Lauren Goode: Oh really?
Zoë Schiffer: Yes.
Lauren Goode: I didn’t have that experience on Caltrain.
Zoë Schiffer: Well, you haven’t read Infinite Joke on Caltrain, have you? This was my catfishing technique.
Lauren Goode: What was your worst commute, Mike?
Michael Calore: There was a time when I lived in the Sunset District of San Francisco in the early 2000s. There are several trains that take you to the city center, but the journey takes an hour. This was pre-mobile technology, so we had Discman Walkmans and portable CD players, so you had to take a little book of CDs with you. And people read newspapers. I remember one day-
Zoë Schiffer: It sounds really romantic.
Lauren Goode: I just wanted to say, for people who don’t remember those times, it was a locomotive and you turned Discman by hand.
Zoë Schiffer: It was 200 BC
Michael Calore: I just remember that there were a lot of things that you had to take with you when commuting to work. And a fresh Harry Potter book came out and everyone on the train was reading this 10-pound, bulky, hardcover Harry Potter book at the same time and talking about it. Lauren, you have to tell us your bad commute story.
Lauren Goode: For a while on the East Coast, I commuted by Metro North, and then when I got to Up-to-date York, I had to hop on the subway and go all the way downtown.
Michael Calore: Two trains. Sulky. Lots of people pushing.
Lauren Goode: Yes. Many people read the Wall Street Journal.
Zoë Schiffer: Don’t say anything else.
Lauren Goode: It took a long time and sucked the life out of me. Even though the pandemic wasn’t a good thing, it was good that none of us had to return to the office. Are we done with this? Welcome to WIRED’s Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley hosted by me, senior writer Lauren Goode, and my co-hosts.
Michael Calore: My name is Michael Calore and I am the Director of Technology and Consumer Culture at WIRED.