[00:00.000 --> 00:04.460]  And you're listening to radio station WBAI in New York.
[00:04.700 --> 00:06.820]  The time is 7.01.
[00:07.040 --> 00:08.380]  Time for Off the Hook.
[01:59.590 --> 02:03.230]  And you're listening to radio station WBAI.
[02:03.350 --> 02:04.870]  As I said, this is Off the Hook.
[02:05.370 --> 02:08.490]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Kyle.
[02:09.050 --> 02:10.150]  Yes, hello, I'm here.
[02:10.570 --> 02:12.510]  And Alex.
[02:12.910 --> 02:13.730]  Good evening.
[02:14.030 --> 02:14.410]  How are you?
[02:14.690 --> 02:16.330]  I'm well, I'm...
[02:16.330 --> 02:17.230]  Hey, Jim, how are you doing?
[02:17.470 --> 02:17.830]  Hello.
[02:18.910 --> 02:19.390]  Wow.
[02:20.150 --> 02:22.030]  I'm the only unmuffled party here.
[02:22.150 --> 02:23.130]  You don't have your mask on.
[02:23.330 --> 02:24.710]  I don't have my mask on.
[02:24.710 --> 02:26.370]  Yeah, I think yours is upside down.
[02:26.650 --> 02:27.690]  Oh, yeah, I always do this wrong.
[02:27.810 --> 02:28.350]  Hold on one second.
[02:28.590 --> 02:29.710]  I'm actually wearing two.
[02:30.330 --> 02:31.050]  You're wearing two?
[02:31.310 --> 02:32.030]  Yeah, I have two.
[02:32.330 --> 02:32.630]  Hold on.
[02:32.850 --> 02:33.730]  It's an extra layer.
[02:36.550 --> 02:38.250]  You know, they get tangled up in the headphones.
[02:42.470 --> 02:44.130]  So, okay, it goes this way?
[02:44.490 --> 02:46.330]  Yeah, you got to get it all the way, yeah, covered.
[02:46.490 --> 02:47.590]  Well, then what does that go over?
[02:47.670 --> 02:49.310]  Yeah, what's that extra strap for?
[02:49.930 --> 02:50.990]  It's the neck strap.
[02:51.130 --> 02:51.990]  Yeah, but you don't need that.
[02:51.990 --> 02:53.710]  It's, uh...
[02:53.710 --> 02:55.230]  All right, that does seem a little better.
[02:55.290 --> 02:55.890]  Yeah, that's perfect.
[02:56.110 --> 02:56.410]  All right.
[02:57.290 --> 02:57.790]  All right.
[02:58.010 --> 03:05.250]  No, we are taking precautions here at the radio station for the coronavirus.
[03:05.670 --> 03:06.070]  Yes.
[03:06.230 --> 03:07.250]  We're covering our faces.
[03:07.250 --> 03:10.890]  I'm sorry, Alex, I thought you were, you would be taking precautions.
[03:11.290 --> 03:13.270]  You know, nobody thought to bring me a mask.
[03:13.510 --> 03:14.750]  I feel really left out.
[03:14.870 --> 03:16.310]  No one thought to bring us a mask either.
[03:16.310 --> 03:17.330]  We had to steal these.
[03:17.330 --> 03:18.010]  From where?
[03:18.810 --> 03:21.030]  Well, from who is a better question, but I'm not going to tell you that.
[03:21.190 --> 03:22.310]  From a person.
[03:22.630 --> 03:24.610]  Well, yeah, but we were able to overpower...
[03:24.610 --> 03:26.270]  Well, it doesn't matter how we did it.
[03:26.510 --> 03:27.770]  They weren't that vulnerable.
[03:28.050 --> 03:32.010]  No, it was very clearly up for grabs, and we grabbed them.
[03:32.090 --> 03:33.930]  You can almost always swipe a mask from somebody.
[03:34.050 --> 03:35.130]  They rarely fight back.
[03:35.250 --> 03:35.930]  I would imagine.
[03:36.010 --> 03:38.970]  But now you have all of their droplets that you're probably breathing in.
[03:39.110 --> 03:40.010]  I don't know if you thought of that.
[03:40.690 --> 03:42.170]  They didn't look like downers.
[03:42.290 --> 03:43.690]  They looked like they were strong.
[03:43.950 --> 03:44.270]  Downers?
[03:44.370 --> 03:45.370]  What does a downer look like?
[03:45.370 --> 03:46.690]  It's like mad cow disease, you know?
[03:46.690 --> 03:48.170]  It's like they weren't downer cows.
[03:48.410 --> 03:49.610]  They were regular ones.
[03:49.810 --> 03:50.310]  They were fine.
[03:50.590 --> 03:51.990]  No, what he says makes sense.
[03:52.150 --> 03:54.050]  We didn't think this through, Kyle.
[03:54.650 --> 03:54.810]  What?
[03:55.050 --> 03:57.350]  We have all the germs of the person we...
[03:57.350 --> 03:57.850]  You know what?
[03:57.850 --> 03:58.790]  No, I'm saying they look...
[03:58.790 --> 03:59.550]  They're strong.
[03:59.810 --> 04:00.970]  I'm taking this thing off.
[04:01.090 --> 04:02.470]  Wait, you said that we had to.
[04:04.270 --> 04:06.510]  But what if we infect the rest of the station?
[04:06.970 --> 04:08.810]  You know, that ship has sailed.
[04:09.870 --> 04:10.750]  We, uh...
[04:10.750 --> 04:11.030]  Okay.
[04:11.490 --> 04:12.470]  I brought all the streets.
[04:12.470 --> 04:12.950]  I'm sorry.
[04:13.190 --> 04:14.590]  I apologize to everybody.
[04:15.070 --> 04:15.850]  No, this is bad.
[04:15.970 --> 04:17.370]  This is bad advice.
[04:18.690 --> 04:20.070]  You don't need these things.
[04:20.130 --> 04:21.570]  We happen to have these already.
[04:22.570 --> 04:25.390]  Because we were tearing down a wall, I think, and we had one of these things.
[04:25.650 --> 04:25.790]  Yeah.
[04:26.090 --> 04:29.290]  But, no, you don't need to be walking around wearing masks.
[04:29.390 --> 04:30.370]  For one thing, it's ineffective.
[04:30.370 --> 04:33.130]  For another thing, it might actually do more harm than good.
[04:33.950 --> 04:35.590]  And, um, it just...
[04:35.590 --> 04:36.490]  It looks goofy, too.
[04:36.830 --> 04:37.870]  Well, and I'll tell you.
[04:38.010 --> 04:39.610]  I mean, I'm taking the subway every day.
[04:40.010 --> 04:46.510]  I have noticed a, uh, a measurable increase, day by day, of the number of people wearing masks in the subway.
[04:47.050 --> 04:48.070]  Uh, and it's freaky.
[04:48.270 --> 04:48.410]  Really?
[04:48.450 --> 04:55.150]  I mean, tonight, I was taking the, uh, the E train down here, the E to the A, actually, from, uh, 52nd Street.
[04:55.150 --> 04:57.070]  I'm going down a massive escalator.
[04:57.290 --> 04:57.390]  Mm-hmm.
[04:57.390 --> 05:06.010]  And not only was there, you know, a guy wearing, you know, pretty heavy-duty mask, but he also had gloves on, making sure he wasn't touching anything.
[05:06.150 --> 05:08.690]  I mean, as you well know, today is not glove weather.
[05:08.830 --> 05:10.190]  It's about 55 degrees outside.
[05:10.450 --> 05:15.430]  The thing is, um, you know, we're, we're, we're told we should wash our hands frequently.
[05:15.430 --> 05:16.730]  And that's, that's good advice.
[05:16.930 --> 05:17.950]  That is what you should do.
[05:18.030 --> 05:21.550]  You should wash your hands frequently, uh, you know, for a good 20 seconds each time.
[05:21.910 --> 05:23.350]  You can't do that when you're wearing gloves.
[05:23.570 --> 05:25.810]  You know, you're, you're going to be carrying the germs around with you.
[05:25.970 --> 05:28.250]  So I don't know if that's the best, uh, the best thing to do.
[05:28.330 --> 05:32.050]  If you, basically, we were listening to a great program earlier on WBAI.
[05:32.130 --> 05:35.930]  We're talking about this with city officials and doctors and things like that, who know far more than we do.
[05:36.090 --> 05:45.930]  But what we're able to glean from what has been, uh, spread so far, no pun intended, uh, is basically, um, stay, stay as healthy as you can.
[05:45.930 --> 05:48.730]  If you feel yourself coming down with something, stay in your house.
[05:49.490 --> 05:59.910]  And, uh, if, um, if you have, uh, underlying conditions that would make you more vulnerable, uh, respiratory issues, things like that, um, then try and stay away from, from crowds of people.
[06:00.830 --> 06:03.850]  But otherwise, go about your normal life.
[06:04.090 --> 06:11.190]  And for God's sake, don't treat people badly because you think they might be more, uh, inclined to carry this thing.
[06:11.270 --> 06:12.250]  First of all, you're wrong.
[06:12.670 --> 06:18.210]  Uh, I mean, it's, it's actually, people are not going to Chinese restaurants as a result of this.
[06:18.270 --> 06:19.710]  We can believe the stupidity.
[06:19.810 --> 06:27.450]  And, and if, if you want an even greater example of stupidity, people have stopped drinking Corona beer, thinking there's some kind of relationship with that.
[06:27.850 --> 06:33.770]  And I can only imagine what Corona Queens is going through right now, but it's, it's really people, please.
[06:34.370 --> 06:38.690]  If, uh, if there's a Chinese restaurant in your neighborhood, go to it, they will be so happy to see you.
[06:38.810 --> 06:40.110]  And it's, isn't that right, Kyle?
[06:40.210 --> 06:41.650]  We've been to like six of them now.
[06:42.070 --> 06:43.070]  Yeah, absolutely.
[06:43.350 --> 06:55.730]  There's, uh, definitely a, uh, measurable down, down tick in, um, people going to different kinds of establishments based on kind of an ethnic, ethnic assumption that ethnicity is somehow playing a part in this.
[06:55.890 --> 07:00.010]  And what this disease is really shown is that it's a truly an equalizer.
[07:00.330 --> 07:20.030]  And I think it also points out, uh, from sort of a macro perspective, just how fragile, um, things can be the sort of precarity of everyday life is, is, uh, truly a fragile thing given, uh, how quickly, um, the specter of a lot of people becoming ill has on,
[07:20.130 --> 07:26.490]  um, economics and, uh, social factors and overall lifestyle and, and sort of normal daily life.
[07:26.650 --> 07:44.590]  So it's, it's really been something that I think highlights the importance of those basic precautions you pointed out, but just also, um, the importance of, of health and wellbeing overall, uh, hygiene overall, and just, um, and like how, how proximate,
[07:44.590 --> 07:48.590]  how our, uh, distance from one another is so, so thin.
[07:48.770 --> 07:53.290]  It's, it's really, um, you know, you're really in everybody's space.
[07:53.470 --> 08:07.330]  Like, like Alex was talking about on, on, uh, subway cars, things we take for granted, I think in, in ordinary circumstances, this is something to be concerned about, but not to be panicking about, of course, it's never time to panic, but this is, um,
[08:07.750 --> 08:14.750]  a serious situation that makes you realize that, um, there are healthier ways to, um, to behave, to interact.
[08:15.110 --> 08:18.890]  But there's also, um, there's also some side notes to this.
[08:18.990 --> 08:26.870]  For instance, you all see the picture of, um, of, uh, China from the air, uh, in just a week or two, the pollution disappeared.
[08:27.230 --> 08:30.750]  It was amazing because they had to shut down so much industry.
[08:31.390 --> 08:35.150]  Things cleared up amazingly quickly when, when, when they did that.
[08:35.270 --> 08:37.110]  And that's just, we can learn from this.
[08:37.430 --> 08:52.170]  I'm not saying it's a, you know, it's, um, uh, something to, to celebrate because of, uh, the reason why it happened, but maybe, uh, we'll learn more about the effects of pollution and how quickly we can, uh, uh, mitigate those, those effects while we learn other things as well.
[08:52.290 --> 08:56.070]  But the important thing right now is science is studying.
[08:56.370 --> 09:06.750]  This is working together and, um, uh, not holding back as far as, uh, pouring whatever we can into figuring out what's, uh, how to, how to get past this.
[09:07.410 --> 09:07.890]  Yeah.
[09:08.090 --> 09:12.250]  And, and look, I, I don't think that we're downplaying the severity of this either.
[09:12.370 --> 09:13.530]  I mean, it, it is a scary thing.
[09:13.650 --> 09:21.530]  And, and let me tell you, being on the subway every morning in rush hour, when you're packed into these trains full of people, it's a freaky thing.
[09:22.010 --> 09:23.350]  It, it certainly is.
[09:23.430 --> 09:24.090]  Well, it always is.
[09:24.330 --> 09:28.250]  Uh, well, yeah, but I mean, just even more so, you know, people don't want to touch the pole.
[09:28.410 --> 09:29.350]  They're leaning on the pole.
[09:29.450 --> 09:30.370]  They don't want to touch anything.
[09:30.370 --> 09:33.650]  You don't see, you know, if somebody's coughing, everybody looks at him.
[09:33.750 --> 09:36.510]  If somebody sneezes, you know, you get the look of death.
[09:36.930 --> 09:44.630]  Um, you know, on my way home tonight, um, you know, I felt like, Oh my God, my nose is going to start running, but I don't want to touch it.
[09:44.770 --> 09:47.910]  I sneeze 36 times every morning when I wake up.
[09:48.090 --> 09:49.430]  I, it's just all my life.
[09:49.550 --> 09:49.930]  I've done that.
[09:50.330 --> 09:55.410]  So I would, if I, if I were to go on the subway early in the morning, that I would not be, uh, the most popular person.
[09:55.510 --> 09:56.030]  Oh my God.
[09:56.130 --> 09:57.630]  You should just, you should try it.
[09:57.730 --> 09:58.710]  It's, it's, it's allergy.
[09:58.850 --> 09:59.870]  I don't know what it is exactly.
[10:00.030 --> 10:06.470]  It's, uh, you know, I'm not walking around, uh, with, with, uh, these, these horrible illnesses, but, um, yeah, and I cough too.
[10:06.610 --> 10:08.690]  Sometimes 36 times usually.
[10:08.850 --> 10:08.930]  Yeah.
[10:09.350 --> 10:09.970]  That depends.
[10:10.150 --> 10:11.070]  Weekends, maybe a little more.
[10:11.210 --> 10:14.550]  That's, that's pretty incredible, but look, I'll tell you, I, I don't like taking the subway.
[10:14.730 --> 10:20.370]  I feel like it, it is, you know, going to be the very fertile ground for the virus to spread.
[10:20.410 --> 10:21.870]  I love taking the subway.
[10:22.090 --> 10:27.870]  I mean, I like taking the subway generally, but I don't like taking the subway during, you know, what is likely to be a pandemic in the city.
[10:28.530 --> 10:36.090]  So, you know, one of the things I did over the last couple of days was I got my bike fixed, get out on the bike, take the bike to the office.
[10:36.270 --> 10:42.890]  And I asked the guys in the bike store, you know, are you seeing an uptick in, in people coming in and getting their bikes cleaned and fixed and whatnot?
[10:42.890 --> 10:43.870]  And they told me they weren't.
[10:44.230 --> 10:45.870]  Another good side note of this.
[10:46.010 --> 10:48.270]  People are going to get more exercise if they're not taking the subway.
[10:48.490 --> 10:50.210]  So we will hopefully be a little bit less crowded.
[10:50.250 --> 10:54.890]  You get out in a nice fresh air, uh, during this, you know, unseasonably warm time.
[10:55.350 --> 11:01.490]  Uh, but look, it is a really freaky thing and, and I'm not going to pretend I'm not freaked out by it.
[11:01.650 --> 11:04.510]  Uh, I think I would be less freaked out by it if I didn't have a family.
[11:05.010 --> 11:07.810]  Uh, and that's what concerns me and probably concerns a lot of people.
[11:08.430 --> 11:09.730]  You're afraid you're going to get it from your family?
[11:09.970 --> 11:10.270]  No.
[11:10.650 --> 11:10.930]  Yeah.
[11:11.250 --> 11:13.090]  I'm afraid if something happens to me, it's going to happen to my family.
[11:13.090 --> 11:13.630]  Get a separate apartment.
[11:13.850 --> 11:17.530]  You can live by yourself until this clears over and, uh, you know, send them email every now and then.
[11:17.570 --> 11:19.250]  There's another beneficial side product.
[11:19.390 --> 11:25.890]  Hey, we're going to talk more about this, but I also want to talk about a different story because, uh, it affects, uh, one of our other, um, uh, show hosts here.
[11:26.110 --> 11:28.650]  Uh, and we've gotten this story about 50 times.
[11:28.770 --> 11:30.430]  Thank you everybody for, for sending it to us.
[11:30.610 --> 11:34.630]  I know you didn't know you were sending you the 51st person sending it to us, but yeah, we got this a lot.
[11:35.070 --> 11:40.470]  Uh, this story ran, I think it ran in the Gothamist, uh, originally, but it's been running all over the place.
[11:41.010 --> 11:45.610]  Uh, headline being most of the last remaining pay funds in New York city will be ripped out.
[11:45.750 --> 11:46.770]  I'll read you the first paragraph.
[11:47.070 --> 12:02.670]  Uh, while the private walk-in phone booths of yesteryear have been nearly extinct for well over a decade in New York city, many open air pay phones have remained jammed into the concrete sidewalks, coin operated totems to our analog days, but like the iconic phone booth before them,
[12:02.850 --> 12:08.530]  of which there are only four left, which, uh, we'll, we'll find and we'll, we'll, we'll deal with later.
[12:08.870 --> 12:10.290]  Uh, their days are now numbered.
[12:10.910 --> 12:11.350]  Yeah.
[12:11.530 --> 12:25.610]  So apparently, uh, there is a plan now to get rid of all remaining pay phones in New York city, uh, which, uh, strikes me as, um, not the smartest thing in the world to do.
[12:25.890 --> 12:46.670]  Uh, but also something rather, rather sad, rather, um, um, you know, sentimental because we have so much, um, having to do with pay phones in our culture, uh, in, in, uh, what we talk about here on this show, what we do with the magazine, what we do at the conferences and to think that they're all going away in cinema too.
[12:47.210 --> 12:58.610]  And that's something that is a sort of a big deal in New York city that the similar to like a yellow cab or something in, in so many plot lines, uh, Superman.
[12:58.670 --> 13:03.090]  I mean, we, we've can go through all the different, uh, uses for pay phone booths.
[13:03.210 --> 13:03.730]  Yeah.
[13:03.890 --> 13:12.110]  Superman, you know, all kinds of, uh, uh, other, uh, uh, possible, uh, you know, cinematic references that will be lost on people.
[13:12.210 --> 13:13.310]  Now, Rob T. Firefly is, uh, joining us now and he is calling us from a pay phone in Queens.
[13:20.470 --> 13:21.210]  Rob, are you there?
[13:22.050 --> 13:22.750]  I am here.
[13:22.950 --> 13:23.210]  Yes.
[13:23.330 --> 13:24.050]  Uh, I am here.
[13:24.150 --> 13:24.890]  I am joined by Gila.
[13:25.030 --> 13:25.230]  Hello.
[13:25.570 --> 13:26.470]  Hey Gila, how you doing?
[13:26.590 --> 13:34.890]  What you, so you found a pay phone in Queens and, um, uh, and, and it's a great way to stay away from us, you know, with all our coughing and sneezing here in the studio.
[13:35.710 --> 13:41.830]  Uh, and, um, I hope you wipe down the phone, uh, uh, pretty good too, but, but... I, I, I used my tongue.
[13:41.930 --> 13:42.290]  It was fine.
[13:42.470 --> 13:42.750]  All right.
[13:42.770 --> 13:47.270]  Well, tell us, tell us something about, about the, uh, the phone that you're calling us from.
[13:47.950 --> 13:52.350]  Well, the phone that we're calling from is, uh, part of a, uh, dual kiosk of phones.
[13:52.610 --> 13:57.910]  It is located on, uh, Queens Boulevard at an undisposed, uh, location, which, uh, might be Queens.
[13:58.650 --> 14:06.330]  And, uh, yeah, it's, it's right out here on the sidewalk in front of some park benches in a very nice, uh, a very nice, uh, high traffic little area.
[14:07.390 --> 14:07.750]  Wow.
[14:07.910 --> 14:11.250]  And now are there people waiting to use the pay phone or are you pretty much by yourself?
[14:12.090 --> 14:13.770]  Uh, fortunately there's another phone here.
[14:13.950 --> 14:16.630]  So if, uh, if someone else wants to use the phone, they can use the other one.
[14:16.910 --> 14:21.850]  Wouldn't that be an amazing story if someone else actually came up and use the pay phone while you were talking?
[14:22.030 --> 14:25.290]  I, I, I don't expect anyone to use the pay phone all day long.
[14:25.530 --> 14:38.630]  Uh, but, um, you know, back in the day, the day being the eighties and nineties, boy, you would, you would get in trouble for talking on the pay phone for, you know, the length of a show, which I assume you're going to try to do.
[14:39.110 --> 14:40.910]  Is that, is this thing eating quarters?
[14:41.770 --> 14:46.030]  Oh, well, I thrown a bunch of quarters in and, uh, we'll see how long it takes for it to ask for more.
[14:46.170 --> 14:47.010]  I just heard a click.
[14:47.010 --> 14:48.770]  Was that, was that the pay phone saying something?
[14:49.290 --> 14:51.890]  That was the, uh, pay phone accepting some more quarters from me.
[14:52.030 --> 14:53.710]  So, uh, we'll see how long they'll last.
[14:53.870 --> 15:01.170]  And, uh, yeah, hopefully we can, uh, hopefully we've brought enough change from, uh, 2600 to petty cash to, uh, last this entire cost.
[15:01.390 --> 15:07.170]  Well, I, I should ask, uh, this is not a, uh, obviously it's, it's not a Verizon pay fund cause I don't think they even exist anymore.
[15:07.170 --> 15:11.050]  This is some sort of a co-cut and occasionally it just asks you for more money.
[15:12.450 --> 15:13.990]  Um, indeed it's not a Verizon pay fund.
[15:14.150 --> 15:21.550]  This was, uh, very probably a Verizon pay fund, um, in a previous life as evidenced by the decal that hasn't been completely removed, um, saying Verizon.
[15:22.210 --> 15:35.550]  Um, those, for those unfamiliar, the, uh, pay phones in the city, um, going back to like the bell days were run as a public utility by the local telephone carrier, um, which, uh, later became New York telephone, which, uh, later became Bell Atlantic, which later became Ninex,
[15:36.050 --> 15:40.570]  which, uh, later became, no, which later became Ninex, which later became Bell Atlantic, which later became Verizon.
[15:41.190 --> 15:57.750]  Um, but Verizon, uh, divested themselves of all their pay phones in the city in 2010, um, at which time they were taken over by an outfit called Titan at the time, which is an advertising And Titan ran the payphones as basically an advertising concern,
[15:57.770 --> 16:05.870]  just advertising on the sides of them, while the telephone inside was generally an afterthought, meaning it became kind of difficult to find one that was still working.
[16:06.970 --> 16:07.530]  Wow.
[16:07.790 --> 16:14.290]  That's a fascinating bit of history as far as how payphones have evolved over the years in the city.
[16:15.270 --> 16:26.470]  Titan later merged with another outfit to form a company that is called Intersection, which is a subsidiary of the Alphabet Company, which is also Google's parent company.
[16:27.170 --> 16:34.530]  They are also the outfit that is overseeing the successor of payphones in the city, the LinkNYC kiosk.
[16:34.930 --> 16:36.690]  Yeah, no surprise there.
[16:37.090 --> 16:42.990]  Yeah, technically right now we're using a Google product that's being overcome by a different Google product.
[16:42.990 --> 16:45.570]  So the payphone itself is a Google product.
[16:45.690 --> 16:46.330]  That is fascinating.
[16:47.210 --> 16:47.650]  Wow.
[16:48.150 --> 16:48.790]  I can't get away from it.
[16:49.230 --> 16:53.510]  Now, Rob, when was the last time in your memory that you used a payphone?
[16:54.830 --> 16:57.050]  The last time in my memory that I used a payphone?
[16:58.230 --> 17:06.270]  That's probably a more interesting question for me than for most people, because I've always enjoyed playing with these things ever since I was a kid.
[17:06.570 --> 17:10.090]  I was a bit of a phone freak in the days when you could be such a thing.
[17:10.090 --> 17:17.530]  And even now when there's one around and I'm, like, waiting for a train or something, I'll just start playing with it and dialing numbers on it.
[17:17.650 --> 17:23.070]  But I can't think of a time where I seriously needed to use a payphone in recent memory.
[17:23.330 --> 17:25.410]  It's all the mobile phones these days.
[17:25.730 --> 17:29.430]  Well, I'll tell you a time when it was important to have payphones around.
[17:29.430 --> 17:34.770]  That was right after Superstorm Sandy, when cell phones weren't working and payphones were.
[17:34.990 --> 17:43.110]  And it was something to be able to use a payphone and make a phone call when other things stopped working.
[17:43.350 --> 17:47.610]  I think it's really short-sighted to get rid of them.
[17:48.310 --> 17:54.650]  Kyle and I were just in Montreal a few weeks ago, and we noticed every single metro station has a payphone on the platform.
[17:54.650 --> 17:56.510]  In fact, I guess they have two, because they have two tracks.
[17:57.330 --> 17:58.790]  And they're all working.
[17:59.050 --> 18:00.070]  They're all in working order.
[18:00.290 --> 18:03.290]  Now, does it cost them a fortune to keep in working order?
[18:03.350 --> 18:03.930]  I doubt it.
[18:04.090 --> 18:05.470]  It's good to have a backup.
[18:05.470 --> 18:08.810]  And this is what we always say on this show for any form of technology.
[18:08.990 --> 18:12.090]  It's always good to have a backup, because something will fail.
[18:12.530 --> 18:21.910]  And when that cell phone antenna goes down, or when the whole network, for some reason, isn't accessible, it's good to have something else that works.
[18:24.650 --> 18:25.610]  Everything is the backup.
[18:27.090 --> 18:27.570]  Absolutely.
[18:28.050 --> 18:28.730]  And it's funny.
[18:28.950 --> 18:45.030]  Payphones, when they were run by a local telephone carrier, such as Verizon or Bell Atlantic or any of the others, it was on a special kind of line, which meant that it was basically getting its power from the telephone system rather than the electric company.
[18:45.270 --> 18:54.250]  So if the electricity went out, as was the case with the old landlines, if the electricity went out, your telephone could still possibly work, because it didn't depend on them.
[18:54.650 --> 19:04.730]  Nowadays, these are a phylophone known as a co-cut, which is basically a computer shaped like a phone, which needs electricity from the electric company.
[19:04.930 --> 19:13.750]  So if the power goes out around here, like during Superstorm Sandy, the phone service on these payphones will also go out, just as the LinkNYC kiosks and everything else.
[19:13.750 --> 19:19.610]  Yeah, that's another instance of short-sightedness.
[19:19.990 --> 19:26.570]  Because as you mentioned, those old payphones, the ones that were run by the Bell operating companies, all the intelligence was in the central office.
[19:26.710 --> 19:33.890]  So when you picked up the phone, the computer asking you for a quarter was not in the phone, it was in the central office.
[19:33.890 --> 19:40.570]  And it knew that this was a payphone, because of the way it was designated in their system.
[19:40.890 --> 19:58.670]  In fact, it was kind of a good-hearted prank back in the 90s, maybe the 80s as well, for hackers who got access to the Bell system to change the categorization of a foe's phone line to payphone, so that when they picked up the phone in their own home,
[19:58.810 --> 20:00.010]  they were asked for a quarter.
[20:00.230 --> 20:01.090]  All good fun.
[20:01.310 --> 20:12.290]  But now, you know, you can plug a CoCup, a customer-owned coin-operated telephone, into any line, and it'll work because the intelligence is in the actual phone itself.
[20:13.510 --> 20:15.750]  You know, it's sad.
[20:15.850 --> 20:24.270]  I only wonder, the person that comes around to collect the quarters out of the phone that you're using, I wonder when the last time that person was around.
[20:24.270 --> 20:28.410]  And they certainly will be in for a surprise if you continue to feed quarters into that thing.
[20:28.990 --> 20:29.890]  Yeah, absolutely.
[20:29.910 --> 20:31.130]  It'll be like Christmas for them.
[20:31.770 --> 20:35.090]  But, yeah, it's all part of the...
[20:35.090 --> 20:40.430]  I mean, the sort of public utility value in a payphone used to be immense.
[20:40.630 --> 20:42.670]  It was all-encompassing.
[20:42.810 --> 20:44.930]  You were never too far from one, at least in this city.
[20:45.270 --> 20:47.410]  And they were needed.
[20:47.630 --> 20:49.930]  They were something that was of value to everyone around.
[20:50.530 --> 20:55.830]  Nowadays, I think we're... I think we might be getting strange looks from people who walk past because we're actually using the payphone.
[20:56.850 --> 20:58.130]  What are you doing?
[20:58.350 --> 21:02.090]  You're talking into this device that's just attached to...
[21:02.090 --> 21:04.990]  Was it just sticking out of the ground or is it attached to a building?
[21:05.890 --> 21:07.730]  No, these are sticking out of the sidewalks.
[21:08.590 --> 21:12.490]  Which is one of the interesting things about this new story.
[21:12.490 --> 21:18.250]  I don't know if you've mentioned it yet, but the new story about the payphones being basically taken out.
[21:18.770 --> 21:28.350]  One of the arguments for getting rid of the payphones in the city was that it'll free up the sidewalk space for people with strollers and people just walking by.
[21:29.010 --> 21:30.710]  But we've been here using this thing.
[21:30.790 --> 21:32.490]  A lot of people are walking by without trouble.
[21:32.610 --> 21:33.430]  There's plenty of space here.
[21:34.090 --> 21:41.310]  And I also don't see any sidewalk space being freed up if they do put a LinkNYC thing in the place of this device.
[21:41.310 --> 21:47.750]  Honestly, it seems like the biggest bit of maintenance they have to do with these things is collect the quarters.
[21:48.390 --> 22:00.210]  And if you simply had these things installed in various places, say street corners, just subway stations, you could operate them for free.
[22:00.370 --> 22:00.830]  You could.
[22:01.730 --> 22:04.750]  LinkNYC has figured out a way to do it where you can make free phone calls.
[22:04.750 --> 22:14.290]  So why not have these things around too that can work in a power failure that aren't dependent on cell phone signals?
[22:14.450 --> 22:20.650]  Seems like, you know, it's a good thing to have just to back up the cell phones that we're constantly using.
[22:20.750 --> 22:26.150]  I bet if you got rid of the fee on that payphone right now, and how much is it charging you right now?
[22:26.870 --> 22:29.910]  Um, 25 cents by three minutes on this thing.
[22:30.230 --> 22:32.790]  25 cents for three minutes for a local call?
[22:32.950 --> 22:33.910]  Wow, that's highway robbery.
[22:34.770 --> 22:35.810]  Are you on a highway?
[22:36.970 --> 22:37.990]  Um, we are.
[22:38.150 --> 22:39.990]  We are on a boulevard, so it's boulevard robbery.
[22:40.250 --> 22:40.690]  Yeah, okay.
[22:40.910 --> 22:42.250]  Then that definitely qualifies.
[22:42.690 --> 22:45.850]  Another interesting thing about it is there are four payphones in the city.
[22:46.410 --> 22:51.350]  I don't have a location off the top of my head, but four payphones that are still in phone booths.
[22:51.350 --> 22:58.330]  And those are actually operated in, uh, I forget who's operating them, but they are actually set to allow free calls.
[22:58.430 --> 22:59.670]  You can just go in and use them for free.
[22:59.810 --> 23:02.050]  Yeah, and we're being kept standing as a historical interest.
[23:02.310 --> 23:07.330]  We're scheduled to do a show from, uh, one or two of those, depending on how many people we can cram into them.
[23:07.430 --> 23:10.990]  But, uh, there's a waiting list, so there's other radio shows doing that first.
[23:11.750 --> 23:15.530]  You know, Rob, you bring up an interesting point there, too, with regard to the phone booths.
[23:15.530 --> 23:22.550]  And, and, and you also mentioned, you know, back in the, in the nineties, et cetera, a lot of, you know, freaker activity was, would happen around payphones.
[23:22.670 --> 23:35.550]  And one of the things that I think is, is just completely missed these days is that payphones, especially back then and, and still today, provided a layer of anonymity that just doesn't exist anymore.
[23:35.550 --> 23:38.970]  I mean, you could go to a payphone and you could scan 800 numbers.
[23:38.970 --> 23:40.610]  You could make prank phone calls.
[23:40.730 --> 23:45.630]  You could call whomever you wanted, and it could not be traced back to you because you were at a payphone.
[23:46.190 --> 23:51.570]  Uh, now, anytime you use the phone, your phone number is connected to an account with Verizon or T-Mobile.
[23:51.710 --> 23:52.950]  That account is connected to you.
[23:53.050 --> 23:56.050]  A credit card, which is connected to your name, connected to your address.
[23:56.310 --> 24:00.890]  There's no way to make anonymous phone calls, uh, very easily anymore.
[24:01.110 --> 24:03.710]  I mean, way back in the day, it was very simple to just pick up a phone.
[24:03.710 --> 24:17.450]  What, what I find kind of fascinating, though, is, as an historical relic, you know, much like, I'm sure you look like, you probably look like some kind of stranded time traveler on Queens Boulevard using a payphone, uh, much to everyone's chagrin.
[24:17.570 --> 24:19.130]  That's, that's Rob's dream, by the way.
[24:19.230 --> 24:21.250]  It, it would be, absolutely, no doubt.
[24:21.610 --> 24:30.230]  Um, but if you go into, uh, a lot of private clubs in the city, like the Harvard Club, the Princeton Club.
[24:30.230 --> 24:36.850]  I was just over at the Princeton Club for a, uh, a cryptocurrency conference run by CypherTrace, uh, two weeks ago.
[24:37.530 --> 24:42.370]  And within these private clubs, they still actually have phone booths.
[24:42.870 --> 24:46.290]  And a lot of them have working payphones inside those phone booths.
[24:46.350 --> 24:48.330]  Sometimes they're, they're quote-unquote house phones.
[24:48.330 --> 24:59.950]  But, within the confines of these private clubs, there is still some kind of, uh, acknowledgement that you need this kind of privacy.
[25:00.170 --> 25:02.570]  And that a phone booth affords you that kind of privacy.
[25:02.750 --> 25:06.030]  And they still have, and many of them, working payphones.
[25:06.330 --> 25:07.150]  It's extraordinary.
[25:07.530 --> 25:09.950]  So, now, uh, this is within New York City, you're saying?
[25:10.050 --> 25:10.250]  Yes.
[25:10.510 --> 25:13.010]  And are these scheduled to be taken out as well?
[25:13.070 --> 25:14.750]  Or will they defend them to the death?
[25:14.950 --> 25:16.570]  They will probably defend them to the death.
[25:16.570 --> 25:24.070]  I think we need to visit at least one of these places and talk to the people in charge and offer our assistance if it comes down to taking up arms.
[25:24.470 --> 25:26.230]  I am happy to arrange that.
[25:26.410 --> 25:26.610]  All right.
[25:26.710 --> 25:29.210]  I have access to almost all of these private clubs in the city.
[25:29.330 --> 25:33.030]  We feel very passionately about, uh, about payphones and their, their preservation.
[25:33.350 --> 25:40.590]  There's that, I can't say the name of it, but there's a club where you actually walk through a payphone, uh, to get into the club.
[25:40.750 --> 25:43.090]  It's kind of like a speakeasy, but you're not supposed to tell anybody about it.
[25:43.690 --> 25:46.190]  Uh, so, um, yeah, those things exist.
[25:46.650 --> 25:47.990]  And, uh, we have our own...
[25:47.990 --> 25:48.530]  I'm sorry, go ahead, Rob.
[25:48.910 --> 25:52.970]  I'm sorry, Alex raises an interesting point with the, uh, with the fact of anonymity on these things.
[25:53.350 --> 25:59.290]  Um, I'm paying cash right now for a phone call, and, uh, you know, I don't, I don't think there are any cameras pointed at me.
[25:59.370 --> 25:59.910]  I might be wrong.
[26:00.290 --> 26:03.510]  But, uh, at a LinkNYC chaos, uh, there is a camera in each one.
[26:03.650 --> 26:07.430]  There are many cameras in each one, and, uh, they're constantly taking video of what's going on around them.
[26:07.430 --> 26:18.750]  Yeah, and the best example of that was, uh, the, the one-man, uh, a crime wave that took place in the East Village, where some guy took it upon himself to just smash up all the LinkNYC, uh, kiosks he could find.
[26:18.990 --> 26:26.410]  And the LinkNYC kiosk took a picture of him and basically reported him to the police, which I thought was kind of funny, but, um, also kind of scary.
[26:27.750 --> 26:34.810]  Yeah, and, uh, in, as, uh, as it goes with, uh, public utilities in this city, I mean, you used to be able to use transit, uh, just basically paying cash.
[26:35.050 --> 26:41.990]  Um, you could, you know, put your coins or dollars or whatever right in, uh, say the, the money machine on a bus, or, you know, you could get subway tokens like that.
[26:42.090 --> 26:49.330]  But now it's all Metro cards, which require you to get them from a machine that, uh, you swipe your card through, and you swipe your credit card through, and it takes your picture.
[26:49.650 --> 26:54.310]  Like, there really, there really isn't much in the way of truly anonymous, uh, public utility anymore in the city.
[26:54.310 --> 26:56.410]  But, you know, people embrace that.
[26:56.650 --> 26:58.810]  They embrace the new technology, the convenience.
[26:58.970 --> 27:02.810]  They don't seem to care about the tracking and the surveillance.
[27:03.370 --> 27:14.450]  And I wonder if, um, if, if we're just proving ourselves to be behind the times by, by hearkening back to those old days where you could do things anonymously, you could pay by cash, you weren't tracked constantly.
[27:14.890 --> 27:17.150]  Uh, you know, is it a, is it a losing battle?
[27:17.650 --> 27:18.350]  It might be.
[27:18.530 --> 27:20.170]  Uh, there's something I need to do here for old time's sake.
[27:20.310 --> 27:20.470]  Hang on.
[27:21.830 --> 27:22.230]  Okay.
[27:22.450 --> 27:22.990]  Wait a minute.
[27:23.150 --> 27:23.490]  Hold on.
[27:23.590 --> 27:24.290]  Hold on a second.
[27:24.310 --> 27:29.610]  And what, that was a red box, uh, that was a quarter going into a, but, but you had a co-cut, so that shouldn't happen.
[27:29.830 --> 27:31.110]  You want to explain what you just did?
[27:32.150 --> 27:35.210]  Uh, what I, what I just did is just relive a bit of my youth.
[27:35.570 --> 27:49.830]  And, uh, no, that, that is a red box tone, which, uh, back in the days when these were basically dumb terminals connected to a more complex system at the phone company, um, that tone was the tone that the phone itself would generate to let the phone system know that you'd put a quarter in.
[27:49.830 --> 28:04.970]  Uh, so, uh, enterprising individuals, uh, would, uh, find a way to record or generate these tones and just play them directly into the phone's mouthpiece, which would make the phone system think that, uh, you put in, say, a quarter or a dime or a nickel,
[28:05.210 --> 28:08.070]  and, uh, it would credit your call accordingly.
[28:08.070 --> 28:18.410]  And, and that's literally all it took to bypass the billing system were those tones, red box tones, they're called, uh, one for a nickel, two for a dime, five for a quarter.
[28:19.090 --> 28:24.430]  And, um, yeah, I, I do remember the days, uh, I never actually red boxed myself.
[28:24.430 --> 28:27.150]  I, I, I did my phone freaking in different ways.
[28:27.270 --> 28:43.930]  Uh, but a lot of people did, they would hold, uh, a little, um, uh, radio shack tone dialers that we printed the plans for how to convert them, uh, uh, into, um, uh, basically, methods to make super long distance calls to other countries, they'd hold them up and press the button a whole lot of times.
[28:44.130 --> 28:45.590]  And you would hear those tones.
[28:45.750 --> 28:48.130]  They would go faster than a quarter could ever possibly go in.
[28:48.730 --> 28:50.290]  And, uh, you know, four or $5.
[28:50.750 --> 29:05.090]  And it was, uh, it was a big deal to the bell system because basically every single payphone in the country, uh, was, was, uh, thwartable by this very simple method of getting past their billing system, just playing the tones.
[29:05.530 --> 29:07.970]  They had to, they had to redesign all of them.
[29:08.130 --> 29:11.190]  They, they still hold a grudge, uh, towards, uh, phone freaks for that.
[29:11.490 --> 29:17.370]  But my God, what a poorly designed system where that's all it takes to, uh, to, to bypass things.
[29:17.650 --> 29:21.430]  I've got such a great, you know, nostalgic red box story about that too.
[29:21.550 --> 29:23.810]  Back in 1994 on Thanksgiving day.
[29:24.090 --> 29:24.230]  Careful.
[29:24.450 --> 29:26.730]  I don't know that, uh, has, has the, uh, statute of limitations.
[29:27.030 --> 29:27.630]  As a, you're a lawyer.
[29:27.810 --> 29:29.370]  So you're sure about that.
[29:29.370 --> 29:29.690]  Absolutely.
[29:29.690 --> 29:32.570]  But what about the murder that, oh, well, let's start, don't mention that.
[29:32.830 --> 29:33.530]  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
[29:33.610 --> 29:33.830]  Okay.
[29:34.190 --> 29:35.050]  This is just...
[29:35.050 --> 29:35.090]  Not on the air.
[29:35.290 --> 29:35.730]  Not on the air.
[29:36.010 --> 29:36.130]  Right.
[29:36.390 --> 29:36.650]  Got it.
[29:36.790 --> 29:44.290]  So the, uh, yeah, so that statute of limitations has got to be six years at the very most, if it, if it would amount to grand larceny, which it probably did.
[29:44.570 --> 29:52.690]  But in any event, 1994, Thanksgiving day, I remember I skateboarded up to the local shopping center where there was a wall bounds where I lived on Long Island.
[29:53.170 --> 29:55.410]  And I went to the bank of pay phones over there.
[29:55.610 --> 30:10.810]  And I had tracked down a telephone number in Austin, Texas, that I believed belonged to one of my favorite authors at the time, a guy who wrote a notorious anthology of hacker culture called the hacker crackdown, Bruce Sterling.
[30:11.230 --> 30:14.290]  And I just called him up on Thanksgiving day.
[30:14.550 --> 30:18.570]  You called Bruce Sterling at his home on Thanksgiving day from a pay phone.
[30:18.810 --> 30:19.750]  Using a red box.
[30:20.150 --> 30:21.090]  Indeed I did.
[30:21.330 --> 30:25.310]  And he answered the phone and he had a bit of a Southern draw, all.
[30:25.750 --> 30:29.270]  And, uh, and I asked him if it was Bruce Sterling.
[30:29.350 --> 30:35.110]  And I told him my hacker handle at the time, and then I was red boxing a call to him and his family was with him over there.
[30:35.230 --> 30:43.250]  But we spent over two hours on the phone, just talking and, you know, chewing the fat, talking about hacker culture.
[30:43.490 --> 30:50.130]  You took him away from his family on Thanksgiving day for two hours to talk to a random kid from Long Island calling from a pay phone.
[30:50.310 --> 30:56.750]  Let me tell you, he seemed very happy to have the distraction by having a hacker locate him, call him, red box the call.
[30:56.870 --> 30:58.390]  He found the whole thing really fascinating.
[30:58.910 --> 31:03.030]  Shortly thereafter, I sent him, uh, almost all of the copies of the books that I had.
[31:03.150 --> 31:05.730]  He autographed them, sent them back to my home address.
[31:05.850 --> 31:07.370]  We're still friends to this day.
[31:07.850 --> 31:10.290]  If he's still friends with his family, that's what I want to know.
[31:10.470 --> 31:12.010]  Uh, two hours on Thanksgiving.
[31:12.370 --> 31:12.610]  Okay.
[31:12.910 --> 31:13.290]  I do.
[31:13.470 --> 31:14.010]  They're very patient.
[31:14.270 --> 31:15.570]  I do believe he got divorced.
[31:16.070 --> 31:18.850]  Uh, not, not, um, shortly thereafter.
[31:19.150 --> 31:19.610]  Not shortly thereafter.
[31:19.670 --> 31:21.490]  I don't think it was on account of that.
[31:21.490 --> 31:22.310]  But, but that's amazing.
[31:22.470 --> 31:24.590]  You could just do that back then.
[31:24.930 --> 31:29.670]  Uh, and, um, yeah, he knew you were calling from, from a red box, using a red box.
[31:29.790 --> 31:29.850]  Yeah.
[31:29.870 --> 31:31.830]  I mean, he could hear the tones coming through.
[31:31.990 --> 31:33.990]  He found the whole thing just, you know, absolutely hilarious.
[31:34.090 --> 31:35.050]  Just not aiding and abetting.
[31:35.450 --> 31:38.750]  Uh, I don't think so because he, he wasn't, he wasn't encouraging me.
[31:38.870 --> 31:44.030]  He didn't give me any, um, uh, any ideas, any, uh, schematics for the red box.
[31:44.250 --> 31:47.070]  We used to get, we used to get all kinds of calls at 2600.
[31:47.430 --> 31:55.070]  Uh, I don't think most of them were, were paid for, uh, conference calls, teleconference calls from all around the world with 30 people on them.
[31:55.350 --> 31:59.110]  And sometimes they leave messages on our answer machine that lasted a good half hour.
[31:59.590 --> 32:03.230]  Uh, so yeah, uh, we, uh, we, we know what it's like.
[32:03.450 --> 32:10.190]  And, uh, we remember that fondly these days, people, they rarely make phone calls, even though they can do it for free now.
[32:10.310 --> 32:13.250]  So that's, uh, a bit of magic that's been, that's been lost.
[32:14.130 --> 32:17.890]  I just wanted to provide some context for our listeners.
[32:18.290 --> 32:27.110]  Um, for anyone curious, I'm reading from, uh, Wikipedia, but it's, uh, it's kind of fascinating just to track the evolution by 1902.
[32:27.110 --> 32:43.130]  There were 81,000 pay phones in the U S and, um, this, the, uh, number as far as the peak is contested exactly when, but it's, uh, about 2.6 million pay phones in 1995 is, is the estimate.
[32:43.310 --> 32:46.310]  Uh, there's another number 2.2 million in 2000.
[32:46.710 --> 32:50.090]  And then, um, what would happen?
[32:50.230 --> 32:50.570]  Let's see.
[32:50.670 --> 32:51.350]  Oh, I'm sorry.
[32:51.630 --> 33:02.950]  Uh, in 2018, the, the fast forward, uh, it's estimated that there were, um, uh, precipitous decline, uh, about a hundred thousand in the U S remaining.
[33:03.510 --> 33:10.130]  That's as of 2018, uh, with a roughly one fifth of that in New York city.
[33:10.250 --> 33:12.230]  You see, I don't get why you have to get rid of them.
[33:12.590 --> 33:19.370]  Uh, when we were driving, um, uh, up to Northern Quebec, uh, we noticed every small town has at least one phone booth.
[33:19.710 --> 33:22.370]  And if someone's not using it, you know what, it's not going to break down.
[33:22.530 --> 33:24.310]  It's just going to be there if you need it.
[33:24.450 --> 33:25.950]  What, what is so wrong with that?
[33:25.950 --> 33:27.170]  I agree.
[33:27.470 --> 33:34.210]  I think it's the, you know, everybody, we, we like have a certain nostalgia for them, but nobody wants to take care of them.
[33:34.350 --> 33:36.390]  And I think that's the real crux of it.
[33:36.530 --> 33:43.530]  Even if you take the, uh, for profit mechanism out of the equation and, but at the same time, I'm with you.
[33:43.610 --> 33:50.470]  I have this feeling that someone should take an interest or there should be a way people can channel that energy.
[33:50.610 --> 33:57.130]  And one of the things, I mean, just mapping and finding strategic spots, like you're, uh, remarking from our travels.
[33:57.290 --> 34:10.050]  I, that's a brilliant thing to just have them in a few places where they're really helpful, um, in the middle of, you know, uh, a road trip where you need to stop and, and get some kind of mechanical help or something.
[34:10.250 --> 34:12.490]  Those are, those are smart ways to handle it.
[34:12.710 --> 34:19.170]  I was also thinking in the, just in the midst of the conversation, the last couple of minutes, what if people could adopt them or something?
[34:19.170 --> 34:26.650]  But again, it's the network itself, like how it's structured and, and taking care of the sort of behind the scenes stuff.
[34:26.890 --> 34:27.570]  I'll make it simple.
[34:27.810 --> 34:40.130]  It's a requirement for the local phone company to offer one phone in a town, in a village that, uh, has to be able to at least access local areas.
[34:40.390 --> 34:41.710]  One phone, that's it.
[34:41.830 --> 34:43.150]  It's there for emergencies.
[34:43.170 --> 34:44.410]  You have to maintain it.
[34:44.510 --> 34:45.670]  You have to make sure it's, it's there.
[34:45.910 --> 34:51.630]  And for that, you get to, uh, to sell the really profitable products to people in, in that area.
[34:51.870 --> 34:54.730]  I think that's, that's something that phone companies could certainly afford.
[34:54.830 --> 34:59.130]  And we might not see the immediate benefit of it now, but we will at some point.
[34:59.230 --> 35:00.670]  And that's when it really pays off.
[35:00.830 --> 35:01.070]  Yeah.
[35:01.090 --> 35:09.650]  It would be so cool if people took a certain amount of pride or there was like a competitive aspect where every town was very proud of their, uh, their payphone.
[35:09.650 --> 35:17.910]  And in some way that, uh, competition allowed them access to whatever, uh, hands or however the, the network gets operated.
[35:18.010 --> 35:18.010]  Yeah.
[35:18.010 --> 35:22.130]  You could design it in a particular way and people would come from miles around to take pictures of your phone.
[35:22.330 --> 35:23.890]  The app and it absolutely.
[35:24.230 --> 35:27.850]  And that then becomes a part of, of your community.
[35:27.850 --> 35:31.150]  But there's just someone, so many creative ways.
[35:31.150 --> 35:34.390]  I think that we're just not, we're not seeing it.
[35:34.390 --> 35:40.430]  Uh, and I think when they're gone, that's when, um, these good ideas are too late, you know?
[35:40.490 --> 35:41.170]  Yeah, absolutely.
[35:41.710 --> 35:43.530]  Hey, uh, Rob, you're still there.
[35:43.630 --> 35:45.030]  You've been feeding quarters into this thing, right?
[35:45.630 --> 35:46.310]  I have been.
[35:46.430 --> 35:46.530]  Yeah.
[35:47.030 --> 35:49.910]  You know, it's, uh, it's happily taking them and, uh, it's still working.
[35:50.030 --> 35:50.950]  How do, how do we sound?
[35:51.150 --> 35:51.930]  You sound pretty good.
[35:52.090 --> 35:55.490]  I mean, you don't sound great, but you also don't sound as lousy as a cell phone.
[35:56.350 --> 35:56.750]  Yeah.
[35:56.750 --> 35:59.110]  You sound a little raspy, a little muffled.
[35:59.310 --> 36:02.130]  What's really cool is that you can hear traffic in the background.
[36:02.330 --> 36:03.410]  Occasionally you hear a car horn.
[36:03.570 --> 36:04.890]  On cell phones, you don't.
[36:04.990 --> 36:06.010]  That gets filtered out.
[36:06.070 --> 36:08.570]  And I think that's, that's a, a, a, a real loss.
[36:08.970 --> 36:14.470]  Uh, one thing I'd like to, uh, to try though, uh, the payphone next to you, it's not being used right now, right?
[36:14.970 --> 36:15.190]  Correct.
[36:15.470 --> 36:15.730]  Okay.
[36:15.770 --> 36:18.550]  I'm going to try to call that because I happen to have the number for that payphone.
[36:18.690 --> 36:23.530]  I don't expect it to answer because payphones, for some reason, don't take incoming calls.
[36:23.650 --> 36:34.110]  That's an, uh, another ill-advised policy where somehow in the fight against drugs, uh, that feature was turned off so that people couldn't call a payphone to, ostensibly make a drug deal.
[36:34.390 --> 36:43.490]  Uh, and also the phone companies were in favor of it because calling a payphone didn't result in any, um, uh, any profit for them that no money was being put into the payphones.
[36:43.630 --> 36:50.290]  So I'm going to make that another stipulation of my rule of having one phone per village, have that phone also take incoming calls.
[36:50.330 --> 36:57.930]  That way somebody, you know, whose, um, cell phone is no longer working or has lost their phone can receive a call at that particular location.
[36:57.930 --> 37:00.590]  If they, if they arrange with somebody, I'm going to try.
[37:00.590 --> 37:04.510]  So, I've got, uh, gear restationed up at phone, ready to pick it up if indeed it should ring.
[37:04.570 --> 37:05.070]  If it rings.
[37:05.150 --> 37:06.150]  Okay, but it probably won't.
[37:06.230 --> 37:07.270]  It probably will do something weird.
[37:07.790 --> 37:09.150]  Um, so, do we have a dial tone?
[37:09.430 --> 37:10.010]  Okay, we do.
[37:10.130 --> 37:10.950]  We're going to call this number.
[37:13.510 --> 37:15.950]  And I guess people can figure out where you are if they can decode this.
[37:21.400 --> 37:22.160]  Here we go.
[37:27.690 --> 37:28.370]  It's ringing.
[37:32.490 --> 37:32.970]  Wow.
[37:36.500 --> 37:37.980]  That's the magical sound.
[37:38.280 --> 37:42.100]  But, but it, it, is it a carrier or is it a, it sounds like a carrier.
[37:42.120 --> 37:43.360]  Can't somebody speak to this thing?
[37:44.080 --> 37:45.480]  Nobody can whistle back?
[37:45.820 --> 37:46.920]  What's wrong with, oh.
[37:48.880 --> 37:49.360]  Wow.
[37:54.100 --> 37:57.160]  She actually picked up the phone, but I don't think it's, it's connected.
[37:57.320 --> 38:02.420]  I think it's, oh, wise guy with the, with the Captain Crunch whistle there.
[38:02.820 --> 38:03.040]  Okay.
[38:03.900 --> 38:04.220]  All right.
[38:04.300 --> 38:05.900]  Well, that, uh, that clearly didn't work.
[38:06.020 --> 38:08.140]  So, um, yeah, they don't take incoming phone calls.
[38:08.220 --> 38:08.560]  Thank you, Kyle.
[38:09.180 --> 38:13.460]  Um, what was interesting is that it, the, the, the ringer in this phone actually rang.
[38:13.960 --> 38:17.640]  Um, so, like, we could hear it, uh, ringing and, uh, and pick it up.
[38:17.800 --> 38:20.760]  But, then, uh, all Gila got was, uh, you got silence on there?
[38:21.180 --> 38:22.300]  It's complete silence.
[38:22.760 --> 38:23.120]  Yeah.
[38:23.320 --> 38:24.300]  That's, that's to be expected.
[38:24.640 --> 38:29.080]  There were other times, though, when you could call these phones and you'd get computers that would tell you how much money was in them.
[38:29.160 --> 38:36.940]  You could actually listen to, um, the, the street sounds from the microphone that was actually in the phone, uh, and get other, other data as well.
[38:37.040 --> 38:40.300]  You could even change things if you figured out the, uh, the right access codes.
[38:40.580 --> 38:42.560]  Um, we'd like to open up our phone lines.
[38:42.560 --> 38:51.260]  It's 212-209-2877 for people to call in with memories of, of payphone escapades that they might have, uh, been a part of.
[38:51.460 --> 38:54.460]  What's the most memorable thing to happen to you with a payphone?
[38:54.800 --> 38:56.160]  Call us, tell us your stories.
[38:56.340 --> 38:59.220]  We also would like to hear from people who worked on payphones.
[38:59.700 --> 39:05.040]  We've actually spoken quite recently to someone who cleaned them, uh, on Long Island.
[39:05.160 --> 39:06.860]  That was, uh, several episodes ago.
[39:07.400 --> 39:11.900]  Um, but if you've worked on these, if, uh, you have sort of a perspective.
[39:12.560 --> 39:14.760]  From behind the scenes, please share your stories.
[39:15.360 --> 39:26.820]  And, um, we're going to do our part, I think, in the weeks and months ahead to document this, this transformation and to, uh, to share our, more of these and other stories about them.
[39:26.960 --> 39:28.020]  Let's, uh, take a phone call.
[39:28.100 --> 39:28.440]  Good evening.
[39:28.600 --> 39:29.340]  You're on off the hook.
[39:30.640 --> 39:31.340]  Hi, how are you?
[39:31.480 --> 39:32.580]  Hi, can you speak up a little bit?
[39:33.180 --> 39:33.920]  Yes, how are you doing?
[39:34.120 --> 39:34.960]  Pretty good, pretty good.
[39:35.080 --> 39:36.220]  Do you have a payphone story for us?
[39:37.920 --> 39:40.880]  Man, listen, um, yeah, it's an error that we'll be missing.
[39:40.880 --> 39:44.940]  I remember, um, you know, because I'm, I'm like 40 years old, so I grew up in the 80s.
[39:44.960 --> 39:53.240]  So I remember when I had to call, make phone calls from the, from the house phone, they had that older dial tone with that, um, that, that, that scratchy background.
[39:53.240 --> 39:53.780]  Oh, wow.
[39:53.940 --> 39:54.600]  Yeah, I remember that.
[39:55.040 --> 39:55.820]  Yeah, they changed that.
[39:56.020 --> 39:59.620]  The one that's out now has been around for like 30 years for a long time.
[39:59.720 --> 40:01.140]  They did that over like in the late 80s.
[40:01.880 --> 40:09.240]  Um, I'm gonna take you back to like 2006 when they, they hooked up those, um, those computers and those payphones.
[40:09.560 --> 40:11.020]  I forgot what company it was.
[40:11.380 --> 40:12.380]  And it was short-lived.
[40:13.620 --> 40:14.860]  What, what did the computers do?
[40:15.860 --> 40:17.220]  You could, I mean, you could go online.
[40:17.820 --> 40:18.480]  Oh, I see.
[40:18.560 --> 40:18.740]  Okay.
[40:18.920 --> 40:21.260]  They had some, they had some like in Midtown and stuff like that.
[40:21.320 --> 40:22.160]  It wasn't every payphone.
[40:22.480 --> 40:22.760]  Uh-huh.
[40:22.760 --> 40:23.880]  Yeah, but, yeah.
[40:24.120 --> 40:25.580]  They, they tried that a number of times.
[40:25.740 --> 40:26.480]  That never quite worked.
[40:26.620 --> 40:35.140]  And in a, a number of different countries, um, uh, and a lot of them used, they were called like multi-phones and text, uh, phones.
[40:35.280 --> 40:36.980]  They had the keyboard and, and stuff like that.
[40:37.120 --> 40:48.980]  But a lot of them used ISDN and other forms of connectivity that quickly fell out of favor and were hard to make, uh, maintain at least, uh, financially.
[40:50.980 --> 41:00.140]  And another thing I would say is, um, I think, um, it's wonderful that you can, you can make a long distance call through Facebook and WhatsApp, but you still get that echo.
[41:00.440 --> 41:00.800]  Yeah.
[41:00.880 --> 41:10.500]  It's very, it's very hard to, I mean, no matter how advanced, um, I guess the, um, the cell phone airway system can, can, can get, I mean, it's very hard to bypass.
[41:10.500 --> 41:22.100]  Yeah, you, you still get, like, you know, you're calling several hundred miles away, like overseas, and you can't, it's hard to bypass that, that, um, that, that, that echo.
[41:22.320 --> 41:25.040]  Yeah, you get the echo even if you're calling somebody standing right next to you.
[41:25.180 --> 41:28.600]  It's, uh, it, it's part of the limitations of the technology so far.
[41:28.700 --> 41:31.960]  Maybe, uh, maybe that will improve in, in, uh, years ahead.
[41:32.280 --> 41:33.240]  Let's take another phone call.
[41:33.320 --> 41:33.680]  Good evening.
[41:33.940 --> 41:34.560]  You're on off the hook.
[41:34.680 --> 41:35.580]  You have a pay fund story for us?
[41:38.120 --> 41:38.480]  Hello?
[41:40.500 --> 41:41.100]  Anyone there?
[41:42.100 --> 41:42.880]  Going once?
[41:43.080 --> 41:43.420]  Gone?
[41:43.620 --> 41:44.320]  Okay, let's go over here.
[41:44.400 --> 41:44.720]  Good evening.
[41:44.860 --> 41:45.580]  You're on off the hook.
[41:46.680 --> 41:47.740]  Hello, uh, Emanuel.
[41:47.980 --> 41:49.500]  Hi, you have a pay fund story for us?
[41:50.060 --> 41:54.120]  Actually, it's, it's not, but I, it's something unusual I think we'd like to hear about.
[41:54.220 --> 41:55.940]  It's a question I have about my service.
[41:56.820 --> 41:57.720]  Okay, make it quick.
[41:58.800 --> 41:59.200]  Okay.
[41:59.820 --> 42:02.580]  I have a, a company that uses Verizon.
[42:02.980 --> 42:04.260]  It's a local company.
[42:04.440 --> 42:06.560]  I pay them cash every month.
[42:06.680 --> 42:09.100]  It's a low amount of money because I don't have internet service.
[42:09.700 --> 42:14.120]  It's on, he punches my, my, my credit card into a computer.
[42:14.640 --> 42:17.700]  And, but the thing is, I have to give him my phone number.
[42:17.980 --> 42:22.780]  He does not have my name associated with my account.
[42:23.260 --> 42:24.740]  And he won't do it.
[42:24.860 --> 42:27.240]  So I have unwanted anonymity.
[42:27.360 --> 42:28.720]  Have you ever heard of that before?
[42:29.740 --> 42:30.780]  Unwanted anonymity.
[42:30.920 --> 42:32.760]  That's, uh, it's a nice concept.
[42:32.800 --> 42:33.820]  I'll give you that.
[42:33.820 --> 42:36.580]  Um, but no, I, I have not heard of that before.
[42:36.780 --> 42:45.460]  I think anybody in the studio has, but yeah, I, I pay him the 30 bucks for, for just straight flip phone service with voice and voicemail only.
[42:45.640 --> 42:45.900]  Uh huh.
[42:46.280 --> 42:49.760]  And, uh, and he, he doesn't want my name.
[42:51.000 --> 42:51.760]  No, that's good.
[42:51.760 --> 42:53.320]  I mean, I would hold onto that.
[42:53.420 --> 42:57.000]  That's, that's, that's a rare thing to be able to get something anonymously these days.
[42:57.200 --> 42:58.660]  So anytime you can do that, it's a win.
[42:59.620 --> 42:59.980]  Yeah.
[43:00.320 --> 43:00.520]  Thanks.
[43:00.600 --> 43:01.200]  Thanks for that call.
[43:01.320 --> 43:02.980]  Let's, uh, see if we can squeeze in one more.
[43:02.980 --> 43:03.320]  Good evening.
[43:03.540 --> 43:04.280]  You're on off the hook.
[43:06.180 --> 43:06.860]  Speak up.
[43:08.160 --> 43:08.840]  Anyone there?
[43:09.500 --> 43:09.900]  Okay.
[43:10.200 --> 43:10.960]  Let's try over here.
[43:11.060 --> 43:11.360]  Good evening.
[43:11.480 --> 43:12.160]  You're on off the hook.
[43:13.600 --> 43:14.000]  Hello?
[43:14.180 --> 43:14.500]  Yes.
[43:14.560 --> 43:14.740]  Go ahead.
[43:14.800 --> 43:15.100]  Speak up.
[43:15.720 --> 43:16.880]  Oh, okay.
[43:16.960 --> 43:17.200]  Great.
[43:17.760 --> 43:31.300]  Um, I, uh, when my daughter was like a, a teenager and, and was like getting lost, you know, would go to school and then not come home, tell me, oh, my cell phone, you know, it was dead.
[43:31.500 --> 43:33.340]  And I said, why didn't you make a collect call?
[43:33.780 --> 43:35.120]  And she said, what's that?
[43:35.520 --> 43:36.220]  Oh my God.
[43:36.300 --> 43:36.820]  What's that?
[43:38.320 --> 43:39.160]  What's, wow.
[43:39.300 --> 43:41.780]  Well, you know, you, you can't call a cell phone collect, can you?
[43:42.080 --> 43:44.800]  So, uh, people might not even know what that is.
[43:45.300 --> 43:56.900]  Or even, well, I have a landline, but the idea of picking up a, a, uh, going to a phone booth and making us a collect call was crazy.
[43:58.000 --> 43:58.120]  Yeah.
[43:58.340 --> 43:58.500]  Yeah.
[43:58.660 --> 44:00.520]  But that used to be, that used to be the norm.
[44:00.780 --> 44:02.260]  Uh, that's how you would get in touch with people.
[44:02.400 --> 44:03.640]  And, and you raise a great point.
[44:03.860 --> 44:14.600]  Uh, the excuse that your cell phone died is used by so many people or it was off, but there's no excuse for not going to a pay phone because they're everywhere and, and checking in.
[44:14.820 --> 44:17.480]  And now that excuse is going away.
[44:17.680 --> 44:19.500]  You know, that, that, that, that option is going away.
[44:19.960 --> 44:20.360]  Yeah.
[44:20.760 --> 44:21.120]  Okay.
[44:21.120 --> 44:22.220]  Thanks for the great show.
[44:22.400 --> 44:22.720]  Thank you.
[44:22.860 --> 44:23.380]  Thank you for calling.
[44:23.900 --> 44:25.140]  And, uh, you aren't off the hook.
[44:25.320 --> 44:25.820]  Go ahead.
[44:27.500 --> 44:28.100]  Speak up.
[44:30.120 --> 44:30.680]  Anyone there?
[44:30.760 --> 44:31.140]  No one's there.
[44:31.240 --> 44:31.440]  Okay.
[44:31.520 --> 44:32.480]  Let's go over here.
[44:32.900 --> 44:33.580]  Anybody there?
[44:33.660 --> 44:33.980]  Good evening.
[44:34.620 --> 44:35.600]  No, no one's definitely there.
[44:35.980 --> 44:36.340]  Okay.
[44:36.360 --> 44:41.640]  I think what happens is the phones, they, they, we haven't fixed this yet where they just keep going from one place to another.
[44:41.780 --> 44:46.200]  They, they hop down our line and then they go somewhere else to someplace.
[44:46.240 --> 44:47.320]  I don't even know where it is.
[44:47.860 --> 44:49.800]  Um, we're going to try, let's try one more.
[44:49.900 --> 44:50.240]  Good evening.
[44:50.240 --> 44:51.380]  You're on off the hook.
[44:52.780 --> 44:55.660]  Hey, I just had a quick story about calling pay phones in the nineties.
[44:55.820 --> 44:56.020]  Okay.
[44:56.500 --> 44:56.800]  Oh yeah.
[44:57.260 --> 45:05.680]  Um, so there was a pay phone by the park near my house and from my friend's house, we used to be able to see when people were walking by or whatever.
[45:05.680 --> 45:06.920]  So we would call a pay phone.
[45:07.080 --> 45:07.500]  Oh, wow.
[45:07.620 --> 45:08.020]  Frank them.
[45:08.280 --> 45:08.560]  Uh huh.
[45:09.060 --> 45:11.200]  Um, so it's really interesting that they turned off that functionality.
[45:11.380 --> 45:12.220]  I didn't know that it happened.
[45:12.500 --> 45:14.580]  You know, it was probably in 96 or so.
[45:14.780 --> 45:18.540]  That brings back such memories because, uh, we used to do something like that.
[45:18.540 --> 45:26.800]  Um, out at, uh, the university I went to, uh, there were, there were a bank of, um, of pay phones, uh, downstairs in the student union building.
[45:27.220 --> 45:29.920]  And, uh, this was the early days of, of personal computers.
[45:30.100 --> 45:37.020]  We programmed the computer to call each of those pay phones for one ring and then call a different one for one ring.
[45:37.020 --> 45:43.760]  And then we'd just go downstairs and watch people trying to run between one pay phone and the other, never quite succeeding in answering the phone.
[45:43.880 --> 45:45.040]  But boy, that was fun.
[45:46.060 --> 45:46.880]  Yeah, that's great.
[45:47.180 --> 45:47.380]  Wow.
[45:47.480 --> 45:47.620]  Okay.
[45:47.680 --> 45:48.400]  Thank you for that memory.
[45:49.060 --> 45:57.880]  I used to, I used to have that same, uh, pastime where like back in, back in the old, old days on BBSs, uh, there would circulate text files of just phone numbers to pay phones all over the world.
[45:58.080 --> 45:59.580]  Later websites started doing that.
[45:59.700 --> 46:08.020]  And if you were bored and you were home and there was nothing else going on, you could always just call a random pay phone somewhere until someone answered and you'd be speaking to someone in a different state, in a different country.
[46:08.360 --> 46:10.900]  And, uh, you could just, uh, have a chat with a stranger like that.
[46:10.960 --> 46:11.720]  And it was a lot of fun.
[46:11.860 --> 46:18.080]  You know, if you listen to one of the early radio shows I did, uh, out on Long Island, uh, there's a show called Voice of Long Island.
[46:18.480 --> 46:25.200]  And I know there were at least a couple of episodes where we called random pay phones, uh, in New York City and other places and just let it ring.
[46:25.200 --> 46:28.260]  And they'd ring forever until somebody picked up that they'd never timed out.
[46:28.540 --> 46:34.100]  And we'd wind up speaking to people live on the air from, uh, from various parts of the country.
[46:34.480 --> 46:37.020]  And they almost always have something interesting to say.
[46:37.360 --> 46:41.980]  Sometimes it was a weird conversation, but it was a very unique way of reaching out to people.
[46:42.220 --> 46:45.420]  And, uh, I, you know, I, I really miss those days.
[46:45.940 --> 46:48.140]  There was even that very famous one in the Mojave Desert.
[46:48.480 --> 46:49.500]  Um, Oh yes.
[46:49.700 --> 46:51.340]  Like a basically cult build up around it.
[46:51.400 --> 46:52.220]  The Mojave phone booth.
[46:52.340 --> 46:56.520]  It's worth, uh, doing some searches on that, uh, on that term to learn more about that place.
[46:56.660 --> 46:57.920]  And they ripped that one out too, right?
[46:58.780 --> 46:59.920]  That one's gone, I believe.
[46:59.920 --> 47:01.340]  Yeah, that one's also gone.
[47:01.560 --> 47:04.180]  You know, what do we, what do we gain from getting rid of something like that?
[47:04.260 --> 47:05.120]  I just, I just don't know.
[47:05.340 --> 47:06.120]  Let's take one more phone call.
[47:06.200 --> 47:06.500]  Good evening.
[47:06.700 --> 47:07.460]  You're on Off The Hook.
[47:07.580 --> 47:07.820]  Go ahead.
[47:09.320 --> 47:10.260]  Hi, good evening.
[47:11.040 --> 47:18.040]  Um, I remember in the 50s driving a pin through the cord of a payphone and grounding it to the box to get a dial tone.
[47:18.240 --> 47:20.080]  Oh, that was, that's the war games trick.
[47:20.160 --> 47:20.520]  Yes.
[47:20.720 --> 47:23.780]  Because, because payphones didn't used to be dial tone first.
[47:23.940 --> 47:30.320]  What that meant is you pick it up and it would be dead until you put a dime in and then you get a, you get a dial tone.
[47:30.400 --> 47:32.600]  But you could thwart that by doing what, what, what, what you did.
[47:33.680 --> 47:42.160]  I also remember jamming a piece of paper up in the coin return slot and coming back days later and getting five or $10 worth of change.
[47:42.500 --> 47:42.900]  Wow.
[47:43.480 --> 47:45.620]  The statute of limitations run out on that, right, Alex?
[47:45.860 --> 47:47.080]  I would certainly think so.
[47:47.200 --> 47:48.160]  I was the 50s.
[47:48.300 --> 47:49.840]  We, um, we were wild then.
[47:49.960 --> 47:50.260]  Uh-huh.
[47:50.700 --> 47:55.820]  You know, uh, we, we, we now have a payphone booth with a phone from the 1950s.
[47:55.820 --> 47:57.380]  So it could be the very one you used.
[47:58.360 --> 47:59.380]  It was in Pittsburgh.
[48:00.020 --> 48:00.240]  Okay.
[48:00.480 --> 48:01.780]  Well, you know, it's, it's possible.
[48:02.100 --> 48:02.500]  Thanks.
[48:02.680 --> 48:03.380]  Uh, thanks for that memory.
[48:03.640 --> 48:06.220]  Oh, we'll have to check the pedigree for...
[48:06.220 --> 48:06.900]  Yeah, absolutely.
[48:07.220 --> 48:09.020]  There are so many stories out there.
[48:09.140 --> 48:11.440]  People have, you won't have these kinds of stories...
[48:11.440 --> 48:11.760]  Endless.
[48:11.900 --> 48:12.780]  ...with your first iPhone.
[48:13.040 --> 48:13.420]  I'm sorry.
[48:13.540 --> 48:14.640]  It's just not the same thing.
[48:14.760 --> 48:20.580]  This, it's an amazingly social, uh, uh, occurrence to use a payphone, to have payphone booths.
[48:20.840 --> 48:22.820]  We should not just discard them.
[48:22.900 --> 48:24.180]  I think we will regret this.
[48:24.760 --> 48:30.760]  Yeah, we don't need a LinkNYC kiosk where I'm standing right now because, uh, Gila, how many LinkNYC kiosks can we see from where we're standing?
[48:31.020 --> 48:34.020]  We can see three from where we're standing across the street.
[48:34.160 --> 48:34.300]  Ugh.
[48:34.540 --> 48:36.540]  Have, have people been using them?
[48:37.640 --> 48:41.740]  Uh, not that, uh, not that I can see, but, uh, the advertisers have certainly been using them.
[48:42.420 --> 48:43.700]  Yes, that's certainly true.
[48:44.540 --> 48:44.900]  Wow.
[48:45.260 --> 48:52.740]  Um, yeah, but the thing is, the phone you're using right now, I gotta say, it's a bit of a ripoff, uh, 25 cents for a couple of minutes.
[48:52.740 --> 48:59.280]  Uh, that, you know, uh, a few years ago, I remember Verizon had 25 cents unlimited local.
[48:59.620 --> 49:01.100]  You could stay on for days.
[49:01.120 --> 49:03.240]  And I think that's, you know, more realistic.
[49:03.420 --> 49:11.120]  Of course, back in the old days, it was very expensive, but that's to be expected for technology that was more primitive.
[49:11.300 --> 49:16.880]  And, uh, uh, phone calls were expensive back then, especially coast to coast or international.
[49:17.380 --> 49:23.060]  But what's interesting about that too, is this, uh, this phone I'm using, I tested it out before, before we did the show to make sure it still worked.
[49:23.240 --> 49:29.220]  And I tested it out with my, with my cell phone, which, uh, still has a phone number out in Long Island where I lived about a hundred years ago.
[49:29.660 --> 49:35.800]  And you only get two minutes for a quarter calling, uh, calling Long Island from this thing, as opposed to three minutes calling, uh, Brooklyn.
[49:35.800 --> 49:37.700]  So, uh, it's interesting.
[49:37.860 --> 49:42.580]  These phones, even though in real life, there's no such thing as a local or long distance call anymore, it's all the same.
[49:42.840 --> 49:46.320]  On these phones, they're still going to price gouge you for, uh, further distance calls.
[49:46.540 --> 49:47.900]  Well, what happens if you call California?
[49:47.900 --> 49:48.560]  How much is that?
[49:49.500 --> 49:51.280]  Oh, I don't even want to begin to imagine.
[49:52.180 --> 49:52.620]  Wow.
[49:53.700 --> 49:54.260]  Uh, Rob T.
[49:54.320 --> 50:02.060]  Firefly on the air with us from a pay phone in Queens, a, a, um, endangered species, something that we're trying to help preserve.
[50:02.320 --> 50:12.420]  Now, Alex, um, getting back to the, uh, coronavirus as, as we promised to do, um, you have been tracking as you do, uh, domain names.
[50:12.440 --> 50:16.100]  Um, can I tell us something about tracking domain names in, in general?
[50:16.340 --> 50:16.740]  Yeah, sure.
[50:16.900 --> 50:17.340]  I'm sorry.
[50:17.440 --> 50:18.080]  Oh, go ahead.
[50:18.200 --> 50:18.620]  Here we go.
[50:18.740 --> 50:18.860]  Yeah.
[50:19.020 --> 50:19.560]  So sure.
[50:20.120 --> 50:30.300]  Part of what's sort of unique about my law firm is that we have a DNS monitoring service that we provide to our, many of our clients, many big brands, organizations, et cetera.
[50:30.460 --> 50:32.040]  DNS stands for the domain name system.
[50:32.240 --> 50:43.720]  So we track domain name registrations and domains that are, that, that give us early stage indicators that something is about to go haywire, early stage indicators of cyber attacks, security issues, et cetera.
[50:44.020 --> 50:53.200]  Uh, it also allows us to track different trends, uh, across the world on the internet, uh, gather a lot of DNS related intelligence, et cetera.
[50:53.940 --> 50:59.420]  Um, and I guess we do this for a lot of the world's most famous and well-known brands.
[50:59.620 --> 51:03.380]  We've got, uh, uh, large client base for which we do this.
[51:03.440 --> 51:20.360]  And we, to give you an indication of the numbers of some of the registrations, some very large sporting events for which we monitor leading up to those sporting events, maybe we'll see 15, 20 domain name registrations per day, targeting that particular sporting event or that company,
[51:20.600 --> 51:21.200]  et cetera.
[51:21.800 --> 51:28.160]  With regard to the coronavirus, we noticed something extraordinarily interesting over the last, I would say five or six days.
[51:28.440 --> 51:47.800]  So if you take a baseline for a major worldwide sporting event as maybe 15 or 20 different domains per day, uh, the coronavirus to give you an indication of today, there were within the last 24 hours, 634 coronavirus related domain names registered.
[51:48.200 --> 51:58.080]  Uh, yesterday there were 547 on Monday, uh, to March, there were 510 on Sunday, there were 447.
[51:58.220 --> 52:01.220]  So you can see that this is really beginning to trend up.
[52:01.340 --> 52:15.660]  And what we're seeing are domain names that relate to mass sales, domain names that relate to prescriptions, domain names that relate to vaccines, domain names that relate to charities, domain names that relate to News, information, apps under development.
[52:15.680 --> 52:28.280]  We found people putting together iPhone and Android apps, you know, that would be akin to the Citizen app, allow you to track the amount of contagion in your particular area in real time.
[52:28.400 --> 52:30.380]  These things are not yet out in the public.
[52:30.960 --> 52:46.400]  But what this indicates to me, though, is that there is a very significant health crisis, a worldwide health crisis with this coronavirus going on, and that bad actors are right now preparing to exploit that on many different levels.
[52:46.600 --> 52:47.140]  Financially...
[52:47.140 --> 52:54.240]  I got 12 emails today saying coronavirus, you know, important news or, you know, cure information, things like that.
[52:54.240 --> 52:57.880]  And I'm sure they relate to domain names that we have been picking up as well.
[52:58.000 --> 53:00.740]  But, you know, people are going to exploit this financially.
[53:00.740 --> 53:02.400]  They're going to exploit it for misinformation.
[53:02.460 --> 53:05.780]  They're going to exploit it for propaganda purposes.
[53:07.000 --> 53:13.640]  And psychologically, we are all very suspect to that kind of, you know, quote, unquote, contagion.
[53:14.480 --> 53:17.260]  And what we're seeing is, you know, massive amounts of stuff.
[53:17.460 --> 53:28.800]  Just to give you a couple of examples, corona-app.com, corona-nusa.com, coronavirus-cures.net, corona-armor.com.
[53:29.280 --> 53:33.200]  Here's one that I was researching on the subway on the way here.
[53:33.480 --> 53:39.960]  It's sort of unique, coronasluts.com, coronavirus-virus-sluts.com.
[53:39.960 --> 53:41.620]  That's just wrong on so many levels.
[53:41.720 --> 53:43.380]  I don't even want to start getting into it.
[53:43.640 --> 53:51.000]  But here's one that's really interesting as well, paypaluk-coronavirussupport.com.
[53:51.360 --> 53:54.300]  Now, if you go to that site, again, that's...
[53:54.300 --> 53:55.140]  You went to the site?
[53:55.340 --> 53:56.180]  Of course I did.
[53:56.200 --> 53:56.240]  Wow.
[53:56.320 --> 54:01.300]  Yeah, well, we actually, you know, scarfed down all of the data related to all of these sites.
[54:01.520 --> 54:02.540]  We run metrics on it.
[54:02.560 --> 54:11.780]  So if you go to paypaluk-coronavirussupport.com, which was registered today, by the way, it's all set up.
[54:11.780 --> 54:13.880]  And it's about... it allows you to donate.
[54:14.120 --> 54:24.520]  And it says, about this charity, your support will help us mobilize a response to quickly assist CDC, the Center for Disease Control, with taking aggressive public health measures to help stop the spread of coronavirus.
[54:24.780 --> 54:34.400]  What's very interesting, however, is that paypaluk.com, which is a real PayPal domain, is registered with Mark Monitor, as are all PayPal domains.
[54:34.580 --> 54:42.900]  This domain name registered today is registered with Shinjuku, which is a domain name registrar out of Kuala Lumpur.
[54:43.380 --> 54:44.100]  Malaysia.
[54:44.360 --> 54:44.780]  Malaysia.
[54:45.060 --> 54:45.200]  Wow.
[54:45.200 --> 54:51.680]  Meaning this is 98% in all likelihood, it is a fraud.
[54:51.860 --> 54:59.100]  And it is an act of fraud, taking people's money, who believe that they're going to be funding the CDC's efforts to combat the coronavirus.
[54:59.480 --> 55:00.920]  And this was registered today.
[55:00.920 --> 55:02.720]  It's already up and exploiting this.
[55:02.800 --> 55:04.240]  So we need to be careful.
[55:04.240 --> 55:07.840]  We need to steal our minds against this type of misinformation.
[55:08.160 --> 55:10.300]  Well, you don't have to go to Kuala Lumpur to get ripped off.
[55:10.300 --> 55:12.480]  You can do that around the block, I'm sure.
[55:13.140 --> 55:20.120]  We can't stress enough that people need to be vigilant and not believe the things that they might be faced with.
[55:20.240 --> 55:25.120]  If you have questions about coronavirus, if you're concerned, and you're in the New York area, dial 311.
[55:25.400 --> 55:28.480]  There are people there trained to answer your questions.
[55:29.100 --> 55:32.920]  And, Rob, I want to thank you for being on the air the whole hour on the payphone.
[55:33.900 --> 55:34.460]  Thank you.
[55:34.540 --> 55:35.560]  You owe me a whole bunch of quarters.
[55:35.760 --> 55:36.000]  Yeah.
[55:36.060 --> 55:39.640]  I just want to say, while we're wrapping up, check out your local 2600 meeting this week.
[55:40.640 --> 55:42.040]  2600.com slash meetings.
[55:42.780 --> 55:43.080]  All right.
[55:43.240 --> 55:47.680]  And with that, write to us, O-T-H at 2600.com with your payphone stories or anything else.
[55:47.760 --> 55:48.440]  We'll see you next week.
[55:48.540 --> 55:48.740]  Good night.
[55:48.980 --> 55:50.760]  Thank you for using a Verizon payphone.
[56:07.870 --> 56:11.470]  You have successfully completed a call to the 325 area code.
[56:12.110 --> 56:15.710]  You have successfully completed a call to the 325 area code.
[56:19.490 --> 56:21.290]  Please contact our switchboard.
[56:33.390 --> 56:33.830]  Okay.
[56:34.550 --> 56:35.290]  Audio about here.
[56:35.290 --> 56:37.450]  Next time.
[56:45.030 --> 57:05.490]  A little pause...
[57:05.490 --> 57:07.470]  I am a bone-freezer.
[57:07.950 --> 57:12.190]  I am a... I am a... I am a bone-freezer.
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