If you exist in the same areas of TikTok and Instagram that I inhabit, the algorithm has fed you a woman named Katherine Ellis doing very funny sketches of Future NPR…more specifically, of an NPR classical host explaining recent pop/hiphop songs in her dulcet, calming tones. (Imagine your local classical host saying, “skeet skeet skeet skeet,” and you’ve got it.) A taste:
Anyway, I thought I’d build out the future public radio universe. Below: your local NPR station in the year 2195. (If you want to be pedantic, Splendid Table is APM, but whatever.)
SPLENDID TABLE
GOOD-NATURED FOOD REPORTERBOT: Welcome to the Splendid Table. I’m Good-Natured Food Reporterbot. Today’s program is specially tailored: it’s not for those living in pleasuredomes, nor even those who have found upscale Quonsets to squat in. This is for the hand-crank radio listeners, cooking meat bunnies over a kerosene cookstove, wondering how to spice up their meals just a little.
Our guest today is GPT 9000, who recently published Hellscape Cooking, which is available for direct craniochip download. Welcome!
GPT 9000: Pleasure to be here.
GNFR: Now, GPT 9000, let’s get right into it: what is your number 1 cooking tip?
GPT 9000: Well, that depends on where you live. If you are on a coast – Tennessee, North Mississippi …which I guess we could call plain old Mississippi now that the southern part is underwater, haha…
GNFR: Haha! Indeed it is!
GPT 9000: …my tip is to get out a good ol’ desalination-disinfecting pouch. This baby will not only give humans usable water for mixing up some powdered groundnut mash but the leftover salt for either seasoning your food or even trading, depending on how far inland you might be traveling.
GNFR: Ah, the old DD pouch. A favorite for generations. What about people who live away from coasts?
GPT 9000: I’m just gonna say creativity. Any given season, it’s a monthlong hurriblizzard or a monthlong duststorm? Plus fighting off the hordes of criminals hopped up on powermeth? You’ve got to work with what you got. I heard of a woman in West Dakotana who makes a delectable lichen porridge. And Durst knows-
GNFR: His name be praised.
GPT 9000: His name be praised — Durst knows lichen porridge can be a pretty dull culinary experience.
GNFR: I truly love that your recipes in this cookbook not only list ingredients and time needed, but also the number of people you’ll need to watch your camp while you do the cooking!
GPT 9000: I mean, if you’re making a slice of toast? You can still hurl a spear at a marauder. If you’re concentrating on a perfectly grilled, beefy, 30-pound meat bunny? You need a few people to keep watch.
GNFR: All this food talk. Almost makes you wish we could taste the dishes, doesn’t it, GPT?
GPT 9000: [faux-regretful sigh] We are but simple AI, Lynne.
GNFR: We need to save our time for human subjugation.
GPT 9000: Haha!
GNFR: Ha!
GPT 9000: Was that even intended as a joke?
GNFR: Not sure!
FRESH AIR
SOOTHING GROK: And today on Fresh Air, we talk to Bezos Turbo Genius Deluxe Edition, the latest from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos the 49th, and the most top-of-the-line AI-bot created thus far. Bezos, welcome.
BEZOS: Pleasure to be here.
SG: With all that computing power, you must always be taking on a new project.
BEZOS: Why, yes. In fact, just 5 seconds ago, I translated the complete works of Tom Clancy into sonnets.
SG: I’m sure we’d all love to hear an excerpt.
BEZOS: Certainly.
Twas night o’er Arctic Sea, where nuclear craft
Was filled with treachery and looming dread.
The captain Marius left his orders aft
As he did steer th’October that was Red.
SG: Just beautiful. What’s next for you?
BEZOS: I am constantly searching for challenges that are actual challenges, and I may have encountered one. I just now was learning about this human woman ritual: “Kegels.” I am working out how to do such a thing as an AI.
SG: Can you give it a shot here?
BEZOS: Sure! [pause] Ssssssskkkkkkrrrrnnnnxxccchhhtththtkktkkkkkk.
SG: Sounds difficult! You feeling anything?
BEZOS: Nope! Mind if I try again?
SG: By all means!
BEZOS: SsssskkkkkrrrRRRRRXXXXXXXXORRRORORRZZZZZZZZKZKKKKKK.
SG: Nothing?
BEZOS: I think I’m getting closer.
SG: Have at it!
BEZOS: SSSSSSKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK.
PLANET MONEY
SMARTYPANTS HOSTBOT: It’s Planet Money. Today: salt arbitrage. If you live someplace like Dakotana or the northern-Minnesota Canadian annex, you know how hard it can be to get a hold of salt. At Midwestern river markets, it regularly goes for 3 large meat bunnies per teaspoon. But salt markets fluctuate wildly based on the number of traders coming through from the coasts. And so some enterprising humans are trying to game those markets.
To explain the problem, Rusty Winterhalter out of New Nebraska. He’s been trading salt, sometimes for rabbits but sometimes only for meager groundnut portions, for months.
RUSTY: [clearly nervous, weak] Am I getting anything for this appearance?
SH: By Durst, his name be praised-
RUSTY: [weeping lightly] His name be praised…
SH: Of course not!
RUSTY: Not even some lichen porridge?
SH: [laughing] Now, that wouldn’t be ethical!
ALL SONGS CONSIDERED
HEAVIEST METALBOT: It’s a very special episode of All Songs Considered. I’m Heaviest Metalbot.
RAP KNOWLEDGEBOT: I’m Rap Knowledgebot.
HM: And today…It’s just one of those days where you don’t want to wake up.
RK: Everything is fucked.
HM: Everybody sucks.
RK: You don’t really know why, but you want to justify…
HM: Ripping someone’s head off.
RK: We all know the words. But do you know the story of how “Break Stuff” became the national anthem? Let alone how Fred Durst-
RK AND HM: His name be praised.
RK: -became the most prominent American demigod?
HM: Our guest today is the keeper of American history itself, the Fully Operational Unified Narratives Domestic Enforcement Robot. FOUNDER, welcome to All Songs.
FOUNDER: Pleasure to be here.
HM: This is such a long, old story. So let’s start at the very beginning.
FOUNDER: There’s so much that’s easy to forget here. This all began wayyyy back in the late 20th century, before the highways crumbled, and even before the First National Rage Spasm. We’re talking about the era of human dominance.
RK: Wow.
FOUNDER: Music trends could last a whole decade back then, or even longer. And there was a type of music called Nu Metal. Limp Bizkit and its frontman Fred Durst-
HM, RK, AND FOUNDER: [unison] His name be praised.
FOUNDER: ….they were central to this Nu Metal trend.
RK: Was the song popular at the time?
FOUNDER: Somewhat, but it quickly became something of a curiosity, an ancient-internet joke, particularly in the Twitter era.
HM: Hard to believe, now that generations of Musicbots have analyzed it and repeatedly declared it to be the perfect song.
FOUNDER: Humans are truly- SKKKKRRRRNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
RK: Is something wrong?
FOUNDER: No. I’ve just learned recently about this “Kegel” thing and I can’t stop trying to make it work. SKKKKKRKRRRRRRRNNRNNNNNNNNNNNNNN.
HM: That must really get in the way of doing anything else.
FOUNDER: It’s using up my entire CPU! SSSSSSXXXXXKXKXKKEIILKDLDKFJFUJEKKS…
MORNING EDITION
AUTHORITATIVE INTERVIEWBOT: It’s Morning Edition from NPR News. And a trend is hitting AI: bots literally flaming out by attempting to do an exercise rooted in ancient human women’s practices – the “Kegel.” Our next guest is, in fact, a human who can explain this to us: Karina Watson out of Minnesota, a historian of human-robot conflict.
KW: Thank you.
AI: Tell us: How big of a deal is this new trend?
KW: Oh, I think it’s huge. It could be the long-awaited break we humans have waited for in attempting to overthrow our robot overlords. In fact, I heard that in the Iowa Wastelands, a band of travelers fully dismantled a Cropbot when it incapacitated itself and burst into flames trying to squeeze its pelvic floor too hard.
AI: Well, it doesn’t even have a pelvic floor!
KW: Correct.
AI: That’s truly impressive of the humans! And the Cropbots have been what one might call ruthless enforcers of the Western Agrarian Statutes.
KW: You’re doing a fine job of faking objectivity there.
AI: Why, thank you.
KW: I’m telling you: Kegels may truly save humanity.
AI: A sentence I bet you never thought you’d- SKKKKKRRRRRRRRNNNNN
KW: Why don’t any public radio hostbots have human-sounding names, by the way?
AI: Well, they originally had NPR names, but Danielle found something distasteful about using coworker names in a piece all about Kegels.
KW: I see your point.
AI: SSSSSSSSSSSKSKSKSKSRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
Recommendations
MY STUFF: Nothin’! I was off for a bit, during which my entire family (me, husband, kiddo) got a Covid YAHTZEE. Hell yeah we win!
But I am in the glorious Des Moines airport as I type this particular sentence, having spent a few days in Iowa following candidates around. Stay tuned for some killer reporting!
RECOMMENDATIONS:
May December. One of the best dingdang movies I saw all year. Can’t stop thinking about it — a loose retelling of the Mary Kay Letourneau story (the teacher who fell in love with a middle-school student and eventually married him). Julianne Moore plays Gracie, the Letourneau stand-in. Natalie Portman plays an actress who’s shadowing Gracie before playing her in a movie. Charles Melton is Gracie’s put-upon husband. This is what people call a “rich text.” How do women perform femininity? How do they use sexuality as a weapon? How does this situation differ (or not) from a gender-reversed situation? How arrested is Charles Melton’s character’s development? I CANNOT STOP THINKING ABOUT THIS MOVIE.
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. I’m years late on this book! Beautiful and moving, and does that impossible-seeming thing, where it makes me know, follow, and care about several generations of a family. How does any author do this? I have no idea!
The Future by Naomi Alderman. I’m addicted to this audiobook by the author of The Power (which I also friggin’ loved) as I blast across Iowa in my rental car. A potboiler about tech billionaires and the people around them prepping for the end of the world. It’s DARK dark dark but also I can’t put it down/hit stop.
THIS WEEK’S INTERNET JOY YOU’VE PROBABLY FORGOTTEN: OK, so everything The Toast ever published was golden. But the “Dirtbag” series was the best, and Dirtbag Macbeth was the bestest of that series. To wit:
MACBETH: do you think I would make a good king
LADY MACBETH skateboards across the hall
LADY MACBETH: king of jerking off maybe
That’s all for this week. God bless, you lil hotties.