The Josh Innes Show - Old Things You've Used

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

I saw a story on social media about the old items you've used. There is a list of 20. Let's break these down. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So I just saw this thing pop up on Twitter. Show your age. You get one point for each one of these old devices or gadgets you have used. One point for each one you've used. I'll bite. I'll get in. Let's see. There's 20 of these.

And I guess 20 means you've, you know, really done some damage. So I'll get into this. Let's do this. We will do that after these words. All right. here we go. So 20 items you've used, show your age, you get one point for each item. All right, one point for each item. Let me see how many of these, how many points we'll get. Fax Machine. Yes, fax machine is a pain in the ass, though. Like, imagine a world that we used to live in.

And this is a world that we once lived in not that long ago, where you hosted a radio show and you asked people to fax you their thoughts and their opinions. So not only did you ask them to do it, they did it. People would sit around at the office or wherever and would send you a fax. Like you'd hear it on the Rome show all the time and all these things. But like think about that. So it's odd to think that you'd receive a fax, but think about the idea that somebody actually sent a fax, typed out a fax or wrote down a fax, wrote it, sent it, and that's how you communicated with people. on a radio show. In the days before, email and the days before all this other stuff, they had

phones and they had facts. And that's how you communicated with people. Like, you're listening to Jim Rome one day and you're like, shit, I got to get my thoughts out. I got big thoughts on something. We must talk about this right now. And instead of being able to grab your phone and tweet somebody or email something that gets there just instantly right to their phone in their hand, you had to go write something out, get all the facts information, put a cover letter on it, send this thing and wait for it to go through it. A lot of times it wouldn't. What a wild world. And that wasn't that long ago. Like, I'd like to know the last time the Jim Rome show took faxes. I need to know the year that this happened. The last time the Jim Rome show took

faxes. All right. So there's number one. So I've got one. Fax machine. A rotary phone. Yes, sir. Like I say, I missed the rotary phone. It's one of those things that you look back on. I think a lot of these things are going to be like that. You look back on it. And you think you think just so fondly of it because of the time and place that it existed. You know, you think of the rotary phone at your grandma's house. I actually, so I believe this was a rotary phone, I think. It may have been a dial pad phone on like an old rotary phone base, but when I was doing baseball games, I was doing the independent baseball games when I was 16. I had a phone that had a send and receive input and outfit on it, like a landline that I would run my board into and out of so

people would, so, like, just to talk about how ridiculous things used to be to get things, like, just about, think about this, think about facts as being ridiculous, here's how ridiculous it was for me to get on the internet and live back in 2003. So this is 2003, this is 22 years ago, which is ridiculous to even think, but 22 years ago in 2003, now you can just grab your phone. And if I wanted to go live on Facebook right now, I could, Twitter, I could, YouTube, I could, all this stuff. But back in that day, way back when I had to get on the internet, there was a website

called Sportsjuice.com, and that's where all these baseball and football and hockey games would stream. And I had a guy that was back in Florida that somebody knew who knew how to get you on the internet. So basically, I would reach out to him. I would call this number that sent like this call to some place that this guy was. I would dial it and I think it was a rotary dial. And on one side it had send, one side it had received for like a little 1-8.

headphone jack and I would plug it in there and run my my console into the phone and then the phone back out back into the board for whatever reason like I was a technical wizard back in the day man back in like the early 2000s I would find ways to make shit work and I was proud of the fact that I could find ways to make shit work now these people have it easy but this guy would get the the call he'd pick it up and he'd put us on the internet and that's how people would hear us and I would get emails from all over the country from people that were randomly listening to this game, people that had family members. And that was kind of the first time I really discovered the message board world, too, because there was a little message board on the Baton Rouge Riverbats

website. And people would post things like, hey, what do you think about the announcer? Where do I listen to the game? And they were all very nice. Life is so much better when you don't know what a bunch of people think about you. I think there's a generation of people that will never fully understand how not knowing what people think about you is so liberating. Because it's addicting to think about what people think about you, and you can see it instantly on social media. There was a time where you had no fucking clue. There was just a time that you lived your life and you did not know, nor did you care what people thought about you. In your mind, you just assume they thought you were great. And now you know they don't, and that part of it

sucks. All right, so there's two. The encyclopedia. Yes, the encyclopedia. Back to the point. Now you can go to your phone and look up anything. That's why it's baffling that people are as stupid as they are. You can use your phone and you can look up anything you want and get the information you need in an instant, yet people are dumb. But back in the day, if you wanted to look up, you know, some shit, you had to get the Encyclopedia Britannica. All right, floppy disk. I couldn't tell you that I know exactly how to use those things or how they worked, but I did use them. They used to send us home in the mid-90s, early computer days for us. There was a class that I was taking as a kid in Missouri. And if you wanted to rent out a computer for a weekend, you could. So you'd bring

home the computer and it was one that had the base and you'd put the screen on top of it and you could play Oregon Trail. And that's what I would do. I'd bring home a computer and play Oregon trail at home. Let's see, an AOL address. You know what? I don't know if I ever actually had an AOL email. I've used, like I've emailed people. I may not have had an AOL. Well, I've had like Cox. That sounds odd. Hey, I've had Cox. I've had like Cox.net.

But I don't know that I ever used an AOL, so I may have to not include that. Record player, I've used a record player. Let's see, I used to sit around the radio stations and screw around with record players and mess up these albums and get my dad in trouble. That was living. You just go into what they call a production room where people record commercials and shit. And this is back in the day before everything was digital. And you would just sit in there and there'd be a record player.

You'd find a vinyl album. You'd throw that bad boy on there and try to hear it. Like, I had no concept really of how to use a record player, but I've used them, and now I've used him at Casey a lot. So, record player is yes. So that's out of the six. I've done five. Dial-up Internet. We have a lot of conversations about dial-up Internet and the beauty of watching porn and getting on AOL Instant Messenger while talking to people on dial-up Internet.

Somebody picking up the phone and being like, get off the Internet. Like, again, like, I know that I sound old, and I'm well aware that. that I sound old, but there's a generation of people who will never know things being even remotely difficult, right? I'm not saying their lives or their lives are easy, but what I'm saying is there's a group of people who will never have a concept and never have to understand any sort of difficulty in terms of like communication. They'll never have to know what it's like to go to a store to buy music.

They'll never have to know that. They'll never have to know what it's like to get on a dial-up internet. and hope that someone else isn't on the phone or that a fax machine isn't going. No one will ever have to know that. Like, it's just crazy to me to think that. That's the era we're in where these people will never have to. Like, if you're a young kid that was born in, like, 2005,

you're 20 years old right now and you have no concept of how the majority of this works. If you were born in 2010, you'll never know this. 2015, you will never, ever, ever, ever know this. And that is crazy to me to think about because it makes me feel old, but it's just wild to think that not that long ago, these things were the norm. And then you start to think about the way things were, like, imagine you're somebody who grew up, like, in the late 1800s. Like, you were born in, like, 1885.

Like, imagine you're, like, one of the Marx brothers or something, who I think were born in the late 1800s, right? Like, you're one of the Marx brothers. If you're Groucho Marx, who I think died in the 70s, you go from probably living in, like, a little house on the prairie house or something like that, no TV, barely electricity, all this shit. And then in a matter of the 70 years between then and the time you die, so like the late 1800s to the 1970s, like Moe from the Three Stoges, I think he was born in the late 1800s died in the 70s. You go from that, just think about the way technology was to you then, the difference then. I don't know, these are the things that interest me. Like I get fascinated by this. Let's see, film camera, having to take the film and get it developed.

Now kids will use disposable cameras as a goof. And then I wanted to do that once. I wanted to buy one as a goof just to take pictures and get them developed. Fucking disposable cameras are super expensive now. Mixed tape. I'm going to assume that means mixed tape. And if that's the case, we've all had a mixed tape. We've all sat around the radio and hit play and record on a boom box to wait for your favorite song.

And all of us missed the beginning of our favorite song because we had to wait for the beginning of it to start. You're like, oh, shit, there's two become one, spice girls. Go! And then you miss the beginning of it. Phone booth. Boy, phone booths ruled pay. To me, pay phone phone booth. They're kind of the same thing. Dude, just a thing. So this was 20 years ago. You want to talk about, again, it doesn't seem like that long ago, but it seems like the Stone Age. Like, I would call girlfriends from pay phones. I was in Poplar Bluff, Missouri once, and I had a girlfriend. This is a dumb story. It's like the first girlfriend really I had in high school. It didn't last fairly. I don't even know she would have considered me her girlfriend. Although we made out a couple times and that was nice and it was an enjoyable experience. but um so like i would call like i'd walk around poplar bluff just to kill time i'm 16 17 years old got nothing going on and i would just stop at pay phones you talk about a pathetic

loser just a fucking loser i would call me like hey is ashley home be like no Ashley's not here Josh and then like i would just keep calling like i would grab a quarter bank put it in another pay phone like this again 20 years ago you could still find pay phones just kind of out there like Now, like, you see, like, remnants of where they used to be. There was a gas station down the road from our house in St. Louis, and there's an old, like, payphone area, like a bank of pay phones. There's no phones in them anymore. And a faded sign that's, like, southwestern bell and shit. Like, it's wild.

But it wasn't that long ago. This was, I guess, 2002, 2003. It wasn't that long ago. Curseve. Yep. Curseve we've done. I was reading a story today about how kids that are in college don't know how to do math. right now. Let me see if I have that story. I had it somewhere in here. But it was that

that kids of a certain age who are now going to college, zero concept, zero clue how to do basic math shit. They're on like a barely an elementary school math level. And it's like, well, because your phone does it all for you. All you got to do is put shit in a calculator. I do take some level in pride knowing that I can do some form of math. I don't think it's that big of a deal to help you advance in the world, but it's nice to know it's there. Checkbook. I have had a check. I still have a checkbook somewhere. I couldn't tell you the last time I used it, but I still have a checkbook from when I got my first bank account with Wells Fargo in Houston, so I still have like rent check, like the little stubs from them. Let's see.

So checkbook, yes. Typewriter. I have used a typewriter, not a ton, but I have. Dictionary. Of course, I've used a dictionary. I've got to know what words mean. But now you can just look that. I've Go to the Urban Dictionary, whatever. VCR, boy, like, that's another one. I miss VCRs. And I know that we say that. And it's easy to say that now. And then the second we get a VCR and put a tape in it would be like, well, this looks like shit.

And this is a cumbersome little thing, and I don't want to do it. Like, I wanted to buy a VCR as a goof the other day, not the other day, but a while back, I wanted to buy a VCR as a goof. And I didn't because, dude, they're more expensive than you think to find a VCR. You have to find someone selling one at like a thrift store or flea market, but even at the flea market, like I was at a record store or something just looking at something one day and there was a VCR and it was like 70, 80 bucks. I'm like what are we doing? But I do miss that. Like I miss like having to set the timer on a VCR, make sure it ran, run from one to the other. So like record from one tape of the other when you're bootlegging shit and you're pirating shit.

God, that was living. So we've done dictionary VCR paper map. Of course I've used a paper map. although one of the great inventions that you thought would never be topped was MapQuest. Of course, now that's been usurped by a thousand other things, Google Maps and Ways. Waterbed, I have been on a waterbed before and they are nauseating and terrible and I have no idea why anybody ever wanted a waterbed. But when I was a kid, man, the idea of a waterbed was the fucking greatest idea ever. A waterbed, man.

Never boned on a waterbed, though. I've never been a waterbed boner. because it seems like it'd be more difficult. It'd be hard to get traction on anything. Let's see here. Postcard, I have written and sent postcards, a Walkman, I have had that, and a phone book I've used. So I've got 19 out of 20, and I've probably had an AOL email address at some point. Like, that should count.

I've had every other thing. Like, the concept of it is fine. So if you want to get technical, maybe I only had 19 out of 20 on that. It's fun watching people that don't know how to use a phone book. Try to use a phone book. Or like, you know, like I did that with Battle in Nashville where I had him try to use a phone book in the yellow pages to try to find a business. I named a business. I told him to find it because we had an old phone book. So it's funny. We found a 2004 phone book just laying around the radio station. And I'm like, hey, let's see if you know how to use a phone book. And he didn't. It's just crazy to me, man. It wasn't that long ago. I'm not that old of a guy. I'm 39. But here we are, man. Like, it's just amazing. And just imagine you're somebody who experienced this, you know, from like, just. the difference in, say, 1940 to 1950 or 1950 to 1960? Because for me, even going from like 1999 to 2009, I mean, just think about that, which most of us can relate to. 2009, you're still

watching your little 13-inch standard TVs. You're still doing all this stuff, and you're recording the videos and everything, recording all your movies that way. You still have CDs, cassettes, VCRs, DVDs. 10 years later, physical media is basically dead. 10 years. years later. It is crazy to think about that. Anyway, more to come.