To save you time later in the call, please enter the primary card holder's nine-digit social security number.

Salut, c'est John, The Glass-Goernicos.

Et vous écoutez un épisode spécial des archives d'Aquimbo.

Corporations have always tried to influence the culture.

They've got money to spend and a big upside if they can change the way we think or act or behave.

And for a really long time, the way corporations did this is they spent money on media.

They spent money on products, but then they were done.

It was the retailer who sold you something.

If that thing you bought didn't work, you went back to the retailer to talk to them about it.

There was a huge disconnect between the people who made it and the people who sold it.

Of course, this wasn't true for the first 10,000 years of farming civilization.

In all those days, you went to the baker, you went to the candlemaker, you went to the butcher,

you looked him or her right in the eye and did business with the person who made it.

But once the industrial age showed up, that's when the dealer showed up, the retailer showed up, the disconnect.

Growing up in the 70s, I never once picked up the phone

and called a company's 800 number.

That's because the 800 number hadn't been invented yet.

The 800 number invented by Roy Weber at AT&T in 1980 had two components.

The first component, the obvious one, is that it was free.

It was free to pick up the phone and call a company.

Back in those days, telephone calls were expensive enough that people talked about when they were going to make a phone call.

Everyone gathered around the phone to talk quickly because a long distance call was expensive.

...