NARRATOR: Why do they make things so complicated? he asked the Englishman one night. So that those who have the responsibility for understanding can understand, he said. It's only those who are persistent and willing to study things deeply who achieve the master work. The boy had noticed that the Englishman was irritable and missed his books. CHARLIE BENNETT: Hey, Ameet. AMEET DOSHI: Hey, Charlie. CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh, there you go. AMEET DOSHI: Hey, Charlie. CHARLIE BENNETT: Hey, do you know how this is a college radio station? AMEET DOSHI: Yes, it is. CHARLIE BENNETT: And you know how there's a multitude of systems and various things that we use to play back stuff in audio vault to make the show work? AMEET DOSHI: Yes, I do know about that. CHARLIE BENNETT: What happens when machines break down, man? AMEET DOSHI: When machines break down, the humans take over. FRED RASCOE: How is this a college radio station? CHARLIE BENNETT: Fred, I'm sorry I didn't turn your mic on-- [LAUGHTER] --because I couldn't find the intro music, and now I don't know what's happening. FRED RASCOE: How is this a college radio station? CHARLIE BENNETT: How is this a college radio station? Much like a raven is a writing desk. This is WREK Atlanta, and this is Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock-and-roll radio show. I am Charlie. I'm on the board. I'm hanging on for dear life because nothing is working, everyone. I'm in the studio with Ameet, Fred, Cody, and the DJ from last hour, who I haven't quite met yet. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. I hope it's going to be a mix. Whichever you're here for, we hope you dig it. AMEET DOSHI: That's right, Charlie. Today's show is called "Second Lives." We'll be digging into the afterlife of our books and DVDs. CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh, and records, too. AMEET DOSHI: And even those retrospective technologies. If only there were, like, some kind of shorthand for "retrospective technology." CODY TURNER: Perhaps a portmanteau? FRED RASCOE: Maybe tecnospective? AMEET DOSHI: Tecnospective. I like that. Or retro respect the tech. CHARLIE BENNETT: What? AMEET DOSHI: Hashtag retro-- well, that's a hashtag, so. CHARLIE BENNETT: You guys are being very fancy with your portmanteaus. I wish we had an archivist here to set us straight, fellas. If you, dear listener, want to join the conversation, the hashtag for this show is #LITS437, for Lost in the Stacks episode 437. How did we ever get this far? Feel free to tweet your thoughts, questions, or tape recordings of radio broadcasts-- you know, like when your favorite song came on-- with that hashtag. AMEET DOSHI: Our songs today are about revitalization, getting more out of what you have, and second life. FRED RASCOE: Not only that, all the songs today will be cover songs. AMEET DOSHI: And we may just be singing them, so covers of covers. [LAUGHS] These are songs that all had a second life in one form or another. And we kick off with a song by an artist who got a second creative life when he renegotiated his Motown contract in the early '70s, Stevie Wonder. This is "Higher Ground," as recorded by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, right here on Lost in the Stacks. [RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS, "HIGHER GROUND"] CHARLIE BENNETT: "Higher Ground," as reinterpreted by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I will confess right now, the first time I ever heard that song was when the Red Hot Chili Peppers did it. FRED RASCOE: I watched MTV 120 Minutes quite religiously in the late '80s, early '90s, and that was the first time I had ever heard that song. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah. That was real fun. And then I listened to the original, and that blew my mind. This is Lost in the Stacks, and today, we're talking about the second lives of our information-- books, non-print media, even the digital. Watch out for that bit rot. Let's start by talking about something that we can all relate to. Books. AMEET DOSHI: Books. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah. So the genesis of this show, Ameet, was a conversation you and I had about used bookstores and the kind of realization that there is a lot to try to unpack when it comes to a used bookstore, as simple as it seems right away. Like, oh, yeah, you sell your books, someone else buys them, life moves on. There's actually a lot to get into there. AMEET DOSHI: Yeah. Just, the business model is astounding to me. [LAUGHTER] CHARLIE BENNETT: Is it a model so much as it's just a huge flow? AMEET DOSHI: A lifestyle. [LAUGHS] CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah. Right. AMEET DOSHI: Yeah, it's volume, certainly is a key metric, I imagine. And I tried to dig into the data little bit about the used bookstore industry. CHARLIE BENNETT: There are a lot of economic models for how the used book market, the secondhand market, influences a lot of different things. AMEET DOSHI: Right. Like, you've probably been in a bookstore, and if you look on the spine or on the top of the book, you'll see, like, a black mark. And that's a signal that the book is remaindered. And I've always been fascinated by that phrase, a remaindered book. CHARLIE BENNETT: Would you like to tell people what the remaindered book is? AMEET DOSHI: It feels very sad, but it's when a publisher is essentially trying to clear out inventory. They'll mark up these books that are on their shelves, to make space, and then sell them at deep discount. CHARLIE BENNETT: It is hilarious to me. Like, normally, you are the optimistic, happy dude. Right, you're the one who feels like life is kind of working out and that things are doing what they should do. And I was all ready for you to be like, remaindered books, a second life of books, so that I could be, you know, deputy downer on you. [LAUGHS] But I can't, because you started a little bit down, a little sad. So now I have to be the one who says, no, no, it's a good thing. Look, a publisher publishes, right, tremendous amount of books, all these dead trees. And they send them out, using the liquefied bones of dinosaurs, to get out there to the stores. They sit on the store shelves. A number are bought, but as always, some are not bought, except in the rarest occasions of stock being sold out. Once that time is over, when you really could sell a book, those books are sent back to the publisher-- right, more dinosaur bones-- and the publisher, instead of pulping them or stashing them somewhere to be eaten by rats, they make black marks on the top of the pages. So it doesn't even obscure the reading-- like, maybe a streak of black marker or a dot. I've seen some remainder in red. But I think that might have been a gag someone was pulling on me. But that says, this has already been through the retail flow, the cycle, and now it can go back out to wholesale distributors, who will sell them for bargain bins. And then-- and this is the part that hurts me to say-- then the consumer can purchase a book for a deep discount and have more money for other items. That's the selling point for the publishing industry, is that if you are going to buy a book for a certain amount, but it only costs a quarter of that amount, that means you'll buy three more books. AMEET DOSHI: And the internet-- [LAUGHTER] CHARLIE BENNETT: And the internet. FRED RASCOE: I have two points. The first point, just clarifying for listeners, oil is not formerly dinosaur bones. CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh, you-- oh, man. FRED RASCOE: Yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: Come on. I was having a good time with that. [LAUGHS] And you had-- I'm burning diesel. FRED RASCOE: It is fossil fuel. CHARLIE BENNETT: I'm burning dinosaur bones. That is what I wanted to go with. OK. OK. FRED RASCOE: And second of all, I think, right now, we're still talking about the first life of a book, right? CHARLIE BENNETT: Scientific accuracy. FRED RASCOE: Right? We're talking about the first life of a book, because it's not-- just because it didn't sell at full price, when it's sold at a deep discount, we're still talking about the first use of that book, right? CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah the idea is that it hasn't been read yet when it's been remaindered. It's not a return by a customer. It's a return by a retailer. FRED RASCOE: But used bookstores, the romantic ideal is these have sat on someone's shelves, have been read, and then, now they're being passed on to-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah the information has been lovingly consumed, and now the object is no longer necessary. FRED RASCOE: Right. CHARLIE BENNETT: That's not how it always goes, though, because I do think used bookstores are often filled with remaindered books, you know, as part of their discount profile. CODY TURNER: So if there's a book on my shelf that I've never read-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Yes? CODY TURNER: --and then I donate it, is it still in its first life? CHARLIE BENNETT: No. Who are you donating it to? CODY TURNER: I don't know, Goodwill. CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh, well, you're definitely not, then. No. Goodwill is a literal secondhand market. CODY TURNER: Right. So, I mean, what is, like, the first life of a book? It has to be read? Because that's probably not true, because-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Well, OK. Morally, Cody, you have ruined the whole cycle, if you sell a book-- CODY TURNER: Because I really use books as, like, a status symbol CHARLIE BENNETT: --that you've never read. Exactly. Yeah. Irony. AMEET DOSHI: We all do it. [LAUGHS] CHARLIE BENNETT: We're almost out of time on this first segment. I think we can push it an extra minute, though. Can you say why the remaindered book fascinates you, and how that seems to connect to the second life of our information containers? AMEET DOSHI: I think it's just the fact that we have something that nowadays has an electronic analog that takes up no shelf space. So to be even more macabre, perhaps every book should be remaindered and we dispense with the artifice. CHARLIE BENNETT: Um. How about you and I step outside, and we'll fight a little bit? AMEET DOSHI: Speaking of artifice, we'll be back with more about the second lives of information after a music set. JOSH: File this set under ML 3534.G74. Also, hey, everybody. [SOUNDGARDEN, "GIRL U WANT"] [THE WOOD BROTHERS, "LIZA JANE"] Little Liza Jane CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh, Josh is not going to do the set review, so I'll do it. JOSH: Oh, it's not for me. CHARLIE BENNETT: You just heard "Liza Jane" by The Wood Brothers and, before that, "Girl U Want" by Soundgarden. Those were two songs that gave a second life to a relatively modern song and also to the very old idea of "Little Liza Jane." [MUSIC PLAYING] FRED RASCOE: You're listening to Lost in the Stacks, and today's episode is all about the second lives of our information products-- books, movies, music, data. CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh, are we really going to talk about data? FRED RASCOE: I think we'll get there. But we're going to start, I think, with CDs, which-- CHARLIE BENNETT: OK. Do you mean the compact disk? FRED RASCOE: The compact disk, which Charlie and me, I know that we're definitely old enough to be on board with CDs, and have had hundreds, probably, in our lifetime. CHARLIE BENNETT: Thousands. AMEET DOSHI: Thousands, yeah. FRED RASCOE: On the other side of the board there, with Josh, I don't know. I'm trying to get your demographic, you know, tendencies. CHARLIE BENNETT: Are you going to take his temperature? FRED RASCOE: Yeah, I'm going to take your I'll take your CD temperature here. JOSH: What exactly do you want to know about CDs? FRED RASCOE: Have you-- do you currently own CDs? Have you owned CDs? JOSH: Yes, actually. And the main reason that I still have CDs in my car is because my friend, while I was in high school, liked to burn me a lot of mixes-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Ah. There it is. JOSH: --because I owned a-- I had a '97 Civic in high school. So I didn't have a particularly modern radio, and my CD player was in the back of the car. It was in the trunk and everything. So my friend would burn me mixes to listen to, and that was really cool. That's how I learned about a lot of awesome music, from him. And then, his parents live in LA, so he would go out to Amoeba Music in LA and pick me up some stuff. Like, I have a CD of Ride the Lightning. I just listen to it all the time because that album's amazing. So, yeah, that's what I use CDs for, mostly for the car. CHARLIE BENNETT: Cody, that's your story, isn't it, about CDs? CODY TURNER: Yeah, I was thinking about it some more, and it was definitely the way that, you know, you'd get closer to a friend. They'd give you a CD with some music on it. I was thinking, my car doesn't even have a CD player anymore, but similar to your a Honda Civic, my car was a little bit behind and only had a CD player. So I kept a lot of those around, and I learned a lot of new music that way. But where those CDs are now, their second life is at the bottom of a landfill, I'm sure. CHARLIE BENNETT: This is almost exactly one step back, because I know cassette tapes were how I made mixes and passed them around to my friends. FRED RASCOE: Oh, sure, me, too. CHARLIE BENNETT: Bought CDs new, and then did use them in the car after I bought a car that had a CD player. My '96 Honda Civic did not have even a tape player, so that's how I listened to a lot of radio. Ameet, you had a recent experience with trying to recycle the CDs, trying to get them back into the market. AMEET DOSHI: Yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: How did that go for you? AMEET DOSHI: It didn't go well. It turns out that the second life of CDs in the market is quite narrow. And-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Now, I need you to remember to avoid actual prices. AMEET DOSHI: [LAUGHS] Yes, absolutely. CHARLIE BENNETT: Including "I will give you nothing for this." AMEET DOSHI: Yeah. Yeah, I, with some hopefulness, took a big box of lovingly curated CDs that I've collected, in the thousands, over the years, over the decades, to a local store that still sells CDs and records. And the outcome was bleak at the end of that exchange. CHARLIE BENNETT: And yet inevitable, right? AMEET DOSHI: Bleak yet inevitable. And so my parents use CDs to keep the squirrels out of their fruit trees. Apparently, if you hang CDs, the sparkle of the luminescence will scare away squirrels and birds, so perhaps a better alternative than a landfill. Although, I imagine landfill is probably where most of this is going. CHARLIE BENNETT: So the actual object of the CD seems to have no worth whatsoever. And in fact, that was declared when Napster, and then actual legal streaming services, made everyone's say, oh, yeah, the only thing I'm paying for is the physical media. The music should be free. Right? I mean, that's what it seemed like when everyone started to steal music in the late '90s. FRED RASCOE: With CDs, they came along so recently, relatively. I know it's, like, 1981 was the first, and that's a long time ago, but relatively recently to other formats. And they overlap so greatly with the conversion to the digital format, that that rarity or-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Since they were digital in their own way. FRED RASCOE: Right. Yeah, the digital only, I guess I should say. The rarity, the obscurity-- you know, there are hundreds, probably, there's thousands of records produced, '40s, '50s, '60s, sometimes even into the '70s, that are just so-- they have not made it into any kind of digital form. And they have, still, that collector's cachet, if you want that record, or it's rare enough in its first tangible printed form-- it's a 1969 psychedelic British garage band. They only made 500 copies, and it was only like somebody in 1979 that discovered how good it was. And so there's 500 left, so that's worth something. But for everything that's just like been-- the format has transferred successfully. Beatles is a good example, Rolling Stones, for things that are really important and well listened to. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah,. AMEET DOSHI: You're not going to take your beat-up copy of Sergeant Pepper, that's been played 50 times and expect to get a bunch for it, except someone that might have sentimental value. CHARLIE BENNETT: Unless the jacket is in excellent condition. FRED RASCOE: If you've preserved it pristinely, you might get something. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah. FRED RASCOE: You're probably not going to get as much as you think you're going to get for it. AMEET DOSHI: But sometimes, the story that you tell when you're trying to sell a CD, about the impact it had on your life, elicits a fun response from the person that's listening. You know, they reject the CD outright, but-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah. And I want to follow that thought a little bit farther, the trigger for memories in the physical object. A CD is just as good as a cassette tape or a vinyl record, right, to actually make you say, oh, yeah, I used to listen to this all the time. Right? And as we move into streaming, as we discard physical media, we seem to have centered on the vinyl record being the preferred choice of material prompt. I think, just because it lasted so long and it's big, and it's very visual because it's so large in your hand, it's got so many good memories attached to it. AMEET DOSHI: Yeah. JOSH: Yeah. It's also, like, the perfect reaction to how you get content now, which is, like, invisible. The opposite of just a thing on the screen is a big wax disk that you have to carry around. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah, using the wax, not using the CD. I feel like we should do a quick reality check on formats. You said CDs are kind of recent, Fred? 1982, 1983? FRED RASCOE: Something like that, yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: Cassette tapes were 20 years before that. FRED RASCOE: Sure. Mm-hmm. CHARLIE BENNETT: And then records were 30 years before that. FRED RASCOE: Records go back to the-- CHARLIE BENNETT: The cylinders do. FRED RASCOE: The cylinders go back, I think, as flat disks made of shellac. CHARLIE BENNETT: Shellac, yeah. FRED RASCOE: Maybe in the '20s? CHARLIE BENNETT: But the RCA long-playing popular records-- in the '30s. FRED RASCOE: OK. Yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: And the '20s, sure, so now we add 40. But, like, we're still talking about less than a hundred years of music formats, recorded music formats. FRED RASCOE: Oh, yeah. We have way more cultural information than most of human history. CHARLIE BENNETT: And the replacement stuff has sped up until, I guess, now, because I don't-- have no idea-- well, I do have some idea of what format my streaming is in, but I don't care. And I certainly-- yeah, Cody, you're nodding. You want to throw in a last thought on that? CODY TURNER: Oh, I was just going to say I agree that you don't care. It's like a constant moving away from the physical medium, both what it physically is, and then, people cared about MP3s and AC3s and ABCs or whatever, and now that doesn't even matter because it's just kind of all the same. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah, you care more about what plays it than what it is. AMEET DOSHI: We'll be back with more about media's second lives on the left side of the hour. [MUSIC PLAYING] JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, this is Jad Abumrad from Radiolab, and you are listening to Lost in the Stacks, the one and only research library rock-and-roll radio show, here on WREK in Atlanta. CHARLIE BENNETT: Today's show is called "Second Lives." From The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, here's a quote. "In the worlds of entertainment and information, we've already lost the capacity constraints of shelf space and channels, along with their one size fits all demands." "Soon, we may lose the capacity constraints of mass production, too. The question tomorrow will not be whether more choice is better, but rather, What do we really want? On the infinite aisle, everything is possible." That's both inspiring and horrifying. File this set under Z 665.A57. [THE MOOPETS, "RAINBOW CONNECTION"] (SINGING) Why are there such great deals on our hotel room? [EAGLES OF DEATH METAL, "STUCK IN THE METAL"] Oh. FRED RASCOE: That was "Stuck in the Metal" by the Eagles of Death Metal. Before that was "Rainbow Connection" by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, and before that was "Rainbow Connection" by The Moopets, songs that gained second life in multiple media formats. [MUSIC PLAYING] AMEET DOSHI: Today on Lost in the Stacks, we're talking about the second acts of our information. CHARLIE BENNETT: There are no second acts in America. AMEET DOSHI: Well, that's where we seem to be, arriving at that conclusion. We've explored remaindered books and other media like CDs and records and tapes. But what about the retro tech? Ah, there it is, the portmanteau. The retro technology-- [LAUGHTER] --the retrospective technologies, things like tape decks and record players and iPod Shuffles. CHARLIE BENNETT: I think now is the moment to be very explicit about retroTECH and what it is. We do not have our friendly neighborhood archivist. She's probably scaling a wall to take down a criminal of some kind. But what is retro tech? AMEET DOSHI: Well, technology that is used to play the kinds of media that we've been talking about. But even going back further. So-- FRED RASCOE: From yesteryear. AMEET DOSHI: Yeah, media from yesteryear, your LP records. CHARLIE BENNETT: Is that freedom rock, man? AMEET DOSHI: Your eight track cassettes. CHARLIE BENNETT: And let's not sell out the more recent stuff, your zip drives. AMEET DOSHI: Ooh. FRED RASCOE: Zip drives. AMEET DOSHI: "5 and a quarter" floppies. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah, your "5 and a quarter" and your "3 and a half" floppy. FRED RASCOE: They have larger than 5 and a quarter. I think it's, like, 8, 12 inches. They have-- I can't even remember the size. But they were even bigger before 5 and a quarter. CHARLIE BENNETT: So the retroTech lab in the library is a cool space, but also makes it clear that it's not just the format that requires some kind of second life or reconsideration, but the ways that the format is accessed. Everything from, Do you have a cassette player? Can we get around the room real quick? Who has the ability at home to listen to a cassette tape? Cody? CODY TURNER: No. CHARLIE BENNETT: Fred? FRED RASCOE: No. CHARLIE BENNETT: Ameet? AMEET DOSHI: Nope. CHARLIE BENNETT: Josh? JOSH: Yes. FRED RASCOE: Ooh. CHARLIE BENNETT: I do not. Josh, how is it that you can listen to a cassette tape at home? JOSH: Ah, you see, I have one of those fancy Victrola retro media players that it has a CD player. It also has FM/AM radio, and also Bluetooth capability. But it can play-- [LAUGHTER] --it can play vinyl records as well as cassette tapes. CHARLIE BENNETT: So it's a dessert topping and a floor wax. JOSH: Essentially, yes. [LAUGHTER] CHARLIE BENNETT: When did you buy that? JOSH: That was a gift to me in late 2016. FRED RASCOE: Nice. CHARLIE BENNETT: OK. So one out of five radio people agree, you should be able to play a cassette tape at home. If someone handed me a 3 and a half inch-- a 3 and 1/2-inch floppy disk-- which also is hard, everyone-- I would not be able to use it. I have no way. AMEET DOSHI: Yeah, I don't either. I mean, I would have to go to my friendly neighborhood archivist to find out what to do next. [LAUGHS] CHARLIE BENNETT: I had to purchase a SuperDrive, an external SuperDrive for my Macintosh computer, to be able to continue to rip CDs and occasionally watch DVDs. Fred is looking at me a little bit shocked. FRED RASCOE: A SuperDrive. CHARLIE BENNETT: OK. Don't be fooled. [LAUGHTER] It's just a CD/DVD drive that is real super, man. But I had to buy a new one. I updated my technology, got the fancy new iMac, which is now, of course, obsolete because I got it yesterday. But then I had to buy a second object to attach. CODY TURNER: That was not cheap. CHARLIE BENNETT: A peripheral, if you will. Yeah, and it was not cheap. We should avoid talking about prices, though. The argument for books is always there is no access technology to it. But we've screwed that up, too. AMEET DOSHI: It is the perfect medium for transmitting information. CHARLIE BENNETT: In paper, and storing it. AMEET DOSHI: Yeah, for the short term. CHARLIE BENNETT: And yet, we have decided that probably we should have digital rights management, cross-platform access. We can avoid remaindered books if we just make it possible for a corporation to fold and steal all of the books you bought back from you. JOSH: You don't like candy? I love candy. [LAUGHTER] Have some candy. CHARLIE BENNETT: Let me show you my fillings. I am deeply disappointed in my lack of preparation for the collapse of all the convenience-format access technology. AMEET DOSHI: Yes, it's true. I do-- it does make me wonder if there are-- the conditions are starting to come into place such that there will be other players, I mean, entities, that will make it simpler to access all of these formats. Imagine a used bookstore cafe that also has this suite of retro technologies where you could-- [LAUGHTER] CHARLIE BENNETT: Ameet. AMEET DOSHI: I'm imagining it. CHARLIE BENNETT: I want to tell you a secret, OK? I want you to come very close to me so I can tell you the secret. I don't want anybody else to hear, OK, anywhere. AMEET DOSHI: All right. CHARLIE BENNETT: So I got a PDF through interlibrary loan, right of a book that I wanted to read. And since it was a PDF, do you know what I did? I printed it out. [LAUGHS] FRED RASCOE: You know, print-down format, isn't that what you're supposed to do? [LAUGHTER] I am 100% convinced that when I-- if I'm lucky enough to get to, like, 90 years old, the things that I will have then that I also have today, that I could enjoy the same, would be books and photographs that are printed out on-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Mostly paper. FRED RASCOE: Paper. Yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: How many things have you gotten rid of? FRED RASCOE: Everything else-- gone. How many what? CHARLIE BENNETT: Records have you gotten rid of? How many vinyl records have you lost? FRED RASCOE: I guess I got rid of most of my collection, which wasn't vast, but I probably got rid of about 400. CHARLIE BENNETT: But you didn't mention those. Do you think those'll go, too? Do you think those'll be gone when you get to the end, when you get to 90? Which you will, Fred. I can see it in your eyes. FRED RASCOE: The ability-- I think I would be able to find a record player at age 90 if I wanted to. But the kind of niche resurgence that it's having now-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Like mustaches. FRED RASCOE: --it's a minor resurgence, compared to where it was-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Like mustaches. FRED RASCOE: --30 or 40 years ago. I think that's going to fade away again. And I think, when I'm 90, I can find a record player somewhere. I definitely won't have a functioning one. [LAUGHTER] And I will probably have gotten rid of the rest of my records by then. CHARLIE BENNETT: The record player conundrum always reminds me of the funniest joke I know of from Joe Rogan, who says that if you think you understand modern technology-- if you're like, I got a feel for how things work, I know how my media happens-- the question is, then, well, if I drop you in the woods with just an ax, how long until you can send me an email? [LAUGHS] I think-- if my turntable broke and there were no more turntables, how long would it take me to build one? I think that I could pull off a turntable. There's no way I could build a CD player. There's no way I could build a computer. And I say "no way" meaning, like, with my abilities right now. If I dedicated my life to creating a CD player, I'd probably still burn my eyes out with a laser. But I could build a turntable. FRED RASCOE: I think there will definitely be lots of crazy, great whizbang technologies when I'm 90 that I'll be enjoying, but nothing then that I am enjoying now. CHARLIE BENNETT: Ameet, do you have anything to say about the second lives of your technology to finish off this segment? AMEET DOSHI: The only thing is, I hope these formats and the retro technologies themselves don't end up filling up landfills, that we find some way to repurpose them, whether through art or recycling. CHARLIE BENNETT: You are listening to Lost in the Stacks, and we'll be back, we hope, after a music set. [MUSIC PLAYING] JOSH: File this set under KF 27.J857. [JESSICA LEA MAYFIELD & SETH AVETT, "BALLAD OF BIG NOTHING"] [SEU JORGE, "FIVE YEARS"] Five years CODY TURNER: All right. That was "Five Years" by-- oh, am I-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Seu Jorge. CODY TURNER: Am I on? Am I on? Oh. Seu Jorge. Oh, sorry. I'm just not-- I'm turned all the way down over here. That was fine. That was on me. CHARLIE BENNETT: Turn down for what? CODY TURNER: [LAUGHS] Before that was "Ballad of Big Nothing," I'm going to say, by Jessica Lea Mayfield with a very small cameo by Seth Avett. [LAUGHTER] Those were songs about wanting to get more out of what you already have. [MUSIC PLAYING] CHARLIE BENNETT: Today's show is called "Second Lives." FRED RASCOE: We talked about what happens to books, CDs, DVDs, and technology after they are used the first time. AMEET DOSHI: You know, Cody mentioned something earlier that distressed me-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Uh-oh. AMEET DOSHI: --but is the reality, that the second lives of a lot of remaindered books, of your old CDs, of your "3 and a half" floppies, is at the bottom of a landfill. So perhaps we can, as a society, find a new way to give these material artifacts new life through art and sculpture. CODY TURNER: There's just too many of them, right? Like, that's the real problem, is that we produced all of this stuff. And even if we did all of the art projects for every part of the belt lines in the world, we'd still have tons of CDs and stuff that we would just have to chunk overboard, right? FRED RASCOE: Maybe we need to figure out how to make parking lots out of it. CODY TURNER: Ooh. Yes. CHARLIE BENNETT: I sense another show. But for now, let's roll those credits. [MUSIC PLAYING] JOSH: Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, produced by Charlie Bennett, Ameet Doshi, Wendy Hagemeyer, and Fred Rascoe. FRED RASCOE: Josh was our engineer today. Good to see you again, Josh. JOSH: Oh, I'm glad to be back. FRED RASCOE: And the show is brought to you by The Collective, supporting new and innovative librarianships since 2014. Find out more at TheLibraryCollective.org. AMEET DOSHI: Legal counsel and a beloved copy of 1995's Using Energy by Mary Atwater-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Do you know how much that's worth? AMEET DOSHI: --were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia. CHARLIE BENNETT: Special thanks to all the record store owners and used book purveyors and people finding stuff in landfills and making them work again in cities large and small. And thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening. FRED RASCOE: Find us online at LostintheStacks.org, and you can subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and plenty of other places we don't know about. CHARLIE BENNETT: Next week on Lost in the Stacks, it's Friday the 13th. Here they come a-growling and prowling. It's bad luck and trouble. AMEET DOSHI: It's time for our last cover song of the day. We're going to close with a song that was originally by a semi-obscure power pop trio called The Arrows. But it got a major second life as a huge, career-defining hit for another artist. CHARLIE BENNETT: Some people are about to have their minds blown, Ameet. AMEET DOSHI: It also happens to be a sentiment that helps identify this show's ethos. This is "I Love Rock and Roll" by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, right here on Lost in the Stacks. CHARLIE BENNETT: The Arrows. [JOAN JETT & THE BLACKHEARTS, "I LOVE ROCK 'N' ROLL"]