It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: "Tongue Mining" by Jack Morton

Episode Date: March 10, 2024

Margaret reads you a story about AI, translation, and love across languages. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. CallZone Media

But club, but club, but club, but club. No one else can say it. That's a joke. Club. No one else can say it. That's a joke. There's no one else on the call. It's just me. I'm your host, Marker Killjoy, and this is Cool Zone Media Book Club. And this week, dear listener, you're the guest. So I hope you're going to...

Okay, so let's chant it together. Okay? You all ready? Buh. Club. Buh. Club. Buh.

Club. Club. What do you mean you don't want to do it in public with while you're listening to headphones on the bus? You should be chanting with me. Well, either way, this is the Cool Zone Media Book Club. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and every week I bring you a new story that's fictional.

The opposite of the truth is fiction. This week, we're going to talk about... Well, I guess you're going to hear what the episode, what the story is about when I read it to you. This story is called Tongue Mining. It was written by Jack Morton. And here's a bio. Jack Morton was born in New Brunswick, Canada. He studied theater and writing at the University of Toronto and carries a knit and black belt in karate. He currently lives in Toulouse,

France, where he writes and narrates audio books. You can read more of his stories in Radon Journal, The Woodward Review, Expanded Field Journal, or let him read one to you at Vast Literary Press. And this story in particular first appeared in Radon Journal No. 4. And if you like Cool Zone Media Book Club, you'll probably like Radon Journal, R-A-D-O-N, which is an anarchist fiction magazine. So, might interest you. It might not. I hope this story does, though.

It's called tongue mining. Oh, and the best part is, there's a bunch of, like, French and stuff in it, and other languages, and I don't know how to speak them. So you can hear my... I'm not even going to try and do an accent. I'm just going to stumble through it. That's the way it goes. Tongue mining. My ears sting, threatening to water. Sweat beads on my upper lip. I don't think anyone said not to

blink or touch my face. Just remain still so the camera can focus on my eyes. The word bird appears, plain white font on a black background projected onto a fabric screen. My gaze flicks to the upper right corner, and then back to center. Mountain comes up next, upper left. The man beside me coughs. I don't look. That could throw off my results. But I'm distracted. It takes me longer to place mole in the lower right. The words disappear quicker, less time to read. I hear sharp inhales. Tension fills the room.

Relax, says the woman monitoring the test. She paces slowly between the rows of desks, making me feel like a schoolchild, even though I'm probably older than her. I break down and wipe the sweat, and I'm able to breathe steadier. The words begin to fly naturally. Tree, upper right. Stump, lower left. Cloud, upper left.

Bat, upper right. Just as the monitor said. I relax. I tell myself not to think about whether the object is high or low, animate or inanimate. The meaning is contained in my English-speaking mind. I just have to let it come out. Then something flashes on the screen. Putik, I think.

I didn't have time to reread it before it disappeared. I'm lost for a moment, but suddenly a voice in the back row said, Buisit! I try to keep focused forward. More words are coming. But I hear a scuffle in raised voices. The man who shouted insists he misread and doesn't speak Tagalog. The monitor points out that nobody mentioned Tagalog until him.

When a chair scrapes loudly against the floor, I turn around. Two men with a symbol matching the one on the monitor's lapel across their broad chests are physically removing a panicked elderly man from the room. He's cursing now, in English, in what I assume is Tagalog. Resisting, like if he could regain his seat, it would undo all of this, and he could still take the test. Then I realize he's reaching for his earbuds and glasses lying to the side of his desk. Like all of us, he had to remove them to start the test. Please, just let me take my... The monitor cuts him off. These devices are not

yours. They are the property of all talk. She strides across the room and collects them. By refusing to abide by the rules of the test and by concealing language fluencies, you have violated our terms and conditions. Your subscription to our translation service is terminated. He tries to object again, but soon he's out of the room. The monitor closes the door, and all noise from outside is silenced. Sorry for the disruption, everyone. Please turn to face the screen, and we'll resume. I look at the others. They mostly look as scared as me, but one tall blonde man's face shows indignance. We make eye contact, and my meek, cowed expression seems to motivate him further.

He stands. No. I'm not taking this. You can't treat people that way, dragging him out like he's some criminal. Altok reserves the right to expel testers who disrupt the process. You all saw him grab me when I asked him to leave on his own. I'd seen nothing. I don't know if anyone else had. The blonde guy goes on. I'm a paying customer. I don't need to put up with this treatment. Of course not, she replies calmly. This test is completely voluntary, as you were informed when your attendance was requested. You're welcome to leave at any time. Simply leave any all-talk

devices with the front desk on the way out, and your subscription will be terminated. And there it is. She has us. Or they do. The corporation behind that symbol on her lapel. Because no one would voluntarily give up their AllTalk. They'd venture into the world with no translation tech, without the ubiquitous glasses and earbuds. Maybe at work the next day, they'd discover their company was Russian and their boss gave instructions in Arabic. Maybe at home, they'd find out their partner spoke Mohawk. Half the signage in the city is probably in scripts they couldn't name, much less read. The blonde man's face still looks defiant,

but he swallows whatever he wants to say and sits down facing the screen. And if you want to look defiant, dear listener, you can buy our 100% defiant ads revenue. This is an ad pivot. Here you go. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try

to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they don't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head,

search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture.

Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. And we're back. We all turn and recenter our eyes on the cameras as the monitor scrubs the test playback.

And we start at bird again. My eye actions become jerky, trying not to think about the Filipino man. At least I can vindicate his loss by succeeding, now that I know the real point of the test. They don't care whether we correctly identify objects as high or low, animate or inanimate. The start of the test was mental training, getting us to react instinctively to these concepts, so that when non-English words appear, we'll respond without thinking. They aren't testing fluency in English. They're hunting for it in other languages. And maybe my participation wasn't

random selection like they'd claimed. A flash of grandma's old place. The box she made us put all our electronics in when we arrived. Songs and games in French as a child. Stories about Champlain or the Corriere de Bois when I was older. But I haven't used my French in years, not since Grandma died. The test won't pick up on that, certainly not if I can help it. I banish Grandma's living room and concentrate. Sure enough, after Poutic, every few words something appears that I don't know, often can't even read. Even if I think I recognize something, I stare defiantly straight unless I'm sure it's English. Anyone else trying to fool them in the room has an edge now, but it still won't be easy.

The words are getting trickier. Snow falls from high to low. Brain could be animate or an inanimate part of an animate whole. I have to think before I can place mine as something low and inanimate. I first think of the other meaning, ownership, to which neither of those ideas applies. Lune. My eyes flick up and left slightly before I steady them. If I hadn't been expecting traps, I would have looked. A fluent French speaker, already programmed by the start of the test to go up and left for something high and inanimate, would have had no chance. I hope I didn't react too much. Surely English

speakers know loon. They have lunar and lunacy. I try not to think about it. More words are coming. Apparently, I succeed at the word recognition portion. At least the monitor doesn't say anything to me before moving on to the written composition. I stare at blank paper on which I'm supposed to write a response of a few hundred words to their prompt. Describe a wedding you attended in the form of an email to a friend. Pens move all around me, but I feel stuck. Images of various weddings flash through my mind. My cousin on the beach. My sister at the old farmhouse. Or I could invent a wedding. It shouldn't matter.

They're not judging my memory. Just my writing. Except now I know that's not really the point. Or at least, not the only one. They don't just want to evaluate my English. They also want to know if I secretly understand anything else. I glance around. The projection screen is rolled up, exposing writing on the blackboard behind it.

Some of it looks like a lesson, a list with bullet points. Some of it could be student graffiti. I turn quickly back to the paper before I have time to take anything in. It wasn't in English. It may be part of the test. I should write in an anglophone way, use a variety of sentence structures to showcase English's versatility. Maybe drop in some impressive vocabulary. But trying too hard might seem suspicious. Everyone around me is already writing. It's not that hard to write a few hundred words in your native language. Simple, off-the-cuff writing is probably best. I squeeze out some details from my cousin's wedding mixed with a movie I saw last week.

Reading back, it feels clunky. Maybe that's okay. Just because you're fluent in a language doesn't mean you can spontaneously shit out beautiful prose, especially in as synthetic a situation as this. I write a few more trite sentences and start counting words. The monitor collects all the papers and directs us to the next hall over for the oral communication portion. Everyone instinctively puts their glasses on and earbuds back in. We move with the slow shuffle of a group no one wants to lead.

I have time to check the blackboard. The writing in other scripts and tongues has resolved into English. I read some of the crassest and most abusive insults I've ever seen. The original phrases could have been tough to ignore for someone who understood them. I chuckle and glance around. No one else notices. We sit in low plastic chairs waiting to be called into one of the small rooms.

When my name comes up, I'm surprised by the man waiting for me. I'd prepare myself to see the monitor from earlier, but of course, she couldn't run each individual test. My expectations of the tight-haired, school-teachery woman run up against a smiling, balding man in his fifties. A red face and a well-fed build, plus a twinkle in his eye, suggest a sort of bon vivant. I mentally chide myself for using that phrase, but there can't be any harm in loan words. I don't know if French speakers even say bon vivant. He gestures for me to sit. I reach for my earbuds, but he says to leave them in.

He verifies my name and all talk user information, then asks how the written component of the test went. I explain my struggle with what to write, how long I hesitated, worrying about the content of the response. Apparently, it's a common problem. The setting is so much like a school classroom that people feel they're going to be graded on clever ideas, when really, we're just looking for comfortable use of the language. The same goes for this test. No need to stress about what you say. We're just establishing whether you speak naturally.

So let's chat. He takes out his earbuds and I do the same. He's explaining why it was important that we talked briefly before taking them out. Something about hearing changes in vocal quality or vocabulary. But I don't follow because halfway through, both of our earbuds are out, and I suddenly hear a regional accent. I'm not sure where from, maybe northern England? I wonder what he'll make of my accent now that all talk is

infiltrating it for him. He looks expectantly at me. We can talk about anything at all. An awful pause follows, which he breaks by bursting into laughter. Sorry, that was mean, he admits. I love how universal it is. Take the most talkative people in the world, ask them to speak, and they have no idea what to say. Why don't you tell me where you're from? As I describe the small town I grew up in, I get more comfortable. He must often ask people about their home to put them at ease. I wonder if that gets boring. I meet people from all over the world in the city. All talks have eliminated one of the biggest barriers to integration.

But for him, always testing English speakers, they must have a more limited range of backgrounds. It might surprise you how many places people learn English as a first language. The British Isles in North America, but also in Australia and Pacific Islands, Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean. There are pockets of it everywhere. That's without all the people trying to pass it off as their mother tongue. We saw someone ejected for that during the word recognition test. Why would they do that? Silly, isn't it? The whole point of all-talk technology is everyone can use their own language. A major selling point when we first pitched to governments was preserving minority languages while giving their speakers the same opportunities as people with one of the big colonial international languages. I notice he didn't answer my question. So why do they object?

AllTalk only translates into the wearer's first language. People raised multilingual get a choice. But you can't get translation to English if you didn't grow up speaking it. But why would someone choose English over their first language? Oh, there are some complaints that the AI interface, designed by Anglos and first adopted in the US, has been trained to perceive the world with an Anglo-centric lens, whatever that's supposed to mean. He's frowning at the table as he speaks. It's all nonsense. There's more data coming in from Mandarin than English these days. Honestly, I think English has become sort of fashionable. But not knowing all our customers' fluencies

messes with our data collection. It lowers the quality of the translation, he hastily adds, as if clarifying what's important. We wouldn't want the AI to start thinking that the way that non-native speakers use English is normal, he chuckles. I decide to push a little further. Outside, I saw a few people picketing the building. A few is understating it. They outnumbered those of us coming in for the test. People of all ages holding signs, shouting. None had worn All Talks, so most of what they said as I walked in was gibberish, Shouting. The bearer of the last one stepped in front of me, shouting. I realized I could understand him. His shouts were English. It's a multinational corporation. States have to work together to regulate it, but All Talk

translates international law. They're writing their own rules while they harvest your voice's data and decide how you interpret everything you hear or read. They are your oppressors. Your mind is being colonized. I pushed past him without really taking in what he said. Voices that aren't filtered through the Alltalk speaker sound a little fainter, less real, when the earbuds are in. But his wrinkled, angry face stuck with me. Something about oppressors colonizing the mind, I say to the monitor. We don't tell anyone what to do, he starts off angrily. We offer a service. They're free to use it or not.

How could we possibly be oppressors? Then he laughs again, but it doesn't have the same full-throated ease of the first time. We're a private company. We're not the state. We exist to liberate people. There was a time when national governments could make language competency a requirement for citizenship, employment, or access to services. Not anymore. Just a bunch of nut jobs, I guess. He concurs, reassured and happy to finish with the subject. He asks me some more about where I grew up before saying he's heard enough.

So did I pass then? He chuckles. There's no passing or failing. We just want to evaluate our customer's facility with the language to better meet their needs. I stand up and shake his hand before heading to the door. I fiddle with my earbuds and thank him. Thoughtlessly, he answers, merci à vous. I turn back to him, frowning, and ask him to repeat himself. He shakes his head. Never mind. Thank you. I exhale deeply as I make my way out. They were specifically checking me for competence in French, and I don't think it was to better meet my needs. The crowd of protesters has gone when I leave the all-talk office. A few police cars parked nearby suggest it might not have been their idea. As I turn the corner, the same wrinkled face from before confronts me.

He has a stack of papers in one hand and holds one out to me with the other. I turn my head and my all-talk glasses with their built-in cameras away from him. Without looking, I take the paper and stuff it into my bag. At home, Luis asks how it went. I tell him it seemed fine and mention about the Filipino man getting thrown out. He doesn't know what to make of it either. I say nothing about the French. When we head for the kitchen, I continue to look after him,

but I reach blindly into my bag and move the crumpled up paper into my pants pocket, still not looking at it. In the kitchen, when Luis is facing the other way, I feel around inside the junk drawer until I find a small flashlight and pocket that, too. I feel around inside the junk drawer until I find a small flashlight and pocket that, too. In bed later, we say goodnight before taking off our earpieces and glasses, mounting them on their chargers. When I hear Luis's breath coming deep and regular, I reach down to my pants on the floor and retrieve the paper and flashlight. I turn my back to my glasses, ostensibly deactivated while charging.

Then I duck under the covers and unfold the paper. It's covered in writing. Dozens of scripts I don't know, even the stuff in Roman letters is mostly meaningless to me. At the bottom, there is one phrase written over and over in different languages. I spot the French. Vous voulez resister? Apprenne une langue, oui. And then the English. Want to resist? Learn a language. How could learning a language be resistance? I think back to practicing French. There were fun games and boring memorization of conjugations and genders. It got better when I could read books or have conversations and started noticing the differences embodied by the languages.

It felt fun, naughty maybe, to learn the swear words, calisay, tabernak, but never felt like an act of rebellion. I was just hanging out with Mammy. Mammy. I hadn't thought of her by that name earlier, when I had my altoc headset on. Grandma, what my parents called her in English, not what I'd addressed her as in French. The screen from the word recognition test flashed into my mind. In ten minutes, they could train my brain to react in a specific way to certain concepts. How many hours of wearing glasses and headsets had taken to implant grandma and erase mommy, or to erase harvest to use later with native French speakers?

Mining your tongue to sell to my ears, a sign had read. No wonder they couldn't stand even a passing competence in a language to go unreported. The service they sold, and all the power and influence that went with it, was built from the voices of linguistic minorities. I suddenly notice an absence. Louisa stops snoring. I look up. He's ducked under the covers as well. His dark eyes are wide, staring at me in the paper and the torchlight. I position it between us. Can you read any of this? I whisper.

Qu'est-ce que vous dit? He whispers back. It almost sounds like French. I don't quite understand. But I want to. The end. And I'm going to talk about it. But first I'm going to talk about how lucky you are to have this podcast interrupted by capitalism.

Right now. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting

if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse

to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me

and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting We'll be right back. Explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead,

now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. And we're back. The we in this case is either royal or I'm including you. Everyone's back. We're all back. So I clearly like this story. Otherwise, I wouldn't have read it to you. And at first, I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about the story because the idea of a universal translator is one of the positive things that we can imagine to come out of AI and that we can imagine to come out of technology, right?

And that's what interests me so much about this story is it talks about the way that that would be developed within our current capitalistic ecosystem. Economy? Economy. And to toot my own horn, yeah, that's the expression. I once wrote a story called One Star that ran on Vice motherboard. And it was a story about a self-driving car that drives you to jail. And when it came out, a lot of people were like, yeah, car that drives you to jail. And when it came out, a lot of people were like, yeah, Margaret Killjoy hates self-driving cars just like us. And I'm like, I lived in a van at the time. It's like, I would have loved if my van drove me places while I like hung out in the back and read books. However, that doesn't mean that I'm not capable of putting two and two together

to say that within our current society, if you had a self-driving car and you had a warrant, your self-driving car would drive you to jail. Because technology, while some of the concepts embedded within technology could be applied in lots of different ways, the ecosystems in which technologies develop do not lend themselves to creating neutral technologies. So I don't want to specifically say it's bad to have translation. I think it's good to have translation services. Not everyone's going to learn every single language, right? But talking about the way that these things that seem like they would be really good would get twisted is really interesting to me. would get twisted is really interesting to me. And I actually asked the author what he had to say about this particular story. And he mentions Radon, the journal that it was published in. He

says, it's cool how Radon brings transhumanism into conversation with anarchism. In my imagination, transhumanism has always been the threat to freedoms, Cybermen or the Borg, not Molly from Neuromancer. I had trouble squaring that. While working on tongue mining, it clicked for me. Not only can transhumanism work with decentralized freedoms, it has to. Transhumanism is scary when it represents a loss of humanity. But if there's no authoritative state enforcing it, and no corporate interest standing to benefit from it,

it becomes a question of personal choice. Then physical or mental modifications are an embodiment of the individual's aspirations. What could be more human than that? And I like this thought about it because I like realizing that the author of the story is coming sort of from the opposite position where I'm like, oh, a self-driving car would be cool, but oh, wait, it's actually going to be terrible. You know, and it seems like he's coming more from a point of view of like, oh, all this transhumanist stuff is going to be terrible. Well, I could see actually how it could be freeing, but within our current context, it's not. Okay, my one other story that relates to this story. You was once arrested in the Netherlands for an anti-fascist action where some Nazis had burned down a mosque and a bunch of anti-fascists went to Rotterdam to go try and stop the Nazis from physically interfering with the rebuilding of that mosque. We went to go fight Nazis and we all ended up in jail. And it was a very

internationalist movement. And they knew that I didn't speak Dutch and I didn't have a Dutch passport. And I wasn't an EU citizen. So everyone refused to speak anything but English. And we all went to jail together and none of us gave our names. And we all said, we only speak English. And so they separated us and they started going through and trying to get all of us gave our names and we all said we only speak english and so they separated us and they started going through and trying to get all of us they tried to prove who was dutch and one of the ways that they would do that some of it would be like they'd catch someone and they'd have a dutch book you know something like that but one of the things that they would do is we're all in individual cells and so an angry man would come in and basically like scream in Dutch, like,

yeah, I fucked your mother last night. How do you feel about that? And like, look to see our facial expressions. And when an angry man screams at me in Dutch, on my second day in the Netherlands, I have no idea what he's saying. And I just sort of stare blankly ahead, feeling a little bit defeated, a little bit like it's my second. I haven't even been in the country for 24 hours and I am in jail. And so they picked me out and sent me to foreign detention. However, they picked several Dutch and or EU citizens

and sent them to foreign detention as well, because those people had successfully masked their Dutch. And here's where systemic racism comes in. Those people who were picked and sent to foreign detention with me, by American standards, those were white people. But by Dutch standards, someone said afterwards, notice how they picked the darker skinned and darker complexioned people and sent them to foreign detention, you know. And again, racial conceptions are very different in different places. But realizing that it was like the people who didn't look Dutch based on ethnic characteristics. And even though it was ostensibly this language filtration, it was also had a racial component. And I think that that kind of thing would absolutely become true in something like what this story discusses.

And that's it. That's it for this episode of Cool Zone Media Book Club. You can find me on Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. If you listen to this on the It Could Happen Here feed. And you can find It Could Happen Here on the It Could Happen Here feed. If you found this on the Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff feed. Because it's one podcast on two feeds, neither of which are the feed for the pod. It's wild, crazy. We're doing something new. No one's ever done it before. I'm going to press stop now on the recording.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season or wherever you get your podcasts veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors,

and influencers. Each week we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us. And it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia. And that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.