For paid subscribers: The crab trap stays baited

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For paid subscribers: The crab trap stays baited

It's hard for me not to share every call that comes into the scam line, but this one must be shared

Evan Ratliff

Aug 09, 2024

∙ Paid

Episode 2 on scammers and spammers may be a couple weeks behind us, but the phone line I set up for my AI voice agent to take these calls continues to light up. If you recall, I likened it to the crab trap I used to put out with my dad when I was a kid. Well, it’s still baited, and all kinds of sea life is scampering in. The line’s been getting a lot of…

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Shell Game

A podcast (and newsletter) about things that are not what they seem, hosted by journalist Evan Ratliff. In Season One, that thing was Evan’s voice. By creating a voice clone and hooking it up to an AI chatbot, Evan set out to discover what happens when you try to take control of the very technology that threatens to replace you.

Shell Game was named one of the the best podcasts of 2024 by Apple, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Vulture, The Information, and The Economist. It's "riveting," says The New Yorker, "awesome" says The Verge, and "slightly terrifying," says The Globe and Mail.

Over the course of six episodes, Evan’s voice agents talked to spammers and scammers, to Evan’s friends and family, to colleagues and sources, to other AIs, and even to a therapist—all to better understand what AI voice is able to do, what it can't yet do, and what to expect from a future in which more and more of the people we encounter in the world aren’t real.

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