Support our non-partisan non-profit newsroom 💜 Donate now
Small Talk

Small talk: Pink lights, games with cats, Google ads

Brendan Francis Newnam and Rico Gagliano Jan 22, 2018

Kai Ryssdal: A note on the way out today, the stuff that didn’t quite make the headlines. Comes to us the same way it always does. Courtesy of Rico Gagliano, Brendan Francis Newnam and the rest of the Marketplace staff.


Brendan Newnam: Stacey Vanek Smith, what story are you going to be talking about this weekend?

Stacey Vanek Smith: Well Brendan, there’s a town in Wales in the United Kingdom that’s been having problems with teenagers loitering around their commercial district and committing petty crimes and things like that. So the police are trying to think of new things they can do to deter them.

Newnam: So they’re finally going to carry guns?

Vanek Smith: No. They’re actually going to try installing pink lighting.

Newnam: That’ll show ’em.

Vanek Smith: Well apparently it might because pink lighting I guess accentuates complexion problems and so the idea is that it will humiliate teenagers who are maybe struggling with acne into leaving, into fleeing the area.

Newnam: So they might succeed in getting rid of the teenagers, but their whole town is going to be bright pink. So is that really a victory?

Vanek Smith: Well, no. And there’ll be a huge influx of 6-year-old girls going through their princess phase.

Rico Gagliano: Jennifer Collins, reporter, what story are you going to be talking about this weekend?

Jennifer Collins: So there’s this new game for the iPad. Apparently it’s one of the first interspecies games and you can play it with your cat.

Gagliano: Is it called dangle a string?

Collins: It involved a little more code than that. It’s actually called “You vs. Cat.” It involves images of things cats like to eat and they have to grab at them. You have to grab at those things, too.

Gagliano: And who’s winning?

Collins: The cats are winning, Rico. There’s a leader board online and apparently cats are 100,000 points ahead right now.

Gagliano: Just what we needed: another way for cats to feel superior.

Newnam: Sally Herships, reporter for Marketplace, what story are you going to be talking about this weekend?

Sally Herships: Google is going to replace our ringtones with ads. So if I call you and you have agreed to this service, I have to listen to ads and you get free minutes.

Newnam: That seems so unfair.

Herships: Yeah. But, but, but there is a plus to this. Which is that if telemarketers call you, guess what they have to listen to?

Newnam: Nice.

Herships: Payback.


Ryssdal: There’s way more where that came from. The radio show Brendan and Rico do is called The Dinner Party.

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.