Podcasts about you push that button

Joining us this week is Ashley Carman; a senior reporter, producer, and host for The Verge. She writes and pitches news articles, features, and scoops about the podcasting business, hardware startups, and social networks. She's the co-host and producer of the podcast Why'd You Push That Button?, and hosts and produces the YouTube series In The Making. During today's episode, Ashley talks about her process for vetting pitches, a story she's been working on for over a year, her appreciation for readers' feedback, and more. Let's hear more from Ashley now!

Almost one in three relationships start as online encounters. But the popularity of dating apps isn’t surprising with so many to choose from, and the pandemic may even be boosting dating app use.For more on how COVID-19 has changed online dating, and how apps are adapting, David speaks today with Ashley Carman, a senior reporter covering dating apps for The Verge. Carman is also Co-host of The Verge’s Why’d You Push That Button podcast. She’s here to talk about which apps are thriving, and what they’ve been doing right.For more on Ashley Carman:https://podcasts.voxmedia.com/host/ashley-carmanListen ad-free on Wondery+ hereSupport us by supporting our sponsors!OurCrowd - The OurCrowd account is FREE, just go to OurCrowd.com/BW.

Why’d You Push That Button? is back for a special episode all about virtual dating in 2020. The pandemic has forced us all to stay at home when we can, which means if you want to go on a date, it may have to be done online. Ashley Carman and Kaitlyn Tiffany return to talk to online daters and app makers about how they are adapting to virtual-only dating, and what features and behaviors will stick around after social distancing and the pandemic end. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Verge's Why’d You Push That Button? is back for a special episode all about virtual dating in 2020. The pandemic has forced us all to stay at home when we can, which means if you want to go on a date, it may have to be done online. Ashley Carman and Kaitlyn Tiffany return to talk to online daters and app makers about how they are adapting to virtual-only dating, and what features and behaviors will stick around after social distancing and the pandemic end. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's podcast recommendations are podcasts all about our relationships with technology and how psychologists and engineers are working together to shape them! ✨

Instagram introduced its Close Friends feature, the ability for users to assign followers to a Close Friends list and only post Stories for them, nearly a year ago. At the time, it seemed like an official product response to the user behavior of Finstagrams, or accounts that people created solely to post less-curated, raw material to a select group of friends. On this week’s episode of Why’d You Push That Button?, Kaitlyn Tiffany and Ashley Carman want to know how Close Friends is going. Who’s using it? Why are they using it? Is the Finsta in trouble? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let's check in on the world of presidential politics.  As we await the first round of debates for the Democratic field to begin this week, the gloves have come off in the battle for the nomination. Former Vice President Joe Biden still leads the field in all the poll and he continues to take hits all around.  On the other side, President Trump has said he may not reach out to swing voters instead focusing on turning out his base to win him re-election.  Ginger Gibson, political reporter for Reuters, joins us to break it all down. Next, we're going to tell you the story of a little robot named Jibo.  People welcomed this social robot into their families, and now they are mourning its death.  Jibo launched on Indiegogo but its history traces back to labs at MIT.  It was part smart assistant like Alexa, but had a cute little body that could twist and turn and because of facial recognition it would always welcome you when you walked into the room. But now, the servers will be turned off soon and the robot just won't be the same anymore. Ashley Carman, host of the “Why'd You Push That Button?” Podcast, joins us for how Jibo made emotional connections with its users. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

What’s going to happen to all of your tweets, Instagram photos, and emails when you die? To kick off a special three-part miniseries about Death Online, Ashley and Kaitlyn are in search of the perfect digital afterlife — and the skills they’ll need to clean up after themselves from beyond the grave. In this episode, they talk to an estate planner, a Tumblr star, an advice columnist, and a Why’d You Push That Button? listener who has no interest in being a Facebook ghost. Long story short: if you want to RIP, you have to plan ahead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new season of Why’d You Push That Button? is coming May 15th! Ashley Carman of The Verge and Kaitlyn Tiffany of The Goods by Vox will explore more of the tiny decisions that technology forces us to make, like why iPhone users judge people with green bubbles in iMessage; why people use anonymous online accounts; and why anyone would promote a tweet. Also, in a special three-part series, Ashley and Kaitlyn will explore the choices we have to make when it comes to death and the internet. Subscribe to get new episodes every Wednesday! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s the season finale of Why’d You Push That Button, and this week, hosts Ashley Carman and Kaitlyn Tiffany discuss exclusive dating apps. Unlike Tinder, Facebook Dating, Hinge, or most other dating apps, these exclusive versions require users to apply and then only approve a select group. The most popular exclusive dating apps include Raya and The League. For this episode, Ashley and Kaitlyn want to know why people spend time applying to these services, and why these apps were created. To find out, Ashley talks to her internet pal Lina about her experiences on Raya. Then Kaitlyn talks to her friend Paul about his Raya rejection and eventual success on The League. Finally, the two of them come back together to interview The League’s founder and CEO Amanda Bradford about why she made the app and why she thinks it’s essential. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My Instagram followers want to know whether I like veggie chips and how many push-ups I can do in a row. The answer is no and one. On this week’s Why’d You Push That Button, Vox.com’s Kaitlyn Tiffany and I (Ashley Carman) discuss anonymous question-and-answer apps — why do people use them, both to ask and receive questions? First, I chat with my pal Vanessa about how they use Instagram’s question and answer feature to build community. Then, Kaitlyn chats with a minor Tumblr celebrity, Klaudia, about how she handles questions she’s asked and how she guides the youth of today through their lives. And finally, I interview Janis Grivins, the COO of Ask.fm, about why people ask anonymous questions and what purpose a masked identity can serve. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Verge’s Why’d You Push That Button squad is in the holiday spirit, so in this week’s episode, hosts Ashley Carman and Kaitlyn Tiffany discuss hashtag holidays. You might not know the term, but you definitely know the phenomenon. Maybe you’ve seen people participate in #NationalSiblingsDay, or #WorldNutellaDay, or maybe even #NationalBoyfriendDay. Why do people post, and why do they use those hashtags? Also, who invents these holidays? Kaitlyn and Ashley chat with one of their producers, Bridget Armstrong, and her family to get their take on hashtag holidays and their Facebook posts about them. Then they talk with Lizz Kannenberg, the director of brand strategy at Sprout Social, about brands’ role in these holidays. Copywriters are infusing holidays into our lexicon with no one to stop them! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The people who love voice messages love voice messages. Vox.com’s Kaitlyn Tiffany and The Verge’s Ashley Carman aren’t those people. On this week’s Why’d You Push That Button, they discuss voice messages and why people send them. They also try to figure out why people like them in the first place. Ashley talks to her best friend, Casey, about her habit of sending voice messages, and Kaitlyn interviews The Verge’s very own AI reporter James Vincent and his mom, Bridget, about their family texting dynamics. It’s heartwarming. Then, Ashley and Kaitlyn take all that they’ve learned to Djamel Agaoua, the CEO of messaging app Viber, to learn more about why people use voice messages and how they’ve become more popular around the world. Agaoua posits a few theories on why they’ve bloomed in popularity and previews how voice messages will evolve in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do you choose which emoji skin tone to use? This week on Why’d You Push That Button, Vox’s Kaitlyn Tiffany and The Verge's Ashley Carman discuss the five emoji skin tones (not counting the default gold option) and how people decide which color best represents them. The tones debuted in 2015, and now, three years later, people have studied how they’re used and how commonly people opt to change the default option. The choice isn’t as simple as you might think. We also change the show up this week. Instead of relying on just two users, we wanted to hear about as many experiences with the emoji as possible, so we have lots of guests. Thank you to all of them for coming on the show, including Ben, J., Jordan, Joshua, Rosie, Soco, and Malachi. We also received lots of emails when looking for guests, so thank you for writing to us. After we hear from everyone, we chat with two expert guests. The first, whose interview is transcribed below, is Alexander Robertson. He’s a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh who published a study — called “Self-representation on Twitter using emoji skin color modifiers” — about skin tone emoji and their usage across Twitter and around the world. Then we chat with Zara Rahman, a linguist and writer, who published a piece called, “The problem with emoji skin tones that no one talks about.” She walks us through her story and how her interviewees felt about the tones. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What makes you post a photo to Instagram? What space is truly worthy of a post? Are we willing to destroy nature for a good pic? This week on Why’d You Push That Button, Vox’s Kaitlyn Tiffany and The Verge's Ashley Carman discuss the characteristics that create an Instagram-worthy place. First things first, we talk to former social media manager at The Verge, Zainab Hasnain, about all of the Instagram-oriented pop-ups she’s visited. We also chat with Kristina Alaneisse about parties she hosts at local cool-kid spot China Chalet. Then, as a special treat to wrap up our Instagram mini-series, we have two expert guests. The first is Eliza Brooke, a freelance writer who has incredible design sensibilities. The second is Piera Gelardi, executive creative director and co-founder of Refinery29, about the media company’s 29Rooms exhibition where visitors can play in 29 different rooms and snap some photos while they’re at it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s nearly Black Friday, and we’re gearing up with a podcast about shopping, of course. This week on Why’d You Push That Button, Vox’s Kaitlyn Tiffany and The Verge's Ashley Carman discuss Instagram shopping: why do we buy stuff? They chat with Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel about all of the horrible gadgets he’s bought, as well as Vox reporter Rebecca Jennings about how the Instagram algorithm learns what we love and then targets us with it. Then they talk to Choosy, an Instagram-made company that uses software to figure out the hottest clothing trends to beat other brands to market. It’s wild, truly. And finally, they take every question we’ve ever had to Layla Amjadi, a product manager for Instagram Shopping, who explains the shopping product to us and how Instagram is building a “personalized mall” for everyone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Why’d You Push That Button, Vox.com’s Kaitlyn Tiffany and The Verge's Ashley Carman give the people behind the camera some attention. We’re talking about Instagram boyfriends, or simply, the photographers who take everyone’s Instagram photos. The unsung heroes. We want to know how these people feel and how influencers decide who to ask to take their photo. We chat with Meredith Haggerty about the time she hired an Instagram boyfriend for Fashion Week in New York City a couple years ago. She wrote about the experience for Racked— I highly recommend it. Then Kaitlyn talks to a verified influencer couple, Rachel Hope and Alex Sunshine. Rachel is the face behind The Concrete Blonde, and she and Alex have had to navigate their relationship in both a romantic and business way. We’re now obsessed with them and their mutual support for each other. Finally, we chat with Mae Karwowski, the founder of influencer marketing company Obviously. Karwowski walks us through the world of influencers and how they really get their photos taken. Turns out, they love to date within the creative world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some of us love our group chats. Others of us hate them and would love nothing more than to leave them all. But why do we want to leave? Maybe you’ve had someone leave a group without giving you a reason as to why, and maybe it hurt a little bit. Vox.com’s Kaitlyn Tiffany and The Verge's Ashley Carman are here to help you work through that pain with this episode of Why’d You Push That Button. First, they chat with Ashley's friend Liz who tells us about her current and past group chat drama.  Then Kaitlyn interviews Maggie Lange, who has written for GQ about never leaving group chats, ever.  Kaitlyn and Ashley then take all their concerns to Asha Sharma, director of product management for Messenger, who tells us all about why people actually leave group chats and what the teens are up to these days. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes you see something happening out in the world, and you feel compelled to record it. You just have to capture it. Is that okay? Legally, are you allowed to record someone without their permission? And what happens if you go viral, then what? It’s murky territory, both legally and as human beings, but we’re going to tackle it on Why’d You Push That Button this week. On this episode, we talk to Porscha Coleman, who recorded an infamous Apple Store Vine, as well as Carlye Wisel, who was once fashion-shamed on Snapchat by a stranger. They have completely opposite beliefs on recording, and we love to facilitate a debate. Then we talk to a couple experts — Jennifer Ellis, a lawyer, and Katherine Cross, a sociologist — who help us figure out when we can record and why we feel like we have to capture other people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why’d You Push That Button is back for season 3, and our first episode is a relatively serious one. Vox’s Kaitlyn Tiffany and I catch up on our summers and then dive into everyone’s favorite social media platform: Twitter. We need to discuss tweets. Are they worth deleting, or should we preserve our limited-character history? Who needs to worry about their tweets? What happens if a potential employer searches your Twitter? What will they find? Kaitlyn and Ashley reflect on their tweet history, and we take it to other users and experts. First, they talk to Max Read, an editor at New York Magazine, and then they chat with Brianna Wu, a woman who ran for Congress this year and was previously a target of Gamergate. Then they talk to Alison Green of the Ask A Manager website / book / podcast universe. (She is Ask A Manager!) And they wrap the show chatting with Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, which attempts to archive the web. It’s true: you could think you deleted a tweet only to discover someone else on the internet has already saved it for you. A truly spooky possibility in the spirit of Halloween. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the most successful recruitment tools the U.S. Army ever made was…a video game? Sometimes without even knowing it, gaming elements in technology — often designed for addiction — are incentivizing you to think certain ways and do certain things. Join Veronica Belmont and co-pilot Ashley Carman as they explore the rise of gamification in our everyday lives, its positives and negatives, and its future. IRL is an original podcast from Mozilla. For more on the series go to irlpodcast.org Ashley Carman is the co-host of the tech podcast, "Why’d You Push That Button?" Natasha Dow Schüll has written several books including Keeping Track and Addiction by Design. She uses the Freedom App to lock herself offline. Long before the Internet, games were a source of entertainment, comradery, and learning. The rise of technology-enabled games to take on video form, and gaming as we know it became popular. Big Tech now gamifies most elements of our online life. The more you know about the evolution of games and why we are all so connected to them, the more you can see how they’re used to sometimes make online experiences better and sometimes more addictive. Here's more on the games we play online, from Mozilla. Leave a rating or review in Apple Podcasts so we know what you think.

I’m deeming this year the year of the push notification solely because of the disaster that was Hawaii’s accidental ballistic missile alert. On this week’s Why’d You Push That Button, Kaitlyn Tiffany and I look into why people turn push notifications on, especially for news. Are they masochists? What makes us turn them off? I don’t hate push notifications, so much as I wish they were more targeted and accurate. Kaitlyn resolutely hates them, and that’s fine. This episode packs a lot of content and interviews into 40 minutes, so settle in with enough water and snacks to make it through. We first talk to two women and friends who were in Hawaii when that terrible push was sent — Emily and Meghan. Then we talk to New York Times writer John Herrman about his feelings on pushes, as well as his essay on red dots. Once we get out all our thoughts, we take it to two experts: Eric Bishop, who also works at The New York Times and strategizes its push strategy, and Christopher Dean, CEO of the company Swrve, which specializes in push notification technology. He explains how push technology might get more sophisticated in the near future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m calling this week’s episode of Why’d You Push That Button the “politics of unfollowing.” What makes someone click that unfollow button, and why does it hurt our feelings when they do? Kaitlyn and I talk to two of our Verge colleagues: Managing Editor T.C. Sottek and Senior Features Editor Michael Zelenko about why they unfollow people. T.C. only follows six people on Twitter! And he only started following me and Kaitlyn after we produced this episode. We appreciate that kind gesture. Michael, on the other hand, used to care about his follower versus following ratio and has now reached a point of zen. Who cares! After all that, Kaitlyn and I take our questions to Jenn Herman, who calls herself “the world’s forefront Instagram blogger.” Jenn is fantastic and made us feel good. She points out that followers are a complete construction of tech companies. They made us care about followers. They’ve ruined us. Jenn, though, she gets it. She’s helping us. (sent via text by Ashley Carman) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this special throwback episode of Why’d You Push That Button, Kaitlyn and Ashley revisit an old, one-off podcast episode from Verge Extras about saving phone numbers of people they meet online. They call one of Ashley’s exes to learn how he’s been doing since they dated. They and The Verge’s Lizzie Plaugic then evaluate all the options for saving a phone number and whether it’s weird to ask for someone’s last name.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re chugging along with Why’d You Push That Button. We’ve got a few more episodes left in the season, and today’s is about music social networks. Kaitlyn loves stalking her friends’ Spotify feeds, whereas I keep my account hidden from everyone. I just want to listen to Britney Spears in peace. I can’t have Kaitlyn texting me every time I listen, you know? Spotify used to let people direct message tracks, but it has since removed that feature, which just leaves us with the friend feed. Why isn’t Spotify building out its social features? Does the company hate us? We brought Jordan McMahon, a social music fan, as well as The Verge’s own Micah Singleton onto the show to discuss why they like seeing their friends’ activity. Then we talk to Charlie Kaplan, the CEO of Cymbal, a social music app, about why his company is shutting down and why it’s so hard to make a sticky social music experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kaitlyn and I love food; take that above photo of us as proof. We’re often conflicted about leaving reviews for restaurants, however. Kaitlyn has never written a Yelp review, whereas I’ve written only one. We worry about reviews as a whole. Should everyone be a reviewer? Are people good? Do they want to intentionally ruin each others’ livelihoods? For this week’s episode of Why’d You Push That Button, we look into restaurant reviews and why people leave them. We talk to a Yelp Elite member, Dominek, as well as a restaurant owner named Benham about how Yelp affects their lives. Then we take our questions to Brian Boshes, product manager of contributions and community, who explains why he thinks people leave reviews and whether they’re tearing apart the fabric of our society. (sent via text by Ashley Carman)   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Why’d You Push That Button, Kaitlyn and Ashley analyze fake Instagrams, aka finstas, to find some truth. We talk to a teen, a model, and a reporter to get answers about why people keep a finsta. I don’t want to spoil anything, but we basically learned that finstas are probably the most authentic social media platform, aside from Venmo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve got a bunch of tech luminaries on The Vergecast this week to help us understand the week in tech news. Nilay, Dieter, and Paul welcome Lauren Goode back to the show for her last week at The Verge to discuss the new iPads that Apple released this past Tuesday. Lauren and Dieter went to Chicago for the event, so they share their experience and insight on the new products and their relationship with the education field. After that, the crew bring in senior reporter Russell Brandom to help us understand how Europe’s new privacy rule is reshaping the internet. And finally, senior editor Tom Warren returns to the show to share his expertise with Microsoft and break down Microsoft’s announcement of the reorganization of their company. There’s a whole lot more in between all of that — like Paul’s weekly segment “The little robot that could” — so listen to it all and you’ll get it all. 03:12 - The 5 biggest announcements from the Apple education event 32:18 - How Europe’s new privacy rule is reshaping the internet 51:17 - Paul’s weekly segment “The little robot that could” 53:12 - Microsoft is ready for a world beyond Windows If you enjoyed this podcast and want to hear more audio from The Verge, well you’re in luck. Season 2 of Why’d You Push That Button hosted by Kaitlyn Tiffany and Ashley Carman is here! This week’s episode is about Facebook event invites. You can subscribe anywhere, including on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play Music, and our RSS feed. And get caught up on season 1 if you missed out. Also! You can check out Lauren Goode’s podcast Too Embarrassed to Ask. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I know you only have a Facebook account for event invites, and I get it. This week on Why’d You Push That Button, Kaitlyn and I explore ignored Facebook events. More specifically, we talk about the check mark and “seen” that Facebook puts under any guest’s name who has opened an invite but not responded. Why do people hate to RSVP? Why do we get hurt when they ignore us? Why are we all so rude? What can Facebook do to fix this problem? We’ve got answers. I talked to a woman named Carrie who tells us about a time she tried to host a bachelorette party, only to have her guests ignore her invite completely. Then Kaitlyn talks to one of my high school friends, Jon, about his notorious reputation for ignoring events. Finally, we chat with Aditya Koolwal, a senior product manager at Facebook, who explains why the “seen” exists. Apparently it’s not just to punish us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you take selfies? Do you take them in public? Do you watch other people take selfies in public and judge them harshly, as if it is any of your business? Or, uh, why does anyone have an opinion on the selfie behaviors of others? I don’t take them; Ashley does. Who cares? This is our question on Why’d You Push That Button this week — with a long detour to defend Kim Kardashian, the tryingest social media pioneer and performance artist of our time — and we’re going to get to the bottom of it. We spoke to Alicia Eler, author of the brand-new book The Selfie Generation, and she broke down the subtle misogyny of maligning young women for making their own records of their lives. We discussed the Super Bowl “selfie kid” and those very annoying sports announcers from 2015. Then we chatted with Racked executive editor Julia Rubin, who does not allow anyone to take photos of her at any time — never mind taking them of herself. Selfies are embarrassing, she says! As a fashion editor, Julia has had other jobs that required her to maintain a meticulous and glamorous Instagram, and that’s just not the life she wants to live anymore. Finally, we spoke to Dr. Sarah Diefenbach, a professor of market and consumer psychology at the University of Munich. Earlier this year, she co-published a paper called “The Selfie Paradox: Nobody Seems to Like Them Yet Everyone Has Reasons to Take Them.” There’s a lot of gold in there, but we were fascinated by her finding that people who take selfies are likely to justify it to themselves as a “situational” decision — e.g. “I’m at the opening of Jake Gyllenhaal’s first Broadway musical, I need a photo of me having this incredible experience, even though I don’t normally take selfies,” or “I’m having a special, unique drunk night with a dear friend and I look good and I need to document it just this once.” When they see other people take selfies, they assume the reason behind it is that the person is a selfie-taker, by nature. This is called the fundamental attribution error, and I vaguely recall learning about it in one of the many “communication” classes I slept or read Jezebel through in college. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kaitlyn and I went to Texas, ate breakfast tacos, each gained five pounds of happy weight, and more or less became certified brands. We had a good time together. We also successfully pulled off our first live episode of Why’d You Push That Button. We tried to figure out why people ghost and ended up learning that humans are lazy and need a manager-type hanging over their heads to keep them accountable at all times. Still, I’d like to think this is just a rough patch in our collective dating experience, so hopefully ghosting will clear itself up after we’re all sufficiently hurt enough to want to stop the cycle. (sent via text by Ashley Carman)  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Vergecast trio is back and so is gadget news. Mobile World Congress was this week, and so much happened in the world of The Verge. Nilay, Dieter, and Paul have everything you need to know. A few other things sprinkled in are the next Light Phone 2, Google Clips review, and a little bit of camera talk — so listen to it all, and you’ll get it all. 03:07 - Samsung’s Galaxy S9 packs an upgraded camera in a familiar body 17:22 - Vivo’s Apex concept phone 19:15 - The Clone Wars: iPhone X copycats battle for notch supremacy 25:59 - Android Go is here to fix super cheap phones 32:44 - Nokia’s banana phone from The Matrix is back 36:59 - The Light Phone 2 adds messaging and more to the ultra-minimalist cellphone 38:40 - Huawei’s new laptop has a mechanical pop-up webcam in the keyboard 44:29 - Amazon has acquired Ring to bolster its home security products 48:54 - Paul’s weekly segment “Bounce shot’ 52:07 - Sony’s new A7 III is a $2,000 full-frame mirrorless camera that should terrify Canon and Nikon 52:40 - Google Clips review If you enjoyed this podcast and want to hear more audio from The Verge, well you’re in luck. There’s a new show Why’d You Push That Button, hosted by Kaitlyn Tiffany and Ashley Carman, which you can subscribe to right now! Season 2 starts March 6th. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Why’d You Push That Button, we’ve been hypnotized by the romance of New York in December and we’re acting accordingly! Twinkle lights, snow banks, and love letters. I recommend listening with a cup of hot chocolate or a bucket of that popcorn that has the little paper dividers between the three flavors. Get cozy; hold hands. The big question: how do you decide to delete or save text threads from friends, family, or significant others? If you have 3GB of texts from an ex, you’re never actually going to scroll back to the beginning, so why can it feel so hard to let go? If you have absolutely no old texts on your phone, what is wrong with you, just wondering? This episode was inspired by Maureen O’Connor’s 2013 New York Magazine essay “All My Exes Live in Texts,” which I am obsessed with, and in which she argues that we struggle to let go of old relationships' digital artifacts because they represent “a dozen soap operas playing at the same time on a dozen different screens, and you are the star of them all.” Wow! A little cynical, but at least 100 percent true if you’re being honest with yourself. To get some alternative angles on this topic, we spoke to freelance writer and former Racked shopping and style editor Nicola Fumo, who has a complicated system for saving and curating the messages she cares about. (This system was inspired by the one, the onlyKim Kardashian West.) Then we called up my college boyfriend Sean, and the two of us had a weird little moment that was ultimately fine. He also explained how deleting texts makes for stilted friendships and missed plans. Finally, we took all of our questions to Michelle Janning, a professor of sociology at Whitman College who’s dedicated her career to studying the differences between digital and physical communication, with a particular focus on how we decide what to save, how to save it, and when to look back at it. Her book, Love Letters: Saving Romance in the Digital Age,will be out sometime in 2018. She had so much wisdom to share and we couldn’t believe she was real.  (sent via text by Kaitlyn Tiffany) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Actress, Sara Chase (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) discusses her old emails from a Broadway production with Patrick Swayze, ghost boat tours and being proud of her Amazon wish list. This episode is sponsored by HelloFresh and Why’d You Push That Button. Music selections: "InBox theme" by 4aStables. (https://www.4astables.com) "As I Was Saying", "How I Used To See The Stars", "Vaping in LA”, "On That Later" by Lee Rosevere. (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/Music_for_Podcasts_4/) Licensed under Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This week on Why’d You Push That Button, we’re getting into one of the real soap operas of modern life: Venmo’s public activity feed. Some people never look at it; some people scroll through it during their daily commute, inexplicably curious about why their friends are exchanging money. The payment app launched in 2009 and is now popular enough to work as a verb: “I’ll Venmo you,” meaning “I’ll hit you back right now and accompany the payment with some emoji or a dumb inside joke.” Yet, somehow, despite its popularity, and despite numeroustrend pieces pointing out the potential for purchase-history sleuthing, users still make their transactions public, allowing others to mine them for drama. Why do we do this to ourselves, (if you even do it) and what secrets can we uncover? Will there ever come a day when a Venmo transaction description is as carefully considered as an Instagram caption? Will you ever hear the end of it, RE: that mysterious 2AM Uber charge? As you may have guessed, it’s about to get pretty messy! First we talked to Olivia de Recat, a cartoonist who “decoded” some common Venmo charges in the New Yorker earlier this fall, and uses the app’s public feed to imagine what ex-love interests might be up to. It’s a crucial resource, she says, when an ex isn’t active on other social media — a winking emoji and a beer mug say a lot more than silence, even if they don’t say much. Then we called up Ashley’s college friend Michelle, who had a slightly less whimsical story about some deeply unpleasant information she managed to dig up via Venmo. You might want to cover your eyes, mouth, and ears while she is telling it. Finally, we took all of our anecdotes and questions to Venmo product lead Melanie Aliperti, to hear a little bit more about why a payments app has a social feed at all, whether this payment app is in fact a social media app, and how stories about Venmo-enabled drama might affect design decisions in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lauren was on Natch Beaut! (Kind of.) JACKIE J FOR PRESIDENT! | New segment: Joshin' Around | It's official, everyone loves A FUNNY FEELING | Marry Holland and The Doughboys Go to Medieval Times and Why Won't Anyone Go With Lauren? | Why'd You Push That Button? | Raise your hand if you like butts on Instagram! | Does Lauren like Hamilton yet? (no) (What Comes After Hamilton) | Adlandia: why are PodcastPodcast ads so BALLER? | Taco bars at weddings | COATS, fuckin' COATS | and outerwear

This week on Why’d You Push That Button, we’re talking about a series of buttons. Specifically, the buttons on your keyboard that you have to use to type out the password to your Netflix, Hulu, or HBOGo account and send them to another person. Do you do that? Do you ever regret it? Do you have to boot ex-boyfriends who keep watching half of the new episode of Game of Thrones before you can get to it, spoiling the latest dragon spectacle? Has your password gotten away from you, whispered down the telephone line until it was in the hands of complete strangers? Are you a password giver or taker, and what does that say about you? Does... anyone actually pay for Netflix? First we talked to Ashley’s friend from college, MarketWatch personal finance reporter Kari Paul, who shared her password with a romantic partner and learned a hard lesson about trusting boys with any sort of secret. Then we heard from our friend and collaborator, The Verge’s audio engineer Andrew Marino, who has a pretty unique system set up so that he can share passwords in a relationship and avoid most of the unfortunate consequences. Finally we took our questions to an expert: Amber Steel, the product marketing manager for the password management app LastPass. She tried and failed to convince me that I need to download LastPass, but she also gave us some valuable insight into how streaming service passwords have become a fraught and fascinating issue for her company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here it is! The second episode of a new Verge podcast called Why’d You Push That Button. On this show, my colleague, Circuit Breaker’s Ashley Carman, and me, the Culture section’s most self-indulgent blogger, talk about all the tiny decisions your gadgets and apps force you to make every day. All day, every day, we’re pushing buttons and thinking about the intended or unintended consequences. We’re interviewing consumers — including friends, co-workers, loved ones, and some strangers — and then we’re talking to product designers and experts who built the tech or have studied it professionally. Last week, we started things off with Tinder’s Super Like feature. This week, we’re talking about read receipts — the timestamp that’s optional in iMessage and mandatory in Facebook Messenger, that lets anyone who’s trying to correspond with you know exactly when you saw their words and chose not to respond. Why do you leave them on? Why do you turn them off? Why must you insist on subtly manipulating every person in your life? We heard from our friends who have made these choices, and then we took their responses to Lujayn Alhddad, who studied human-computer interaction while obtaining her master's degree at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She wrote a paper on this exact topic, and she knows what’s up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Über was rede wenn ned gäng über über gäng?” – wer für schlechte Wortspiele und ungekonnte Übergänge nichts übrig hat, sollte diese 4. Folge des chuchichästlii-Podcast besser überspringen… Links: Organspende Schweiz – https://www.leben-ist-teilen.ch/ pinqponq Rucksack – http://www.pinqponq.com/de/blok-medium-vivid-monochrome/ Ted Talk (Snapchat) – http://pca.st/e50j Podcasts der Woche: Why’d You Push That Button? – https://art19.com/shows/whyd-you-push-that-button Fest & Flauschig  – http://www.festundflauschig.de/ Social Media: Twitter – http://twitter.com/chuchichaestlii Facebook – http://facebook.com/chuchichaestlii Instagram – http://instagram.com/chuchichaest.li YouTube – http://yt.chuchichaest.li/ Soundcloud – https://soundcloud.com/chuchichaestlii_podcast Website – http://chuchichaest.li/

Why’d You Push That Button? is a podcast about the choices technology forces us to make, featuring interviews with consumers, developers, friends, and strangers. Hosted by The Verge’s Ashley Carman and Kaitlyn Tiffany, Why’d You Push That Button? asks the hard, weird, occasionally dumb questions about how your tiny tech decisions impact your social life.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices