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Leave a message after the beep: Living for a month with only a landline

25:00
New York Magazine associate editor and his home landline, which he used exclusively for more than 50 days. (Max McKeon/New York)
New York Magazine associate editor and his home landline, which he used exclusively for more than 50 days. (Max McKeon/New York)

Jeremy Rellosa used to watch TV shows and movies from the '90s and revel in how the characters walked around untethered to a smartphone, with no expectations of constant connectivity. So he decided to run an experiment on himself: he'd live for at least two weeks without a smartphone. No Slack. No text messages. No Instagram or WhatsApp. If his friends, family, or boss wanted to reach him, they'd have to call him on his landline.

Sure, landlines were the norm just a couple of decades ago. But in our always-online world, how feasible is the landline life, really? Ben and Amory call Jeremy up to find out.

Show notes:

"I Turned Off My Phone for a Month and Used a Landline" (New York Magazine)

This content was originally created for audio. An auto-generated transcript is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

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Grace Tatter Producer, WBUR Podcasts

Grace Tatter is a producer for WBUR Podcasts.

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Paul Vaitkus Manager of Podcast Production

Paul Vaitkus is the manager of podcast production for WBUR.

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Amory Sivertson Host and Senior Producer, Podcasts

Amory Sivertson is a senior producer for podcasts and the co-host of Endless Thread.

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Ben Brock Johnson Director, Digital Audio

Ben Brock Johnson is the director of digital audio at WBUR and co-host of the podcast, Endless Thread.

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