This week, our hosts discuss why OpenAI and Elon Musk’s legal feud is heating up once again—and happening alongside SpaceX’s IPO filing. They also dive into how a Department of Justice lawyer misled a judge about how they’re handling voter data, and why the Artemis II’s launch captured all of our imaginations.
Articles mentioned in this episode:
- The DOJ Misled a Judge About How It’s Using Voter Roll Data
- Artemis II’s Breathtaking View of the Far Side of the Moon
You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett and Leah Feiger on Bluesky at @leahfeiger. Write to us at [email protected].
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Transcript
Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Brian Barrett: Hey, it's Brian. Zoë, Leah, and I have really enjoyed being your new hosts these past few weeks, and we want to hear from you. If you like the show and have a minute, please leave us a review in the podcast or app of your choice. It really helps us reach more people. And for any questions and comments, you can always reach us at [email protected]. Thank you for listening. On to the show. Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley. I am Brian Barrett, executive editor.
Leah Feiger: And I'm Leah Feiger, senior politics editor.
Brian Barrett: This week, we're discussing why OpenAI and Elon Musk's feud in the courts is starting to heat up again. And speaking of Musk, we're going to go over some key takeaways from SpaceX's recent confidential IPO filing. Then we'll dive into the rising concerns around how some agencies in the current administration are handling voter data. And finally, let's get away from it all and go to outer space and talk about why the Artemis II launch was such a big deal for everyone watching.
Leah Feiger: Before we dig into our lineup this week, we do briefly have to talk about what happened between the US and Iran in recent days.
[Archival audio]: President Trump is threatening Iran again, writing online this morning Trump said, quote, “A whole civilization will die tonight never to be brought back again.”
[Archival audio]: Moments ago, President Trump once again reiterated his threat to devastate Iran if a deal is not reached before the deadline he set of 8 pm Eastern time tonight.
[Archival audio]: Breaking news out of the White House, the US president has agreed to a two-week ceasefire.
Leah Feiger: The entire situation was very odd. I guess this is how global politics happens these days. I'm so curious for your thoughts.
Brian Barrett: Well, yeah, talk about what happened or more specifically what didn't happen this week, which was potential World War III. We were on the brink of it feels like, and I don't think that's … It's interesting, there were good odds that Trump was bluffing, right? Because he has done this time and again, he says, "Here's this deadline," and then he pushes it back. But what he's bluffing about has gotten really alarming and it's only a bluff until it's not. You know what I mean? I think threatening to annihilate an entire civilization, terrifying stuff, even if it's bluster. Terrifying bluster.
Leah Feiger: What's wild about pushing this back two weeks is you made this very pithy remark in Slack late last night, Brian. Sorry, I'm going to reveal it, which was just like-
Brian Barrett: Wow.
Leah Feiger: "See you guys in two weeks here." Something along those lines.
Brian Barrett: I said it in that voice too.
Leah Feiger: Yes, exactly.
Brian Barrett: It's like I wrote it in Comic Sans.
Leah Feiger: A hundred percent. And we will see each other in two weeks on this. I'm wondering how … Frankly, I'm not sure how much the world, capital W, was 100 percent paying attention to this anyway, and in two weeks it feels like that's going to be even less so because it's just yet another Trump bluff. And the boy who called World War III is a very scary thing because at some point, is this real?
Brian Barrett: And it makes it very hard. I think there's people talk about the madman theory of politics, which is Richard Nixon famously thought that if people thought he was erratic and unpredictable, then they wouldn't be able to sort of-
Leah Feiger: Famously, this is a theory that people in the Trump administration joke about.
Brian Barrett: And the difference is that Nixon was pretending to be a madman, whereas Trump feels very much settled into the role. We had some similar situations in the first Trump administration with North Korea, where Trump was very overtly threatening, "I'm going to push the big red button and my button is bigger than yours, and I'm going to send a nuke to North Korea." Which again, in retrospect was like, "Oh, well, he was just being Trump." But when Trump being Trump equals taking the world to the brink of the nuclear age, and he seems fully capable of doing it, no, it's really alarming. I do want to … Leah, and your point, I don't want it to get lost. You were saying, "I'm not sure how much the world was paying attention." Can you expand on that a little bit? Do you feel like there's just so much noise from Trump's Truth Social account that people have tuned it out by now?
Leah Feiger: Yes. Yes and no. Obviously, this was the headline. CNN had a countdown clock. There was a very specific corner of the world that was keeping the closest eye on this. I had a hard time working yesterday because I was constantly checking my phone, checking in with sources, which is all to say though, having conversations with friends that are politically minded who are going like, "Yeah, pretty wild," but yet another Trump tweet, yet another Trump message. I haven't seen wild call-outs from the people that you would expect them to happen from, I suppose. And I'm speaking in a more global sense. I think that the world has been very hard hit by Iranian war already. Madagascar yesterday quite literally declared a state of emergency over the energy situation. Clearly, there have been very serious impacts already. I guess, maybe this isn't fair of me, but I really do think of this in so many ways as, when we really do have to pay attention, will people be able to do so? I keep thinking about how quickly everyone moved on from Venezuela. The US kidnapped the sitting leader. That's-
Brian Barrett: Oh, he's still in jail in New York.
Leah Feiger: And still in jail in New York City, quite literally blocks away from where I am right now. Being able to pay attention, being able to really care about this, I don't know. What do you think? I feel like you're giving everyone a little bit more credit than I am.
Brian Barrett: I don't know. It's a weird thing where I feel like people in real life that I have talked to seemed aware of it, but also kind of resigned to it as another thing. But I think that's kind of where we're at. The last thing I'll say in this too is, it's such a classic Trump deal in that it seems like it's not really a deal at all. It's a sort of, we've got a framework. It seems like it's on the right track. Meanwhile, there are still bombs flying in the region that the US is involved. Maybe Bitcoin will have something to do with the … It is just throwing in … It's that perfect combination of vagueness and seediness that is the hallmark of-
Leah Feiger: And also claims that the US is going to financially benefit. We're going to supposedly … Now the strait that was once free for passage is now going to be charging a fee shared between Iran and Oman, but also maybe the US is getting into it. The news coming out of this is also changing moment to moment. It's so hard to figure out what we're paying attention to, and it feels very seedy. Yes, it all feels very seedy. I'm sorry, did we wage war to charge a toll? What's happening here?
Brian Barrett: It sounds like maybe. In terms of things that are maybe not seedy, but tawdry, or at least you can't get enough in a voyeuristic way. I want to talk about the OpenAI Elon Musk feud. There is a trial that's going to be headed to courts later this month, but in the meantime, on Monday, Leah, OpenAI, sent a letter to the California and Delaware Attorneys General urging them to investigate quote, "improper and anti-competitive behavior by Musk and his associates," including Mark Zuckerberg, who was allegedly one of those associates. Again, this is all alleged. We got to make that very clear. All this behavior is alleged.
There's some background who aren't familiar with Musk and OpenAI's history because I think a lot of people maybe aren't. Musk is a co-founder of OpenAI. He sued the company and its CEO, Sam Altman, back in 2024, accusing them of violating OpenAI's founding mission as it restructured itself from a nonprofit to a for-profit organization. The idea of OpenAI when it started was we're going to have this nonprofit thing that is going to research AI for the benefit of humanity, make sure it's aligned, make sure that this very powerful force can be harnessed for good. And then they started making billions of dollars and spending trillions of dollars, and that fell by the wayside a bit. Altman and Musk have a long history of throwing jabs at each other's expense.
News anchor [Archival audio]: OpenAI, you seem somewhat frustrated with them. You were one of the big contributors early on.
Elon Musk [Archival audio]: I am the reason OpenAI exists.
News anchor [Archival audio]: Do you think Musk's approach then is from a position of insecurity?
Sam Altman [Archival audio]: Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity. I feel for the guy.
News Anchor [Archival audio]: You feel that?
Sam Altman [Archival audio]: I do, actually. I don't think he's a happy person. I do feel for him.
Brian Barrett: Musk's defense team doubled down on Tuesday requesting that, if he wins the case that's coming up later this month, he's going to demand that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman need to be removed from their roles as officers in the company and OpenAI needs to return to being a nonprofit. Not sure what power he actually has to compel those things, but the fact that he's really going for it, I think shows just how vitriolic this situation has become.
Leah Feiger: I love the gossip. I'm sorry, this is so entertaining. The boys are fighting. We're talking about multi-billion dollar companies here. This is so much money.
Brian Barrett: And it's very messy. And I think OpenAI … Apologies to any OpenAI people listening to this podcast … has been messy in general lately. We've talked a lot about the revolving door of people leaving the company, people coming back to the company. They had a big executive shakeup this week. They bought a podcast this week. It is all over the place.
Leah Feiger: Shout-out to TBPN, the other tech podcast.
Brian Barrett: There's a lot of mess going around in general. And then you have Elon Musk coming in who is trying to upset the apple cart even further. And I think as a background to all this too, Elon Musk's SpaceX reportedly filed confidentially for an IPO last week. So they are at a very momentous time. I think everyone is racing to hit the IPO market, whether it's OpenAI, SpaceX, Anthropic, and SpaceX is out the door first. So a lot going on here.
Leah Feiger: And Musk is betting that SpaceX will be valued at nearly two trillion, which would be the largest IPO in history. Again, the backyard squabbles, it feels like so much more. How incremental do you think is the back and forth though between the Musk and Altman camps? Does this actually mark a very big juncture in this case or not really, just something that you're paying close attention to?
Brian Barrett: I feel like this is something where it's Elon trying to twist the knife a little bit more. I think using every opportunity to dig in and extract maximum impact if he's able to succeed, I do think this case will be really, really interesting assuming they don't settle, which maybe they'll settle, maybe this all goes away, but they both seem really entrenched. So the case will be really interesting because I feel like all of these AI companies have acted pretty much with impunity from the start. There's no real regulatory pressure. The only pressure is among each other and between each other for hiring, basically, because there's infinite money and there's infinite scope. So it feels like the first real hit-the-brakes moment, potentially, if Musk is somehow able to pull out a win in court.
Leah Feiger: Is this a good time for SpaceX to go public?
Brian Barrett: It's a good question. I do think there is pressure to go public. I think there's only so many $2 trillion IPOs that the market can hang onto. And remember, when we talk about SpaceX, it's not just rockets anymore. It's also XAI and it's X. It is so much of Elon Musk's empire rolled up into one. And so it would unlock a ton of capital for them to keep building out their data centers, to keep building compute. It would make them the first big AI company to go public other than … Not counting obviously Google is a big AI company, Alphabet’s been public a long time. So it is a chance to get out there first. One thing I want to note though, I don't know if you saw, and this is a side note, but it's another thing about Elon Musk extracting as much as he can out of everything he can, it's the way he operates. He is making any bank that wants to pitch their services for the IPO, they all have to subscribe to Grok. They all have to be xAI customers.
Leah Feiger: Incredible strategy.
Brian Barrett: On a really big scale, that actually is material money, because these banks have thousands of employees, they're all going to have to get on Grok. Just a really, I think, not the usual way these things work, but it is in Musk World.
Leah Feiger: There's no usual in Musk World. I think that that ship sailed a very long time ago, but that is wild. I'm so curious to see where that happens. And I also, it's hard to not talk about Elon and Sam as political players. They're having these business squabbles that are taking place in a very large stage, not just because of how much money, but also because they invariably different ways have the ear of different people in the Trump administration.
Brian Barrett: And just I think last thing on this, you mentioned them as political players, absolutely. OpenAI on Monday of this week released a big policy document saying, "Here's how we think the post AGI world needs to work in terms of policy. Here are some policy points that are going to prepare the world for where we're headed." There's a certain audacity to do that. There's a certain trying to own the narrative to that, but it does speak to, yes, these are extremely political players.
Leah Feiger: Let's talk about another fun part of politics everything, which is voter data. Brian, don't you love voter data?
Brian Barrett: I love voter data. I love voter data when it is kept private and kept in my state and people can't use it to cross reference for bad things.
Leah Feiger: Well, I have a-
Brian Barrett: Is that where we're going?
Leah Feiger: Bummer of a story for you.
Brian Barrett: Oh, no, Leah. No.
Leah Feiger: Well, last week we learned in a court hearing in Rhode Island, a Department of Justice lawyer misled a judge about what the agency has been doing with voter roll data. So this DOJ lawyer, Eric Neff, who is the acting chief of the DOJ's voting section, said that nothing had been done with this information. But then our colleague, David Gilbert, reported that he later backtracked that statement and actually admitted that the preliminary internal data analysis of the non-public voter registration data has begun, which is a slightly complicated way to say, "Yeah, your voter data in certain states is being taken and being processed." And in the DOJ's case, they're looking for anomalies. They're trying to find people that they think should not be voting. This is part of a larger voter roll campaign that's been led by the DOJ. It started last year when the agency sent letters to election officials in almost every single state asking for unredacted voter rolls. That includes social security numbers, driver's licenses, dates of birth and addresses. A lot of states have pushed back, and so the DOJ has actually sued 30 of them to force them to comply. Eric Neff, this lawyer, disclosed that the DOJ intends to share the state voter roll data with the Department of Homeland Security. The goal is to run this through a DHS system called SAVE, again, to check for non-citizens, deceased individuals, et cetera. I want to be so clear here that in all of the studies that have happened about non-citizen voting, it is teeny, teeny, tiny. We're talking 30 people across many, many millions of votes. This is not a real issue. Obviously, the Trump administration has made this an issue. The DOJ has now made this an issue, and it's pretty wild. And this voter data, it's not just, "Oh, this person voted Democrat, this person voted Republican." I just want to say again, this is your very personal information that is being pooled together in a way that it's not supposed to be. And a lot of states are really, really upset about it.
Brian Barrett: And I want to also just take a step back too. We need to get into the data privacy and the way they're using this, but I think there's also just the … I think there are two possibilities here with Neff, neither which is encouraging. One is he intentionally misled the court and then thought better of it the next day. Two, which I would argue is equally as alarming, he just didn't know. He just didn't know what was going on with the data, which suggests a casualness with how this is being used and a lack of oversight with how this is being used that I think, regardless of any other factors, is really concerning.
Leah Feiger: I 100 percent agree. David Becker, who's the head of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, and he's also a former Justice Department lawyer, talked to David Gilbert for this story and basically said the same thing, which is just this is so concerning. And I'm aware that it's this small moment, the specific state case, but is indicative of this larger, larger trend.
Brian Barrett: It also comes at a time, Leah, that the DOJ's acting chief privacy officer has resigned, not really a high priority for them to fill that role, I'm guessing. We talked about this a little bit, I think last week too, this full court press from the Trump administration to get access to this data. And I want to mention why it is compartmentalized is because voting is fundamentally a state issue or even more local than that. And that actually helps make it more secure because there's no one big switch that you can flip that says, "Steal the vote," right? As much as Trump thinks there is, it comes down to local workers, local municipalities, states, secretaries of state running their own systems securely. As you said, there's no indication that this is a real problem, but they're going to keep going until they make it one.
Leah Feiger: And especially this is really not going to be pattering that quietly behind in the background either. Last week, after Donald Trump effectively fired his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, a lot of election deniers, as WIRED reported again today, are really frothing for more and potential candidates that would be able to actually lean even further into election denial and make this process as convoluted and complicated as possible. I'm a little bit nervous. I'm a little bit nervous, I have to say. Pam Bondi's resignation/firing aside, I think that there's a lot more that we're going to see from the DOJ in the coming weeks and months when it comes to the midterm elections.
Brian Barrett: Before we go to break, let's talk about something that this week captured our attention, not because it makes us anxious or afraid, but makes us filled with joy and awe, the Artemis II launch.
NASA [Archival audio]: And here we go. 10, 9-
Brian Barrett: The mission shuttle with the crew of four astronauts lifted off smoothly on April 1st.
NASA [Archival audio]: Booster ignition and liftoff. The crew of Artemis II now bound for the moon.
Brian Barrett: And as you've probably heard by now, Artemis II is the first crewed flight to orbit the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. It's pretty remarkable in and of itself, but it also goes further than that. For one, they've officially traveled further away from earth than any humans have before. Good for humanity. We need some wins. We're putting them on the board, but it's also they're going to be testing whether NASA can send a crew to the moon itself to land there without any issues. That means testing this basecraft's life support systems that are put in place for the astronaut, hopefully laying the foundation for an enduring human presence on the moon. And then possibly maybe after that, although it's a little bit up in the air right now, Mars. Leah, I know that you have strong feelings about Artemis II. What has stood out to you on this journey?
Leah Feiger: So I actually didn't get to watch it live because it was the first or second night of Passover. And I remember being like, "Ugh, that's a bummer. I would love to go and do this." The next day I decided I want to relive this. I just read some amazing descriptions of what this was like and it got me. This crew has already broken so many records. They've traveled farther from Earth than any humans ever have. They broke the distance record previously held by Apollo 13 since 1970. They passed behind the moon, the photographs of them passing behind the moon, which is, again, one of the longest communications blackout in human spaceflight history, 40 minutes before they reestablished contact with Mission Control, just feats of humanity. It is truly where no person has gone before. They saw features of the lunar far side that have never been seen by human eyes. Just really shocking, incredible, awe-inspiring stuff. And not to mention, and this is me revealing just really how much I love reality TV, I suppose. I love the characters here. I love every single one of the astronauts. They are posting these incredible videos and sharing that awe and joy of their space flight with others. It's not just about breaking the records. It's not just all serious all the time. One of my favorites recently was showing the food that they're eating and how they're rehydrating their shrimp packets.
Brian Barrett: The jar of Nutella floating quietly through the shuttle.
Leah Feiger: It's lovely. It's so lovely and special.
Brian Barrett: I'll say, if you haven't had a chance to see the pictures taken by the astronauts, which Leah, I know you have, but they've taken a bunch of photos along the way with high quality equipment, telescopic lenses, we have several of them on WIRED. To interject a little tiny downer in this celebration of joy and all that humanity can achieve, there is a rampant corner of the internet that insists that all this is fake and all this is AI and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
Leah Feiger: I knew you were going to bring this up.
Brian Barrett: Just briefly.
Leah Feiger: It's upsetting me to my core in a very intense way. I see conspiracy theories online on a daily basis. Most people in a very specific corner of the internet think that not only is former President Joe Biden dead, but that he's been dead for a very long time. I am used to that, but for whatever reason, this is really getting me. I get that this is the original conspiracy theory. Did man actually land on the moon? But very upsetting. Very upsetting, Brian.
Brian Barrett: But let's take it back to something nice and joyful then. We're going to pull it back from that. Just had to mention it, had to say it, but there were some deeply human moments along the way. And Leah, I know that this resonated with you as well. Astronaut Jeremy Hansen told NASA's Kelsey Young during the flight that the crew would like to name some craters on the moon that they could currently see. Again, they're seeing parts of the moon that had not been seen by human eyes. So a lot of branding opportunities, a lot of naming opportunities. For one of the craters they named, the team proposed naming it Carroll. And Carroll is a tribute to Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman's late wife who died of cancer in 2020. And we can listen to that here.
Jeremy Hansen [Archival audio]: So we lost a loved one. Her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katie and Ellie. And if you want to find this one, you look at Glushko and it's just to the northwest of that at the same latitude as Ohm, and it's a bright spot on the moon. And we would like to call it Carroll. And you spell that C-A-R-R-O-L-L.
Leah Feiger: It's so emotional. We needed that this week. We needed this. Part of why this feels so special is because I know perhaps just like the Olympics, Brian, maybe thank goodness Zoë isn't here, but this is one of the increasingly rare events that can really just unify and capture imagination and attention in such a specific way. It's been beautiful to witness. I love it.
Brian Barrett: I like the suggestion that Zoë maybe hates space flight as well.
Leah Feiger: I'm throwing it out there.
Brian Barrett: It's possible.
Leah Feiger: I'm spreading that rumor.
Brian Barrett: She's not here.
Leah Feiger: Just like the Olympics.
Brian Barrett: As far as we know.
Leah Feiger: As far as we know.
Brian Barrett: One thing about this, so there is a contrast between how much everyone is rightly celebrating this and what a terrific moment it is for the United States, for humanity. I keep saying the word humanity, but it's true.
Leah Feiger: It is true.
Brian Barrett: At the same time, the White House is proposing cutting NASA's budget by 24 percent. It's already been cut several times. There's a lot of tension at NASA, both between how much of space flight is going to be supported by private companies like SpaceX, or I guess soon to be public companies, versus NASA. What's NASA's role in all of this? If we do set up shop on the moon, is that going to be from the private sector, developing lunar bases and a Mars spacecraft, while at the same time NASA just cedes its role, right? That's what we've seen happening and will continue to happen. Fortunately, Artemis missions are planned up through 2030 at least. I think the plan is to actually land humans on the moon by 2030. So we've at least got a few more good years of this mission and learnings from it, but it does make you remember a time when it's OK for the government to do things. It's not the worst thing in the world.
Leah Feiger: It's really OK for the government to do things.
Brian Barrett: It's fine.
Leah Feiger: Watching NASA get DOGE’d last year as well and watching different, young, inexperienced technologists all of a sudden enter this very storied government agency, there was very much a moment of like, "Is nothing sacred? Truly is nothing sacred?" I'm very glad that there is some very specific funding in place that will outlive some certain administrations perhaps, but I'm very curious, especially as it comes to SpaceX, especially as it comes to NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, who is a big ally of Elon Musk, this was apparently one of the big fighting points between Musk and Trump and Musk and the Trump administration was saying that he wanted Jared Isaacman to be in this role.
Brian Barrett: And Isaacman had committed the sin … Am I right, he had committed the sin of donating to a Democrat at some point in his life?
Leah Feiger: Yes, exactly. Exactly. And so when we're talking private versus public, what can the government do? What can they not? There is still this very slimy undertone that thankfully I am able to mostly forget when I am viewing the beautiful, beautiful images of the far side of the moon. But you always remind me of, Brian. You always remind me of.
Brian Barrett: Yeah, and we'll always have the Nutella floating-
Leah Feiger: And we'll always have the Nutella.
Brian Barrett: Drifting.
Leah Feiger: And the rehydrated shrimp. Coming up after the break, we're going to share our Wired and Tired Picks for the week. Stay with us. It is time for our Wired and Tired segment. Whatever is new and cool is wired and whatever passé thing we're over is tired. Brian, you go first.
Brian Barrett: I am so excited to share with you and with the world that scientists have made a french fry breakthrough.
Leah Feiger: Huge. Say more.
Brian Barrett: This is wired. So some food researchers have spent a long time studying french fries. And the problem with french fries, Leah, not that they have any problems really—they're perfect and I won't have them besmirched on this podcast. But in order to get the real crispiness, you got to throw away the air fryer, you got to dunk them in oil and they absorb the oil and they get really crispy and delicious, but also that's a lot of fatty badness that you're putting into your body. However, what these scientists have realized, have figured out, is that if you, instead of just deep frying, you combine microwaving with frying, you can cut down the actual amount of oil that the fry absorbs by a significant margin without sacrificing any of that crispy, crunchy goodness. So they have developed a microwave fryer to get the best of both worlds, the perfect Goldilocks french fry, and they hope to make it something that can be more commercialized or spread out soon. So no, I have not actually tasted one of these miracle fries, but I look forward to doing so. And I guess my tired then is the old way to do french fries. Tired, I'm over it. Get rid of that deep fryer.
Leah Feiger: Tired, done. Well, I can't wait for this to become a public commodity. I'm looking forward to it. Mine is also, I guess, in the commodity space. My wired, and this is not a new cool thing, so I'm vaguely embarrassed. However, when I told you about this right before, during the break, you had never heard of it. So I'm going ahead.
Brian Barrett: I'm ready to deny that now if it's going to make me look stupid on the show. What do you mean? Of course I know what it is. Of course I've heard of it.
Leah Feiger: No, no. It's very niche. This is the RealReal app. This is this company that I feel like a couple of years ago took the vintage resale market by storm. It's specifically luxury goods. So we're talking about vintage Gucci but for a lot less. It's great. It is, put the collection of your favorite vintage stores basically online. You kind of sell to the app, but then they sell it for you, they take a cut, et cetera, et cetera. And I love it. And I've recently been turning to it more and more because I've decided that I really can't be reading the news the minute that I'm going to sleep and the minute that I'm waking up. And so instead if I really feel the need to scroll and I want five minutes of screen time, but I want to detach myself a little bit more from the news, I'm just quite literally looking through beautiful vintage designer bags.
Brian Barrett: Heavily discounted luxury goods-
Leah Feiger: Yes
Brian Barrett: To lull yourself to sleep.
Leah Feiger: Yep.
Brian Barrett: Leah, I love this for you.
Leah Feiger: I'm loving it. I'm loving it so much. Zoë, not to mention our not-here friend again, but Zoë recently was like, "You have sent me a lot of listings. Are you OK?" And I was like, "Yes, this is my new hobby. This is what I like." And again, I think part of this is my tired is sort of buying new things. I'm trying very, very hard to lower my consumption generally. And so this has been a fun, every-once-in-a-while purchase, but mostly just the scroll. I'm loving the scroll. It's so good. RealReal, sponsor me.
Brian Barrett: I feel like it's better than Instagram reels, right?
Leah Feiger: Mm-hmm.
Brian Barrett: It's a little bit less mindless.
Leah Feiger: Yes.
Brian Barrett: You're helping the environment by giving old Gucci bags new homes.
Leah Feiger: Yeah. Really excited.
Brian Barrett: That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about today in the show notes. Uncanny Valley is produced by Kaleidoscope Content. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. It was mixed by Amar Lal at Macro Sound. Pran Bandi is our New York studio engineer. Kimberly Chua is our senior digital production manager. Kate Osborn is our executive producer and Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director.
