Leah Feiger: I do like the nostalgic touch. I miss my Motorola Razr. I miss it every single day. Perhaps not the exact same capabilities, but it does the trick.
Brian Barrett: It is funny. It is. Imagine your Motorola Razr, but it opens side to side instead of up and down, and it’s all one big screen, so there’s no buttons to push. You can’t do T9 texting. Then you can watch YouTube on it.
Leah Feiger: I’m waiting, honestly, for the first story to drop from the quiet car of the Acela between DC and New York where someone, some sweet person from the administration, did not realize how big that screen is when you unfold it and how many messages are visible.
Brian Barrett: Oh, it’s going to be great.
Leah Feiger: It’s going to be, this is the new frontier for eavesdropping. Also, congratulations, Apple. But for me, that’s what I’m looking forward to.
Brian Barrett: Leah, what would it take to get you to purchase a foldable phone?
Leah Feiger: It would have to be a lot less than $2,000.
Brian Barrett: Yeah.
Leah Feiger: I can’t wait for Zoë to come back next week and tell us all about her new purchase. To be clear, I don’t think she’s gotten one, but it would be really funny if she did.
Brian Barrett: I bet she will.
Leah Feiger: So our next topic involves the US Census Bureau, which definitely not as shiny or theoretically life-threatening as our previous topics, but really, really important. Last month, the bureau published a report that claimed to uncover evidence backing up President Donald Trump’s claims that noncitizen voting cost him the 2020 election. He touted the report on True Social saying, “I won the election.” This is, as you know, we’ve talked about this many times, one of Trump’s favorite conspiracy theories. He cannot let it go. And WIRED reporters, Vittoria Elliott and David Gilbert, dug into how this specific report actually got made, who wrote it, and they discovered a lot of holes with this. I kind of want to start by saying, if you’re listening to me and thinking, why do I care about a US Census Bureau report? They just do the census. They tell me how many people live in all of these different areas, how big families are, et cetera, et cetera. You’re not 100 percent wrong, but this is really important data. These are reports about people and their lives, and the average citizen shouldn’t have to know that much about it, but because of the situation we’re in with the current administration, knowing these weird little intricacies of what’s going on in government, I think has been really key to understanding the full picture here.
Brian Barrett: Also, to be clear, I do care.
Leah Feiger: You do care. There we go. All right. Can I run you through some of the quick down and dirty stuff, Brian, with what the report said?