INFLUENCE

If you need a break from the world crumbling around us, this episode is for you. Alli and Lindsey try as HARD AS THEY CAN to only talk about good things, and they almost manage to do it!UFOs are getting a rebrand, hummingbirds are dope, Katy Perry concerts are fun, Zac Efron continues to be attractive, and Ukrainians made an original song about U.S. missiles.Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin the 2G1P Discord community: http://discord.gg/2g1pJoin the 2G1P Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2girls1podcast/Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We have another one of our favorite classic episodes for you this week, so kick back, relax, and enjoy this wholly unnecessary diversion.--Original Show Notes: September 28, 2020--Matty Benedetto is a product designer by training, but his sense of humor led him to a life of hilarious content creation instead. Benedetto builds Unnecessary Inventions, ingenious products that solve urgent problems you don’t actually have — like a drink holder for your shoe, or an alarm clock that snoozes itself so you won’t be bothered in the morning. His fake products (and their crisp photos and videos) are so popular that he’s garnered 4 million followers across social media, and a vast community of invention enthusiasts who either really want to buy these ridiculous items, or can’t stop suggesting bad inventions.Alli and Jen talk to Benedetto about where his weekly inspiration comes from, why it’s so hard to think of a problem that doesn’t exist, and what happens when real brands get involved in the fake product business.https://www.unnecessaryinventions.com/https://www.instagram.com/unnecessaryinventions/Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin the 2G1P Discord community: http://discord.gg/2g1pJoin the 2G1P Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2girls1podcast/Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Bible can be pretty dense and outdated by today's storytelling standards. But what if you could hear the story of Lot, or Judah, or Abraham, expertly recounted by a cool dude at the barstool next to you, with all the hot goss about incest, murder, and rape?What started as award-winning Reddit comments on politics articles has morphed into The Woke Bible, an entire subreddit devoted to getting high and retelling Bible stories with modern vernacular, reality TV show references, and hip-hop lyrics.Jason Washington grew up in a fundamentalist family with a strict religious education. But despite leaving the church later in life, he continues to find messed-up Bible stories fascinating ⁠— and so do tens of thousands of Redditors. Alli and Lindsey talk with Jason about his growing community, and how he's educating thousands about what the Bible really says.Subscribe to The Woke Bible on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWokeBible/Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin the 2G1P Discord community: http://discord.gg/2g1pJoin the 2G1P Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2girls1podcast/Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Autistic children love Minecraft as much as anyone, but they're often bullied by other kids on multiplayer servers. When software developer and dad Stuart Duncan learned of this, he set out to create a private, safe Minecraft server exclusively for autistic kids and their families. The moment he shared it, he got 300 emails from parents who desperately wanted in,Today, Autcraft has a community of 15,000 kids with autism and their parents, and Stuart quit his job to run the server fulltime and meet the needs of his players. He shares how the server changed the lives of kids and parents, Autcraft's accessibility features that Minecraft has implemented into its game for all players, and why social scientists study the server for autism research.Learn more about Autcraft and support Stuart's efforts on Patreon: https://www.autcraft.com/https://www.patreon.com/autcraft/postsSupport 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin the 2G1P Discord community: http://discord.gg/2g1pJoin the 2G1P Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2girls1podcast/Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lindsey is on vacation this week, so Alli and Matt check the newspaper to see if there's anything going on in the good ol' USA this past week (Spoiler alert: There was!).We also discuss the philosophical pros and cons of a more "decentralized" Web, and Alli pooped in a hole somewhere in Utah (good luck, Geocachers!).Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin the 2G1P Discord community: http://discord.gg/2g1pJoin the 2G1P Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2girls1podcast/Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

r/Place is a blank canvas on Reddit. Every five minutes, you can add one pixel of any color. The result is thousands of Redditors working together (or against each other!) to carve out a visual space for their community, country, sports team, favorite video game, or a co-operative pixelated Mona Lisa.This fascinating social experiment has been conducted twice on Reddit, but also has roots in a similar gambit from 2005 called "The Million Dollar Homepage," where pixels were sold to any person (or brand) with enough cash to make a statement on this early Web billboard.Alli and Lindsey speak with Jay Hoffman, who documents this and many other Internet phenomena in his "History of the Web" newsletter. They discuss the extraordinary artwork created on this collaborative free-for-all, and why it never devolved into madness, thanks to a variety of self-policing communities.Read Jay's issue and subscribe to his fantastic newsletter here: https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/the-power-of-the-pixel/Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin the 2G1P Discord community: http://discord.gg/2g1pJoin the 2G1P Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2girls1podcast/Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alli reports in from a Furry convention and Lindsey caught a bad case of "Ass Pee" from Mexico, so all-told a pretty average episode of 2G1P.Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin the 2G1P Discord community: http://discord.gg/2g1pJoin the 2G1P Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2girls1podcast/Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Stephen Wilhite, the creator of the .GIF image, died last month at the age of 74, millions on the Internet shared their favorite (and earliest-known) looping animations in honor of the influential computer scientist. But how did this highly compressed CompuServe image format from 1987 become the ubiquitous communication method bursting from all of our smartphone keyboards?Nearly all the coverage of Wilhite's death links back to one interview from 2012. Fernando Alfonso, III, a reporter at The Daily Dot (fine publisher of this very podcast!) tracked down the reclusive Wilhite to discuss the legacy of the .GIF, and why it became so pivotal in the maturation of the Web. Alfonso (now a supervising editor at NPR) explains why .GIFs were invented, why they blossomed with artists of the early Web, how hard it was to make them in the early aughts, and whether we should expect the .GIF to survive the next 10 years.Read Fernando's piece from 2012: https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/gif-history-steve-wilhite-olia-lialina-interview/Follow Fernando: https://twitter.com/fernalfonsoSupport 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin the 2G1P Discord community: http://discord.gg/2g1pJoin the 2G1P Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2girls1podcast/Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we learn more about Alli's TikTok strategy, dissect the Oscars' "Slap Heard 'Round the World," and the civilian Ukrainian hackers fighting back from Cyberspace.Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin the 2G1P Discord community: http://discord.gg/2g1pJoin the 2G1P Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2girls1podcast/Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Secret spy messages are "hiding" in the airwaves all around us. It may sound like another Internet conspiracy theory, but this one is the real deal. Shortwave radio transmissions are among the most reliable ways for military, government, and intelligence agencies to exchange information. And every day for the last 40 years, one shortwave radio station called UVB-76 has been broadcasting static, beeping patterns, and cryptic Russian messages to ... someone. The contents of the messages are unknown — they are re-encrypted regularly. Anyone can listen, but only the intended recipient(s) can decode them. But that doesn't stop a thriving community of online listeners who stream these stations for the entire Internet to hear, in the hopes of finding patterns or clues.Alli and Lindsey speak with ZapdoZ, a YouTube streamer who also moderates a large Discord server devoted to cataloging the cryptic messages of this Russian military shortwave transmission. He explains the difference between Numbers Stations (for spies) and Military Stations (for armed forces), why streamers use spectral analysis to "look" at the sound, and how chatter on these stations may have hinted at the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin the 2G1P Discord community: http://discord.gg/2g1pJoin the 2G1P Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2girls1podcast/Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices