TLDR

Brian Droitcour is a professional art critic, and a Yelp user. In 2012 he started using the popular review site to post his reactions to galleries and museums, using a distinctly un-art world-y voice. This week, Brian sits down with TLDR to talk about art, online criticism, parties and his unusual project. To read Brian's Yelp reviews, click here. To check out Fifteen Stars, Brian's project for the New Museum, click here. If you like our show, please subscribe and review us on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow Meredith and TLDR on Twitter.

CJ Philips and Charlie Rainwater bought JebBushforPresident.com back in 2008 -- but not because they're huge Bush fans or want to sell the address at a markup. With the 2016 election approaching, the pair have launched the site as a place for discussion, with a focus the URL might not suggest. This week, CJ and Charlie tell TLDR about what inspired their initial purchase, their plans for JebBushforPresident.com, and what a CJ and Charlie presidency would look like. To join the discussion at JebBushforPresident.com, click here. To check out Santorum-2012.com, click here. If you like our show, please subscribe and review us on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow Meredith and TLDR on Twitter.

The last episode of TLDR was titled "Quiet, Wadhwa." It concerned a man named Vivek Wadhwa, but we did not ask him for comment. The episode was later removed. This week we look at the controversy we've become a part of and our role in it. To read Amelia Greenhall's original blog post, titled "Quiet, Ladies. @wadhwa is speaking," click here. To read Greenhall's post-podcast removal follow up, titled "I wrote about Vivek Wadhwa and you'll never guess what happened next!," click here. To read Vivek Wadhwa's rebuttal of episode #45 on Venture Beat, titled "My response to the podcast that unfairly attacked me," click here. To read Vivek Wadhwa's other response to the situation on South Asia Mail, titled "Perils of becoming a public figure," click here. To read Gawker and Gizmodo's coverage of the situation, click here and here. [Update: The Cate Huston article referenced was co-authored by Karen Catlin, and is notably titled "Tech’s Male ‘Feminists’ Aren’t Helping. To read, click here.]  

Charlotte Shane writes a TinyLetter called Prostitute Laundry, writing frankly and lyrically about her feelings, her relationships, her body and her sex lives -- both personal and professional. This week TLDR looks into women writing personal, voice-driven newsletters, sitting down with Charlotte, as well as writer Meaghan O'Connell, to talk about the kind of writing that you want delivered straight to your inbox. To sign up for the Prostitute Laundry TinyLetter, click here. Meaghan O'Connell's birth story was published by Longreads, and you can read it here. Download "The Laugh of the Medusa," by Helene Cixous, here. If you like our show, please subscribe and review us on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow Meredith and TLDR on Twitter.   

"Sweepers" are people who spend their free time entering hundreds of online sweepstakes -- the contests most of us skip because we're sure they're all scams. It turns out, we're wrong. Some people win big. Sandra Grauschopf is About.com's Contests and Sweepstakes Expert. You can visit her website, http://contests.about.com, to learn all you need to know about sweepstakes, and to check out what other sweepers have to say in About.com’s contests and sweepstakes forums. You can order Don Cruz's book "Life of an HGTV Dream Home Winner" at his website, DonCruz.net Thanks for listening. If you like the show please follow TLDR on Twitter and subscribe to us on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you've ever been a bridesmaid, in a sorority, or just been friends with two or more women, you have probably received an off-the-wall planning email or two. Caroline Moss and Michelle Markowitz have been parodying these chains for The Toast since August 2013, in a series called Hey Ladies. This week on TLDR, the cast of Hey Ladies Live comes together to show us how much effort goes into organizing one, simple St. Patrick's Day on the town. Thanks for listening. You can find Caroline and Michelle on Twitter, as well as the rest of the cast. If you like our show, please subscribe and review us on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow Meredith and TLDR on Twitter. 

When Will Rogers discovered GodTube.com, he was bothered by the idea of Christians segregating themselves from the larger cultural conversation. So he set out to start a dialogue. Meredith talks to Will about his GodTube.com videos, what he wanted to communicate, and the people he met. Thanks for listening. You can read Will's essay about Godtube at The Kernel. If you like our show, please subscribe and review us on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow Meredith and TLDR on Twitter. 

Susan Miller, proprietor of Astrology Zone, is the biggest name in internet astrology. Her fans are many and devoted, and among them are both Meredith and Laura Mayer (this week's co-investigator). This week marks Miller's 19th year reading the stars online. Meredith and Laura look into her enduring appeal with the help of Emily Gould, Jon Methven, and Kate McKean.   Thanks for listening. Emily, Jon, and Kate are all on Twitter. If you like our show, please subscribe and review us on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow Laura, Meredith and TLDR on Twitter. 

The first message you send to a Tinder match can determine the rest of your relationship. To ease this pressure, some men on the internet have taken to their favorite forums to crowdsource the perfect opening line. Meredith evaluates their results.   Thanks for listening. You can see the article this episode was based on at The Daily Dot. If you like our show, please subscribe and review us on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow Meredith and TLDR on Twitter. 

For the past three years Alanah Pearce has been reviewing video games on YouTube. Like other women doing just about anything publicly online, she gets harassed, and in the past she just hasn't replied. But recently Alanah got fed up with not responding at all, and did some digging, which led her to a whole new way to deal with her harassers.  Thanks for listening. You can check out Alanah's video game reviews on YouTube. If you like our show, please subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow Meredith and TLDR on Twitter. 

In the late nineties Leah Reich was working for the video game website IGN, which was the most popular website on the internet for 13 to 18 year old boys at the time. She started reading and responding to the site's mailbag, and before she knew it she had become the trusted advisor for thousands of lonely teenaged boys. This week PJ (who was one of those boys) talks to Leah about the trials and rewards of being a counselor to confused, budding nerds. Thanks for listening. You can read Leah's writing about her time as an advice columnist at The Bygone Bureau and The Kernel. She's also writing a series of essays called A Year of Wednesdays, which are very great. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. You can also follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter. 

In the late nineties Leah Reich was working for the video game website IGN, which was the most popular website on the internet for 13 to 18 year old boys at the time. She started reading and responding to the site's mailbag, and before she knew it she had become the trusted advisor for thousands of lonely teenaged boys. This week PJ (who was one of those boys) talks to Leah about the trials and rewards of being a counselor to confused, budding nerds. Thanks for listening. You can read Leah's writing about her time as an advice columnist at The Bygone Bureau and The Kernel, and check out some of her old columns at the Internet Archive. She's also writing a series of essays called A Year of Wednesdays, which are very great. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. You can also follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter. 

On Tuesday, the Philadelphia Police released a video of some unidentified suspects in a brutal attack on a gay couple. Within a few hours, a Philly sports fan and his online friends had identified some of the people in the video without the blizzard of false accusations that usually accompany an online investigation. Alex speaks to  "Fan Since 09" about how he managed to corral a online mob into potentially solving a crime. Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. You can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter. 

Rapper Childish Gambino (A.K.A actor Donald Glover) famously claims to have received his rap pseudonym, "Childish Gambino," from an online Wu-Tang Name generator. But investigating whether this story is true or not led TLDR host Alex Goldman on an odyssey of discovery. Thanks for listening! If you want to receive your own Wu-Tang name, check out the original Wu-Tang Name Generator here, and the other wu-tang name generator here. You can read Tim Carmody's article about the mystery of Childish Gambino at kottke.org. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. You can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter. 

This week, hackers stole and published naked photos of female celebrities. Forbes reporter Kashmir Hill has covered stories like this before, but she says that this latest example has completely changed her mind about who to blame for these thefts and how to prevent them.  Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. You can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter. 

Steve Terrill is a journalist who works in Rwanda. Or at least he worked in Rwanda, until he accidentally got the office of Rwanda's president Paul Kagame to implicate itself in a long-running online harassment campaign. Alex talks to Steve about inadvertently exposing the Rwandan government's most prolific troll, and being banned from the country as a result. Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Steve Terrill aggregates stories about Rwanda on his website Rwanda Wire. You can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter. 

A few weeks ago, writer Katie Notopoulos created a holiday called Unfollow a Man Day, wherein everyone (women and men) was encouraged to Unfollow a Man on social media. Men's rights activists were enraged, cable news was intrigued, and a lot of people felt quiet relief. This week PJ talks to Katie about her mission and her manifesto. Thanks for listening. Katie wrote about her experience of Twitter without men, and about #UnfollowAMan, here. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. You can also follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter. 

This week, dating site OK Cupid put up a blog post describing experiments it conducted on its users. In one experiment, the site told users who were bad matches for one another that they were actually good matches, and vice versa. Alex and PJ talk to OK Cupid President and co-founder Christian Rudder about the ubiquity of online user experimentation and his defense of potentially sending OK Cupid's users on bad dates. Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter. 

Whether you think the internet is a great or terrible place is partly a reflection of which parts of the internet you choose to visit. It's also a reflection of who you are, and how people online react to you. Mikki Kendall is a writer who deals with an extraordinary amount of trolling and vitriol online. Mikki is a black woman in real life, and she created an experiment to see how her online life would change if she were a white man.  Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter. 

Last month, documents surfaced that showed a company called the Internet Research Agency was paying people in Russia to go to an office and post pro-Kremlin comments all day. Alex talks to Buzzfeed's Max Seddon about why they do it, and how successful they actually are at swaying public opinion. Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and and TLDR on Twitter. 

Rob Dubbin accidentally built a teenage girl named Olivia Taters who lives on the internet. She may not always communicate in complete sentences, but she's convincing enough that teenagers actually converse with her. Also, she's very, very funny. PJ talks to Dubbin about how Olivia came into existence, and what she's been talking about lately. Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and Olivia Taters and TLDR on Twitter.   

In February of this year, Philip Welsh of Silver Spring, Maryland, was murdered. His murder remains unsolved, largely because he didn't use the internet, and left no digital trail. Alex talks to Philip's family and reporter Dan Morse about the case.  Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter. If you'd like to hear more of Josh Welsh's band Meatyard, they're on iTunes, Spotify, and SoundCloud. And if you have any information about the murder of Philip Welsh, please call the Montgomery County Police Department at 240-773-5070.

A couple weeks ago, Matt Haughey, the founder of TLDR's favorite website, Metafilter, announced that his website is dying. And he says it's because Google algorithmically stopped directing traffic to the site over a year ago. Alex tries to figure out what you do when Google's algorithm decides it no longer likes you. Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter.

Most people use social networks to present themselves as happier than they really are - it's hard to get an honest read on anyone. But writer Charlie Warzel believes there's a secret method you can use to find out how someone is actually feeling online. On TLDR this week, we try to use Charlie's method to divine the secret heart of Drake, the rapper.  Thanks for listening. Eric's tumblr, photos Drake liked, is here. Charlie writes about internet stuff here. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter. Or Drake on Instagram. 

Kim Correa loves the online game DayZ, which lets you interact with other humans during a zombie apocalypse. DayZ's appeal is that it allows weird, spontaneous interactions between players. It also allows really terrible ones. Kim talks about her experience of being raped in a virtual world -- something she doesn't quite know what to do with. We also talk to writer Julian Dibbel, who wrote about how one online community dealt with a virtual rape back in 1993.  You can read Kim's essay about her experience here. Julian Dibbel's piece about how one online community dealt with virtual rape is here. Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter.

In 2005, Alex Tew was a 21-year-old entrepreneur who wanted to make a million dollars before college. The only problem was he had literally nothing of value to sell. So he made The Million Dollar Homepage -- possibly the most ambitiously garish website ever created. Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter.  

When Wired reporter Andy Greenberg read Newsweek's cover story claiming to have found mysterious Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, he was disappointed. Not so much that the mystery had been solved, but that the answer to the search was not all that interesting. But then, as the Newsweek started getting picked apart, he got a tip about another possible Bitcoin creator: a very ill, very brilliant cryptographer named Hal Finney.  Andy Greenberg is the author of This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information. Donate to Hal Finney's care here.  Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter.

Earlier this week, a commenter named Y. Woodman Brown posted his online passwords in the Washington Post comments section to show just how little his online security mattered to him. It was quickly picked up by the press as an example of online security hubris. Naturally, we had to find him. Alex talks to Y. Woodman Brown and the person who hijacked his Twitter account after the passwords were posted. Here's a brief excerpt from our interview, although there's much more (including a chat with Brown's hacker) in the episode.    ALEX: Despite what happened, you seem to have not changed your mind about your password-sharing philosophy. WOODY BROWN: In the olden days, nobody even locked their front doors, not in the neighborhood I grew up in. And the choice is either live behind the locked door or don’t. And for me freedom is choosing not to live behind the locked door. You know, I think that the way that this story was told on an internet was sort of an idiot who posted his password and got his comeuppance. Does it bother you that that’s the way that that story was told? I expect it. It’s the conventional view. I suppose I did get my comeuppance if you consider that somebody then walked into my accounts on Facebook and added an extra page that said “Boy are you stupid.” I don’t know. I’m inviting you in. I don’t think that some Russian mob guy that invents something like the Heartbleed bug is going to waste his time looking for my money. I think he’s after bigger fish to fry. I think what I’m risking is teenage pranks - “Hahaha, I tagged your account. And what does that amount to? But you know, you exist online as Y. Woodman Brown, which is your real name. And when I found your name, I looked all over the internet, and I found comments by you and you gave people the keys to write on the internet as you. Weren’t you concerned about your reputation as Y. Woodman Brown? Uh...no, I guess not. I guess not. I suppose if Y. Woodman Brown was actually somebody in this world, I might have thought twice. But since I’m just your average joe, that didn’t occur to me. I’m actually curious, if you don’t mind telling me, I found your presence all over the internet, but there’s very little on it about you. It’s mostly you commenting on things. And I was curious who you are. Not, you know, your address, but where you live and sort of what you do. I’m just a technical writer. And what do you do with your free time? I’m so interested in the person who gave his passwords on a Washington Post comment thread. I just think that it takes a level of bravery that I couldn’t begin to muster. I guess during most of life, I’m a low-risk guy. You won’t find me bungee jumping, and you won’t find me doing clips that show up on Tosh.O. Believe me, I’m not daring enough to try that stuff and risk a Tosh-worthy accident. I think I know what you mean about bravery. There was this movie that came out - I don’t know how old you would have been, how long ago was it? "Good Morning Vietnam.” Oh, I remember that, it was from the late 80’s I think. So the moment that defines the movie actually is there’s where Robin Williams is teaching English as a second language to a group of people. He’s talking to an elderly man, and he’s saying to this elderly man “I’m attacking you! I have a spoon and I’m attacking you with my spoon! What do you do?” So he says, “I’m sitting here. I do nothing.” And Robin Williams says, “Well I’m coming after you, I’ve got my spoon, I’m going for you, I’m about to kill you!” and the man said something like, “Then I am dying.” What he’s saying is “I subscribe to peace. So if you truly have the incivility to attack me to the point of death, then what I’m doing is, I’m dying." Real bravery is staying to committed to your principles even if it means your own death. That’s quite extreme. I’m not sure that I’m that far along, but I understand the theory. Wow. You took me on a real journey with that answer. Now comes the confession period of this discussion. The way I found your email address is that I actually reached out to the person who hijacked your twitter account.  Oh, that’s OK. You don’t get to be 53, and put your password on the Washington Post, and not expect that something is going to happen.   Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter.

Continuing our expose into the very hush-hush world of Silence, we look at an app that promises to deliver you four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. PJ talks to Larry Larson, who helped design the 4'33" app. Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter. Our favorite thing that we couldn't fit into this TLDR was this anecdote about John Cage and Merce Cunningham's relationship.

Update: Vulfpeck received an email from Spotify asking the band to remove "Sleepify" from Spotify. See our update here. A band called Vulfpeck has asked fans to stream an entire album of silence on Spotify while they sleep, so the band can use the royalties to tour without charging for their shows. So far, the scheme has worked. We talk to Vulfpeck's Jack Stratton about hustling as a musician on the internet. Thanks for listening! If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. You can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter.   

In 1966, a bored college freshman created Project Flame, an early computer dating system that promised to pair lonely hearts. Project Flame was an overnight sensation. The only problem was that the guy who founded didn't have a computer. Or any idea how to use one.  Thanks for listening. We found out about Project Flame from an obscure weblog called Slate.com. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter. 

Sgt. Star is the army’s robot. Specifically, he’s a chatbot designed to influence potential recruits to enlist in the US Army. So how do we feel about that? Alex talks to the Army and a reporter who's covered recruitment abuses to figure out if we're better or worse off for having a Siri who can talk us into going to war. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, you can subscribe to us on iTunes. Also, please check out all our previous episodes!

Last fall, TLDR covered a bunch of hoaxes. Some we liked, most we didn't. On this episode, we talk to Paulo Ordoveza and Adrienne LaFrance, a couple of people who have devoted themselves to trying to debunk the innumerable falsehoods flying around the internet.  Thanks for listening. If you like the show, you can subscribe to us on iTunes. Also, please check out all our previous episodes!

"Sweepers" are people who spend their free time entering hundreds of online sweepstakes -- the contests most of us skip because we're sure they're all scams. It turns out, we're wrong. Some people win big. Reporter Laura Mayer takes us into the online sweepstakes universe. Sandra Grauschopf is About.com's Contests and Sweepstakes Expert. You can visit her website, http://contests.about.com, to learn all you need to know about sweepstakes, and to check out what other sweepers have to say in About.com’s contests and sweepstakes forums. You can order Don Cruz's book "Life of an HGTV Dream Home Winner" at his website, DonCruz.net   Thanks for listening. If you like the show, you can subscribe to us on iTunes. Also, please check out all our previous episodes! 

In 1998 Swatch tried to completely reinvent our concept of time. Swatch Internet Time (or .beat time) would have been a new way to conceive of moments. There'd be no time zones, and also, no hours, minutes, or seconds. PJ talks to Gizmodo's Eric Limer and Swatch Creative Director Carlo Giordanetti about Swatch's plan to create time's version of Esperanto.  Thanks for listening. If you like the show, you can subscribe to us on iTunes. Also, please check out all our previous episodes! If you're curious, you can calculate beat time on Swatch's website here. 

Every year, a small group of sports fans scattered across the US play a game called "Last Man." The goal is to be the last man in America to find out who won the Super Bowl. TLDR Sports reporter Lisa Pollak followed the game this year, and found out just how hard information was to avoid in the internet age. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, you can subscribe to us on iTunes. Also, please check out all our previous episodes!

A special mini-episode of TLDR to get your mouth watering for tomorrow's non-mini episode! This week, a man named Matthew Mills interrupted the post-Super Bowl MVP press conference to let the world know that 9/11 was perpetrated by the US Government. News outlets pounced at the chance to interview him, flocking to the internet to locate his web presence. A few ended up contacting a different Matthew Mills, who gamely played along. PJ talks to the non-conspiracy minded Matthew Mills about his run-ins with the news media. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, you can subscribe to us on iTunes. Also, please check out all our previous episodes!  

The Slender Man is the internet's monster - the subject of countless remixes, tributes, and parodies. He's so ubiquitous he feels like he's been around for ages, like folklore. But Slender Man has an owner and a point of origin. Alex talks to Eric Knudsen, the creator of Slender Man. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, you can subscribe to us on iTunes. Also, please check out all our previous episodes!

YouTube's infamous for having one of the worst comment sections on the internet. There's no reason to ever read them. Unless you’re writer & filmmaker Mark Slutsky. Mark spends hours scouring the comments section on YouTube, and occasionally, scattered in the dross, he finds small poignant stories for his site Sad Youtube. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, you can subscribe to us on iTunes. Also, please check out all our previous episodes!

This episode of TLDR contains some explicit language. On September 11th, 2012, gunmen attacked two American compounds in Benghazi, Libya, killing four Americans. Sean Smith, one of the four killed in the attack, was an IT manager in the real world, but online, he was Vile Rat, a hugely influential diplomat in the video game Eve Online. Alex talks to Sean's friend Alex "The Mittani" Gianturco about who Sean was both in Eve and in the real world. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, you can subscribe to us on iTunes. Also, please check out all our previous episodes!

One way to make money making music online is the boring way. Write one song that does incredibly well and live off the royalties for the rest of your life. Matt Farley is a musician who’s gone a different route. He's written over 14,000 songs and he makes a tiny bit of money each time someone plays one on Spotify or iTunes. PJ visited Matt at his home recording studio to see how it all works. Thanks for listening. Be sure to check out Matt's music. If you like the show, you can subscribe to us on iTunes. Also, please check out all our previous episodes!

Marion Stokes was a hoarder. When she died last year, her family had to figure out what to do with 9 separate residences and 3 storage locations full of stuff - everything from tens of thousands of books to decades-old Apple computers. This is the story of how they found a home for the strangest artifact in her collection — 140,000 videocassettes filled with 35 years of round-the-clock cable TV news. Thanks for listening. Be sure to check out the story by Sarah Kessler in Fast Company, where we first read about Marion Stokes. If you like the show, you can subscribe to us on iTunes. Also, please check out all our previous episodes!

This episode of TLDR contains some explicit language. This has been a crazy season for internet hoaxes. This week, we investigate one we actually deeply enjoyed being fooled by -- about a social media bot for Pace Picante Salsa going insane and inadvertently revealing an entire world of corporate conspiracy. We talk to the comedian behind the hoax, Randy Liedtke, who has his own very funny podcast called The Bone Zone. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, you can subscribe to us on iTunes. Also, please check out all our previous episodes!

Hello! We are taking a week off the podcast to work on some special things that you will like a lot. This episode is a Best Of*, in case you have a friend who hasn't gotten a chance to check us out who you might like to share TLDR with. It also includes an answer to one of our show's enduring mysteries - just what the hell TLDR stands for. Thanks for listening, and if you like the show, subscribe to it on iTunes. If you want other people to hear it, please rate and review it! If you want to check out our previous episodes on our website, you can listen here. If you like our theme song, you can hear more by Breakmaster Cylinder here. *Yes, we know that it takes some pretty unmitigated gall to run a clip show two months after launching a podcast.

This week on New Tech City, we're crossing the digital divide.  First up, some residents New York City's Housing Authority who use free WiFi vans run by the city to apply for jobs, shop online, pay bills and take care of other odds and ends on the internet. Then, there's Mike, a 50-something owner of a diner in Brooklyn who's never surfed the web. According to a recent Pew poll, there are millions of people just like Mike all around the country (h/t to our friends at TLDR, a new WNYC podcast about all things internet). Finally, your home WiFi: Should you nix the password and let anyone in range surf the web for free? Tech writer Brian Hall did. Maybe he'll convince you to do the same.

Lulu is an app that lets women rate guys they've slept with. Was he willing to commit? Was he gassy? The ratings are anonymous, and men can't see their profiles. When Lulu launched earlier this year, people didn't like it, but it also seemed more like a thought experiment than a real social network women would use. Nine months later, the company says that one in four female college students is using it. This week, we talk about Lulu with Maureen O'Connor, who blogs for New York Magazine's The Cut. Thanks for listening, and if you like the show, subscribe to it on iTunes. If you want other people to hear it, please rate and review it! If you want to check out our previous episodes on our website, you can listen here. If you like our theme song, you can hear more by Breakmaster Cylinder here.

Before the Internet as we know it today, there were text-based bulletin board systems all over the country that people could dial into. One of those systems, M-net, happened to live in Alex's backyard, and it was his internet home base for the better part of a decade. Alex went back this week and found out that it's actually still running. Thanks for listening, and if you like the show, subscribe to it on iTunes. If you want other people to hear it, please rate and review it! If you want to check out our previous episodes on our website, you can listen here. If you like our theme song, you can hear more by Breakmaster Cylinder here.

Up until this fall, there was a secret internet. You probably heard about one part of it, the Silk Road, but that was just one secret website among many. This week, we talk to Gawker's Adrian Chen about the rest of the dark part of the internet, and how it's been damaged by the Silk Road arrests.  Thanks for listening, and if you like the show, subscribe to it on iTunes! If you want other people to hear it, please rate and review it! If you want to check out our previous episodes on our website, you can listen here. 

Millions of Americans don't use the internet at all. Some don't have access because of poverty, geography, or age. But some just never logged on. This week, Alex goes on a quest to find a unicorn -- someone who lives a life just like his, but entirely without internet.   Sorry for the delay on this episode - we hope it was worth the wait. Thanks for listening, and if you like the show, subscribe to it on iTunes! If you want to check out our previous episodes, you can listen here. And if you want other people to hear it, please rate and review it!

Daniel Drucker's father died earlier this year. Daniel was excavating stuff on his Dad's computer when he found a file called JOKES.TXT. It was filled with thirty one punchlines to jokes, but not the jokes themselves. So he turned to the internet for help.  Thanks for listening. If you like the show, you can subscribe to us on iTunes. Also, please check out all our previous episodes!

Christopher Hermelin has a project called "The Roving Typist," where he writes stories for people in the park on his typewriter. One day last summer, he found his photo posted to Reddit, and suddenly his image was the butt of jokes all over the internet. We talked to him about what it feels like to become a meme. Thanks for listening. If you like our show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. Or you can follow PJ and Alex and TLDR on Twitter.