The Iconic, Complicated VW Beetle

26:48The reason the war broke out is because the Nazis started everything. Yeah. I just want to make sure no one forgets that. Yeah, that's true. And they immediately started sort of reconfiguring the KDF to suit their military needs. So they came out with different types, a Type 87, which was a four-wheel drive. And I guess that German officers would drive that one. They had a Type 82, a Kübelwagen, a bucket seat car, and that was armored. It was on that Beatles, Beatles, like the band, you get it? It was on a Beatle chassis, but it was armored and so therefore safe. And I'm sure some of the higher ups rode around in that one for obvious reasons.

27:34That one very clearly to me became the thing, the VW thing. Yeah, I knew one person in high school, Mary Frances Shepard. It had a VW thing, and I thought it was so cool. Oh, yeah, it was cool. Especially in high school, it takes some gall to drive such an unusual cool car. Yeah, I admit you were, and a little bit the same with me. I was the only person with a Beetle in my whole high school because everyone else wanted like a Mazda RX-7 or something. Right, exactly. Yeah. So they also had a modified version of the Type 82, or Type 80, yeah, Type 82, called the Schwimmwagen, the swimming car. And you could drive around in the water with it.

28:15I saw a picture of some dude in his vintage Schwimmwaggen, like in the water. And it looks so nerve wracking. The thing is maybe eight inches above the water line. The rest of the car is below the water. Too close for comfort. Yeah, way too close for comfort. Apparently it went six full miles an hour on the water. And there weren't very many of those made. So I imagine that that dude probably paid a lot for that. Yeah, probably so. And I don't know if you can, I doubt if you can still find one of these, but they had a, during the war, they had some gas shortages, some fuel shortages. So they developed a wood-burning conversion kit for that Kübelwagen.

28:59So the bucket seat car, and I'm sure you looked up pictures of this thing, it had a little round hatch in the front of the car. What do you call that, the hood? Yeah. And you would open up that hatch like a like a wood burning stove and put wood in there to power this thing. That's how you remember it's called a hood. That's where you put the wood. That's right. That was your slogan. And that would power the car not through combustion, but through pyrolysis where the wood was gasified. And then those gases would be transferred to the pistons to make them go up and down and then make the wheels on the bus go round and round.

29:40I didn't know that was even possible. Not the wheels on the bus, but I didn't know that you could use wood in such a way to power a car. It's kind of cool. Yeah, and it did work, but it didn't work very well. And to answer your question, I read some article on it, and the people said that as far as anyone knows, none of those survive. So you would not be able to find one of those. Yeah, sadly. So in the end, while they were pumping these things out, what they would use was forced labor. They had and this is another horrifying fact of the show. There were four literal concentration camps and eight forced labor camps on the grounds of the Volkswagen factory complex.

30:22And that's just like that's as not only was it a Nazi car like they were exploiting labor to make them. Yeah. And it gets even worse because Ferdinand Porsche specifically asked for forced labor to be assigned to build the Volkswagens because he wanted to keep costs down. So you put all this together. Hitler's directly involved in the creation and manufacture of this car. They use slave labor in concentration camps built into the automotive factory complex. And the reason that they're using slave labor is because the chief designer, Ferdinand Porsche, asked for slave labor. VW eventually had to, like, face this.

31:03As the world kind of continued on, people were like, guys, this is, we have to talk about this because this is not okay to just ignore. Yeah, I mean, you wonder, like, could they literally arrest Ferdinand Porsche for this? He was held by French authorities at one point, but he was not convicted of a crime. But in the 90s, I think it was the early 90s, Volkswagen started a couple of different payouts. They paid 12 million German marks, Deutschmarks, which is about 63 million bucks today to some of the survivors who were those forced laborers from that factory. And then about eight years later in 99, Porsche actually set up a fund.

31:43Even they were like, yeah, you know, Volkswagen's taking all the heat on this, but it was really our guy. So maybe we should pony up some dough. So they ponied up 5 million euros, about 10 million bucks today to compensate some of those same laborers. Yeah. So remember, they only produced 210 of what became the Beetle, the what, the Type 38. Is that correct? Yeah, I think that was it. Or the Series 3. One of the two. They only produced 210 of those before the war. During the war, they changed the whole VW factory to a defense vehicle factory. And then after the war, when they started to get back to business, it was under oversight from the British authorities.

32:25So it actually, in a really weird way, was the Brits who first fully realized Hitler's vision for a people's car for Germany. Yeah, it was in their occupation zone, so it was kind of theirs, I guess. They renamed the factory to the Wolfsburg Motor Works because of the Wolfsburg Castle that was close by. And that, you know, that I don't know if you would recognize it depends on how much you've been in like these old Beatles and Volkswagens. But a lot of them like later on would be like the Wolfsburg edition if they had a special edition of a golf or something. Even I know about that. Okay. All right.

33:02Good. But they would have that little symbol, this little castle with a wolf there on the center of the steering wheel, just sort of an iconic logo. I haven't seen that. Yeah, you might recognize it. Maybe. Is it on the hood? I don't know what that is. So with the Brits, they made 20 ,000 of those things, 20 ,000 essentially beetles in 1946 alone. But all of them were to be used by allied occupation forces in Germany at the time, right? So they weren't the people's car yet. It wasn't, and I think the Brits ran it from 1945 to 49. In 1949, they finally handed it back over to the West German authorities.

33:45And in the interim, I think 1948, they hired the guy who would essentially be who you could truly call like the real actual father of the VW Beetle, a guy named Heinz Nordhoff, who took the took the control of this factory and like ran with it and introduced the Beetle to the world. Yeah, I mean, he he really ramped up production. He was a very experienced carmaker. He made the car a little better. He, I think, gave it a little more horsepower, but, you know, that's not saying much because the Beetle was never known for that. Yeah, it would actually cough sometimes. Right. Yeah. He gave it hydraulic brakes, which is pretty good, and shock absorbers.

34:26But again, none of that stuff was like, it was always a car that felt a little janky to drive. I remember you talking about yours and the heater was redirected waste heat from the engine onto your ankles. Is that correct? Yeah, they just had these little vents down on the floorboards, and we call them ankle burners because it would just pump heat directly from the engine right out to your feet. And it would ultimately heat the car, but it would scorch the ankles. Was it bad enough that you could smell the hair on your legs burning? I didn't have hair on my legs then. Okay. But it didn't have AC at all, did it?

35:02No. I know that some of the Super Beetles did later, and I don't think my Super Beetle did, though. But my 68 definitely did not. It was 260 air, which is you drive 60 miles an hour and roll down two windows. Not a dad joke. That was a joke I heard back then. Okay. From a dad? Probably. So Heinz Nordhoff, he comes in, he takes over, and he's like, look, there's a lot of stuff we can do. Like you said, we can update the car. The problem is we can sell a million of these in Germany, but German marks are so devalued right now because of the fallout of World War II that we need to get some dollars in here.

35:40And the way that you get dollars or start selling them in America. So he tried that and it did not go very well at first, in large part because America was like, that's a Nazi car. And you're probably a Nazi trying to sell us a Nazi car. And by the way, your stupid Nazi car is ugly as sin. Get out of here, Nazi. And Heinz Nordhoff was like, well, let's try this again in a year. Yeah. And that's all it took. I think the first Beetle and it was just a single one that came to America was in 1949. It was a Dutch car dealer named Ben Pond. And he had to sell that thing for like whatever he could get just so he could go back home, like, you know, transatlantic sale back home.

36:21that he's like, all right, I barely sold the one car. So it's probably not a good idea to buy a bunch of these. But like you said, just one year later in 1950, there was a dealer named Max Hoffman, a foreign car dealer that ended up selling 330 Volkswagens to dealerships that were selling Porsches and Jags, other foreign cars. So it fit in just a little better and doesn't look that much different. You know, those old bathtub Porsches, the design isn't that different than the BW Beetle. They're very round and sort of buggy looking. That's true, for sure. So I think in 1950, they sold 330 of them.

36:56Yeah. In 1955, they sold 32 ,662 of them. And one of the reasons for the huge leap forward, especially considering when the year before they sold 9 ,000, was that Volkswagen of America was formed. So essentially an extension, the American version of Volkswagen was formed. And that really kind of help streamline importing, setting up dealerships, moving cars to those dealerships, getting car salesmen to step away from their chicken fingers in the break room and actually go out and sell the cars for once in their life. That's really all those factors put together are what helped them start selling beetles like crazy in the mid-50s.

37:39Should we take a break? Sure. All right, good, because I got a cliffhanger. A very key thing happened in the mid-50s to really ramp up sales of these. We'll talk about that right after this.

38:12the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one person billion dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people.

38:48Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. The moments that shape us often begin with a simple question. What do I want my life to look like now? I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, and on Therapy for Black Girls, we create space for honest conversations about identity, relationships, mental health, and the choices that help us grow. As cybersecurity expert Camille Stewart-Gloster reminds us, We are in a divisive time where our comments are weaponized against us.

39:30And so what we find is a lot of Black women are standing up and speaking out because they feel the brunt of the pain. Each week, we explore the tools and insights that help you move with purpose, whether you're navigating something new or returning to yourself. If you're ready for thoughtful guidance and grounded support, this is the place for you. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Lines and Tines with Spencer Graves on the iHeartRadio app is a podcast designed for hunters and fishermen to enjoy success. I like the idea of like, hey, put me on a big deer.

40:09You know, hey, there's a big deer out here. He's doing this. Be looking for this deer. But I also love doing it on my own. I love going out there and saying, running my cameras. I love patterning the deer. I like showing up at the right time, checking the wind, knowing what stand I need to be in. and then whenever it all comes together and it happens, that's the most satisfying thing ever. So when you do it on your own, it's like I then can hang my hat. But if I had somebody say, hey, pull up on these dots and catch them right here and you're going to win, and then when I go in, it's like, yeah, that's cool.

40:43I won the tournament. The ultimate goal is done. But it's like, dude, when you find them and you make them bite, that's the puzzle. I love it. Listen to Lines and Tines with Spencer Graves on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

41:09So, Chuck, you left everybody hanging. You said that you had a cliffhanger about something that happened in the 50s that really kind of revved the beetle up into hyperdrive, which I think is a thing. Yeah, and I said mid-50s. It was really 1959. And anyone that has been around the advertising industry or even knows a little bit about it or watch Mad Men knows that there was a series of brilliant, brilliant ads brought forth by the DDB, I almost said insurance agency, ad agency, that I hate to say this, but they leaned into what people didn't like about the Volkswagen. and tried to make that a selling point.

41:56And they did so to tremendous success. Yeah, it was a real game changer. Yeah, so this, I mean, like everybody in advertising knows about this. And a lot of people outside of advertising know about it because it's just talked about so much. And the reason why, it was a great ad campaign. Just visually speaking, they used all sorts of different techniques that were very much different than what you would normally find to sell American cars, which were huge land yachts at the time. This is, I think, the first compact car that America ever encountered. But like you said, they really kind of took some of the criticisms of the Beetle and turned them into selling points.

42:40One of the first things they said was that it's ugly, but it gets you there. So this was just one example of what came to be called an anti-ad campaign. It was like the, what was that Paul Reiser movie from the 80s where he like just turns the ad world on its head by just speaking the truth about the products he's selling. Do you know the one? No. Yeah, it was like an ad for Volvo. They're boxy, but they're good. I don't remember that movie at all. I can't remember what it was called. It doesn't matter, but it was basically a movie based on this, even though it was never meant to be like a fictionalized version of it.

43:21I think it gave the screenwriter an idea is what I'm saying. Okay, I get you. One of the ads became, and I guess it was the most famous one. It's not the one I think of first, but it was named Ad of the Century by Ad Age. It just said, think small. And the one I remember most specifically was, and not by seeing it, you know, live, obviously, because this was before my time, but I just remember seeing, I guess, reading about it or something. But it was just a picture of the VW Beetle and it said Lemon underneath it. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Which Lemon is, you know, a car that kind of sucks. Right. So I'm not sure what they were going for with that.

44:01Can you explain? Well, I don't know. I mean, the same as the other ones that say ugly is only skin deep. You know, they were just sort of playing upon people saying it was ugly or saying it was, you know, I don't know if people were saying it was a quality car because lemon definitely indicates like it doesn't run well. So that was a real sort of extra brave, I think, even compared to the rest. I mean, even I don't get that one at all. It doesn't make any sense to me. I'll have to go look further into it. what's your search norm can someone explain to me why they yeah i'll write it out exactly like that well i mean i don't think it's that much different than saying it's ugly no it is because ugly it's like that's all just a point of view it's it's subjective and really ultimately if the car runs well a lot of people don't care what it looks like a lemon everyone cares that the car is not going to run well it does not it makes no sense to me whatsoever, but I'll figure it out and I'll report back.

45:02How about that? Yeah. Well, maybe that's why I remembered it because it didn't make any sense. Right. But, but it, yeah. And I guess you ended up buying one. So there you go. Well, my favorite one was live below your means. That's pretty fun. But who wants to do that? Well, I'll tell you who wants to do that. People who essentially were the basis of the counterculture, the people who were the, who were the beats a few years earlier, started to grow up, started to go to college, were very highly educated, but still did not want to follow in the exact steps of their parents. And the Beetle kind of gave them a vehicle out of their parents' shadow to kind of forge their own path.

45:38It was basically a finger to the crew cut buying a Beetle was in the early 60s. Yeah, and it's very weird that my parents bought one brand new in 68 because they were not that at all. My dad was the crew cut, like literally. Yeah. And I don't know. They weren't counterculture. Sure. Like I have no idea. Maybe, I mean, maybe my mom thought it was cute. Maybe my dad did. I have no idea. I'm going to have to ask my mom about that. But cost-wise, it's probably because of the cost, because they didn't have a lot of money. And in 1964, you could get a Beetle for$1 ,565 compared to about$2 ,400 for a Ford Mustang at the time or close to$7 ,000 for a convertible Lincoln Continental.

46:22So it was definitely affordable. And I'm sure that's probably why they got it. Yeah. And so they started selling a ton of these things in 1968. They sold 420 ,000 just in America. And by this time, by this year, around the world, it was the best selling car in the world. This was 20 years after Heinz Nordhoff took over. So we went from essentially this Nazi car to the best selling car in the world in two decades, which is quite a quite a feat. Yeah, for sure. Just a year after that, it got a big bump when Disney came out with the Love Bug movies. The initial one was just the Love Bug. And Herbie, of course, was the name of that 63 Beetle.

47:05If you haven't seen those movies, they're like those 60s, early 70s Disney movies. They're kind of fun, but they're not great. But Herbie was definitely a lovable car. And you can still see Herbie versions driving around with the two off-center stripes. And whatever the number in the circle was. I can't remember what its racing number was. 63 or 53? I don't know. Well, it was probably 63 because it was a 63 Beetle. Oh, yeah. Okay. I'm more of a Snowball Express man myself. Have you ever seen that one? No. It's a good one. Okay. Okay. Just check that one out and thank me later. I bet this stuff is all on the Disney app.

47:45Don't they have all their classics on there? Snowball Express? For sure. Watch that one and then watch the North Avenue Irregulars. Those are both really good. I do remember that one. I love that movie. Okay. So if you love North Avenue Irregulars, there's a good chance you're going to like Snowball Express. I guarantee it. One thing about the movie, though, was it was a it wasn't a radio controlled car like it's driving around by itself. That's the whole concept that is a car is kind of alive. And you might think, oh, cool. They figured out how to, you know, remote control this car. It was actually a movie making trick where they have somebody down out of view of the windows, kind of in the backseat, like a stunt driver driving that thing.

48:21Yeah. And we say that because there's a bunch of people on the Internet saying this is the world's first self-driving car. And they're just wrong, wrong, wrong. Wow. I didn't know that people claim that. Yeah. Wrongly. What about what about Mexico, Chuck? Because it turns out that Mexico and the Beetle go hand in hand. I didn't know that, though. Oh, you didn't know that? No, I mean, I know I didn't. I'm not going to even try to BS my way out of it. I did not know that. I am surprised that you've been to Mexico City and that you did not notice the inordinate amount of VW Beetles driving around.

48:56I just saw a forest. Yeah, that's what I was kind of one of the things I was looking forward to when I went to Mexico City for the first time. So I heard they were just like VW Beetles everywhere. And there are because they were made there until 2003, which is remarkable. remarkable. Like, you can buy a 2003, you know, final year edition Mexican Volkswagen Beetle. I went online immediately and like, you can buy one for like 15 grand that I saw that was looked to be in pretty good shape. And that's kind of all I want now. Okay. Good to know. Somebody's got a birthday coming up in March. Yeah, they actually, the factory in Pueblo, Mexico, which was the first plant outside of Germany, or the largest plant outside of Germany, it outlasted the one in Wolfsburg.

49:49I think the one in Wolfsburg shut down, or sorry, yeah, the one, it was in Stuttgart, the Wolfsburg plant in Stuttgart. It shut down in 1974. And like you said, the Mexican plant kept going until 2003. It's amazing. Yeah. And again, they stopped selling new beetles in the States in 1979. But Latin America is like, we still love them. So keep them keep them coming, Mexico. And Mexico said right on. Yeah, for sure. I know I mentioned earlier sort of the dune buggy conversion that some people have done. The initial guy, I guess, or I don't know if he was the first one, but the guy that really got famous for it was a California kind of car guy and racer named Bruce Myers.

50:29and he was a dune buggy guy. He built a kit car using a beetle chassis and kind of reconfigured the shell. If you've ever seen like Wonder Bug, the Sid Martycroft show from the 1970s, it's that kind of dune buggy. But it was called the Myers-Manx, very, very popular, especially in California after he won the Baja 1000 in one of those in 1967. And you can, I went to the Myers-Manx website. They are building a new one. The first one in decades, it's called the Manx 2.0 EV. Yeah. And it is, did you see this thing? Yeah, I did. They're amazing. Oh, man. I immediately was like, should I put a deposit down on this thing?

51:11It's like 500 bucks to put down a deposit. Right. $74 ,000 starting price. So I immediately was like, oh, I don't think so. I'll just admire them. Right. Yeah, they had another one. I can't remember what it was called, but it was like 125 grand starting or something. These are like, these are like doom buggies, electric doom buggies, essentially. And I'm not sure that they go off road. I didn't have that impression. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's going to, if it's a Manx, it'll do all you want. Okay. Well, it's good. It's got a pretty, it's because it's so small. It's going to have a limited range, like 125 miles.

51:48But if you're a listener out there and you end up getting one of these, I will meet you wherever you are in the United States to ride around in it with you. Oh, cool. There you go. Putting out that offer right now. I think we should talk about a few stats, a few records that VW put out. Sure. Well, one thing was that they kept kind of upgrading or updating or tweaking the bug in all sorts of ways. But if you really look at the first bug that came out in the 40s and you look at the bugs that were produced until 2003, they don't look very different. It's essentially the same car, which is why it's considered the longest selling car of all time.

52:28It's the greatest selling of all time. I think they sold 21 million plus Beatles over the production run. But it was essentially the same car. And so they would tweak it and release these limited editions once in a while. One was the sports bug. One was a bicentennial bug. And then there was one that came out in 1977 called the Champagne Edition. and I looked into these and it seemed like maybe that had like a different exclusive paint color or there was a slight tweak to the trim package or something. The champagne edition came with a Coke mirror and a vacuum shaped metal straw. But other than that, they seem like just regular Beatles.

53:06Yeah, I mean, it was convertible, but there were other convertibles. I always wanted a convertible too, because, you know, back in those days with the Beatles, it was just like a couple of twists of a knobs and then you manually just sort of threw it back over your head. never was able to get a convertible. You're right about the body style never changed. The taillights would change shape a little bit here and there, and that's kind of one of the ways you could tell what year it was. But other than some sort of headlight, taillight stuff, it was basically the same shape even through the Super Beetle.

53:40They might have been a slightly different shape. They were a little bit bigger, I think, but not much because I had a Super Beetle in it. It's not like it was roomy, you know? Yeah, and you had to be paying attention to probably spot the difference between a Beetle and a Super Beetle unless they just park next to each other, you know? Yeah, for sure. But VW Beetle owners were and are still very much known for being very into them and sort of knowing that kind of stuff. It's sort of like it wasn't just a car usually. It was like something that you adored and were into and you could get parts cheap and, you know, generally work on it yourself because when you looked at that engine, it looked like it had like nine or ten parts total.

54:16Right, yeah. Yeah, and apparently VW dealerships kept all parts in stock from all years, essentially. They had huge, huge stockpiles of parts, so you could always be like, well, I can at least go get this thing fixed pretty cheaply. Yeah, for sure. And we should probably close with a car that you owned, or at least Yumi bought that thing, right? Yeah, that was Yumi's car, the new Beetle. Yeah. It was cute. That doesn't surprise me. It was super cute, and it just fit Yumi to a T, I think. Yeah, she would do donuts in that thing all day long. It had the best turn radius. Oh, really? Not really. I mean, yeah, it would turn fine, but she didn't actually do donuts as far as I ever knew.

54:58No, no, no. I knew that part wasn't true, but I thought it had a noted turn radius or something. No. Okay. You just got me on that. I did. But one thing it did have, Chuck, was a little vase, a little flower vase next to the steering wheel. Do you remember that? Yeah, it's very cute. And I think they look pretty cool. I wish they would have made it a little more traditionally looking like a bug, like the couple of things that bothered me. And this is nitpicky as a beetle guy was the the flush headlights and the flush taillights. I always love that they stuck out before. But aside from that, I think they honored it quite well.

55:33Yeah, they did an update in 2011 that I thought was pretty cool, too. I don't know if I saw that one. I'll have to look that one up. Okay. So you look that up. I'm going to look at the text of your square back beetle station wagon. Yeah. I'm going to look up that lemon, that confusing lemon ad. Okay. And there might have been something else. I'll have to go back and re-listen to this. Well, I got one more quick little thing, because if you have ever been in a beetle or owned one, and this is something I didn't know until Dave pointed this out, There's a very particular smell that when I stick my head in a Beetle, it's just like it zaps me back.

56:12It smelled like no other car made on the interior. And apparently that came from the cushioning of the seats. It was made out of coconut hair. And I remember seeing that coconut hair like falling out from under my seats and stuff. But I never knew that was what the smell was due to. Did it smell like coconuts or it just had this distinct smell? Just a distinct smell. I think it was the vinyl combined with that coconut hair. It was just super, super distinct. Very nice. Well, I guess, well, Chuck, do you have anything else? No, that's it. Well, since Chuck started nostalgizing, then he just accidentally triggered listener mail.

56:51That's right. I'm going to call this, I guess, a follow-up on Madman Muntz. Mm-hmm. Because this is a pretty fun email. Hey, guys, a big fan of the show. I was very excited listening to the topic on 8-Tracks and was thinking silently, they better mention Muntz, they better mention Muntz. Because Earl Madman Muntz was born here in Elgin, Illinois. He led a very colorful life, and his part of the 8-Track story is only a small portion of that wildlife. He was an innovator in giant screen televisions, cellular telephones for cars, and satellite receivers. Wow. He started as a car salesman, and this is the basis of the typical crazy used car salesman thing.

57:30and one of his slogans was, I buy them high and sell them low. It's more fun that way. Don't tell Mrs. Muntz.

57:40And as she pointed out, he failed to mention what Mrs. Muntz he was talking about because I think he had seven wives. I think I saw that when we were doing the eight-track research. What, that ad? No, that he had seven marriages, I think. Yeah, you know, I'm not one to blame a divorce on a person, but if you've been married seven times, you may be the problem. You know? Sure. He would smash cars with sledgehammers, wear a tricorn hat with red long johns. So he was, you know, he was supposedly invented the wacky car salesman guy routine. That's pretty cool. So Mad Men Months will be the subject of the Elgin History Museum's podcast, Echoes of Elgin on August 1st of this year, if you want to learn a little bit more.

58:31And this is coming from Rebecca Miller, who is the museum educator at the Elgin History Museum. Very neat. Thanks a lot, Rebecca. Chuck, I have to say I have a terrible feeling that we're going to get a lot of follow-up emails saying it's pronounced Elgin. Oh, is it Elgin? I don't know, but I could just totally see it. All right. Well, just pretend I said Elgin if that's the case. We'll have Jerry go edit hard G's into all the time she said L. Yeah, instead of giving her a full read, I'll just go, guh. Yeah, use that, Jerry. Yeah, just lace that in. If you want to be like Rebecca and bring us up to speed on somebody we just kind of mentioned but really walked past, we love that kind of thing.

59:12You can do what Rebecca did and send us an email. Send it off to StuffPodcasts at iHeartRadio.com.

59:21stuff you should know is a production of iheart radio for more podcasts my heart radio visit the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows

59:37hi kyle could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan just one page as a google doc and send me the link thanks hey just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Whether it is getting swatted or just hateful messages online, there is a lot of harm and even just reading the comments.

1:00:15That's cybersecurity expert Camille Stewart-Gloster on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. Every season is a chance to grow. And the Therapy for Black Girls podcast is here to walk with you. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, and each week we dive into real conversations that help you move with more clarity and confidence. This episode, we're breaking down what really happens to your information online and how to protect yourself with intention. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:01:10You can download this episode and others from Lines and Tines with Spencer Graves on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.