Brian Laird on WNYC, now another of the segments we're doing this drive that revisit some recent segments that listeners told us ran too short.

Back with us now for a second 10-minute appearance is Melissa

Kirsch, writer of the New York Times newest newsletter, The Good List. You know, with all the bad

news that we're all obligated to report on, the Good List newsletter gives recommendations and tips and

tricks each week for things that are good. So let's revisit the good list and see what

they're up to now. Hey, Melissa, thanks for coming on again by popular demand. Welcome back to WNYC.

Hi there. So I see that on your list this week is voice memos. Voice memos? Yes, voice memos. Are you not trafficking in the world of

voice memos? Yes, sometimes, but go ahead. You know, a voice memo is basically like a voicemail that you can

record at any time asynchronously with the person that you're corresponding with and send it off

to them like a text message.

So it's almost like a podcast for an audience of one.

And it's a very intimate form of communication.

A friend of mine had told me that she really loved voice memos and had been sending them

a lot.

And I was just thinking about our different forms of communication and how people complain about texting that there's no tone, or they complain that we don't talk on the phone anymore, and people are loath to pick up their phones. And voice memos do seem like this sort of happy medium where you can, you know, get sort of like a human connection, even if you don't have time for that full phone call.

Yeah, and I guess you're talking about a pre-recorded voice memo, not necessarily just voice

to text in a text message, because I know that when I do voice to text, it comes out sort of like

AI. It gets most of what I said right, but not necessarily everything.

That's right, yeah.

You can tell that someone's using voice to text.

This is an actual recording of your voice.

Cool.

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