Ted Audio Collective.

There are some times where it's like,

maybe I should just put my phone down.

Oh my God, I think, you know, Tom, that is you, that's the new tagline of this show.

Maybe I should put my phone down. Wow. Hey listener a quick favor. We are conducting an audience survey and we'd be really

grateful if you could take just a few minutes to respond.

Please visit survey.

PRX.org slash Ted to take the survey today.

That's survey dot PRX.

org slash Ted.

Thanks. Hey and welcome back to conversations with people who hate me, the show where I take a negative

online comment and I connect the person who wrote it to the person they wrote it about.

Sometimes I speak one-on-one with people who have said mean things to me.

Other times I moderate calls between strangers.

Today, I'm moderating.

Contrary to the word hate in the title, this is actually a very loving show where we get to know

the humans on the other side of the screen. I am your host, Dylan Merrin.

It is really hard to pinpoint why exactly something starts trending on the internet.

It's not always clear how one thing suddenly becomes such a lightning rod for conversation that one thing that everyone wants to weigh in on

for a period of 24 hours, sometimes more, sometimes less.

Sometimes it's a political matter, which kind of makes sense because it's about a policy that affects people's lives, or an individual politician saying something wrong, or a group of politicians who are doing a certain thing that another group of people doesn't like.

Sometimes though, or I'd say often, the trending topic comes not from politics, but culture.

...