INFLUENCE

Latest Episodes:

131 Dating in 'Animal Crossing' May 11, 2020

Show notes

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has taken over the world in self-isolation, and become a virtual place of normalcy, even for non-gamers. But what if you’re single and dating, but can’t leave the house due to lockdowns? Tom Nook, in his infinite wisdom, has a solution for that.

Alli and Jen talk with Lady Brittany, a Twitch streamer who has converted her entire Animal Crossing domain into a Love Island, optimized for romance and photo ops around every corner. There, she hosts real dates and even wedding ceremonies, which can’t take place IRL due to COVID-19. And while she typically livestreams her island activities, she also takes the privacy of visiting couples very seriously. Brittany shares the inspiration for her mermaid-themed getaway, the special events she holds for her community, and why Animal Crossing is such a special and important game — especially now.

Lady Brittany on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lady_brittany

Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1P

Join us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1p

Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.com

Talk to Alli and Jen:

https://twitter.com/alligold

https://twitter.com/joonbugger

Call the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

130 Building College Campuses in Minecraft May 04, 2020

Show notes

College classes and graduations around the world are being canceled or administered remotely, but many enterprising students have taken to the virtual spaces of Minecraft to painstakingly recreate their campuses in amazing detail. While you can't walk down the main streets of Boston University and UPenn in real life, you can visit them virtually inside the blocky servers built by their students and faculty.

Alli and Jen talk with students and volunteer builders Pearse Anderson, Nick Marchuk, and Makarios Chung about why the Minecraft community is so powerful in a time of social distance, why video game worlds are better than Zoom calls, and their virtual graduation plans.

Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1P

Join us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1p

Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.com

Talk to Alli and Jen:

https://twitter.com/alligold

https://twitter.com/joonbugger

Call the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

129 Zoom Memes for Self Quaranteens Apr 27, 2020

Show notes

More than 600,000 people (mostly college students) are using a Facebook group to come together and bond over how bad taking classes on Zoom is. This week, Alli and Jen talk to Zana Rashid, a moderator from Zoom Memes for Self Quaranteens, a place for humor in a time of isolation.

Rashid shares how disruptive COVID-19 has been for university students, the power of funny memes during this difficult time, and the Boomer vs. Zoomer wars that constantly erupt within this growing community.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/zoommemes/about/

Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1P

Join us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1p

Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.com

Talk to Alli and Jen:

https://twitter.com/alligold

https://twitter.com/joonbugger

Call the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

128 Medical Fetishes (MedFet) Apr 20, 2020

Show notes

Amid worldwide shortages of personal protective equipment (medical PPE), someone at the UK's National Health Service reached out to the medical fetish retailer MedFetUK, hoping to find a stock of masks or scrubs. MedFetUK immediately delivered, donating their entire supply (usually sold for sex play) to a hospital. While Justin, the co-founder of the company, says it was obviously "the right thing to do," thousands on Twitter quickly gathered round to cheer the small fetish company, and also collectively wonder: What *is* a medical fetish, anyway?

This week, Alli and Jen talk to Justin about the diverse world of MedFet, its roots in BDSM, the variety of equipment used in role play (including needles!), and whether the current pandemic is affecting the community.

Check out MedFetUK for all your MedFet needs! https://medfetuk.com/

Read Justin's tweet, and the hilarious replies: https://twitter.com/MedFet_UK/status/1243590308878848002

Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1P

Join us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1p

Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.com

Talk to Alli and Jen:

https://twitter.com/alligold

https://twitter.com/joonbugger

Call the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

127 The Spot: 1995's Online Reality Show Apr 13, 2020

Show notes

In 1995, at the height of cultural mania around 90210, Melrose Place, and MTV's The Real World, the Internet as we know it today was just getting started. But if you had a connection and thirsted for more beautiful people trapped in a house with drama, there was The Spot. Created by producer Scott Zakarin, it was a first-of-its kind interactive webseries that imagined a cast of young, attractive characters writing journal entries about their lives inside a shared beach house in California. Diaries, pictures, and short video clips kept the audience up to date, and devoted fans (some who assumed it was real) could write in by email to influence the characters and plot. Today, we take this kind of interactive media for granted.The Spot was incredibly innovative for its time, and engaged a rabid fanbase while simultaneously baffling mainstream media.

Alli and Jen chat with Zakarin about his inspiration for the show, what kind of plot points create the best drama, and why dogs are always able to write journal entries in his projects. He also shares details of his current obsession, a new podcast called Digital Sky, available on all podcast platforms, and YouTube.

Subscribe to Digital Sky: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-sky/id1491254282

Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1P

Join us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1p

Call the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548

Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.com

Talk to Alli and Jen:

https://twitter.com/alligold

https://twitter.com/joonbugger

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

126 Self-Isolation Checkin Apr 06, 2020

Show notes

So...how's everybody holding up? Please call us: (347) 871-6548

Follow Alli on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/alligold

Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1P

Join us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1p

Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.com

Talk to Alli and Jen:

https://twitter.com/alligold

https://twitter.com/joonbugger

Call the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

125 Chris Dancy, The Mindful Cyborg Mar 30, 2020

Show notes

In 2008, database engineer Chris Dancy weighed 320 pounds, smoked two packs and drank 36 cans of Diet Coke every day. He was being paid a lot of money to be — in his words — “a real pile of shit.”

But as modern social media began taking shape, Dancy noticed how the things he posted online correlated with how he felt — and therefore, how he acted.

He began to track everything he did: foods he ate, shows he binge-watched, and people he interacted with online. He wrote programs that automatically uploaded these habits to a Google Calendar.

In time, he drew correlations between his actions and the resulting behavior. This lead to automated systems, powered by 700 sensors and applications, that reinforced good habits (like exercise and gratitude) instead of bad ones.

The results were dramatic. He lost 120 lbs., kicked the smoking and soda habits, and left his regimen of anti-depressants behind.

Dancy is now an author and public speaker who inspires people to take control of the data that corporations are using to track and advertise bad habits to you, and put it to work to improve your life.

In this week’s episode of 2 GIRLS 1 PODCAST, Alli and Jen talk to Dancy about his latest project to help communities cope with COVID-19, the simple systems he created to build gratitude into his daily life, how he earned the title of “Most Connected Man on Earth,” why limiting screen time is bullshit, and the lessons from his book Don’t Unplug: How Technology Saved My Life and Can Save Yours Too.

Dancy's COVID-19 Neighborhood Resource: https://www.chrisdancy.com/employment/2020/3/17/covid-19-neighborhood-volunteer-and-support-system

Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1p

Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.com

Talk to Alli and Jen:

https://twitter.com/alligold

https://twitter.com/joonbugger

Call the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

124 Biohackers Mar 23, 2020

Show notes

There are two types of "biohackers" in this world: People who are optimizing their bodies for peak performance, and...cyborgs.

The cyborgs are putting microchips, magnets, and even full, working computers inside their bodies. Why? Because it's the future. And these brave pioneers are willing to cut themselves open to see where humanity is headed.

Alli and Jen talk to Quinn Mooney, a biohacker with NFC chips in his hands and plans to install a Raspberry Pi in his leg. Mooney moderates the forums at biohacking.me and the r/biohackers subreddit, and explains the community's fascination with human augmentation, the open-source movement behind it all, and the medical and regulatory challenges that stand in the way of this personal experimentation.

Visit the forums:

https://biohack.me/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Biohackers/

Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1p

Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.com

Talk to Alli and Jen:

https://twitter.com/alligold

https://twitter.com/joonbugger

Call the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

123 What If YouTube Had Failed in 2006? Mar 16, 2020

Show notes

An entire generation has grown up in a world where uploading hours of 4K video to the Internet is not only common, but expected. But, what if the legal and technological barriers that killed Napster and other file-sharing sites had also crushed YouTube? In 2006, despite its growing popularity, YouTube could easily have been wiped off the map by copyright battles and the skyrocketing cost of hosting humanity's video.

So, what would the Internet, its culture, and the world look like today if YouTube had failed? Adi Robertson, senior reporter at The Verge, has imagined just that in her alternate history of the Web. While mostly an entertaining thought experiment, Robertson's theories are rooted in "Web 1.5's" corporate landscape, and what was technologically possible at a time when putting video onto the Internet was no easy task.

Alli and Jen talk to Robertson about the inspiration for her piece, why education and politics would be different, the miracle that YouTube exists at all, and WTF a "mesh net" is.

Read Robertson's full piece: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/28/21145506/youtube-without-internet-fiction-alternate-history

Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1p

Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.com

Talk to Alli and Jen:

https://twitter.com/alligold

https://twitter.com/joonbugger

Call the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[Encore Episode] 51 The Birth of Online Dating (September 24, 2018) Mar 09, 2020

Show notes

We're proud to share this encore episode of #2G1P featuring Gary Kremen, the inventor of online dating. Learn how a fateful purchase order in the '90s lead to the creation of Match.com, and ultimately all the swiping you enjoy today. We'll be back next week with a fresh one!

Originally published: September 24, 2018.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected