Episode 448 – SOS Phones, Subscription Everything & The Case of the Wandering Bear

What did we talk about this week on The Slade and Mayson Show?This week’s show starts with technology failing in the most basic way possible: phones. We talk about the Verizon outage that left millions of people stuck in SOS mode, unable to make calls, text, or do much of anything—right when everyone depends on their phones the most. That leads into stories about bad hardware, including a phone that had to be returned because you literally couldn’t hear anyone on the other end, and a bizarre Nigerian phone call with a phone number so long it looked more like a serial code than a call.From there, we drift into food, as we often do. We joke about a “new” food pyramid that’s basically the old one flipped upside down, encouraging more meat and dairy, and JD shares a story from his youth about early cell phones—back when having one made you that guy. Cheap eating also comes up, with JD explaining how noodles and chicken soup can be stretched into a full, respectable meal, while I once again get called out for being, well… economical.Last week’s bear story gets an update when we learn the same 550-pound crawlspace bear apparently packed up and moved next door. Because of course it did. Animal news continues with a strange situation in St. Louis involving monkeys—possibly four of them, possibly one extremely busy monkey seen in multiple places. Nobody seems entirely sure, which only makes it better.We also make a small but satisfying automotive discovery: my Corolla does have cruise control—it just needs the steering-column stalk installed. Proof that sometimes the feature you want is already there, hiding in plain sight.Technology reenters the conversation with frustrations over the redesigned Alexa app and the growing sense that everything—apps, devices, even things you already own—now wants a subscription. That leads naturally into AI, including a discussion about whether a system that can recite books verbatim is demonstrating impressive memory or quietly stepping into copyright trouble. Oops.We also touch on new AI tools, including a program called “Cowork” tied to Claude Code, and whether it’s worth experimenting with for building simple software projects. Finally, we revisit recent concerns about AI-induced psychosis, which—after closer inspection—turns out to be less about AI itself and more about the humans using it.It’s another episode full of tech annoyances, strange news updates, everyday discoveries, and the kind of conversations that bounce effortlessly from cell towers to monkeys to soup.All that and more on Episode 448 of The Slade and Mayson Show.🎶 Love old-time country music?Check out Sladio, JD’s daily old-time country podcast:https://soundcloud.com/sladio-539214100/🎧 Prefer SoundCloud?https://soundcloud.com/norblits/🛍️ Merch:https://teespring.com/stores/the-slade-and-mayson-show-2🎵 Music by Dano:https://danosongs.com/📱 Follow the show:https://www.facebook.com/sladeandmaysonhttps://twitter.com/SladeAndMayson