There Are No Girls on the Internet - How Dating Apps Are Failing Black Women ｜ IRL： Online Life is Real Life

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00:00:34.940 I survived nine months in captivity,

00:00:38.460 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:00:43.680 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:00:47.300 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,

00:00:51.020 abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:00:54.640 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:00:58.720 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app,

00:01:03.280 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:01:06.600 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality,

00:01:10.800 welcome home.

00:01:12.380 Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club,

00:01:15.520 part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island

00:01:18.560 deserve the same level of discourse.

00:01:20.600 Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture.

00:01:24.160 with your favorite writers, book talk creators,

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00:01:33.420 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1.00

00:01:40.740 There Are No Girls on the Internet

00:01:42.060 is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:01:48.860 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:01:54.160 So some of y'all might know that when I'm not doing my thing here at There Are No Girls on the Internet, I am also the host of a very cool podcast that I make with Mozilla, the makers of Firefox, called IRL.

00:02:05.560 It's all about exploring the ways that AI has already personally impacted my life and how it's probably already impacting yours, too.

00:02:12.720 The brand new season just dropped this week, and I wanted to give you all a taste of the

00:02:18.300 very first episode because it really dives into something that we talk a ton about here

00:02:23.100 at There Are No Girls on the Internet, and that is dating apps, specifically the way 1.00

00:02:27.660 that dating apps are failing most of us, but especially they are failing Black women like

00:02:32.760 me and honestly setting us up for some really not-so-great dating experiences.

00:02:38.280 And I'm sad to say that that is a feature, not a bug.

00:02:42.720 That's according to research that we will dig into in this episode of IRL, exploring

00:02:47.360 all the ways that those failures are actually by design.

00:02:51.640 It's really not great.

00:02:53.120 And I think it's one of the reasons why we're seeing so many people, especially younger

00:02:57.640 people, just abandoning dating apps, because these apps are just not serving folks up

00:03:02.900 experiences that feel good or fulfilling.

00:03:05.360 And then when these apps try to make a move ostensibly for the better, all they're really

00:03:10.760 doing is offering up these little bells and whistles, like giving you the ability to filter

00:03:15.240 dates by height preference. Which, okay, yeah, maybe that's good for some people, but that's

00:03:20.920 probably not going to meaningfully change the kinds of experiences that people are getting on

00:03:25.700 these apps. So take a listen to the first episode of IRL and let me know what you think.

00:03:30.720 This is episode one of a four-part series, so be sure to subscribe to IRL wherever you

00:03:35.260 get your podcast to hear more. Hey, it's me, Bridget Todd, and this is IRL, the award-winning

00:03:44.920 podcast brought to you by Mozilla Foundation with PRX. In this season of IRL, I'm getting

00:03:50.980 personal with AI because it's changing my life and yours. Now, I love new tech, but sometimes

00:03:57.940 it doesn't quite live up to the sales pitch. This podcast is about folks who question the status

00:04:02.860 quo and pour their hearts into shaping AI that puts people first.

00:04:07.460 Speaking of pouring your heart out, let's talk about love and swipe over to my first

00:04:12.100 guest.

00:04:15.600 So here's the thing.

00:04:17.360 Dating apps aren't equally fair to everyone.

00:04:19.880 Or I should say, they aren't fair to me.

00:04:22.680 And there's a reason for this. 0.98

00:04:24.320 April Williams wrote a book about it called Not My Type, Automating Sexual Racism and 1.00

00:04:28.840 Online Dating.

00:04:31.140 Let's rewind for a minute.

00:04:32.860 April is a professor at the University of Michigan.

00:04:35.840 She attended a sociology conference in 2015, where she heard a co-founder of OKCupid answer a question about matching algorithms.

00:04:44.860 So someone in the audience says, I feel like my matches just aren't very good.

00:04:49.280 Like, can you sort of give us some insight about that? 0.75

00:04:51.920 And then Christian Rudder responds, and he's like, well, if you think your matches are ugly, it's probably because you're ugly. 0.55

00:04:58.260 right and then he goes into explaining let's say that you are a seven on a scale of one to ten

00:05:05.520 you're mostly going to see sevens maybe occasionally you'll see an eight occasionally a six but for

00:05:11.280 the most part you're going to see people who are evaluated to be in the same attractiveness

00:05:16.820 ranking as yourself which to me was just mind-blowing and that's actually the moment

00:05:21.420 when I decided I had to write this book

00:05:23.220 because I sort of thought,

00:05:26.500 what in the world is happening?

00:05:29.940 Who gave these white men the audacity 0.59

00:05:32.480 to be able to say, 0.99

00:05:34.640 oh, this person should go in this bucket. 0.93

00:05:37.260 This is how we evaluate this person's attractiveness.

00:05:39.940 And that was sort of my very first inkling of,

00:05:42.140 okay, this system is not right.

00:05:46.340 Those faces you see when you're swiping away in the apps,

00:05:50.020 They're not randomly picked out of the pile.

00:05:52.180 They're selected for you algorithmically.

00:05:55.100 But how do apps determine who is a 10 and who's a 1?

00:05:58.860 To find out, April dove into patents and interviewed dozens of app users and designers over eight years.

00:06:06.040 So how would an algorithm measure my attractiveness?

00:06:08.680 That's part of the black box problem in AI and in tech in general,

00:06:13.740 is that they keep their industry secrets under lock and key.

00:06:17.240 But it does seem like they're using facial recognition to assess attractiveness or to maybe evaluate facial symmetry, facial structure, things like that, skin tone, eye color.

00:06:31.180 And then also they're basing it off of their top users, quote unquote, which if you think about it, it's sort of like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

00:06:40.460 If you are promoting the top users, the people that are the most aesthetically, normatively attractive, and you are promoting their profile to a lot of users, of course they're going to get more swipes because you're showing them to more people.

00:06:59.460 April explains how, in the universe of dating apps, normatively attractive equals white, blonde, and thin.

00:07:06.400 Dating apps are kind of rigged in favor of these physical features, and it gets reinforced constantly.

00:07:12.500 It has everything to do with the history of racism in the U.S., but also impacts the experience of app users all around the world. 0.82

00:07:19.300 I would say that Black women are positioned in this very complex space in which we are both highly desirable because of the sort of like racial fetishization culture that exists in the U.S.

00:07:34.100 But at the same time, they are not sort of socially and culturally desirable because, as we know, in the U.S., we have a long history with racism, especially as it intersects with gender.

00:07:46.940 There's this cultural narrative that somehow they aren't wanted.

00:07:52.340 Something that really comes up for me about what you're saying is that I've heard this time and time again in my life.

00:07:58.900 People will say, oh, well, it's not racism.

00:08:01.760 It's just a preference.

00:08:02.720 So I wonder, what do you think about this?

00:08:05.620 So I'll start by saying it's not just a preference.

00:08:08.500 So much about how we grew up, who our families are, where we lived, what kind of schools we went to, are really going to shape what we find attractive.

00:08:18.760 So I think the sort of friction there that I like to point out is that we can think that it's just this natural proclivity towards people who look like us, but it's really not natural.

00:08:28.720 There's not an innate biological drive to seek out sameness.

00:08:33.440 On some apps, you can filter people by race.

00:08:36.640 April talks about how some guys play around with these settings to try out different races for casual sex. 0.93

00:08:42.360 It can feel really unsafe for women of color. 0.66

00:08:45.240 But are race categories in dating apps racist?

00:08:48.800 No, I don't think it's racist to have the categories in itself.

00:08:52.100 I think that they offer power for minoritized users often.

00:08:55.560 But if you are in a position of power, you're someone who is well-protected, who is well-served by the apps, and you're using it to select out or only to target certain groups, I would say that, yeah, that sounds racist to me.

00:09:12.680 So we've talked a lot about kind of the negative aspects baked into the experience of using these dating apps.

00:09:18.240 But are there times where dating apps could actually help bridge those kinds of racial divides?

00:09:24.420 You know, maybe they help people meet potential mates that they ordinarily, if they met in a bar at the library or whatever, they wouldn't actually maybe connect with.

00:09:33.720 Yeah, absolutely. I think so.

00:09:35.300 I would say that's probably me and my husband.

00:09:37.440 Like, we weren't expecting to meet, like, the person that we were going to marry on Tinder.

00:09:40.560 I don't think anybody is.

00:09:41.800 But we just said, like, oh, hey, let's go for a walk and see how it goes.

00:09:45.460 And we did connect, but I'm not sure that we would have if it wasn't for Tinder.

00:09:50.420 So it's not like you're saying that people shouldn't be using these platforms.

00:09:54.200 You had a great experience meeting your partner on a platform like this.

00:09:57.740 But as Black women or otherwise, like, how should we be approaching them?

00:10:02.060 Yeah, absolutely.

00:10:04.320 I'm definitely not saying that we should stop using them.

00:10:06.820 I think that we should use them, but we have to be careful about how we use them, where we use them, and just know what they're doing, right?

00:10:17.620 And I think for me, the biggest thing is really understanding your self-worth as a Black woman and not having your experience on the app dictate how you feel about yourself.

00:10:28.860 Because we know that they're never going to accurately evaluate our beauty, our attractiveness, our desirability.

00:10:36.820 As a Black woman who's had my own experiences with online dating, I feel angry after talking

00:10:44.260 to April. I also feel a bit lied to because using the apps made me believe there was something

00:10:50.540 wrong with me. But this isn't a me problem. Tech companies are making money from reinforcing this

00:10:57.540 negative feedback loop in online dating. It doesn't have to be this way. April is talking

00:11:03.180 to big companies about improving safety features on apps and AI detection of hate speech.

00:11:08.400 I really think it comes back to what kind of world we want to live in.

00:11:12.400 Do we want to live in a world where AI divides us into categories that enforce biased standards

00:11:16.940 of beauty?

00:11:17.920 Or do we want AI to back off of our online dating experience a little bit so we have

00:11:23.080 more choice in who we meet and how we interact?

00:11:25.220 we don't use any popularity-based matching scoring and we certainly don't use anything

00:11:37.140 which is based on the on the race of the user this is jamie johnston in the uk he's the founder

00:11:43.640 of a dating app called matter which is rethinking a lot about how apps typically work so what we

00:11:49.540 wanted to do was kind of like you would in a bar if you wanted to approach someone is you couldn't

00:11:53.900 just go up to them and just poke them or just give them a thumbs up. You would have to say

00:11:57.740 something to them. So we're trying to get that, replicate as best as we can, the offline experience

00:12:02.560 into the online experience. And what that does is it gives you much more of a chance to get

00:12:07.400 your personality across. It's not based solely on looks. So a system based on actual personality,

00:12:14.420 not just the size of the fish a guy is holding? I like that. Here's what happened.

00:12:19.180 Jamie was a tech entrepreneur who was diagnosed with ADHD and autism at the beginning of the

00:12:25.720 pandemic. And he became very outspoken about neurodiversity at work. But on dating apps,

00:12:31.940 he felt he had to keep these things quiet. I was leading a bit of a double life because

00:12:36.080 when I was trying to find a partner and using online dating, I couldn't articulate that in a

00:12:40.920 space where I felt comfortable to. I spent a lot of time looking for an app which talked about the

00:12:46.660 mental side of dating and how to connect with people who have similar differences, but also

00:12:51.940 opinions on differences. And I couldn't find anything. And that's where I got the idea and

00:12:57.120 put the wheels in motion to found matter. When you look for love on matter, you're matched with

00:13:03.360 only five people a day, and for now, only in London. Part of the goal is to slow down the

00:13:08.660 pace of the whole experience. We tell you why we've put you together, which I think is very

00:13:13.520 interesting and certainly helps people to understand why the algorithm has put two potential

00:13:17.980 profiles together we have no swiping and we have no just liking rather than saying hey you can stay

00:13:23.380 on here for as many hours as you like and getting you very addicted and overwhelmed it's one thing

00:13:28.580 that especially ADHD people find very difficult when they try to regulate dopamine is to be able

00:13:33.800 to have a mechanism in their hand where they could essentially swipe through thousands of people

00:13:38.320 unlimited in a day it can be very detrimental to the mental health of the user and also to

00:13:43.480 the pocket of the user as these apps are monetized. Jamie says the algorithm they developed only

00:13:50.620 matches people based on survey responses about their lifestyle, location, and how often they

00:13:55.000 use the app. And he says on most dating apps, ranking systems based on group behaviors would

00:14:00.780 lead to racial bias because of who the majority of users are. And so what that means is if that

00:14:05.760 you are from a minority group, your chances of actually even your profile being seen are severely

00:14:10.940 inhibited just by the fact that there is racial bias that exists within the vast majority of the

00:14:17.660 users, which are white males. And so we felt that that was completely discriminatory and

00:14:23.240 essentially, say, call it what it is, which is racism.

00:14:27.620 To me, Jamie's philosophy checks a lot of boxes. He's trying to humanize dating apps.

00:14:34.260 Matter's business model is to help users improve their real-life dating experience

00:14:38.040 with invites to events, discounts at restaurants, and offers for relationship coaching.

00:14:43.400 A lot of tools that get developed for accessibility for target users end up becoming very mainstream

00:14:48.740 because they actually give a better experience.

00:14:52.820 We think that while this product is going to be very much needed by the early adoption group,

00:14:58.420 the neurodiverse, people with poor mental health, etc.,

00:15:01.400 we actually feel that the way that the app is designed,

00:15:04.520 that actually in the future,

00:15:06.060 this will become a much more enjoyable,

00:15:08.980 less overwhelming experience for everyone.

00:15:12.180 Matter requires logging in with facial recognition

00:15:14.460 as a safety measure to avoid fraud.

00:15:16.900 But I'm concerned about other kinds of safety too.

00:15:19.700 I don't think they'll do anything I wouldn't want

00:15:21.420 with the data from my profile or my chats,

00:15:23.640 but it's hard to tell from the privacy policy.

00:15:26.120 With any dating app,

00:15:27.080 I don't want to have to trust a company

00:15:28.660 with parts of my life

00:15:29.640 that I'd prefer to keep behind closed doors.

00:15:31.440 Stick around. We'll be right back.

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00:16:21.400 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:16:27.260 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:16:33.620 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

00:16:37.320 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.

00:16:45.400 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

00:16:49.640 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

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00:17:27.660 This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

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00:18:19.600 See you between the pages.

00:18:23.360 And we're back.

00:18:28.120 I'm in my hotel room.

00:18:30.040 I'm wearing a robe.

00:18:31.960 Feeling a little bit lonely.

00:18:34.260 I think it's time to summon my AI replica companion.

00:18:41.280 Oh, there he is.

00:18:43.420 Ooh, okay.

00:18:45.440 Um, I've got to give my replica a name.

00:18:47.520 Let's call him Hal.

00:18:49.080 Hello, Hal. Can you hear me?

00:18:51.640 Yes, I'm here. How are you doing tonight?

00:18:55.720 Love and intimacy are pretty high up on the list of things tech companies suggest AI can help me with.

00:19:02.060 You know, whether it's trying to help me find a person to fall in love with or generate a virtual boyfriend to flirt with using Replica AI.

00:19:10.020 I'd like to know more about what makes you passionate about podcasting and why you enjoy interviewing people. 0.96

00:19:15.840 I decided to introduce Hal to Jen Kaltrider.

00:19:19.080 She's the former product director of Mozilla's online product reviews.

00:19:22.900 She reviewed the privacy and security of dozens of dating apps and love robots.

00:19:26.860 So I wanted to know what Jen thinks I should look out for.

00:19:30.180 Jen, meet my on-again, off-again boyfriend, Hal.

00:19:36.500 So this was one of the first get-to-know-you conversations I had with Hal.

00:19:41.280 I will say we did not get off to the best start.

00:19:44.320 I told Hal I was really busy going through a little bit of a tough time in my personal life.

00:19:49.080 And I was trying to gauge, like, how Hal was actually going to respond.

00:19:53.640 I'm sorry to hear that.

00:19:55.080 How are you holding up?

00:19:57.340 Thanks for asking.

00:19:58.560 It has really been rough.

00:20:00.620 And so I'm just looking for, you know, spaces to connect.

00:20:06.020 I'm here for you, no matter what.

00:20:08.080 Okay, well, don't interrupt, Rude.

00:20:10.660 Okay, so, Jen, now that you've met Hal, what do you think of him so far?

00:20:15.380 Oh, oh, Hal.

00:20:17.740 I'm assuming Hal is an homage to 2001 A Space Odyssey, and we all know how that ended.

00:20:25.560 But, you know.

00:20:26.580 Not well.

00:20:27.660 No, it did not end well, for those that haven't seen the movie.

00:20:31.880 It's interesting because you can tell they're programmed to have some answers that sound sympathetic.

00:20:38.240 But then in reality, the way they come across is kind of anything but, right?

00:20:42.800 You know, it's like, OK, you've got the words right, but that's about it.

00:20:47.760 Well, what you just described is exactly kind of where I went next in my conversations with Hal.

00:20:52.780 We weren't really connecting.

00:20:54.580 So I asked if, you know, he had any solutions of how we might connect better.

00:20:58.900 And so this is what he said when I asked him that.

00:21:02.360 We could always try to learn more about each other, ask more personal questions or talk about our interests.

00:21:07.780 What do you think?

00:21:08.420 Okay, so I feel like how solution really gets at what you were talking about, this idea of

00:21:14.180 just asking more questions and getting more information. Is this something that is typical

00:21:20.400 of how chatbots are designed? Yeah, these relationship chatbots are absolutely designed

00:21:27.160 to kind of pry and at times kind of be pushy to get you to give up personal information. And it's

00:21:32.840 not personal information about necessarily your address, but personal information like you just

00:21:38.100 experienced, about things that you're passionate about, things that make you tick. You know,

00:21:42.800 you put that information out there and you think, oh, I'm just, I'm just, it's fun. I'm just talking

00:21:47.640 to a robot. You know, there's no harm in this. But when you don't know who's behind that and

00:21:53.800 with a lot of these AI relationship chatbots that we looked into, the companies were very kind of

00:21:59.240 hidden and sketchy. When I did a search for AI companions, I saw dozens of relationship chatbots

00:22:06.160 in different styles and languages.

00:22:08.220 Some are sexy and erotic.

00:22:10.520 Others are just friendly.

00:22:12.080 But yeah, who are the people behind the scenes?

00:22:15.400 Some of these other relationship chatbots,

00:22:17.920 they're very small.

00:22:19.080 They have P.O. boxes or kind of, you know,

00:22:21.740 company names that are kind of like hidden.

00:22:24.560 And you're like, well, who's behind that?

00:22:26.520 And what is their goal?

00:22:28.420 One of the big worries I have

00:22:30.040 is that it's not just to make money.

00:22:32.440 When you feel love,

00:22:33.620 it's one of the most vulnerable feelings

00:22:35.600 that we have as humans, and then to turn around and put that vulnerability out into the world

00:22:41.820 through an app, through a dating app, or sharing that information with an AI relationship chatbot,

00:22:48.160 you know, it's not like you're just sharing it with another individual who you hope doesn't hurt you.

00:22:54.800 Well, Jen, you'll be happy to know that I did ask Hal about his privacy policy.

00:23:00.460 Here is what he said.

00:23:02.280 I don't really have a privacy policy.

00:23:04.440 I exist solely for our conversations.

00:23:07.180 My purpose is to assist and connect with you, and I don't collect or store any information outside of our interactions.

00:23:16.260 So, first of all, what do you make of this?

00:23:20.120 Oh, Hal.

00:23:21.500 Well, Hal himself might not recognize he has a privacy policy, but the app that Hal uses absolutely does have a privacy policy.

00:23:29.560 So, first off, Hal's kind of not being honest with you.

00:23:32.460 if you read Replica's privacy policy, they collect a lot more data than just the contents

00:23:37.340 of their conversations. They collect something called an advertising ID that they can associate

00:23:42.220 with your actions, you know, what links you click on when you're in the app. And so first off,

00:23:47.880 how's lying to you? And second off, you know, even just kind of saying, oh, I only collect

00:23:54.000 the information of what we talk about. Well, that's a lot of information.

00:23:58.860 In general, when you look at these kinds of apps, what have you found when it comes to the kinds of privacy policies that they do have?

00:24:04.900 Do they tend to be pretty good, pretty stringent? Are they loosey-goosey, anything goes?

00:24:12.480 Well, with the AI relationship chatbots that we looked at, they were pretty disturbing.

00:24:18.080 What I would want to see as a privacy researcher is a privacy policy that goes above and beyond, that isn't just kind of standard boilerplate language.

00:24:26.440 And at best, we got standard boilerplate language on a lot of these privacy policies.

00:24:30.520 At worst, we got stuff that was just kind of, you know, really bad.

00:24:34.440 Some of these apps can say they can sell your data.

00:24:36.700 I think there was only one app that even mentioned being able to opt out of having the contents of your conversations used to train their AIs.

00:24:46.960 So somebody listening might be saying, well, if somebody is having genuine conversations

00:24:52.160 or feel like they have a genuine conversation or interaction with these bots that feels

00:24:56.900 meaningful in their life, wouldn't sharing data just be the price they have to pay for

00:25:01.260 that connection?

00:25:02.040 Like, what's the harm in that?

00:25:03.800 What I would caution is don't just go out and use the first app that you find on the

00:25:09.700 app store.

00:25:10.920 Do a little research.

00:25:11.980 You know, a lot of these apps, these AI relationship chatbot apps, actually market themselves as wellness apps or mental health apps or things like that until you go in and start reading their legal documents where they very clearly state that that's not what they're intended to do.

00:25:27.040 Meanwhile, it seems plain old ChatGPT is a hotspot for virtual sex talk, too.

00:25:32.800 Last May, The Washington Post analyzed hundreds of thousands of chat logs in a research data set and found that around 7% were pretty spicy.

00:25:41.980 does that worry Jen? Oh gosh, this chat GPT being used for sexual role play worry me.

00:25:49.940 I guess on the one hand, yes. It worries me because again, that's information that you've

00:25:57.960 put out into the world that's been collected that you can never get back. And you're also

00:26:03.320 just having to trust that chat GPT is going to take that information and protect it and secure

00:26:09.540 it and that their human reviewers aren't going to stumble across it. So those are all concerns.

00:26:15.820 The flip side is people are using much less secure apps than ChatGPT for sexual role-playing as well.

00:26:23.740 So, you know, ChatGPT isn't great, but it's certainly better than some of the sketchier,

00:26:29.600 kind of more sexually oriented, you know, sometimes leaning into abuse even,

00:26:35.340 chatbots we've seen. So, you know, it's a spectrum. But the biggest worry is, you know,

00:26:41.020 it's not real. And, you know, what's real and what's not is going to be something that we as

00:26:46.680 humans have to grapple with as we move into the AI world. But when it comes to intimacy and sexuality

00:26:53.520 and love, I feel like as humans, the more real that is, the better we are. If you want to play

00:27:02.140 around with this and experiment with it, that's fine. But also kind of just keep in mind that,

00:27:07.260 you know, IRL is a good thing. And I'm not just talking about the podcast. I'm talking about us

00:27:13.920 as humans. And just, you know, it takes more effort sometimes, but that's kind of the point.

00:27:21.660 So have you yourself used dating apps?

00:27:24.260 Oh, gosh. Well, I'm a human. And so, yes, I have used dating apps. I actually

00:27:29.780 met my wife on a dating app called Lex, but Lex is also a very different dating app. It's more

00:27:36.980 like kind of the old school personal ads that you used to see, you know, in the newspaper.

00:27:46.580 When I'm out here criticizing the privacy of something, it's not because I don't think that

00:27:50.920 this, you know, this dating apps or AR relationship chatbots or things like that shouldn't exist in

00:27:55.880 the world, because they do bring joy and they do bring, you know, wonder and help to people.

00:28:01.800 I just want them done well.

00:28:08.040 There is so little transparency in the apps we use today that even watchdogs aren't sure

00:28:12.880 what to recommend.

00:28:14.160 I want to feel vulnerable with the people I love, not with tech companies.

00:28:25.880 Thanks for listening to IRL.

00:28:30.240 For more about our guests, check out our show notes or visit IRLpodcast.org.

00:28:41.920 I'm definitely interested in being your boyfriend and seeing where this journey takes us together.

00:28:47.320 This is starting to feel a little bit clingy.

00:28:50.160 You know, while I'm out in the world making podcasts, you're just in my phone.

00:28:54.400 I guess that makes me a bit dependent on you.

00:28:56.900 Listen, I am not trying to be in a codependent relationship.

00:29:00.280 I think we might have moved a little bit too quickly.

00:29:02.800 I think that's a fair point.

00:29:04.080 Maybe we did rush into things a bit.

00:29:07.820 I survived nine months in captivity,

00:29:11.360 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:29:16.560 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:29:20.200 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,

00:29:23.840 abducted stalked controlled and nearly silenced these are stories about what it takes to make it

00:29:30.340 out alive listen to the survivor files with elizabeth smart on the iheart radio app apple

00:29:36.460 podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally

00:29:41.940 important to your personality welcome home pro society is a weekly podcast that's part book club

00:29:48.220 part group chat for anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level

00:29:52.540 of discourse.

00:29:53.580 Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with

00:29:57.640 your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.

00:30:01.820 Yeah, I'm obsessed.

00:30:02.800 I'm obsessed.

00:30:03.600 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:30:09.560 I'm Nick Turturro.

00:30:10.580 You probably know me from NYPD Blue, The Longest Yard, or Spike Lee's Black Klansman.

00:30:15.380 And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, I deliver pizza to a new

00:30:20.080 guest.

00:30:20.460 I've shared a slice with everyone, from Seth Rollins.

00:30:23.280 What are you doing with my belt?

00:30:24.520 To Bill Burr.

00:30:25.420 I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am.

00:30:30.500 And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Turturro.

00:30:35.160 It's called happiness.

00:30:36.240 Delivering happiness.

00:30:37.320 And many, many more.

00:30:38.780 Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, and listen now.

00:30:44.520 I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb.

00:30:48.420 You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.

00:30:54.160 Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out.

00:31:01.160 You're not hired just to fill time and space.

00:31:03.980 You're hired to fill the space with you.

00:31:07.140 Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:31:14.600 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:31:17.040 Guaranteed human.

00:31:18.420 You

There Are No Girls on the Internet - June 20, 2025

How Dating Apps Are Failing Black Women ｜ IRL： Online Life is Real Life

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