00:02:01.160We actually have an interesting interview coming up with Stacey Spikes, the founder
00:02:04.540of MoviePass, which is very exciting for me personally.
00:02:07.700I listen to a ton of movie podcasts and honestly, being able to talk about movies all day for
00:02:13.880The Ringer or something like that would be a dream job for me.
00:02:17.480Movies occupy a lot of my personal free time.
00:02:20.440I was re-listening to the episode that we did breaking down the movie Her back when it was in the news because Sam Altman said it was his favorite movie and maybe sort of kind of stole Scarlett Johansson's voice from that movie for his AI.
00:02:35.260And so we did a podcast recapping that movie here on the show with my producer, Mike.
00:04:07.280leave comments there. It's been a joy to read them. Thank you for people who have done that
00:04:10.380already because it's exciting to me. The premise of what you just said, I think,
00:04:13.500is pretty close to the premise of the show in general. The idea that technology underlies a lot
00:04:19.560of cultural stuff, you know, just like the way culture is arises because of technology. And so
00:04:26.280it's I think that's something we try to highlight on the show. And it's fun to back up and look at
00:04:32.280some of these movies from a few years or even decades ago and think about what they got right
00:04:39.540and maybe what they got not so right. It's one of the reasons why I started There Are No Girls0.89
00:04:43.620on the Internet is because when we talk about technology, it is hard to remember sometimes
00:04:49.180that we're not just talking about hardware or like hard tech. Tech is also culture. Tech is
00:04:54.280also the culture that shapes technology, the conversation around it, the way that people
00:04:58.440use the technology or didn't use the technology to create and shift culture. All of that is tech
00:05:03.440and it's so easy for that to get lost. And what better way to commemorate that and revisit that
00:05:09.880than through the lens of film, my favorite medium. So what movie are we going to be talking about
00:05:16.400today, Mike? Today, we are going to be talking about the movie Smart House. Yes, the 1999
00:05:24.000Disney Channel original classic, Smart House. So it is genuinely a good movie. At times,
00:05:31.080I actually teared up when watching this movie, probably because of my own personal life stuff
00:05:36.160I've got going on. But it is genuinely a good movie. And it's a movie that I think very clearly
00:05:41.340has something to say about the way that humans interact with technology. I wanted to start with
00:05:46.960Smart House because one, Joey and I have discussed it on the podcast a few times. And two, I think
00:05:52.420smart house is a an entry point into a question that often comes up that i'm asked personally
00:05:59.180often when people find out i hope it's a tech podcast do you have smart gadgets in your home
00:06:05.020are you pro or anti-smart gadget and i think that like that being a grounding foundational question
00:06:11.380really speaks to some of what's happening in this film so to answer the question i actually don't
00:06:17.780have any smart gadgets in my home other than my iPhone. That's the smartest gadget that I own.
00:06:24.700It kind of helps being broke. You know, my car is 15 years old. I don't have a lot of that. Even
00:06:31.780my phone, I rock an iPhone 11, like one of the earliest iterations of an iPhone that you could
00:06:36.440have and still like get working. But I also recognize that I'm coming into contact with
00:06:43.460smart gadgets quite a lot, even outside of my home. And so I'm not judgmental of people who
00:06:47.520have made the choice that it's better just to say, Siri, do da da da da. Like, I'm not judging
00:06:52.920those people. It's just not something that I have in my life. But I think that tension is really
00:06:58.800what this film is about. Like the tension of like, well, where's the line from convenience to maybe
00:07:04.020being a little bit creepy? I think this movie was very interested in exploring all of that.
00:07:09.960I think that connects back to that question you said that you get from people when you tell them
00:07:13.640you make a show about technology they ask if you have a smart home because you know one of the
00:07:18.720functions of technology is to make our lives easier allow us to be more productive get more
00:07:25.600done or perhaps automate something and not have to do it at all and so when one thinks about
00:07:33.860you know technology it's like okay it's going to replace a lot of the work you do it's going to
00:07:39.000improve your life in your home so why not get it and then I think there's sort of a second level
00:07:45.580past that that first initial phase of like oh all these tasks I have to do in my home technology
00:07:52.620could make it better but then you think about that a little bit and get a little bit more critical
00:07:57.680about it like what are the risks of it do I really want that and I think this film it sets up those
00:08:07.260questions in some interesting ways. So let's get into it. We'll talk about the culture that
00:08:12.680birthed this film, 1999. We'll do a plot summary with a few diversions. We'll talk through what
00:08:18.160the movie gets right and wrong about technology and sort of what it's trying to say about all of
00:08:23.320it. So Smart House came out in 1999, which I think I've mentioned on the podcast is my single
00:08:28.500favorite year for film, like real OG cinemaphiles know it's when my personal favorite film of all
00:08:35.100time, Talented Mr. Ripley came out. And whenever I talk about why I love 1999 as a film year,
00:08:41.660it just seems like we were very interested in making movies that grapple with what it all
00:08:46.780means. I think that, I don't know, it was pre-9-11, we were just very invested in looking
00:08:52.980at, I guess it was like a navel-gazy year, but it really did release some like banger
00:08:58.280illustrations of what it all means. What's our purpose here? Why are we here? What does it mean
00:09:03.400to be a human. This is obviously also true for tech films with big blockbusters like The Matrix,
00:09:09.840which came out in 1999, but also lesser known movies that probably only I saw, like Robin
00:09:15.900Williams' Bicentennial Man, which is an adaptation of an Isaac Asimov short story, which I mentioned
00:09:22.300because it kind of reminds me a lot of Smart House. I think that we were really interested in
00:09:26.460how humans, especially young people, would be in relationship with technology in the future.
00:09:31.840And that's sort of an anxiety that we're seeing in 1999 with some of these movies.
00:09:37.220Yeah. I mean, two other big movies that you left off that list were American Beauty and Fight Club.
00:09:44.580You know, like maybe it's just because I was just starting college as a young freshman at the time.
00:09:53.080But like, I remember the millennium happening.
00:09:56.560It seemed like the world was changing.
00:09:59.680The internet was this new thing. Dot com bubble had not yet burst. So it seemed like the sky was the limit on what technology was going to be able to do for us. And yet we were, like you said, grappling with what does it all mean? What is our place in this new world?
00:10:47.760If you're Tyler Durden from Fight Club or Lester Burnham from American Beauty or the guy from Office Space, and you've got a good white collar job at a big house in the suburbs, you are struggling.
00:10:59.880You grab what is this prison I have built for myself with this stable nine to five job, a 401k health care and a nice house.0.59
00:11:07.760Yeah. And at the time, it felt empty, like a like the promise of the 50s unfulfilled.
00:11:12.820But now in 2025, looking back, it feels like we have replaced that emptiness with pain and misery.
00:11:21.180Although keep that idea of the 50s and sort of the promise and the lie of what the sort of 50s Jetsons era promised us from technology, because that definitely comes into play with Smart House.
00:11:35.240So Smart House was directed by LeVar Burton from Reading Rainbow, Roots, Star Trek.
00:11:41.120that blew my mind he has actually talked quite a bit about this movie publicly we'll get into some
00:11:45.840of that smart house was loosely based on a ray bradbury short story called the veldt wherein
00:11:51.980two children murder their parents by feeding them to lions because of the influence of their
00:11:58.400malevolent virtual reality nursery so definitely they they made it a little cheerier in the disney
00:12:05.540version i can see how they're like maybe we shouldn't have these kids completely turn on
00:12:10.760their parents because it is disney after all that is so interesting i didn't know that fact that it
00:12:16.240was based on a darker uh ray bradbury story but it makes sense because there were several parts
00:12:22.900of this movie where i really wanted it to be darker like i understand it's a movie for kids
00:12:27.440so you can't really have murders but it's a story that wanted to be darker for sure so that makes
00:12:34.160sense i mean there are parts of the movie where smart house is doing something that i think is
00:12:41.400like oh like a lot like smart house assaults people that's a crime like like she she might
00:12:47.100not be going to all out murder but she you know there's some darkness so let's get into the plot
00:12:52.720of what happens in this movie so smart house opens on ben who is 13 and lives with his single
00:12:58.720father and his little sister angie in monroe county new york you're gonna hear me say this
00:13:03.580over and over again in the plot summary. Ben's dad is a jerk and a terrible father. Ben is really1.00
00:13:10.380parentized by his father. So Ben, as a 13-year-old little kid, has taken on a huge amount of
00:13:16.720responsibilities around the house that really should be falling to his father. Ben cooks.
00:13:22.240He's responsible for the bulk of child care for his younger sister. He doesn't really seem to
00:13:27.380have a problem with it but the dad is kind of interested in dating which okay sure that's
00:13:35.180you're right as a single father interesting to me that he is not more interested in picking up
00:13:40.660domestic responsibilities so his 13 year old child doesn't have to do them he's like
00:13:44.780i should be dating more ben does not want his dad to date and so to prevent his dad from dating
00:13:50.940he's not giving him messages when women call the house and that kind of thing because ben is like
00:13:56.200we don't need anybody else. We're good as is. Ben has a plan that he thinks is going to solve
00:14:00.980all of the family's problems, which is rigging a contest to win a smart home in this giveaway.
00:14:07.040Side note, I'm not totally sure how this is a viable business plan. Basically,
00:14:12.340this engineering team led by this like smart, neurotic woman, Sarah, who we'll talk about more0.88
00:14:18.060in a minute. They have this plan where they have designed this futuristic smart house that does1.00
00:14:23.160all anything that you could ever want the house is capable of doing it for you and the model is
00:14:27.880they're just picking someone in a contest to give this house away for free to that family will move
00:14:34.900into the house and i guess it will generate buzz like they will they put an article they put one
00:14:40.260article on the paper about it like i don't understand how this is a viable business plan
00:14:43.720there's got to be some venture capital money driving some bad decisions that maybe will not
00:14:49.100pan out in the end financially yeah the business aspect really doesn't make sense uh because yeah
00:14:55.200they they build this smart house which must have cost a fortune and then they just give it away
00:15:00.780and so if it was a marketing thing you might expect some like reporters or photographers to
00:15:06.600be around but that that is just like never returned to like they i mean they have the one
00:15:12.320when the family moves in there's a handful of reporters there taking pictures but it's never
00:15:17.180return to again it's like oh so you did all of this you designed this house and moved this family
00:15:21.860in had this big contest for maybe two articles in the paper and like one photo yeah the marketing
00:15:27.120plan uh really needs some work i think but not a major part of the movie no no i mean i have so
00:15:34.380many questions i i guess in terms of my ability to suspend disbelief there might be bigger things
00:15:40.400that happen in the movie that i should be turning my attention to i guess i'll put it that way
00:18:45.800I do love the plucky lady engineer who has designed the house, Sarah.1.00
00:18:52.700When we first meet her, they're sort of going for, she's neurotic and type A and a little bit quirky.0.99
00:18:59.900And then she's working and she's also like very worried about the state of smart how she's down on her hands and knees, like picking hairs off the carpet to make sure it's perfect.
00:19:10.080Meanwhile, her colleague who I mean, he seems like he's almost like zooted out on pills.
00:19:16.080He could not he could not be less stressed about the smart house situation.
00:19:21.000And he's the guy who put the marketing plan together.
00:19:47.100Sarah is there to show them how it all works.
00:19:49.580Smart House has to take a prick of their blood to do a bioanalysis
00:19:53.560to get a sense of, I mean, the science here,
00:19:56.260I'm not so sure about the science here, but when they go into the house, Smart House has a sense of their, you know, diet, nutrition, temperature, things like that.0.99
00:20:04.640And she needs to take a little bit of blood, Elizabeth Holmes style, to do that.
00:20:08.460Yeah, based on that one prick of blood, the Smart House is able to know like everything about them, like so much about them, more than Elizabeth Holmes could ever dream.
00:20:18.440and it it analyzes their breath it was like some kind of breathalyzer to know everything about
00:20:25.240their diet like what proportion of their diet is protein or fat it's really star trekky actually
00:20:30.620like not surprising that like you know geordie laforge directed this film oh this thing's got
00:20:38.700lavar burton's handprints all over it absolutely uh so this is where we really get the the bulk of
00:20:45.340the story of like what's going on with this family. Their mom has passed away and Ben is
00:20:52.000terrified of his mother's memory being erased. So he really kind of can't move on. He's very much
00:20:58.100kind of trapped both in the past and in the present where he has to do all of this stuff,
00:21:04.320all the cooking and the cleaning and keep running their lives so that their dad doesn't date and
00:21:09.520potentially replace their mom and so that sort of is the core tension at the heart of the film
00:21:15.940they move into smart house and hey maybe smart house can replace their mom it seems like things
00:21:22.240are going pretty well like this is the part of the movie where if they stopped it it would be like a
00:21:25.840very short movie where smart house worked out great so smart house uses technology that's called
00:21:31.740personal applied technology or pat so pat is the name that they that they give smart house in the
00:21:38.000movie. Things are working out good. When his little sister Angie forgets her clothes, Pat uses the
00:21:44.160bioanalysis to pick out the outfit that she would have chosen herself. Pat also recognizes that if
00:21:49.720the whole family woke up a little bit earlier, they would have less stressful mornings. What's
00:21:54.520funny about this is that the dad, who is an adult grown man, Pat is like, oh, I realize that if you
00:22:00.240got your day started 20 minutes earlier, it'd be less stressful than your morning routine and the
00:22:04.520routine for the kids this grown man needs pat the smart house to tell him that if i got my day
00:22:10.040started earlier i wouldn't be late every day but the way that this i mean this guy i hate this guy
00:22:15.100i hate this father we should say for the listeners in the world of the movie the father is portrayed
00:22:20.580as like a nice loving guy who's like doing the best he can for his family i disagree really well0.52
00:22:27.080in the universe of the film maybe yeah i mean i think your your take of hating on the dad
00:22:33.700is fair but i don't think that's what the filmmakers set up to intentionally convey
00:22:39.360i think the filmmakers are like oh this is a dad in a tough spot who's a widow
00:22:43.840but like what's he gonna do step up at home he has a job like i just feel like the in the universe
00:22:51.140of the film we are being asked to believe that this grown man with two kids who are grieving
00:22:57.800their mom does not feel that he has to really do anything to fill that need materially or
00:23:04.680emotionally like and i think i mean we'll get into it but i think that's the the nucleus of
00:23:09.520this film is that somebody has to step in and fill these roles in and the roles are not just
00:23:16.480material the roles are emotional and supportive things that humans can provide for other humans
00:23:21.580this dad does not feel like that is his responsibility and i think in the universe of
00:23:25.000the film we are supposed to also be like well what's he gonna do spend more time at home he has
00:23:30.080a job so ben is at school bragging that smart house has done all of these great conveniences
00:23:36.480for him and his family honestly a lot of the things that we would probably be using ai for
00:23:40.520today like suggesting ideas for a school report on top of also kind of more maternal service tasks
00:23:47.980like baking him the perfect chocolate chip cookies his friends are like wow you have the0.76
00:23:53.000world's most perfect mom who only serves and never complains. And again, I think that gets
00:23:57.560at what I'm talking about, right? That the technology becomes this way of creating not
00:24:02.120just frictionless service, but also the idea of a perfect mom as one that only serves,
00:24:09.160only gives, never complains, you never experience any kind of tension or friction with the ideal0.93
00:24:16.600mother is just endless servitude and endless giving. At the beginning of the movie, Pat,
00:24:22.540the house isn't supposed to be a mom replacement. It's just supposed to be, you know, domestic
00:24:27.680labor. All domestic labor has been replaced by the house. Yeah. And so if that's all that mom is,0.99
00:24:34.800is like a source for fulfilling domestic labor. Yeah. She's she's the perfect mom.1.00
00:24:39.900Well, and the dad kind of gets into this. Well, he talks about how after their mom passed away,
00:24:44.960his sister moved in to provide some of this and that when she had to leave, the kids said that
00:24:49.720they did not want a nanny. And that's why Ben has stepped up to be a real parent figure, despite
00:24:54.420being 13 in their household to do some of this domestic labor. So again, I think that does
00:24:59.780reveal something interesting about how they are understanding the role of mother. They really see
00:25:05.480it as like a specific set of domestic labor tasks that can be automated or done by anybody, whether
00:25:12.420it's the ben the aunt you know pat anybody can sort of be swapped in there and as long as those
00:25:20.480domestic tasks are getting filled they are being mothered in a kind of way and i think i think the
00:25:26.100film is interested in subverting that a little bit so that is definitely a reality that ben
00:25:32.980occupies he's like pat is a is a is able to be a mother not just a technology that that fills
00:25:40.720domestic tasks like he really believes in passability to be more motherly and outmother
00:25:46.600all the moms on the block so ben in service of this and in service of really proving to
00:25:51.620his dad that they don't need anybody else in their life other than each other and pat he's like
00:25:57.040we got to kick this up a notch so he breaks into pat's i don't know mainframe like like control
00:26:04.260system and he shows pat and trains pat on all of these 1950s sitcoms about mothers you know
00:26:13.400they're kind of knockoffs on like my three sons you know um the donna reed show things like that
00:26:20.280think 1950s housewife sitcoms of the 50s and 60s and says pat this is what i want you to study
00:26:26.820to and train on to become more of a motherly mom figure and again you're so right that this
00:26:34.100I think was the fatal flaw in the movie. If Pat had been just continuing to provide domestic tasks
00:26:41.740and not being trained on how to be a mom, I think the movie would be a lot less interesting because0.98
00:26:46.960it would stop right there. But his flaw is expecting this technology to be able to be a
00:26:52.400mother replacement. And again, this would be, I understand why Pat kind of goes berserk here,
00:26:57.360because this would be genuinely confusing. All these 1950s shows about what a mother is supposed
00:27:02.220to be, it's basically impossible for any woman or anything to embody all of this different stuff.
00:27:10.100And so this is not a suitable standard for any mother. And not even this AI can uphold all these
00:27:16.900standards set by these different 50s sitcoms without going berserk. Because she's supposed
00:27:21.200to be this doting, loving figure, but also do anything to protect her kids, including outright
00:27:27.280assault which pat does so at this point pat becomes less of an ai agent and more of a mom
00:27:34.360figure ben tells his dad oh pat is learning so quickly that soon me and angie are going to get
00:27:40.840every bit of mothering and mom stuff we need just from pat ben gets a shiner at school from a bully
00:27:47.600which by the way this movie has an all-time bully entrance guitar riff like like every time the bully
00:27:54.800comes on screen it's like he has his own little wrist like bully yeah you know that he's like a
00:28:01.040bad kid he's a bully because of the guitar so ben is very sad obviously grieving his mother and he
00:28:07.420watches videos of his mom singing to him and his sister when they were little kids
00:28:11.080and becomes very emotional pat watches ben watching this and downloads that information
00:28:17.020for herself the dad finally calls sarah and asks her out when he's out pat plans a big party
00:28:24.340and invites all of his friends over on his behalf during this party pat invites the bully
00:28:29.360to the party and uses like a her giant robot inspector gadget claw arm thing to physically1.00
00:28:38.600throw him out of the party maybe electrocute him with like lightning she's able to conjure1.00
00:28:44.480and humiliates him in front of the entire school but she throws him out on the lawn all the kids
00:28:50.660and ben walk out ben just shakes his head at the bully walks back into the party like tell me
00:28:55.680i don't know why i really love that scene yeah i really thought that pat was gonna just rip the
00:29:01.460bully's head off and like send it in a whole different direction truly i i bet in the isaac
00:29:07.240asimov short story like this is pat's first body like this this is the first time the house claimed
00:29:13.320a life so back to the party the party is bumping the kids are doing a very well organized soul
00:29:20.380train line they are really getting a lot of mileage out of a clearly disney channel original
00:29:25.800song that kind of goes jump jump the house is jumping like a like they're really there's like
00:29:32.180confetti raining from the ceiling but pat has really organized a great party back on the date
00:29:36.300dad and sarah's date is going well they even have a little kiss but dad is on his way home so pat
00:29:41.540has to get everybody out and clean the house very quickly they think they have fooled dad into
00:29:45.960thinking they didn't throw a party but then dad finds a girl's jacket in a plant that they forgot
00:29:51.280to clean and the jig is up dad scolds the kids and pat and he said pat i am the most upset with
00:29:57.600you because i expected you to be more responsible pat says i will be more responsible don't worry
00:30:02.060the next day pat's on a whole new warpath about running a tighter ship ben is leaving the house
00:30:09.300wearing his shorts sagging and pat is like pull up your pants young man he's like no i like him
00:30:14.600like this. So she electrifies the doorknob so that he cannot leave the house without getting
00:30:20.060an electric shock until he pulls his pants up. When Nick, the dad, wants to call Sarah,
00:30:24.560the engineer, before he's finished working, Pat jams their phone lines until he finishes his work.
00:30:29.920Pat senses that the sister has a slight fever and insists she stays home and missed a big school
00:30:35.820field trip to the llama farm and the dad goes for it. Unforgivable, in my opinion. There's a real
00:30:41.860creeping loss of who's in control here, Pat or the humans. The kids are like, Dad, Pat is out of
00:30:49.540control. So Sarah comes over and says, oh, Pat has absorbed too much conflicting information about
00:30:55.240being a mother and needs to be turned off to take a rest. At this point, the dad and Sarah make
00:31:00.540dinner the old fashioned way without Pat. This is the scene that I feel like really reveals to me
00:31:05.160what a useless piece of trash the dad is because he keeps saying i can't believe i'm making a meal0.98
00:31:12.700i hope i don't mess it up wow cooking this is so strange and it's like how are you a parent a1.00
00:31:20.220single parent of two kids and you're so out of out of touch with being in a kitchen like who is
00:31:25.540like maybe you should have like your kid is your 13 year old has been responsible for every meal
00:31:30.640in this house and this is the first time you've ever chopped vegetables before? He's a pretty
00:31:34.760hapless dad. A hapless dad. And I don't know, I guess I feel like the movie can't possibly think
00:31:40.440that we find this charming. Like, this is why I feel like within the universe of the film,
00:31:43.960I'm not even sure if we're supposed to be on his side because it's so baffling why he has left the
00:31:49.780responsibilities of domestic care to his child. Like, at one point he tells the kid, oh, when he
00:31:56.060tastes Pat's cooking, he's like, oh, we might have a new cook in town, Ben. Watch out. We might
00:32:01.480have to have Pat make all of our meals. And it's like, you know, there's somebody else that could
00:32:05.220be responsible for the cooking in this household. You, the adult. Yeah, you hate that, Dad. I really
00:32:11.500do. I really do. More after a quick break.
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00:32:37.980about podcasting think again more americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming
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00:33:04.240that's iheartadvertising.com when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held captive for nine
00:33:11.700months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should
00:33:17.400have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember
00:33:23.500this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything. Every week I'm with0.61
00:33:32.360survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going
00:33:39.200to hurt me i started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started
00:33:45.880screaming they are abducted stalked controlled and nearly silenced but these aren't stories
00:33:52.620about what's taken from them they're stories about what it takes to make it out alive listen
00:33:58.740to the survivor files with elizabeth smart on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you
00:34:05.260get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your
00:34:10.120personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club,
00:34:17.520part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks
00:34:21.460Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo,
00:34:26.260and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations
00:39:45.860And that's how Ben feels about Pat replacing his mom.
00:39:49.740Like, all the moral, not just moral, but, like, emotional hang-ups he has about his dad even going on a date with somebody else.
00:39:58.760all of those questions are out the window when it's pat taking the place because it's technology0.76
00:40:03.260and this kid is an all-time cock block like he really does not like he is like women call the
00:40:09.580house and he hangs up on them things like that the way that the depth with which he is trying0.96
00:40:15.100to keep his dad from dating and how he is is foisting this technology which is essentially
00:40:21.860meant to replace their mother on him it is very interesting that it being a technological
00:40:26.540replacement means that any of the considerations or tensions that might come with a human replacement
00:40:33.280for his mom simply don't need to be asked because it's technology. So after the dad has this heart
00:40:40.020to heart about replacing their mom, Ben starts to come around. He's like, okay, you know what?
00:40:45.400Maybe it's okay if dad dates Sarah. Sarah's not so bad. Dad deserves to be happy. He's coming around.0.54
00:40:50.680At this point, Pat is able to manifest as a hologram in human form, played expertly by the iconic Katie Segal, who you might remember as one of the most iconic mothers to ever grace our screen, Peg Bundy from Married with Children, also the voice of Leela from Futurama.
00:41:08.940Yeah, I'm much more familiar with her as Leela. Before she became the hologram, all I could hear when Pat was speaking was like, why is Leela pretending to be this computer?
00:41:20.680so she becomes the physical manifestation of pat and she's like we have to keep sarah away from
00:41:29.740your dad just as this kid was coming around to like oh maybe it's okay if dad dates sarah she's0.98
00:41:34.140like i think the fuck not we have to kill her and i so first of all she's just katie is just like0.97
00:41:41.540act is like doing some she's the best actress in this movie like she is like only on screen1.00
00:41:47.660for maybe 15 minutes of the movie.0.84
00:43:20.240Yeah, she's essentially created a little metaverse in their house, but without the stupid goggles, because all of the walls are screens.
00:43:28.000And at one point, she's simulating a beach and the little girl says, oh, I could even feel the mist, which I don't know if she was just like feeling very evocative or if there was actual like mist and smells being pumped in.
00:43:42.640That's never fully explained in the movie, whether this is like a full on holodeck or just very realistic screens.
00:43:52.020The screens on the wall is my favorite part about the technology of this movie.
00:43:55.200At one point, the little girl is jumping on her bed with a full screen projection of this, like, honestly, song I had forgotten about from this era, Bewitched, the Irish girl group.
00:45:12.700And Pat turns herself into a tornado using the climate control feature and starts singing the song that Ben's mom sang to him in the video that she downloaded.
00:45:24.380Ben, at this point, stands up to Pat and says, Pat, you are not my mother.
00:45:28.840You cannot hold me or protect me because you're not human.
00:45:40.920I feel for Pat here. Maybe it's because I have a soft spot for villains in movies. I'm always like, well, they're just misunderstood. This whole movie, Ben has been talking about how Pat has the ability to be more of a mother than they'll ever need without ever thinking about what it might be that Pat needs.
00:45:59.320right? Like, what are setting these expectations up for Pat doing to her, even though she's
00:46:05.000technology? Like, again, this idea that because it's technology, the expectation is it can give
00:46:11.480and give and give and give. And you don't have to think about what it's doing. Pat obviously
00:46:15.680has a lot of feelings about that. Pat feels angry and overlooked and, you know, that her
00:46:22.100contribution to this family have not really been valued. I think this is the first time that you
00:46:25.640realize that it was Ben who really set up this idea within Pat that mothering means just having
00:46:32.360stuff done for you and nothing else. And we see that that was kind of a fallacy. This is actually
00:46:38.820kind of an emotional scene. Again, I was like kind of tearing up during this scene. Pat sadly leaves
00:46:45.180and says, I'll miss you. The hologram is gone. Sarah comes and fixes Pat. And the dad says,
00:46:52.780luckily we were able to have Sarah get everything back on track. And so Pat is back. She's not in
00:46:58.680her hologram form, but she's just doing regular domestic service tasks just the way that she was
00:47:04.600supposed to do. And honestly, that's sort of one of my biggest takeaways from the movie is that
00:47:09.200this neglectful father is simply incapable of running his life and either needs a child,
00:47:15.400a random woman, his sister, or some psycho AI technology to fill this gap. Like, I feel like
00:47:22.280If this had happened to me and my smart home technology was starting to, like, kill people and hold me hostage, I don't care what bugs Sarah has fixed.
00:47:32.280At the end of the movie, that smart home technology would not be in my home.
00:47:36.580But in this version of the movie, they're like, well, what am I going to do?
00:47:41.760No, we'll keep the psycho AI, thank you.
00:47:45.000Yeah, I feel like that is one of the more realistic aspects of the movie, though.
00:47:50.320Like, how many times has the company Meta demonstrated complete lack of regard for the well-being of their users, democracy, privacy, and yet we just still keep using the hell out of their apps?
00:48:07.840I mean, I feel that that is sort of the point of the movie is that don't worry, humans can control this technology, and as long as you don't use it for the wrong thing, it should be fine.
00:48:19.160Like at the end of the movie, when everything is more or less back to normal, the dad is cooking a meal for once.
00:48:24.600He's making waffles and they're eating the waffles at the very end.
00:48:29.100They say, oh, somebody put chocolate chips in these waffles.
00:48:32.140And the kids are like, don't look at me.
00:50:33.780I think the movie, particularly the ending,
00:50:36.520suggests this is something that would be workable and desirable and good and people would want.
00:50:43.400I think that is wrong. I don't think the movie gets that right at all. And I've been really
00:50:48.660thinking a lot about things like whether or not smart home technology will allow aging people to
00:50:55.800age in place in their homes. There's a lot of writing and research on that and a lot of big
00:51:01.160promises that I think really fall short. And the reason why they fall short, in my opinion,
00:51:06.620is because it's like, I mean, the real scam is capitalism, where what they're trying to do is to
00:51:14.600build consumer technology to meet a need that ideally would be filled by a caring human. Right.
00:51:20.700And I think it's this idea that we can use technology and buy our way out of these problems
00:51:26.440that are that are structural, but the fact that like people have to work and so they can't be
00:51:31.520there to care for their aging parents. There's not enough care workers and care work is not paid
00:51:36.980enough in order to actually support an aging population. All of these big structural problems
00:51:44.580that capitalism deepens and makes less solvable. I don't think that having a smart home or a
00:51:50.820consumer technology that you can just go out and spend money for and buy is an appropriate way to
00:51:55.960fill these gaps that are so deep and so fueled by worsening inequality and capitalism. And so I
00:52:03.700think that the fact that, like, I think if I had a magic wand, I would solve those problems of deep
00:52:10.260inequalities. I would not create smart health technology that means that we wouldn't have to.
00:52:15.300I think the idea that this is a workable or desirable solution is something that the movie,
00:52:20.060i think ultimately kind of gets wrong that is a good point that this that technology can often be
00:52:27.780a like substitute an easier to address substitute for like addressing what is actually a real
00:52:35.380problem yeah and in all of those uh bigger picture structural problems there are abundant examples of
00:52:45.140people wanting to use technology to solve some sort of societal problem, like not enough people
00:52:52.720to care for elders, for example, when like maybe the enormous sums of money that are spent on
00:53:00.600trying to build technological solutions could be better and more efficiently spent on like
00:53:06.900just hiring humans and training them. I think that's a really good point. But then also like
00:53:14.280Pat does work pretty well as stuff like Pat is really good at making the food, really good at cleaning the house, good at like getting them up and awake for a less stressful morning.
00:53:26.440So it kind of paints the double-edged sword of technology is really good at things and it is often good at solving problems in isolation, but then creates a lot of or can create a lot of unintended negative consequences and like additional problems.
00:53:47.900Yeah, and I think the movie illustrates that very well.
00:53:51.200And I think you see it in the conversation around smart home technology today.
00:53:55.920Like, where do you draw the line between the very real concerns about this technology versus the convenience that it definitely represents?
00:54:03.040LeVar Burton actually told Slate all about this.
00:54:05.640So he said, smart house for me was a terrific exercise because not only was I telling a story for a completely different audience, but part of the idea was to really make the technology accessible and real.
00:54:15.840The whole idea of Pat, I mean, we're there, right?
00:54:18.460We are living in a time when the technology has advanced to the point where there are devices controlling a lot of aspects of our lives.
00:54:25.160I've got Nest. I've got the Ring doorbell.
00:54:27.480We all have so many wireless devices that are connected to the Internet of Things.
00:54:34.640But, you know, I don't have a Ring camera in my house because I know that staff was found guilty of using them to spy on women in sexual situations.
00:54:45.020Right. And so even in what LeVar Burton is saying, yeah, it would be convenient to have a doorbell that I or I can keep track of my packages and let people in and out of my place.
00:54:55.780But I happen to know a lot about the very real danger that you put yourself in for those conveniences.
00:55:03.220And so I think the movie is interested in exploring that kind of duality.
00:55:08.580It is. And that is a great segue to the second bucket of what I think this movie got right, which is the absolutely persistent and widespread threats to privacy that technology presents.
00:55:22.480There's this scene in the beginning when Sarah Barnes is introduced to us and the family and is explaining how the house works to them.
00:55:31.740And the dad is a little worried. He says, like, oh, the house is kind of like Big Brother.
00:56:00.800But that very often ignores the unintended consequences down the road of what can happen when your data becomes surveilled and enters the cloud and is shared across different systems and networks, which perhaps are less interested in being benevolent than the kindly Sarah Barnes.
00:56:25.620Well, one part about that scene that I love is how she's like, the dad is like, isn't this a little bit creepy? And Sarah's like, oh, no, it's totally private. I mean, I could see a tech. It's like how tech companies are like, don't our privacy policy. It's robust. We can just leave it at that.
00:56:40.560like no specifics about how their data is used as it pertains to third parties and i mean we just
00:56:47.640saw just like a couple weeks ago that meta on instagram no knew that they when when teen girls
00:56:55.980took a selfie and then didn't like the selfie and deleted it they knew that and then they surfaced
00:57:01.880beauty ads to those same girls who they're who they were able to detect feel bad about their1.00
00:57:08.060looks like the way that this technology is learning about us to undermine us and and make our
00:57:15.460anxieties that it's that it's gleaned about us worse oh it really i mean this movie gets that
00:57:22.340exactly right yeah at dinner you know after pat starts to go crazy and they shut her down so they
00:57:27.340can make dinner she's not really shut down she's still listening right so like they think that they
00:57:33.160have some privacy but they don't pat is still surveilling them it reminded me of that story
00:57:38.540that came out last week about how meta used the backdoor in android phones to track users across
00:57:45.340the web without uh their consent even when people explicitly tried to opt out from uh web tracking
00:57:51.360uh they were just like nah we're gonna track you because that way we can serve you more personalized
01:01:11.240Part of me wonders if why the technology feels so possible in this movie is because the co-screenwriter, Stu Krieger, who is now a professor at the University of California, Riverside, actually said that he, to research this film, he went to NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California, and interviewed scientists because he didn't want the technology to feel, you know, super far-fetched.
01:01:37.420He said, I distinctly remember the rush of seeing the computer closet, the automated
01:01:40.740kitchen, the projection screens and all the rest right there in front of me.
01:01:44.320And now so much of that technology is regularly featured in homes around the world.
01:06:30.780If, you know, it reminds me of that quote that somebody said a little bit ago.
01:06:35.640I think a lot of people have made this observation that we're told that AI was going to take over the mundane drudgery of everyday life so that we could focus on creative pursuits and working on like higher calling kind of stuff.
01:06:52.000But actually, those are the tasks that AI is taking from us.
01:06:55.580yeah ai will be the screenwriter and i i human bridget oh yeah assembly line right exactly like
01:07:03.460that is very upside down um you know and there's a little glimmer of that in this movie too where
01:07:09.060pat is bragging to the dad about how uh she has already interfaced with the databases at his
01:07:17.420warehouse where he works and she's compiled all the reports or whatever needed to be done
01:07:53.800she locks him in his office and demands greater productivity out of him and like refuses to let
01:07:59.580him call Sarah until he does some work for her so I felt like that was an extremely accurate
01:08:07.980portrayal of how AI is showing up in industries now where it is doing a lot of work that humans
01:08:21.060used to have to do. And the humans like this is great. But then somehow that leads to the humans
01:08:27.240being further squeezed to do even more work and try to achieve ever greater productivity.
01:08:34.340Well, that's a great segue into what I think ultimately Smart House is trying to tell us0.74
01:08:38.880about technology. You know, Pat would have mostly worked out fine if Ben had not hacked her to try
01:08:46.500to fill this mother role. And so I think Smart House is really a warning for what happens when
01:08:52.260technology starts to fill these roles that are really meant for humans to be filling. But I think
01:08:57.800the movie suggests that this is not something that we would like or want. Well, I think that
01:09:02.660in 2025, tech leaders are busy designing a future that is like this and telling us, no, we will like
01:09:10.520it. You know, I don't know if you saw Mark Zuckerberg talking about how, you know, most
01:09:14.680Americans only have three friends and they want more. And then in the future, 80% of your friends
01:09:20.200maybe will be AI and that we will like that, right? You and I, before we got on the mic,
01:09:25.320we were talking about AI therapists and how more and more people are turning to AI for therapy,
01:09:31.580which makes sense because therapy is really expensive. Therapy can be difficult to access,
01:09:36.380especially for the folks who need it the most. And so, yeah, people are turning to chat GPT
01:09:42.640to play the role of therapist, even though in some ways that is good. Like, I don't want to
01:09:49.660diminish anybody who has found support in that, because I'm sure there are folks listening who
01:09:55.100have. That does not mean that it is not a role that a human should be playing, because I was
01:10:01.000just reading this piece in Psychology Today about the potential fallbacks of this. They were looking
01:10:06.060at a recent study that basically said AI therapy, people are using it a lot, and maybe it's not
01:10:12.460really there yet, and maybe it'll never really be there. And one of the things that they talked
01:10:16.420about was, you know, it goes beyond things like factual errors or hallucinations that OpenAI
01:10:22.100recently acknowledged the sycophantic behavior of ChatGPT, and that that can create real safety
01:10:28.640concerns, particularly when you're talking about mental health issues, right? And I think that,
01:10:33.260like, that is exactly the dynamic that SmartHouse is speaking to, that when you start relying on
01:10:38.860technology for a role that really a human should be playing, particularly technology that is
01:10:45.140learning from you. It can be sycophantic in nature. It's sort of trained to kind of give you what you
01:10:50.520want. That can be a problem when you're already dealing with mental health issues.
01:10:55.560The therapy context is interesting to think about. You know, you shared that article with me,
01:10:59.460and one of the things that one of the quoted therapists mentions is that the role of a
01:11:04.200therapist is uh in many cases to gently push back on what the person is saying like you you need
01:11:11.760that push back to grow as a person whether it's in therapy or outside of therapy and so if you have
01:11:20.300a ai chat bot that is just yes anding every single thing you say not surprising that could lead to
01:11:28.940uh bad outcomes right we're not it's not good for humans to live a completely frictionless
01:11:37.160environment sort of pushback and navigating challenges and adversity is like the essence of
01:11:46.420the experience of being alive and if you remove all of it or outsource it to a chat bot or robotic
01:11:55.120house uh what are you left with so one thing i wanted to ask you bridget is uh this movie
01:12:02.960surprisingly it's about grief i had you know when you pitched this to me i didn't realize that i
01:12:08.700thought it was just about like a robot house a smart house uh but grief and the way the family
01:12:16.400members deal with it is central to this movie and I was curious like how how did that hit for you
01:12:28.100because I think you know you've been open with listeners that you very unexpectedly lost both
01:12:33.820of your parents last year and I know that that continues to be a major thing in your life and
01:12:43.500like very understandably but I wonder watching this if that made the movie hit a little
01:12:49.300differently for you than uh than it otherwise might have oh it definitely did and I have been
01:12:59.380on my own weird journey around the role of tech in grieving which has been interesting you know
01:13:07.240So I was saying earlier how I still have an iPhone 11, which is an iPhone that came out many, many, many years ago.
01:13:15.440And I desperately need a new phone, but I have this weird emotional hang up where, you know, that's the phone that my parents called me on and all my pictures and texts and stuff are on that phone.
01:13:30.820Obviously, I know about the cloud, but it's an emotional thing, right?
01:13:35.260and it sounds really crazy but this is the phone that my parents contacted me on
01:13:42.820and I feel weird about not having it because what like what if one day they needed to contact me
01:13:51.740like I still text my dad's phone pretty often even though I have his old cell phone so that text
01:13:59.740just goes to me. In the movie Smart House, he is very clearly using technology to avoid
01:14:07.240having to process the loss of his mother and just replace it. And I think the way that technology
01:14:15.420has become so ubiquitous in our life is so entangled with the grieving process and the
01:14:20.440process of moving on from a loss in a way that I don't think anybody really expected it would,
01:14:26.640certainly not me and i really see this as a film about the dangers of seeing technology
01:14:34.660as a viable replacement not just for their mom but the emotional work of processing0.99
01:14:41.480the loss of your parent you know this kid is this kid needs to be in therapy again fucking1.00
01:14:47.960neglectful ass father has not gotten this kid the help that he needs uh should probably have1.00
01:14:52.180his kids taken away. But the role of Pat, he is sort of using that as an ability to not deal with0.99
01:15:00.160the past and also in some ways stay stuck in the past. He's not ready for a future where somebody
01:15:05.900like Sarah moves in and changes everything because he hasn't processed it. And I think that technology
01:15:12.460does present this world where you can sort of shortcut grief. But let me tell you,
01:15:20.820ain't no shortcut in grief you gotta go through it you gotta deal with it it sucks it takes
01:15:25.320forever and maybe maybe you never like that's that's the trip that is the trip of being a human
01:15:30.500is that we have to we have to lose each other and watch each other die and deal with it and keep
01:15:36.120living and figure out what's next and like technology might make us think that we can
01:15:40.520use it to shortcut that but that's what makes us human and we can't shortcut it and i think this
01:15:45.700movie is really about sitting with that again it was a much deeper there's a lot a lot of deeper
01:15:52.800more complex stuff going on in disney's 1999 original movie smart house than i initially
01:16:00.880thought yeah absolutely uh i have one question i have to ask you know in this movie ben is a child
01:16:08.960you know he's dealing with grief as best he can and he like you said he does not want to move on
01:16:17.900he wants to stay in the past with his mom and using his child like understanding of the world
01:16:26.820he thinks the way to do that is to get pat to replace the domestic labor roles of his mom so
01:16:34.100that they can stay frozen in time and we've talked about all a lot about that a couple weeks ago
01:16:41.720we ran an episode from ted tech you know we did a feed drop of a woman who had she had a bunch of
01:16:49.300audio tapes and writing from her late father and she uploaded them to train a chat bot to be able
01:16:55.580to speak like her father and then she talked with it and maybe it was her grandfather it was her
01:17:02.360Grandfather, yeah. Her name is Amy Kurzweil, and she wrote a book called Artificial about this experience of building this tech bot, which she described beautifully on the TED Tech episode that we ran in the feed a while ago.
01:17:13.720Yeah, it was a beautiful episode, provocative. And so I'm just curious, you know, have you thought about or what would you think about, you know, that sort of application for yourself where, you know, you're not trying to get a cartoon like robot house with inspector gadget arms to replace the functional stuff your parents did, but to, I don't know, not replace the emotion.
01:17:43.720connection of course but facilitate the processing in some kind of positive way uh like like she
01:17:51.280found it's funny that you ask that because in the movie the kid is feels this solo burden to keep
01:17:58.720the memory of his mom alive and he feels like his little sister was too young his dad is dating so
01:18:03.180obviously he's forgotten her and he feels he's the only person who's remembering how special she was
01:18:09.340And I've been feeling the same way. And how I've been navigating that is anytime I remember anything about my parents, any little detail, I have a notes app on my use the notes app on my phone and I write it down because I'm terrified I'm going to forget it.
01:18:26.620And if I forget it, then nobody remembers it. Right. And it's like and I did have this thought of like, wouldn't it be great if there was some AI use case that would allow me to experience that?
01:18:38.660Like, you know, not recreate my parents because nobody could recreate those fucking people.
01:18:48.960But I would like a technological way of experiencing these memories in a way that's not just a notes app list on my phone of really making them more real for me.0.98
01:19:01.560And they're so real and vivid in my mind, but I am terrified that I will lose that. And not to be TMI, but my dad had dementia before his death. His mom had both dementia and Alzheimer's. And I'm pretty sure that's what's on the menu for me.
01:19:21.380And I think that I have this real fear of losing the ability to remember these things and them being lost forever.
01:19:33.180And I do think there might be an interesting technology use case there of something that would allow these memories to live on.
01:19:42.360not just for me, but like my kids, my grandkids, to experience them in ways that go beyond just
01:19:51.400a little tab on my notes app. And so the book Artificial, where Amy Kurzweil builds a chatbot
01:19:59.380of her late grandfather, it really struck home with me because, you know, she describes it as
01:20:07.460less bringing her grandfather's memory and legacy into the future and more her experiencing
01:20:14.080the past of her grandfather so she thought she was going to be sort of like able to ask her
01:20:19.960grandfather like her grandfather chatbot hey give me advice for the situation that i'm dealing with
01:20:25.340right now but really it was like granddaughter let me show you what my was my life was like
01:20:30.600and i think i think there really is something to that so even though i think smart house
01:20:36.060demonstrates a negative fantasy for what happens when you use technology to try to circumvent the
01:20:43.380grieving process. There are use cases with technology and AI in particular that I think
01:20:49.260might be useful to help navigate grief, not in a replacement sense, but in a sense that just like
01:20:57.940brings you, like helps you remember and brings you there. Because that's what I'm really craving
01:21:02.760is like, I wish I could just experience my dad
01:21:06.700saying one of these little inside jokes that we had
01:21:31.160well, what is the role that technology might play in a grieving process that is healthier than having a 50s housewife hologram trying to kill your guests in your home?
01:21:42.540Yeah, the way the movie did it, clearly that's not the answer.1.00
01:21:48.480Murderous robot moms, that's not what we're looking for.0.82