Hey mom and dad are fighting listeners, it's Dan. Don't worry, we'll have a fresh episode

on Thursday, but before then I wanted to share a story I've been working on in the background

for a little while. It's an episode of Slate's Culture Documentary Podcast Dakota Ring,

and it's written and reported by me. Because before I was a writer, before I was a podcast host,

before I was a dad, I was at the center of one of the strangest and most consequential viral

events of the early internet. The spectacular rise and fall of the Segway personal scooter.

I've been wanting to tell the story for years, and I'm excited to share it with all of you.

If you like that episode, you should subscribe to Dakota Ring. That way you won't miss any

new episodes, and you can listen to their backlog of great shows. I'm a big fan of their

Cabbage Patch Kids episode from last year, but there's a lot of really good stuff there about

the way that we think about culture and the way that culture has changed over the years.

They're decoding cultural mysteries, and it's a really terrific show. I'm excited to be part of it.

All right, on to my episode. This is Who Killed the Segway?

I got the book proposal and just said, wow, check this out. It had this incredible new invention

that was going to change the world. But the one thing that book proposal didn't tell you was

what it was. I see me recall the first thing that really took off was the whole idea of a

hoverboard. It's a hovercraft. It's a spaceship. It's a jetpack. People are coming up with jet packs

and, you know, inertial thrusters and imagination is just going crazy. This was the biggest story

anywhere in the world. For that time, it was insane. News cameras outside of our buildings and

news trucks and reporters trying to interview you. So when it does come out, you remember

on the Good Morning America. All right, are we ready? Are you ready? I'm ready. Okay. I think it's time.

I think it was kind of pertinent when it came out. It was like the kind of

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