(BNS) The Answering Machine - With Toni Trucks!

Summary

Techmeme Ride Home: Episode Summary Title: The Answering Machine - With Toni Trucks!
Host: Brian McCullough
Guest: Tony Trucks
Release Date: November 28, 2024

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1. Introduction to Nostalgia

Brian McCullough opens the episode by delving into the nostalgic realm of 80s and 90s phone technology, specifically focusing on the answering machine. He introduces Tony Trucks, an accomplished actress known for her roles in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 and SEAL Team. Brian sets the stage for a deep dive into the era's communication gadgets, emphasizing the personal and societal impact of these technologies.

Brian McCullough [00:31]: "Today Rad 80s 90s history is tackling the answering machine and 80s 90s phone tech."

2. Personal Memories of Answering Machines

Tony Trucks shares her childhood experiences with answering machines, highlighting how integral they were to family communication. She reminisces about the excitement of receiving a new machine and the challenges of crafting the perfect outgoing message.

Tony Trucks [02:07]: "I kind of do remember us getting [an answering machine]. It was a big deal, us like figuring out what the outgoing message was going to be."

3. The Functionality and Social Role of Answering Machines

Brian and Tony discuss the answering machine's role as a family hub, much like texting today. They explore how it served as a status update tool, allowing family members to leave important messages and updates without needing real-time communication.

Brian McCullough [03:15]: "You would check the answering machine to see how many messages came in over the course of a day."

Tony Trucks [04:58]: "This platform gave us so much more freedom because you had the wiggle room of, like, your parents had to be home to get the message."

4. Evolution of Phone Technology and AT&T's Monopoly

The conversation shifts to the historical context of phone technology, particularly the monopolistic control exerted by AT&T. Brian provides an in-depth analysis of how AT&T's dominance stifled innovation, delaying the commercialization of inventions like the answering machine and fax technology.

Brian McCullough [14:54]: "The answering machine was invented at Bell Labs by someone named Benjamin Thornton in 1935."

Brian McCullough [22:07]: "The Hushaphone ruling was 'an unwarranted interference with the telephone subscribers right to reasonably use his or her telephone in ways which are privately beneficial without becoming publicly detrimental.'"

5. The Breakup of AT&T and Technological Liberation

In 1984, the U.S. government finally breaks up AT&T, leading to the emergence of the "Baby Bells" and a surge in new phone technologies. This deregulation allowed for innovations that had previously been suppressed by the monopoly, paving the way for answering machines, pagers, and eventually cell phones to become household staples.

Brian McCullough [30:54]: "The government finally has a ruling that breaks up AT&T and the Bell System into what we would all know as the Baby Bells."

6. Introduction and Impact of Pagers and Cell Phones

Tony recounts the advent of pagers and their status symbol significance in the 90s, contrasting their limited functionality with the later explosion of cell phone usage. They discuss how pagers were initially seen as tools for professionals but eventually became popular among the youth as indicators of social status.

Tony Trucks [49:27]: "For us, it was always the doctors... they would say, silence your phone, but silence your pager was acceptable."

Tony Trucks [52:24]: "I got my first cell phone in August of 1999... it was minutes, right? So you had like 500 minutes to start."

7. Societal Changes and Communication Autonomy

The duo reflects on how these technologies transformed personal autonomy and privacy. The introduction of cordless phones and personal lines allowed for more private conversations, while cell phones introduced instant connectivity, fundamentally changing how people interact and manage their time.

Tony Trucks [42:05]: "The phone would be in my bedroom... It was a revolution of autonomy, having that sort of independence and privacy."

Tony Trucks [71:54]: "The cell phone is for my convenience, not for your convenience."

8. The Decline of Answering Machines in Modern Media

Brian and Tony explore how answering machines were once pivotal plot devices in television and film, enabling exposition and advancing storylines effortlessly. With the rise of cell phones and voicemail, such narrative tools have become obsolete, altering storytelling dynamics in modern media.

Brian McCullough [66:50]: "The plot contrivance of the answering machine has an ability to do exposition dumps."

Tony Trucks [68:36]: "I still have hundreds of headshots of this answering service and I paid for it for years."

9. Reflections on Modern Communication vs. Past Technologies

The conversation concludes with a contemplation on the psychological and societal implications of instant communication. While modern technology offers unprecedented connectivity and convenience, it also introduces challenges related to privacy, boundaries, and the stress of being constantly reachable.

Brian McCullough [72:28]: "There's a segmented sort of... you don't have to know right now. And I don't have to get a notification instantaneously."

Tony Trucks [75:54]: "The cell phone is for my convenience, not for your convenience."

10. Final Thoughts and Farewell

As the episode wraps up, Tony Trucks shares her favorite outgoing message from her early acting career, emphasizing the personal impact of answering machines. Brian reflects on the bittersweet nature of technological progress, appreciating the conveniences of today while yearning for the simpler, albeit less connected, times of the past.

Tony Trucks [74:45]: "My favorite outgoing message... 'You've reached Dolores.'"

Brian McCullough [75:30]: "Nothing that we're talking about is better today... but we were around for something a little magical."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Brian McCullough [03:15]: "You would check the answering machine to see how many messages came in over the course of a day."
• Tony Trucks [04:58]: "This platform gave us so much more freedom because you had the wiggle room of, like, your parents had to be home to get the message."
• Brian McCullough [14:54]: "The answering machine was invented at Bell Labs by someone named Benjamin Thornton in 1935."
• Tony Trucks [42:05]: "The phone would be in my bedroom... It was a revolution of autonomy, having that sort of independence and privacy."
• Brian McCullough [66:50]: "The plot contrivance of the answering machine has an ability to do exposition dumps."

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Conclusion

In this episode of Techmeme Ride Home, Brian McCullough and Tony Trucks provide a comprehensive exploration of the answering machine's role in the evolution of personal communication. They intertwine personal anecdotes with historical insights, offering listeners both a nostalgic trip down memory lane and an understanding of the technological and regulatory forces that shaped modern communication systems. The discussion underscores the delicate balance between connectivity and personal autonomy, highlighting how past technologies continue to influence present-day communication dynamics.

Transcript

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[Brian McCullough]

Did you know the answering machine was invented decades before we got a chance to use one, but it was buried by a major corporation? What was the funniest outgoing answering machine message you ever left? And how much did you have to beg your parents to get a second phone line? Leave a message after the tone. Because today Rad 80s 90s history is tackling the answering machine and 80s 90s phone tech. Welcome to Rad in 80s 90s history podcast. Remembering the last two decades of the 20th century when things were still kind of normal and chill. I'm your host, Brian McCullough. Today, my extremely lovely special guest is Tony Trux. Tony has been in movies such as the Twilight Saga, breaking Dawn Part 2, and Dreamgirls. You might know her best these days as Lisa Davis on the TV show SEAL Team, but I know her best as one of the three greatest bowlers in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Tony, thanks for coming on the show.

[Tony Trucks]

That's the best introduction I'll ever have, honestly.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, by the way, I also am drinking coffee out of my SS Badger coffee mug.

[Tony Trucks]

Well done, sir.

[Brian McCullough]

Well done, Tony, thanks for coming on. Let me ask you this. We're going to do a grab bag of 80s 90s tech today, but it's mostly going to be answering machine tech. What is your memory of answering machines growing up? Like, do you remember a time when there wasn't one and then one came into your family's life?

[Tony Trucks]

Oh, I mean, I don't think for a while before my parents were divorced, I don't remember ever having one. And then I actually, I kind of do remember us getting. It was a big deal. It was a big deal, us like figuring out what the outgoing message was going to be. I remember distinctly being at my dad's and like always trying to convince him to do something funny or fun and he was like. We ended up going with like the automated one that was like, we're not home right now. Leave us a message. He was like the one that came with the phone, but no vision on his part.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, I guess that would be actually extremely useful for families that are in multiple houses, back and forth. In a way, what we have to do with this sort of stuff is, like, you know, people listening that remember this stuff. It's nostalgia. But also, we should, like, explain why you would have an answering machine. So the answering machine was, in a way, sort of like a family hub. Do you remember, like. Do you remember being out for the day, coming home from school, and, like, you would check the answering machine to see how many messages came in over the course of a day?

[Tony Trucks]

100%. It was like, the first thing you did, you, like, ran through the door, and you would see if your answer machine was blinking. If it was blinking. If there's, like, a little light on it, it was blinking. Then you knew you had messages. Also, if you were super fancy, you have, like, a little timer code thing that'd be, like. It would tell you a number on it. It would tell you the number of messages you had on the phone.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, that was when they went digital. Do you remember the original answering machines? It was actually a cassette tape. Right. So you would have to come in and rewind to go back and see what you missed during the day.

[Tony Trucks]

Totally, totally. I do remember that I'd really dug deep enough, I might have found it. But, yeah, I do remember having to rewind the tape. It was on an automatic rewind, though.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah. No, I can remember having to literally, as if it were a tape deck or something, having to hit rewind, and, oh, that's not far enough. That's not far enough. And then you'd have to erase it, because then the space would get clogged up and stuff like that.

[Tony Trucks]

Yeah.

[Brian McCullough]

So you were mentioning. So first of all, you would come home and you would hear the calls that were missed, and it was maybe the doctor calling, your appointment is next week, or something like that, or your friends calling, hey, Tony, do you want to do something tonight? Or whatever. But also, and I think a way to think about this is what we use texting for now. That was what the answering machine was for kids a lot, where it's like, hey, mom, I'm. I'm staying at Susie's, or, soccer practice got canceled, so I'm coming home early. So a lot of it was, like, literal status updates.

[Tony Trucks]

It was. But I would argue that, like, honestly, this platform gave us so much more freedom because you had the wiggle room of, like, your parents had to be home to get the message. Right. So if your parents Were like in transit from work to home and you left them a message like, hey, I'm going to stay late at Suzy's house. It took time. So you have like this buffer of time. It was so great. And you could always have these. Just like, I left a message, I left a message. It wasn't like, wasn't happening in real time. You always have space to mess up well.

[Brian McCullough]

And also you could. So people would call in and they would leave a message and it would get recorded. But then also the person with the answering machine would record an outgoing message. And again, before we get into the funny messages and things that people would leave, this was also a status update thing because you could say, we're on vacation for the next week or don't expect to hear back from us till after everyone gets home at 7. So, like, you could leave information for other people trying to contact you, essentially.

[Tony Trucks]

Oh, yeah, that was. That was actually great. I remember. I know now workplaces have the outgoing email, but.

[Brian McCullough]

Or even outgoing out of office.

[Tony Trucks]

Yeah, yeah, the outgoing message was the best. Like, hey, we're going to be out of town for this long of time. Or you. Yeah, it was great. It was great. I'm sure my dad at one point, I think had there, like, my brother doesn't live here anymore. Like, if you're a telemarketer, don't call her.

[Brian McCullough]

All right, so then let's get into the outgoing messages, which people would make funny ones. You know, the thing that jumps to mind almost immediately is nobody's home, nobody's.

[Tony Trucks]

Home, nobody's home, nobody's home, nobody's home, nobody's home.

[Brian McCullough]

Or what you would do. Everybody did this at least once where you would. You would pretend that you had picked up the phone. Hello? Hello? Oh, yeah, people thought you had picked up the phone, but it was actually.

[Tony Trucks]

So that was my. I hate that one because I fell for it every time. And I was always so mad. I had a friend that's like, particularly colorful and he always goes, hello. And I was like, hey, how you doing?

[Brian McCullough]

Anyway?

[Tony Trucks]

And I would always launching and talking. He's like, just kidding. I'm not. You know.

[Brian McCullough]

Can you remember any memorable joke ones that you pulled or like, you know, doing an impression or singing a song or anything like that?

[Tony Trucks]

Oh, you. I remember the family, you know, families doing like Christmas ones where they would, you know, would be like, the Smiths wish you a merry Christmas. Wish you. And you're like those. The holiday themed ones were particularly lovely. And yeah, I'm trying to think of Some more. My dad liked to. My dad's very straightforward, so he would always like to leave a very somber, straight message, like, hello, you've reached the trucks. Residents were not available right now.

[Brian McCullough]

But, you know, well, conversely, I was thinking today when I was doing more research on this that this was one of the greatest delivery mechanisms for dad jokes ever invented. So I think we're poorer as a society that dads don't have that as a way to make terrible jokes. So, yes, you showed me offline and this might be a video only thing, but you found your phone with answering machine from college.

[Tony Trucks]

Oh, yeah, I can. I mean, let me just. For the viewers, for those that can't see it, it's been through some things.

[Brian McCullough]

But did you try to see if there is an outgoing message still on there?

[Tony Trucks]

There is, There is. Hold, please. Let me see if I can make sure the volume's up. Volume's up to 10.

[Brian McCullough]

Okay.

[Tony Trucks]

Telling me for those viewers, see if I can do this. You have no messages. Okay, fine. All right, fine. We know that we've got. No. No message for them. Answer call. Hi, you reach Tony Trucks.

[Brian McCullough]

Not available right now, but leave me.

[Tony Trucks]

A message and I'll call you back.

[Brian McCullough]

Hi.

[Tony Trucks]

You can listen to how thick my Michigan accent is. Oh, well, Tony Trucks. I'm not available right now, but leave a message and I'll call you back.

[Brian McCullough]

Was that. You're saying that was college?

[Tony Trucks]

It was college. This is like 2002, 2003. That's like, this is my senior year message. So 2003 is the pocket of this. This is where all the boys were calling. You know, this is real. I thought that was going to reel somebody in.

[Brian McCullough]

That reminds me of another thing, though. Thinking of boys calling is one thing that you could do with the answering machine was screen calls. So if you didn't want to answer the phone, but you wanted to what the message was, you could just let it play. Yeah, yeah.

[Tony Trucks]

And then you're like, just kidding, I'm home.

[Brian McCullough]

Right. If you were, you were willing to talk, right?

[Tony Trucks]

Yeah, you could pick it up. You could pick it up mid answering machine. That's what that was. Listen, we're talking about the outgoing messages, but I think of it all the times where I know my mom just didn't pick up. And so my message was, mom, mom, pick up, mom, just pick up the phone, Mom. You know, like it wasn't an actual message. It was like, I know you're home.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, so let's get into. Since this is a history podcast, let's get into the history of the answering machine. It might surprise you to know there's actually some interesting history to this technology. For example, would it surprise you to know that we could have had answering machine machines decades before the 1980s?

[Tony Trucks]

How big would it have been?

[Brian McCullough]

Well, right. But in a way, I brought you here under false pretenses because you think you're here to wax nostalgic about this tech, when in reality you're going to get a crash course in the history of deregulation, antitrust law, Ma Bell. So listeners might have heard of Ma Bell, but maybe everybody has heard of AT&T. For most of the 20th century. We didn't have Verizon, T Mobile, even things like SBC or Ameritech or Pacific Bell, things like that. If people remember from the 80s and 90s, there was just AT&T. It was called the Bell System after Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. The company that he created was the company that AT&T grew out of. This is simplifying things just a bit. But in the early 20th century, when certain new technologies came around, they were granted regulated monopolies by the government. This makes sense. You hear monopoly and you think, that's a terrible thing. We want to break up monopolies and we're going to get to that. But it makes sense in the sense that. Think of the electric company. You don't want three power plants in a region. You only need one. You don't want the duplication of infrastructure. You don't want. Think of cable. Cable. They grant a monopoly to a cable company in a region because you don't want five different cable companies laying fiber to everybody's house. Or like stringing cable on the phone lines or whatever. Like there's too much duplication and things like that. Now, I am alighting over a bunch of details that readers of Tim wu's books would be mad at me for simplifying. But the same thing happened with the telephone. Because the US Government wants one reliable nationwide network for communications. And I'm talking about the timeline of the turn of the 20th century. So the 1900s, the 1910s, the 1920s, they want what is called a common carrier. They want one system that is reliable and. But they want that one system to not be able to discriminate over who is using your lines. Right? Okay. In a way, think of electricity again, like if GE runs the power plant, and then they charge less money if you buy a GE washing machine, but charge more money if you buy a non GE washing machine. Like, that's sort of the common carrier thing. No discrimination in modern parlance. It would be similar argument to what net neutrality is on the Internet. Charge the same, offer the same level of service, don't discriminate over who connects to your network. Sounds good, right? Good deal. Except what we know about monopolies is they tend to not be good at innovation because there's no competition to force them to be innovative. AT&T basically had a monopoly for most of the 20th century in the United States for especially long distance distance communication over telephone lines. They tried to bend over backwards to show that they could innovate. And thus the famous Bell Labs, which was this research lab that I mean, is legendary for a reason. They invented the transistor, which led to computers. They invented the laser, they invented the solar cell. They invented the concept of cellular phones, of sending transmission signals via satellite up to satellites, down to space. The problem is. So Bell Labs again is rightfully famous. But one of the things that you would notice if you look at their inventions is that AT and T doesn't develop and monetize or productize a lot of these inventions. Some of them just sit in drawers back in their labs gathering dust. Some are picked up by other companies because AT&T is a monopoly. They do not necessarily want their monopoly disrupted. They're making tons of money, bank bankrolled and backed by the government, allowed to by the government. It is the innovator's dilemma on steroids when you have a huge monopoly. So Tony, take a guess at when the answering machine. Answering machine.

[Tony Trucks]

I'm going to 1932.

[Brian McCullough]

Listen, price is Right rules. You've gone over, but you're very close. It's 1935. It was invented at Bell Labs by someone named Benjamin Thornton. And he developed a machine to record voice messages from a caller on actual tape. Tape as a technology, magnetic tape was a recent invention at the time and Bell Labs sat on it. AT&T sat on it. They did not offer it to the public because they didn't want to. The.

[D]

If you and I.

[Brian McCullough]

Do you remember what your phone looked like when you were a kid on the. On the YouTube video? I'll find pictures to overlay here now. But you know, that sort of like soft sort of thing. And then it was rotary at first, but then it was touched out. But do you remember how, though everybody's phone looked the same when we were kids? Right.

[Tony Trucks]

100%.

[Brian McCullough]

You want to know why that was?

[Tony Trucks]

Because they were all made by bolabs.

[Brian McCullough]

And they wouldn't let anyone else Create phones. You could get one type of phone, the phone that the phone company produced and allowed you to connect to their system.

[Tony Trucks]

Now are you thinking like we had color choices, didn't we?

[Brian McCullough]

There were color choices and slightly different models. And then you know what, we need to lay a little bit of groundwork again. In a way, what non 80s kids won't remember is that the phones were all corded so often it was in a central place in the home. So you couldn't necessarily have private conversations because it was in one place. It was sort of like the family TV or later on the family computer, which was often out in the open. The big innovation that they gave us, they thought us worthy to receive in the phone lines. Well, no, no, no, not even yet. No, no.

[Tony Trucks]

I mean in the same home, like two options. Like you could talk in the kitchen.

[Brian McCullough]

Or the living room, you could get there. But actually we're going to come back to that in a second because that was something that was, that only came in in the late 80s and early 90s at least they wanted you to have this. But what I'm saying is the big innovation was moving from rotary, a dialogue, a spinning dial to push button. That was the big innovation from basically the 60s into the 70s and the 80s.

[Tony Trucks]

Yes.

[Brian McCullough]

So.

[D]

Today'S episode is sponsored by the Washington Post. But you don't really need me to tell you about the Washington Post when it comes to their tech coverage because I quote from them all the time.

[Brian McCullough]

Back of the envelope.

[D]

I think they're easily in the top three of sources we quote from on this show. But it's not just tech that they're good at. They're one of my personal go tos for things beyond tech too. I even signed up to get the Posts for you newsletter, which sends me my very own personalized roundup of stories every evening based on my interest and reading history. Their app makes it easy for me to stay up to date on the latest news, save and share stories, and follow my favorite authors. The Post even offers a cool feature for audio lovers like you. You can actually listen to articles in addition to reading them. So you can tackle your to do list and catch up on the news at the same time. Now more than ever, it's important to stay up to date on the world. So go to washingtonpost.com ride to subscribe for just 50 cent per week for your first year. That's 80% off their typical offer, so this is truly a steal. Once again, that's washingtonpost.com ride to subscribe for just 50 cents per week for your first year. This episode is brought to you by Incogni. Incogni is a service that helps protect your personal data from data brokers who collect, aggregate and sell it. Incogni reaches out to data brokers on your behalf and requests your personal data removal with the Family and friends plan. You can also add up to four members to your subscription. And since many data brokers continue collection of your personal information even after they've removed it, Incogni makes sure your data stays off the market by conducting repeated removal requests. Incogni will handle any objections from data brokers and keep you updated on their progress every step of the way. Take control of your data Privacy today. Visit incogni.com, sign up and enjoy a 30 day money back guarantee to ensure you're completely satisfied with their service. Take your personal data back with Incogni. Use ride home at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan incogni.com ridehome that's incogni I n-c o g n I.com ridehome and use code ridehome to get 60% off their annual plan.

[Tony Trucks]

But wait, but we don't, we need to say also, just because it was push didn't mean that it wasn't going ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, right? It doesn't mean it was going beep, boop, beep, boop. That was a different thing.

[Brian McCullough]

The technology that was based on actual, like, sound tones. That's why hackers, the earliest hackers, before there were computer hackers, they would hack phone lines because if you could match the tone of what was dialed out, like either the click, click, click, or the, or the whatever, you could get free calls. So among other people, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak invented devices before they started making computers to do what they called phone freaking, which was basically a way to hack the phone system to get free long distance calls. Because again, maybe we need to lay this. You had to pay local calls, you paid a certain dollar figure per month within your area code. That's why we have area codes. The area code long distance, you paid by the minute. It was expensive. That was the cash cow for 18.

[Tony Trucks]

You never hear this anymore. But I remember so often growing up, it was regularly said, it's long distance, I'm calling long distance.

[Brian McCullough]

Right?

[Tony Trucks]

You know, that was always like, I'm calling you long. It was, it was ammunition, right?

[Brian McCullough]

Or your grandmother would rush you off the phone because she was, she was horrified by the amount of money you were Spending to call her long distance. Like we've been on for 15 minutes. Okay, get off, get off. Because wasn't there also. There was. We, we all knew there was a certain amount of time that you could stay on and it would be cheaper. But then if you went beyond that, then like the rates ratcheted up or.

[Tony Trucks]

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Oh my gosh. The long distance calling or forget that.

[Brian McCullough]

So to bring it back to the technology itself AT&T does not allow people to. You can't just create your own phone or your own device and plug it into their network. And their argument is in the same way that, you know, Apple says, well, we can't open the App Store because it's not secure and it's unsafe for users. And they made that argument time and time again. And not just, you know, hey, U.S. government, we can't allow this because what if the phone network goes down and the Russians attack and you know, no one can talk to each other. It was also, they literally made the argument that if you connect things to the network that they don't support, a phone company worker could be out there on the line working on it and they'll get electrocuted.

[Tony Trucks]

No, stop.

[Brian McCullough]

There were people and companies that tried to commercialize the answering machine. One was called Tel Magnet, which was offered in the United States in 1949. It played outgoing messages and recorded incoming messages on a magnetic wire. It was priced at $200, which was very expensive for 1949, so was not a commercial success. There was also the electronic secretary and it was kind of state of the art, but it used a 45 RPM record player. So imagine, forget tapes.

[Tony Trucks]

Oh my gosh, that's so funny.

[Brian McCullough]

It's recording messages. I wonder why none of these ever took off, huh?

[Tony Trucks]

Gosh, Well, I think of like Barbra Streisand, like as a seven year old going into the A booth in, you.

[Brian McCullough]

Know, New York to record her single.

[Tony Trucks]

Song in her tiny little record she came out with, right? This also made like collect calling a very big deal. Like you don't hear about collect calls as much unless, you know, you have ready family members in jail. But like, you know, the collect call isn't. That was such a big deal. Like I'd be like, my brother would call collect from college and it was.

[Brian McCullough]

So let's explain that if I am a poor college student and I'm calling home to my mother, can, you know, early enough on you could call the operator and a human being would get on and you'd say, I Want to place a collect call?

[Tony Trucks]

Yeah. The operator would come on and she'd be like, how can I, operator, how can I help you?

[Brian McCullough]

And then the operator would dial your mother and say, will you accept a collect call from Tony Trucks?

[Tony Trucks]

Yes.

[Brian McCullough]

And you could say yes or no. And if you said yes, then your mother would be billed for that long distance call and you would not.

[Tony Trucks]

Right, exactly, exactly.

[Brian McCullough]

We will come back to 1-800-Collect and all that stuff in a second. So the quintessential device that was a decade long battle to try to connect to the phone company was something called Hushaphone which was invented in 1922. Again, look at how far back from the 80s we are the Hush A Phone. You know how when you put your mouth over the phone like this to try to muffle you, okay, so the Hush A phone was basically just a cup that you would put over the mouth part of the receiver. So that, let's say, I feel like I've seen these. They would market it as if you're in the office and you don't want, you don't want your secretary or your coworkers to hear your important business call. Put this over. It's literally a cup. You could take a plastic cup or a solo cup and imagine you just cut it out. That's all it is. Nothing complicated, nothing technological.

[Tony Trucks]

Somebody retired off of that, you know.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, wait, they did not. So the Hushaphone was the product of Harry C. Tuttle, president of the Hush A phone company. And he keeps trying to market this and for various reasons ATT says you can't connect to this. It degrades the quality of the call. 1948 Protest to the Federal Communications Commission asking them to order the phone company to authorize the use of the device. The phone company delayed, delayed. The hearing occurred in 1950. Again, lay, delay, delay. This is, you know, it's a quasi governmental entity, ATT at this point it has the backing of the government, it has the backing of the CIA, the military because this is a national security sort of thing in the eyes of the government. So they delay issuing a ruling to 1955. Five years later. The ruling states that the unrestricted use of the Hushaphone could result in a general deterioration of the quality of interstate and foreign telephone service. So they reject it. The rejection was overturned a year later in a U.S. court of Appeals suit, hush a phone versus United States with the decision stating, and this is important historically, I'm going to quote this, that the Hushaphone ruling was quote, an unwarranted interference with the telephone subscribers right to reasonably use his or her telephone in ways which are privately beneficial without becoming publicly detrimental. And so they're saying your notion that using a cup over the phone is going to ruin the network is bananas. And also the consumer, the user of the network, has a private interest in using the network in the way that they want. The reason that I quoted that particular line is that is going to be the key ruling. And that sentence of the ruling is going to be key to the eventual breakup of ATT, of their monopoly.

[Tony Trucks]

Oh, okay.

[Brian McCullough]

So this is a hugely famous case in antitrust law. It eventually gets settled in 1984, which is why as 80s kids, we're going to get a whole bunch of technology that we're going to get to. It was the Nixon administration first that started to try to break up AT and T. So a Republican administration. It was the Reagan administration that pushed through the final breakup of att. Now you think Republicans, they would be, you know, they're pro business or whatever, but at the same time they're pro competition. And the phone company had gained a reputation for being incredibly tony. Here's something that you could not do if you did want to set up a new phone line. You know, the phone jack that we're. Yeah, so you just plug it in and go. So that was something that I think it was not till the 19th, the government forced them to use that technology. Before the phone jack, if you wanted to install a new phone or a second phone line, you had to have the phone company repairman come to your house and install it as if he were wiring electricity or something like. And so again, it's like the priesthood of they don't want anybody messing with their stuff, messing with their network.

[Tony Trucks]

It seems very Apple adjacent in its like we're the only ones that can do this.

[Brian McCullough]

Right. So the Nixon, Ford, Carter and eventually Reagan administration, the FCCs for all of those administrations keep trying to open the doors of crack things like MCI. If you remember MCI from the 90s, microwave communications incorporated was someone that was a company that was formed to allow long distance service via microwave towers as opposed to these long distance telephone lines. And the microwave towers were initially just between Chicago and St. Louis. ATT fought it tooth and nail. You can see the forerunner of the cellular industry there. But again, it's not ATT that's moving towards cellular. It's people trying to go against the monopoly. Here's another one. Fax technology was invented decades before. Again, faxes are something that became prominent in the 80s and 90s could have had it earlier. The ability to send pictures via phone lines, I think was invented in the 30s or the 40s.

[Instacart Advertiser]

Wow.

[Brian McCullough]

Why not make that a product? ATT doesn't have to. They're making tons and tons of money allowed to by the government because it's a monopoly. And also again, their cash cow is the long distance calling. So again, when we're talking about what did you use the answering machine for? Things that you would send as text now or instead of trying to, I don't know, sending a fax. What they were afraid of is things like sending a fax or saving a message would discourage you from making an expensive long distance phone call. They want you to make those long distance phone calls. They don't want anything that sort of a shortcut around that. So 1982, after basically two decades of the government trying, through various legal mechanisms and actual antitrust lawsuits trying to break up AT&T in the United States versus AT&T, it's finally decided that AT&T is a monopoly. And in 1984, the government finally has a ruling that breaks up ATT and the bell system into what we would all know as the baby bells. AT&T, the bigger company keeps the long distance, but there are seven independent regional holding companies, also known as regional Bell operating companies, or RBOCs, colloquially known as Baby Bells. Okay, so what was your, like, what was the Babybel, the phone company when you were a kid growing up?

[Tony Trucks]

I feel like, yeah, there was, there was Pac Bell, right?

[Brian McCullough]

Well, or I think Ameritech might have been the one.

[Tony Trucks]

Oh, in Michigan, yeah. Ameritech, yeah, sure, yeah. AT&T. Ameritech, yeah.

[Brian McCullough]

So you had next in the Northeast, Pacific Telesis, Ameritech, Bell Atlantic, Southwestern Bell, which eventually became SBC Bell south in the south and US west in the West. They basically, these Baby Bells get the local calls, ATT maintains the long distance calls, which again, which is why you would have the local call bill and then the long distance call bill. But the door hasn't been cracked open. It has been blown wide open. Because what also in this ruling is allowed is basically a Cambrian explosion of new phone technology that AT had been sitting on or not allowing to have happen. And this brings us back to what you and I remember from our childhood. So actually my notes were, here's the thing on the fax machine. The fax machine was invented in 1924.

[Tony Trucks]

That's insane. Like, I feel like it really didn't.

[Brian McCullough]

Gain popularity until, until the 80s and 90s and it was largely a business thing. Like by the late is a lot of us had fax machines in our houses for. Especially if your parents were doing business or something like that. And so, but, but business people, back when there were things called actual business cards, you would have your phone number on it. You would have a fax number on it.

[Tony Trucks]

You would even see it, like early days email. People would say, like I always say that this is my number, this is my fax number. Gosh, yeah, the fax. I have to say that I feel like people are still asking for faxes way after they should have. You know, once the technology changes, there's like any fax. I was like, who's. I remember so many times, early days living in Los Angeles, where I would be like, they want me to fax them and going to Kinko's and be.

[Brian McCullough]

Like, oh, right, yeah, well. And weirdly, banks and stuff. Still ask for your fax number in case. Yeah, yeah. Or I feel like that is definitely on the way out with things like being able to just take a picture.

[Tony Trucks]

Take a picture. The picture is huge. Yeah. Like, I love that. Now you could, you know.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, here, here's another piece of technology that got kicked loose as we mentioned before, cordless phones. Do you remember first time that you had a cordless phone and how mind blowing was it? Now again, as kids and teens, it was essential because then you could go in your room and have a private conversation that your brother or your mother or whomever couldn't listen in on. But also, do you remember just the. You could walk outside with it.

[D]

You imagine that to have a phone.

[Brian McCullough]

Call, there would often be a chair next to where the phone was so that you could sit down, you could just do whatever. You could be making dinner, you could, you could, you could walk all over your house.

[Tony Trucks]

Well, two things. Like our phone lived on a chair, right. It just lived on a chair in the corner for this purpose. But it also makes me think back. You know, you sometimes see those like old timey movies where someone's in a club and they get a phone call and it's like the longest cord you've ever seen.

[Brian McCullough]

Oh, right. They literally bring the cord out to the table. Yes. Yeah.

[Tony Trucks]

You're like, how long is this cord? You know, and so I was like feeling they must, you know, ATT must have been making specifically custom cords for the fanciest clubs in town. But you know, the cordless phone also what it did was you could go anywhere, but it put you a little out of practice because that Meant you needed to also remember to go put.

[Brian McCullough]

The phone back to charge it.

[Tony Trucks]

The venom that came from my mother when a phone call would come in and then we would come to the realization that the cordless wasn't charged, was like. It was like, put the damn thing.

[Brian McCullough]

I wonder if that was one of the first things like that because a lot of things had AA or AAA batteries. And, you know, as a father, now I'm that guy that's running around charging everyone's devices. Your iPad, we're leaving the house. You might as well put it on the charger, you know, So I wonder if that was the first thing like that. I can't think of something else where it was like, you've got to make sure it's charged or something.

[Tony Trucks]

No, yeah, no, no, no. I think that was a big deal. I remember you put it on the charger and. Oh yeah, like, look, you can even see here, right? Like my little light up thing. The ones that are listening, like, if I put it back on the charger, a little light comes on that says I'm charging.

[Brian McCullough]

Right, right, right, right. There was also, weirdly, do you remember this at all? There was sort of like a. Not a moral panic, but a sort of panic or pearl clutching about the idea that because now with the wireless, you're sending the signal back to the base station that was actually wired into the phone line. And so people were afraid that, oh, people, your neighbors are listening in on your calls. I don't know if it was because the early technology of that was so piss poor that you could hear other people's calls.

[Tony Trucks]

Didn't you ever have that happen? I did.

[Brian McCullough]

Did you really?

[Tony Trucks]

Okay, I'd be on our phone call, I would be on the phone and all of a sudden I was, I don't know, got messed up at the switchboard or what's going on. But like I could hear somebody else's call. Yeah, they couldn't necessarily hear me, but I would be able to hear them. I'm like, I can hear like. Or I'd be talking to somebody and all of a sudden we would realize that we were also hearing somebody else talking.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah. I wonder if like whatever the radio band was that they put those on early on were just so weak or again, the technology might have gotten better or something like that.

[Tony Trucks]

Yeah, but I definitely. That was definitely a thing. I don't know why, but yeah.

[Brian McCullough]

Okay, so let's get to having your own line, which I found an article from the New York Times from 1995 where they're saying it was the biggest single year increase in new residential phone lines in the United States since the end of World War II. The percentage of households with more than one line has nearly doubled this year to 16%. It's predicted that by the year 2000, as many as half of the nation's 97 million households will have two or more phone lines. Here's why this is happening. Because again, the baby bells are given, essentially it is a regulated monopoly. Again, it's just a regional monopoly, but they don't have the cash cow of the long distance. So they're looking for revenue stream. And so it becomes a concerted marketing effort to be like, hey, just like one car garage is great, but you know what's better is a two car garage, two phone lines. And the idea of working from home or working remotely or being reachable by your work at your house was something that I don't think was a thing at all in the 70s and it started to become in the 80s. So the first thing that they market to is you need a business line that's separate.

[Tony Trucks]

Your office line.

[Brian McCullough]

Right. But then, then they see, they see the dollar signs. When they think of us, they think of the teens, they think of the youth. Now, do you remember talking your parents into getting a second line?

[Tony Trucks]

Hell yes.

[Brian McCullough]

What did you have? What did you.

[Tony Trucks]

Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, it was, it was actually a short sell because my mother hated dealing with us in most capacities. She just was like, I don't want to deal with these kids. And so we're like, lee, can we have what is lovingly referred to as the teen line? The teen line. And now listen, we need to also highlight for the audience members here, your listeners that we. This is back when the phone book was still happening, right? All of a sudden you're looking in the phone book, the white pages. White pages are like people, right? Yellow pages are business.

[Brian McCullough]

Businesses, right?

[Tony Trucks]

So you're looking in the white pages. Yes. You go trucks, trucks, trucks, trucks. There's Mary, trucks. And then right underneath. So I got my regular phone number, right underneath is the teen line. So I have my own mind blowing. It was like my first real taste of autonomy.

[Brian McCullough]

This is sort of an aside, but I think one of the things that when you tell people, younger people that this was possible, there was a time when everybody's phone number was not only public, it was published on a yearly basis by the phone company.

[Tony Trucks]

Like, that's right.

[Brian McCullough]

You had a fourth grade teacher, you could figure out what their phone number was.

[Tony Trucks]

I mean, do we need a spin off episode just about prank calling? Because I had access to every teacher's phone number, right?

[Brian McCullough]

You know what? Save that for when we do star 69.

[D]

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[Brian McCullough]

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[Brian McCullough]

So the other. So first of all, the. The teen line is youth. I mean, I guess it wasn't a thing in the 70s or prior to the 80s that teenagers would be. You'd come home from school and you might be on the phone for 2, 3, 6 hours till 1am with your friends.

[Tony Trucks]

Yes, yes.

[Brian McCullough]

And so it becomes a necessity. Again, I don't know when that became a thing, but by the time I was in middle school and high school, it was like, yeah, this is what you do. You come home from school and you're on with your friends all afternoon. So, right. Your parents, they need to get calls so you can make the argument that it's necessary.

[Tony Trucks]

Absolutely, absolutely. And also, I think having the listeners understand, not only is your number public to everybody, it's in a book. Anyone can call you. And not only that, every call that you're getting in your formative years has to go through your parents first. Like, just mortifying. So the incarnation, the invention of the teen line, the introduction of this, it was a gift to teens everywhere.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, but think of whatever.

[Tony Trucks]

A phone would be in my bedroom.

[Brian McCullough]

In your bedroom. So that's. The revolution of autonomy, is you have the cordless phone so you can have private conversations in your bedroom. Then you have a line that is only yours, and probably that phone is in your bedroom. Like, yes, the.

[Tony Trucks]

Oh, my gosh.

[Brian McCullough]

Just the autonomy, that revolution in having that sort of independence and privacy.

[Tony Trucks]

I still remember my teen line phone number. It was so pivotal in my life. 723-6963. And as a teenager, the fact that there was a 6, 9 in there was huge.

[Brian McCullough]

Oh, geez, I missed that. But yes. Well, also.

[Tony Trucks]

What you mean you're not 15 anymore?

[Brian McCullough]

Do you. Do you remember? I still have memor. Do I still have memorized my first girlfriend's phone number? No, I think I've lost it.

[Tony Trucks]

You know, so many phone numbers still, though, I could. I could do you.

[Brian McCullough]

I've lost them all. I've lost them all.

[Tony Trucks]

I got them. I got them. I know all my girlfriend's phone numbers from.

[Brian McCullough]

Right. Because again, you would call them every day, multiple times a day, so they're memorized. Did you. Did your friends do the thing where if you could spell out a word with the number, because again, I don't know if people know this, but there would be letters on the numbers of the. Yeah. And so somebody had a phone number that the numbers spelled risk. So they would always be like, my phone number is 277 risk or something.

[Tony Trucks]

My cousin's was like 723 self. That was the big one.

[Brian McCullough]

Okay, well, let's. Let's continue with the technology explosion that the breakup of AT&T allows. R69. Star 69 is. There's the famous REM song. Star 69. I know you called. I know you called. Somebody calls, hangs up. Star 69. You get the number and you can find out who called you.

[Tony Trucks]

Yep. Call them right back. Best thing ever. Like somebody calls you, they prank you, whatever, you just star 69 or somebody like it rings once. That was the things I remember. It had to ring twice in order for you to do star 69.

[Brian McCullough]

Now there was also star 67, but I feel like. So star 67, if you hit it before you dialed somebody, it blocked the ability to do Star 69. But I felt like that came out later. Like Star 69 came first. And then it was almost like an innovation to add star 67 maybe.

[Tony Trucks]

Well, listen, we're really getting into some high tech stuff here. Okay, you want to do the star 67 to X out the star 69. And we're not even talking about the three way call.

[Brian McCullough]

Oh, I didn't even put that in my notes. All right, tell us about three way calling.

[Tony Trucks]

Don't you remember the three way calling?

[Brian McCullough]

Where.

[Tony Trucks]

Okay, so like as I recall, what you would do is you dial your friend and then if you wanted to make a number call a different call, then add in a call you could. And this was the source of a lot of drama. You see it on Mean Girls. There's a very prominent thing where she three way calls and she doesn't tell the other person. So they just start talking shit about each other. But you would press the hang up button. What is that called? I forgot. I guess the hang up the.

[Brian McCullough]

Or the cradle or something. Yeah, I don't know.

[Tony Trucks]

Yeah, Press the hang up button.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah.

[Tony Trucks]

And you would press it twice or you would hold it down and then you would lift it back up and you get a new dial tone. And then once that started to ring, you would press the cradle again and then you would all be on together and you would do three way. But that was the limit. You three way. That's it.

[Brian McCullough]

Let me give you another. Well, actually, before I get to another technology thing, we mentioned things like calling collect also. So there are competitors to ATT that come out. So if you remember watching TV at all, any commercials like MCI and Sprint, MCI would just advertise constantly because they're trying to go after the cash cow of ATT long distance and suddenly there's competition. So literally you couldn't watch a TV show where there wasn't one MCI or Sprint commercial in the 90s. 1-800-Collect, I believe was an AT&T product. But there was competing ones as well. No, that was 1-800-call- attention and then 1, 800, collect with somebody else. So again, a product, a multi probably billion dollar product was, hey, we're going to brand a new collect calling brand and maybe people will use that again. People are just chipping away at the ATT long distance cash cow.

[Tony Trucks]

My dad, when I went to cop, when I went to college, my dad engaged a servant where you could pay to attach your home phone line and make it a 1, 800 number. And that's another thing people might not remember is that 1, 800, if it was a 1, 800, it means it's free. 1, 900 was the.

[Brian McCullough]

Oh, I didn't put that in my notes. That was.

[Tony Trucks]

I was paying for it, remember? So my dad, I. For years I had in my brain this 1, 800 number. Like if I was out of the country or something or out of the state. Because long distance was still a thing, right?

[Brian McCullough]

Right. Yeah.

[Tony Trucks]

If I was in Ann Arbor and wanted to call Manistee, Michigan, I would call this one, 800 number we haven't even talked about.

[Brian McCullough]

Long distance is one thing within the country, overseas long distance, the international long distance. Way more expensive even than that. Yeah.

[Tony Trucks]

Oh, yeah. Way, way.

[Brian McCullough]

And I can't believe all the things that I didn't put in my notes. The 1900 numbers. Because again, now these were late night commercials. But the 1900 numbers must have been something else that also got kicked up after the ATT breakup. And the 1, 900 numbers were the sexy time.

[Tony Trucks]

That was the sexy time. That was like the Skinemax numbers where you were like. Yeah, that was like the fully. The skin of max numbers they call. 1, 800.

[Brian McCullough]

What was the. Didn't Spike Lee do a movie about somebody being a phone sex worker or something? Anyway, that was a whole thing, which I guess now is only fans or.

[Tony Trucks]

I don't people can do. You know when phone sex became a profitable thing here, right?

[Brian McCullough]

Because I did not. I just said I didn't occur to me to research that, but I wish I had. But I. Something tells me that didn't exist in the 70s.

[Tony Trucks]

No, I don't think the fact that.

[Brian McCullough]

There were movies and again, moral panics about it says to that I remember says to Me that that was an innovation of the time that probably was shaken loose by the AT&T breakup as well. Okay, Pagers.

[Tony Trucks]

And you would get those, remember also to your point when you would. Sometimes you were getting what we would think of as spam, right? Calls on your answering machine. So occasionally you would get some 1, 800, like you called 1 900, lady, lady, lady. And that would be in your answering machine. You're like, oh, it's just junk. It's junk. So there was still that presence of junk messaging, junk mail happening with the early answering machine.

[Brian McCullough]

Okay, so pagers. I graduated high school in 96. I feel like they started to come in around 93, 94. And the joke always was, well, the only people that had pagers are drug dealers. But the truth was, at least in southwest Florida, that the only people that had pagers were the rich kids.

[Tony Trucks]

For us, I mean, I remember I was in a very small community and I was, you know, not at an age to have a pager. But like, for us, it was always the doctors, like, you would. They would never. They would say, silence your cell phones wasn't a thing, right? But if you go to see a play or something or a movie, silence your pagers. But it was accepted that if a pager went off, it was a bona.

[Brian McCullough]

Fide emergency emergency, right?

[Tony Trucks]

A baby was being born.

[Brian McCullough]

Someone like. Like the fax machine, it was a business use case first, that eventually they broadened out to, hey, this could be a consumer product. And it was a status symbol. And there's the Missy Elliott song, beat me 911. Call me on your cell phone. I'll call you back to see what you're going to tell me. So the kids that I knew, again, the rich kids, what would a pager be? It would be on your belt buckle, right? And all that would happen is it would buzz because you called it like a number. Your pager had a number, but this wasn't a cell phone. So you couldn't talk. All you could do was enter in the number pad numbers. So 911 is emergency, call me back, right?

[Tony Trucks]

It would show you the number that.

[Brian McCullough]

Was calling who called you, right? So you would know who called you. And then we all came up with various codes. And you would, you know, your boyfriend would give you a code to be like, you know, what would you say? You up. That sort of thing. Maybe it was 69, like your phone number or something. I don't know. So again, this is technology that you could have had before the AT&T breakup. But you didn't have. Why do you have it in the 80s and 90s is because the Baby Bells want this local stuff. Because your pager wouldn't necessarily be for long distance. It would just be for local calling and legitimate emergencies and things like that. Which brings us to the cell phone. We're winding things down here. I believe I got my first cell phone in the year 2000. Can you place your first cell phone?

[Tony Trucks]

I got my first cell phone in August of 1999. I was going into my freshman year at University of Michigan and my parents were driving me into Ann Arbor to drop me off at the dorm and we saw a T Mobile. They made a split decision. I actually still have it, but I think it's in Michigan. But I still have my very first cell phone that I got from T Mobile. And they got me a plan. And at that point, it was. It was, you know, janky. It was minutes, right? So you. So many minutes.

[Brian McCullough]

So that's the thing is mine was from Singular, which Singular grew out of whatever. But again, the Baby Bells, they innovate in the cell phone business. Taking off because the idea was not that you would use the cell phone to do long distance calls. If you're going to do long distance calls, you're still going to do it on a landline. The cell phone was initially, again, a business thing. Like in the movie Wall street, where what's his name, Michael, who's the actor? He's on the beach and he's using a cell phone and he's calling Charlie Sheen and he's like, I can't. Michael Douglas.

[Tony Trucks]

Yes, Michael Douglas, yes.

[Brian McCullough]

So originally business rich people, but then. And by the late 90s, the reason the Baby Bells market this is because the intention is not that you're going to make long distance calls. You're not going to call your grandmother and talk for an hour. You're just using this again to talk to your mom or your boyfriend or like, here's what's. Where are you, let's meet up and that sort of thing. They're incentivized to do that because this is a new revenue stream for them. Do you remember the first few years of using a cell phone? You would never call anyone long distance on it because it was so expensive and you only had. You only had minutes. So even. Even locally, you could run out of minutes and you would be like, hey, listen, don't call me for the rest of the week because the month is going to end and it's going to roll over and I'll get more minutes again.

[Tony Trucks]

You're like, oh, my gosh. Yeah, totally, totally. You're always kind of thinking, I have like 500 minutes to start or something like that. Which seems like an eternity. But you just flew through it, you know, and your phone would be, as I recall, I'd have a counter on it. It would say, like, how many minutes I have left? You know.

[Brian McCullough]

Oh, that was useful. I feel like I used to have to call the 1, 800 number and they'd tell me how many minutes I had left or something. Do you remember the first phone you had? Mine was a Nokia, that little tiny one that was like this big.

[Tony Trucks]

Mine was, like, larger than that. It was kind of like a brick. And I recall that it was red. For some reason, I felt like I needed a leather case for it. Don't ask me why. Had a rather large antenna. But what I really remember about it is there was the adoption of phone etiquette. Didn't exist. Like, we just didn't have it right. So I remember being in a very important meeting with the department that I was in, the musical theater department. The, you know, program director was up speaking, and my phone goes off in front of like, 100 students. And I stand up, I put my finger up to the director of the program. Put my finger up, and I was like. I'm like, I'll be right back. I've got to take this, you know, waltz out of the auditorium. And then came in like. I'm like, it was my boyfriend.

[Brian McCullough]

La dee da. Look at her. She's. Yeah.

[Tony Trucks]

Like, it didn't even occur to me. Like, I don't know. Silence it. Turn it up. You know, like, sending people to voicemail also wasn't. It wasn't. I remember it wouldn't. It didn't even occur to me to send someone to voicemail. We always, in our normal lives, you had to let it ring.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah.

[Tony Trucks]

Voicemail, yeah. So I would never. I would always. It would just be ringing and ringing and ringing. So now we know that, like, you know, to your point, like, if you're in public and somebody's just letting their phone ring, we're like, what's the matter with you? Send them to voicemail.

[D]

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[Brian McCullough]

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[D]

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[Brian McCullough]

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[D]

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[Brian McCullough]

This is. This is slightly outside of 80s and 90s, but you. You mentioning boyfriend. There's a specific relationship that I remember texting becoming a thing. And this was 2003 fall.

[Tony Trucks]

Yep.

[Brian McCullough]

Then remember how many. What did you only get like 30 texts a month initially or something like that?

[Tony Trucks]

Yeah.

[Brian McCullough]

And after that it was a dollar a text. It was.

[Tony Trucks]

It was insane. No, I remember the first texting experience I had. I was. I was studying abroad in London and I. And the particular whatever random phone I got when I was abroad had a text feature. And I was like, this is so dumb. And I was staying that one of my other students was staying in the apartment above me and he texted me something and I was like, what an idiot. Call me. Like, why would you text me? This is so stupid. And we sort of texted back and forth and like by the end of the evening, I was like, this is kind of fun, you know. But there was a long chunk of time there. I was like, texting is so dumb. Like, how lazy are you? Pick up the phone.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, I remember the exact moment that the inverse of that happened to me where I was on a trip with somebody and we're in two separate cars and they keep calling to say like, turn left and then hang up. And I was like, mf or just send me a text you don't have. I'm not going to pick up the phone every time you have two words to say to me.

[Tony Trucks]

Yeah, totally, totally.

[Brian McCullough]

So to wrap this up, we're going to have to come back to regulation and antitrust because what have we got today? We have essentially three carriers. If YouTube video listeners, you will see on the screen graph that shows all of the baby bells and all the phone companies, they're just at and t. They split up and then they slowly come back together into one as mergers and people acquire everybody. This all came about, about, thanks to the Clinton administration. The Telecommunications act of 1996 was passed, which again, the argument was, we're allowing more competition in the telephone and the communication space. But really what it did was it Opened the floodgates to let's just let everybody buy everyone and reconsolidate into monopolies again. The argument could be made that the Telecommunications act of 1996 is what allowed the explosion of cellular technology to happen again. A more detailed and wonkier nerdier podcast can adjudicate that. But I will say that one of the things that to bring it to modern times that people would understand is when you had things like ringtones or the early part of getting the Internet on your phone, or the weird little apps before the iPhone that the phone companies would offer you. It's almost like they were harkening Back to the AT&T days because Verizon would only allow a certain type of app, then @&t wouldn't allow it, or singular wouldn't allow it and they would charge an arm and a leg. So they would keep 90% of the revenue of ringtones and things like that. So in a way it harkens Back to the AT&T monopoly of well, we don't want you on our network and so we're controlling things. Things Today this is being recorded at the tail end of 2024. One of the big tech news stories of the year is the slow breaking up of the Apple and Google monopoly of the app stores where they're charging 30% of revenue for apps on phones, which sounds insane. Why do you have to give 30% of every dollar for an app to Apple or Google? That seems like a pretty extreme vig. And people like Epic Games and Spotify have been fighting this in various jurisdictions for years. Here's the reason why the 70:30 split became the normal is because before the iPhone and before the App Store, the singulars of the world, the Verizons of the world, if you wanted an app on their phone, they would take 90%. So when Steve Jobs announces the the App Store, if you watch the video of that announce, it's a huge roaring cheer because developers are like, oh my God, we can actually build businesses off of this. 30% seemed like a fair deal at the time. Now that the entire app economy is the way it is, it doesn't feel fair. But that's the sort of accident of history that led us to the again monopoly and sort of anti competitive stuff that we see in the app stores today.

[Tony Trucks]

That is wild. I had no idea.

[Brian McCullough]

Let me thinking of the iPhone and things like that. One more thing that we were promised in the 80s and 90s forever was video calling. Isn't it funny that like video calling in AT&T commercials in the 80s and 90s, like, wow, this is the gee whiz. Like flying cars and video calling. This is the future, man. And now it's just like a friggin app. Like the things that the smartphone has obviated that seem to be the fact that you can take a picture of something and translate from a different language. If you had invented that in 1970, you could have charged $10,000 for that G, that, that amazing sci fi device.

[Tony Trucks]

What you and I are doing right now wasn't like, you know, commonplace, but on the Jetsons, you know, the cartoon the Jetsons. Right, the futuristic. I mean, I was at boarding school on a pay phone to call my parents and if I came back from class, we would all. There'd be sticky notes lined up on the desk of all of our messages. That was our texting. It was. Didn't exist. So we would just be like, oh, your mom called you Jack. I remember distinctly, I came back one time and it said, you know, Pat Sawhill called, he wants to know if you'll go to homecoming. And I'm like.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, so. So one point that I want to make is that in a way we were there for the golden age of this sort of gadgetry where this technology was given to us. And in a way it's sort of like back to boring snooze stuff. Every phone is the same slab of glass. And sure, new apps come along and they do new things, but we just went through a litany of answering machines, pagers, all this stuff. The technology sort of just seems to be commoditized and boring now. And somehow we were around for this weird Cambrian explosion of communications tech that again has all been subsumed into the smartphone and social networking. But it was just, in a way, we were kind of lucky to be there for something a little magical, I guess.

[Tony Trucks]

Yeah, we didn't even realize it was happening. As per. Always is the thing you don't even realize what's, what's going on. You know what you're missing?

[Brian McCullough]

One last thing specifically about the answering machine. But maybe cell phones as well, because you are someone that works in TV and movies. The plot contrivance of the answering machine has an ability to do exposition dumps. Think of how many, you know, Seinfeld episodes or things like that where it's like you need to move the plot along. And so what you do is have the character hit the button on the answering machine and it's Glenn Close saying, I just boiled your kid's rabbit or something, you know.

[Tony Trucks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian McCullough]

Or again, do the dated up. Well, you know, by the way, they're coming for you. Get out of there. Like that sort of. You know, people have talked a lot also about how there's so many old movies where the plot. If you had had a cell phone, the plot would not have happened because you would have just been like, hey, get out of there. They're coming for you.

[Tony Trucks]

Right.

[Brian McCullough]

So I'm wondering, has that been something that you've heard screenwriters, producers, people talk about that it's harder. Like, that was such an easy cheat to have the answering machine do the exposition dump? Or how do you have this character not know if all they have to do is pick up their cell phone? Like, is that something that comes up in scripts and plots and stuff?

[Tony Trucks]

God, I don't see it as much anymore. But it's interesting you're mentioning that, like, for two reasons. One, I just revisited one of my favorite movies, which is My Best Friend's Wedding. You get a major plot point right at the beginning of that movie. Someone calls and leaves, you know, a message that tells you, like, catapults. Think of catapults.

[Brian McCullough]

Think of Sleepless in Seattle.

[Tony Trucks]

Yes.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, exactly.

[Tony Trucks]

Well, you know, sometimes there is art imitating life, though. I. This is like putting my family on blast a little. But I. When I was 12, we came home to a message on our answering machine that was like, hey, your brother's girlfriend. You know, you like, your son's girlfriend's pregnant. Click. Like, that was the message.

[Brian McCullough]

And we were like, see that? And that is a thing that would have happened in a movie. That would have been an easy sort of way to realize.

[Tony Trucks]

Within two days later, I had a nephew. You know what I mean? I was like, oh, shit.

[Brian McCullough]

Okay. Yeah, yeah, right. That ability to advance the plot in a really easy way. Like, what do we. What do. The workarounds now is like, they have little text bubbles that go up. Like, does that happen in your show? Like, sometimes, too, where it's like, you'll do the text overlay to do the thing that.

[Tony Trucks]

Like the crayon, whatever. Like, telling you, like, what's going. Like, where you are, what's happening five days later?

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah.

[Tony Trucks]

Well, and also, wait, as an actor, when I moved to New York, this was 2003. When you got your headshots, it didn't just say Tony Trucks. It had a service number on it. So that was my answering service. The whole business had a 2 1, 2 number that was solely for the purpose of casting directors. And agencies leaving me answering machine messages and like now they just don't exist. But I'm telling you, I've got hundreds of headshots of this answering service and I paid for it for years. I was like, oh my God, what if I need my service number again? You know? And just like things that. But that was the thing. Oh, you have a callback. Oh, you booked a job. Da da, da. That all happened through your answering service.

[Brian McCullough]

It's funny, when I'm doing these episodes, a lot of the nostalgia is, wasn't that fun? And sometimes it's. Wasn't it better that way? Nothing that we're talking about is better. Today is better. It's impossible not to know things. It's impossible, I know to like within a three foot radius of where my wife is right now.

[Tony Trucks]

Right.

[Brian McCullough]

Which I get a notification when she swipes her card and she's coming home on the train or, you know, like, or you can look up anything on Wikipedia or something.

[Tony Trucks]

But wouldn't it stress you out if you had to like, wait to get home to check your answering machine to see if like, your daughter needed something?

[Brian McCullough]

But I wonder. But, but. Or is what the adjutant and anxiety of modern life is that you're bombarded with that stuff? So there was a segmented sort of. There are times you could be out of the house and unreachable.

[Tony Trucks]

I love it.

[Brian McCullough]

Right?

[Tony Trucks]

I love being unreachable.

[Brian McCullough]

So imagine we're saying what we've just described nostalgically on a quantifiable basis is things are better now. But on an emotional basis we're kind of being like, I miss that.

[Tony Trucks]

Well, to your point, in the 80s, the office line was introduced, right? But other than that, people were like, if I'm at home with my family, you can't reach. I'm not, I'm not on the clock. But now they're having to like, make rules about when your bosses can reach you. Right? My favorite thing to do is to be on a plane.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, good point.

[Tony Trucks]

I'm not even, I'm not even pretending to try to get on the wifi.

[Brian McCullough]

I'm all like, that's a perfect analogy.

[Tony Trucks]

Perfect analogy on Mars.

[Brian McCullough]

Because we have no real ability unless you make the choice. We have no real ability to. What are we describing? You don't hear that annoying message from your boss until you get home and check your message. You don't hear that thing from your kid until you get home and check your message and. Right. It's better that I know where my Kids are right now within five seconds. But also, hey, there was a time when human beings, society got by forever with it. Just like, I'll find out when I can find out. I don't have to know right now. And I. I don't have to get a notification instantaneously.

[Tony Trucks]

Like so. And so is on the road. If you're on a road trip. That's why they changed that by message. Right. If there was going to be full days where you were road tripping, it's like you won't be able to reach me. Right.

[Brian McCullough]

Or think about. And this is. This is maybe getting a little too, too dark. But like, like, if a loved one died right now, you would find out instantaneously in the middle of a movie, in the middle of a meeting, in the middle of your acting. And versus there would wait till you get home or wait till you're back. Hey, look, there was a time when if you went on a steamship to Europe and you were gone for two months, maybe you'd get letters that would be three weeks later, but you wouldn't know anything that happened until you got back from Europe.

[Tony Trucks]

People have the audacity, and I'm guilty of this as well, to be like, if I'm calling my husband, he doesn't pick up and I call him again. If I got my. Like, why didn't you pick up? Like, I don't even leave any room for the notion that he might be busy.

[Brian McCullough]

Right, right, right.

[Tony Trucks]

I'm like, no, no, no. And. But my brother said it best once. He was like, listen, he's like, I'm gonna hang on to this, you know, this train of thought for as long as I can, which is the cell phone is for my convenience, not for your convenience. To me, it is so that I can do what I need to do, not so that you have access to me all the time. That is, especially now that he's a father and a husband and all the things. But I liked that. I liked trying to have a healthy relationship with him. It's nearly impossible now.

[Brian McCullough]

Yes. And I think that's a good philosophical way to end. Before we go, Tony, what would you like us to know about any projects? Is this the last season of your show? Did Lisa tell me that this is the last season?

[Tony Trucks]

And I love your wife so much, by the by. But, yes, this is the last season.

[Brian McCullough]

So it's been of SEAL Team.

[Tony Trucks]

Of SEAL Team on Paramount with COVID and all the shenanigans in between actor strikes and writer strikes. It's been eight years and seven seasons and 114 episodes, something like that. So it's. I am actively trying to figure out what is next, so I'll keep you updated, but I have to tell you my favorite outgoing message that I ever heard.

[Brian McCullough]

Okay. Please.

[Tony Trucks]

I called a. My. The first TV show I ever did was this guy named Leonard Drake. And I called him. He was staying with his mother in New York and he was like, just call me at my mother's house. And she had a landline and her answering machine. When I called, the answering machine was her thick New York accent. And she said, hello, you've reached Dolores. But the timing was all wrong. And that was it. And that was it.

[Brian McCullough]

That is a good one. That's just good. I love it so much. That's great. Tony, socials or website to look up whatever it is you end up doing next?

[Tony Trucks]

Totally. I'm onytrucks on across the board and.

[Brian McCullough]

If you are watching this on YouTube or listening to this on a podcast, however you're hearing my words right now, like and subscribe as they say or follow on Spotify or what have you. He's 90s history on all of the socials. Tony, thank you so much for doing this. I love you. You're a great friend.

[Tony Trucks]

Thank you so much. I'm so glad you asked me. I'll come back for anything you want to talk about.

[Brian McCullough]

Okay. I think we can find some other things that you might have. I'm available.

[Tony Trucks]

I'm unemployed.

[Brian McCullough]

Can you see okay? Can you see? Well, as I always end this. Until then, holmes, smell you later.