Are Pay Phones Making a Comeback?
Part-Time Genius
iHeartPodcasts and Kaleidoscope
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How did an ailing Connecticut wife inspire the pay phone? Why did thousands of people flock to the Mojave Desert just to use one? And do people really talk for longer when they know someone else is waiting? Today Mango and Gabe answer the call of nostalgia by tracing the rise, fall, and possible resurgence of the public pay phone.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:18.7 | You're listening to Part-Time Genius, the production of kaleidoscope and IHeart Radio. |
| 0:27.8 | Guess what, Gabe? |
| 0:28.9 | What's that, Mango? |
| 0:30.0 | Did you know that one of the first things to go viral on the internet was a payphone in the Mojave Desert? |
| 0:37.3 | Okay, so was this before or after that a flying toaster screen? net was a payphone in the Mojave Desert. Okay. |
| 0:38.0 | So was this before or after that a flying toaster screen saver that everybody was going nuts over? |
| 0:44.9 | That is so long ago. |
| 0:47.8 | This was after the toasters, but before the hamster dance. |
| 0:51.0 | I got it. |
| 0:51.5 | I got my bearings now. |
| 0:53.0 | So what was so special about this payphone? |
| 0:55.2 | Nothing really. It was just random and this super isolated payphone that was in the middle of the |
| 1:00.7 | Mojave National Preserve. But for this brief moment in 1997, it completely captivated the online |
| 1:07.6 | community. And thousands of people started trekking out to the desert just to see |
| 1:11.4 | this payphone and of course to call up their friends from the middle of nowhere which I just love |
| 1:16.4 | so much and and the person who brought this to everyone's attention was a guy named Godfrey |
| 1:20.9 | Daniels who stumbled upon a mention of the phone in an underground zine. Okay so this guy sparked an online craze about a payphone after reading about it in a zine. |
| 1:32.8 | That might be the most 90s thing I've ever heard. |
| 1:37.0 | I know. |
| 1:37.9 | But Daniels got obsessed with the idea of this payphone in the middle of a desert and all the |
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