofrenda, with the help of a larger development team (of fellow furries, of course) and better technology. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Like we said at the top, this episode first aired a year ago. We recently caught up with Changa over email. He said he’s actually planning a rebuild of the Furry Family Ofrenda, with the help of a larger development team (of fellow furries, of course) and better technology. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>His hope is that it’ll be easier to find individual altars in this revamped world, and implement a better system for submitting information for each memorial. Basically, streamlining the whole process so this world is easier to manage, and is more accessible.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>His hope is that it’ll be easier to find individual altars in this revamped world, and implement a better system for submitting information for each memorial. Basically, streamlining the whole process so this world is easier to manage, and is more accessible.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Although he spends a lot of time maintaining the Furry Family Ofrenda, Changa hadn’t been to Mark’s altar much since his passing — except for our interview last year. But a few months later, on Dia de los Muertos, Changa finally sat down at Mark’s memorial, and took in the world they built together.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Although he spends a lot of time maintaining the Furry Family Ofrenda, Changa hadn’t been to Mark’s altar much since his passing — except for our interview last year. But a few months later, on Dia de los Muertos, Changa finally sat down at Mark’s memorial, and took in the world they built together.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Over email, he said: “Dealing with loss can really be such a slow burn.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>We’ll be back next week with another deep dive. For now, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Chris Egusa and edited by Jen Chien, who is our Director of Podcasts. The Close All Tabs team also includes producer Maya Cueva, editor Chris Hambrick, and audio engineer Brendan Willard. Our intern is Lauren Yoon. Additional music by APM.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K-84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches. If you like these deep dives and want to support public media, become a member at donate dot KQED dot org slash podcasts! \u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Anthrocon, the largest gathering of furries in the world, just celebrated its 20th anniversary in July — so we’re re-airing one of our favorite episodes yet. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Furries are a community often known for wearing full-body animal suits at conventions, but the characters they inhabit, called “fursonas,” are much more than costumes. They’re deeply personal expressions of identity and creativity.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So when someone in the furry fandom dies, how does the community say goodbye? In some cases, they take to VR. Since 2020, a furry named Changa Husky has been running the \u003ca href=\"https://vrchat.com/home/launch?worldId=wrld_8b9be9e0-f4f3-4f3e-b671-0a0714fa262a\">Furry Family Ofrenda\u003c/a>, a virtual memorial space inspired by the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos. It’s a place where furries gather to remember and celebrate the people — and fursonas — who have passed. In this episode, Morgan steps into that virtual world to explore what it means for a community to grieve both a person and the character they brought to life.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-megaphone wp-block-embed-megaphone\">\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\nhttps://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC1428041683\n\u003c/div>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest: \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/changa.gay\">Changa Husky\u003c/a>, furry Vtuber and video producer\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://dogpatch.press/author/patchofurr/\">Patch O’Furr\u003c/a>, founder and writer, \u003cem>Dogpatch Press\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://thespinoff.co.nz/internet/11-01-2022/who-runs-the-internet-furries\">Who runs the internet? Furries\u003c/a> — Dylan Reeve, \u003cem>The Spinoff \u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://dogpatch.press/2024/02/22/remembering-mark-merlino/\">Remembering Mark Merlino (1952-2024), a founder and soul of furry fandom \u003c/a>— Patch O’Furr, \u003cem>Dogpatch Press \u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv0QaTW3kEY\">The Fandom: A Furry Documentary\u003c/a> — Ash Coyote, \u003cem>YouTube\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqOFuRic3KU\">Never Ending Song – Doggo Edition \u003c/a>— Changa Husky, \u003cem>YouTube\u003c/em> \u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://vrchat.com/home/launch?worldId=wrld_8b9be9e0-f4f3-4f3e-b671-0a0714fa262a\">Visit the Furry Family Ofrenda\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>\u003cem>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hello! Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show! And tell your friends! Post about it! Look, we don’t have a clipping army or bot farms to astroturf virality, so it would be a huge help to get the word out. All I’m saying is, we would not be opposed if you want to start a Close All Tabs stan account. Ok, let’s get to the show.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Earlier this month, the US was ablaze with fireworks for our country’s 250th anniversary. But in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the weekend of the Fourth of July is a big deal every year. That’s when the furries take over. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Every July, crowds of anthropomorphic animals descend upon downtown Pittsburgh — a huge boost to the local economy. You might see a cluster of attendees at the local cafe, dressed in regular clothes — but holding their lattes between gloves that look like furry paws. You’ll probably catch a few milling about the city in fuzzy fox ears and clip on tails. But at the convention center itself, out of the blazing summer heat, is another world of fantastical, otherworldly beasts. That’s where you’ll find the crowds in full fursuits, covered head to toe so they don’t look human and all. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This is Anthrocon, the world’s largest get together for furries. This year, the convention drew over 20,000 attendees for workshops, artist markets, charity events, meet and greets, and of course, the big fursuit parade. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Just over a year ago, just in time for Anthrocon, we aired a very special episode about furry funerals — what it means to grieve a version of someone that the rest of the world might not see. And how furries, being incredibly tech adept, have used virtual reality to memorialize their loved ones. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Among the Close All Tabs team, this is one of our favorite episodes of the show — and genuinely, maybe one of my favorite stories that I’ve ever worked on in my entire journalistic career. So in honor of Anthrocon’s big 20th anniversary this year, we’re re-airing this very special episode. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And if you’re like, wait, what the hell are furries? What does any of this have to do with your whole thing of “how the digital world shapes our real lives?” Well … stick around. This is \u003cem>How the Furry Fandom Says Goodbye. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I’m standing under a black sky with cobalt blue clouds. In front of me looms an Aztec pyramid. There are trees in the distance with puffs of fuchsia and chartreuse leaves. And there’s a massive tree growing in the center of the pyramid too. The steps leading to the top are lined with candles, as well as an array of offerings like food and sugar skulls. Strung throughout the space are vibrant paper flags featuring intricate designs of cartoon animals. A variety of creatures appear and then disappear around me. Foxes, dragons, and beings that look like more ethereal versions of Sonic the Hedgehog. And my guide to this mystical place?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> I’m Changa Husky. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa is an anthropomorphic, animated husky dog. He has gray fur that’s lighter around his muzzle and a tuft of black hair on top of his head. His eyes are icy blue behind gold-rimmed glasses and his brown ears move as his facial expressions change. He and I are together in this virtual world, but I’m talking to him through the screen of my laptop. And yes, there is a real person under his virtual costume. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> I am a furry of an older variety. I’ve been in the fandom for decades since at least the early to mid-90s, and I’m here to talk about, well, this world I built in virtual reality. We call this the Furry Family Ofrenda. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> This VR world is inspired by the Day of the Dead, the Mexican holiday dedicated to honoring the lives of those who have passed away. Families welcome back spirits of their loved ones with altars called “ofrendas,” adorned with photos, candles, flowers, and offerings of the departed’s favorite foods. This isn’t a holiday for mourning, but for celebrating. Changa shows me how this virtual world is dotted with altars, each one with a framed photo, candles and a plaque. They’re all dedicated to the fursonas of people who have passed away. Fursona is a portmanteau of fur and persona, essentially an alter ego. And just a note, in this episode, we’ll be referring to a few people, including Changa, by their “fursona” names. Furries are often the targets of harassment and bullying, so many of them are publicly known only by their pseudonyms to maintain their safety and privacy. Beyond that, fursonas are kind of like a drag persona. It’s how a lot of furries express themselves. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> A lot of drag personas are just that person exploring their identity. To be able to put on a mask and amplify your personality. It ends up being a way of exploring your identity and yourself. And not in those cliches of, “oh, I identify as blah, blah, blah.” It’s like, no, I know I’m human. But there are ways you can explore who you are and how you interact with the world and friends, through the lens of um like an anthropomorphic creature. It’s very much a medium. It’s like a medium of expression. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa stops at one particular altar with a framed photo of an older man, a human person, to be clear. He’s got glasses and he’s smiling from under his gray mustache. And he’s wearing a baseball cap with two fluffy auburn ears sticking out of it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> His fursona was a mustelid, a pine martin, a kind of tree weasel, and he was, well, very much the weasel persona. They have to be a little fearless, you know, tiny little carnivore. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> This pine martin was named Sy Sable, also known as Mark Merlino. He passed away a year ago, and he was Changa’s life partner. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> This project was his idea. So it was beautiful but painful that I had to add him in here. I was with him for close to 30 years before he passed. I mean, many marriages do not last that long. And here we are a polycule. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Mark Merlino and Mark’s other partner, Rodney O’Reilly, are known as the grandfathers of the furry fandom. Their house, where Changa also lives, has been a home base for the fandom for decades. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> Mark and Rodney, the founders of the first furry convention, were a bisexual couple, openly. And they started the convention in 1989, which was not the greatest time period to be very openly queer. Let’s be real, much less running a convention. And that became a safe space for a lot of people. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Now outsiders might only know the subculture as a weird kink for dressing up as animals. And because of that stigma, a lot of furries aren’t open about being furries to people outside of the fandom. And that means grieving, for furries, might look a little different. Even if someone wasn’t open about being a furry to the rest of the world, the furry community remembers that person’s fursona as much as their real-life presence. And then there’s the fandom’s technical aptitude. There’s a long running joke online that if a plane full of furries goes down, then Silicon Valley will crumble because furries built the modern IT industry. The furry fandom evolved with the internet and since the 80s, furries have always been pioneers of emerging tech. They’ve incorporated it into their costuming and conventions and even memorials. So what does a furry funeral look like? What does it mean to memorialize an aspect of someone’s life that may not have been part of their bodily form, but was still a part of the identity? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> We’ll come back to Changa and the Furry Family Ofrenda. But first, we need to understand this fandom. You know how this goes: we open a new tab. What does it mean to be a furry? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Look, I may be chronically online, but I’m still an outsider when it comes to this fandom. So to explain furries, I reached out to someone who’s actually part of the community. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Patch O’Furr:\u003c/strong> I’m Patch. I go by Patch O’Furr online. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Patch runs the furry news site, Dogpatch Press. The site covers furry conventions, the furry economy, and has even investigated furry crimes. But before all that, Patch was brand new to San Francisco and exploring the city’s nightlife. Back in 2012, he stumbled across a furry party at a gay bar within walking distance of his apartment. Out of curiosity, he stopped by. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Patch O’Furr:\u003c/strong> So I showed up and um you know I’m walking down a dark street and here’s this club in front of me with you know some muffled beats and some light coming in through the cracks and uh I walk up to the door and there’s like this beckoning werewolf paw pulling me in. And I walked into this just magical experience. It was being transported to another dimension. I went over towards the dance floor. This was a famous dive bar with like a little postage stamp of a dance floor and I was kind of lurking on the edge and then I saw this amazing sight. There was this six foot cartoon otter who came out from behind a curtain and it just gave me this urge to ask him to dance. And, you know, this is a cartoon character and it’s very loud. So we’re using kind of body language and he just pulls me in and we’re dancing. And I’m just sort of like, wow, this is a cartoon character, but I can actually hug him. And right there I decided I have to be one of these characters. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> The otter that Patch met was wearing a “fur suit.” Picture something like a mascot at a theme park. Some people build their own fur suits, which is pretty labor intensive and requires a lot of technical sewing skills. Others commission their fur suits from artists, but that can cost upwards of a couple thousand dollars. Patch ended up finding his fur suit on an auction site. There was one dog suit, a husky to be specific, that jumped out at him. He won the bid, and it arrived just in time for a local furry convention. Patch decided to debut the character that weekend. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Patch O’Furr:\u003c/strong> And there at the hotel when I put it on, it was a very strange feeling for the first 30 minutes. You’re completely immersed. There’s no skin, your senses are sort of muffled, you have tunnel vision. But then, you start to feel this connection with the people who are around you. They’re seeing you as somebody who’s different and kind of magical, and it’s a very addictive feeling. You know, it’s getting out of yourself, but it’s also making a new version of yourself. You can kind of be reborn with this one life that you’re given. And it’s really special to be able to do that and be validated by everybody else who’s doing that. There’s a strong overlap between queer communities and furry communities. And it’s not necessarily that furry is an identity itself. The more accurate definition is um we’re talking about expressing identity. So furry is queer as, you know, so is musical theater or disco or other things that are attached to the queer community, you now, drag. Drag is not always practiced by queer people, but it’s very strongly allied. So the same is true with furries. So they are adopting a fursona so they can be themselves more. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa, the husky we talked to earlier, pointed out that there are also a lot of neurodivergent people who gravitate toward the furry fandom. Putting on a fursona can be like masking. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> I mean, people like in this community can have a lot of social anxiety. Um, I mean we are a very neurodiverse, uh, community. We’re very queer, we’re very neurodiverse. And so this community, people will like put on these masks to like actually tell more truth about themselves. Cause I mean let’s be real, real, everybody out there in the real world is always wearing a mask. You’ve got your work persona. You have who you are at the grocery store or at church or what have you, um, you know even to family members and being able to put on say, I don’t know, a doggy persona and just explore that way and be seen that way is a way of interacting with friends and family, um or even just yourself in ways that are actually kind of therapeutic. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> So for a lot of furries, the fandom has provided a space to be queer and neurodivergent without judgment. Changa actually found the fandom after watching Lion King. Yes, that’s the 1994 Disney animated movie, Lion King. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> There’s always um like a piece of media that was the inflection point for a lot of furries. Classically, it was Disney’s Robin Hood, you know, something about those foxes. Let’s be real. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> But it was Lion King for you. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> Lion King. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> This was the early 90s at the peak of the AIDS epidemic. It was dangerous to be openly gay, especially in Kansas, where Changa lived at the time. He found solace online in animation role-playing discussion boards. And that’s where he met Mark, who was also obsessed with Disney animation. They hit it off and started talking on the phone. After visiting Mark in California once, Changa decided to move. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky:\u003c/strong> And this is how I knew Mark was a keeper. He dropped everything, drove to Kansas and helped me move cross country. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Mark and Rodney had an extra room, so Changa ended up moving in and, over time, joined this queer furry polycule. Their house, which is known as the Prancing Skilltaire, is a base for a lot of the fandom. Since the 80s, the Prancing Skilltaire has hosted monthly furry parties, furry convention staff meetings, and other furry get-togethers. They’ve also taken in young queer people who were kicked out of their homes, and once even hosted an impromptu wedding. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>They’re over there doing their vows. And I just leaned over to Rodney going, “wait, wait. Are they trans? They’re trans.” And it’s like, “yeah, yeah.” It’s, like, “did we just have a trans wedding in our backyard?” He’s like, “yeah.” Like, huh, okay, cool. Um and that was like, oh God, that was more than a decade ago. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> The Prancing Skilltaire is just one hub for the furry community. The fandom has evolved into a widespread, thriving subculture, and as furries have passed on over the decades, the community has come up with unique ways to honor them. Some choose to pass their costume on to a loved one after they die, and let the character they embodied live a second life. Patch said that this also celebrates the artist who made the fursuit. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Patch O’Furr:\u003c/strong> Another way people can be remembered is they can just have their costume displayed. I know that there are people who have their costumes placed on like a dummy and it’s kept in a certain place in their house. So you can go and say hi to the person again and just have that experience of them having a presence, a physical presence still. There’s also ways that people set up having their costume worn by friends at special occasions, maybe once a year, just so they’re present again. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> That idea of coming back to visit the living really stuck with Mark Merlino, too. He had seen a lot of his peers in the fandom age and pass away, and wanted to honor their memory somehow. Changa said that Mark was obsessed with the Disney Pixar movie Coco, which is about spirits returning home on the day of the dead. In 2018, Mark built an ofrenda display at PAWCon, a furry convention that happened to take place during the holiday. It was just a small room at the event with a single decorated table, but people loved it. They left notes and offerings and photos. So the next year, Mark built another one. He wanted to make it an annual tradition. But then in 2020, the pandemic shut down conventions. It shut down everything else too. Life moved to the internet and so did grieving. That’s a new tab, but first a quick break. Okay, we’re back. Time to open a new tab. And for this one, we’re jumping back into VR. The Furry Family Ofrenda. You made it in one piece? We’re back in VR chat, in this world that Changa and Mark built with the Aztec pyramid, candles, and altars. Right now, Changa is showing me how users can leave offerings. He’s placing a virtual meatball sub on Mark’s ofronda. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Did he like meatball subs? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>Uh, yeah, actually he did. Um, we only have so much limited space. Um, I mean, all of this has to be downloaded and rendered on people’s, um, video cards. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I know Mark had built that small a friend at this real life in person convention. But can you tell me about this move to VR? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>At the time, of course, we’re all locked in in 2020. And this platform, VRChat, had existed already. And then I saw on Twitter at the time people posting pictures from this virtual convention, Furality. And when I went in there it was like, “this is the vibe of a real convention.” This was the real community that I knew. And there was something amazing about slipping on an avatar like this and actually seeing yourself the way you would internally think about yourself. Well, it’s like fursuiting only, well, I won’t say cheaper, good lord, the amount of computer upgrades and technology just keep up in here. But it’s, like, wearing a fursuit without suffocating. Hell, I had my midlife crisis and went canine. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> That’s when Mark had an idea. Instead of building a single physical ofrenda, why not build a VR world where each furry could have their own? He didn’t have the technical skills to make it happen, but Changa did. So, Changa started digging through a site called WikiFur, which is like Wikipedia for furries. He started adding ofrendas for each furry listed as deceased on WikiFur. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>And it just kind of blew up from there. Now it’s just more of a matter of trying to keep up as people pass. Which is, oh god, well I would really hope people would kind of stop doing that. That would be, that would be great. It’s not as bad as it was in 2020. 2020 was traumatic. You’re really changing when you’re sitting there counting the dead within your own community. And this actually gave a lot of people a space to kind of mourn, given that we weren’t able to really, like, be together in person. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> The original Furry Family Ofrenda was pretty basic. Changa had to work with pre-made assets and none of them were made for the Day of the Dead. It definitely wasn’t culturally accurate. In 2021, the Furry Family Ofrenda got a makeover with the help of a Mexican furry convention called Confuror. The event is based in Guadalajara, Mexico, but during the pandemic lockdown, it was entirely on VRChat, and they wanted to host part of it in the Furry Family Ofrenda. The event organizers hired Mexican artists to design new 3D assets for the space so that it could look more like a real Day of the Dead festival. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>I’m not from the culture that this celebration came comes from, but they helped immensely. I’m glad it’s the kind of culture that that was shareable, you know, it’s because it’s a beautiful way of dealing with mourning. Because I mean a lot of mourning is like sitting around crying and I know Mark preferred the idea of like joyfully talking about people that passed and remembering them, you know bring out the food celebrate, talk, and all that. And it was really wonderful to be able to bring a piece of that into a virtual space. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> In the five years since Changa built it, the Furry Family Ofrenda has memorialized countless furries. Some of the altars feature photos of people’s real faces, but many of them honor their fursona too, which may not be acknowledged in any real-life memorials. You don’t need a whole VR setup. You can access it from any computer or mobile app. That’s why it’s become an important gathering spot for the community. That connection to the larger community became really important to the Prancing Skilltaire household during the pandemic lockdowns. And then again, when Mark got sick. Let’s talk about that in a new tab. Remembering Sy Sable. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>When he went sick, I mean, both me and Rodney were like breaking. Let’s be real. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Mark had a stroke in December 2023, but was stable enough to come home in time for Christmas. Then he got sicker during that holiday week. After seven hospitals, an ICU stay, and a stint in a rehab center, Mark was diagnosed with stage four terminal liver cancer. That news shook the furry community. Once word got out, furries put together a GoFundMe to cover his medical bills. People who had attended Prancing Skilltaire parties or crashed on their sofa when they were kicked out for being gay, showed up to help with Mark’s hospice care. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>So there was a lot of outpouring of love. And I mean, when you have, you know, young, like early 20-year-old kid showing up at your door with a covered dish while, you know, your partner’s hospicing, it says a lot. That is community. That is, you know, the found family. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> And those who couldn’t help out in person kept him company in VR. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>We were bringing in, you know, had a tablet for Mark, where he could talk over Discord with various friends that he’d gotten to know on VR. And so he was able, from his deathbed, to, you now, have conversations with various friends that we were scheduling. He could, essentially on a tablet, get to talk with people who are still presenting themselves with avatars and the way they saw themselves and the way he saw them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Mark passed away in his home at the Prancing Skilltaire last February. Changa and Rodney knew that Mark didn’t want a traditional somber funeral. Remember that bit about furries building the tech industry as we know it? Changa and Rodney incorporated that into Mark’s funeral too. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>We were both kind of agreement that it should be a big blow-out party. We would celebrate him and so we rented out a hall and given the virtual reality community that both he and I were involved in and close to the staff, the convention Furality decided to help us with some resources and they built a VR portal so that people could show up and give their respects virtually. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Furality is the virtual reality convention that initially got Mark and Changa into using VRChat. A VR portal is a massive screen that acts as a window between the real world and VR for people who can’t make it to events in person. Usually conventions, but in this case, a funeral. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>They rented out the equipment and we had to scout out how good the internet was because our requirements, just a little off the beaten path of normally. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> So the physical funeral was beamed into a virtual room that Furality had built for the event. Meanwhile, that virtual room was beamed into the funeral. People took turns speaking about Mark. They either spoke from the real life podium or from a huge screen that displayed the VR portal. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>We did have also several hundred people actually at the event, and there was that level of chaos that um, technical chaos that just keeps me focused. Like, “okay, we need to string cable.” Really what it came down to is it really felt like every other community social convention sort of situation that we’d been trained for, that like we essentially took all the stuff we would have done setting up at a hotel for a convention, just really concentrated in a hurry, in a hall. We had drawing pads where people were sketching, little tribute sort of things. I brought in a little portable TV from the 80s, and it was playing media that was related to Sy, some of his stuff he’d shot. So there’s like all this mix of kind of like technology, retro technology, art, and of course junk food. We actually had fursuiters. People got into fursuit too. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I mean, it doesn’t sound like any funeral I’ve ever seen or been to. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>Oh, that’s probably the case. Yeah, it was like a mini party convention. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I mean, aside from huge technical feat, which is very cool, it also sounds like it was a real community event. What was it like to add him to the ofrenda? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>That was painful, that was by myself. I did not grieve at the memorial, I was just too busy, I kept myself distracted. But adding him to the ofrenda was just, oh, oh, that’s was a painful upload. I never prepared for that, but it was kind of fitting that he would end up getting put into the thing that he, well he spurned on. It was like the project that he put on to me, and now I have to keep that torch going for him. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa actually hasn’t visited Mark’s altar much since uploading it. He says he’s been avoiding it. This interview, where he showed me around, was one of the first times he’s back. Like his funeral itself, many of the memorials and tributes honoring Mark are really for the greater furry community to pay their respects. Changa said he struggles to grieve at these community spaces. Like last year, Furality wanted to honor Mark during the convention’s closing ceremony. So they asked Changa for a photo of Mark’s VR avatar. Since there weren’t any good ones available, Changa had to put on Mark’s fursona in VR. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>I had to get into his avatar with a photographer and kind of do a shoot. And that was painful. You know, it’s like, I really wanted to get that over with. Yeah, well, yeah, get slipping into your dead partner’s body, essentially. But it was a beautiful tribute when they actually did it. It was lovely. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Instead of these public tributes, Changa has his own way of honoring Mark’s memory. And of course, it involves virtual reality. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>I’m a good video editor and I was doing a whole bunch of very nostalgic stuff with modern music, you know, where I’m like putting people in original like movie footage — doing that scene from Risky Business, you now where they slide in, except it’s a werewolf. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Changa and his friends record the footage using tracking rigs. They dance and lip sync to the music, and then Changa composites their fursonas over movie scenes. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>And the first one I worked on was from The Birdcage. It’s that iconic scene on the park bench with the boat going by the harbor. And that was the moment where Robin Williams and Nathan Lane’s characters are sitting down and it’s kind of the, you know, “I’m 50 whatever and you’re my family. You’re the only person I wanna spend the rest of my life with.” It is iconic queer media. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Robin Williams: \u003c/strong>What does it matter? Take it all. I’m 50 years old. There’s only one place in the world I call home, and it’s because you’re there. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> The birdcage scene in Changa’s music video is just a few seconds long. It has Changa as big, gray, husky fursona sitting on the bench, dressed in red pinstripe pants and rose-tinted glasses. It’s just like the outfit Nathan Lane wore in the movie. Changa lip syncs a line from the song, and then the music video shifts to another movie. But before the scene flashes by, you might catch a glimpse of Mark’s fursana, the mustelid called Sy Sable perched on the bench next to Changa. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changa Husky: \u003c/strong>I just hope he could see it wherever he is. I don’t think they have YouTube. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Like we said at the top, this episode first aired a year ago. We recently caught up with Changa over email. He said he’s actually planning a rebuild of the Furry Family Ofrenda, with the help of a larger development team (of fellow furries, of course) and better technology. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>His hope is that it’ll be easier to find individual altars in this revamped world, and implement a better system for submitting information for each memorial. Basically, streamlining the whole process so this world is easier to manage, and is more accessible.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Although he spends a lot of time maintaining the Furry Family Ofrenda, Changa hadn’t been to Mark’s altar much since his passing — except for our interview last year. But a few months later, on Dia de los Muertos, Changa finally sat down at Mark’s memorial, and took in the world they built together.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Over email, he said: “Dealing with loss can really be such a slow burn.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We’ll be back next week with another deep dive. For now, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Chris Egusa and edited by Jen Chien, who is our Director of Podcasts. The Close All Tabs team also includes producer Maya Cueva, editor Chris Hambrick, and audio engineer Brendan Willard. Our intern is Lauren Yoon. Additional music by APM.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K-84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches. If you like these deep dives and want to support public media, become a member at donate dot KQED dot org slash podcasts! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Thanks for listening! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "are-we-doomed-if-the-internet-goes-dark",
"title": "Are We Doomed If The Internet Goes Dark?",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What are the chances that the internet could go down forever? How bad for humanity would it be if it did? And what would a shift back to the before-times look like? These are the kinds of questions “doom reporter” Ben Bradford tries to answer in his new podcast, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://doompod.com/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are We Doomed?\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Morgan and Ben discuss the scenarios that might lead to a long-term internet outage — from severed undersea cables to a massive solar storm. And they tackle the most pressing question of all: will influencers survive the internet apocalypse?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC7222381679\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Guest: \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ben Bradford, journalist and host of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://doompod.com/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are We Doomed? \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://doompod.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are We Doomed?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Ben Bradford, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are We Doomed?\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://pod.link/1893359212/episode/cHJ4XzE2ODU3XzAxYmFmM2NmLWU4ZWEtNDM0ZS05YTFlLTgyYzgzMjE1OGI3Yg?view=apps&sort=popularity\">We Try and Kill the Internet\u003c/a> — Ben Bradford, \u003ci>Are We Doomed?\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-explains-how-its-aws-outage-took-down-the-web/\">Amazon Explains How Its AWS Outage Took Down the Web\u003c/a> – Matt Burgess and Lily Hay Newman, \u003ci>WIRED \u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/the-aws-outage-bricked-peoples-2-700-smartbeds/\">The AWS Outage Bricked People’s $2,700 Smartbeds\u003c/a> – Matthew Gault, \u003ci>404 Media\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/complex-structure-supported-by-a-tiny-part\">Complex Structure Supported by a Tiny Part\u003c/a> – \u003ci>Know Your Meme \u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/04/02/a-stealth-attack-came-close-to-compromising-the-worlds-computers\">A Stealth Attack Came Close to Compromising the World’s Computers\u003c/a> – \u003ci>The Economist\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Do you like these deep dives? Whether you call yourself a Tabby or a Tab Head or part of the Tab Hive, if you’re a fan of Close All Tabs, it would be so, so helpful if you could rate and review the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you’re listening to us. Under our watch, every tab in the land will be closed, eventually. I mean, I have like 15 open right now. Okay, let’s get to the show\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> Okay, not to brag, but last year Close All Tabs won a pretty special award, the Media Literate Media Award from NAML. That’s the National Association for Media Literacy. According to them, we’ve helped listeners better understand the internet, which is pretty cool. Ben Bradford, a veteran public radio journalist, also won the award. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I recently talked with him, and obviously had to bring it up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, thanks so much for joining us, Ben. Um, to start off, we both received NAMLE awards at the same time, which means that our takes are always correct. We are so media literate. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That’s exactly right. We- it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s been proven. We’re credentialed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Exactly. I have a little plaque that says, “My takes are always correct.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ben has long been fascinated by politics and history and climate and disaster, which means he spends a lot of time thinking about the end of the world. And now he’s launched a new project. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> My name is Ben Bradford, and I am the creator and host of a new podcast that’s called Are We Doomed?, which is the cheery title for a show about the end of the world. And we look at practical threats to society and to humanity. We look at internet hysteria. We look at, like, our pop culture obsession with the end of the world, and try to find some hope in the darkness. And I think that we actually do that, which has been very fun.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Today, we’re actually doing something a little different than our usual deep dives. You see, Are We Doomed? recently explored my personal doomsday scenario. What happens if the internet goes out forever?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This would really suck for Close All Tabs, a show that literally revolves around the internet. It would also suck for me, someone who’s built an entire career around covering the online world. But this also goes way deeper than just a job. There are so many habits ingrained in my life that depend on internet access.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m not talking mindless scrolling. I mean daily functions, like LA earthquake Twitter\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I live in Los Angeles, so does Ben, and every time there’s even the slightest rumble afoot, I run straight to social media to check if it was indeed an earthquake. Despite its name, the concept of LA earthquake Twitter transcends a single social media platform. It’s the communal experience of everyone in Southern California going online to see if anyone else felt that rumble.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Was that an earthquake? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most of the time it’s not, but there have been times when some earthquake hobbyist on social media confirms it before any news outlet does. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The earthquake one is funny ’cause I definitely do that, and I also get… You know how people get phantom vibrations for their phone- \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> where they think that their phone is buzzing? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think I get that for earthquakes. I don’t know if you ever get that- Yeah … where I’m like, “Man, was that an earthquake?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But, you know, how will I ever be sure if, if I can’t check Twitter? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> You need it \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This isn’t a frivolous concern, okay? The entire infrastructure of modern warning systems relies on internet connection.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For minor shakes, I’ll run to LA Earthquake Twitter, but if a big one’s coming, I’ll probably get a push alert from ShakeAlert first. That’s the West Coast Earthquake Warning System. It calculates the magnitude of potential earthquakes and where they might hit, and then automatically sends alerts to that area, which trigger safety actions like slowing down trains, shutting off elevators, and turning on hospital generators, and hopefully with enough time to get people to safety.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But to do all that, ShakeAlert gathers data from a sprawling network of sensors transmitted electronically online. The algorithms that figure out if an earthquake is actually dangerous process from the cloud. And to actually send this information to people, obviously the system needs the internet.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Internet connection is baked into every step of the process. It’s why the very concept of the internet going dark is such a terrifying doomsday event. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We have become so reliant on this very complicated technology, and that happens in various ways throughout human history. I think we can safely say there has not been one as complicated, and that requires so many other things to keep running. I mean, you know, from, uh, electricity to infrastructure to software. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> As a self-described doom reporter, this kept Ben up at night. LA Earthquake Twitter and the complex warning system behind it is just one example. The infrastructure of society is internet based. Our drinking water processing sites, our food supply chains, our hospital equipment, these all rely on systems that can only function with internet access.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So for his podcast, Are We Doomed?, Ben looked into it. I said we’re doing things a little differently for this one, right? Today, Ben and I are both going to take you on a deep dive as we attempt to get to the bottom of some questions you might be asking yourself right now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Has the internet ever gone dark before? What kind of doomsday scenarios are we looking at here? Could we survive? And the question I was dying to ask, how likely is this really? Buckle up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s get into it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, let’s open our first tab. How important is the internet to our lives?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just like my fear of losing LA earthquake Twitter, this question feels frivolous. But like the warning system behind it, losing the internet will cut a lot deeper than you might think. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And so then the question becomes, one, how reliant are we actually? What ability do we have to roll back if this thing were to leave us, and not for an inconvenient couple of hours, not for a day, but for longer? And then two, is there a way for that to happen? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. So you actually looked at a real world, um, case study of this that took place in northern Arizona in 2015. What happened there? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So 2015, the internet went out in Flagstaff and surrounding areas, and it is an interesting case study because of just how many things suddenly didn’t work and what people could figure out how to do and what they couldn’t figure out how to do.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Here’s an excerpt from this episode of Are We Doomed? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Northern Arizona, TV screens cut out. ATMs broke down. Credit card readers, gone. Cell phone service, gone. 911, jammed. Banks, courthouses, bars, you name it, in disarray\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What had happened was this big internet cable that delivers internet to that area of Arizona had been cut by copper thieves probably looking for copper wire. And so it’s sort of a small vulnerability. The cable’s just out there. It stretches hundreds of miles. You go, you saw in, you take the copper, and it has this really dramatic effect.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> From emergency services to sewer systems, it became clear that this one cable was foundational to the infrastructure that kept northern Arizona going. One reporter called it the area’s digital umbilical cord. This outage only lasted half a day and affected a 100-mile stretch of communities. It makes me wonder, what if the internet went down for the whole world, and it lasted much longer, even forever?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, but the situation in Arizona happened over 10 years ago. Surely society as a whole has learned from that experience and developed better backup plans since then, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So this is one of the questions that we looked at and didn’t thrill me because I don’t think that I loved the answers to it. As we embrace the internet more as a fundamental technology, and we build more things on top of it, we, we do simply have less backups. And so I remember talking to a friend of mine, I just pinged him while I was working on a story. Um, he’s the medical director in an emergency department at a major hospital, and I said, “Hey, if the internet went down, and not for a day, but for a while, what would it mean for you?” And he said, “We’d be out of luck.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s how we submit prescriptions. That is how we look up patients. That’s how we transfer them between places.” And so it’s funny because hospitals have backup generators, but they don’t have a backup internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I’m thinking of that scene in The Pit when, uh, the hospital systems go down because of a cyber attack and- \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> all these doctors have to suddenly go back to clipboards and charting by hand and, like, reading manual, uh, test results. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip from The Pitt]:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This is how we rolled when I was a resident. Was that in the 1900s? Yeah, when charts were written by candlelight. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The part of it that I think is sort of fascinating is just how expansive that question becomes. Things that surprised me are, like, the degree to which our water treatment centers rely on network connectivity. There are reports that have been written, federal government inspector general reports or GAO reports, that look at the vulnerability of water treatment centers to cyber attacks, for instance, and that’s not great.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uh, you would prefer that your water not be hacked, and I don’t know that we wanna create a system where we rely on our water where it’s vulnerable to hacking. Like, that’s sort of a strange thing. Uh- Well, who thought? Totally, and then it becomes, okay, in our sort of galaxy brain scenario where the whole internet goes down or this technology just becomes unfeasible, it’s like, yeah, your drinking water is degraded, if available at all, and that’s pretty wild. And it depends on the area that you’re in, and there’s some nuance to that, but it shows the extent to what we’re looking at here. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. So it seems like a lot of these scenarios that we’ve talked about, the fictional one in The Pit or, you know- \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah … \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> the one in Arizona, like, all these scenarios have an end date or an end time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like, they will come to an end and that’s comforting. But in the event that the whole world’s internet does go dark, I mean, what would happen? Like, genuinely, would we die without the internet? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I can’t predict the- … the future or the hypothetical of it, but I will say that I think it would be massively disruptive for a longer amount of time than we might think.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When it comes to survival, the main questions are over food and water. Our food system is incredibly reliant on the internet. Crops don’t rely on the internet to grow, but the cargo shipping systems that get that food into our grocery stores do, and these systems also send necessary supplies to the farms that grow our food.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of these systems rely on the internet and our ability to communicate through it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And while I am confident in humanity’s resilience and cleverness in being able to figure out workarounds, I think that the massive scale of the disruption, I mean, what it would do just to basically to money, you know, your stock market crashes, um, people can’t get access to their money. How often are you looking at paper bills, and what would those do for you in that world where so many other aspects of the financial system are down? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You start to get into this real hard-to-imagine world, right? But if you start kind of taking those individual pieces of hospitals and water treatment centers and the supply chain, and you add it all together, you get something that looks pretty dystopian and a lot like an apocalypse movie.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So that is, I think, what you’re dealing with in the near term if the internet goes down and doesn’t come back. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah, I mean, I’m gonna be honest, it’s really hard to not, like, hear this and then, want to, I don’t know, buy baby goat to move to Ohi, which is- Right. Yeah … like the furthest, most rural place I can imagine. Like- \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Before Ben and I get you all worked up into a panic, take a breath. Humanity survived for thousands of years before the internet, and if we had to, we could do it again, even if I personally would really rather not.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re gonna dive into these offline doomsday scenarios after a quick break, but first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can support us by becoming a member at donate.kqed.org/podcasts. Okay, after the break, could the internet really go down for good?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Welcome back. Let’s open a new tab. Could the internet go dark forever?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I posed this question to Ben, and if it’s any small comfort, he says it’s actually a lot harder to make that happen than you might think, and that’s because of the way this physical infrastructure is built. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know how we call it the World Wide Web? The phrase is actually kind of literal. There are these undersea cables that span all across the globe.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It is this sort of spider web connecting all the different continents in different ways, and the internet runs through all of them. If you cut one, the software of the internet figures out how to reroute the information. So when you think about Northern Arizona, that happens to be one area where there was sort of a choke point, one sort of big pipe connecting the internet to that region, and there are other places like that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We saw several years ago a volcanic eruption in the ocean, uh, near Tonga. An undersea volcano blew through the ocean’s floor. Smoke and ash erupted into the sky. The force of the explosion unleashed a devastating tsunami, and that explosion also ripped through the underwater cable that delivers internet to Tonga.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Without communication, other countries struggled to provide relief. Tongans couldn’t access outside money. Much of the nation relies on remittances from family off the islands. Those stopped. In that case, it was a natural disaster that cut off Tonga from the internet. But people do attack undersea cables, and it’s hard to prove sabotage, although countries are constantly accusing each other, because the cables are unprotected, innocent, perfect for attack.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was another sort of look at just how disruptive this kind of thing can be. So internet cables being severed can be a problem, but because the internet is decentralized and because the software is designed to find where it’s not working and then reroute, it’s generally not that big of a problem. One pipe goes down, and you can repair it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so Tonga was sort of like the worst-case scenario of that, and even then, the pipe gets repaired relatively quickly, and there are some workarounds you can put in place in the meantime. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> During the Cold War, technologists started thinking about how to build a telecommunication system that could survive nuclear war.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Legend goes that the internet was built off of that, and so that’s that sort of decentralized network. One part goes down, and you imagine a spiderweb with, like, electricity running through it. Electricity runs through all the spiderweb, but one little tendril of spiderweb gets severed, and the electricity still courses through the rest of it, and that’s essentially how information flows through the internet.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So even if you were to go and sever a lot of the undersea cables, it would be a problem. It would create slowdowns, but any places that the pipes were still running to would still work. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That is comforting, simply cutting the cables connecting our world wouldn’t instantly doom us. But there is another theory of an event that could fry our internet, solar storms.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Solar storms are sudden bursts of energy from the sun with enough radiation that could affect our planet’s electrical systems. This has actually already happened on Earth in 1859. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> If you go back to the 1850s, the biggest technology of the day was the telegraph, and there was this event– it’s called the Carrington Event.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of a sudden, around the world, telegraph machines start going crazy. Telegraph stations in some cases are lighting on fire because they’re overloading. People are unplugging their telegraphs, and the telegraphs are still chattering away, and they don’t know what’s happening, right? They think they’re possessed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The night sky lit up like it was daytime. Some people thought it was daytime, and so they went to church. Uh, it was a solar storm. It was the biggest solar storm that we’ve had in recorded history \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And since 1859, we have become much more reliant on electricity. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> There are some questions about if we were to be hit with an equivalent event to that one back when there was telegraph, how well the internet would stand up. Like that seems to me like the best thing to blow out the hardware of the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But we have a government office called the Space Weather Center. It’s part of the, uh, National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. You have utilities that are starting to take that threat more seriously. So you have some work being done, and I think the hope would be that by the time we have another one of those events, that we’re prepared.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So from what you’ve been telling me, it sounds like the internet is actually a lot more resilient than you might think, than the, the doomsday people might be worried about. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I feel really good about it. The two things that I worry about are, um, I think that there are some software vulnerabilities. There’s a famous, uh, web comic, uh, from XKCD.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s, it’s Randall Munroe, who’s a former NASA rocket scientist, and just is, just absolutely brilliant, and he does these web comics. And there’s a very famous one that he does about the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s titled Dependency. So this image shows a drawing of a giant intricate tower of blocks stacked in increasingly complicated ways as you move toward the top. Above it, there’s text that says, “All modern digital infrastructure.” This is like Jenga from hell. At the bottom is a comically thin block holding up all the others. The caption says, “A project some random person in Nebraska has been thanklessly maintaining since 2003.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The artist posted Dependency in 2020, and it’s become a meme among software engineers who edit the tower higher and higher with even more precarious blocks.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like, there’s this one edit that has the blocks off-kilter, balanced on a lever labeled AI. The tiny block propping up the whole tower is labeled unpaid open source developers, while an angry bird flies toward the structure, ready to topple it over. That one is labeled whatever Microsoft is doing. The point is the internet as we know it is this tower, cobbled together, perpetually built upon by hobbyists doing it for free and companies that have their own agenda.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And so if people were to identify those particular things, you could potentially knock them out and have unforeseen outages. Now, would that outage create, you know, the endless lack of internet? It seems like probably not. And it seems like people are clever and people are really good at hacking things in. But that’s one of the other vulnerabilities that we saw. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And it seems like it doesn’t necessarily need to be some kind of bad actor going after that one thing a guy built in his basement in 2003 to take down huge parts of the internet. You know, I’m thinking of the AWS outage last year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, for listeners, AWS, or Amazon Web Services, it’s the cloud computing platform that pretty much everyone uses.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s the backbone of the internet. Last year, a DNS error brought it all down. DNS, domain name system. It’s the way the internet translates names to numbers, like translating the human language into one computers can understand. Some call DNS the phone book of the internet. Imagine all the contacts in your phone get wiped out, but your whole job is making calls.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’re the cog that keeps your whole machine running. So without your phone book, everything comes grinding to a halt. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This led to a cascading comedy of errors that brought down, like, entire chunks of the internet. Like Ring cameras were down, online banking services went dark, my Roomba wouldn’t turn on because it couldn’t- \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Your Roomba? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> My Roomba actually went down. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah, obviously you can’t vacuum if you can’t use the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> No. Well, even worse, it kept turning on and then getting lost, and then trying to get back to its dock, but it couldn’t find anything, and I was like, “Stop turning on.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> What’d you do? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I literally turned it upside down like a bug. Oh my God. It was so annoying. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Um, people’s smart beds went down and suddenly changed to, like, 100 degrees overnight, or it s- automatically set alarms off- Mm-hmm … in the middle of the night. It, it’s like parts of society just kind of came to a halt because of this one bug.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> People have apartments they can’t get into, uh- Literally … unless there’s network connectivity. It… Literally, it’s like our whole lives are, like, smart devices now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> In the event of a real doomsday scenario, what does last year’s AWS outage tell us about society’s ability to function without even parts of the internet?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Right. I mean, I think that that, again, is one of those examples that shows two sides of what we’re talking about here. It shows the level of disruption, and it also shows some of those pain points. Experts worry about the centralization of the internet because that becomes a potential vulnerability where one company goes down, one company has a bug like Amazon, and all of a sudden nothing works.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, that has only continued to build because 10, 15 years ago, if you were starting a business and it related in any way to the internet, you would buy your own servers, and you would usually host your own servers. But companies began to offer cloud services, and only a few companies are the big ones.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">AWS, Google has one, Oracle has one, and that is where almost all businesses now reside. So now you’ve again got this sort of larger vulnerability, and there’s a lot of security that they have, but things can go wrong ’cause they’re complicated. So the AWS outage is such a good example of that, and it shows you the reach that just that one company has in over all kinds of other things that we wouldn’t think are connected.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It was a stark reminder that entire swaths of the internet depend on just a handful of tech giants. This centralization is not ideal when one of those companies has a problem, like a tiny block propping up a precarious and ever-growing tower of digital infrastructure. One vulnerability could cause it to all come tumbling down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The only other element that I wonder if we should talk about at all when we talk about the, the software side of things is, of course, like the big new player here is AI. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’ve got something like, you know, Claude Mythos, which has been hyped up as something that can find vulnerabilities that nobody has found in software. And I think that there is a question of as AI continues to advance, if this is a thing that seems to be good at, it seems to be good at coding, it seems to be useful for that, can it help people find more vulnerabilities? Does that add to our vulnerability on the software side? And I don’t think we know yet, but I mean, certainly to me as doom reporter guy, I’m like, that doesn’t seem ideal.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Okay, we’ve talked about the ways the internet could feasibly be taken down, whether it’s a solar storm or a software bug. What would the world look like if it really did go down for good, if we were all forced offline and had to figure out how to make it work? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open one more tab, Surviving the Internet Apocalypse.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The practical reality of like, oh, if the internet goes down, like we’ve talked about, it’s so much more deeply embedded in every aspect of like society and culture and our lives. What would a return to the before times actually look like? Is there any going back? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I think that, uh, in some ways it’s like we’ve done it before, we could do it again. And we have examples from history of civilizations collapsing where the whole, again, sort of supply chain of a massive area of the world fell apart. And not to be the guy that talks about Rome, um, but that is one example, I’m sorry. Uh, where, you know, you had this sort of kind of incredible amount of trade going around the Mediterranean, supply chains that really, you know, brought things from the Middle East all the way to Europe and back, and that falls apart. And places figured out how to continue to survive, and they became less reliant on large trade routes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think that if the internet, which is this big connector of societies, fell apart, we would figure it out. It probably would require some reliance on figuring out how to go local. Uh, it would present some major challenges.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that like it’s hard to understate the level of challenges it would create because I do think things like figuring out how to get food to the places, figuring out how to get the things that grow the food to the right places is all a major challenge and a disruption for a matter of months, even if we could ultimately circumvent that, would be an issue.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I’m pretty confident we’d figure it out.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you ever camping and you’re in an area where your phone doesn’t get service, really quickly you put your phone away, and you kind of forget about it, and it becomes a non-issue because it’s just not there anymore. Whether we’re talking about Doom or we’re talking about just like everyday tasks, people kind of live their lives with what’s available to them. So I think that that would be true in an internet-less world. I think it would be true in a powerless world, a world where there wasn’t electricity. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of those would be less comfortable. All of them would be worse in certain ways. I’m not rooting for any of those. But yeah, I have kind of like good optimism in humanity’s ability to, to figure those things out, just not without suffering.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I am wondering, like from your perspective, like, you know, you are a tech reporter, you are much more immersed in this side of things, and I’m just wondering, you know, what struck you about this story, if anything, that I might not have thought of? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> You know, it’s funny, I, I started out reporting on the creator economy and memes and like influencers. Like That was kind of like the first jobs I had. I did have this thought of like, okay, society collapses, will influencers continue influencing? Will they just become local, you know, town criers? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Sure. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Will they become the person who’s like in the great market where everyone’s bartering again, where they’re like, “Everyone needs to get on this.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> yeah \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I did have this thought of like, hmm, I bet, you know, all these current influencers and their ring lights, they’re gonna find a way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We have an upcoming episode that looks at what a post-apocalypse might actually look like. How would it be different from what we see in the films, and what would you actually need probably to survive a post-apocalypse?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as far as we can tell, in historic events that resemble today’s apocalypse scenarios, some society totally fractured, massive death, whatever. Um, I just said massive death whatever, and I regret that. But, um- … you know, in real big tragic scenarios, people do not flee to their bunkers. They come together and they reform communities.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So there are hard skills that seem to be useful like being able to grow food seems to be very useful. But there’s an argument that we hear that the most useful thing is communication, that it’s leading people to be able to work together. And I don’t know whether an influencer is like the best skill set to lead people and bring people together. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But certainly in terms of having an authoritative voice that people will listen to, that skill set might be really useful. Yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I mean, hey, I can’t wait till the apocalypse when we’re all just eating berries and someone’s like, “Oh, this berry’s the best one. Believe me.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This is the one. Yeah. Yeah. Here’s why I use it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Okay. After all of this reporting, um, as the now voice of doom scenarios, in this kind of like, I don’t know, mental ranking that you have of like this is the worst thing that could happen, where does the internet going down worldwide fall in that?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It is not high up on the list of things that I worry about. It is an example of a black swan event, something that essentially is not in any planning, that we consider to be sort of impregnable. So I think it’s worth considering from the perspective of what if it’s not? So this one feels very solvable.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It feels to me like a thing that people are thinking about to some extent, that we could take more seriously, that we should consider, but that we shouldn’t be like stressing about.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So yes, the internet going down is a possible doomsday event, but the likelihood of it happening is comparatively low compared to other apocalyptic scenarios, and if it does happen, we’ll figure out ways to survive it. That being said, Ben, as a doomsday reporter, thinks about this stuff a lot, and there are a few situations that do seriously worry him.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The big four, according to him: AI, nuclear war, climate change, pandemics. But those last three are way out of my scope of a deep dive. To hear more about those scenarios, you should check out Are We Doomed? You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll link to Ben’s episode about killing the internet, and some useful reading, if you’re interested in opening even more tabs about this.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as usual, if you’re really that hungry for more, you can stick around after the credits for some bonus content. Okay, but for now, let’s close all these tabs\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Ana De Almeida Amaral and Chris Egusa. It was edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. The Close All Tabs team also includes producer Maya Cueva, editor Chris Hambrick, and audio engineer Brendan Willard.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our director of podcasts, and Ethan Toven Lindsay is our editor-in-chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Also, by the way, because we’re both running podcasts, uh, the fact that there is no podcast without the internet because that’s the way audio is shared- … that seems like a big problem for both of us. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I’m, you know, I think out of habit if the internet went down, I would just be, like, alone in my closet talking into a hairbrush, you know?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Right. That’s bleak.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"description": "What are the chances that the internet could go down forever? How bad for humanity would it be if it did? And what would a shift back to the before-times look like? These are the kinds of questions “doom reporter” Ben Bradford tries to answer in his new podcast, Are We Doomed? Morgan and Ben discuss the scenarios that might lead to a long-term internet outage — from severed undersea cables to a massive solar storm. And they tackle the most pressing question of all: will influencers survive the internet apocalypse?",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What are the chances that the internet could go down forever? How bad for humanity would it be if it did? And what would a shift back to the before-times look like? These are the kinds of questions “doom reporter” Ben Bradford tries to answer in his new podcast, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://doompod.com/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are We Doomed?\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Morgan and Ben discuss the scenarios that might lead to a long-term internet outage — from severed undersea cables to a massive solar storm. And they tackle the most pressing question of all: will influencers survive the internet apocalypse?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC7222381679\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Guest: \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ben Bradford, journalist and host of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://doompod.com/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are We Doomed? \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://doompod.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are We Doomed?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Ben Bradford, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are We Doomed?\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://pod.link/1893359212/episode/cHJ4XzE2ODU3XzAxYmFmM2NmLWU4ZWEtNDM0ZS05YTFlLTgyYzgzMjE1OGI3Yg?view=apps&sort=popularity\">We Try and Kill the Internet\u003c/a> — Ben Bradford, \u003ci>Are We Doomed?\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-explains-how-its-aws-outage-took-down-the-web/\">Amazon Explains How Its AWS Outage Took Down the Web\u003c/a> – Matt Burgess and Lily Hay Newman, \u003ci>WIRED \u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/the-aws-outage-bricked-peoples-2-700-smartbeds/\">The AWS Outage Bricked People’s $2,700 Smartbeds\u003c/a> – Matthew Gault, \u003ci>404 Media\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/complex-structure-supported-by-a-tiny-part\">Complex Structure Supported by a Tiny Part\u003c/a> – \u003ci>Know Your Meme \u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/04/02/a-stealth-attack-came-close-to-compromising-the-worlds-computers\">A Stealth Attack Came Close to Compromising the World’s Computers\u003c/a> – \u003ci>The Economist\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Do you like these deep dives? Whether you call yourself a Tabby or a Tab Head or part of the Tab Hive, if you’re a fan of Close All Tabs, it would be so, so helpful if you could rate and review the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you’re listening to us. Under our watch, every tab in the land will be closed, eventually. I mean, I have like 15 open right now. Okay, let’s get to the show\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> Okay, not to brag, but last year Close All Tabs won a pretty special award, the Media Literate Media Award from NAML. That’s the National Association for Media Literacy. According to them, we’ve helped listeners better understand the internet, which is pretty cool. Ben Bradford, a veteran public radio journalist, also won the award. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I recently talked with him, and obviously had to bring it up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, thanks so much for joining us, Ben. Um, to start off, we both received NAMLE awards at the same time, which means that our takes are always correct. We are so media literate. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That’s exactly right. We- it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s been proven. We’re credentialed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Exactly. I have a little plaque that says, “My takes are always correct.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ben has long been fascinated by politics and history and climate and disaster, which means he spends a lot of time thinking about the end of the world. And now he’s launched a new project. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> My name is Ben Bradford, and I am the creator and host of a new podcast that’s called Are We Doomed?, which is the cheery title for a show about the end of the world. And we look at practical threats to society and to humanity. We look at internet hysteria. We look at, like, our pop culture obsession with the end of the world, and try to find some hope in the darkness. And I think that we actually do that, which has been very fun.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Today, we’re actually doing something a little different than our usual deep dives. You see, Are We Doomed? recently explored my personal doomsday scenario. What happens if the internet goes out forever?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This would really suck for Close All Tabs, a show that literally revolves around the internet. It would also suck for me, someone who’s built an entire career around covering the online world. But this also goes way deeper than just a job. There are so many habits ingrained in my life that depend on internet access.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m not talking mindless scrolling. I mean daily functions, like LA earthquake Twitter\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I live in Los Angeles, so does Ben, and every time there’s even the slightest rumble afoot, I run straight to social media to check if it was indeed an earthquake. Despite its name, the concept of LA earthquake Twitter transcends a single social media platform. It’s the communal experience of everyone in Southern California going online to see if anyone else felt that rumble.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Was that an earthquake? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most of the time it’s not, but there have been times when some earthquake hobbyist on social media confirms it before any news outlet does. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The earthquake one is funny ’cause I definitely do that, and I also get… You know how people get phantom vibrations for their phone- \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> where they think that their phone is buzzing? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think I get that for earthquakes. I don’t know if you ever get that- Yeah … where I’m like, “Man, was that an earthquake?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But, you know, how will I ever be sure if, if I can’t check Twitter? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> You need it \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This isn’t a frivolous concern, okay? The entire infrastructure of modern warning systems relies on internet connection.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For minor shakes, I’ll run to LA Earthquake Twitter, but if a big one’s coming, I’ll probably get a push alert from ShakeAlert first. That’s the West Coast Earthquake Warning System. It calculates the magnitude of potential earthquakes and where they might hit, and then automatically sends alerts to that area, which trigger safety actions like slowing down trains, shutting off elevators, and turning on hospital generators, and hopefully with enough time to get people to safety.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But to do all that, ShakeAlert gathers data from a sprawling network of sensors transmitted electronically online. The algorithms that figure out if an earthquake is actually dangerous process from the cloud. And to actually send this information to people, obviously the system needs the internet.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Internet connection is baked into every step of the process. It’s why the very concept of the internet going dark is such a terrifying doomsday event. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We have become so reliant on this very complicated technology, and that happens in various ways throughout human history. I think we can safely say there has not been one as complicated, and that requires so many other things to keep running. I mean, you know, from, uh, electricity to infrastructure to software. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> As a self-described doom reporter, this kept Ben up at night. LA Earthquake Twitter and the complex warning system behind it is just one example. The infrastructure of society is internet based. Our drinking water processing sites, our food supply chains, our hospital equipment, these all rely on systems that can only function with internet access.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So for his podcast, Are We Doomed?, Ben looked into it. I said we’re doing things a little differently for this one, right? Today, Ben and I are both going to take you on a deep dive as we attempt to get to the bottom of some questions you might be asking yourself right now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Has the internet ever gone dark before? What kind of doomsday scenarios are we looking at here? Could we survive? And the question I was dying to ask, how likely is this really? Buckle up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s get into it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, let’s open our first tab. How important is the internet to our lives?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just like my fear of losing LA earthquake Twitter, this question feels frivolous. But like the warning system behind it, losing the internet will cut a lot deeper than you might think. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And so then the question becomes, one, how reliant are we actually? What ability do we have to roll back if this thing were to leave us, and not for an inconvenient couple of hours, not for a day, but for longer? And then two, is there a way for that to happen? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. So you actually looked at a real world, um, case study of this that took place in northern Arizona in 2015. What happened there? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So 2015, the internet went out in Flagstaff and surrounding areas, and it is an interesting case study because of just how many things suddenly didn’t work and what people could figure out how to do and what they couldn’t figure out how to do.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Here’s an excerpt from this episode of Are We Doomed? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Northern Arizona, TV screens cut out. ATMs broke down. Credit card readers, gone. Cell phone service, gone. 911, jammed. Banks, courthouses, bars, you name it, in disarray\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What had happened was this big internet cable that delivers internet to that area of Arizona had been cut by copper thieves probably looking for copper wire. And so it’s sort of a small vulnerability. The cable’s just out there. It stretches hundreds of miles. You go, you saw in, you take the copper, and it has this really dramatic effect.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> From emergency services to sewer systems, it became clear that this one cable was foundational to the infrastructure that kept northern Arizona going. One reporter called it the area’s digital umbilical cord. This outage only lasted half a day and affected a 100-mile stretch of communities. It makes me wonder, what if the internet went down for the whole world, and it lasted much longer, even forever?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, but the situation in Arizona happened over 10 years ago. Surely society as a whole has learned from that experience and developed better backup plans since then, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So this is one of the questions that we looked at and didn’t thrill me because I don’t think that I loved the answers to it. As we embrace the internet more as a fundamental technology, and we build more things on top of it, we, we do simply have less backups. And so I remember talking to a friend of mine, I just pinged him while I was working on a story. Um, he’s the medical director in an emergency department at a major hospital, and I said, “Hey, if the internet went down, and not for a day, but for a while, what would it mean for you?” And he said, “We’d be out of luck.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s how we submit prescriptions. That is how we look up patients. That’s how we transfer them between places.” And so it’s funny because hospitals have backup generators, but they don’t have a backup internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I’m thinking of that scene in The Pit when, uh, the hospital systems go down because of a cyber attack and- \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> all these doctors have to suddenly go back to clipboards and charting by hand and, like, reading manual, uh, test results. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip from The Pitt]:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This is how we rolled when I was a resident. Was that in the 1900s? Yeah, when charts were written by candlelight. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The part of it that I think is sort of fascinating is just how expansive that question becomes. Things that surprised me are, like, the degree to which our water treatment centers rely on network connectivity. There are reports that have been written, federal government inspector general reports or GAO reports, that look at the vulnerability of water treatment centers to cyber attacks, for instance, and that’s not great.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uh, you would prefer that your water not be hacked, and I don’t know that we wanna create a system where we rely on our water where it’s vulnerable to hacking. Like, that’s sort of a strange thing. Uh- Well, who thought? Totally, and then it becomes, okay, in our sort of galaxy brain scenario where the whole internet goes down or this technology just becomes unfeasible, it’s like, yeah, your drinking water is degraded, if available at all, and that’s pretty wild. And it depends on the area that you’re in, and there’s some nuance to that, but it shows the extent to what we’re looking at here. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. So it seems like a lot of these scenarios that we’ve talked about, the fictional one in The Pit or, you know- \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah … \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> the one in Arizona, like, all these scenarios have an end date or an end time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like, they will come to an end and that’s comforting. But in the event that the whole world’s internet does go dark, I mean, what would happen? Like, genuinely, would we die without the internet? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I can’t predict the- … the future or the hypothetical of it, but I will say that I think it would be massively disruptive for a longer amount of time than we might think.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When it comes to survival, the main questions are over food and water. Our food system is incredibly reliant on the internet. Crops don’t rely on the internet to grow, but the cargo shipping systems that get that food into our grocery stores do, and these systems also send necessary supplies to the farms that grow our food.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of these systems rely on the internet and our ability to communicate through it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And while I am confident in humanity’s resilience and cleverness in being able to figure out workarounds, I think that the massive scale of the disruption, I mean, what it would do just to basically to money, you know, your stock market crashes, um, people can’t get access to their money. How often are you looking at paper bills, and what would those do for you in that world where so many other aspects of the financial system are down? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You start to get into this real hard-to-imagine world, right? But if you start kind of taking those individual pieces of hospitals and water treatment centers and the supply chain, and you add it all together, you get something that looks pretty dystopian and a lot like an apocalypse movie.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So that is, I think, what you’re dealing with in the near term if the internet goes down and doesn’t come back. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah, I mean, I’m gonna be honest, it’s really hard to not, like, hear this and then, want to, I don’t know, buy baby goat to move to Ohi, which is- Right. Yeah … like the furthest, most rural place I can imagine. Like- \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Before Ben and I get you all worked up into a panic, take a breath. Humanity survived for thousands of years before the internet, and if we had to, we could do it again, even if I personally would really rather not.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re gonna dive into these offline doomsday scenarios after a quick break, but first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can support us by becoming a member at donate.kqed.org/podcasts. Okay, after the break, could the internet really go down for good?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Welcome back. Let’s open a new tab. Could the internet go dark forever?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I posed this question to Ben, and if it’s any small comfort, he says it’s actually a lot harder to make that happen than you might think, and that’s because of the way this physical infrastructure is built. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know how we call it the World Wide Web? The phrase is actually kind of literal. There are these undersea cables that span all across the globe.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It is this sort of spider web connecting all the different continents in different ways, and the internet runs through all of them. If you cut one, the software of the internet figures out how to reroute the information. So when you think about Northern Arizona, that happens to be one area where there was sort of a choke point, one sort of big pipe connecting the internet to that region, and there are other places like that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We saw several years ago a volcanic eruption in the ocean, uh, near Tonga. An undersea volcano blew through the ocean’s floor. Smoke and ash erupted into the sky. The force of the explosion unleashed a devastating tsunami, and that explosion also ripped through the underwater cable that delivers internet to Tonga.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Without communication, other countries struggled to provide relief. Tongans couldn’t access outside money. Much of the nation relies on remittances from family off the islands. Those stopped. In that case, it was a natural disaster that cut off Tonga from the internet. But people do attack undersea cables, and it’s hard to prove sabotage, although countries are constantly accusing each other, because the cables are unprotected, innocent, perfect for attack.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was another sort of look at just how disruptive this kind of thing can be. So internet cables being severed can be a problem, but because the internet is decentralized and because the software is designed to find where it’s not working and then reroute, it’s generally not that big of a problem. One pipe goes down, and you can repair it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so Tonga was sort of like the worst-case scenario of that, and even then, the pipe gets repaired relatively quickly, and there are some workarounds you can put in place in the meantime. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> During the Cold War, technologists started thinking about how to build a telecommunication system that could survive nuclear war.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Legend goes that the internet was built off of that, and so that’s that sort of decentralized network. One part goes down, and you imagine a spiderweb with, like, electricity running through it. Electricity runs through all the spiderweb, but one little tendril of spiderweb gets severed, and the electricity still courses through the rest of it, and that’s essentially how information flows through the internet.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So even if you were to go and sever a lot of the undersea cables, it would be a problem. It would create slowdowns, but any places that the pipes were still running to would still work. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That is comforting, simply cutting the cables connecting our world wouldn’t instantly doom us. But there is another theory of an event that could fry our internet, solar storms.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Solar storms are sudden bursts of energy from the sun with enough radiation that could affect our planet’s electrical systems. This has actually already happened on Earth in 1859. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> If you go back to the 1850s, the biggest technology of the day was the telegraph, and there was this event– it’s called the Carrington Event.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of a sudden, around the world, telegraph machines start going crazy. Telegraph stations in some cases are lighting on fire because they’re overloading. People are unplugging their telegraphs, and the telegraphs are still chattering away, and they don’t know what’s happening, right? They think they’re possessed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The night sky lit up like it was daytime. Some people thought it was daytime, and so they went to church. Uh, it was a solar storm. It was the biggest solar storm that we’ve had in recorded history \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And since 1859, we have become much more reliant on electricity. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> There are some questions about if we were to be hit with an equivalent event to that one back when there was telegraph, how well the internet would stand up. Like that seems to me like the best thing to blow out the hardware of the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But we have a government office called the Space Weather Center. It’s part of the, uh, National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. You have utilities that are starting to take that threat more seriously. So you have some work being done, and I think the hope would be that by the time we have another one of those events, that we’re prepared.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So from what you’ve been telling me, it sounds like the internet is actually a lot more resilient than you might think, than the, the doomsday people might be worried about. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I feel really good about it. The two things that I worry about are, um, I think that there are some software vulnerabilities. There’s a famous, uh, web comic, uh, from XKCD.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s, it’s Randall Munroe, who’s a former NASA rocket scientist, and just is, just absolutely brilliant, and he does these web comics. And there’s a very famous one that he does about the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s titled Dependency. So this image shows a drawing of a giant intricate tower of blocks stacked in increasingly complicated ways as you move toward the top. Above it, there’s text that says, “All modern digital infrastructure.” This is like Jenga from hell. At the bottom is a comically thin block holding up all the others. The caption says, “A project some random person in Nebraska has been thanklessly maintaining since 2003.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The artist posted Dependency in 2020, and it’s become a meme among software engineers who edit the tower higher and higher with even more precarious blocks.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like, there’s this one edit that has the blocks off-kilter, balanced on a lever labeled AI. The tiny block propping up the whole tower is labeled unpaid open source developers, while an angry bird flies toward the structure, ready to topple it over. That one is labeled whatever Microsoft is doing. The point is the internet as we know it is this tower, cobbled together, perpetually built upon by hobbyists doing it for free and companies that have their own agenda.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And so if people were to identify those particular things, you could potentially knock them out and have unforeseen outages. Now, would that outage create, you know, the endless lack of internet? It seems like probably not. And it seems like people are clever and people are really good at hacking things in. But that’s one of the other vulnerabilities that we saw. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And it seems like it doesn’t necessarily need to be some kind of bad actor going after that one thing a guy built in his basement in 2003 to take down huge parts of the internet. You know, I’m thinking of the AWS outage last year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, for listeners, AWS, or Amazon Web Services, it’s the cloud computing platform that pretty much everyone uses.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s the backbone of the internet. Last year, a DNS error brought it all down. DNS, domain name system. It’s the way the internet translates names to numbers, like translating the human language into one computers can understand. Some call DNS the phone book of the internet. Imagine all the contacts in your phone get wiped out, but your whole job is making calls.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’re the cog that keeps your whole machine running. So without your phone book, everything comes grinding to a halt. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This led to a cascading comedy of errors that brought down, like, entire chunks of the internet. Like Ring cameras were down, online banking services went dark, my Roomba wouldn’t turn on because it couldn’t- \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Your Roomba? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> My Roomba actually went down. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah, obviously you can’t vacuum if you can’t use the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> No. Well, even worse, it kept turning on and then getting lost, and then trying to get back to its dock, but it couldn’t find anything, and I was like, “Stop turning on.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> What’d you do? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I literally turned it upside down like a bug. Oh my God. It was so annoying. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Um, people’s smart beds went down and suddenly changed to, like, 100 degrees overnight, or it s- automatically set alarms off- Mm-hmm … in the middle of the night. It, it’s like parts of society just kind of came to a halt because of this one bug.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> People have apartments they can’t get into, uh- Literally … unless there’s network connectivity. It… Literally, it’s like our whole lives are, like, smart devices now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> In the event of a real doomsday scenario, what does last year’s AWS outage tell us about society’s ability to function without even parts of the internet?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Right. I mean, I think that that, again, is one of those examples that shows two sides of what we’re talking about here. It shows the level of disruption, and it also shows some of those pain points. Experts worry about the centralization of the internet because that becomes a potential vulnerability where one company goes down, one company has a bug like Amazon, and all of a sudden nothing works.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, that has only continued to build because 10, 15 years ago, if you were starting a business and it related in any way to the internet, you would buy your own servers, and you would usually host your own servers. But companies began to offer cloud services, and only a few companies are the big ones.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">AWS, Google has one, Oracle has one, and that is where almost all businesses now reside. So now you’ve again got this sort of larger vulnerability, and there’s a lot of security that they have, but things can go wrong ’cause they’re complicated. So the AWS outage is such a good example of that, and it shows you the reach that just that one company has in over all kinds of other things that we wouldn’t think are connected.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It was a stark reminder that entire swaths of the internet depend on just a handful of tech giants. This centralization is not ideal when one of those companies has a problem, like a tiny block propping up a precarious and ever-growing tower of digital infrastructure. One vulnerability could cause it to all come tumbling down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The only other element that I wonder if we should talk about at all when we talk about the, the software side of things is, of course, like the big new player here is AI. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’ve got something like, you know, Claude Mythos, which has been hyped up as something that can find vulnerabilities that nobody has found in software. And I think that there is a question of as AI continues to advance, if this is a thing that seems to be good at, it seems to be good at coding, it seems to be useful for that, can it help people find more vulnerabilities? Does that add to our vulnerability on the software side? And I don’t think we know yet, but I mean, certainly to me as doom reporter guy, I’m like, that doesn’t seem ideal.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Okay, we’ve talked about the ways the internet could feasibly be taken down, whether it’s a solar storm or a software bug. What would the world look like if it really did go down for good, if we were all forced offline and had to figure out how to make it work? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open one more tab, Surviving the Internet Apocalypse.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The practical reality of like, oh, if the internet goes down, like we’ve talked about, it’s so much more deeply embedded in every aspect of like society and culture and our lives. What would a return to the before times actually look like? Is there any going back? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I think that, uh, in some ways it’s like we’ve done it before, we could do it again. And we have examples from history of civilizations collapsing where the whole, again, sort of supply chain of a massive area of the world fell apart. And not to be the guy that talks about Rome, um, but that is one example, I’m sorry. Uh, where, you know, you had this sort of kind of incredible amount of trade going around the Mediterranean, supply chains that really, you know, brought things from the Middle East all the way to Europe and back, and that falls apart. And places figured out how to continue to survive, and they became less reliant on large trade routes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think that if the internet, which is this big connector of societies, fell apart, we would figure it out. It probably would require some reliance on figuring out how to go local. Uh, it would present some major challenges.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that like it’s hard to understate the level of challenges it would create because I do think things like figuring out how to get food to the places, figuring out how to get the things that grow the food to the right places is all a major challenge and a disruption for a matter of months, even if we could ultimately circumvent that, would be an issue.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I’m pretty confident we’d figure it out.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you ever camping and you’re in an area where your phone doesn’t get service, really quickly you put your phone away, and you kind of forget about it, and it becomes a non-issue because it’s just not there anymore. Whether we’re talking about Doom or we’re talking about just like everyday tasks, people kind of live their lives with what’s available to them. So I think that that would be true in an internet-less world. I think it would be true in a powerless world, a world where there wasn’t electricity. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of those would be less comfortable. All of them would be worse in certain ways. I’m not rooting for any of those. But yeah, I have kind of like good optimism in humanity’s ability to, to figure those things out, just not without suffering.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I am wondering, like from your perspective, like, you know, you are a tech reporter, you are much more immersed in this side of things, and I’m just wondering, you know, what struck you about this story, if anything, that I might not have thought of? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> You know, it’s funny, I, I started out reporting on the creator economy and memes and like influencers. Like That was kind of like the first jobs I had. I did have this thought of like, okay, society collapses, will influencers continue influencing? Will they just become local, you know, town criers? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Sure. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Will they become the person who’s like in the great market where everyone’s bartering again, where they’re like, “Everyone needs to get on this.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> yeah \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I did have this thought of like, hmm, I bet, you know, all these current influencers and their ring lights, they’re gonna find a way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We have an upcoming episode that looks at what a post-apocalypse might actually look like. How would it be different from what we see in the films, and what would you actually need probably to survive a post-apocalypse?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as far as we can tell, in historic events that resemble today’s apocalypse scenarios, some society totally fractured, massive death, whatever. Um, I just said massive death whatever, and I regret that. But, um- … you know, in real big tragic scenarios, people do not flee to their bunkers. They come together and they reform communities.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So there are hard skills that seem to be useful like being able to grow food seems to be very useful. But there’s an argument that we hear that the most useful thing is communication, that it’s leading people to be able to work together. And I don’t know whether an influencer is like the best skill set to lead people and bring people together. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But certainly in terms of having an authoritative voice that people will listen to, that skill set might be really useful. Yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I mean, hey, I can’t wait till the apocalypse when we’re all just eating berries and someone’s like, “Oh, this berry’s the best one. Believe me.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This is the one. Yeah. Yeah. Here’s why I use it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Okay. After all of this reporting, um, as the now voice of doom scenarios, in this kind of like, I don’t know, mental ranking that you have of like this is the worst thing that could happen, where does the internet going down worldwide fall in that?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It is not high up on the list of things that I worry about. It is an example of a black swan event, something that essentially is not in any planning, that we consider to be sort of impregnable. So I think it’s worth considering from the perspective of what if it’s not? So this one feels very solvable.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It feels to me like a thing that people are thinking about to some extent, that we could take more seriously, that we should consider, but that we shouldn’t be like stressing about.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So yes, the internet going down is a possible doomsday event, but the likelihood of it happening is comparatively low compared to other apocalyptic scenarios, and if it does happen, we’ll figure out ways to survive it. That being said, Ben, as a doomsday reporter, thinks about this stuff a lot, and there are a few situations that do seriously worry him.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The big four, according to him: AI, nuclear war, climate change, pandemics. But those last three are way out of my scope of a deep dive. To hear more about those scenarios, you should check out Are We Doomed? You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll link to Ben’s episode about killing the internet, and some useful reading, if you’re interested in opening even more tabs about this.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as usual, if you’re really that hungry for more, you can stick around after the credits for some bonus content. Okay, but for now, let’s close all these tabs\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Ana De Almeida Amaral and Chris Egusa. It was edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. The Close All Tabs team also includes producer Maya Cueva, editor Chris Hambrick, and audio engineer Brendan Willard.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our director of podcasts, and Ethan Toven Lindsay is our editor-in-chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Also, by the way, because we’re both running podcasts, uh, the fact that there is no podcast without the internet because that’s the way audio is shared- … that seems like a big problem for both of us. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I’m, you know, I think out of habit if the internet went down, I would just be, like, alone in my closet talking into a hairbrush, you know?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Bradford:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Right. That’s bleak.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "get-the-flock-out-the-heated-debate-over-license-plate-readers",
"title": "'Get The Flock Out': The Fight Over License-Plate Readers Heats Up",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flock Safety’s license plate readers have become a flashpoint for a debate across the country. On one side: law enforcement and their supporters, who say the cameras reduce crime and improve public safety. On the other: residents and advocates worried about a creeping surveillance state and the myriad security issues Flock has already been exposed for.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan talks to Bay Area reporters Roselyn Romero and Riley Cooke about the fight over Flock spreading throughout the region, what we still don’t know about how Flock’s data is used and how some residents are finding creative ways to push back.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC6560783367\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://oaklandside.org/author/roselyn-romero/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Roselyn Romero\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, public safety journalist at \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Oaklandside \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.paloaltoonline.com/author/rcookeembarcaderopublishing-com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Riley Cooke\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, reporter at \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Palo Alto Weekly \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We Hacked Flock Safety Cameras in under 30 Seconds \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Benn Jordan, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Youtube \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://sanjosespotlight.com/palo-alto-license-plate-data-searched-by-hundreds-of-out-of-state-agencies/\">Palo Alto license plate data searched by hundreds of out-of-state agencies\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Riley Cooke, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>Palo Alto Weekly\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://oaklandside.org/2026/05/28/flock-training-police-city-councils-webinar/\">Flock is quietly training Bay Area police to sway city leaders to buy surveillance tech\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Roselyn Romero, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>The Oaklandside \u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/flock-exposed-its-ai-powered-cameras-to-the-internet-we-tracked-ourselves/\">Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Jason Koebler, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>404 Media\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://knock-la.com/does-flock-safety-keep-women-safe/\">Does Flock Safety Keep Women Safe?\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Jayme Kusyk, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Knock LA\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://ij.org/police-have-reportedly-used-license-plate-readers-to-stalk-romantic-interests-at-least-14-times-in-recent-years/\">Police Have Reportedly Used License Plate Readers to Stalk Romantic Interests at Least 21 Times in Recent Years \u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci> —\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Christopher Ingraham, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Institute for Justice\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://prospect.org/2026/05/21/home-depot-lowes-downplay-customer-surveillance-threats-flock-cameras-immigration/\">Home Depot and Lowe’s Downplay Customer Surveillance Threats\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Whitney Curry Wimbish, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>The American Prospect\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.whro.org/business-growth/2026-01-20/flock-cameras-in-hampton-roads-surveil-black-communities-more-intensely-than-white-ones-cnu-study-says\">Flock cameras in Hampton Roads surveil Black communities more intensely than white ones, CNU study says\u003c/a> — Toby Cox, \u003ci>WHRO\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-into-nationwide-ai-enabled-camera-network-data-shows/\">ICE Taps into Nationwide AI-Enabled Camera Network, Data Shows\u003c/a> — Jason Koebler & Joseph Cox, \u003ci>404 Media\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://oaklandside.org/2026/04/24/who-is-paint-bombing-oaklands-flock-cameras/\">Who is paint bombing Oakland’s Flock cameras?\u003c/a> — Eli Wolfe, \u003ci>The Oaklandside\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/across-the-us-people-are-dismantling\">Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras\u003c/a> — Brian Merchant, \u003ci>Blood In The Machine\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/sf-car-break-in-data-18639763.php\">Has S.F. cracked how to fix the car break-in crisis? Here’s what is driving the decline\u003c/a> — Rachel Swan, \u003ci>San Francisco Chronicle \u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bay Area Resident: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Having Flock cameras will not keep us safe. These cameras will go up in the neighborhoods where people of color live and we can be damn sure that this information will be taken by the feds and shared with ICE. They do what they want. So don’t believe anybody who says this information is private and secure. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In April, Bay Area residents crowded into the downtown Oakland Administration building. It was supposed to be a routine budget meeting for the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. But it was unusually packed, thanks to one agenda item: approving a contract extension for Flock Safety cameras. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This would allow the controversial surveillance tech company to continue running its network of AI-powered license plate readers throughout the county — including unincorporated areas outside of cities like Oakland and Berkeley. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The contract expired last summer. If approved, the extension would buy another three months of Flock surveillance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The room was packed with residents, from Oakland to Castro Valley. Even more attended virtually to give comments. More than a hundred residents spoke during the meeting. Close All Tabs producer, Maya Cueva, was on the scene. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Narayan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Good evening. I urge you to reject Flock’s $854,000 contract extension. This isn’t a camera system, it’s a mass surveillance network that will track every single one of us, making a searchable database that tracks our movements. You guys say you care about immigrant communities, but this system puts them directly in danger. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flock’s license plate readers have become a flashpoint for a debate across the country — not just in the Bay Area. On one side: law enforcement and their supporters, who say the cameras reduce crime and improve public safety. On the other: residents and advocates who are concerned about a creeping surveillance state, an erosion of the right to privacy, and the myriad security issues Flock has already been exposed for. Alameda County residents of all ages have been fighting against Flock in their neighborhoods for a while. And some aren’t even able to vote yet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Narayan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hi, my name’s Narayan. I’m 17. I go by he/him pronouns, and I’m from East Oakland. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kaylyn: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hello, my names Kaylyn. I’m 17 years old, and I live in Oakland. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tyson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My name is Tyson, I’m 18, he/him pronouns, and I live in Albany. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Narayan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m here to stop the implementation and extending of a Flock contract in my county. Flock is a multi-billion dollar corporation that is focused on hyper surveillance of people, and we’ve already seen that it is in the wrong hands. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Three years ago, Alameda County leaders approved a contract to install 100 plate readers throughout the county. Berkeley has just over 30, and Oakland recently approved a $2 million contract for nearly 300 more cameras in the city. Other residents have been speaking out about the issue for years now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Manny: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve been fighting Flock since 2023, but now it’s a lot more in the cultural zeitgeist. A lot of people have become a lot aware of the surveillance systems that are being used to surveil them, to watch and kidnap their community members. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ramesh Sridharan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We don’t want mass surveillance. We should be investing in communities. We should be spending our money on that as opposed to programs like Flock, which contribute to a surveillance state and have no evidence of actually reducing crime. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But some residents spoke in support of extending Flock’s contract. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robert Battinich: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was raised in San Leandro for 25 years. I own property in San Leandro and I’ve been robbed 24 times. Recently, they put Flock cameras in San Leandro, and it seems to be that they haven’t been breaking in. So, please vote “yes” on renewing the contract with the Flock cameras. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The board of supervisors kept calling for decorum when attendees clapped for anti-Flock speakers. So one resident used his allotted time to scold the board. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ralph Brown: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, it seems like a majority of you are just ready to reject the overwhelming majority of your residents who are telling you to vote “no” on this contract, not spend $300,000 plus more dollars to extend this contract and basically just say- tell us to go fuck ourselves, is what I’m hearing from you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The meeting lasted hours — and after all that, the board of supervisors voted 3-2 in favor of extending the contract. Protests broke out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Protesters outside of budget meeting]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Get Flock off our block! Get Flock off our block! Get Flock off our block! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The backlash we’re seeing against Flock in Alameda County is part of a bigger nationwide fight against normalizing mass surveillance. Flock vandalism is up across the country. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip from @wwmtnews on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office says someone intentionally cut down a Flock license plate reader camera along D Avenue in Cooper Township. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip from @WHAS11News on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Auburn normally has 12 in the city, now they’re down two. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip from @tmj4 on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Take a close look at this automatic license plate reading camera, and you’ll notice gold paint covering the lens. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People have put stickers over the cameras’ lenses, covered them with trash bags, paintbombed entire devices, and joked online about pointing lasers at the cameras to destroy the sensors. In Oregon, someone cut down six poles holding Flock cameras, leaving a note that said, quote, “Hahaha get wrecked you surveilling fucks.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip from @KEZI9News on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No arrests have been made in either jurisdiction, but this is considered criminal mischief. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s local news station KEZI 9, which actually broadcasted the uncensored note. But aside from resorting to “criminal mischief,” how else are people fighting the installation of these cameras in their neighborhoods? Today, we’re digging into the heated debate around Flock cameras: what exactly they’re doing with your data and why this might matter more than you think. Ready? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, have been rapidly rolled out by cities and communities around the country, with Flock Safety’s tech at the lead. Before we get any deeper into this, we need to talk about what Flock actually is — and how it was adopted so quickly. Let’s open a new tab: Why is Flock so controversial? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s get into the origin story. So, Flock Safety is based in Atlanta, Georgia. It operates a whole host of surveillance devices: cameras, drones, and, importantly, for this story, ALPRs. Back in 2017, this Georgia Tech alum, Garrett Langley, noticed the uptake in break-ins around his Atlanta neighborhood. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Police told him that grainy surveillance camera footage was actually unhelpful, and what they really needed to find perpetrators were license plates. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, Garrett called up two of his college buddies. Together, they worked on a prototype camera that could record and share what he called “evidence,” not just footage. Here he is speaking to Forbes last year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Garrett’s interview with @Forbes on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it’s pretty wild. At the end of ’17, we were sitting at my dining room table in Atlanta, building cameras by hand. And now, today, we’re in a roughly 100,000 square foot facility building cameras, building trailers, building drones — all right here in Georgia, which is pretty fun. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Fun” is certainly one way to put it. This entrepreneurial, neighborly concern has grown into an operation of at least 90,000 cameras nationwide, scanning over 20 billion license plates per month. Over 1,000 private businesses have also installed the cameras, adding to Flock’s massive surveillance database. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Oakland, the push for installing Flock’s ALPRs was fueled by local frustration over BIP-ing — you know, breaking into a parked car and looting whatever’s inside. Here’s Roselyn Romero, a reporter for the independent local news outlet, The Oaklandside. She’s been covering Flock Safety cameras for the region. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BIP-ing, or car break-ins, were also understandably making a lot of residents angry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The city took action around 2024. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Oakland Police Department eventually signed a contract with Flock Safety for cameras to be installed throughout the city, primarily on freeway entrances and exits. And right now, today, there are 293 Flock cameras in Oakland — specifically, automated license plate readers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flock’s ALPRs go way further than the standard traffic cam that tickets drivers for speeding. The cameras automatically capture the license plate of every car that drives by — as well as 6 to 12 images of other identifying information. All of this is used to create what Flock calls: a vehicle fingerprint. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The make and the model of that vehicle, if there is a scrape on the bumper, or if there are bumper stickers on the car — Flock keeps a database of all of that information of every car that passes by the ALPRs. And that database can be used by the law enforcement agencies that contract with Flock to investigate crimes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flock will send officers alerts when a camera captures a vehicle that’s been marked stolen or wanted. Or, the police can search the database to trace a specific vehicle’s movements across the country. Car break-ins in San Francisco have plummeted since 2023. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But whether Flock has any part in that is dubious. The city started cracking down on car break-ins long before it adopted Flock cameras. Still, supporters say that Flock is necessary to prevent crime and catch those who do it. Now, the company says its devices are not equipped to track individual people — but recent expansions have residents concerned. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flock also has cameras that are called pan, tilt, and zoom cameras. Those cameras, which are currently being used by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, can be used to track pedestrians in addition to vehicles. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of the data collected by Flock cameras around the country is shared and stored in a massive aggregated database, which can be accessed by anyone in the network. That means that police in Texas can hunt a woman who travels out of state for an abortion, or that ICE agents can ask local police in Illinois to track undocumented families. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Both of these scenarios are real. They’ve already happened. Privacy activists and civil liberties groups are especially worried. Given the Trump administration’s recent immigration crackdown. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People are scared — even putting Flock cameras aside, many immigrants are afraid of immigration enforcement knocking on their doors. We’re hearing a lot of newly arrived immigrants, refugee and asylum seekers, and other vulnerable populations say that they don’t even want to go outside anymore. They don’t even want to go grocery shopping or send their children to school because they’re afraid of ICE coming in and taking them away from their families. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve been seeing reports of law enforcement agencies and police departments in places outside of California that have shared data with Border Patrol, with U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement, and other federal law enforcement agencies that deal with deporting people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so a lot of people are understandably afraid. And really concerned about, well, if this technology is continued here in Alameda County, who’s to say that that data is gonna end up in the wrong hands? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A big part of the concern is around data privacy. Flock says it deletes all the information after 30 days. But the company isn’t very transparent about how they handle all of this data. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There have been a lot of concerns from community members I’ve interviewed who say, you know, even if this data is stored in this database for 30 days, what happens after those 30 days? There have just been a whole host of concerns about the type of data that is stored, for how long it’s stored, and who has access to that data before and after it’s retained. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flock also says all of this data, and their camera feeds, are encrypted. These assurances fall flat, though. Around the U.S., amateur hackers have been able to get around the company’s security systems. Tech YouTuber Benn Jordan explained how he did it in a video posted last year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip from @BennJordan on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You may remember me from this video, where I told you about 40,000 of these things that your tax dollars pay for that are tracking your every move and repurposing data collected about you every time that you drive past them. Upon further investigation, it turns out that there are over 80,000 of them — and, um, we got some, and we hacked them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With the help of a cybersecurity expert, Benn was able to hack Flock safety cameras in a whopping 30 seconds. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip from @BennJordan on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">First thing you’re going to want to do is go ahead and press the button to turn on that police camera. Then press the button on the back a number of times I can’t disclose in this video. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There she is: the Flock wireless access point. Go on and connect. Send a command to enable ADB. Connect. And now you can connect to the Flock Safety device and access its data. Or install whatever the hell you want on it. Have fun! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Apparently, hacking a Flock camera really is that easy. At least, it was when that video was published. And once you’re in, there’s a lot you can do. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip from @BennJordan on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can clone or decompile the apps. You could send the video stream data to a remote server. You could use it as a botnet client for malware. You could have it capture Wi-Fi handshake credentials and do middleman or honeypot attacks — or replace or modify captured footage or images. And if that is the case, this could bring into question the integrity of the data being used as admissible evidence in court, like, in general. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When these cameras can be hacked and used to spy on people or watch kids, watch everyday people, it really makes you think: how comfortable are we with this type of mass surveillance in our communities? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a follow-up video, Benn showed how easy it was to find the control panels for Flock’s cameras. 404 Media confirmed that at least 60 of Flock’s Condor cameras — the ones that can pan, zoom, and tilt — were left unsecured on the open internet. That means that the live streams and administrator panels could be accessed by anyone with the right link — no login credentials needed. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With the panels, anyone could download 30 days of archive footage, manually control the cameras, and run diagnostics. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, if Flock cameras can be easily hacked or are left totally unsecured, what does it mean for the troves of data? All the photos, the live feeds, the vehicle fingerprints that are stored on Flock’s cloud servers — how is this data being used, authorized or not? Who can access it? That’s a new tab: How is Flock being misused? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There have been a lot of red flags raised by privacy experts and technology experts who say that Flock doesn’t have enough data privacy safeguards to protect itself from liability, as well as protect community members who may be vulnerable to civil immigration enforcement, or enforcement as it relates to seeking abortions or reproductive health care in states where it’s illegal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There have been reports of law enforcement using Flock data for both of these purposes — as well as more… personal uses. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve seen reports from other parts of the country where police officers have used Flock’s database to track down their ex-girlfriends and stalk them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A Wisconsin cop used Flock to stalk his ex-girlfriend and her partner. He submitted 179 database searches for their license plates. In fact, multiple officers have been accused of using Flock’s database to stalk romantic interests — there are at least 21 reported incidents of this in recent years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, even though we have Flock and law enforcement saying one thing about Flock cameras’ original intent and purpose, there’s always the potential for something to happen where this technology is used beyond its original intent. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that’s all assuming that technology is working correctly. What if Flock’s vehicle fingerprint is wrong? Just a few months ago, police stopped a 62-year-old woman in Oakland who was driving to her job at a nursing home. Flock had connected her plates to a “serious crime.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, she exited the vehicle with her hands up, her car registration was in her hand, and she saw these sheriff’s deputies pointing their guns at her — and she was really confused. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, eventually the sheriff’s deputies told her, “Oh, you might not be the suspect we’re looking for because the license plate reader tracked down your license plate. And we essentially connected your license plate number to a crime that had been committed not that long ago.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What the woman didn’t know was that her plates had been stolen, and replaced with the ones associated with the crime. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She came to the realization, “I’m being treated like I’m a violent criminal.” That could have gone so much worse than it did, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But here’s the thing: Flock flagged a black Honda Civic. This woman drove a silver car. Flock’s “vehicle fingerprint” is supposed to be holistic, taking into account way more details about a car than just its license plates. Were these other details checked before officers made the stop? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It opens up this scary question of: can this happen to me? Can this happen to someone I love, someone I know — completely unsuspecting — who may have had their license plate stolen?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And here’s another issue with this technology: racial bias. Black and Brown communities are already more likely to be overpoliced and are disproportionately targeted for traffic stops. The existing bias is evident in Flock’s search records — law enforcement officials still use racist and derogatory language when they search through Flock’s ALPR database. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as one study showed, Flock Safety cameras have been found to surveil predominantly Black communities more intensely than white ones. In Virginia’s Hampton Roads area, neighborhoods where at least 50% of residents are Black have four times the number of Flock cameras as majority-white neighborhoods. One of the highest concentrations of cameras is around the only HBCU in the area. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In neighborhoods where Black and Brown people are already overly policed, overly surveilled, and overly criminalized, these cameras can play a big role in terms of the types of enforcement actions police take against these communities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And, the company has been long-resistant to efforts to track and log its devices, like in the case of a project called DeFlock. It’s an open-source, community-run tool that identifies and maps the locations of Flock’s cameras. Flock CEO and Co-Founder Garrett Langley is not a fan. Here he is speaking to Forbes again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Garrett’s interview with @Forbes on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Unfortunately, there’s terroristic organizations like DeFlock, whose primary motivation is chaos. They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else. And that, I think, is unfortunate — because we don’t want chaos, or I don’t want chaos. I like law and order, I like a society that has a bedrock of safety. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That interview is from September of last year. A few months later, he sent an unsolicited email to all Flock law enforcement clients. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And in that email, the CEO attacked activist groups who were against Flock. He said that they wanted to normalize lawlessness and let murderers go free. The CEO also called these activists, quote, “terrorists.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This prompted the city of Staunton, Virginia, as well as several others, to officially terminate their contracts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And in a press release, the police chief of Staunton, Virginia, basically was like, “We will not tolerate this type of rhetoric.” They said, quote, “The city of Staunton wants to make it clear that the Flock Safety CEO’s narrative does not reflect the city’s values.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Langley’s comments also came amid intense debate over local police sharing Flock data with ICE, which is a violation of city policy in some places. Altogether, it was a PR disaster. As of March, at least 30 localities have canceled their contracts with Flock, or deactivated the ALPRs. The city of Dayton, Ohio is still deciding whether to turn off their cameras — so, while they deliberate, they covered them up with trash bags. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Despite all the vocal opposition, Flock has a lot of support from businesses looking to improve public safety around their buildings — whether it’s private companies trying to protect employees in downtown corporate offices, or mom-and-pop shops trying to protect their storefronts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flock Safety cameras have been used by many business leaders and commercial districts throughout the Bay Area to address crime, prevent crime, track down people who may have broken into restaurants, vandalized businesses. So there’s just been a lot of support from large corporations, in addition to local business leaders, who argue that Flock cameras have actually been a really good thing for business, and for the safety of their employees, and customers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But residents are becoming more vocal about their distrust in Flock — in part, because it’s unclear who exactly has access to Flock’s data once it’s collected. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Who’s to say that these law enforcement agencies from other states can also use data from California law enforcement agencies? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How far is this data being shared? Is Flock breaking local laws? One reporter in Palo Alto uncovered a slew of Flock search requests that violated the city’s own policies. We’re getting into that after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going. You can support us by becoming a member at donate dot kqed dot org slash podcasts. Okay. After the break, Flock’s data breach. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, we’re back. Let’s open a new tab: The Palo Alto Flock scandal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People were just as fired up about a pickleball debate a couple of weeks ago in Palo Alto — so there are certain issues that definitely get people to turn out, whether it’s converting a pickleball court or, you know, cameras that are watching your every move when you’re moving about the city. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Riley Cooke is a City Hall reporter at Palo Alto Weekly. Earlier this year, a publication in nearby Mountain View had discovered that the city’s Flock data had been accessed by a slew of outside entities. Riley wanted to find out if the same thing was happening in Palo Alto. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what I did is I filed a records request for these search audits that Flock and the police department maintain. So, every time a search is conducted, whether by a local officer or by an out-of-state agency, or outside agency at all into Palo Alto — that’s logged in a giant spreadsheet with the time, the date, and the reason for the search. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The request was approved, but at first, the police chief didn’t hand over the specific documents that Riley was looking for. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, I reopened the request and said, “Hey, I actually want these spreadsheets.” And eventually they gave them to me in March. And my editor was- he was out on some, like, coffee chat with a source, and so I was blowing up his texts, like, “We got the ALPR records, we’ve got them.” And it’s thousands and thousands of pages that detail every single search: the time, the date, who conducted it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The search records revealed that police departments from all over the country were also searching Palo Alto’s Flock data, without the permission of the city, or the Palo Alto Police Department. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The police department told me that they didn’t actually access any of the data or download it, but Palo Alto’s cameras still appeared in search results from, you know, Mississippi, Illinois — basically all 50 states, including some federal agencies, such as the ATF. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ATF is short for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Riley’s reporting shows that, for about a year and a half, tens of thousands of searches from outside agencies were performed in Palo Alto. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think my hope with doing that was to sort of beg the question of: what do these agencies have anything to do with Palo Alto? Or why is Palo Alto’s ALPR data appearing in search results by, you know, police departments from halfway across the country? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is actually super illegal. California law prohibits the sharing of ALPR data with out-of-state and federal agencies — and this has been the case since 2016. The Palo Alto Police Department told Riley that they didn’t know the city had been opted into the national lookup feature. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And, they went above and beyond existing California law about not sharing with any out-of-state or federal agencies. And, what my reporting shows is that Flock was still able to bypass those without telling anybody. They didn’t tell the police department, they didn’t tell city officials, they just quietly rolled out this nationwide data-sharing effort, which completely went past local and California regulations. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think city officials were really confident at first that they had enacted these protections, that they were protecting residents and heeding those surveillance concerns. And yet, at the end of the day, the company still did what they wanted to do. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It begs the question: why did Flock bypass the police department and make this data available nationwide? And what is the point of privacy protections if Flock can just access the data and share it anyway? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Recently there’s been hundreds of people turning out to city government meetings to protest the Flock contract and urging Palo Alto to do what neighboring cities have done, which is to shut down the cameras or terminate their contract with Flock. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, thanks to Riley’s reporting, the Palo Alto Police Department is proactively sharing license plate search logs on its website. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, everyone’s able to go and find that information on their own, and can verify that no out-of-state or illegal searches are being performed. I don’t know any other city that’s currently doing that by practically publishing those, so I think that’s pretty cool. And Palo Alto is also auditing its Flock contract. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The consulting firm in charge of the Flock audit — called the OIR Group — has managed to hold Palo Alto’s cops accountable in the past — like standardizing bodycam usage. Will these data protections do anything, though? Riley says that residents are concerned that Flock could easily disregard them and go over the city again, like it did in Mountain View. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They don’t like that they were lied to. And so, I think a lot of residents had their suspicions about this, couldn’t exactly confirm that it was happening in Palo Alto, and my reporting was just — again, that confirmation that they were looking for. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Riley said the Palo Alto Police Department will probably listen to resident demands for greater transparency around Flock. But, even if the city gets rid of Flock cameras, law enforcement will likely still use ALPRs. If not Flock’s, then another company’s. There’s nationwide pushback against Flock — are these community efforts going anywhere though? Let’s open one last tab: can Flock be stopped? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re heading back to Alameda County, where Oakland is partnering with Flock to operate nearly 300 ALPRs throughout the city. But organizers remain committed to protesting the contracts. Roselyn Romero, the Oaklandside reporter from earlier, pointed out that Alameda County has a history of social movements. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because of Alameda County’s location, situated where all of these technological and AI advancements are originated, and the fact that Alameda County is home to many social justice movements over the years — I’m thinking about the Black Panther Party in Oakland, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of these social justice movements, racial justice movements, and activists are also on the side of: we shouldn’t have Flock in our communities, and why are we continuing to expand these sorts of police technologies in our neighborhoods, when there are already so many community members who are vulnerable and afraid? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think it speaks to this crucial moment in Alameda County of: everybody agrees that Flock Safety’s cameras are really powerful. It’s just- now, the debate is: what to use that power for, how comfortable we are with that power, and where we see our society going with this type of powerful tool in our communities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In California, organizers have actually made real progress in stopping Flock — or getting it removed. Santa Cruz was the first city to turn off its cameras. Mountain View, South Pasadena, El Cerrito, Campbell, Oxnard, and other California cities followed. And, like we talked about earlier, some residents have taken matters into their own hands. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Oakland, we’ve seen people paintbombing these Flock cameras, where cameras in Oakland have just been splashed with paint and vandalized, if you will. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And beyond the concerns about Flock’s capabilities, the company’s services are expensive. Flock contracts add up to millions of dollars. And this has many residents questioning how else this funding could be used. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When crime is at near historic lows, why are we continuing to put more money and more power into these powerful technologies? Right now, the Oakland City Council is debating its budget for the next fiscal year. And, we’re seeing all of these programs for violence prevention and for other community events being cut. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of community members are saying, “Why are we continuing to invest in police technologies and surveillance tools when we could instead allocate that money toward, say, health care or childhood education — early childhood education — more social programs for people who really need it during the summertime, or homelessness services?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a really interesting and seemingly endless debate that we’re seeing in Oakland and Alameda County and across the country. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alameda County Supervisor David Haubert: \u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[bangs gavel] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have to take a vote on this. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back in April, at the Alameda Board of Supervisors meeting, the board voted in favor of extending the Flock contract until July 1st. That’s despite the vocal pushback from residents. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Protesters outside of budget meeting]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Get Flock off our block! Get Flock off our block! Get Flock off our block! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last Tuesday — the day before the contract expired —the Alameda Board of Supervisors once again voted to extend Flock’s contract… This time, until the end of next year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alameda County Supervisor David Haubert: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So that motion passes. We’re not entertaining comments from the gallery. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once that’s up, the County Sheriff’s Office will have the opportunity to look for alternative vendors: surveillance tech companies that offer the same services as Flock. There are about a dozen or so competitors that could replace Flock cameras. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, even if the board votes to end its contract, this larger question still exists: Does mass surveillance of people who aren’t suspected of a crime violate their Fourth Amendment right to privacy? Is that worth giving up in the name of public safety? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This debate is not unique to the Bay Area. We’re seeing — at the federal level — President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda playing out in full force. What does that say about the type of surveillance, technology, and society that we want to have here in the Bay Area? What does that say about the types of companies and values we want to support and continue funding, not just at the national level, but even here, in our own communities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This debate gets at the heart of the right to privacy, guaranteed by the Constitution, but chipped away at every year. Communities across the country have made it clear that they oppose the partnerships between surveillance tech companies and the government. Will city leaders listen? Who knows? But paintbombing Flock cameras is a growing trend. And, as we’ve seen from other incidents across the country, people will find alternative — and creative —ways to make their anger heard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s it for today’s deep dive. But, as usual, stick around after the credits for bonus content. And if you’re dying to open more tabs about Flock Safety and all of its controversies, check out our show notes. We have some further reading there. But for now, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and it’s reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced and field-reported by Maya Cueva. It was edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Close All Tabs team also includes editor Chris Hambrick and audio engineer, Brendan Willard. Additional music by APM. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience and engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. Some members of the KQED Podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and materon Milky yellow pro v2 switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode includes clips from WWMT News, WHAS-11, TMJ4 News, KEZI 9, Benn Jordan, and Forbes. Special thanks to Rosalyn Romero and Riley Cooke, and everyone we spoke to at the Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting. Thanks for listening! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For the past couple of months, it’s mostly been organized demonstrations, and there’s been a sign that’s been going around that says, “GTFO: Get the Flock Out,” which I think is pretty funny. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flock Safety’s license plate readers have become a flashpoint for a debate across the country. On one side: law enforcement and their supporters, who say the cameras reduce crime and improve public safety. On the other: residents and advocates worried about a creeping surveillance state and the myriad security issues Flock has already been exposed for.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan talks to Bay Area reporters Roselyn Romero and Riley Cooke about the fight over Flock spreading throughout the region, what we still don’t know about how Flock’s data is used and how some residents are finding creative ways to push back.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC6560783367\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://oaklandside.org/author/roselyn-romero/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Roselyn Romero\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, public safety journalist at \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Oaklandside \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.paloaltoonline.com/author/rcookeembarcaderopublishing-com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Riley Cooke\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, reporter at \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Palo Alto Weekly \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We Hacked Flock Safety Cameras in under 30 Seconds \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Benn Jordan, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Youtube \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://sanjosespotlight.com/palo-alto-license-plate-data-searched-by-hundreds-of-out-of-state-agencies/\">Palo Alto license plate data searched by hundreds of out-of-state agencies\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Riley Cooke, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>Palo Alto Weekly\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://oaklandside.org/2026/05/28/flock-training-police-city-councils-webinar/\">Flock is quietly training Bay Area police to sway city leaders to buy surveillance tech\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Roselyn Romero, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>The Oaklandside \u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/flock-exposed-its-ai-powered-cameras-to-the-internet-we-tracked-ourselves/\">Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Jason Koebler, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>404 Media\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://knock-la.com/does-flock-safety-keep-women-safe/\">Does Flock Safety Keep Women Safe?\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Jayme Kusyk, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Knock LA\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://ij.org/police-have-reportedly-used-license-plate-readers-to-stalk-romantic-interests-at-least-14-times-in-recent-years/\">Police Have Reportedly Used License Plate Readers to Stalk Romantic Interests at Least 21 Times in Recent Years \u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci> —\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Christopher Ingraham, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Institute for Justice\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://prospect.org/2026/05/21/home-depot-lowes-downplay-customer-surveillance-threats-flock-cameras-immigration/\">Home Depot and Lowe’s Downplay Customer Surveillance Threats\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Whitney Curry Wimbish, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>The American Prospect\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.whro.org/business-growth/2026-01-20/flock-cameras-in-hampton-roads-surveil-black-communities-more-intensely-than-white-ones-cnu-study-says\">Flock cameras in Hampton Roads surveil Black communities more intensely than white ones, CNU study says\u003c/a> — Toby Cox, \u003ci>WHRO\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-into-nationwide-ai-enabled-camera-network-data-shows/\">ICE Taps into Nationwide AI-Enabled Camera Network, Data Shows\u003c/a> — Jason Koebler & Joseph Cox, \u003ci>404 Media\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://oaklandside.org/2026/04/24/who-is-paint-bombing-oaklands-flock-cameras/\">Who is paint bombing Oakland’s Flock cameras?\u003c/a> — Eli Wolfe, \u003ci>The Oaklandside\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/across-the-us-people-are-dismantling\">Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras\u003c/a> — Brian Merchant, \u003ci>Blood In The Machine\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/sf-car-break-in-data-18639763.php\">Has S.F. cracked how to fix the car break-in crisis? Here’s what is driving the decline\u003c/a> — Rachel Swan, \u003ci>San Francisco Chronicle \u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bay Area Resident: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Having Flock cameras will not keep us safe. These cameras will go up in the neighborhoods where people of color live and we can be damn sure that this information will be taken by the feds and shared with ICE. They do what they want. So don’t believe anybody who says this information is private and secure. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In April, Bay Area residents crowded into the downtown Oakland Administration building. It was supposed to be a routine budget meeting for the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. But it was unusually packed, thanks to one agenda item: approving a contract extension for Flock Safety cameras. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This would allow the controversial surveillance tech company to continue running its network of AI-powered license plate readers throughout the county — including unincorporated areas outside of cities like Oakland and Berkeley. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The contract expired last summer. If approved, the extension would buy another three months of Flock surveillance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The room was packed with residents, from Oakland to Castro Valley. Even more attended virtually to give comments. More than a hundred residents spoke during the meeting. Close All Tabs producer, Maya Cueva, was on the scene. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Narayan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Good evening. I urge you to reject Flock’s $854,000 contract extension. This isn’t a camera system, it’s a mass surveillance network that will track every single one of us, making a searchable database that tracks our movements. You guys say you care about immigrant communities, but this system puts them directly in danger. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flock’s license plate readers have become a flashpoint for a debate across the country — not just in the Bay Area. On one side: law enforcement and their supporters, who say the cameras reduce crime and improve public safety. On the other: residents and advocates who are concerned about a creeping surveillance state, an erosion of the right to privacy, and the myriad security issues Flock has already been exposed for. Alameda County residents of all ages have been fighting against Flock in their neighborhoods for a while. And some aren’t even able to vote yet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Narayan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hi, my name’s Narayan. I’m 17. I go by he/him pronouns, and I’m from East Oakland. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kaylyn: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hello, my names Kaylyn. I’m 17 years old, and I live in Oakland. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tyson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My name is Tyson, I’m 18, he/him pronouns, and I live in Albany. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Narayan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m here to stop the implementation and extending of a Flock contract in my county. Flock is a multi-billion dollar corporation that is focused on hyper surveillance of people, and we’ve already seen that it is in the wrong hands. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Three years ago, Alameda County leaders approved a contract to install 100 plate readers throughout the county. Berkeley has just over 30, and Oakland recently approved a $2 million contract for nearly 300 more cameras in the city. Other residents have been speaking out about the issue for years now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Manny: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve been fighting Flock since 2023, but now it’s a lot more in the cultural zeitgeist. A lot of people have become a lot aware of the surveillance systems that are being used to surveil them, to watch and kidnap their community members. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ramesh Sridharan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We don’t want mass surveillance. We should be investing in communities. We should be spending our money on that as opposed to programs like Flock, which contribute to a surveillance state and have no evidence of actually reducing crime. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But some residents spoke in support of extending Flock’s contract. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robert Battinich: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was raised in San Leandro for 25 years. I own property in San Leandro and I’ve been robbed 24 times. Recently, they put Flock cameras in San Leandro, and it seems to be that they haven’t been breaking in. So, please vote “yes” on renewing the contract with the Flock cameras. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The board of supervisors kept calling for decorum when attendees clapped for anti-Flock speakers. So one resident used his allotted time to scold the board. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ralph Brown: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, it seems like a majority of you are just ready to reject the overwhelming majority of your residents who are telling you to vote “no” on this contract, not spend $300,000 plus more dollars to extend this contract and basically just say- tell us to go fuck ourselves, is what I’m hearing from you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The meeting lasted hours — and after all that, the board of supervisors voted 3-2 in favor of extending the contract. Protests broke out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Protesters outside of budget meeting]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Get Flock off our block! Get Flock off our block! Get Flock off our block! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The backlash we’re seeing against Flock in Alameda County is part of a bigger nationwide fight against normalizing mass surveillance. Flock vandalism is up across the country. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip from @wwmtnews on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office says someone intentionally cut down a Flock license plate reader camera along D Avenue in Cooper Township. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip from @WHAS11News on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Auburn normally has 12 in the city, now they’re down two. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip from @tmj4 on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Take a close look at this automatic license plate reading camera, and you’ll notice gold paint covering the lens. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People have put stickers over the cameras’ lenses, covered them with trash bags, paintbombed entire devices, and joked online about pointing lasers at the cameras to destroy the sensors. In Oregon, someone cut down six poles holding Flock cameras, leaving a note that said, quote, “Hahaha get wrecked you surveilling fucks.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip from @KEZI9News on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No arrests have been made in either jurisdiction, but this is considered criminal mischief. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s local news station KEZI 9, which actually broadcasted the uncensored note. But aside from resorting to “criminal mischief,” how else are people fighting the installation of these cameras in their neighborhoods? Today, we’re digging into the heated debate around Flock cameras: what exactly they’re doing with your data and why this might matter more than you think. Ready? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, have been rapidly rolled out by cities and communities around the country, with Flock Safety’s tech at the lead. Before we get any deeper into this, we need to talk about what Flock actually is — and how it was adopted so quickly. Let’s open a new tab: Why is Flock so controversial? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s get into the origin story. So, Flock Safety is based in Atlanta, Georgia. It operates a whole host of surveillance devices: cameras, drones, and, importantly, for this story, ALPRs. Back in 2017, this Georgia Tech alum, Garrett Langley, noticed the uptake in break-ins around his Atlanta neighborhood. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Police told him that grainy surveillance camera footage was actually unhelpful, and what they really needed to find perpetrators were license plates. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, Garrett called up two of his college buddies. Together, they worked on a prototype camera that could record and share what he called “evidence,” not just footage. Here he is speaking to Forbes last year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Garrett’s interview with @Forbes on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it’s pretty wild. At the end of ’17, we were sitting at my dining room table in Atlanta, building cameras by hand. And now, today, we’re in a roughly 100,000 square foot facility building cameras, building trailers, building drones — all right here in Georgia, which is pretty fun. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Fun” is certainly one way to put it. This entrepreneurial, neighborly concern has grown into an operation of at least 90,000 cameras nationwide, scanning over 20 billion license plates per month. Over 1,000 private businesses have also installed the cameras, adding to Flock’s massive surveillance database. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Oakland, the push for installing Flock’s ALPRs was fueled by local frustration over BIP-ing — you know, breaking into a parked car and looting whatever’s inside. Here’s Roselyn Romero, a reporter for the independent local news outlet, The Oaklandside. She’s been covering Flock Safety cameras for the region. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BIP-ing, or car break-ins, were also understandably making a lot of residents angry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The city took action around 2024. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Oakland Police Department eventually signed a contract with Flock Safety for cameras to be installed throughout the city, primarily on freeway entrances and exits. And right now, today, there are 293 Flock cameras in Oakland — specifically, automated license plate readers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flock’s ALPRs go way further than the standard traffic cam that tickets drivers for speeding. The cameras automatically capture the license plate of every car that drives by — as well as 6 to 12 images of other identifying information. All of this is used to create what Flock calls: a vehicle fingerprint. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The make and the model of that vehicle, if there is a scrape on the bumper, or if there are bumper stickers on the car — Flock keeps a database of all of that information of every car that passes by the ALPRs. And that database can be used by the law enforcement agencies that contract with Flock to investigate crimes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flock will send officers alerts when a camera captures a vehicle that’s been marked stolen or wanted. Or, the police can search the database to trace a specific vehicle’s movements across the country. Car break-ins in San Francisco have plummeted since 2023. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But whether Flock has any part in that is dubious. The city started cracking down on car break-ins long before it adopted Flock cameras. Still, supporters say that Flock is necessary to prevent crime and catch those who do it. Now, the company says its devices are not equipped to track individual people — but recent expansions have residents concerned. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flock also has cameras that are called pan, tilt, and zoom cameras. Those cameras, which are currently being used by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, can be used to track pedestrians in addition to vehicles. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of the data collected by Flock cameras around the country is shared and stored in a massive aggregated database, which can be accessed by anyone in the network. That means that police in Texas can hunt a woman who travels out of state for an abortion, or that ICE agents can ask local police in Illinois to track undocumented families. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Both of these scenarios are real. They’ve already happened. Privacy activists and civil liberties groups are especially worried. Given the Trump administration’s recent immigration crackdown. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People are scared — even putting Flock cameras aside, many immigrants are afraid of immigration enforcement knocking on their doors. We’re hearing a lot of newly arrived immigrants, refugee and asylum seekers, and other vulnerable populations say that they don’t even want to go outside anymore. They don’t even want to go grocery shopping or send their children to school because they’re afraid of ICE coming in and taking them away from their families. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve been seeing reports of law enforcement agencies and police departments in places outside of California that have shared data with Border Patrol, with U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement, and other federal law enforcement agencies that deal with deporting people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so a lot of people are understandably afraid. And really concerned about, well, if this technology is continued here in Alameda County, who’s to say that that data is gonna end up in the wrong hands? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A big part of the concern is around data privacy. Flock says it deletes all the information after 30 days. But the company isn’t very transparent about how they handle all of this data. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There have been a lot of concerns from community members I’ve interviewed who say, you know, even if this data is stored in this database for 30 days, what happens after those 30 days? There have just been a whole host of concerns about the type of data that is stored, for how long it’s stored, and who has access to that data before and after it’s retained. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flock also says all of this data, and their camera feeds, are encrypted. These assurances fall flat, though. Around the U.S., amateur hackers have been able to get around the company’s security systems. Tech YouTuber Benn Jordan explained how he did it in a video posted last year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip from @BennJordan on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You may remember me from this video, where I told you about 40,000 of these things that your tax dollars pay for that are tracking your every move and repurposing data collected about you every time that you drive past them. Upon further investigation, it turns out that there are over 80,000 of them — and, um, we got some, and we hacked them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With the help of a cybersecurity expert, Benn was able to hack Flock safety cameras in a whopping 30 seconds. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip from @BennJordan on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">First thing you’re going to want to do is go ahead and press the button to turn on that police camera. Then press the button on the back a number of times I can’t disclose in this video. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There she is: the Flock wireless access point. Go on and connect. Send a command to enable ADB. Connect. And now you can connect to the Flock Safety device and access its data. Or install whatever the hell you want on it. Have fun! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Apparently, hacking a Flock camera really is that easy. At least, it was when that video was published. And once you’re in, there’s a lot you can do. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip from @BennJordan on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can clone or decompile the apps. You could send the video stream data to a remote server. You could use it as a botnet client for malware. You could have it capture Wi-Fi handshake credentials and do middleman or honeypot attacks — or replace or modify captured footage or images. And if that is the case, this could bring into question the integrity of the data being used as admissible evidence in court, like, in general. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When these cameras can be hacked and used to spy on people or watch kids, watch everyday people, it really makes you think: how comfortable are we with this type of mass surveillance in our communities? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a follow-up video, Benn showed how easy it was to find the control panels for Flock’s cameras. 404 Media confirmed that at least 60 of Flock’s Condor cameras — the ones that can pan, zoom, and tilt — were left unsecured on the open internet. That means that the live streams and administrator panels could be accessed by anyone with the right link — no login credentials needed. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With the panels, anyone could download 30 days of archive footage, manually control the cameras, and run diagnostics. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, if Flock cameras can be easily hacked or are left totally unsecured, what does it mean for the troves of data? All the photos, the live feeds, the vehicle fingerprints that are stored on Flock’s cloud servers — how is this data being used, authorized or not? Who can access it? That’s a new tab: How is Flock being misused? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There have been a lot of red flags raised by privacy experts and technology experts who say that Flock doesn’t have enough data privacy safeguards to protect itself from liability, as well as protect community members who may be vulnerable to civil immigration enforcement, or enforcement as it relates to seeking abortions or reproductive health care in states where it’s illegal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There have been reports of law enforcement using Flock data for both of these purposes — as well as more… personal uses. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve seen reports from other parts of the country where police officers have used Flock’s database to track down their ex-girlfriends and stalk them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A Wisconsin cop used Flock to stalk his ex-girlfriend and her partner. He submitted 179 database searches for their license plates. In fact, multiple officers have been accused of using Flock’s database to stalk romantic interests — there are at least 21 reported incidents of this in recent years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, even though we have Flock and law enforcement saying one thing about Flock cameras’ original intent and purpose, there’s always the potential for something to happen where this technology is used beyond its original intent. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that’s all assuming that technology is working correctly. What if Flock’s vehicle fingerprint is wrong? Just a few months ago, police stopped a 62-year-old woman in Oakland who was driving to her job at a nursing home. Flock had connected her plates to a “serious crime.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, she exited the vehicle with her hands up, her car registration was in her hand, and she saw these sheriff’s deputies pointing their guns at her — and she was really confused. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, eventually the sheriff’s deputies told her, “Oh, you might not be the suspect we’re looking for because the license plate reader tracked down your license plate. And we essentially connected your license plate number to a crime that had been committed not that long ago.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What the woman didn’t know was that her plates had been stolen, and replaced with the ones associated with the crime. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She came to the realization, “I’m being treated like I’m a violent criminal.” That could have gone so much worse than it did, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But here’s the thing: Flock flagged a black Honda Civic. This woman drove a silver car. Flock’s “vehicle fingerprint” is supposed to be holistic, taking into account way more details about a car than just its license plates. Were these other details checked before officers made the stop? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It opens up this scary question of: can this happen to me? Can this happen to someone I love, someone I know — completely unsuspecting — who may have had their license plate stolen?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And here’s another issue with this technology: racial bias. Black and Brown communities are already more likely to be overpoliced and are disproportionately targeted for traffic stops. The existing bias is evident in Flock’s search records — law enforcement officials still use racist and derogatory language when they search through Flock’s ALPR database. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And as one study showed, Flock Safety cameras have been found to surveil predominantly Black communities more intensely than white ones. In Virginia’s Hampton Roads area, neighborhoods where at least 50% of residents are Black have four times the number of Flock cameras as majority-white neighborhoods. One of the highest concentrations of cameras is around the only HBCU in the area. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In neighborhoods where Black and Brown people are already overly policed, overly surveilled, and overly criminalized, these cameras can play a big role in terms of the types of enforcement actions police take against these communities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And, the company has been long-resistant to efforts to track and log its devices, like in the case of a project called DeFlock. It’s an open-source, community-run tool that identifies and maps the locations of Flock’s cameras. Flock CEO and Co-Founder Garrett Langley is not a fan. Here he is speaking to Forbes again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Garrett’s interview with @Forbes on YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Unfortunately, there’s terroristic organizations like DeFlock, whose primary motivation is chaos. They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else. And that, I think, is unfortunate — because we don’t want chaos, or I don’t want chaos. I like law and order, I like a society that has a bedrock of safety. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That interview is from September of last year. A few months later, he sent an unsolicited email to all Flock law enforcement clients. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And in that email, the CEO attacked activist groups who were against Flock. He said that they wanted to normalize lawlessness and let murderers go free. The CEO also called these activists, quote, “terrorists.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This prompted the city of Staunton, Virginia, as well as several others, to officially terminate their contracts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And in a press release, the police chief of Staunton, Virginia, basically was like, “We will not tolerate this type of rhetoric.” They said, quote, “The city of Staunton wants to make it clear that the Flock Safety CEO’s narrative does not reflect the city’s values.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Langley’s comments also came amid intense debate over local police sharing Flock data with ICE, which is a violation of city policy in some places. Altogether, it was a PR disaster. As of March, at least 30 localities have canceled their contracts with Flock, or deactivated the ALPRs. The city of Dayton, Ohio is still deciding whether to turn off their cameras — so, while they deliberate, they covered them up with trash bags. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Despite all the vocal opposition, Flock has a lot of support from businesses looking to improve public safety around their buildings — whether it’s private companies trying to protect employees in downtown corporate offices, or mom-and-pop shops trying to protect their storefronts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flock Safety cameras have been used by many business leaders and commercial districts throughout the Bay Area to address crime, prevent crime, track down people who may have broken into restaurants, vandalized businesses. So there’s just been a lot of support from large corporations, in addition to local business leaders, who argue that Flock cameras have actually been a really good thing for business, and for the safety of their employees, and customers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But residents are becoming more vocal about their distrust in Flock — in part, because it’s unclear who exactly has access to Flock’s data once it’s collected. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Who’s to say that these law enforcement agencies from other states can also use data from California law enforcement agencies? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How far is this data being shared? Is Flock breaking local laws? One reporter in Palo Alto uncovered a slew of Flock search requests that violated the city’s own policies. We’re getting into that after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going. You can support us by becoming a member at donate dot kqed dot org slash podcasts. Okay. After the break, Flock’s data breach. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, we’re back. Let’s open a new tab: The Palo Alto Flock scandal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People were just as fired up about a pickleball debate a couple of weeks ago in Palo Alto — so there are certain issues that definitely get people to turn out, whether it’s converting a pickleball court or, you know, cameras that are watching your every move when you’re moving about the city. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Riley Cooke is a City Hall reporter at Palo Alto Weekly. Earlier this year, a publication in nearby Mountain View had discovered that the city’s Flock data had been accessed by a slew of outside entities. Riley wanted to find out if the same thing was happening in Palo Alto. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what I did is I filed a records request for these search audits that Flock and the police department maintain. So, every time a search is conducted, whether by a local officer or by an out-of-state agency, or outside agency at all into Palo Alto — that’s logged in a giant spreadsheet with the time, the date, and the reason for the search. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The request was approved, but at first, the police chief didn’t hand over the specific documents that Riley was looking for. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, I reopened the request and said, “Hey, I actually want these spreadsheets.” And eventually they gave them to me in March. And my editor was- he was out on some, like, coffee chat with a source, and so I was blowing up his texts, like, “We got the ALPR records, we’ve got them.” And it’s thousands and thousands of pages that detail every single search: the time, the date, who conducted it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The search records revealed that police departments from all over the country were also searching Palo Alto’s Flock data, without the permission of the city, or the Palo Alto Police Department. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The police department told me that they didn’t actually access any of the data or download it, but Palo Alto’s cameras still appeared in search results from, you know, Mississippi, Illinois — basically all 50 states, including some federal agencies, such as the ATF. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ATF is short for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Riley’s reporting shows that, for about a year and a half, tens of thousands of searches from outside agencies were performed in Palo Alto. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think my hope with doing that was to sort of beg the question of: what do these agencies have anything to do with Palo Alto? Or why is Palo Alto’s ALPR data appearing in search results by, you know, police departments from halfway across the country? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is actually super illegal. California law prohibits the sharing of ALPR data with out-of-state and federal agencies — and this has been the case since 2016. The Palo Alto Police Department told Riley that they didn’t know the city had been opted into the national lookup feature. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And, they went above and beyond existing California law about not sharing with any out-of-state or federal agencies. And, what my reporting shows is that Flock was still able to bypass those without telling anybody. They didn’t tell the police department, they didn’t tell city officials, they just quietly rolled out this nationwide data-sharing effort, which completely went past local and California regulations. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think city officials were really confident at first that they had enacted these protections, that they were protecting residents and heeding those surveillance concerns. And yet, at the end of the day, the company still did what they wanted to do. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It begs the question: why did Flock bypass the police department and make this data available nationwide? And what is the point of privacy protections if Flock can just access the data and share it anyway? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Recently there’s been hundreds of people turning out to city government meetings to protest the Flock contract and urging Palo Alto to do what neighboring cities have done, which is to shut down the cameras or terminate their contract with Flock. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, thanks to Riley’s reporting, the Palo Alto Police Department is proactively sharing license plate search logs on its website. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, everyone’s able to go and find that information on their own, and can verify that no out-of-state or illegal searches are being performed. I don’t know any other city that’s currently doing that by practically publishing those, so I think that’s pretty cool. And Palo Alto is also auditing its Flock contract. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The consulting firm in charge of the Flock audit — called the OIR Group — has managed to hold Palo Alto’s cops accountable in the past — like standardizing bodycam usage. Will these data protections do anything, though? Riley says that residents are concerned that Flock could easily disregard them and go over the city again, like it did in Mountain View. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They don’t like that they were lied to. And so, I think a lot of residents had their suspicions about this, couldn’t exactly confirm that it was happening in Palo Alto, and my reporting was just — again, that confirmation that they were looking for. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Riley said the Palo Alto Police Department will probably listen to resident demands for greater transparency around Flock. But, even if the city gets rid of Flock cameras, law enforcement will likely still use ALPRs. If not Flock’s, then another company’s. There’s nationwide pushback against Flock — are these community efforts going anywhere though? Let’s open one last tab: can Flock be stopped? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re heading back to Alameda County, where Oakland is partnering with Flock to operate nearly 300 ALPRs throughout the city. But organizers remain committed to protesting the contracts. Roselyn Romero, the Oaklandside reporter from earlier, pointed out that Alameda County has a history of social movements. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because of Alameda County’s location, situated where all of these technological and AI advancements are originated, and the fact that Alameda County is home to many social justice movements over the years — I’m thinking about the Black Panther Party in Oakland, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of these social justice movements, racial justice movements, and activists are also on the side of: we shouldn’t have Flock in our communities, and why are we continuing to expand these sorts of police technologies in our neighborhoods, when there are already so many community members who are vulnerable and afraid? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think it speaks to this crucial moment in Alameda County of: everybody agrees that Flock Safety’s cameras are really powerful. It’s just- now, the debate is: what to use that power for, how comfortable we are with that power, and where we see our society going with this type of powerful tool in our communities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In California, organizers have actually made real progress in stopping Flock — or getting it removed. Santa Cruz was the first city to turn off its cameras. Mountain View, South Pasadena, El Cerrito, Campbell, Oxnard, and other California cities followed. And, like we talked about earlier, some residents have taken matters into their own hands. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Oakland, we’ve seen people paintbombing these Flock cameras, where cameras in Oakland have just been splashed with paint and vandalized, if you will. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And beyond the concerns about Flock’s capabilities, the company’s services are expensive. Flock contracts add up to millions of dollars. And this has many residents questioning how else this funding could be used. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When crime is at near historic lows, why are we continuing to put more money and more power into these powerful technologies? Right now, the Oakland City Council is debating its budget for the next fiscal year. And, we’re seeing all of these programs for violence prevention and for other community events being cut. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of community members are saying, “Why are we continuing to invest in police technologies and surveillance tools when we could instead allocate that money toward, say, health care or childhood education — early childhood education — more social programs for people who really need it during the summertime, or homelessness services?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a really interesting and seemingly endless debate that we’re seeing in Oakland and Alameda County and across the country. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alameda County Supervisor David Haubert: \u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[bangs gavel] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have to take a vote on this. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back in April, at the Alameda Board of Supervisors meeting, the board voted in favor of extending the Flock contract until July 1st. That’s despite the vocal pushback from residents. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Protesters outside of budget meeting]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Get Flock off our block! Get Flock off our block! Get Flock off our block! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last Tuesday — the day before the contract expired —the Alameda Board of Supervisors once again voted to extend Flock’s contract… This time, until the end of next year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alameda County Supervisor David Haubert: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So that motion passes. We’re not entertaining comments from the gallery. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once that’s up, the County Sheriff’s Office will have the opportunity to look for alternative vendors: surveillance tech companies that offer the same services as Flock. There are about a dozen or so competitors that could replace Flock cameras. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, even if the board votes to end its contract, this larger question still exists: Does mass surveillance of people who aren’t suspected of a crime violate their Fourth Amendment right to privacy? Is that worth giving up in the name of public safety? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Roselyn Romero: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This debate is not unique to the Bay Area. We’re seeing — at the federal level — President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda playing out in full force. What does that say about the type of surveillance, technology, and society that we want to have here in the Bay Area? What does that say about the types of companies and values we want to support and continue funding, not just at the national level, but even here, in our own communities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This debate gets at the heart of the right to privacy, guaranteed by the Constitution, but chipped away at every year. Communities across the country have made it clear that they oppose the partnerships between surveillance tech companies and the government. Will city leaders listen? Who knows? But paintbombing Flock cameras is a growing trend. And, as we’ve seen from other incidents across the country, people will find alternative — and creative —ways to make their anger heard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s it for today’s deep dive. But, as usual, stick around after the credits for bonus content. And if you’re dying to open more tabs about Flock Safety and all of its controversies, check out our show notes. We have some further reading there. But for now, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and it’s reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced and field-reported by Maya Cueva. It was edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Close All Tabs team also includes editor Chris Hambrick and audio engineer, Brendan Willard. Additional music by APM. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience and engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. Some members of the KQED Podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and materon Milky yellow pro v2 switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode includes clips from WWMT News, WHAS-11, TMJ4 News, KEZI 9, Benn Jordan, and Forbes. Special thanks to Rosalyn Romero and Riley Cooke, and everyone we spoke to at the Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting. Thanks for listening! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Riley Cooke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For the past couple of months, it’s mostly been organized demonstrations, and there’s been a sign that’s been going around that says, “GTFO: Get the Flock Out,” which I think is pretty funny. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Everyone seems to have an opinion about AI, but what about those who will likely be affected most — recent graduates?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This cohort of grads is unique. They remember what classrooms were like before the emergence of ChatGPT in 2022, and have seen how it transformed the education world seemingly overnight. Today, we hear from three recent graduates in the Bay Area about their thoughts on AI, how it affected their education, and how they feel about their futures. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This week, we’re sharing a recent \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12085502/three-recent-graduates-share-their-thoughts-on-ai\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">episode\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> from KQED podcast \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/thebay\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Bay\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — a show that takes an in-depth look at stories from across the SF Bay Area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC2030502225\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Hello! Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show! And tell your friends! Post about it! On Instagram, Bluesky, X, Discord, Reddit, the comments of whatever random recipe blog you start arguments in … basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Ok, let’s get to the show.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, it’s Morgan. So, Close All Tabs is on vacation this week. Shocking, I know! We do log off sometimes. Or at least, we try to. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But don’t worry — we still have an episode for you today. On Close All Tabs, we’re always talking about AI … from the way data centers are changing local communities, to the drama that industry billionaires are getting themselves into. About a year ago, we dove into how some teachers are dealing with the AI boom in their classrooms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, we’re gonna hear the other side of that story, from young people who’ve been in the thick of it, but don’t always get to share their perspective. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our friends at The Bay, another KQED podcast, spoke to a few recent college graduates about AI. This is a unique cohort of students: they remember what classrooms were like before ChatGPT, and they’ve seen how much it’s changed learning. They spoke to The Bay about how AI affected their college experience, and how they feel about entering the workforce in such rapidly changing industries. What are they really thinking about their futures? What’s on their minds?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alright, here’s Three Recent Graduates Share Their Thoughts on AI, from \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Bay\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I’m Alan Montecillo, in for Erika Cruz Guevara, and welcome to The Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. I graduated from college 13 years ago, and I gotta be honest, no disrespect, but I don’t remember who the commencement speaker was or what they talked about. Most graduation speeches have the same themes. Some message about hope. Thanking your friends and family, the importance of following your passion, and perhaps a call to change the world for the better. But this graduation season has felt a little different.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Gloria Caulfield:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> There have been several videos of students booing commencement speakers when they mention AI. These videos have gone viral.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eric Schmidt:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Time magazine selected its person of the year for 2025. And it was this time, it was the architects of artificial intelligence. Interesting.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Scott Borschetta:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> AI is rewriting production as we sit here. I know it, deal with it. Like I said, it’s a tool. Hey, like I said. You can hear me now or you can pay me later.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Today’s college graduates were in school when ChatGPT was first released in late 2022. They’ve seen it change their classrooms. Today, three recent graduates in the Bay Area tell us how they really feel about AI and about their futures.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellena Simentel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My name is Ellena Simentel. I graduated with my master’s in kinesiology from San Francisco State.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kinesiology is the study of muscle movement. It’s very interdisciplinary, so there’s kind of a lot of different aspects in the field. So we do like sports psychology. You can go into physical therapy, athletic training, occupational therapy. I wanted to be a physical therapist. I’ve been to a little bit more recently. So I did focus mostly on like muscle physiology classes and that types of things. But now I think I wanna go more into a little bit more of the psychological motivational side, either doing some kind of city planning that has to do with getting people moving, or maybe even working for some type of nonprofit like Girls on the Run or things that get people active.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So even in undergrad we take our core class which is like one of the classes that teaches you like how to read and write in the field of kinesiology and that type of thing and midway through the semester I want to say this was like 2023. Our professor had actually changed the entire course of the class to focus on AI because it had like kind of just come out and she was like you And all of us at that point were kind of like, oh, you know, like, it’ll come and go, it is what it is. But what’s funny sitting back and looking at it now, it’s like, I feel like she really changed the class for a reason. I think it helped a lot of us just kind of get a grasp on what is AI, how to use it, the advantages maybe and some of the disadvantages. And so I obviously only took that class once, but I hope that they continue to do that for that class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s good to have immediate feedback, right? That’s, I think, one of the biggest advantages as a student. You don’t have to wait for your professor. It’s very individualized and you can really use it to fix specific things in your writing, for example, like writing essays. I think it’s a great tool to make you sound professional, help fix your grammar, maybe help you with the formatting. Um, the problem and the drawback is just sometimes it takes over your thinking. You it’s, it’s very easy to just put something in and be like, okay, now write me an essay, but there’s no thought that goes into that. There’s no critical thinking that goes in to that. Um, and at the end of the day, like it’s kind of taking away from the learning itself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m definitely less worried than other fields. I think there’s some careers in kinesiology, like if you wanted to be an athletic trainer or maybe like a personal trainer, there’s definitely a chance that AI could swoop in and take some of your clients. You can ask for a workout routine on ChatGPT so easily. However, The motivational aspect that comes with kinesiology and sports psychology that we learn with our degree I think is more helpful than talking to something online and just kind of having that like one-on-one human support is a lot more personalized. For example, like I worked in the athletic training department for a little bit and you can feel the difference in muscle when like a muscle is tense and you can kind with tell. What it needs, AI is not gonna be hands-on like that. And so having that human interaction in this field specifically is really helpful.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I will say though that there’s just so much negativity around it and it’s kind of hard to take yourself out of the online discourse. My friend works out in this athletic studio with some of these tech guys and they talk the pros and the cons and like how people are being let go and and you know But at the same time, maybe there’s some jobs that AI should take over. Do people really need to be coding all day every day sitting on a computer? Maybe there’s things that humans shouldn’t be doing, like computer work all day. Maybe we need to go back outside.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m looking forward to seeing what’s out there, right? I live in San Francisco currently and I can’t really see myself. Moving away anytime soon. I think there’s just so much to experience and so many people to meet. Global pandemic, like I was in college, I was taking like 20 units a semester. Every semester I was summer classes, winter classes, and I really chased the academic route. I just turned 24 and I have my master’s and I don’t think a lot of people can say that. And so I think now kind of like finding what it is exactly that I want to do with it and kind of just getting more experience in the field is really exciting to me.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ada He: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My name is Ada He, and I’m currently a fourth year student at UC San Diego set to graduate on June 14th. My hometown is San Jose in the Bay Area, and I’m currently studying cognitive science with a specialization in machine learning and neural computation.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So just to boil down to simple terms, it’s basically the study of intelligence, and it’s super duper relevant for machine learning, understanding these computational models of intelligence. The reason that I chose it and specifically the machine learning and neural computation track was because I think in high school I knew that I was curious about technology but I was also curious about more so the neuroscience and psychology side of things. And so I think I was kind of struck by this idea of like what is intelligence, how can we model it computationally and I think at the time even then there were starting to be like these buzzwords around ML and like AI and how this is going to be the next big thing of the future.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so… Very practical future-oriented parents were like, you, our child, should definitely study something related to technology. And I was like, well, I’m not quite sure, so let me pick this broader major that has to do with technology, but also kind of has to do more with like the philosophy and the psychology and like the ethics of what these systems are.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think when I first started in college, basically the only place that I was hearing about machine learning, artificial intelligence as a whole was through theory in my coursework. But I think all of it was very much creative and like human driven. I think where I really started hearing about these AI tools that were in mass production was during my second year of college. So I think in that time, that was when ChatGPT was sort of like released to Apollo can never start using it and it became like the big thing. And suddenly it felt like everyone was talking about chatgbc like, oh hey, it’s pretty smart, it can do all these things. In my third year of college then, like after the summer when we came back to school, then it was taking off and everyone was using it in their classes, everyone’s like asking it questions, and they were using it to code in my programming classes, they were asking it for essay advice, and then I think that was when I started to think like wait, isn’t that an academic integrity violation and then so is AI just being used to like help us cheat now? Started out in this very humanistic direction, right?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was using AI as a tool to investigate these hypotheses and to see if I could get it to predict the patterns that I could predict. They were supposed to be these helpful tools that would help us diagnose bigger problems that were facing people. I’ve heard of applications of AI to chart patterns of climate change. So in my head, I just thought AI and ML had so much potential to be used for good. With ChatGPT, I know it’s like- There’s so much progress now going on in the area of large language models that I wonder if the other areas of AI and other use cases are being neglected. This seems like all research is funneling into how these large language models can help us replace white collar jobs. And I’m like, when did that become the focus of artificial intelligence and machine learning?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think I’ve been searching for a full-time job since January. As a student who is looking for a white collar job, it’s been very very very distressing to hear all the discourse that AI is meant to replace the work that I’ve spent four years studying. I think I honestly lost track by half to have applied for more than 300 jobs at this point. Just knowing that like the odds of getting a job are so slim even if you do get a callback and then seeing the number of callbacks I’m getting compared to the number applications I put out, that is kind of insane to me.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I do have summer jobs lined up. I’m currently like a student employee at the UC San Diego library. And I think like I’ve been really fortunate to have that environment because working for the web team there feels very meaningful since the work we do is like all done by hand. We have a very intentional design approach and the goal of all the work that I put out there is to serve the student body.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think everything that I’ve made there has made me like feel good and I don’t like feel as much like moral confusion when I think about continuing that work this summer. But that rule runs until September, so I know that I have wiggle rooms trying to figure things out somewhat.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Every generation has faced its demons and maybe the world of AI slop these like powerfully generative tools are kind of one of the demons that my generation has to face in the sense that we have to figure out where it fits into our lives and where it fits into workflows without compromising our morals because they might be here to stay. And then we also have to figure out how to deal with them in our daily, day-to-day work, because that’s probably gonna be an inseparable part of it, whether we like it or not.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aaron Kim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My name is Aaron Kim. I graduated from UC Berkeley with a major in political science. I came in through the community college route and I started community college in 2019. So I had a couple of years to see like at least in community college, like what higher education was like before AI, then it dropped. And then I saw everyone kind of like scrambling to react to it. It was really interesting watching the different ways professors would try to handle it. Some of them just had like a no AI policy. Others had like a, you have to use AI policy. My gosh, yeah. I remember really early on, there was a professor that told me that like, or that told the class that don’t use AI. I can tell if you use AI because it’ll take your essay, put it in ChatGPT and ask it if it wrote it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s been a bit of a consensus that’s settled around AI, where professors just kind of understood that it’s here. So they got more specific on how we’re supposed to use it. So they’re like, oh, you can use it as a writing assistant. You can use as to help start your research, but don’t use it a source and don’t make it do all your writing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I know some people that are really hardline against it, I kind of agree with them for the most part. Like I think that AI especially, it’s not very sustainable. I feel like it’s sometimes people over-rely on it, which I’ve seen a lot. But I’ve also seen it level the playing field, especially for like ESL speakers. Sometimes I’ll see people who are like in higher education and they’re like not speaking English as a first language I I remember before AI they were excuse my language, but they were basically just shit out of luck. They were gonna be judged the same as like a native English speaker and like sometimes like it just like people were not nice about it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I’m like a first-gen college student, so I I just kind of went to college because I don’t know, I didn’t really know why I was going. I just did it. I’m not one of those people that was like, oh yeah, I’m gonna be a doctor or a lawyer or a dentist. I ended up doing a lot of stuff in the union world and the labor world and like the community organizing world, which is why I think AI has affected me a little less personally, like a little less directly because none of the jobs that I was really looking for are really AI exposed as much.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Luckily I’m one of these people, but I do think the implementation of AI in the economy has like, I’ve received a lot of the downwind effects. I think a lot tasks are having AI implemented into it. And because of that, I think there’s just less need for a lot of entry level positions that existed in the past. My friends and I joke about it being a “nepo economy” right now, because there’s just like, nobody’s getting jobs through applications, at least not a lot. It’s just all like, you have to know somebody and that’s how you’re getting jobs. I’m still trying to really figure out what direction I want to go for that. But right now I’m just like trying to find something in social impact, you know, nonprofits or unions, um, which is just because that’s like, you know, where my heart was at during college. And that’s where a lot of my experience was at. But yeah, at this point, I think I just kind of have to try to keep an open mind.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I just don’t really think this sort of like innovation is really helping most people in a way that’s really substantial. Like I feel like, yeah, it’s like making things more convenient for a lot of us in like really minor ways, but I just feel like, like, was this all necessary? But it’s like here and we can’t like press, there’s no undo button for things like this, so I guess I just kind of have to adapt. Luckily, in terms of my personal career trajectory, it still feels pretty peripheral. Because a lot of the organizations I’m interested in working for are concerned with working people-centered kind of policies, I think mass, uncritical, enthusiastic adoption of AI is just something that hopefully a lot them just wouldn’t do. Like how would you feel if you’re like working and your union rep is like a chat GPT, like an iPad on the like a little thing that rolls around and tries to get you to sign union cards, right? Like that’s kind of something that AI can never take away. It’s like, because of so much of organizing job or so much organizing is based on building trust human to human, you know? And that’s just something AI can ever do…I hope!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was Ellena Simentel, Ada He, and Aaron Kim. This episode was cut down and edited by me, and producer Jessica Kariisa. It was also produced by Ericka Cruz Guevarra. Additional support from Pauline Bartoloni. Music courtesy of Audio Network. Support for The Bay is provided in part by the Osher Production Fund. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you want to get in touch with us at The Bay, send us an email at TheBay@KQED.org.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Bay is a production of KQED Public Media in San Francisco. You can help power our show by becoming a member at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/donate\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED.org/donate\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. I’m Alan Montecillo, in for Ericka Cruz Guevarra. Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey! It’s Morgan again. You can listen to more of The Bay wherever you get your podcasts! We’ll be back next week with a brand new episode of Close All Tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"description": "Everyone seems to have an opinion about AI, but what about those who will likely be affected most — recent graduates? This cohort of grads is unique. They remember what classrooms were like before the emergence of ChatGPT in 2022, and have seen how it transformed the education world seemingly overnight. Today, we hear from three recent graduates in the Bay Area about their thoughts on AI, how it affected their education, and how they feel about their futures. This week, we’re sharing a recent episode from KQED podcast The Bay — a show that takes an in-depth look at stories from across the SF Bay Area.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Everyone seems to have an opinion about AI, but what about those who will likely be affected most — recent graduates?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This cohort of grads is unique. They remember what classrooms were like before the emergence of ChatGPT in 2022, and have seen how it transformed the education world seemingly overnight. Today, we hear from three recent graduates in the Bay Area about their thoughts on AI, how it affected their education, and how they feel about their futures. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This week, we’re sharing a recent \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12085502/three-recent-graduates-share-their-thoughts-on-ai\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">episode\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> from KQED podcast \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/thebay\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Bay\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — a show that takes an in-depth look at stories from across the SF Bay Area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC2030502225\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Hello! Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show! And tell your friends! Post about it! On Instagram, Bluesky, X, Discord, Reddit, the comments of whatever random recipe blog you start arguments in … basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Ok, let’s get to the show.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, it’s Morgan. So, Close All Tabs is on vacation this week. Shocking, I know! We do log off sometimes. Or at least, we try to. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But don’t worry — we still have an episode for you today. On Close All Tabs, we’re always talking about AI … from the way data centers are changing local communities, to the drama that industry billionaires are getting themselves into. About a year ago, we dove into how some teachers are dealing with the AI boom in their classrooms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, we’re gonna hear the other side of that story, from young people who’ve been in the thick of it, but don’t always get to share their perspective. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our friends at The Bay, another KQED podcast, spoke to a few recent college graduates about AI. This is a unique cohort of students: they remember what classrooms were like before ChatGPT, and they’ve seen how much it’s changed learning. They spoke to The Bay about how AI affected their college experience, and how they feel about entering the workforce in such rapidly changing industries. What are they really thinking about their futures? What’s on their minds?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alright, here’s Three Recent Graduates Share Their Thoughts on AI, from \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Bay\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I’m Alan Montecillo, in for Erika Cruz Guevara, and welcome to The Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. I graduated from college 13 years ago, and I gotta be honest, no disrespect, but I don’t remember who the commencement speaker was or what they talked about. Most graduation speeches have the same themes. Some message about hope. Thanking your friends and family, the importance of following your passion, and perhaps a call to change the world for the better. But this graduation season has felt a little different.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Gloria Caulfield:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> There have been several videos of students booing commencement speakers when they mention AI. These videos have gone viral.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eric Schmidt:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Time magazine selected its person of the year for 2025. And it was this time, it was the architects of artificial intelligence. Interesting.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Scott Borschetta:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> AI is rewriting production as we sit here. I know it, deal with it. Like I said, it’s a tool. Hey, like I said. You can hear me now or you can pay me later.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Today’s college graduates were in school when ChatGPT was first released in late 2022. They’ve seen it change their classrooms. Today, three recent graduates in the Bay Area tell us how they really feel about AI and about their futures.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ellena Simentel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My name is Ellena Simentel. I graduated with my master’s in kinesiology from San Francisco State.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kinesiology is the study of muscle movement. It’s very interdisciplinary, so there’s kind of a lot of different aspects in the field. So we do like sports psychology. You can go into physical therapy, athletic training, occupational therapy. I wanted to be a physical therapist. I’ve been to a little bit more recently. So I did focus mostly on like muscle physiology classes and that types of things. But now I think I wanna go more into a little bit more of the psychological motivational side, either doing some kind of city planning that has to do with getting people moving, or maybe even working for some type of nonprofit like Girls on the Run or things that get people active.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So even in undergrad we take our core class which is like one of the classes that teaches you like how to read and write in the field of kinesiology and that type of thing and midway through the semester I want to say this was like 2023. Our professor had actually changed the entire course of the class to focus on AI because it had like kind of just come out and she was like you And all of us at that point were kind of like, oh, you know, like, it’ll come and go, it is what it is. But what’s funny sitting back and looking at it now, it’s like, I feel like she really changed the class for a reason. I think it helped a lot of us just kind of get a grasp on what is AI, how to use it, the advantages maybe and some of the disadvantages. And so I obviously only took that class once, but I hope that they continue to do that for that class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s good to have immediate feedback, right? That’s, I think, one of the biggest advantages as a student. You don’t have to wait for your professor. It’s very individualized and you can really use it to fix specific things in your writing, for example, like writing essays. I think it’s a great tool to make you sound professional, help fix your grammar, maybe help you with the formatting. Um, the problem and the drawback is just sometimes it takes over your thinking. You it’s, it’s very easy to just put something in and be like, okay, now write me an essay, but there’s no thought that goes into that. There’s no critical thinking that goes in to that. Um, and at the end of the day, like it’s kind of taking away from the learning itself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m definitely less worried than other fields. I think there’s some careers in kinesiology, like if you wanted to be an athletic trainer or maybe like a personal trainer, there’s definitely a chance that AI could swoop in and take some of your clients. You can ask for a workout routine on ChatGPT so easily. However, The motivational aspect that comes with kinesiology and sports psychology that we learn with our degree I think is more helpful than talking to something online and just kind of having that like one-on-one human support is a lot more personalized. For example, like I worked in the athletic training department for a little bit and you can feel the difference in muscle when like a muscle is tense and you can kind with tell. What it needs, AI is not gonna be hands-on like that. And so having that human interaction in this field specifically is really helpful.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I will say though that there’s just so much negativity around it and it’s kind of hard to take yourself out of the online discourse. My friend works out in this athletic studio with some of these tech guys and they talk the pros and the cons and like how people are being let go and and you know But at the same time, maybe there’s some jobs that AI should take over. Do people really need to be coding all day every day sitting on a computer? Maybe there’s things that humans shouldn’t be doing, like computer work all day. Maybe we need to go back outside.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m looking forward to seeing what’s out there, right? I live in San Francisco currently and I can’t really see myself. Moving away anytime soon. I think there’s just so much to experience and so many people to meet. Global pandemic, like I was in college, I was taking like 20 units a semester. Every semester I was summer classes, winter classes, and I really chased the academic route. I just turned 24 and I have my master’s and I don’t think a lot of people can say that. And so I think now kind of like finding what it is exactly that I want to do with it and kind of just getting more experience in the field is really exciting to me.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ada He: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My name is Ada He, and I’m currently a fourth year student at UC San Diego set to graduate on June 14th. My hometown is San Jose in the Bay Area, and I’m currently studying cognitive science with a specialization in machine learning and neural computation.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So just to boil down to simple terms, it’s basically the study of intelligence, and it’s super duper relevant for machine learning, understanding these computational models of intelligence. The reason that I chose it and specifically the machine learning and neural computation track was because I think in high school I knew that I was curious about technology but I was also curious about more so the neuroscience and psychology side of things. And so I think I was kind of struck by this idea of like what is intelligence, how can we model it computationally and I think at the time even then there were starting to be like these buzzwords around ML and like AI and how this is going to be the next big thing of the future.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so… Very practical future-oriented parents were like, you, our child, should definitely study something related to technology. And I was like, well, I’m not quite sure, so let me pick this broader major that has to do with technology, but also kind of has to do more with like the philosophy and the psychology and like the ethics of what these systems are.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think when I first started in college, basically the only place that I was hearing about machine learning, artificial intelligence as a whole was through theory in my coursework. But I think all of it was very much creative and like human driven. I think where I really started hearing about these AI tools that were in mass production was during my second year of college. So I think in that time, that was when ChatGPT was sort of like released to Apollo can never start using it and it became like the big thing. And suddenly it felt like everyone was talking about chatgbc like, oh hey, it’s pretty smart, it can do all these things. In my third year of college then, like after the summer when we came back to school, then it was taking off and everyone was using it in their classes, everyone’s like asking it questions, and they were using it to code in my programming classes, they were asking it for essay advice, and then I think that was when I started to think like wait, isn’t that an academic integrity violation and then so is AI just being used to like help us cheat now? Started out in this very humanistic direction, right?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was using AI as a tool to investigate these hypotheses and to see if I could get it to predict the patterns that I could predict. They were supposed to be these helpful tools that would help us diagnose bigger problems that were facing people. I’ve heard of applications of AI to chart patterns of climate change. So in my head, I just thought AI and ML had so much potential to be used for good. With ChatGPT, I know it’s like- There’s so much progress now going on in the area of large language models that I wonder if the other areas of AI and other use cases are being neglected. This seems like all research is funneling into how these large language models can help us replace white collar jobs. And I’m like, when did that become the focus of artificial intelligence and machine learning?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think I’ve been searching for a full-time job since January. As a student who is looking for a white collar job, it’s been very very very distressing to hear all the discourse that AI is meant to replace the work that I’ve spent four years studying. I think I honestly lost track by half to have applied for more than 300 jobs at this point. Just knowing that like the odds of getting a job are so slim even if you do get a callback and then seeing the number of callbacks I’m getting compared to the number applications I put out, that is kind of insane to me.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I do have summer jobs lined up. I’m currently like a student employee at the UC San Diego library. And I think like I’ve been really fortunate to have that environment because working for the web team there feels very meaningful since the work we do is like all done by hand. We have a very intentional design approach and the goal of all the work that I put out there is to serve the student body.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think everything that I’ve made there has made me like feel good and I don’t like feel as much like moral confusion when I think about continuing that work this summer. But that rule runs until September, so I know that I have wiggle rooms trying to figure things out somewhat.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Every generation has faced its demons and maybe the world of AI slop these like powerfully generative tools are kind of one of the demons that my generation has to face in the sense that we have to figure out where it fits into our lives and where it fits into workflows without compromising our morals because they might be here to stay. And then we also have to figure out how to deal with them in our daily, day-to-day work, because that’s probably gonna be an inseparable part of it, whether we like it or not.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aaron Kim: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My name is Aaron Kim. I graduated from UC Berkeley with a major in political science. I came in through the community college route and I started community college in 2019. So I had a couple of years to see like at least in community college, like what higher education was like before AI, then it dropped. And then I saw everyone kind of like scrambling to react to it. It was really interesting watching the different ways professors would try to handle it. Some of them just had like a no AI policy. Others had like a, you have to use AI policy. My gosh, yeah. I remember really early on, there was a professor that told me that like, or that told the class that don’t use AI. I can tell if you use AI because it’ll take your essay, put it in ChatGPT and ask it if it wrote it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s been a bit of a consensus that’s settled around AI, where professors just kind of understood that it’s here. So they got more specific on how we’re supposed to use it. So they’re like, oh, you can use it as a writing assistant. You can use as to help start your research, but don’t use it a source and don’t make it do all your writing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I know some people that are really hardline against it, I kind of agree with them for the most part. Like I think that AI especially, it’s not very sustainable. I feel like it’s sometimes people over-rely on it, which I’ve seen a lot. But I’ve also seen it level the playing field, especially for like ESL speakers. Sometimes I’ll see people who are like in higher education and they’re like not speaking English as a first language I I remember before AI they were excuse my language, but they were basically just shit out of luck. They were gonna be judged the same as like a native English speaker and like sometimes like it just like people were not nice about it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I’m like a first-gen college student, so I I just kind of went to college because I don’t know, I didn’t really know why I was going. I just did it. I’m not one of those people that was like, oh yeah, I’m gonna be a doctor or a lawyer or a dentist. I ended up doing a lot of stuff in the union world and the labor world and like the community organizing world, which is why I think AI has affected me a little less personally, like a little less directly because none of the jobs that I was really looking for are really AI exposed as much.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Luckily I’m one of these people, but I do think the implementation of AI in the economy has like, I’ve received a lot of the downwind effects. I think a lot tasks are having AI implemented into it. And because of that, I think there’s just less need for a lot of entry level positions that existed in the past. My friends and I joke about it being a “nepo economy” right now, because there’s just like, nobody’s getting jobs through applications, at least not a lot. It’s just all like, you have to know somebody and that’s how you’re getting jobs. I’m still trying to really figure out what direction I want to go for that. But right now I’m just like trying to find something in social impact, you know, nonprofits or unions, um, which is just because that’s like, you know, where my heart was at during college. And that’s where a lot of my experience was at. But yeah, at this point, I think I just kind of have to try to keep an open mind.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I just don’t really think this sort of like innovation is really helping most people in a way that’s really substantial. Like I feel like, yeah, it’s like making things more convenient for a lot of us in like really minor ways, but I just feel like, like, was this all necessary? But it’s like here and we can’t like press, there’s no undo button for things like this, so I guess I just kind of have to adapt. Luckily, in terms of my personal career trajectory, it still feels pretty peripheral. Because a lot of the organizations I’m interested in working for are concerned with working people-centered kind of policies, I think mass, uncritical, enthusiastic adoption of AI is just something that hopefully a lot them just wouldn’t do. Like how would you feel if you’re like working and your union rep is like a chat GPT, like an iPad on the like a little thing that rolls around and tries to get you to sign union cards, right? Like that’s kind of something that AI can never take away. It’s like, because of so much of organizing job or so much organizing is based on building trust human to human, you know? And that’s just something AI can ever do…I hope!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was Ellena Simentel, Ada He, and Aaron Kim. This episode was cut down and edited by me, and producer Jessica Kariisa. It was also produced by Ericka Cruz Guevarra. Additional support from Pauline Bartoloni. Music courtesy of Audio Network. Support for The Bay is provided in part by the Osher Production Fund. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you want to get in touch with us at The Bay, send us an email at TheBay@KQED.org.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Bay is a production of KQED Public Media in San Francisco. You can help power our show by becoming a member at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/donate\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED.org/donate\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. I’m Alan Montecillo, in for Ericka Cruz Guevarra. Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey! It’s Morgan again. You can listen to more of The Bay wherever you get your podcasts! We’ll be back next week with a brand new episode of Close All Tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"title": "The $55B Deal That Has Sims Players Worried",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When shareholders of gaming giant Electronic Arts approved an acquisition of the company by a group that includes Jared Kushner’s private equity firm and the Saudi Public Investment Fund late last year, it rocked the entertainment industry. The sale worth an estimated $55 billion sent the player community of the EA-owned game The Sims scrambling, afraid that a game known as a haven for LGBTQ+ expression might be changed for the worse. In this second part of our exploration of the inclusive history of The Sims franchise, we dive into what the deal might mean for the game, how it’s reshaping the future of the industry, and why a popular Sims streamer is ready to walk away from the game in protest.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC7131851733\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/lilsimsie\">Kayla Sims\u003c/a>, Twitch streamer and YouTuber known as “lilsimsie”\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.twitch.tv/zefrine/\">Zefrine\u003c/a>, Twitch streamer and organizer with The Players Alliance\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Loel Phelps, senior game design director at Maxis\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jessica Croft, senior designer at EA on The Sims 4 \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12083135/bay-area-gamers-rally-against-electronic-arts-55-billion-acquisition\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Area Gamers Rally Against Electronic Arts’ $55 Billion Acquisition\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-gaming-is-the-new-oil-how-the-ea-buyout-diverges-from-the-traditional-playbook-\">‘Gaming is the new oil:’ How the EA buyout ‘diverges from the traditional playbook’\u003c/a> — Nicole Carpenter, \u003ci>Game Developer\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://aftermath.site/rep-maxwell-frost-lilsimsie-stream-ea-saudi-arabia-interview/\">Congressman Teams Up With Popular Sims Streamer To Oppose Saudi Purchase Of EA\u003c/a> — Nathan Grayson, \u003ci>\u003ci>Aftermath\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/us-representative-maxwell-frost-voices-protest-over-saudi-buyout-of-ea\">US representative Maxwell Frost protests Saudi buyout of EA\u003c/a> — Diego Argüello, \u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Game Developer\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/games/816750/the-sims-ea-buyout-content-creator-program-departures-lilsimsie\">Sims streamers are distancing themselves from EA, but for some the choice is hard\u003c/a> — Ash Parrish\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>,\u003ci> The Verge\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://simscommunity.info/2026/06/17/ea-advertisement-brands-history/\">EA Advertisement Isn’t New: A Look Back At The Sims’ History With Brands (And What Comes Next)\u003c/a> — Callum Bowyer,\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci> Sims Community\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://cepr.net/publications/electronic-arts-and-private-equity/\">Private Equity’s EA Takeover: Corruption, Contradictions, and Exploitation\u003c/a> — Daniel Stone, \u003ci>Center for Economic and Policy Research\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sul Sul! That’s “hello” in Simlish. This is the second part of our deep dive into the queer history of The Sims. Do you like these deep dives? Whether you call yourself a Tabbie or a Tab Head or part of the Tab Hive, if you’re a fan of Close All Tabs, it would be so, so helpful if you could rate and review the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you’re listening to us! Okay, let’s get to the show. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Audio from Players Alliance demonstration]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There is a med pack in my backpack, so if anyone like, tweaks their ankle or falls or something, in this lower pouch there is a second pouch, you’ll find all sorts of medical stuff in there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In early May, a colorful group of gamers assembled in a grocery store parking lot in Redwood City, California — preparing to march on the headquarters of video game giant Electronic Arts. They called it a “raid,” which, in gaming terms, means a big battle with the intention of taking down the boss. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Audio from Players Alliance demonstration]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This has concluded your safety brief. All right, woo! We did it! And then once you’re here, everybody look at me. We’re just going to grab a quick photo. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was a small group — maybe a dozen — but passionate. They’re part of an organization called The Players Alliance. They pulled up in elaborate costumes, with some wearing plumbobs, the gems from The Sims. Some wore the more common green ones, which float above the heads of happy Sims. But several in the group donned red plumbobs — typically seen on unhappy Sims, which is an iconic way to express anger toward The Sims’ parent company.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The group had gathered to protest the $55 billion deal that would take EA private and transfer ownership to a group of investors that includes a firm led by Jared Kushner and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The Players Alliance created an online petition addressed to U.S. Secretary Scott Bessent, calling on him to block the buyout. They had over 70,000 signatures by that point, printed on a comically long scroll. The plan? Rally other players, block the buyout, and, of course, stream the whole thing. Streamer and organizer, Kase Cosgrove, took the mic for much of the demonstration. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kase Cosgrove: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Woo! Here we go! Welcome everyone! We are here to… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They staged a boss fight, which involved taking down giant cardboard heads of the guys in charge of the buyout. Picture a huge Jared Kushner cutout surrounded by disapproving gamers. Then, they turned to a cutout of EA CEO Andrew Wilson. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Audio from Players Alliance demonstration]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Traitor! Traitor! Traitor! He’s betraying you, he’s betraying us, he’s betraying the workers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then came the big finale. The group unfurled the massive roll of paper printed with a portion of the 70,000 signatures. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Audio from Players Alliance demonstration]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is the gaming community. These are the people that signed their name on the dotted line that joined us. And I need you to know, this isn’t all of them. We have over 70,000 signatures — something we did in two months, not two years. I also want to add that this is 50 feet, a thousand signatures — this would span over a half mile at this size. It’s simply too big. And we’re only growing… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s Rachel… Better known as Zefrine. She’s an organizer and Sims creator who spoke about why she opposes the buyout. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Zefrine: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Sims is a game about life and like, that’s everyone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kase Cosgrove: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sims, the game about life, they should use that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Zefrine: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All colors, all walks of life. Yeah, like all of that. And that’s why we’re here today. Like me specifically, for a myriad of reasons, not only for the integrity of the industry, the jobs, the security, and the more that they continue to just treat it like the cash cow that it’s viewed to be by people who don’t care about us — the more that those spaces are going to become inaccessible to people who can no longer afford them. I love this… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many gamers are concerned about the EA buyout — fearing employee layoffs, decreasing quality of games, and aggressive monetization. But for Sims players, the threat feels especially personal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mivyard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a bisexual, there weren’t a lot of games where you could just have anybody, romance anybody else. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a Sims creator who goes by Mivyard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mivyard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was really important for me, especially when I was younger. So this game has a really special place in my heart and just the thought of it being taken over by people who might want to censor that aspect and that representation for the community is really frightening. So, when the news about the buyout dropped, a lot of Simmers and Sims streamers were like, “Oh my god,” like, “What do we do?” Like, what action can we do to actually… have an effect on the situation? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What does this deal really entail? If it goes through, what are the consequences on the gaming industry and its workers? And, is there anything that can stop it? Last week, we dove into the queer history of The Sims. Today, we’re looking at the present reality of EA and the future of this beloved game. Ready?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Picking up where we left off last week’s deep dive: let’s open another tab. What does The Sims mean to players? How many hours do you have logged on The Sims 4? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh dear, let me open it and I’ll find out. 10,522. And actually, it’s more than that, because I had like 1,700 hours in the Create A Sim demo as well — and then, now they’re all logged with The Sims 4 regular game, but doesn’t count those. So, it’s… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh my god!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Probably like 12,000, which — yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wow. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. No, but like it’s my job, right? So it’s totally fine. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Kayla Sims. She’s a Twitch streamer and YouTuber better known as LilSimsie. She has millions of followers. Almost every day, like five to six days a week, viewers tune in to watch her play cozy games. Think: farming sims like Stardew Valley, or social games like Animal Crossing. These are games that revolve more around creativity, slowing down, and exploring. It’s the complete opposite of first-person shooters like Call of Duty and Halo. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Kayla Sims playing Animal Crossing from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve been playing Animal Crossing for a couple of weeks now on this channel and unfortunately my island is still really, really ugly. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cozy games aren’t necessarily low stakes. One of the most popular games of the genre is The Sims. It’s a game where a lot can go wrong. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Kayla Sims playing The Sims from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh well, we decorated the tree… No!!! Why is this happening? Oh my god, the tree’s on fire! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Sims community is so different from other gamer circles online. At the Game Developer Conference in 2023, Phillip Ring, an executive producer for The Sims 4, gave a talk on developing DEI content in games. He cited a demographic study conducted by The Sims team. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Phillip Ring from GDC Vault website]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">43% of our audience identify as members of the LGBTQIA+ community. And 38% of audience are people of color. That’s far exceeding traditional gaming demographics on these dimensions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And 64% of Sims players are cis women. 17% are gender fluid or trans. Just over 20% are cis men, which is incredibly rare in gaming, an industry that’s long been marketed to men. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Phillip Ring from GDC Vault website]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a tremendous testament to the progress that we are making towards The Sims being a place where all players can represent themselves and see the world as they imagine it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that sometimes gaming gets a bad reputation. People think about horrible hate speech being spewed in voice chats and stuff, but The Sims is just not like that. I think that actually a lot of marginalized folks kind of flock to The Sims because it is so welcoming and so accepting. And so, it’s just a really wholesome, wonderful place to be. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Obviously it’s heavily made up by a lot queer folks, a lot people from the LGBTQ+ community are in The Sims community. There’s a lot of women in The Sims community as well. I think it’s just in general kind of a different demographic from a lot of other really major games titles, especially games titles that have been around for this long. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What has The Sims meant to you throughout your life? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It might sound silly, but honestly, The Sims has meant everything to me. When I was a kid, I really had a hard time in middle school and high school. I was kind of having a lot of mental health struggles and then my dad got cancer, and I was really like, going through it when I was in school. And The Sims was a real escape for me back then — not just playing the game, but like the community as a whole. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was almost like a utopia, right? Like I could like escape into this game where everything was fine. And it was a creative outlet for me to like, work on building houses and making characters and like, telling stories and stuff. And it’s kind of, I think, shaped me now and shaped my hobbies and my interests to this day. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like many Simmers, Kayla started playing The Sims as a kid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I finally managed to convince my parents to buy it for me after a long time of begging. I was like, “No, this is like named after us. We need to play it,” you know? “It’s fate.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In high school, Kayla started taking video production classes. It was the mid-2010s. Reaction videos and short form content hadn’t taken over yet. This was the golden age of YouTube. Gaming playthroughs and daily vlogs were blowing up. Kayla loved watching them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And this is around the time that my dad was diagnosed with cancer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After months of being sick, her dad was diagnosed with an aggressive blood cancer. Kayla’s parents went to Tampa for treatment, leaving Kayla and her younger siblings with their grandparents, two hours away. And Kayla felt really alone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so I was really looking, I think, for an outlet, and like, maybe also some community, because I was playing the game alone… And I think I was really like, kind of grasping to see if I could find some people that were like me and make some friends. So I started making videos just for fun and I really poured so much into it. I’ve spent all my free time playing the game and recording it and thinking about it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At 16 years old, Kayla started posting videos of her attempt at completing the, “Sims 4: 100 Baby Challenge.” Basically, you have to birth and successfully raise 100 in-game babies. Once your Sim can no longer have babies, you pick an heir, get them pregnant, and keep going. The goal is to build a family tree with all 100 babies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Kayla Sims playing The Sims from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hi everybody and welcome back to Part 3… I think? Of Let’s Play The Sims 4: 100 Baby Challenge. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It took Kayla five years to finish the challenge. To be fair, she was also making other videos about The Sims: reviews, playthroughs, speed builds — but still, it was five years of her life. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Kayla Sims playing The Sims from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I- It’s over. We- It’s done. We did it. Little did I know when I was 16 years old and starting this stupid challenge that I would be 21 when I finished it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the time it took Kayla to raise 100 in-game babies, her dad’s health stabilized, she built a huge following, and she found a community of fellow Simmers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I ended up making so many friends that are lifelong friends to this day, 10 years later. I was so shy and so anxious and to meet some of these other girls that were my same age, and they were also really shy and really anxious and having some similar mental health struggles, and they we’re also really into The Sims. And so, it was really, really powerful, I think, for me to make some friends that I felt like I could truly be myself with, because I don’t know if I had that in person and at school. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As her channel grew, Kayla started doing charity streams, fundraising for various causes. Her big one is an annual, month-long fundraising campaign for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. Just last month, she raised over a million dollars. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Kayla’s livestream from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">999,000! Woo! Oh my god! One million. *screaming*\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Her dad often pops in for those streams. Fans call him PapaSimsie or LilDadsie. And every year, Kayla takes a break from playing The Sims while she and her mom shave her dad’s head, live on stream, as part of the fundraiser. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Kayla’s livestream from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She’s embarrassed. Yeah. \u003cem>[laughing]\u003c/em> Of me? Of bald daddy? \u003cem>[more laughing]\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My dad’s kind of weird. I mean that in a good way. But, you know, he really hams it up for the camera. And I think that people enjoy that. He’s really gotten involved with some of those things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Kayla’s livestream from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can call me bald daddy. Stop!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So now, the whole Sims family is also involved in Sims content. It’s the Simsie-verse. Over the years, Kayla started working directly with Maxis, which is owned by EA. Back in the day, the company flew out Sims creators to play test games early and give feedback directly to developers. It was mutually beneficial — the creators got early access footage that they got to post, and Maxis got to drum up some promotion for upcoming game content. A symbiotic relationship, if you will. In her reviews, Kayla’s been a pretty harsh critic of the pre-made buildings in the earlier Sims expansion packs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s one build that just, like, never ceases to amaze me, and it comes in Get Famous. It’s like this celebrity mansion. There’s five bathrooms. No toilets. There’s like space for a toilet. They’ve — clearly, they meant to put it there, and they just didn’t put one. Why?\u003cem> [laughs] \u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The developers at Maxis were definitely keeping tabs on the criticism. So, they asked Kayla to work on a few builds for upcoming releases. She created three buildings for the expansion pack Snowy Escape, which came out in 2020. And then again, for another expansion pack a few years later. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s all to say that Kayla’s life had become completely intertwined with The Sims. I mean, it’s her last name! Her parents were involved. She built a career out of playing this game. These playthroughs and reviews and silly challenges paid her bills. And, she played it in her free time, too. The Sims had become her job, but it was still the safe space that it was for her as an anxious, lonely teenager. Which is why she was so heartbroken when news of the EA buyout went public. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I couldn’t even believe it, to be honest, and I was so, so sad and scared. I mean, like, tears have been shed over this by me, because I feel like they’re tearing something away from us, you know? It’s really frustrating to have something that has been such a safe space for so long be bought out by people that are not safe. And I think that a lot of Sims players kind of echo that same sentiment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, we know that this is a $55 billion deal — a truly unfathomable amount of money. Beyond the staggering price tag… what does this buyout really entail? Game studios are sold and acquired all the time — why are players so concerned about this one in particular? We’re opening a tab on that in just a minute. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going. You can support us by becoming a member at donate dot kqed dot org slash podcasts. Okay, after the break: the EA buyouts and The Players Alliance. Stick around. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re back. Time to open a new tab: the EA buyout, explained. In October, Kayla joins other major Sims creators in leaving the EA Creator Network. This is the official partnership program for The Sims, and it opens the doors to huge perks. Creators in the network get early access to game packs, an affiliate code to share with their followers, and invites to beta testing sessions and special events. Some creators in the network even get paid collaborations. Stepping down from the Creator Network means giving up a lot of opportunities for Simmers like Kayla. But, as she learned more about the buyout deal, she knew she couldn’t stay. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Upon first seeing it, I was like, “I do not want this to happen, I hope that it will not go through, and I want people to be aware of what is going on.” I kind of in good conscience do not want to work with EA directly and like, support them behind the scenes or have any like, contractual obligation to them if this sale goes through. I had hoped that by a large creator like myself and also a bunch of other large Sims creators leaving the network, it would kind of take a huge stand and hopefully send signs to them about how much we do not want this to happen and how strongly we stand against it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s talk about the details of this deal. In September last year, EA announced that the brand and its catalog had been sold to an “investor consortium” in a $55 billion deal. This group of investors includes the tech-focused private equity firm Silver Lake, Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. That’s the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like, this deal alone could buy the entire music industry. I think that sometimes we forget just how big gaming is. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The consortium didn’t publicly disclose the planned ownership breakdown. That part actually came from a filing with Brazil’s antitrust regulators — spotted by the Wall Street Journal. So, once EA is delisted from the NASDAQ, Affinity Partners will own just 1.1%, and Silver Lake will own 5.5%. The Saudi Public Investment Fund will own a whopping 93.4% of the company. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And there’s a lot of concerns about censorship within The Sims, I think, also, because of those new owners that do not have a great track record with human rights. They actually have a direct track record of criminalizing LGBTQ+ expression. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Saudi Arabia, engaging in same-sex relationships is punishable by flogging, and in some cases, death. Gender expression is also criminalized. Multiple human rights reports note that it’s “illegal for men to behave like women,” and “dress in women’s clothes,” and vice versa. Publicly advocating for the rights of LGBTQ people is also illegal, and those who do? They also face arrest and imprisonment. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, PIF, already owned almost 10% of EA prior to the buyout. Now, PIF will own the vast majority of EA and its portfolio — including The Sims, a game that’s been a haven for queer players. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so a lot of queer players of The Sims are really, really worried about those new owners for that reason too. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Sims team has addressed the concerns. In October, they posted a statement to the game’s official channels, thanking players for being part of the community. They said, “Our mission, values, and commitment remain the same. The Sims will always be a space where you can express your authentic self.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In our last episode, we talked to Loel Phelps, the senior design director for The Sims 4. As the self-described “shepherd of ideas” for the game, Loel has guided over a decade of updates and expansions to make The Sims more inclusive. I asked him about the concerns over how new ownership could change the game, particularly for queer players who found refuge in The Sims. Here’s what he wants players to know. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Loel Phelps: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I believe in this team. The sec- like I said, the second I joined, I felt a very welcoming presence. I felt like there was a diverse group of people who are passionate creators, who have very different lived experiences from one another, just like everybody who’s here to play the game. So, inclusivity is foundational. It’s the lifeblood of who we are and the product we build. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why would Saudi Arabia, a notoriously repressive country, want anything to do with a company behind the most explicitly queer game on the market? Well… The Sims is just a tiny piece of EA’s portfolio. I mean, EA Sports is its own division. It’s huge. Saudi Arabia has been a major investor in e-sports and video games. By investing in gaming, PIF is diversifying the Saudi economy beyond petroleum, while also buying global cultural relevance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As one business professor put it in an interview with the industry news site, Game Developer, “Gaming is the new oil.” The ripple effects go way beyond diversity and inclusion. It could fundamentally change the gaming industry as we know it. Okay, lock in. You’re about to get a lot of details. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, the EA deal is the largest leveraged buyout in history. A leveraged buyout means that the buyer uses borrowed funds to acquire a company — almost like a mortgage. The buyer puts down the down payment and the bank finances the rest. Except, the buyer isn’t the one who has to pay it off. The company that was just bought does — using its own assets and revenues to pay off the debt. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, $55 billion, right? The investment group that bought EA chipped in a collective $36 billion, but there’s almost $20 billion left. Where does that come from? Now we have a new player, JP Morgan Chase Bank, which financed the remaining $20 billion. Well, who’s going to pay back the bank? EA.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a massive deal that’s being financed by $20 billion in debt that EA is going to have to carry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, EA actually makes a ton of money. In the 2025 fiscal year, the company pulled in nearly $7.5 billion of revenue. But their profit — what’s left after paying business costs — was just over $1.1 billion. And as multiple financial experts and market analysts have warned us, EA is probably going to have to make some pretty significant changes to pay off $20 billion. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, they’re gonna need to pay that off quickly because the investors wanna make money. And people are really concerned about things like layoffs of a lot of the people that work at EA — possibly replacing them with AI, which would just ruin the heart and soul of the game. And it’s really scary, I think, as a step for the gaming industry as a whole. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Days after it agreed to the deal, EA published an employee FAQ assuring workers that, quote, “There will be no changes to your job, team, or daily work as a result of this transaction.” This FAQ was actually made public in an SEC filing. Multiple experts have said that EA will likely double down on their existing revenue streams — sports franchises like Madden, cash cow mobile games that revolve around in-app purchases, and microtransactions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’re already pricing a lot of people out. And if we have this new standard set — because now it’s the norm — I really am worried about it getting even worse and preventing people from being able to play these games. I worry about the kids of the future being able play things like this because the prices are just so extreme and it’s only going to get worse. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Simmers have already complained of changes. In March, The Sims 4 unveiled the Marketplace, a virtual store of Sims custom content created by other players. It essentially gives players a way to sell customized in-game clothes and furniture directly to other players. However, creators only take home 30% of their sales. EA gets the remaining 70%, and when it first launched, players could only buy this stuff using a special currency called “Moola” — which they had to buy with real-world money. Simmers weren’t thrilled about the microtransactions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of @goofylilshady playing The Sims 4 from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, if you thought this game was expensive, now guess what? It just got a little bit more expensive! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then just this month, EA quietly launched its new Advertising department, which will focus on integrating brand partnerships with other ads directly into gameplay. Now, for The Sims, this could look like brand collabs that the game has already done, like giving players free Coach bags in-game, or free IKEA furniture that looks just like the real IKEA furniture. It could also look like an unskippable pop-up ad that interrupts the game. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, it’s not just about The Sims. Obviously my personal experience is with The Sims, because that’s my favorite game and this thing that I’ve been playing for so long, but it really does affect all games across the entire industry, even beyond just EA games. I think that a private equity buyout of this scale is completely unprecedented and will probably have ripple effects across the entire industry forever. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This kind of sets the model for future buyouts, future private buyouts. It sets the model for potential mass layoffs and these like really big AI concerns that we have over replacing developers. And I’m really concerned about that aggressive monetization because already, games are so expensive. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Leaving the Creator Network alone wasn’t enough for Kayla. She wanted to do more. So, she joined The Players Alliance. And, what is that? Well, that brings us back to the protest — and to open a new tab: How are gamers fighting the EA buyout? You’ve actually gone further than just leaving the network and not promoting the new games — you joined The Players Alliance. What is that? What are they trying to achieve? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, The Players Alliance is a group of gamers that is working to help fight corporate greed, just in general, in the gaming industry — right now, a lot of talk about the EA buyout and ways that that impacts the gaming industry as a whole. So, that’s kind of a heavy focus of them at this current moment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Players Alliance is trying to gain signatures for its petition to block the deal. They’ve collected over 72,000 signatures so far. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, my friend Zefrine and I, we had kind of been talking a little bit about wanting to do something and wanting to do more, and I had been thinking privately about ways that I could try and get involved and do more and not… I didn’t really know where to start. Because I — you know, I’m just one person, like, I don’t know how to do something like this. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You heard Zefrine at the top of this episode — during the rally outside EA’s headquarters. She’s one of the lead organizers for The Players Alliance, which she describes as a gamers’ union. Her dad was a union guy too, so she grew up among organizers. When she heard about the buyout, she knew she had to get involved and that she could leverage her platform to get the word out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Zefrine: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kayla and I are actually very close friends. And… It kind of gives me chills to talk about it, but we both had a dream the same night that we did a livestream together — like the same night. And then I just decided, I was like, “You know what? I’m just going to see, how stupid can we get? How silly, goofy can we get? Let’s shoot for the stars.” And then we… She said, “Are you kidding me? We have… Like, I had the same dream last night!” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Zefrine had been working with The Players Alliance, and she kind of had this idea to work with a Congress member, and like, reach out to them and ask them to maybe do a stream with us or like, to speak more openly about this. And fortunately, I have- my congressman, Maxwell Frost, had already signed an open letter in Congress about the deal and so we felt like that was actually a really, kind of kismet opportunity to try and reach out to his team. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Maxwell Frost is the first Gen Z member of Congress. He’s known for being more… online than his colleagues. He’s more in the know. And it helps that he’s already a gamer himself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Zefrine: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think, what better of a person to reach an audience like that — like, he’s young, he’s in touch, he’s understanding of like, what’s going on with things, and his voice is so powerful. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With The Players Alliance, they organized a live stream with the Congressman, back in April. Here’s the setup: Zefrine acted as a moderator, taking audience questions and passing them on to Kayla and Maxwell. Like, a guided fireside chat.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Begin clip of Players Alliance livestream]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cstrong>Maxwell Frost:\u003c/strong> Saudi Arabia is essentially trying to acquire every part of gaming you can think of. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s going to put us in a really tough position in terms of national security, in terms of censorship and what that government believes, and in terms of the workers who create the games as well. So, I really think the FTC needs to step in here. They can sue to stop the merger. The Department of Justice can also sue to stop the mergers as well. I think there’s so many reasons why they need to do it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cstrong>Kayla Sims:\u003c/strong> Yeah. I completely agree. And I hate to interrupt you, but how is your energy looking in the game, and maybe we should go to bed? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cstrong>Maxwell Frost:\u003c/strong> \u003cem>[laughing]\u003c/em> My energy’s kinda low and it’s really dark. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[End clip]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And this whole discussion happened while they played Stardew Valley. Zefrine said they picked this game for a reason. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Zefrine: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stardew Valley — it’s an indie smash hit, and I think it’s just so comfy and cozy and approachable, and it’s made by one guy. And I think, it’s really important, especially among all this, to highlight the amazing things that can be done. You know, when you let your developers pour their hearts into something. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We kind of wanted to make it really approachable for the viewer and like, make it something that was similar enough to my regular content that maybe it wouldn’t just be a click-off like, “Oh, who’s this random guy she’s talking to? I don’t need to watch this.”. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I was going to ask like about the livestream itself. It really cracked me up watching Maxwell Frost explain like, how the downfall of democracy with foreign involvement while also trying to break open a geode, because you guys are playing Stardew Valley. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of the Players Alliance livestream from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, can we open the geode? Yeah, okay. If you come back to like where the cabins are, you can follow me, I’ll show you where Clint is. Clint? Clint… Nice, dude, Clint is the guy that opens the geodes? Yeah.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Leading up to that and going into it, I was like, “I’m not equipped to be talking to a Congress member.” Like, I just play video games. But he is so nice, and he was so excited about the game as well. It’s really funny to watch the video back, and he’s like so locked in, like staring at his screen while he’s talking. It’s really fun. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But yeah, it was amazing that he offered to join us, and I felt like he had a lot of really great things to say about how it was working and what people can do to get involved. I think that it inspired a lot of people to sign the petition that we’ve been trying to share. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. So let’s talk about the petition itself. What is the goal of it? What are you trying to bring awareness to? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, the petition itself, is to the Secretary of the Treasury. And the ultimate goal is to hopefully have him stop the deal because he has the power to block it. But I think even beyond that, having a massive petition with so many signatures, really sends signs to EA and to the new buyers about how much the community opposes it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that because we have so many really valid concerns about national security and data security of Americans — this would be a foreign monarchy having almost complete control over a company that has hundreds of millions of people buying their games, it’s one of the biggest entertainment industries in America — and so the hope is that because of those concerns, we can get the government to help prevent the deal from going through. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kayla has hoped that lawmakers will at least be able to stall the deal. Nearly 50 members of Congress signed a letter to FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson — calling for a thorough review into the labor market consequences of the buyout. The House Judiciary Committee opened a probe into Jared Kushner’s quote, “foreign entanglements and staggering conflicts of interests,” AKA, his financial ties to Saudi Arabia. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, there’s renewed scrutiny of the buyout now, thanks to his involvement. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The deal is expected to close by the end of this fiscal quarter — so, sometime this summer, if not by the end of the month. Regardless of whether the deal goes through, Sims creators who continue to promote the game have been bombarded with questions from followers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ahead of the Players Alliance collab with Congressman Frost, the Sims team reached out to members of the EA Creator Network over Discord. The messages were private, but screenshots quickly leaked online. They said the team was aware of the planned livestream and included guidance on how creators could answer their followers’ questions about the buyout. The message also said, quote, “There’s no expectation for you to engage with or respond to this conversation. You will always be free to express your honest opinions, but it’s also completely okay if you’d prefer to step back from the conversation entirely.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For months, Simmers like Kayla and Zefrine have been grappling with what it means to disentangle themselves from a game that’s meant so much to them. What does that even look like? Alright, we have time to open one last tab, right? The Sims creator dilemma. Many high-profile Sims creators left the EA Creator Network, but Zefrine decided to stay, even though she’s one of the lead organizers for the Players Alliance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Zefrine: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I try to keep them relatively compartmentalized. Obviously, because I have like my contract and I respect that contract — it’s been like this huge goal for me to be in the Creator Network and be a part of that. And I think that in every company, no matter where you are, you still need good people that are willing to advocate for it from within. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some people choose to step away because they feel like their power is that way, but I’m not afraid to be noisy or outspoken about certain things. And um, I talk to my community, I see things online, and then I… advocate directly to the people who make the game, and I think that’s a really powerful thing. So that’s personally what I have chosen to do. And I’m still like continuing to play it because it can get quite complicated for like a lot of people, but it’s something I’ve enjoyed since I was eight years old. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it truly was like, it saved my life to be fully honest with you. Um, and… It allowed me to discover like, queer representation within myself and like those things like through storytelling or through building. It’s just such a powerful outlet. I’m using my voice and my platform that I’ve been gifted by this community essentially, to make sure that that integrity stays in place. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While she stayed in the network, Zefrine has also been very involved in organizing protests and collecting signatures. And then there’s Kayla. She’s been criticized for continuing to make Sims content, even after she left the EA network. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that for anyone on YouTube, it’s kind of impossible to just like, quit cold turkey with your bread and butter. Like, I think that that’s really a turnoff to your entire audience and I don’t think that it’s practical. So, from day one, my goal was to start incorporating more other games onto my YouTube channel. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She plays Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing and a new game called Paralives. It’s an indie game that’s very similar to The Sims. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s been scary, I think, because I was nervous, again, that people wouldn’t care… But it’s been fun for me to experiment a little bit — because I kind of have like a format. I sort of know what it takes to make a good Sims video, but I don’t really know what is takes to make a video about some of these other games. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But when Kayla does return to The Sims, she follows some new rules she set for her channel. She hasn’t been reviewing or promoting any of the newer packs or game content. In fact, she hasn’t being buying them at all. She’s hesitant to even speak negatively about any of newer stuff because it’ll bring attention to a company that she refuses to financially support. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s like, her current Sims content is a time capsule of Sims releases up until 2025. So much of Kayla’s identity is tied up in The Sims — like fundraising with her dad, working with Maxis, and meeting so many of her best friends through the game. I mean, this is someone who has like, 12,000 hours in the game — her last name is literally Sims. And she admitted that she does really miss it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I love The Sims so much and like, seeing this new content come out and like for example, when the most recent expansion pack came out and I chose not to play it and not to review it — that’s the first time in like 15 years that I haven’t played new Sims content and that made me really sad. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like, I love the game. I want to continue to play the game, I want continue to support the game, I want The Sims to exist because I think it’s such an important pillar of the gaming community. There’s nothing else like it in the entire world, and it’s so special, and I wish so desperately that I could feel comfortable continuing to support it, but it just feels morally wrong at this point. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No matter what happens with EA, and the buyout, and the Saudi investment in the gaming industry, the Sims team has made a lot of assurances that the game won’t change. Well, the microtransactions have been amped up, but the game is still as queer and inclusive as it was last year, before EA shareholders approved the buyouts. Last episode, we talked to Jessica Croft, a senior designer for The Sims. When I asked her about the player concerns we laid out in this episode, here’s what she said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Croft: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re still the same team we’ve always been. We are the same folks that made the sexual orientation update, that made pronouns update, that fought for diversity and representation throughout our long history. Our values haven’t changed. Like, we still believe the exact same things we’ve always believed. And I could also say that — I could claim this till I’m blue in the face, and you might still not believe me — I would say don’t trust our words, trust our actions. Watch what we do next, watch the next few years of releases, and take from that the understanding that we haven’t changed, we still hold the same values. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, LGBTQ inclusion in games rarely feels revolutionary. It’s a given. Of course you can be a demon-blooded lesbian in Baldur’s Gate. It makes total sense that the main characters in Hades are canonically bisexual. Marry whoever you want in Stardew Valley. The Sims opened the door for these games to be… so gay. The buyout doesn’t change what The Sims has come to mean to so many queer people over the last 26 years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">From the very first accidental sapphic kiss at E3, this game has been a trailblazer for what it means to actually see yourself in a story. The future of EA may be uncertain, but the queer history of The Sims is undeniable. Will it stay this gay? I really hope so. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s it for this extra deep, deep dive on The Sims. Let me tell you — the tabs on this one almost got out of control. I cannot open another without crashing this episode. But if you’re hungry for more, stick around after the credits for some bonus content. Okay, happy pride. Let’s finally close all of these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. This episode was edited by Chris Hambrick. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Close All Tabs team also includes producer, Maya Cueva, and audio engineer, Brendan Willard. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro V2 switches. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I remember I was trying to have my Sim adopt a baby, because I realized like, “Oh, you can adopt a baby. That’s cool. I want to try that.” And so, I clicked the button and then nothing happened. And I was like, “That’s weird. Let me do it again.” Nothing happened. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I thought, “That’s weird. Let me do it again.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, I adopted like six babies by accident, and then, I didn’t know that you had to take care of them, which, in hindsight is like, “Well, of course you do.” But you know, I was a kid, so I wasn’t taking care of them — and they all got taken away. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cem>[laughs]\u003c/em> Oh no. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Um, and I, yeah, I harbored a lot of guilt about that back then. Now I kind of think it’s funny, but I was like, “What is this game? This is a nightmare!” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"description": "When shareholders of gaming giant Electronic Arts approved an acquisition of the company by a group that includes Jared Kushner’s private equity firm and the Saudi Public Investment Fund late last year, it rocked the entertainment industry. The sale worth an estimated $55 billion sent the player community of the EA-owned game The Sims scrambling, afraid that a game known as a haven for LGBTQ+ expression might be changed for the worse. In this second part of our exploration of the inclusive history of The Sims franchise, we dive into what the deal might mean for the game, how it’s reshaping the future of the industry, and why a popular Sims streamer is ready to walk away from the game in protest.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When shareholders of gaming giant Electronic Arts approved an acquisition of the company by a group that includes Jared Kushner’s private equity firm and the Saudi Public Investment Fund late last year, it rocked the entertainment industry. The sale worth an estimated $55 billion sent the player community of the EA-owned game The Sims scrambling, afraid that a game known as a haven for LGBTQ+ expression might be changed for the worse. In this second part of our exploration of the inclusive history of The Sims franchise, we dive into what the deal might mean for the game, how it’s reshaping the future of the industry, and why a popular Sims streamer is ready to walk away from the game in protest.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC7131851733\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/lilsimsie\">Kayla Sims\u003c/a>, Twitch streamer and YouTuber known as “lilsimsie”\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.twitch.tv/zefrine/\">Zefrine\u003c/a>, Twitch streamer and organizer with The Players Alliance\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Loel Phelps, senior game design director at Maxis\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jessica Croft, senior designer at EA on The Sims 4 \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12083135/bay-area-gamers-rally-against-electronic-arts-55-billion-acquisition\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Area Gamers Rally Against Electronic Arts’ $55 Billion Acquisition\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-gaming-is-the-new-oil-how-the-ea-buyout-diverges-from-the-traditional-playbook-\">‘Gaming is the new oil:’ How the EA buyout ‘diverges from the traditional playbook’\u003c/a> — Nicole Carpenter, \u003ci>Game Developer\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://aftermath.site/rep-maxwell-frost-lilsimsie-stream-ea-saudi-arabia-interview/\">Congressman Teams Up With Popular Sims Streamer To Oppose Saudi Purchase Of EA\u003c/a> — Nathan Grayson, \u003ci>\u003ci>Aftermath\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/us-representative-maxwell-frost-voices-protest-over-saudi-buyout-of-ea\">US representative Maxwell Frost protests Saudi buyout of EA\u003c/a> — Diego Argüello, \u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Game Developer\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/games/816750/the-sims-ea-buyout-content-creator-program-departures-lilsimsie\">Sims streamers are distancing themselves from EA, but for some the choice is hard\u003c/a> — Ash Parrish\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>,\u003ci> The Verge\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://simscommunity.info/2026/06/17/ea-advertisement-brands-history/\">EA Advertisement Isn’t New: A Look Back At The Sims’ History With Brands (And What Comes Next)\u003c/a> — Callum Bowyer,\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci> Sims Community\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://cepr.net/publications/electronic-arts-and-private-equity/\">Private Equity’s EA Takeover: Corruption, Contradictions, and Exploitation\u003c/a> — Daniel Stone, \u003ci>Center for Economic and Policy Research\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sul Sul! That’s “hello” in Simlish. This is the second part of our deep dive into the queer history of The Sims. Do you like these deep dives? Whether you call yourself a Tabbie or a Tab Head or part of the Tab Hive, if you’re a fan of Close All Tabs, it would be so, so helpful if you could rate and review the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you’re listening to us! Okay, let’s get to the show. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Audio from Players Alliance demonstration]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There is a med pack in my backpack, so if anyone like, tweaks their ankle or falls or something, in this lower pouch there is a second pouch, you’ll find all sorts of medical stuff in there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In early May, a colorful group of gamers assembled in a grocery store parking lot in Redwood City, California — preparing to march on the headquarters of video game giant Electronic Arts. They called it a “raid,” which, in gaming terms, means a big battle with the intention of taking down the boss. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Audio from Players Alliance demonstration]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This has concluded your safety brief. All right, woo! We did it! And then once you’re here, everybody look at me. We’re just going to grab a quick photo. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was a small group — maybe a dozen — but passionate. They’re part of an organization called The Players Alliance. They pulled up in elaborate costumes, with some wearing plumbobs, the gems from The Sims. Some wore the more common green ones, which float above the heads of happy Sims. But several in the group donned red plumbobs — typically seen on unhappy Sims, which is an iconic way to express anger toward The Sims’ parent company.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The group had gathered to protest the $55 billion deal that would take EA private and transfer ownership to a group of investors that includes a firm led by Jared Kushner and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The Players Alliance created an online petition addressed to U.S. Secretary Scott Bessent, calling on him to block the buyout. They had over 70,000 signatures by that point, printed on a comically long scroll. The plan? Rally other players, block the buyout, and, of course, stream the whole thing. Streamer and organizer, Kase Cosgrove, took the mic for much of the demonstration. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kase Cosgrove: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Woo! Here we go! Welcome everyone! We are here to… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They staged a boss fight, which involved taking down giant cardboard heads of the guys in charge of the buyout. Picture a huge Jared Kushner cutout surrounded by disapproving gamers. Then, they turned to a cutout of EA CEO Andrew Wilson. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Audio from Players Alliance demonstration]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Traitor! Traitor! Traitor! He’s betraying you, he’s betraying us, he’s betraying the workers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then came the big finale. The group unfurled the massive roll of paper printed with a portion of the 70,000 signatures. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Audio from Players Alliance demonstration]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is the gaming community. These are the people that signed their name on the dotted line that joined us. And I need you to know, this isn’t all of them. We have over 70,000 signatures — something we did in two months, not two years. I also want to add that this is 50 feet, a thousand signatures — this would span over a half mile at this size. It’s simply too big. And we’re only growing… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s Rachel… Better known as Zefrine. She’s an organizer and Sims creator who spoke about why she opposes the buyout. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Zefrine: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Sims is a game about life and like, that’s everyone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kase Cosgrove: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sims, the game about life, they should use that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Zefrine: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All colors, all walks of life. Yeah, like all of that. And that’s why we’re here today. Like me specifically, for a myriad of reasons, not only for the integrity of the industry, the jobs, the security, and the more that they continue to just treat it like the cash cow that it’s viewed to be by people who don’t care about us — the more that those spaces are going to become inaccessible to people who can no longer afford them. I love this… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many gamers are concerned about the EA buyout — fearing employee layoffs, decreasing quality of games, and aggressive monetization. But for Sims players, the threat feels especially personal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mivyard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a bisexual, there weren’t a lot of games where you could just have anybody, romance anybody else. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a Sims creator who goes by Mivyard. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mivyard: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was really important for me, especially when I was younger. So this game has a really special place in my heart and just the thought of it being taken over by people who might want to censor that aspect and that representation for the community is really frightening. So, when the news about the buyout dropped, a lot of Simmers and Sims streamers were like, “Oh my god,” like, “What do we do?” Like, what action can we do to actually… have an effect on the situation? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What does this deal really entail? If it goes through, what are the consequences on the gaming industry and its workers? And, is there anything that can stop it? Last week, we dove into the queer history of The Sims. Today, we’re looking at the present reality of EA and the future of this beloved game. Ready?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Picking up where we left off last week’s deep dive: let’s open another tab. What does The Sims mean to players? How many hours do you have logged on The Sims 4? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh dear, let me open it and I’ll find out. 10,522. And actually, it’s more than that, because I had like 1,700 hours in the Create A Sim demo as well — and then, now they’re all logged with The Sims 4 regular game, but doesn’t count those. So, it’s… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh my god!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Probably like 12,000, which — yeah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wow. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. No, but like it’s my job, right? So it’s totally fine. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Kayla Sims. She’s a Twitch streamer and YouTuber better known as LilSimsie. She has millions of followers. Almost every day, like five to six days a week, viewers tune in to watch her play cozy games. Think: farming sims like Stardew Valley, or social games like Animal Crossing. These are games that revolve more around creativity, slowing down, and exploring. It’s the complete opposite of first-person shooters like Call of Duty and Halo. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Kayla Sims playing Animal Crossing from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve been playing Animal Crossing for a couple of weeks now on this channel and unfortunately my island is still really, really ugly. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cozy games aren’t necessarily low stakes. One of the most popular games of the genre is The Sims. It’s a game where a lot can go wrong. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Kayla Sims playing The Sims from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh well, we decorated the tree… No!!! Why is this happening? Oh my god, the tree’s on fire! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Sims community is so different from other gamer circles online. At the Game Developer Conference in 2023, Phillip Ring, an executive producer for The Sims 4, gave a talk on developing DEI content in games. He cited a demographic study conducted by The Sims team. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Phillip Ring from GDC Vault website]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">43% of our audience identify as members of the LGBTQIA+ community. And 38% of audience are people of color. That’s far exceeding traditional gaming demographics on these dimensions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And 64% of Sims players are cis women. 17% are gender fluid or trans. Just over 20% are cis men, which is incredibly rare in gaming, an industry that’s long been marketed to men. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Phillip Ring from GDC Vault website]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a tremendous testament to the progress that we are making towards The Sims being a place where all players can represent themselves and see the world as they imagine it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that sometimes gaming gets a bad reputation. People think about horrible hate speech being spewed in voice chats and stuff, but The Sims is just not like that. I think that actually a lot of marginalized folks kind of flock to The Sims because it is so welcoming and so accepting. And so, it’s just a really wholesome, wonderful place to be. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Obviously it’s heavily made up by a lot queer folks, a lot people from the LGBTQ+ community are in The Sims community. There’s a lot of women in The Sims community as well. I think it’s just in general kind of a different demographic from a lot of other really major games titles, especially games titles that have been around for this long. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What has The Sims meant to you throughout your life? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It might sound silly, but honestly, The Sims has meant everything to me. When I was a kid, I really had a hard time in middle school and high school. I was kind of having a lot of mental health struggles and then my dad got cancer, and I was really like, going through it when I was in school. And The Sims was a real escape for me back then — not just playing the game, but like the community as a whole. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was almost like a utopia, right? Like I could like escape into this game where everything was fine. And it was a creative outlet for me to like, work on building houses and making characters and like, telling stories and stuff. And it’s kind of, I think, shaped me now and shaped my hobbies and my interests to this day. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like many Simmers, Kayla started playing The Sims as a kid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I finally managed to convince my parents to buy it for me after a long time of begging. I was like, “No, this is like named after us. We need to play it,” you know? “It’s fate.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In high school, Kayla started taking video production classes. It was the mid-2010s. Reaction videos and short form content hadn’t taken over yet. This was the golden age of YouTube. Gaming playthroughs and daily vlogs were blowing up. Kayla loved watching them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And this is around the time that my dad was diagnosed with cancer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After months of being sick, her dad was diagnosed with an aggressive blood cancer. Kayla’s parents went to Tampa for treatment, leaving Kayla and her younger siblings with their grandparents, two hours away. And Kayla felt really alone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so I was really looking, I think, for an outlet, and like, maybe also some community, because I was playing the game alone… And I think I was really like, kind of grasping to see if I could find some people that were like me and make some friends. So I started making videos just for fun and I really poured so much into it. I’ve spent all my free time playing the game and recording it and thinking about it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At 16 years old, Kayla started posting videos of her attempt at completing the, “Sims 4: 100 Baby Challenge.” Basically, you have to birth and successfully raise 100 in-game babies. Once your Sim can no longer have babies, you pick an heir, get them pregnant, and keep going. The goal is to build a family tree with all 100 babies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Kayla Sims playing The Sims from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hi everybody and welcome back to Part 3… I think? Of Let’s Play The Sims 4: 100 Baby Challenge. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It took Kayla five years to finish the challenge. To be fair, she was also making other videos about The Sims: reviews, playthroughs, speed builds — but still, it was five years of her life. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Kayla Sims playing The Sims from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I- It’s over. We- It’s done. We did it. Little did I know when I was 16 years old and starting this stupid challenge that I would be 21 when I finished it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the time it took Kayla to raise 100 in-game babies, her dad’s health stabilized, she built a huge following, and she found a community of fellow Simmers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I ended up making so many friends that are lifelong friends to this day, 10 years later. I was so shy and so anxious and to meet some of these other girls that were my same age, and they were also really shy and really anxious and having some similar mental health struggles, and they we’re also really into The Sims. And so, it was really, really powerful, I think, for me to make some friends that I felt like I could truly be myself with, because I don’t know if I had that in person and at school. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As her channel grew, Kayla started doing charity streams, fundraising for various causes. Her big one is an annual, month-long fundraising campaign for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. Just last month, she raised over a million dollars. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Kayla’s livestream from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">999,000! Woo! Oh my god! One million. *screaming*\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Her dad often pops in for those streams. Fans call him PapaSimsie or LilDadsie. And every year, Kayla takes a break from playing The Sims while she and her mom shave her dad’s head, live on stream, as part of the fundraiser. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Kayla’s livestream from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She’s embarrassed. Yeah. \u003cem>[laughing]\u003c/em> Of me? Of bald daddy? \u003cem>[more laughing]\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My dad’s kind of weird. I mean that in a good way. But, you know, he really hams it up for the camera. And I think that people enjoy that. He’s really gotten involved with some of those things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of Kayla’s livestream from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can call me bald daddy. Stop!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So now, the whole Sims family is also involved in Sims content. It’s the Simsie-verse. Over the years, Kayla started working directly with Maxis, which is owned by EA. Back in the day, the company flew out Sims creators to play test games early and give feedback directly to developers. It was mutually beneficial — the creators got early access footage that they got to post, and Maxis got to drum up some promotion for upcoming game content. A symbiotic relationship, if you will. In her reviews, Kayla’s been a pretty harsh critic of the pre-made buildings in the earlier Sims expansion packs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s one build that just, like, never ceases to amaze me, and it comes in Get Famous. It’s like this celebrity mansion. There’s five bathrooms. No toilets. There’s like space for a toilet. They’ve — clearly, they meant to put it there, and they just didn’t put one. Why?\u003cem> [laughs] \u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The developers at Maxis were definitely keeping tabs on the criticism. So, they asked Kayla to work on a few builds for upcoming releases. She created three buildings for the expansion pack Snowy Escape, which came out in 2020. And then again, for another expansion pack a few years later. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s all to say that Kayla’s life had become completely intertwined with The Sims. I mean, it’s her last name! Her parents were involved. She built a career out of playing this game. These playthroughs and reviews and silly challenges paid her bills. And, she played it in her free time, too. The Sims had become her job, but it was still the safe space that it was for her as an anxious, lonely teenager. Which is why she was so heartbroken when news of the EA buyout went public. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I couldn’t even believe it, to be honest, and I was so, so sad and scared. I mean, like, tears have been shed over this by me, because I feel like they’re tearing something away from us, you know? It’s really frustrating to have something that has been such a safe space for so long be bought out by people that are not safe. And I think that a lot of Sims players kind of echo that same sentiment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, we know that this is a $55 billion deal — a truly unfathomable amount of money. Beyond the staggering price tag… what does this buyout really entail? Game studios are sold and acquired all the time — why are players so concerned about this one in particular? We’re opening a tab on that in just a minute. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going. You can support us by becoming a member at donate dot kqed dot org slash podcasts. Okay, after the break: the EA buyouts and The Players Alliance. Stick around. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re back. Time to open a new tab: the EA buyout, explained. In October, Kayla joins other major Sims creators in leaving the EA Creator Network. This is the official partnership program for The Sims, and it opens the doors to huge perks. Creators in the network get early access to game packs, an affiliate code to share with their followers, and invites to beta testing sessions and special events. Some creators in the network even get paid collaborations. Stepping down from the Creator Network means giving up a lot of opportunities for Simmers like Kayla. But, as she learned more about the buyout deal, she knew she couldn’t stay. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Upon first seeing it, I was like, “I do not want this to happen, I hope that it will not go through, and I want people to be aware of what is going on.” I kind of in good conscience do not want to work with EA directly and like, support them behind the scenes or have any like, contractual obligation to them if this sale goes through. I had hoped that by a large creator like myself and also a bunch of other large Sims creators leaving the network, it would kind of take a huge stand and hopefully send signs to them about how much we do not want this to happen and how strongly we stand against it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s talk about the details of this deal. In September last year, EA announced that the brand and its catalog had been sold to an “investor consortium” in a $55 billion deal. This group of investors includes the tech-focused private equity firm Silver Lake, Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. That’s the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like, this deal alone could buy the entire music industry. I think that sometimes we forget just how big gaming is. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The consortium didn’t publicly disclose the planned ownership breakdown. That part actually came from a filing with Brazil’s antitrust regulators — spotted by the Wall Street Journal. So, once EA is delisted from the NASDAQ, Affinity Partners will own just 1.1%, and Silver Lake will own 5.5%. The Saudi Public Investment Fund will own a whopping 93.4% of the company. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And there’s a lot of concerns about censorship within The Sims, I think, also, because of those new owners that do not have a great track record with human rights. They actually have a direct track record of criminalizing LGBTQ+ expression. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Saudi Arabia, engaging in same-sex relationships is punishable by flogging, and in some cases, death. Gender expression is also criminalized. Multiple human rights reports note that it’s “illegal for men to behave like women,” and “dress in women’s clothes,” and vice versa. Publicly advocating for the rights of LGBTQ people is also illegal, and those who do? They also face arrest and imprisonment. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, PIF, already owned almost 10% of EA prior to the buyout. Now, PIF will own the vast majority of EA and its portfolio — including The Sims, a game that’s been a haven for queer players. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so a lot of queer players of The Sims are really, really worried about those new owners for that reason too. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Sims team has addressed the concerns. In October, they posted a statement to the game’s official channels, thanking players for being part of the community. They said, “Our mission, values, and commitment remain the same. The Sims will always be a space where you can express your authentic self.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In our last episode, we talked to Loel Phelps, the senior design director for The Sims 4. As the self-described “shepherd of ideas” for the game, Loel has guided over a decade of updates and expansions to make The Sims more inclusive. I asked him about the concerns over how new ownership could change the game, particularly for queer players who found refuge in The Sims. Here’s what he wants players to know. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Loel Phelps: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I believe in this team. The sec- like I said, the second I joined, I felt a very welcoming presence. I felt like there was a diverse group of people who are passionate creators, who have very different lived experiences from one another, just like everybody who’s here to play the game. So, inclusivity is foundational. It’s the lifeblood of who we are and the product we build. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why would Saudi Arabia, a notoriously repressive country, want anything to do with a company behind the most explicitly queer game on the market? Well… The Sims is just a tiny piece of EA’s portfolio. I mean, EA Sports is its own division. It’s huge. Saudi Arabia has been a major investor in e-sports and video games. By investing in gaming, PIF is diversifying the Saudi economy beyond petroleum, while also buying global cultural relevance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As one business professor put it in an interview with the industry news site, Game Developer, “Gaming is the new oil.” The ripple effects go way beyond diversity and inclusion. It could fundamentally change the gaming industry as we know it. Okay, lock in. You’re about to get a lot of details. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, the EA deal is the largest leveraged buyout in history. A leveraged buyout means that the buyer uses borrowed funds to acquire a company — almost like a mortgage. The buyer puts down the down payment and the bank finances the rest. Except, the buyer isn’t the one who has to pay it off. The company that was just bought does — using its own assets and revenues to pay off the debt. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, $55 billion, right? The investment group that bought EA chipped in a collective $36 billion, but there’s almost $20 billion left. Where does that come from? Now we have a new player, JP Morgan Chase Bank, which financed the remaining $20 billion. Well, who’s going to pay back the bank? EA.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s a massive deal that’s being financed by $20 billion in debt that EA is going to have to carry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, EA actually makes a ton of money. In the 2025 fiscal year, the company pulled in nearly $7.5 billion of revenue. But their profit — what’s left after paying business costs — was just over $1.1 billion. And as multiple financial experts and market analysts have warned us, EA is probably going to have to make some pretty significant changes to pay off $20 billion. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, they’re gonna need to pay that off quickly because the investors wanna make money. And people are really concerned about things like layoffs of a lot of the people that work at EA — possibly replacing them with AI, which would just ruin the heart and soul of the game. And it’s really scary, I think, as a step for the gaming industry as a whole. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Days after it agreed to the deal, EA published an employee FAQ assuring workers that, quote, “There will be no changes to your job, team, or daily work as a result of this transaction.” This FAQ was actually made public in an SEC filing. Multiple experts have said that EA will likely double down on their existing revenue streams — sports franchises like Madden, cash cow mobile games that revolve around in-app purchases, and microtransactions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’re already pricing a lot of people out. And if we have this new standard set — because now it’s the norm — I really am worried about it getting even worse and preventing people from being able to play these games. I worry about the kids of the future being able play things like this because the prices are just so extreme and it’s only going to get worse. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Simmers have already complained of changes. In March, The Sims 4 unveiled the Marketplace, a virtual store of Sims custom content created by other players. It essentially gives players a way to sell customized in-game clothes and furniture directly to other players. However, creators only take home 30% of their sales. EA gets the remaining 70%, and when it first launched, players could only buy this stuff using a special currency called “Moola” — which they had to buy with real-world money. Simmers weren’t thrilled about the microtransactions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of @goofylilshady playing The Sims 4 from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, if you thought this game was expensive, now guess what? It just got a little bit more expensive! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then just this month, EA quietly launched its new Advertising department, which will focus on integrating brand partnerships with other ads directly into gameplay. Now, for The Sims, this could look like brand collabs that the game has already done, like giving players free Coach bags in-game, or free IKEA furniture that looks just like the real IKEA furniture. It could also look like an unskippable pop-up ad that interrupts the game. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, it’s not just about The Sims. Obviously my personal experience is with The Sims, because that’s my favorite game and this thing that I’ve been playing for so long, but it really does affect all games across the entire industry, even beyond just EA games. I think that a private equity buyout of this scale is completely unprecedented and will probably have ripple effects across the entire industry forever. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This kind of sets the model for future buyouts, future private buyouts. It sets the model for potential mass layoffs and these like really big AI concerns that we have over replacing developers. And I’m really concerned about that aggressive monetization because already, games are so expensive. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Leaving the Creator Network alone wasn’t enough for Kayla. She wanted to do more. So, she joined The Players Alliance. And, what is that? Well, that brings us back to the protest — and to open a new tab: How are gamers fighting the EA buyout? You’ve actually gone further than just leaving the network and not promoting the new games — you joined The Players Alliance. What is that? What are they trying to achieve? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, The Players Alliance is a group of gamers that is working to help fight corporate greed, just in general, in the gaming industry — right now, a lot of talk about the EA buyout and ways that that impacts the gaming industry as a whole. So, that’s kind of a heavy focus of them at this current moment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Players Alliance is trying to gain signatures for its petition to block the deal. They’ve collected over 72,000 signatures so far. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, my friend Zefrine and I, we had kind of been talking a little bit about wanting to do something and wanting to do more, and I had been thinking privately about ways that I could try and get involved and do more and not… I didn’t really know where to start. Because I — you know, I’m just one person, like, I don’t know how to do something like this. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You heard Zefrine at the top of this episode — during the rally outside EA’s headquarters. She’s one of the lead organizers for The Players Alliance, which she describes as a gamers’ union. Her dad was a union guy too, so she grew up among organizers. When she heard about the buyout, she knew she had to get involved and that she could leverage her platform to get the word out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Zefrine: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kayla and I are actually very close friends. And… It kind of gives me chills to talk about it, but we both had a dream the same night that we did a livestream together — like the same night. And then I just decided, I was like, “You know what? I’m just going to see, how stupid can we get? How silly, goofy can we get? Let’s shoot for the stars.” And then we… She said, “Are you kidding me? We have… Like, I had the same dream last night!” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Zefrine had been working with The Players Alliance, and she kind of had this idea to work with a Congress member, and like, reach out to them and ask them to maybe do a stream with us or like, to speak more openly about this. And fortunately, I have- my congressman, Maxwell Frost, had already signed an open letter in Congress about the deal and so we felt like that was actually a really, kind of kismet opportunity to try and reach out to his team. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Maxwell Frost is the first Gen Z member of Congress. He’s known for being more… online than his colleagues. He’s more in the know. And it helps that he’s already a gamer himself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Zefrine: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think, what better of a person to reach an audience like that — like, he’s young, he’s in touch, he’s understanding of like, what’s going on with things, and his voice is so powerful. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With The Players Alliance, they organized a live stream with the Congressman, back in April. Here’s the setup: Zefrine acted as a moderator, taking audience questions and passing them on to Kayla and Maxwell. Like, a guided fireside chat.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Begin clip of Players Alliance livestream]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cstrong>Maxwell Frost:\u003c/strong> Saudi Arabia is essentially trying to acquire every part of gaming you can think of. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s going to put us in a really tough position in terms of national security, in terms of censorship and what that government believes, and in terms of the workers who create the games as well. So, I really think the FTC needs to step in here. They can sue to stop the merger. The Department of Justice can also sue to stop the mergers as well. I think there’s so many reasons why they need to do it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cstrong>Kayla Sims:\u003c/strong> Yeah. I completely agree. And I hate to interrupt you, but how is your energy looking in the game, and maybe we should go to bed? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cstrong>Maxwell Frost:\u003c/strong> \u003cem>[laughing]\u003c/em> My energy’s kinda low and it’s really dark. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[End clip]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And this whole discussion happened while they played Stardew Valley. Zefrine said they picked this game for a reason. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Zefrine: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stardew Valley — it’s an indie smash hit, and I think it’s just so comfy and cozy and approachable, and it’s made by one guy. And I think, it’s really important, especially among all this, to highlight the amazing things that can be done. You know, when you let your developers pour their hearts into something. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We kind of wanted to make it really approachable for the viewer and like, make it something that was similar enough to my regular content that maybe it wouldn’t just be a click-off like, “Oh, who’s this random guy she’s talking to? I don’t need to watch this.”. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I was going to ask like about the livestream itself. It really cracked me up watching Maxwell Frost explain like, how the downfall of democracy with foreign involvement while also trying to break open a geode, because you guys are playing Stardew Valley. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>[Clip of the Players Alliance livestream from YouTube]: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, can we open the geode? Yeah, okay. If you come back to like where the cabins are, you can follow me, I’ll show you where Clint is. Clint? Clint… Nice, dude, Clint is the guy that opens the geodes? Yeah.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Leading up to that and going into it, I was like, “I’m not equipped to be talking to a Congress member.” Like, I just play video games. But he is so nice, and he was so excited about the game as well. It’s really funny to watch the video back, and he’s like so locked in, like staring at his screen while he’s talking. It’s really fun. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But yeah, it was amazing that he offered to join us, and I felt like he had a lot of really great things to say about how it was working and what people can do to get involved. I think that it inspired a lot of people to sign the petition that we’ve been trying to share. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. So let’s talk about the petition itself. What is the goal of it? What are you trying to bring awareness to? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, the petition itself, is to the Secretary of the Treasury. And the ultimate goal is to hopefully have him stop the deal because he has the power to block it. But I think even beyond that, having a massive petition with so many signatures, really sends signs to EA and to the new buyers about how much the community opposes it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that because we have so many really valid concerns about national security and data security of Americans — this would be a foreign monarchy having almost complete control over a company that has hundreds of millions of people buying their games, it’s one of the biggest entertainment industries in America — and so the hope is that because of those concerns, we can get the government to help prevent the deal from going through. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kayla has hoped that lawmakers will at least be able to stall the deal. Nearly 50 members of Congress signed a letter to FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson — calling for a thorough review into the labor market consequences of the buyout. The House Judiciary Committee opened a probe into Jared Kushner’s quote, “foreign entanglements and staggering conflicts of interests,” AKA, his financial ties to Saudi Arabia. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, there’s renewed scrutiny of the buyout now, thanks to his involvement. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The deal is expected to close by the end of this fiscal quarter — so, sometime this summer, if not by the end of the month. Regardless of whether the deal goes through, Sims creators who continue to promote the game have been bombarded with questions from followers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ahead of the Players Alliance collab with Congressman Frost, the Sims team reached out to members of the EA Creator Network over Discord. The messages were private, but screenshots quickly leaked online. They said the team was aware of the planned livestream and included guidance on how creators could answer their followers’ questions about the buyout. The message also said, quote, “There’s no expectation for you to engage with or respond to this conversation. You will always be free to express your honest opinions, but it’s also completely okay if you’d prefer to step back from the conversation entirely.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For months, Simmers like Kayla and Zefrine have been grappling with what it means to disentangle themselves from a game that’s meant so much to them. What does that even look like? Alright, we have time to open one last tab, right? The Sims creator dilemma. Many high-profile Sims creators left the EA Creator Network, but Zefrine decided to stay, even though she’s one of the lead organizers for the Players Alliance. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Zefrine: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I try to keep them relatively compartmentalized. Obviously, because I have like my contract and I respect that contract — it’s been like this huge goal for me to be in the Creator Network and be a part of that. And I think that in every company, no matter where you are, you still need good people that are willing to advocate for it from within. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some people choose to step away because they feel like their power is that way, but I’m not afraid to be noisy or outspoken about certain things. And um, I talk to my community, I see things online, and then I… advocate directly to the people who make the game, and I think that’s a really powerful thing. So that’s personally what I have chosen to do. And I’m still like continuing to play it because it can get quite complicated for like a lot of people, but it’s something I’ve enjoyed since I was eight years old. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it truly was like, it saved my life to be fully honest with you. Um, and… It allowed me to discover like, queer representation within myself and like those things like through storytelling or through building. It’s just such a powerful outlet. I’m using my voice and my platform that I’ve been gifted by this community essentially, to make sure that that integrity stays in place. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While she stayed in the network, Zefrine has also been very involved in organizing protests and collecting signatures. And then there’s Kayla. She’s been criticized for continuing to make Sims content, even after she left the EA network. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that for anyone on YouTube, it’s kind of impossible to just like, quit cold turkey with your bread and butter. Like, I think that that’s really a turnoff to your entire audience and I don’t think that it’s practical. So, from day one, my goal was to start incorporating more other games onto my YouTube channel. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She plays Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing and a new game called Paralives. It’s an indie game that’s very similar to The Sims. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s been scary, I think, because I was nervous, again, that people wouldn’t care… But it’s been fun for me to experiment a little bit — because I kind of have like a format. I sort of know what it takes to make a good Sims video, but I don’t really know what is takes to make a video about some of these other games. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But when Kayla does return to The Sims, she follows some new rules she set for her channel. She hasn’t been reviewing or promoting any of the newer packs or game content. In fact, she hasn’t being buying them at all. She’s hesitant to even speak negatively about any of newer stuff because it’ll bring attention to a company that she refuses to financially support. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s like, her current Sims content is a time capsule of Sims releases up until 2025. So much of Kayla’s identity is tied up in The Sims — like fundraising with her dad, working with Maxis, and meeting so many of her best friends through the game. I mean, this is someone who has like, 12,000 hours in the game — her last name is literally Sims. And she admitted that she does really miss it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I love The Sims so much and like, seeing this new content come out and like for example, when the most recent expansion pack came out and I chose not to play it and not to review it — that’s the first time in like 15 years that I haven’t played new Sims content and that made me really sad. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like, I love the game. I want to continue to play the game, I want continue to support the game, I want The Sims to exist because I think it’s such an important pillar of the gaming community. There’s nothing else like it in the entire world, and it’s so special, and I wish so desperately that I could feel comfortable continuing to support it, but it just feels morally wrong at this point. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No matter what happens with EA, and the buyout, and the Saudi investment in the gaming industry, the Sims team has made a lot of assurances that the game won’t change. Well, the microtransactions have been amped up, but the game is still as queer and inclusive as it was last year, before EA shareholders approved the buyouts. Last episode, we talked to Jessica Croft, a senior designer for The Sims. When I asked her about the player concerns we laid out in this episode, here’s what she said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Croft: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re still the same team we’ve always been. We are the same folks that made the sexual orientation update, that made pronouns update, that fought for diversity and representation throughout our long history. Our values haven’t changed. Like, we still believe the exact same things we’ve always believed. And I could also say that — I could claim this till I’m blue in the face, and you might still not believe me — I would say don’t trust our words, trust our actions. Watch what we do next, watch the next few years of releases, and take from that the understanding that we haven’t changed, we still hold the same values. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, LGBTQ inclusion in games rarely feels revolutionary. It’s a given. Of course you can be a demon-blooded lesbian in Baldur’s Gate. It makes total sense that the main characters in Hades are canonically bisexual. Marry whoever you want in Stardew Valley. The Sims opened the door for these games to be… so gay. The buyout doesn’t change what The Sims has come to mean to so many queer people over the last 26 years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">From the very first accidental sapphic kiss at E3, this game has been a trailblazer for what it means to actually see yourself in a story. The future of EA may be uncertain, but the queer history of The Sims is undeniable. Will it stay this gay? I really hope so. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s it for this extra deep, deep dive on The Sims. Let me tell you — the tabs on this one almost got out of control. I cannot open another without crashing this episode. But if you’re hungry for more, stick around after the credits for some bonus content. Okay, happy pride. Let’s finally close all of these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. This episode was edited by Chris Hambrick. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Close All Tabs team also includes producer, Maya Cueva, and audio engineer, Brendan Willard. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro V2 switches. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I remember I was trying to have my Sim adopt a baby, because I realized like, “Oh, you can adopt a baby. That’s cool. I want to try that.” And so, I clicked the button and then nothing happened. And I was like, “That’s weird. Let me do it again.” Nothing happened. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I thought, “That’s weird. Let me do it again.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, I adopted like six babies by accident, and then, I didn’t know that you had to take care of them, which, in hindsight is like, “Well, of course you do.” But you know, I was a kid, so I wasn’t taking care of them — and they all got taken away. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cem>[laughs]\u003c/em> Oh no. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kayla Sims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Um, and I, yeah, I harbored a lot of guilt about that back then. Now I kind of think it’s funny, but I was like, “What is this game? This is a nightmare!” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Bay-Curious-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/news/series/baycurious",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 3
},
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"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious",
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}
},
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"id": "bbc-world-service",
"title": "BBC World Service",
"info": "The day's top stories from BBC News compiled twice daily in the week, once at weekends.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9pm-10pm, TUE-FRI 1am-2am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BBC-World-Service-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_world_service",
"meta": {
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"source": "BBC World Service"
},
"link": "/radio/program/bbc-world-service",
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"rss": "https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0gn.rss"
}
},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
"title": "The California Report",
"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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}
},
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"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/City-Arts-and-Lectures-p692/",
"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 1
},
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"id": "code-switch-life-kit",
"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
"site": "radio",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/code-switch-life-kit",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnByLm9yZy9yc3MvcG9kY2FzdC5waHA_aWQ9NTEwMzEy",
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},
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/commonwealth-club-of-california-podcast/id976334034?mt=2",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
"link": "/forum",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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},
"freakonomics-radio": {
"id": "freakonomics-radio",
"title": "Freakonomics Radio",
"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Masters-of-Scale-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mindshift-podcast/id1078765985",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/0MxSpNYZKNprFLCl7eEtyx"
}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
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