This is a podcast extra from Nature.

Each week nature publishes a science fiction story in its futures slot,

and every month we read you our favourite.

This month is staff meeting as seen by the spam filter,

by Alex Schwarzman, published on the 29th of October, and read by Charmoney Bundell.

Cal watched the conference room through the security feeds. Four camera angles. 9th of October and read by Charmoney Bundell.

Cal watched the conference room through the security feeds.

Four camera angles showed Joe Kowalski walk in, nod to the people seated around the oblong table, and stand there, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Carl thought Joe might be uncomfortable, but it wasn't sure.

Human emotions were so difficult to understand.

Take a seat, Mr. Koalski, Bill Morrison said.

Bill was the chief security officer, and his emails weren't particularly interesting.

It was all business, daily reports and spreadsheets.

Joe did as he was told.

His jeans and t-shirt looked out of place among the suits.

Well, asked Emily, the head of HR, what have you learned? Cal liked Emily. Her emails were many and varied. She especially enjoyed sharing photos of cats. Cal realized that the grossly misspelled captions were meant to be humorous,

but couldn't yet grasp the meaning of all but the most basic human jokes.

It's like this, said Joe. Every year or so, we installed the new spam filter. The spam

as they get smarter and more sophisticated, they find ways to get past the defences and force the good guys to build better filters. It's an arms race.

Todd Kensington looked up from his smartphone for the first time since Joe walked in.

What does any of this have to do with anything?

The VP of Marketing watched a lot of videos pertaining to human reproduction in his office.

...