Whether it is a cute animal, a new dance, or a delicious recipe, there is no shortage of viral moments shown to you on TikTok. Now the newest trend: regional accents.
What exactly is driving this latest trend?
Just as car accidents and plane crashes can have deadly consequences, so do train derailments.
Reforms are being made to how train companies are required to handle hazardous materials so that communities located by train routes can have peace of mind.
Prime Day, one of the largest shopping events of the year, starts on Tuesday. How can people make the most of it?
Does AI have the wisdom to help people fix their relationship issues? Most people don’t think so.
Thinking about buying a new iPhone? It’s time to start saving, because prices are expected to increase.
Guests:
- Shane O’Neill, journalist, The Washington Post
- Jess Conard, executive director, Rail Watch
- Russell Holly, director of commerce content, CNET
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology, and the future of our environment. TikTok has made many moments go viral. Whether it's a cute animal, a new dance, or a delicious recipe, there's no shortage of viral moments shown to you after every swipe.
The newest trend, regional accents. Here to talk about the regional accents posts on TikTok is Washington Post journalist, Shane O'Neill. Welcome to the show, Shane.
Shane O’Neill: Amy, it's such a pleasure.
Juravich: So first, I wanted you to tell us how this all started. You wrote the story because it started with Emily Sweeney and her new found fame. Can you tell me a little bit about who Emily Sreeney is and how she became viral?
O’Neill: So Emily Sweeney has worked at the Boston Globe for years, and she's got a really kind of inspiring story. She posted a TikTok where she was just describing a crime that had happened, and she has this monumentally thick Boston accent. She also, by the way, which helps it, she has kind of like this unique butch persona. She's got short blonde hair, and she only wears tracksuits on camera.
And so this moment of her describing an intruder in Boston, like a white camera, she says like, a really crazy thing, and. Kiataka, the only person home was a Kiataker. Forgive my terrible Boston accent. People weren't so wrapped up in the story. People got really excited about the way she was talking.
And it's become a sort of rags to riches story for her. She's gotten many more opportunities at the Boston Globe. She told me she's getting other, you know, professional opportunities she couldn't tell me about on the record. And she's just exploded. And it is particularly sweet because she's 51 years old or 50, I'm sorry, she's 50 years old.
And she wanted to be an on camera personality, but when she was in college, she was like, oh, no one who talks like me would ever be able to be on the TV news. So it's an exciting like new day in America for people with like gorgeous regional accents like Emily Sweeney.
Juravich: All right, so let's listen now that you've given us the back story. Let's listen to what Emily Sweeney sounds like.
Emily Sweeney: There was a crazy home invasion in Beverly over the weekend. A masked intruder broke into an $18 million waterfront mansion in Prides Crossing, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods on the North Shore. The only person home at the time, a caretaker, was assaulted and tied up. I interviewed the homeowner, Thomas Swan III, and he told me that the caretakers was forced around the house by gunpoint and was pistol-whipped and was even dragged down the stairs by our hair at some points.
Juravich: So, I mean, it goes on from there, but I mean the story she's telling is very dramatic, but people really focused in on her accent. They loved the way she said caretaker. Tell me about, did they feel, do you think that people felt it was cool, it was strange, it was nice to listen to? Like what drew people in?
O’Neill: I would say all of the above. So first of all, by the way, there's been an update. That mansion is for sale. If you want the details of the sale, Emily has posted an update to her TikTok and so she'll get through it. But yeah, she says that people now on the street are stopping her and being like, say caretaker, like say it for me.
You know, I think there's, it's hard. The thing about the internet is that it's hard to tell, is that like sometimes people can be making fun of you and celebrating you all at once, you know, there is no, the way the internet functions is that like everything you do is going to have Every positive feeling you get is going to have an equal and opposite negative reaction basically.
But I think what's interesting is that one of the beautiful parts, one of the rare beautiful parts about social media, because social media can be such a hellscape, is that ideally it can give you this sort of portal into another person's life, another person culture, or another person like speech patterns. So I think myself included, there are people who are just genuinely enjoying this.
Genuinely like I find her voice to be like ASMR. I get a lot of Appalachia content, which is like exploding on TikTok right now. And I think people really enjoy just hearing the rhythms of it just from like an esthetic point of view. And then also that's, you know, ideally that was the dream of the internet that we get to like have access to these portals that we wouldn't have otherwise.
Juravich: But this isn't the first time that accents have gone viral. I mean, there was a time when Valley Girl accents were very prominent on the TikTok app and they were talked about in both a joking manner and a not so joking manner. So tell me how the reaction to Sweeney and her Boston accent is different than how people were basically like making fun of the Valley Girl accent.
O’Neill: So I think what you might be referring to, like it sounds like a valley girl accent to my ears as well, but it's what people call TikTok. And so there's a quintessential sort of example of this as far as I'm concerned is this creator named Hoopify. I interviewed Hoopfy for another story, an unrelated story, and he talks like this on TikTok. And that's the way he deliberately talks on all of his videos.
And he specifically was like, oh, I just noticed that when I did that, I got greater engagement. On TikTok, there's this phenomenon of the creator speak. I'm sure you're familiar with it if you spend any time on it. It's that come with me to the store to buy Brussels sprouts. Like that, that, that cadence that sort of like developed on TikTok. Where did it come from?
Why is it happening? It's kind of unclear. Linguists can talk a lot about Valley Girl accents and how... They once were, when the song "Valley Girl" came out with Moon Unit Zappa doing her Valley Girl accent, they were kind of like made fun of, stigmatized. It was sort of the stereotype was that you were like, maybe like not so smart or kind of like a girl at the mall.
That sort of transmuted over the years, in the next 20 years to become sort of like a signifier for a certain sort of like rich girl or like a suburban white girl. And so like that was sort of like this, it became. I don't know if aspirational is the right word. Anyway, it has transmuted to TikTok, which is what brought me to the story in the first place.
I was worried that TikTok was destroying regional accents. That was sort of my hypothesis. I was like, everyone's gonna listen to TikTok and this is the way everyone's going to talk. And I was very pleasantly surprised to find A, there's a huge market for people with regional accents and B, the linguist that I spoke to said that like the accents you listen to online aren't nearly as impactful on how you speak as the people you speak to face to face.
Juravich: Yes, I found that very interesting from your story. So just listening to a video on social media isn't gonna change the way you speak. The way you talk is influenced by the conversations you have. Tell me more about that.
O’Neill: You know, again, this was all brand new to me because this was running counter to what I was expecting to learn. But yeah, the research from the linguists that I spoke to, I spoke several linguists and they were saying, everyone code switches. You know this is something that we do consciously and it's something we do unconsciously.
I used to live in the Midwest, whenever I get pulled over all of a sudden I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe, I'm so sorry officer. You know like, these things sort of happen consciously and unconsciously, so there's a conscious sort of like. There are people who are consciously adopting TikTok online, like Hoopify, people who were like, oh, this is the cadence that I need to speak to online to get going.
But as far as like the way accents change specifically, it has a lot more to do with who you are having a conversation with, not just who you're listening to. I guess that's sort of the example that I might come up with, and the linguist can tell me if this is right or not, but it's like, I would sound just like Beyonce if it was just based on whatever I listened to, or I would sounds like Bjork if it's just based what I was listening to, But sadly, I do not sound like Bjorn or Beyonce, I sound like the people I talk to.
Juravich: This is Tech Tuesday From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News, and we're talking about TikTok regional accents and going viral with Washington Post journalist Shane O'Neill. The whole concept of these accents going viral plays into the bigger picture, the portrayal of cultures on social media. Tell me about that, and an example you give in your piece is related to Southern accents and how people view a Southern accent.
O’Neill: It's really complicated. I mean, I think that one of the women I spoke to is named Iva of Appalachia. She has a very interesting story. She was raised in Appalacha by her great grandparents, not her grandparents, her great-grandparents. So in addition to being in a kind of a regionally inaccessible area, she also was raised by people who were just of like two generations removed from what the dominant culture was.
So she, since 2009, has been uploading stories and memories and recipes and legends that she grew up with and songs. Basically, she considers it to be sort of her life's work, her life passion to create an archive of what she's learned from her great grandparents and to preserve culture. She said that when she first was online, she would just get so much hate that there would be comments in the threads making fun of how she spoke.
We all know the slurs and insults that people use to describe Southern people. And she said, literally her husband would find her like crying at her computer and he would be like, why are you doing this? Like what? And she would just be like no, I need to create this record. What she literally said was the internet is forever and I need find a way to preserve this.
She has also said though that like, and this bears out with other people that I've spoken to is that there's this new Renaissance online of young people from Appalachia and from the South. Who are super proud of their accents and are super-proud of their culture and the way they speak. And there's one professor I spoke to, who I think she's at the University of Kentucky.
She said she increasingly has students from Appalachia who are like, no, I am not going to change the way that I speak. I'm not going lose my accent. I'm going to code switch in order to get jobs. That runs really differently to what Iva's experience was, which is that she said her whole life, she had teachers being like, you gotta lose that accent.
You gotta change the way you talk. Even well-meaning people who are saying you know like I know it's a terrible stereotype, but people won't think you're smart. People won't take you seriously. That bore out with Reshonda Elias Lockhart, who I also spoke to, who has a beautiful southern accent.
People underestimate you. People think that you are maybe nice or friendly or folksy, but people also can think that you're uneducated or not smart. So I think it's an ongoing conversation, but there is this sort of renaissance of pride that is happening online and in real life.
Juravich: Another linguist you talked to said that people once believed that television was going to make us all sound the same, but that didn't happen, right?
O’Neill: Yes, and she said the same thing happened with radio, which really struck me because this was sort of the humbling thing of following the story, was she was like, nope, you're part of the same moral panic that happens whenever there's a new technology. People think that it's gonna be the end of everything.
The example with radio and TV is also interesting because radio and T.V. Also gave us that kind of strange 20s, like mid-Atlantic, the mid-atlantic accent, where you sorta talk like this. And there's not a whole lot of evidence that that actually changed the way that people off the radio or off the TV spoke.
So I think there's a direct parallel to that, that there are these there are these conventions that we take up with audio technology so that we think certain things sound a certain way or play into people's expectations or desires. But that doesn't necessarily literally change the way that we're speaking when we're not behind a microphone.
Juravich: Well, obviously, I work in public radio. I got my start in Pittsburgh, which is where I was born and raised, but I worked hard to get rid of my Pittsburgh accent when I'm speaking on the radio, right? Peter, let it out, let out, let it down. Yeah, I'm gonna go, I'm going to go down town to the Stiller game after I wash my laundry, you know? Like, so, yes, it's in there, but I don't use it unless I'm talking about the Stillers, you now?
O’Neill: Or the other thing is if you get drunk, that's another way.
Juravich: Okay, but if I'm around my father for a long period of time, my husband will tell you that suddenly I'm from Pittsburgh again.
O’Neill: Oh yeah, those are the things. If you get excited, if you get emotional, if you got drunk or if you're around people who also have that accent. I, for a long time, I lived with a wonderful man who is from South Carolina and there were days when I would come home and be like, oh, you were just on the phone with your mom because I can tell that's what you're talking to me right now.
Juravich: So, but what about that idea of, um, I needed to speak in a public radio manner, right? Should I have all those like 20 some years ago, should I have listened to my boss then and gotten rid of the Pittsburgh accent or should I have kept it? 20 years ago, getting rid of it was what I should do.
O’Neill: I mean, you tell me these are personal choices, you know, it's like, especially far be it from me, you know, like, white Midwestern guy to tell you whether or not you should or shouldn't keep your accent. I think everyone knows and has to make those decisions for themselves. There are advantages to code switching and there's disadvantages to code-switching.
Personally, from my personal point of view, you, know, I love hearing regional accents and I find them really exciting and wonderful. But, you know, far be it from me to tell someone that, you know, they should or shouldn't speak a certain way. Stephen Colbert is also from the South. And he specifically said, like, when I was young, I realized that, like everyone on TV who had a Southern accent was portrayed as being stupid.
And I decided I wasn't going to be sounding like that. I don't know how he feels about that decision these days, but you know these are just personal decisions you make. So I don't think there is a should. I guess I would just say that if you're talking to me, I love hearing, I love hearing regional accents.
Juravich: Are other social media platforms, Instagram, Facebook, are they also making cultures and accents go viral or is this an exclusive TikTok thing?
O’Neill: It's happening on multiple platforms. I think TikTok is, for reasons we'll probably never know because we will never have full access to their algorithms. For whatever reason, Appalachian content is just like real hot right now on TikTok and has been for quite some time. There's a really beautiful, just a self-recorded, I mean, like everything is, just a recorded clip of a woman singing at a funeral, for example, that has been viewed millions and millions of times on both TikTok and Instagram.
Um, so yeah, there's, it's happening on multiple platforms. There's something about TikTok that is like really vibing on Appalachia right now and Appalachen remedies and, um, and folk culture and cryptids and all, all these things, for whatever reason, the algorithm's really rewarding that on TikTok.
Juravich: Tell me a little bit about the thick New York accents. You spoke with someone who shares family recipes in a thick New york accent. Are people embracing that as well?
O’Neill: So that is one of my very favorite creators. Her name is Rita Gigante. She is a fascinating woman. She's a professional psychic. She's also the daughter of the head of like a crime, an organized crime syndicate leader. And she wrote a memoir about that. But the reason I discovered her and loved her is she gives these really basic recipes from her childhood.
With this really beautiful, thick New York accent. And that's kind of what I've found the most fascinating about her and what people tend to love about her as well. So she's a multifaceted woman. Interesting thing about New York accents or new accents in general. I spoke to a linguist who did a really seminal study in the eighties of Detroit accents at a high school.
And the self-described students at this high school that you did this sort of like linguistic ethnography on. They self-described as either jocks or burnouts. And jocks didn't necessarily mean like sports. It meant like, I do homework. I'm in clubs. I'm really aligned with the school. And burnouts didn't mean necessarily mean like doing drugs, which is what I sort of associated with.
It was more just like, counterculture, don't care, don't care about school. And what she found was that the people, the self-identified burnouts, tended to have more of what we considered a regional Detroit accent than the jocks who sort of like aligned more with the values of the institution. So her theory, which is sort of borne out in various other places, is that if you're aligned with an institution, you're more likely to speak in what we consider like a sort of value-neutral Midwest regionalist accent.
And if you are aligned more with a community, with a specific community, you're more likely have more what we'd consider like local accent. One of the big examples that she gave was you go into a fire station in New York City. You are way more likely to hear someone with a New York accent, because these are guys who are all hanging out together, you know, at 24 hour shifts and all of that.
And they have this like sort of like common bond and common goal that they're working towards that there's, depending on how you're aligning yourself institutionally or with like an internal community changes the way that you speak. Um, so I think that that's part of what also Authenticity is such currency online that I think that people get really excited about anything that's authentic.
Also that's, you know, the people who tell you how to make money on social media, they're like, authenticity is everything. So I guess it would make sense that like for regional accents, that's a part of what we consider to be authenticity.
Juravich: We've been talking about regional accents and viral moments on social media with Washington Post journalist, Shane O'Neill. Thank you so much for your time today.
O’Neill: It is such a pleasure and please speak in that Pittsburgh accent to me all day long.
Juravich: I will, especially after watching The Pit for a little while. Coming up, we're going to talk about train derailments and the environmental impact. That is when Tech Tuesday from all sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to Tech Tuesday from all sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology and the future of our environment. All U.S. Freight lines are required by law to carry hazardous materials. About two million hazmat cars are transported each year. But just as car accidents and plane crashes have deadly consequences, so do train derailments.
In 2023, a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. The effects of the derailment in East Palestine were tragic and long lasting. And since East Palestine, reforms are being made to how train companies are required to handle hazardous materials so that communities located by the train tracks can have peace of mind.
Joining us now to talk about train derailments and prevention is Jess Conard, the executive director of RailWatch. Welcome to All Sides Jess. Hi Amy, great to be here. So there is a growth in manufacturing and energy demands. It relies on the transportation of hazardous chemicals. We have to move them around. How are hazmat transit incidents trending? What have you found about the number of incidents in recent years?
Jess Conard: Well, that's a big question and something that I think a lot of us are really concerned about. I am a resident or former resident rather of East Palestine, Ohio. I still feel like I live there because my whole family is there and I visit often. Train derailments themselves occur three times a day. And as you said, most of them are carrying hazardous materials.
So I think that's pretty significant. These trains are traveling through heavy metropolitan areas, highly populated areas, folks' backyards. And, you know, basically all over the country, you either have one in your backyard or you know someone who does. So it's very concerning. And you know I think that most people think that there is nothing that can be done about this, especially locally, because a lot of the regulations are made at the federal level. But I've learned a lot over the last three years by studying the events in my hometown and I've come to realize that that's not completely true.
Juravich: Well, three train drillments a day is a lot. I mean, if we had three plane crashes a day, people would be up in arms and very scared. But then also on the flip side, we have way more than three car accidents a day. So how is it that people are just like immune to worrying about this? Is it just it only affects you if it affects you in your backyard.
Conard: I mean, I think maybe a lot of issues are like that, but that is one reason why I established a grassroots organization called Railwatch to bring light to these issues and to take my personal tragedy and turn it into a national movement for railroad accountability and disaster prevention. So I think that there is a lot outreach that we can do and there are certainly concerns I have found that communities do have.
Railwatch is a really desirable organization right now. The first two months after I launched Railwatch earlier this year, I was able to work in 19 communities, 11 states, and parts of Canada. So, you know, communities are concerned about rail safety and I think Railwatches filling that gap between regulatory power and community concern.
Juravich: So tell me if, yeah, you've explained rail watch. Tell me a little bit more about what you're trying to do. You're trying build awareness, but then also are you trying to make changes in safety practices?
Conard: You bet. Certainly want to empower communities to be able to identify concerns that they have about railroad tracks, bridges, infrastructure, crossings. The cornerstone of RailWatch is a community mapping tool that takes their concerns and turns them into action. So I work with my team to help develop next steps for community members.
So that they can take their concerns to the next level. I also do a lot of policy advocacy. I just got back from a week in Washington, DC. I frequently speak with state and local representatives about policy solutions at all levels of government. And Railwatch is also really well connected to create technical comments, do research, reports. Obviously, I do a lotta media. But it's been a pretty successful five or six months here to start.
Juravich: You signify a difference between, there's class one, class two, and class three rail carriers. Do safety practices differ between the three? Maybe explain what those each are and how they differ.
Conard: Yeah, you know, I think it's the class one railroads, they have a responsibility to set the safety standard and unfortunately are the top two class one railroad that are the most unsafe are Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern. Um, I think that Norfolk Southern, since the train derailment in my community.
You know, I think they've made some gains in safety, but with, you know, there's a merger between these two class one railroads that's coming up and they've applied for this. And I just think that that's really setting a bad example for everyone to put the two most, statistically most unsafe railroads together. I think that they have a lot of work to do.
Union Pacific safety culture assessment still has not been completed and you know I think they have responsibility for the other railroads but I'm not sure, I'm not really convinced that they're merging because they want to compete with the
Juravich: Hmm. Yeah. Well, tell me more about rail companies being reluctant to adopt some increased safety measures. I mean, does it all come down to the bottom line of money? It costs too much money to make the line safer.
Conard: Well, I have pretty good relationships with a lot of folks who work on the railroads. And from what I can understand, precision scheduled railroading is a huge problem. It certainly does identify profits as the primary goal. And unfortunately, that does lead to cuts in staff as well as safety. Measures, decreasing the amount of time to properly inspect the train.
All sorts of issues will come with making those kinds of cuts. And I think that it is, you know, the railroads do need to take accountability for those things. I also want to lay a little responsibility on the Federal Rail Administration and, you now, the US Department of Transportation. The surface transportation board, there's a lot of government agencies that are responsible for railroad operations, and we need a better system of enforcement for the regulations that we have in place.
The phrase that resonates with me the most after the East Palestine train derailment is that it was preventable. That tells me that there were laws and regulations in place, that should have been followed and they weren't. And yet no criminal charges have been applied in this circumstance. So where is the downfall? And I think it's just really important that if we are gonna have regulation for rail that we need to enforce it.
Juravich: This is Tech Tuesday from all sides on 89.7 NPR News, and we're talking about train derailments and prevention with the Executive Director of Railwatch, Jess Conrad. So tell me about railroad safety procedures. Are they similar to airline safety procedures? How would you compare the two? Are airlines safer than railroads?
Conard: That's a good question. I really don't know too much about airlines, but I certainly know more about trains than I ever anticipated knowing. I think that they are different in a lot of ways. Um there are the way that trains are regulated is private um and so that leads to a lot of concerns, right?
A lot of limitations that we, as the public, have in order to address those safety concerns, things like blocked crossings. For example, localities really can't make rules or laws in regards to blocked crossngs, so trains can actually block those crossings pretty much as long as they want to without any active penalty. There are deteriorating train tracks, hazardous materials transport, things like defect detectors.
A lot of these are regulated at the federal level and they are privately owned. So it's really difficult to compare even the different modes of transportation because they are regulated. In such a different fashion. And there are groups out there, grassroots groups, that would propose things like nationalization of our rail. There are really important groups that want to electrify the rail system.
And I think that these are really great initiatives that we need to continue to consider. Because railroad really, they should be more in the public interest than corporate profit. And right now, it's a corporate profiteering model and a socialized risk. And I just don't think that that's an acceptable framework anymore.
Juravich: Can you tell me about electronically controlled brakes? They can help prevent train derailments, but why are rail companies hesitant to adopt them?
Conard: I think you would probably need to ask them that question. But I think the main concern is we have technologies that are post-Civil War era, which are the current braking systems. And I think that we need to consider using them. I mean, even just the simple being able to access the consist, right?
The availability of knowing whether or not your train wheels are on fire. That information. Does not go to the person operating the train. It goes to a call center when a defect detector goes off. Could you imagine driving down the highway, Amy, and your wheel is on fire, but you're not allowed to know because that goes to call center.
And that person at the call center says, ah, you're good. Keep driving, Amy. I just feel like that's probably not a system that we should be using anymore. And a lot of the systems, the structures, they're very antiquated, and we've done a terrible job of upgrading them and forcing even something as simple as a rail car that is very notably dangerous.
The National Transportation Safety Board has said to remove it. And yet there's not an immediate removal of that. It's a voluntary phase out, the DOT 111 cars. Um, that have, you know, high puncture probability and, you know, they're just really not safe to be on the tracks, but yet here we are still allowing these rickety rail lines to run through our backyards.
Juravich: Well, after the East Palestine derailment, the Railway Safety Act of 2023 was released. I mean, did that help? What did that do?
Conard: Yeah, so I did work a little bit with former senator Sherrod Brown. And I think JD Vance was also on the original version. So it was a bipartisan effort, which was great. The 2023 version did not include everything from the National Transportation Safety Board investigation report from my community.
But it included a lot of it. And I think. What the other thing that happened is that rail safety kind of became sexy in the legislative space which is great we needed to become sexy so more people are paying attention to it apparently sex sells but my point in saying that is that there have been other versions states have introduced all sorts of legislation i think most importantly right now we have the surface transportation board reauthorization act, where provisions of Delusio's bill has gone into that.
Dynatitis from Nevada also had the Secure Tracks Act, which requires putting your eyes on the railroad tracks to inspect it regularly. And so, you know, these provisions are so important to be passed. They need to be pass robustly and urgently. And so it's nice to be able to see. That's being put into a budget bill, which would require passage maybe a little bit sooner than some of the bills that are currently circulating.
Juravich: So are some of those things that you just mentioned, are they in the works? Are they gonna pass? Or what do listeners need to do? Do they need to call their congresspeople or their senator just to raise awareness?
Conard: I mean, I'm always a huge proponent of civic engagement. I think that if there's something that you really care about, take that to someone, a decision maker, a person that can make that happen for you. So yes, I do, if you have any concern about rail safety in your community, maybe just start with a local legislator, start with your state representative or your senator.
You know, you don't have to take a big trip to Washington, D.C. Your elected leaders are available and they work for you. So being able to contact them is really important and it should be accessible. I would like to see the Surface Transportation Board pass some rail safety legislation within that bill. I think that it could be a bit more robust.
I'd like to see it include more things like crossings and emissions from rail yards. But, you know, I guess at this point there hasn't really been anything that has passed in the rail safety space. So I'm gonna be happy with.
Juravich: Anything right now. Alright, anything. Well, just to end on, do you feel like, I know you said you don't live there anymore, but you still have family in East Palestine. Do they feel like they're being taken care of? Do they feel like their being forgotten? Is it just that this train derailment happened years ago and we need to move forward? What are you thinking there from an East Palestine perspective?
Conard: Oh, I just love East Palisades so much. And, you know, as a community that I grew up in and my parent, a multi-generational resident, I think I know every single street because I rode my bicycle everywhere. I believe that people are actively healing, working on healing. I think that some are still suffering.
I think there has not been enough done in terms of an organized medical response. In fact, there has been nothing done. There is legislation in place that we, as taxpayers, you know, we pay for that legislation. We pay for the taxpayer to create it, to pass it.
And then when it comes time to use it, we were not able to use any of the legislation in-place to help us relocate, to help get medical care, to remediate our lands. And, you know that's been really unfortunate. And I think that it sets a precedent. And we don't want that. We want to make sure that we're able to heal and move forward.
It's been really interesting seeing all of the civic engagement that has happened since the disaster. There are so many folks, so many advocates, and that's, you know, really great to see, but hopefully we can take our knowledge and turn the crisis into a catalyst to prevent train derailments and chemical disasters.
Juravich: We've been talking about train derailments and prevention with the executive director of RailWatch, Jess Conard. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jess. Yes, thank you for having me. And coming up, we're gonna talk about what deals are the good deals for Amazon Prime Day, and also can you use AI to fix your relationship issues? Many think not. That is when Tech Tuesday from all sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. This is Tech Tuesday, a show where we share stories about science, technology, and the future of our environment. Prime Day starts today. How can people make the most of it this year? And at this point, AI has become a staple in all of our lives, from Google searches to sending emails. But how does AI have the wisdom to help people fix their relationship issues? Most people think it doesn't. We're here to talk about those topics and more. We have Russell Holly, Director of Commerce, Content, and CNET. Welcome back to All Sides Russell.
Russell Holly: Thank you.
Juravich: I wanted to start with Prime Day because it's today, but as usual, it's not one day, it is many days. Tell me about the schedule here and what you're excited about buying for Amazon Prime Day.
Holly: Yeah, so this is a weird one, right? Because Prime Day for the summer usually is something that happens either in coordination with or after the 4th of July, and Amazon has decided to step in front of the US 250 this year and have their event before it happens. But a lot of their competitors are going to keep that sale throughout the next couple of weeks.
So Walmart and Best Buy are running kind of competing sales right now to Amazon's thing, but it's going to stretch out for a little while. This is kind of an unusual. Set of circumstances for how long this thing is actually going to go. Prime Day is listed as being from today, the 23rd, until Friday, the 26th, though Amazon has a history of making sure that those things, the best performing things, tail through the weekend for folks who jump on at the last minute to see what is available. And as we have seen for the last couple of events, there are a lot of things that are on sale, and those sale prices are bringing the products back down to what they were pre-inflation.
Juravich: Hmm. Okay. And is what's on sale? I mean, usually you come here and you tell me about electronics and that's where the good deals are. Is that true?
Holly: There's a surprising amount of outdoor stuff. REI has a really compelling sale that is competing with Prime Day right now, which is worth keeping an eye on if you're not necessarily interested in tech. Walmart has quite a bit in the way of outdoor grills and wireless speakers and things like that.
What we found was different so far this year is that because the World Cup is happening at the same time, a lot of the prices that we would see on TVs that are normally prices that we would see for Black Friday are available now. LG and Hisense in particular are two companies that have done some pretty substantial discounts. And if you are a little more technically minded and have been, like I have been really sad as we check the prices of storage and memory for computers, Samsung has some genuinely compelling discounts on a lot of that stuff right now.
Juravich: And these deals for prime days, you have to be a member of prime, right? I mean, this all started because Amazon was trying to get more people to join prime.
Holly: That's exactly right. Yeah, you will find a vast majority of the deals, though not 100% of them, are something that requires you to be a Prime subscriber in order to take advantage of. And this includes, if you are one of the Amazon MasterCard holders, there are some cash back advantages during Prime Day that only apply to those card holders.
Juravich: My Amazon branded smart speaker, you know the name, is very old and sounds her age. So I was just thinking this morning when I asked it to play that, oh, maybe I should get a new one for Prime Day. So I looked this morning, there's a pretty good deal. Yeah, would you recommend I buy my smart speaker right now?
Holly: Amazon always make sure that their own products are at the best prices during these events. So while those prices are great, they are the same prices that they were during the spring and almost assuredly the same price as we will see for Black Friday. So buying Amazon stuff is always an exercise in waiting until there's an Amazon branded sale in order to get the best price on them. But yeah, to answer your question, I wouldn't expect it to be any better priced any time the rest of this year. So if you're looking to upgrade now is one of the better times.
Juravich: Okay, and just to recap, I felt like I was going crazy because I was like, I really thought Prime Day was always in July because it was always when I was on vacation and I didn't want to order anything. That's right. I didn't want to have to order and sit on my porch so I was always annoyed when Prime Day was. So, is this? So they moved it because of America 250? Or they moved- They haven't-
Holly: They haven't explicitly stated one way or the other, but Amazon almost always has this event after July 4th. Last year it actually ran through July 4 and into the remainder of that week. And I think things lined up in such a way for Amazon that having it now at the end of this quarter probably made more business sense to them than starting the next quarter with the sale.
Juravich: Well, and in their ads on their site telling you what to buy, I was annoyed because they were trying to get me to buy school supplies. And I was like, it is only June, sir.
Holly: It is only June, and yet things like AA batteries are on some pretty great prices, so those kind of daily staple things are also worth kind of scrolling through and seeing what you can find.
Juravich: All right, I'll buy my composition notebooks, that's fine. All right let's move on to dating and AI. People are using AI for everything. Everything except dating it seems. This might be surprising in an age of online dating but you're finding that people are avoiding AI on dating apps. Your CNET story talks about this where they don't want AI overly involved in their dating apps, tell me why.
Holly: Yeah, so I think a lot of it comes from a combination of things. The first is kind of selecting on your behalf algorithms that will filter people out based on interests that you have said are kind of red flags or however the particular dating site would want to take it. You know, having, using AI to modify your image, you know, so that the picture that you share on these dating apps is not actually reflective of who you are.
It's also not reflective of the way that you talk or the way that you write because the AI is doing those things for you. So, it ends up being a really terrible way of, you now, kind of quickly getting to know if this is someone that you would want to pursue a conversation with because there's no way of knowing how much of what you see on the screen is actually them.
Juravich: But I would have to think a lot of dating apps are using AI in the programming on the back end, right? Because that's just the world we live in now and that's how things work. But you're talking more where on the front end where people are using AI to enhance their profiles. That's what's giving people this like ick feeling.
Holly: Yeah, so it's two different things, right? It is not knowing that you can actually rely on the image on the dating app, which I would argue is something that people expressed as a concern before AI got popular, and not necessarily an issue that is unique to the AI world that we find ourselves in. But the bigger thing was once you actually go to meet someone in person.
Using an AI tool, say, at a dinner or something like that, specifically in a conversational tone. So, if you're using AI to solve a particular task or to kind of set yourself a reminder for something, that is sort of less troublesome. But there are quite a few singles across the entirety of the spectrum that say that using an AiChat companion as though it is a personal conversation you're having with your phone. Is something that just makes a lot of people very uncomfortable. In some cases, up to 70% of the thousand people that were questioned for this particular group of questions.
Juravich: So, yeah, so this survey, is it basically saying that if you are going on a first date and you're sitting there and you are using AI to help you with the conversation starters or help you be a different person than you actually are, that's what they're worried about?
Holly: Right, it's that. And when you have the kind of companion-style chat bots that are quite personal, the conversation that you're effectively having with the inanimate object at your table can often be quite intimate. In the replies that are given, where it will complement how quickly you were able to solve a problem or something like that.
And those are things that are typically done out loud. For the person that you are courting to hear and it's just kind of off-putting to have, you know, this semi-intimate conversation with a rectangle on the table instead of the human being across the table from you.
Juravich: So what are we supposed to do? We're supposed to be getting dating advice from family and friends in real life. Is that what we should be doing?
Holly: You could just try talking to people and not having your phone out while talking to you people. That is something that worked for the human race for quite a while before we had rectangles and I imagine it will continue to work after.
Juravich: This is Tech Tuesday from all sides on 89.7 NPR News. We are talking about some recent tech news with Russell Holly, Director of Commerce Content for CNET. I want to talk about Apple now. So Tim Cook, the outgoing CEO of Apple, says that an increase in the price of an iPhone is unavoidable. So the iPhone 18 is expected to roll out later this year in the fall. What are we expecting the cost to be? Just a lot, right?
Holly: Yeah, it's really hard to tell, you know, so you know Apple was one of the first companies to cross the thousand dollar threshold for what a phone would cost by making these versions of the iPhone that had incredible amounts of storage and features that went along with that sort of thing. Samsung then followed suit and then Google and several others.
And now there's quite a bit of speculation about which phone is going to first cross the $2,000 threshold. And the current speculation is that if Apple were to roll out a folding phone as kind of the way to start the next CEO's journey, as Tim Cook will not be CEO for the next iPhone launch, he will have stepped up into his more administrative role with the board. But, you know, this could be a new CEO as John Ternes takes the stage for the first time and announces this phone that that could well be a phone that crosses the $2,000 mark.
Juravich: Are all Apple products expected to rise in price or are we just talking about this foldable phone?
Holly: The things that are the most expensive for Apple right now are things like storage and memory. And those are things that Apple does not make itself. It has to acquire from other places, almost always Samsung in most cases. And so all of that has gotten more expensive as AI data centers have continued to grow and cryptocurrency has continued to to grow.
The hardware manufacturers cannot keep up with that demand, and so the cost goes up pretty incredibly. And that's something that, combined with other global economic struggles, has made it so that acquiring that technology is just very much more expensive than it was even two years ago. So, you know, those things are where I would expect to see the greatest increase in cost, where historically Apple has had maybe a $100 difference between one phone size and another, that could increase to $150 or even $200 as a difference between phone models to offset some of those costs.
Juravich: Is this what people are calling ramageddon? Because the storage costs more? Yeah, tell me about the word ramagedon.
Holly: Yeah, so memory for computers of pretty much any description, all of it has gotten more and more expensive. Some of the memory problems for the memory costs for things like phones are less problematic, because this is all what is called system on a chip. So it's all built into one board and not a thing that you are adding later.
You know, but anyone who has been looking to upgrade a desktop recently has seen that the prices for a lot of that stuff has gone incredibly high, you know, while the cost of other things like display technology and things like that come down, it's just not enough to kind of balance the the increase in cost there.
Juravich: We have less than a minute, but should I buy an Apple product during Amazon Prime days? Will that save me any money?
Holly: You will definitely find discounts on Apple products for Amazon Prime Day. Weirdly enough, you will not find them at Amazon or at Apple. Some of the best prices that we have seen on Apple product so far this year for this event are actually at Walmart and Best Buy.
Juravich: Oh, okay. So, so, but Walmart and Best Buy are having sales because Amazon is, right?
Holly: Yes, but their discounts on Apple products just happen to be better for this particular event.
Juravich: All right. So should I can go get my iPhone 17 before the 18 comes out at a cheaper price?
Holly: And you should.
Juravich: Okay, duly noted. We've been talking about recent tech news with Russell Holly, Director of Commerce, Content for CNET. Thank you so much, Russell.
Holly: Thanks for having me.
Juravich: And I want to say thanks to the All Sides staff. That includes producers Marcus Charleston and Erin Esmont Rabinowitz. Student producers Iza Huck, Colin Simpson and Brianna Fortunit. Our student producer from Denison University is Ellen Hanson. Video production by the Ohio Channel and board operation is by Chris Johnston and Trey Hayes. This is All Side on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich. Thanks for joining us.