February 23, 2024 • 37 mins
In this episode of "Mike Dell's World," number 398, titled "The Nothingness of Overconnected Lives," Mike Dell explores the themes of technological simplicity and privacy. The episode was recorded on February 22nd, 2024.
Mike begins by updating his listeners on his personal life, mentioning his recent shoulder surgery recovery and his return to flying. He also notes a change in his recording setup due to technical issues, leading to a lack of sound effects and music in this episode.
Mike shares that he's started a new podcast with Mike Wilkerson, which will be available in video, audio, and on a YouTube channel. He talks about his experience with different podcast apps, praising features like smart playlists and privacy-focused platforms like Cast o Matic, Podverse, Fountain, and Podcast Guru.
The main topic of the episode revolves around smartphones, privacy, and the idea of 'de-Googling' one's life. Mike discusses the consequences of using free apps, his intolerance for advertisements, and the consideration of using a 'dumb' phone. He mentions his decision to reduce Google's presence in his personal life, although he still uses YouTube and Facebook for work and occasional personal posts.
Mike critically evaluates the necessity of always being connected, mentioning his preferences for minimal social media usage and the privacy implications of technologies like face ID. He expresses concerns about the habit-forming nature of smartphones, describing efforts to simplify his phone usage by removing unnecessary apps and switching to the Brave browser for privacy.
He references an article by the BBC about the resurgence of 'dumb phones' among younger generations, highlighting a particular model called the Nokia 3310. Mike then details his interest in a minimalist phone called the Light Phone, which aside from basic features, has limited apps to minimize distractions.
Mike also discusses an article that explains how to turn an iPhone into a 'dumb phone' and suggests getting rid of applications that track users or serve ads. He talks about living without the constant bombardment of news and entertainment, advocating for a more straightforward lifestyle.
He further discusses his experience in de-cluttering his media consumption, from podcasts to news and television, advocating for RSS feeds as an alternative to mainstream news sources. Mike also adds that he has been exploring off-grid living through various YouTube channels.
The episode wraps up with Mike mentioning his initiatives at Blueberry, including testing AI for generating chapter files and adding transcripts to make podcasts more accessible. He remarks on the resilience of RSS feeds in maintaining a decentralized platform for podcast content, independent of larger corporations like Apple or Spotify.
Mike concludes by encouraging listeners to tune into his more regular appearances on the Auto History Podcast and Podcast Insider for content related to automobiles and podcasting insights. Additionally, he promises to provide links in the show notes related to topics discussed in the episode, such as the BBC article, the Light Phone details, and the guide to dumbing down an iPhone.
- Mike updates on his shoulder surgery recovery and return to flying
- Discusses changes in recording setup resulting in no sound effects or music
- Announces a new podcast with Mike Wilkerson, including video and audio formats Auto History Podcast
- Discusses podcast apps, favoring smart playlists and privacy-focused options like Castamatic, Podverse, Fountain, and Podcast Guru
- Main topic on the downsides of smartphones and privacy concerns
- Speaks on ‘de-Googling’ his life while still using YouTube and Facebook for essential work purposes
- Advocates for reduced social media usage and is wary of technologies like face ID
- Efforts to simplify phone use, including removing apps and using Brave browser
- References BBC's article on the popularity of 'dumb ph...
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
- Mike Dell's World number 3 98.
And today is the
22nd of February, 2024.
Happy New Year since I didn't, uh, talk,
I haven't talked to you since November.
Well, or maybe December.I don't know,.
Anyway, all is well herein northern Michigan.
(00:23):
And today I want to talkabout a particular subject,
but, uh, I figured I'd catch you up on all
the personal details.
I, uh, had my shoulder surgery in October,
which if you listen to anyof the Nap Pot Pomo episodes,
I was in the midst of recovering.
Well, I'm, I'd say 90%recovered, uh, back to,
(00:45):
uh, flying.
So I've been doing quite a bit
of flying here lately,.
So been fun. And, uh, I got all that, uh,
you know, got all the, the, theshoulder pain taken care of.
It's still a little stiff.
Don't quite have the range of motion that,
uh, I have had in the past.
By the way, I don't have any,uh, fancy sound effects today
(01:09):
because, uh, I'm using adifferent, uh, USB interface.
Uh, my road caster keeps failing me,
and I think it's more thecomputer than the road caster.
So, uh, I'm using a foresight, uh, solo.
That's what it's called.So if it sounds a little,
it shouldn't sound any different.
(01:29):
Uh, got the same, uh, setup otherwise.
But, uh, anyway,
that's why I'm not gonnaplay the intro music
and all that stuff 'cause I don't like
to edit if I don't have to.
And speaking of podcasting, of course, uh,
you guys might know that Istarted another podcast with,
uh, Mike Wilkerson.
So I have a partner in crime,and we're doing it slow.
(01:54):
So, uh, we're starting outwith a couple episodes a month,
but they're gonna be comingout in video podcast,
audio podcast
and YouTube, A YouTube channel,a a proper YouTube channel,
not a, not a, uh, fakevideo YouTube channel,
like you could find this showon if you go to YouTube music.
(02:16):
I'm now on YouTube music with this one.
And also there's a, a YouTube channel.
But, uh, basically it's justthis audio with, uh, the,
the, uh, artwork, uh, as a still shot.
So it's kind of, kind of lame in my humble opinion.
(02:36):
You're better off goingto, uh, podcast apps.com
and pick one of your,pick one of those apps.
Uh, lately I've been using castomatic
and it has a lot of neat features.
Not all the features, but,uh, a lot of neat ones, uh,
from podcasting 2.0, anotherone, another good one is,
(02:59):
- Uh, of course, pod verse and Fountain.
Those are, uh, pretty popular these days.
And, and, uh, another one youmight like is podcast guru.
Nice thing about Castomaticis, if you like overcast,
and I still like overcast,
but if you like overcast,this is kind of the, uh,
(03:20):
uh, it's not a quite aclone, but darn close.
And, and the nice thing I like about
that is it has a thing called collections
or smart playlists thatwork really good, uh, for
how I like to listen to podcasts.
You know, I have them separatedby aviation, uh, cars,
(03:41):
uh, news, uh, you know, just to, you know,
have a fun category where Ijust throw things in there and,
and, you know, it, itworks out really good.
'cause it automatically puts,you know, a playlist together
of those types of shows
that you've downloaded to your phone.
And speaking of phones, that'sgonna be the main subject
(04:04):
of today's episode.
We've been doing a lot ofthinking about, you know,
all this stuff we have in ourpocket, you know, the little
device that can do just abouteverything and anything.
And you, there's an app for that.
Well, all those apps have consequences,
(04:25):
especially the free ones, the free apps,
as I've said all along sinceall this technology started,
if you're getting something from
for free, you are the product.
And, you know, they loveselling data and collecting data
and, you know, targetingyou for advertisements.
And, you know, I've become very intolerant
(04:46):
of te uh, advertisements.
And of course, I'mprobably going to be, uh,
counter addicting myself, in this subject,
because I do do some things that, uh,
are counterintuitive towhat I'm talking about.
But what I'm talking about is, you know,
what's the difference
or what, uh, you know, what would be
(05:07):
your thought about goingback to a, a dumb phone,
or maybe not even carryinga cell phone at all,
but let's just assume youneed to have a cell phone
so you can at least make phonecalls and receive phone calls
and maybe text.
Uh, you know, texts kindof bother me sometimes too,
when people kind ofuse that in replacement
(05:27):
of regular communications.
You know, used to be, you could, uh,
just pick up the phone and call it.
And, you know, you
and the other person on the other
end didn't know who was calling.
And that was good in some ways,
and obviously bad in other ways'.
There's a lot of scammersand telemarketers,
and anymore the telemarketersare freaking lazy.
(05:49):
They, they just have a bot do it.
And, uh, you know, with AI coming on
and all that, no matter, you know,
who knows what's gonnahappen with the, uh,
smartphones and all that.
You know, I have a, an iPhone15 Pro Max, whatever the,
the, the latest greatest iPhone.
(06:11):
And I do enjoy it.
It has a wonderful camera, and,
but I've just found it thatI'm very overconnected,
I guess would bebe the way to, to put it.
I, I, you know, I'm not tooworried about Google following
me around and all that,but, uh, I have decided
that I'm gonna dego my, uh,
(06:33):
existence on the internet at least.
Uh, personally, of course,uh, you know, we use a lot
of Google for work.
Um, you know, so I've gotta kinda do that.
But I have it kind ofcompartmentalized on my work computer.
I have all the stuff that I need.
(06:53):
I don't have it on my phone.
And I, I do, you know, I,
the only thing I have on myphone that's Google related is,
uh, YouTube and I, and
because I have YouTube, I don't have
to watch commercials otherthan what's built into some
of the YouTube channels.
But, so that's, that'sone counter diction there.
(07:15):
Yes, I'm still gonna bewatching YouTube now.
I've tried Rumble and I like Rumble,
but Rumble doesn't have thevariety of things that I like
to watch that YouTube does.
But anyway, get back to thesmartphone versus dumb phone
versus de Googling and deFacebooking and all that.
Uh, I do have a Facebook,I don't particularly, uh,
(07:39):
post to it a whole lot.
I use it, uh, mainly for work.
And, you know, and usuallywhen I post something on
Facebook, it's usuallysomething I think is funny.
Anyway,, well, therest of you think that,
but, uh, I, I don't, Itry not to use Facebook as
a communications platform necessarily.
(08:01):
Uh, I do use Twitter
or X, um, I'm more active on that,
but I still don't post a heckof a lot on there either.
I'm mostly lurking and reading and,
and all that, which isactually kind of a good thing.
Uh, and I, and I don't have either
of those apps on my cell phone.
(08:22):
Now. I have an iPad, uh,an iPad mini that I do.
I don't carry it aroundwith me all that often,
but when I'm home, I use thatkind of my easy chair machine.
And, and, uh, I use itfor flying, you know,
I got my electronic flightbag on it and all the maps
and, you know, that kind of stuff.
But, uh, I don't carry itaround with me that much.
(08:46):
So the location data thing isn't
as big a deal as it is with a phone.
Now, you know, of course your carrier has
your location all the time,
and probably nothing you cando to block that, uh, you know,
except for turning the whole thing off.
. And even the newdumb phones are that way.
I was reading an article, uh, on the BBC
(09:10):
and where is that?
Ah, here it is. The, thetitle of it is Not Smart,
but Clever, the Return of Dumb Phones.
And it seems to be a thingwith, uh, high school age
or Gen ZI guess you would call that.
Uh, you know, I don'tknow, up to 20 somethings.
Uh, I don't know, I don't know the
(09:30):
generations all that well.
I just know I'm a Gen X, an early Gen X.
But, uh, you know, in here,in the article, you know,
you're talking about this, uh,this girl in, in high school
that she just has a dumb phone, you know,
Nokia thirty three ten, which is,
it's about 24 years old now.
(09:53):
Although they, uh, dohave newer versions of it.
So I'm sure there's a lotof the tracking stuff.
And like I said, I'm not thatworried about the tracking
as much, but the thingis, is it's so easy,
you know, when you get bored,you pull out your phone
and you look at somethingand you pull out your phone
and you look at somethingelse, you, you know, you scroll
(10:15):
or, or, you know, we call, uh,I call my, uh, iPad my, uh,
toilet scroller,, youknow, sitting there instead
of reading the newspaper or a magazine.
Well, you got my iPad.
So, like I said, I gotmy foot in both worlds,
but as far as my cell phone, I,
I've dumbed it down a lot.
(10:38):
I, I've taken off prettymuch all of the, uh,
quote unquote fun apps.
You know, I don't have any games on it.
I don't have, uh, you know,any social media on it.
Uh, basically it's a telephone
and a text device.
(11:00):
You know, it's kind of a necessary evil.
And I do have a browser on it,
but I did go to the Brave Browser.
So instead of using the StockSafari browser on iPhone
or Chrome or any of those other ones,
I figured that's good enough.
I took all the mappingprograms off my phone,
with the exception of Apple Maps.
(11:21):
'cause you know, it is handy to be able
to plug it into the truck and,
and have the maps on the, on the screen.
So that's, you know, that,that's a compromise I'll take.
And Apple seems to be betterat the privacy thing than a lot
of other places, but maybenot, uh, significantly.
So you just never know.
But, uh, they seem to be better at it.
(11:44):
And, you know, other things I've done, I,
I do have face ID on my phone, so you can,
I can unlock it with my face.
That's a convenience.
But you think about that, ifyou were to get pulled over
by a police officer whothinks you did something
that you shouldn't have done,
and they have your phone,they can't unlock it.
(12:08):
If you have face ID turned off, you know,
otherwise, they justhold it up to your face
and get it to unlock.
But if it has a code, ofcourse, when you have face id,
you still have a code.
Uh, and I don't knowhow it works on Android.
I, uh, decided that, uh, Android is not
what I'm gonna be doing.
(12:29):
So I guess I could do a de Googled Android
phone if I wanted to.
But, uh, I think, uh, I thinkI'll stick with Apple just
'cause they seem to last longer and,
and they're reasonably good at privacy.
But along that line, it's just, there's
so many apps tracking.
(12:49):
So I took off all the apps.
I got to the Brave Browser asmy only browser on the phone.
So if I really wannalook something up, I can,
I have a couple banking appson there that, uh, just,
just makes it really easy.
So I, I do that.
I, I have the airline apps onthere, or I put them on right
before a trip, is what I usually do.
(13:10):
'cause I don't alwaysfly the same airline.
And that works out pretty well
because you just, you know,
you use it and then you get rid of it.
You know, just having a wholebunch of apps on your phone
just makes it so you wannaplay with it more.
And it's amazing whatthose devices will do.
(13:33):
And, and I do see a use case for it.
But, you know, I went to the restaurant,
uh, with a buddy of mine.
We, we do our Thursday night
to solving the world's problem session.
I got back from that a little while ago.
This is Thursday nightwhen I'm recording this.
And I just kinda looked around the place.
We were just at a Chili'sand looked around the place,
(13:55):
and there were people, youknow, couples there, you know,
both looking at their phones instead
of talking to each other.
And, you know, I, I guess ona, on, on one level, I think
that's probably not good.
But anyway, so yeah, I've,
I've dumbed down the phonea little bit, uh, a phone
that I was interested in.
(14:16):
It's not either, it's,it's not Apple, it's not,
uh, Android.
I'm sure it has some formof Linux under the hood,
but, uh, called the Light Phone.
And it's at the light phone.com,
and it has just the basic stuff on it.
It has, uh, minimal, youknow, it's a minimal phone.
(14:38):
It has an E Ink screen.
Uh, it does not have social media.
It does not have news.It does not have email.
It does not have, uh, a browser,
but it does have some of the stuff
that I would like to have.
(14:59):
It, uh, does phonecalls, it does text, uh,
does calendar alarm and podcasts.
I don't know how well it does podcasts,
but it also has Bluetooth.
So you can play your podcasts through, uh,
through your Bluetooth inyour car if you have that.
(15:19):
And you can use it as a hotspot.
So I was thinking, you know,geez, I have a light phone
and then an iPad,
and, you know, so the iPad could be the,
the one I do all the browsing and whatnot,
and I don't always haveto bring that with me,
but, you know, if I want to go light,
I take the light phone.
So, I don't know, I'm thinking about that.
They're a little spendy andI haven't seen one in person.
(15:42):
But, uh, it looks likequite the compromise
between the smart and the dumb phone.
And I'll have an article herethat I, uh, went through.
I didn't do everythingin this article that, uh,
they suggest, but it's, uh, how
to turn Your iPhone intoa dumb phone,.
And, uh, it, uh, youknow, you could do it.
(16:03):
That's the thing. And the,
and the beauty of that is, isif you ever wanna add an app
for some reason, youknow, if you're traveling
or whatever, you throw iton there, you do your thing,
you turn it off, um, you know, it's,
and there's a lot of other,you know, privacy stuff.
But like I said, I'm notthat worried about privacy.
I wanna avoid ads, and Iwanna avoid distractions.
(16:24):
Uh, I find that it's a lotnicer to take a drive, uh,
and just not have to worryabout the phone ringing.
'cause I, I don't answermy phone when I'm driving.
I, you know, unless I'mon a really long trip.
But if I'm just drivingaround town, it'll wait,
leave a voicemail, send me atext, I'll read it when I stop.
(16:46):
Or my, technically thetruck will read it to me
or the, the, the, uh,Siri lady in the, uh,
in CarPlay.
But, uh, you know, most of the time
that stuff's not an emergency, you know?
And what did we do 20 years ago?
And not everybody wascarrying around a phone
or maybe 30 years ago, Idon't know, just getting old.
(17:10):
But, uh, you know, I remembertraveling cross country.
I didn't have a phone.
I didn't have a GPS, you had a map
or several maps, you know,I used to go between here
and Idaho, uh, you know,uh, at least once a year.
And I'd make that entiretrip with a map, a ham radio,
(17:30):
and, uh, an am FM radio in the truck.
I didn't even have cassettes or CDs.
I mean, you know, CDs were around,
but, uh, didn't have anyof that in the truck.
I just had, uh, A MFM.
And, uh, yeah, that was good enough.
You know, you list to an AMstation at night, you know,
you could listen to it for a long time
and, you know, listen to talk radio
(17:52):
or whatever, if you wannafind some music there,
it's all over the FM dial.
The only thing is you hadto change the channel every
so often when you run out of the station.
Wasn't, uh, wasn't really a big deal.
And I wasn't going toofar off the beaten trail,
so it wasn't like Ineeded to find, you know,
some place out in the middle
of the mountain somewhere,.
So I didn't need the GPS.
(18:13):
The GPS didn't even exist at the time.
And, you know, now we're spoiled,you know, satellite radio
and, and, uh, you know, streamingstuff to our phones and,
and podcasts and all that stuff.
You know, I, I believeme, I love podcasts.
Uh, you know, I, I dothem. I, I listen to them.
(18:34):
I, I do all that stuff,
but I don't, uh, you know,
I don't wanna be continuallyinundated with news,
and I don't, I don't needto know all that stuff.
If anything really bighappens, I'll figure it out.
Uh, so I, you know, I'm still continuing.
This is, I'm going on four yearshere that I don't watch any
(18:55):
of the national news.
I read some of it. Uh, and,
and another thing, you know, geez,
I'm just going all over onthis tech stuff, you know,
I said, I'm a geek, but man,I'm telling you, it's, uh,
it's getting to the point where,uh, it, it's overwhelming.
Uh, not that I don't knowwhat it does, and I don't,
and I do understand its value,
(19:18):
but I think we're, we're going down a path
that's gonna really messus up, uh, in the future.
You know, what happened? Liketoday, uh, this morning at
and t had a massiveoutage almost nationwide,
on their cellular network.
And people were freaking out.
Uh, you know, my sister calls me, uh,
(19:41):
or text me, actually,
and she did it via wifi on,uh, you know, on the ambulance.
She goes, Hey, I don'thave any phone service,
or no internet, whatever, youknow, then their wifi at home.
And, you know, she wasjust freaking out about it.
She's like, whathappened? What's going on?
You know, and all that.Well, you know, I, you know,
(20:02):
my theory is that it was acouple of, uh, X-Class flares
that came off the sun earlier,uh, last night, I guess.
But, uh, messed something up. Who knows?
Uh, talking maybe even, uh,cyber attacks or whatever.
But, you know, people wouldbe lost without their phones.
Now, you know, it's, I, I'vemade it a habit of mine to, uh,
(20:25):
every once in a while, justleave the phone at home when I
go out, you know, go out,
run errands, I'll leave the phone at home.
I've done that a few times.
Not very often, but I've done it.
So, like I said, I'm alittle bit of an enigma.
'cause I, I still, you know,I love the tech that I love,
but just everywhere is advertising and,
(20:45):
and it's targeted advertising, you know,
and you got these,these, uh, speaker boxes
and, uh, you know, I wanna say her name,
but, uh, you know, theAmazon Echo device, uh,
you know, we've got 'em.
And, you know, plus yourphone's listening to you.
And if you have Facebook on your
phone, Facebook's listening to you.
Uh, I'm sure X is listening.
(21:07):
Everybody that's selling ads
and data are listening, you know,
and, you know, I'm nottotally against ads, uh,
but I like to avoid them as much as I can.
Now, you know, podcasts thatI like, that have ads in 'em,
I generally listen through the ads.
Uh, if it's in a, in, you know,if it's a way they can tell
(21:30):
that I actually listen or not,
but, uh, for the most part, they can't.
Um, and I'll sometimes forward
through 'em if I've heard thead 200 times or something.
But, uh, you know,
but if, if it's a podcast thatI'm thinking about, you know,
subscribing to, or listeningto on a regular basis,
if they overdo the ads, I'm out of there.
(21:51):
You know, same thingwith YouTube channels.
If I watch a YouTube channel
and every 10 minutes thehost is doing a host read
endorsement for something thathe's talking about on the,
on the video, eh, probablywon't watch that much anymore.
You know, they get paid prettygood from YouTube for people
that don't pay the, whateverit is, 15 bucks a month,
(22:11):
or, you know, they get YouTube premium.
And I do that because, again,I just don't want the ads,
and I don't, you know, I don't need
to be inundated with tracking.
But, you know, famous famously,to me, I guess,
there's nothing famous about this,
but, uh, my wife
(22:32):
and I, a few years ago, weretalking about getting the, uh,
underground fence for our dogs.
'cause, you know, we'relike, well, you know, they,
the fence that we have,we have a regular fence.
And, and, you know, it's goodenough for most situations,
but, you know, sometimesthe gate gets knocked open
or left open or something,and they could get out.
And, you know, we live on a busy road
(22:54):
and, you know, I, you know,
just don't wanna be tracking down beagles.
So, uh, we were talking about that,
and I swear she got on hercomputer, on her laptop, um,
sitting in the easy chairand went to Facebook.
And then immediately therewere ads for underground fences
(23:14):
and, uh, GPS dog collarsand all that sort of stuff.
And I mean, it was like instantaneous.
So I don't know whetherher phone was listening,
or Facebook was listening,or Google was listening,
or the Amazon talking tube ladywas listening, I don't know.
But, uh, you know, thatjust kinda creeped me out.
(23:34):
And it, and it happens a lot.
And it, you know, you would,you'd be amazed at the amount
of data they have onyou if you're carrying
around a smartphone, and probablynot avoidable completely,
but you could mitigate some of it.
Uh, and,
and again, you know, backto the attention span thing,
you know, I, I made themistake one time of, uh,
(23:57):
loading TikTok on, uh, on a phone,
and it was like a time warp.
I don't think I, I, I think Iwas on that app for two hours
and it felt like 10 minutes.
And so they really gotthat algo dialed in to,
uh, keep your attention.
You know, same thing with Facebook.
You know, the, you scroll down Facebook
(24:19):
and your timeline there,
and they'll always be somesensational clickbait thing that,
oh, I wanna check this out.
And then before you know it,you've wasted a whole bunch
of time for a whole bunch of nothing.
And one of the things thatI, I find also interesting
that most people probablydon't even know about anymore,
(24:41):
but it used to be really popularin the early two thousands,
was, uh, feed readers.
So, you know, this samething that gets you this, uh,
this podcast RSS can also getyou written, written stuff,
uh, blog posts or news or whatever.
(25:01):
And I recently downloaded anapp on my iPad, not my iPhone,
but my iPad, and let me look it up.
Uh, I forget what it's called,
but it's an, uh, open source,
uh, feed reader.
And what is it called?
(25:22):
Well, that's just embarrassing,eh, in my news folder.
Might be. Yeah, that's where it is.
It's called News Net News Wire.
And believe it or not, there's a whole lot
of stuff out there that is,that has RSS feed, just look
for the little RSS logoon, uh, on websites
(25:45):
or even email newsletters.
We have a couple of localnewsletters, the Traverse ticker
and the, uh, le ticker,
and it's a daily newsletter, you know,
just stuff going on in the area, you know,
and it's not a political thing,
and it's not a, you know,
controversial thing most of the time.
It just tells you, you know, kind
(26:05):
of what's going on in the area.
And they have RSS,
and the, the link wasright in the, you know,
right in the newsletter.
I opened up the newsletterand I saw that RSS link.
I said, oh, let's check this out.
And then I got to looking at feed readers
and found that Net Newswire,it's pretty darn good.
(26:26):
So, you know, you might thinkof that instead of, you know,
going to Facebook or Twitter or,
or X whatever to get your news, uh,
or, you know, go, God forbid,the, uh, network news sites
or the cable news sites.
It's a, you know, barrenwasteland of garbage
scare, scare, scare.
(26:48):
But, uh, you know, if you find some blog
or reasonable news source,oh, get the hiccups,
reasonable news sourcethat you can subscribe
to via an RSS feed.
Well, there you go. There'syour decentralized news.
Just like, you know, what you're listening
to now is decentralized media.
(27:09):
Uh, you know, I don't do this show as much
as I thought I would, butI still keep it alive.
So I appreciate you guys for hanging out.
But, uh, you know, this will be here.
Uh, this podcast will be here,
or it'll be somewhere thatyou'll be able to find,
because it's not controlledby Apple, it's not controlled
(27:33):
by Facebook, it's notcontrolled by Spotify.
I hate them too. AlthoughI love their music service.
I know I'm a, I'm a bunch
of enigmas wrapped in a confused mess.
But, uh, you know, Spotify,
if they'd just stay in their
lane, would've done pretty good.
You know, they're a music service.
They're not a podcast service, and,
and they spend a billion dollars trying
(27:54):
to get into podcasting.
And, you know, to some,they seem successful.
But again, you know, how manypeople do you personally know
that listen to their podcasts on Spotify?
Uh, probably not that many.
Or maybe you're one of those people
that don't have very many peoplethat you know, that listen
to podcasts at all.
(28:16):
But, you know, I, I just,again, go back to, uh, you know,
keeping things free and open.
Uh, you know, podcasting is still it.
Uh, you know, if, if Appleand Spotify and iHeart
and, you know, all these big company,
big tech companies decide they don't like
(28:36):
what I'm talking about, andthey take me outta their app,
well, I'm still here.
And if you get a modern podcastapp over@podcastapps.com,
you can, uh, you know,you'll still get it.
RSS will still continue to work,
you know, one way at the other.
I'll make sure it works.
And, and that's, you know,
(28:59):
that's the good thing about it.
But, you know, just simplifying as much
as possible on your phone is, you know,
help you in the both of those ways.
Uh, you know, whetherattention span or distraction
or waste of time or,
or, uh, you know, just, I mean,
people are having neck problems these days
(29:19):
because they're alwaysstaring down at a screen.
You know, I remember Iused to be able to watch TV
and just actually watch tv.
Well, now you can't do that
'cause you got six minutes ofcommercials every 10 minutes.
Uh, or, you know, maybe not that much,
but it seems that way sometime.
Even the streamers now aredoing that, you know, if, uh,
(29:41):
like Netflix is even talkingabout throwing ads in there
unless you pay 'em extra.
Uh, so all those shows, and,
and, you know, you can't even forward
through the ads on the streamers.
Uh, the only, you know, we,we have a couple of 'em.
We have Netflix. My, my wife likes
that we have Apple TV only'cause I bought this new iPad
(30:02):
and we got, uh, a month free.
I don't know if we'regonna continue to use it.
I have Amazon Prime mainlyfor the free shipping,
but, uh, you know, thereis some prime video that's,
that is interesting.
But I pretty rarelywatch any over the air tv
and that simplifies it.
(30:23):
You know, I have a, a, anantenna now, I don't have cable.
I have, uh, you know, Ihave way more stuff to watch
on the internet, uh,through the Apple TV or the,
or in this case, in myoffice here, I've got a, uh,
Amazon Fire Stick.
But, uh, you know, I canwatch all kinds of stuff,
(30:43):
even live stuff.
Uh, you know, there's lots of live feeds
that you can listen to or watch.
And so there's a lotof stuff to listen to.
And, you know, kind ofwhen I was, you know,
when I was younger and wedidn't have all this internet
stuff, I did a lot of shortwave listening.
And now a lot of that hasall gone to the internet.
(31:05):
You know, the BBC World Service,
I think still transmits on a few towers,
but for the most part, they're,uh, an internet service.
The Voice of America.
Uh, I know for a factthey got, uh, 500, so 500
or so, so shows that formerly were, uh,
transmitted on shortwave.
(31:26):
Now they're, they do stilltransmit on shortwave
around the world and, and all that.
But that's what we listenedto back in the day.
Or we would watch, you know, TV
and back then, you know, tv,you went to the, uh, you went
to MTV, that was music, music television.
You go to CMTV, it wascountry Music Television.
(31:49):
Uh, you go to the Discovery Channel
and you actually discovered things.
Uh, you went to History Channel
and they talked about history.
Imagine that, or the WeatherChannel even now, uh,
it's mostly realityshows and, and all that.
And very little weather, you know,
you get the little scrolleraround the side of the screen.
But, uh, that's it for weather, you know,
(32:10):
it's not like it used to be.
And, you know, everybody's kindof going to the same model,
and, and I'm just tired of it, you know,
and, you know, back
to the dumb phone versussmartphone thing, it's like,
you know, I would love atsome point in the future to,
to just, just have like a light phone
or something similar to that,or a dumbed down iPhone.
(32:32):
You know, the only thing I have
to have really on a phone is podcasts.
And I could probably getaway with not doing that
and go back to the old way
of putting it on a portabledevice, an iPod type device,
even though they don'treally make a iPod anymore.
Uh, but, uh, you know, something like
(32:52):
that I'm sure still existsthat, uh, if you really wanted
to, you could go completelyoff the grid and, and do that.
And, I find that I'mwatching a lot of off grid, uh,
YouTube channels as well.
Uh, a lot of, a lot of peopleare, are getting into that.
And, uh, you know, it's, it isinteresting how much you can
(33:16):
do without a lot of the tech.
Now, you know, a lot of 'em are, you know,
obviously I'm watching a YouTube
channel, so they're into tech.
But you know, this oneguy in West Virginia
that I've been watching, uh, you know,
he's got a solar set up,
and of course he's gota portable generator,
and he works from home.
(33:36):
He has his own business.
So, you know, he, he makesproducts and sends them out,
or has them made and sends them out.
So, plus he's doing pretty goodon YouTube. I, I understand.
So he's got quite thelifestyle where he doesn't have
a television necessarily.
He's got, well, he does have a tv,
but I don't think it's hookedup to anything that would get
(33:57):
outside stuff other than internet.
And he does have a, youknow, starlink internet.
So, you know, he is tech,
but it's a much simpler existence.
And I don't know if I'mready quite for that.
I don't feel like chopping woodand, and, uh, raising ducks
and geese and,
(34:19):
and, uh, whatever, raisingmy own food or whatnot.
Probably not a bad idea,but, uh, I really can't do it
where I am and I don't feel like moving.
So,, I'm lazy.Come on, I wasn't lazy.
You'd get episode of this,
this podcast more often, figure that out.
Some of the new things we're,uh, doing at Blueberry.
You'll notice, hopefully if itall works, uh, on my website,
(34:44):
the new player there, uh, has chapters
and, uh, I generate that via, uh,
AI thing on blueberry that we're testing.
So I generate thosechapter files that way.
So there'll be little spots in the player
or apps that you, you know, if you get one
of those new appsover@podcastapps.com
(35:07):
and look for one that, uh, does chapters,
and you could jumparound, of course, I jump
around, uh, for you.
So you probably don'tneed it on this show,
but, you know, you'llnotice that some, a lot
of other shows are doing that.
Same thing with transcripts.
Uh, I've been putting transcriptson these here, you know,
the last, I don't know,probably a couple years.
(35:29):
And now Apple is even going
to start pulling in transcripts
or creating one for you ifyou don't do it yourself.
The one, the only problem withthat is it's only on Apple.
If you do it through, uh,through one of these new apps,
uh, it's everywhere.
And that's, you know, that's a good thing.
(35:50):
I, I don't, you know, a lot ofpeople are hearing impaired,
probably don't listen to podcasts
or consume podcasts in most ways,
but they do now have that option.
Uh, you could read it.
I don't know if I'd wanna read this one,
but it could be interesting.
I dunno if you hear the jet taking off,
but, uh, away he goes, remember,
(36:13):
I'm close to the airport.
So anyway, I guess I'verambled on long enough
and, uh, jumped subjectsfour or five, six times.
But yeah, that's why you listen to me.
So with that, everybody have a good,
however long it is, till the next one.
And, uh, if you wanna hear meon a more regular basis, uh,
(36:34):
auto history podcast.com,
that's the Auto Historypodcast in video and audio.
And, uh, that's with myco-host Mike Wilkerson from the
Two Guys Talking Network.
And, uh, we're committed
to doing two episodesa month, uh, for now.
We'll probably kick that upat some point in the future.
(36:54):
And of course, you can hear me on Podcast
Insider at least threeoutta four weeks a month.
Uh, we switch up the host.
So it's, uh, I'm usually on three of 'em.
Todd's on three of 'em, andMcKenzie is on three of 'em.
And however that works out,uh,, where it pairs.
But, uh, podcast insider.com
(37:15):
and, uh, that, uh, that onedoes come out every single week.
If you're interested in podcastingon the, uh, business side
or creator side, uh, that'sa good one to listen to.
And I'll have a few links inthe, uh, show notes here just
to, uh, you know, talk about stuff.
(37:36):
I talked about the articlefrom BBC, the light phone,
and, uh, turning YouriPhone into a dumb phone.
So with that, catch me later.
I.
- Mike Dell's World number 3 98.
And today is the
22nd of February, 2024.
Happy New Year since I didn't, uh, talk,
I haven't talked to you since November.
Well, or maybe December.I don't know,
Anyway, all is well herein northern Michigan.
(00:23):
And today I want to talkabout a particular subject,
but, uh, I figured I'd catch you up on all
the personal details.
I, uh, had my shoulder surgery in October,
which if you listen to anyof the Nap Pot Pomo episodes,
I was in the midst of recovering.
Well, I'm, I'd say 90%recovered, uh, back to,
(00:45):
uh, flying.
So I've been doing quite a bit
of flying here lately,
So been fun. And, uh, I got all that, uh,
you know, got all the, the, theshoulder pain taken care of.
It's still a little stiff.
Don't quite have the range of motion that,
uh, I have had in the past.
By the way, I don't have any,uh, fancy sound effects today
(01:09):
because, uh, I'm using adifferent, uh, USB interface.
Uh, my road caster keeps failing me,
and I think it's more thecomputer than the road caster.
So, uh, I'm using a foresight, uh, solo.
That's what it's called.So if it sounds a little,
it shouldn't sound any different.
(01:29):
Uh, got the same, uh, setup otherwise.
But, uh, anyway,
that's why I'm not gonnaplay the intro music
and all that stuff 'cause I don't like
to edit if I don't have to.
And speaking of podcasting, of course, uh,
you guys might know that Istarted another podcast with,
uh, Mike Wilkerson.
So I have a partner in crime,and we're doing it slow.
(01:54):
So, uh, we're starting outwith a couple episodes a month,
but they're gonna be comingout in video podcast,
audio podcast
and YouTube, A YouTube channel,a a proper YouTube channel,
not a, not a, uh, fakevideo YouTube channel,
like you could find this showon if you go to YouTube music.
(02:16):
I'm now on YouTube music with this one.
And also there's a, a YouTube channel.
But, uh, basically it's justthis audio with, uh, the,
the, uh, artwork, uh, as a still shot.
So it's kind of, kind of lame
(02:36):
You're better off goingto, uh, podcast apps.com
and pick one of your,pick one of those apps.
Uh, lately I've been using castomatic
and it has a lot of neat features.
Not all the features, but,uh, a lot of neat ones, uh,
from podcasting 2.0, anotherone, another good one is,
(02:59):
- Uh, of course, pod verse and Fountain.
Those are, uh, pretty popular these days.
And, and, uh, another one youmight like is podcast guru.
Nice thing about Castomaticis, if you like overcast,
and I still like overcast,
but if you like overcast,this is kind of the, uh,
(03:20):
uh, it's not a quite aclone, but darn close.
And, and the nice thing I like about
that is it has a thing called collections
or smart playlists thatwork really good, uh, for
how I like to listen to podcasts.
You know, I have them separatedby aviation, uh, cars,
(03:41):
uh, news, uh, you know, just to, you know,
have a fun category where Ijust throw things in there and,
and, you know, it, itworks out really good.
'cause it automatically puts,you know, a playlist together
of those types of shows
that you've downloaded to your phone.
And speaking of phones, that'sgonna be the main subject
(04:04):
of today's episode.
We've been doing a lot ofthinking about, you know,
all this stuff we have in ourpocket, you know, the little
device that can do just abouteverything and anything.
And you, there's an app for that.
Well, all those apps have consequences,
(04:25):
especially the free ones, the free apps,
as I've said all along sinceall this technology started,
if you're getting something from
for free, you are the product.
And, you know, they loveselling data and collecting data
and, you know, targetingyou for advertisements.
And, you know, I've become very intolerant
(04:46):
of te uh, advertisements.
And of course, I'mprobably going to be, uh,
counter addicting myself,
because I do do some things that, uh,
are counterintuitive towhat I'm talking about.
But what I'm talking about is, you know,
what's the difference
or what, uh, you know, what would be
(05:07):
your thought about goingback to a, a dumb phone,
or maybe not even carryinga cell phone at all,
but let's just assume youneed to have a cell phone
so you can at least make phonecalls and receive phone calls
and maybe text.
Uh, you know, texts kindof bother me sometimes too,
when people kind ofuse that in replacement
(05:27):
of regular communications.
You know, used to be, you could, uh,
just pick up the phone and call it.
And, you know, you
and the other person on the other
end didn't know who was calling.
And that was good in some ways,
and obviously bad in other ways'.
There's a lot of scammersand telemarketers,
and anymore the telemarketersare freaking lazy.
(05:49):
They, they just have a bot do it.
And, uh, you know, with AI coming on
and all that, no matter, you know,
who knows what's gonnahappen with the, uh,
smartphones and all that.
You know, I have a, an iPhone15 Pro Max, whatever the,
the, the latest greatest iPhone.
(06:11):
And I do enjoy it.
It has a wonderful camera, and,
but I've just found it thatI'm very overconnected,
I guess would be
I, I, you know, I'm not tooworried about Google following
me around and all that,but, uh, I have decided
that I'm gonna dego my, uh,
(06:33):
existence on the internet at least.
Uh, personally, of course,uh, you know, we use a lot
of Google for work.
Um, you know, so I've gotta kinda do that.
But I have it kind ofcompartmentalized on my work computer.
I have all the stuff that I need.
(06:53):
I don't have it on my phone.
And I, I do, you know, I,
the only thing I have on myphone that's Google related is,
uh, YouTube and I, and
because I have YouTube, I don't have
to watch commercials otherthan what's built into some
of the YouTube channels.
But, so that's, that'sone counter diction there.
(07:15):
Yes, I'm still gonna bewatching YouTube now.
I've tried Rumble and I like Rumble,
but Rumble doesn't have thevariety of things that I like
to watch that YouTube does.
But anyway, get back to thesmartphone versus dumb phone
versus de Googling and deFacebooking and all that.
Uh, I do have a Facebook,I don't particularly, uh,
(07:39):
post to it a whole lot.
I use it, uh, mainly for work.
And, you know, and usuallywhen I post something on
Facebook, it's usuallysomething I think is funny.
Anyway,
but, uh, I, I don't, Itry not to use Facebook as
a communications platform necessarily.
(08:01):
Uh, I do use Twitter
or X, um, I'm more active on that,
but I still don't post a heckof a lot on there either.
I'm mostly lurking and reading and,
and all that, which isactually kind of a good thing.
Uh, and I, and I don't have either
of those apps on my cell phone.
(08:22):
Now. I have an iPad, uh,an iPad mini that I do.
I don't carry it aroundwith me all that often,
but when I'm home, I use thatkind of my easy chair machine.
And, and, uh, I use itfor flying, you know,
I got my electronic flightbag on it and all the maps
and, you know, that kind of stuff.
But, uh, I don't carry itaround with me that much.
(08:46):
So the location data thing isn't
as big a deal as it is with a phone.
Now, you know, of course your carrier has
your location all the time,
and probably nothing you cando to block that, uh, you know,
except for turning the whole thing off.
I was reading an article, uh, on the BBC
(09:10):
and where is that?
Ah, here it is. The, thetitle of it is Not Smart,
but Clever, the Return of Dumb Phones.
And it seems to be a thingwith, uh, high school age
or Gen ZI guess you would call that.
Uh, you know, I don'tknow, up to 20 somethings.
Uh, I don't know, I don't know the
(09:30):
generations all that well.
I just know I'm a Gen X
But, uh, you know, in here,in the article, you know,
you're talking about this, uh,this girl in, in high school
that she just has a dumb phone, you know,
Nokia thirty three ten, which is,
it's about 24 years old now.
(09:53):
Although they, uh, dohave newer versions of it.
So I'm sure there's a lotof the tracking stuff.
And like I said, I'm not thatworried about the tracking
as much, but the thingis, is it's so easy,
you know, when you get bored,you pull out your phone
and you look at somethingand you pull out your phone
and you look at somethingelse, you, you know, you scroll
(10:15):
or, or, you know, we call, uh,I call my, uh, iPad my, uh,
toilet scroller,
of reading the newspaper or a magazine.
Well, you got my iPad.
So, like I said, I gotmy foot in both worlds,
but as far as my cell phone, I,
I've dumbed it down a lot.
(10:38):
I, I've taken off prettymuch all of the, uh,
quote unquote fun apps.
You know, I don't have any games on it.
I don't have, uh, you know,any social media on it.
Uh, basically it's a telephone
and a text device.
(11:00):
You know, it's kind of a necessary evil.
And I do have a browser on it,
but I did go to the Brave Browser.
So instead of using the StockSafari browser on iPhone
or Chrome or any of those other ones,
I figured that's good enough.
I took all the mappingprograms off my phone,
with the exception of Apple Maps.
(11:21):
'cause you know, it is handy to be able
to plug it into the truck and,
and have the maps on the, on the screen.
So that's, you know, that,that's a compromise I'll take.
And Apple seems to be betterat the privacy thing than a lot
of other places, but maybenot, uh, significantly.
So you just never know.
But, uh, they seem to be better at it.
(11:44):
And, you know, other things I've done, I,
I do have face ID on my phone, so you can,
I can unlock it with my face.
That's a convenience.
But you think about that, ifyou were to get pulled over
by a police officer whothinks you did something
that you shouldn't have done,
and they have your phone,they can't unlock it.
(12:08):
If you have face ID turned off, you know,
otherwise, they justhold it up to your face
and get it to unlock.
But if it has a code, ofcourse, when you have face id,
you still have a code.
Uh, and I don't knowhow it works on Android.
I, uh, decided that, uh, Android is not
what I'm gonna be doing
(12:29):
So I guess I could do a de Googled Android
phone if I wanted to.
But, uh, I think, uh, I thinkI'll stick with Apple just
'cause they seem to last longer and,
and they're reasonably good at privacy.
But along that line, it's just, there's
so many apps tracking.
(12:49):
So I took off all the apps.
I got to the Brave Browser asmy only browser on the phone.
So if I really wannalook something up, I can,
I have a couple banking appson there that, uh, just,
just makes it really easy.
So I, I do that.
I, I have the airline apps onthere, or I put them on right
before a trip, is what I usually do.
(13:10):
'cause I don't alwaysfly the same airline.
And that works out pretty well
because you just, you know,
you use it and then you get rid of it.
You know, just having a wholebunch of apps on your phone
just makes it so you wannaplay with it more
And it's amazing whatthose devices will do.
(13:33):
And, and I do see a use case for it.
But, you know, I went to the restaurant,
uh, with a buddy of mine.
We, we do our Thursday night
to solving the world's problem session.
I got back from that a little while ago.
This is Thursday nightwhen I'm recording this.
And I just kinda looked around the place.
We were just at a Chili'sand looked around the place,
(13:55):
and there were people, youknow, couples there, you know,
both looking at their phones instead
of talking to each other.
And, you know, I, I guess ona, on, on one level, I think
that's probably not good.
But anyway, so yeah, I've,
I've dumbed down the phonea little bit, uh, a phone
that I was interested in.
(14:16):
It's not either, it's,it's not Apple, it's not,
uh, Android.
I'm sure it has some formof Linux under the hood,
but, uh, called the Light Phone.
And it's at the light phone.com,
and it has just the basic stuff on it.
It has, uh, minimal, youknow, it's a minimal phone.
(14:38):
It has an E Ink screen.
Uh, it does not have social media.
It does not have news.It does not have email.
It does not have, uh, a browser,
but it does have some of the stuff
that I would like to have.
(14:59):
It, uh, does phonecalls, it does text, uh,
does calendar alarm and podcasts.
I don't know how well it does podcasts,
but it also has Bluetooth.
So you can play your podcasts through, uh,
through your Bluetooth inyour car if you have that.
(15:19):
And you can use it as a hotspot.
So I was thinking, you know,geez, I have a light phone
and then an iPad,
and, you know, so the iPad could be the,
the one I do all the browsing and whatnot,
and I don't always haveto bring that with me,
but, you know, if I want to go light,
I take the light phone.
So, I don't know, I'm thinking about that.
They're a little spendy andI haven't seen one in person.
(15:42):
But, uh, it looks likequite the compromise
between the smart and the dumb phone.
And I'll have an article herethat I, uh, went through.
I didn't do everythingin this article that, uh,
they suggest, but it's, uh, how
to turn Your iPhone intoa dumb phone,
And, uh, it, uh, youknow, you could do it.
(16:03):
That's the thing. And the,
and the beauty of that is, isif you ever wanna add an app
for some reason, youknow, if you're traveling
or whatever, you throw iton there, you do your thing,
you turn it off, um, you know, it's,
and there's a lot of other,you know, privacy stuff.
But like I said, I'm notthat worried about privacy.
I wanna avoid ads, and Iwanna avoid distractions.
(16:24):
Uh, I find that it's a lotnicer to take a drive, uh,
and just not have to worryabout the phone ringing.
'cause I, I don't answermy phone when I'm driving.
I, you know, unless I'mon a really long trip.
But if I'm just drivingaround town, it'll wait,
leave a voicemail, send me atext, I'll read it when I stop.
(16:46):
Or my, technically thetruck will read it to me
or the, the, the, uh,Siri lady in the, uh,
But, uh, you know, most of the time
that stuff's not an emergency, you know?
And what did we do 20 years ago?
And not everybody wascarrying around a phone
or maybe 30 years ago, Idon't know, just getting old.
(17:10):
But, uh, you know, I remembertraveling cross country.
I didn't have a phone.
I didn't have a GPS, you had a map
or several maps, you know,I used to go between here
and Idaho, uh, you know,uh, at least once a year.
And I'd make that entiretrip with a map, a ham radio,
(17:30):
and, uh, an am FM radio in the truck.
I didn't even have cassettes or CDs.
I mean, you know, CDs were around,
but, uh, didn't have anyof that in the truck.
I just had, uh, A MFM.
And, uh, yeah, that was good enough.
You know, you list to an AMstation at night, you know,
you could listen to it for a long time
and, you know, listen to talk radio
(17:52):
or whatever, if you wannafind some music there,
it's all over the FM dial.
The only thing is you hadto change the channel every
so often when you run out of the station.
Wasn't, uh, wasn't really a big deal.
And I wasn't going toofar off the beaten trail,
so it wasn't like Ineeded to find, you know,
some place out in the middle
of the mountain somewhere,
So I didn't need the GPS.
(18:13):
The GPS didn't even exist at the time.
And, you know, now we're spoiled,you know, satellite radio
and, and, uh, you know, streamingstuff to our phones and,
and podcasts and all that stuff.
You know, I, I believeme, I love podcasts.
Uh, you know, I, I dothem. I, I listen to them.
(18:34):
I, I do all that stuff,
but I don't, uh, you know,
I don't wanna be continuallyinundated with news,
and I don't, I don't needto know all that stuff.
If anything really bighappens, I'll figure it out.
Uh, so I, you know, I'm still continuing.
This is, I'm going on four yearshere that I don't watch any
(18:55):
of the national news.
I read some of it. Uh, and,
and another thing, you know, geez,
I'm just going all over onthis tech stuff, you know,
I said, I'm a geek, but man,I'm telling you, it's, uh,
it's getting to the point where,uh, it, it's overwhelming.
Uh, not that I don't knowwhat it does, and I don't,
and I do understand its value,
(19:18):
but I think we're, we're going down a path
that's gonna really messus up, uh, in the future.
You know, what happened? Liketoday, uh, this morning at
and t had a massiveoutage almost nationwide,
on their cellular network.
And people were freaking out.
Uh, you know, my sister calls me, uh,
(19:41):
or text me, actually,
and she did it via wifi on,uh, you know, on the ambulance.
She goes, Hey, I don'thave any phone service,
or no internet, whatever, youknow, then their wifi at home.
And, you know, she wasjust freaking out about it.
She's like, whathappened? What's going on?
You know, and all that.Well, you know, I, you know,
(20:02):
my theory is that it was acouple of, uh, X-Class flares
that came off the sun earlier,uh, last night, I guess.
But, uh, messed something up. Who knows?
Uh, talking maybe even, uh,cyber attacks or whatever.
But, you know, people wouldbe lost without their phones.
Now, you know, it's, I, I'vemade it a habit of mine to, uh,
(20:25):
every once in a while, justleave the phone at home when I
go out, you know, go out,
run errands, I'll leave the phone at home.
I've done that a few times.
Not very often, but I've done it
So, like I said, I'm alittle bit of an enigma.
'cause I, I still, you know,I love the tech that I love,
but just everywhere is advertising and,
(20:45):
and it's targeted advertising, you know,
and you got these,these, uh, speaker boxes
and, uh, you know, I wanna say her name,
but, uh, you know, theAmazon Echo device, uh,
you know, we've got 'em.
And, you know, plus yourphone's listening to you.
And if you have Facebook on your
phone, Facebook's listening to you.
Uh, I'm sure X is listening.
(21:07):
Everybody that's selling ads
and data are listening, you know,
and, you know, I'm nottotally against ads, uh,
but I like to avoid them as much as I can.
Now, you know, podcasts thatI like, that have ads in 'em,
I generally listen through the ads.
Uh, if it's in a, in, you know,if it's a way they can tell
(21:30):
that I actually listen or not,
but, uh, for the most part, they can't.
Um, and I'll sometimes forward
through 'em if I've heard thead 200 times or something.
But, uh, you know,
but if, if it's a podcast thatI'm thinking about, you know,
subscribing to, or listeningto on a regular basis,
if they overdo the ads, I'm out of there.
(21:51):
You know, same thingwith YouTube channels.
If I watch a YouTube channel
and every 10 minutes thehost is doing a host read
endorsement for something thathe's talking about on the,
on the video, eh, probablywon't watch that much anymore.
You know, they get paid prettygood from YouTube for people
that don't pay the, whateverit is, 15 bucks a month,
(22:11):
or, you know, they get YouTube premium.
And I do that because, again,I just don't want the ads,
and I don't, you know, I don't need
to be inundated with tracking.
But, you know, famous famously,to me, I guess
there's nothing famous about this,
but, uh, my wife
(22:32):
and I, a few years ago, weretalking about getting the, uh,
underground fence for our dogs.
'cause, you know, we'relike, well, you know, they,
the fence that we have,we have a regular fence.
And, and, you know, it's goodenough for most situations,
but, you know, sometimesthe gate gets knocked open
or left open or something,and they could get out.
And, you know, we live on a busy road
(22:54):
and, you know, I, you know,
just don't wanna be tracking down beagles.
So, uh, we were talking about that,
and I swear she got on hercomputer, on her laptop, um,
sitting in the easy chairand went to Facebook.
And then immediately therewere ads for underground fences
(23:14):
and, uh, GPS dog collarsand all that sort of stuff.
And I mean, it was like instantaneous.
So I don't know whetherher phone was listening,
or Facebook was listening,or Google was listening,
or the Amazon talking tube ladywas listening, I don't know.
But, uh, you know, thatjust kinda creeped me out.
(23:34):
And it, and it happens a lot.
And it, you know, you would,you'd be amazed at the amount
of data they have onyou if you're carrying
around a smartphone, and probablynot avoidable completely,
but you could mitigate some of it.
Uh, and,
and again, you know, backto the attention span thing,
you know, I, I made themistake one time of, uh,
(23:57):
loading TikTok on, uh, on a phone,
and it was like a time warp.
I don't think I, I, I think Iwas on that app for two hours
and it felt like 10 minutes.
And so they really gotthat algo dialed in to,
uh, keep your attention.
You know, same thing with Facebook.
You know, the, you scroll down Facebook
(24:19):
and your timeline there,
and they'll always be somesensational clickbait thing that,
oh, I wanna check this out.
And then before you know it,you've wasted a whole bunch
of time for a whole bunch of nothing.
And one of the things thatI, I find also interesting
that most people probablydon't even know about anymore,
(24:41):
but it used to be really popularin the early two thousands,
was, uh, feed readers.
So, you know, this samething that gets you this, uh,
this podcast RSS can also getyou written, written stuff,
uh, blog posts or news or whatever.
(25:01):
And I recently downloaded anapp on my iPad, not my iPhone,
but my iPad, and let me look it up.
Uh, I forget what it's called,
but it's an, uh, open source,
uh, feed reader.
And what is it called?
(25:22):
Well, that's just embarrassing,eh, in my news folder.
Might be. Yeah, that's where it is.
It's called News Net News Wire.
And believe it or not, there's a whole lot
of stuff out there that is,that has RSS feed, just look
for the little RSS logoon, uh, on websites
(25:45):
or even email newsletters.
We have a couple of localnewsletters, the Traverse ticker
and the, uh, le ticker,
and it's a daily newsletter, you know,
just stuff going on in the area, you know,
and it's not a political thing,
and it's not a, you know,
controversial thing most of the time.
It just tells you, you know, kind
(26:05):
of what's going on in the area.
And they have RSS,
and the, the link wasright in the, you know,
right in the newsletter.
I opened up the newsletterand I saw that RSS link.
I said, oh, let's check this out.
And then I got to looking at feed readers
and found that Net Newswire,it's pretty darn good.
(26:26):
So, you know, you might thinkof that instead of, you know,
going to Facebook or Twitter or,
or X whatever to get your news, uh,
or, you know, go, God forbid,the, uh, network news sites
or the cable news sites.
It's a, you know, barrenwasteland of garbage
scare, scare, scare.
(26:48):
But, uh, you know, if you find some blog
or reasonable news source,oh, get the hiccups,
reasonable news sourcethat you can subscribe
to via an RSS feed.
Well, there you go. There'syour decentralized news.
Just like, you know, what you're listening
to now is decentralized media.
(27:09):
Uh, you know, I don't do this show as much
as I thought I would, butI still keep it alive.
So I appreciate you guys for hanging out.
But, uh, you know, this will be here.
Uh, this podcast will be here,
or it'll be somewhere thatyou'll be able to find,
because it's not controlledby Apple, it's not controlled
(27:33):
by Facebook, it's notcontrolled by Spotify
I hate them too. AlthoughI love their music service.
I know I'm a, I'm a bunch
of enigmas wrapped in a confused mess.
But, uh, you know, Spotify,
if they'd just stay in their
lane, would've done pretty good.
You know, they're a music service.
They're not a podcast service, and,
and they spend a billion dollars trying
(27:54):
to get into podcasting.
And, you know, to some,they seem successful.
But again, you know, how manypeople do you personally know
that listen to their podcasts on Spotify?
Uh, probably not that many.
Or maybe you're one of those people
that don't have very many peoplethat you know, that listen
to podcasts at all.
(28:16):
But, you know, I, I just,again, go back to, uh, you know,
keeping things free and open.
Uh, you know, podcasting is still it.
Uh, you know, if, if Appleand Spotify and iHeart
and, you know, all these big company,
big tech companies decide they don't like
(28:36):
what I'm talking about, andthey take me outta their app,
well, I'm still here.
And if you get a modern podcastapp over@podcastapps.com,
you can, uh, you know,you'll still get it.
RSS will still continue to work,
you know, one way at the other.
I'll make sure it works.
And, and that's, you know,
(28:59):
that's the good thing about it.
But, you know, just simplifying as much
as possible on your phone is, you know,
help you in the both of those ways.
Uh, you know, whetherattention span or distraction
or waste of time or,
or, uh, you know, just, I mean,
people are having neck problems these days
(29:19):
because they're alwaysstaring down at a screen.
You know, I remember Iused to be able to watch TV
and just actually watch tv.
Well, now you can't do that
'cause you got six minutes ofcommercials every 10 minutes.
Uh, or, you know, maybe not that much,
but it seems that way sometime.
Even the streamers now aredoing that, you know, if, uh,
(29:41):
like Netflix is even talkingabout throwing ads in there
unless you pay 'em extra.
Uh, so all those shows, and,
and, you know, you can't even forward
through the ads on the streamers.
Uh, the only, you know, we,we have a couple of 'em.
We have Netflix. My, my wife likes
that we have Apple TV only'cause I bought this new iPad
(30:02):
and we got, uh, a month free.
I don't know if we'regonna continue to use it.
I have Amazon Prime mainlyfor the free shipping,
but, uh, you know, thereis some prime video that's,
that is interesting.
But I pretty rarelywatch any over the air tv
and that simplifies it.
(30:23):
You know, I have a, a, anantenna now, I don't have cable.
I have, uh, you know, Ihave way more stuff to watch
on the internet, uh,through the Apple TV or the,
or in this case, in myoffice here, I've got a, uh,
Amazon Fire Stick.
But, uh, you know, I canwatch all kinds of stuff,
(30:43):
even live stuff.
Uh, you know, there's lots of live feeds
that you can listen to or watch.
And so there's a lotof stuff to listen to.
And, you know, kind ofwhen I was, you know,
when I was younger and wedidn't have all this internet
stuff, I did a lot of shortwave listening.
And now a lot of that hasall gone to the internet.
(31:05):
You know, the BBC World Service,
I think still transmits on a few towers,
but for the most part, they're,uh, an internet service.
The Voice of America.
Uh, I know for a factthey got, uh, 500, so 500
or so, so shows that formerly were, uh,
transmitted on shortwave.
(31:26):
Now they're, they do stilltransmit on shortwave
around the world and, and all that.
But that's what we listenedto back in the day.
Or we would watch, you know, TV
and back then, you know, tv,you went to the, uh, you went
to MTV, that was music, music television.
You go to CMTV, it wascountry Music Television.
(31:49):
Uh, you go to the Discovery Channel
and you actually discovered things.
Uh, you went to History Channel
and they talked about history.
Imagine that, or the WeatherChannel even now, uh,
it's mostly realityshows and, and all that.
And very little weather, you know,
you get the little scrolleraround the side of the screen.
But, uh, that's it for weather, you know,
(32:10):
it's not like it used to be.
And, you know, everybody's kindof going to the same model,
and, and I'm just tired of it, you know,
and, you know, back
to the dumb phone versussmartphone thing, it's like,
you know, I would love atsome point in the future to,
to just, just have like a light phone
or something similar to that,or a dumbed down iPhone.
(32:32):
You know, the only thing I have
to have really on a phone is podcasts.
And I could probably getaway with not doing that
and go back to the old way
of putting it on a portabledevice, an iPod type device,
even though they don'treally make a iPod anymore.
Uh, but, uh, you know, something like
(32:52):
that I'm sure still existsthat, uh, if you really wanted
to, you could go completelyoff the grid and, and do that.
And
YouTube channels as well.
Uh, a lot of, a lot of peopleare, are getting into that.
And, uh, you know, it's, it isinteresting how much you can
(33:16):
do without a lot of the tech.
Now, you know, a lot of 'em are, you know,
obviously I'm watching a YouTube
channel, so they're into tech.
But you know, this oneguy in West Virginia
that I've been watching, uh, you know,
he's got a solar set up,
and of course he's gota portable generator,
and he works from home.
(33:36):
He has his own business.
So, you know, he, he makesproducts and sends them out,
or has them made and sends them out.
So, plus he's doing pretty goodon YouTube. I, I understand.
So he's got quite thelifestyle where he doesn't have
a television necessarily.
He's got, well, he does have a tv,
but I don't think it's hookedup to anything that would get
(33:57):
outside stuff other than internet.
And he does have a, youknow, starlink internet.
So, you know, he is tech,
but it's a much simpler existence.
And I don't know if I'mready quite for that.
I don't feel like chopping woodand, and, uh, raising ducks
and geese and,
(34:19):
and, uh, whatever, raisingmy own food or whatnot.
Probably not a bad idea,but, uh, I really can't do it
where I am and I don't feel like moving.
So,
You'd get episode of this,
this podcast more often, figure that out.
Some of the new things we're,uh, doing at Blueberry.
You'll notice, hopefully if itall works, uh, on my website,
(34:44):
the new player there, uh, has chapters
and, uh, I generate that via, uh,
AI thing on blueberry that we're testing.
So I generate thosechapter files that way.
So there'll be little spots in the player
or apps that you, you know, if you get one
of those new appsover@podcastapps.com
(35:07):
and look for one that, uh, does chapters,
and you could jumparound, of course, I jump
around, uh, for you.
So you probably don'tneed it on this show,
but, you know, you'llnotice that some, a lot
of other shows are doing that.
Same thing with transcripts.
Uh, I've been putting transcriptson these here, you know,
the last, I don't know,probably a couple years.
(35:29):
And now Apple is even going
to start pulling in transcripts
or creating one for you ifyou don't do it yourself.
The one, the only problem withthat is it's only on Apple.
If you do it through, uh,through one of these new apps,
uh, it's everywhere.
And that's, you know, that's a good thing.
(35:50):
I, I don't, you know, a lot ofpeople are hearing impaired,
probably don't listen to podcasts
or consume podcasts in most ways,
but they do now have that option.
Uh, you could read it.
I don't know if I'd wanna read this one,
but it could be interesting.
I dunno if you hear the jet taking off,
but, uh, away he goes, remember,
(36:13):
I'm close to the airport.
So anyway, I guess I'verambled on long enough
and, uh, jumped subjectsfour or five, six times.
But yeah, that's why you listen to me.
So with that, everybody have a good,
however long it is, till the next one.
And, uh, if you wanna hear meon a more regular basis, uh,
(36:34):
auto history podcast.com,
that's the Auto Historypodcast in video and audio.
And, uh, that's with myco-host Mike Wilkerson from the
Two Guys Talking Network.
And, uh, we're committed
to doing two episodesa month, uh, for now.
We'll probably kick that upat some point in the future.
(36:54):
And of course, you can hear me on Podcast
Insider at least threeoutta four weeks a month.
Uh, we switch up the host.
So it's, uh, I'm usually on three of 'em.
Todd's on three of 'em, andMcKenzie is on three of 'em.
And however that works out,uh,
But, uh, podcast insider.com
(37:15):
and, uh, that, uh, that onedoes come out every single week.
If you're interested in podcastingon the, uh, business side
or creator side, uh, that'sa good one to listen to.
And I'll have a few links inthe, uh, show notes here just
to, uh, you know, talk about stuff.
(37:36):
I talked about the articlefrom BBC, the light phone,
and, uh, turning YouriPhone into a dumb phone.
So with that, catch me later.
I.
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