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Music, stories & mysteries and the-making-of-things.
Lately, I've been hearing a voice telling me I should start a podcast. It sounds like this.
Addie:Daily reminder that you should start a podcast.
Kevan:That's my 13 year old daughter, Addy. She's literally been waking me up to say that each morning. Why do you keep saying that to me?
Addie:Because I want you to start a podcast. It seems like something you'd like.
Kevan:But there's already enough audio content out there
Addie:for But you like making stuff.
Kevan:That's true. So you think I should make a podcast because I would like it? Yes. So even if nobody in the world listens. Yeah.
Kevan:It's a beautiful and rare reason to make something these days. What would even go on it? Welcome to the Kevin Gilbert show. On today's show, we get to the bottom of a mysterious radio signal being broadcast from ninety four point five FM in the Kelowna area. We have an exclusive interview with a member of Gen z inside the mind of a 13 year old.
Kevan:We also have a special performance of a spoken word piece by the writer Thomas Cairns called I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. And lastly, a beautiful song by the band Good Looks called If It's Gone. If that sounds interesting to you, then you're at exactly the right place. I was driving home from dropping Adelaide off at a sleepover when I heard this sound on the radio. Lynn Turbot.
Kevan:Lynn Turbot. Recorded it on voice memos. I brought in my family to hear. The next day, it was still happening. A week later, it was still happening.
Kevan:And even now, if you're in the Kelowna area, you can tune in to ninety four point five FM and hear this sound. Wind turban. Wind turban. Wind turban. Wind turban.
Kevan:Is it? Do you know?
Addie:Not really.
Kevan:Does anybody know? Probably. Will we ever find out the answer? Likely. Stay tuned.
Addie:Okay.
Kevan:I will share the answer of this mystery of this sound by the end of this episode. But first, I wanna spend a little bit of time conversation with the person that inspired this podcast, my own kiddo, Adelaide.
Addie:Are you recording this?
Kevan:Yes.
Addie:You're pregnant, Gregory. I
Kevan:have too many questions.
Addie:No. I just took that from the audio used on the Simba and Scar meme and just added Gregory.
Kevan:That was the starting point. I invested a lot of energy into trying to guide the conversation towards adult interesting intellectual topics such as the upcoming Canadian election, the threat of America against Canada's sovereignty, and Adelaide's opinions on artificial intelligence. However, it all just ended up sounding a bit like I was trying to force things. But you know what I didn't have to force?
Addie:Things that I like not, oh my gosh, look, there's the new popular Taylor Swift song.
Kevan:You know, that's interesting. I mean, the algorithms Wizard posting. Wizard posting.
Addie:Gravity Falls. It's where people post normal things and pretend they're wizards. It's like
Kevan:Is that from something? Wizard posting? I think it's from the
Addie:Gnomon Night War originally. What's the Gnomon Night War? There are these I think it started with some a Polish man who raid I wouldn't know your meme for this one. A Polish man who raided a grocery store or something pretending dressed as a gnome. Maybe he didn't raid it.
Addie:He just like walked around and then someone replied to that video as a knight being like, we will vanquish these gnomes. And then it started this whole chain of things of people taking signs.
Kevan:In Poland.
Addie:Not necessarily in Poland, on social media.
Kevan:They went to real grocery stores.
Addie:Oh, No. Sorry. It was just that one person.
Kevan:They didn't go to grocery stores.
Addie:The the first person did. Then the other people replied. So he was like, we will vanquish the nights and I guess some people probably work together on it. I've
Kevan:seen Did a war happen? No. This sounds like LARPing. I think it was. But they didn't go offline?
Kevan:No. This was online LARPing? I guess so. This sounds like collaborative fan fiction.
Addie:Yeah. Wow. I need I wanna look more into the lore of it.
Kevan:The lore of the gnome and the knight who robbed the Polish convenience store while wizard posting?
Addie:No. I don't know if wizard posting is connected to it but it reminds me of that a
Kevan:little bit. There's a lot to keep track of. Maybe we'll be done now. Okay. Great.
Kevan:Thanks for hanging out with me. Yeah. That was fun. It was fun. Well, in between exploring mysterious radio signals to sitting down to interview somebody I live in the same house as, you may have noticed I have a lot of time on my hands.
Kevan:Well, hello, everybody. Thank you for coming. My name is Kevin. I recently lost my job. Well, to be fair, I didn't lose it.
Kevan:I know exactly where it was. I was doing it at the time and it was taken away from me all of a sudden. It wasn't very nice. I was doing stuff, you know. Just for two months, and then it's gone.
Kevan:Well, so I'm out there, out there on the mean streets of LinkedIn looking looking for new work again. I remember this little piece that a friend of mine wrote, a friend named Thomas, Thomas Cairns. If you're out there, Thomas, you're a good writer. Thomas wrote a little piece called, I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. When he first shared it with me, I saw it as a bit of a spoken word piece.
Kevan:So I'd like to perform that for you here tonight. Thomas Cairns, I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. Here it goes. My friend said that I needed to update my LinkedIn profile. My friend has a job at a large company that pays well.
Kevan:I do not. He has, I suspect, more of a plan for retirement than my own, which is more or less death. Look, the thing is oh, here's the thing. I mean, how exactly do I summarize this? I mean, this?
Kevan:Me? For the purposes of a LinkedIn profile? These years sitting here doing these tasks, looking for an opportunity to sit there, do those tasks, I have no gaps. Well, no noticeable ones. I mean, okay.
Kevan:There's that one gap, not a huge one, maybe not even necessarily a gap unless one is strictly concerned with employable skills. And, yes, there's a gap there, something of a hole, in fact. I was busy getting some meaning of life skills, perhaps some debt. Am I skilled in the meaning of life, though? Is my life replete with meaning?
Kevan:Is the meaning of life interesting to you, LinkedIn network to you, prospective employers? Is someone with some sense of orientation on the deepest questions of human existence rising to the top of the applicant pile? Will the automated human resource algorithm move me forward to the next stage of the interview process? I mean, nice guy. Sure.
Kevan:Bright guy. Okay. Maybe not so good at climbing the professional ladder thing. Maybe he was not so clear on where exactly such a ladder might be located. Maybe should have been spending more time determining the location of such a ladder and how to climb it in my formative years.
Kevan:My friend earned a degree in business administration. He has employable skills. He scans the horizon for new opportunities. He networks with potential and existing colleagues. He is collegial.
Kevan:All this is, I think, more important than having a LinkedIn profile. Perhaps they teach you this when they are teaching you how to administer business. I fill in the different fields online. I project confidence. I think I begin to quote unquote connect.
Kevan:The LinkedIn AI explores my email dredging up people from the past. I have not talked to them in years. Hello. I'd like to join your professional network on LinkedIn. Here's my LinkedIn profile.
Kevan:I have also enjoyed viewing your profile. I am pleased to see your virtuous climb through various corporate hierarchies. There are no calamitous dissents, LinkedIn, only abandoned profiles. I Trying to join the network. I notice everyone who is more successful than me.
Kevan:Everyone is more successful than me. This is embarrassing because I am here, not there. The there of some success that I seem to want. Do I want it? Really?
Kevan:Again, meaning of life skills seem to be failing me here. Connect only connect. I joke to myself. It's a quote from somewhere. I can't quite remember some repressed English novelist or headline of an article I didn't read.
Kevan:I click the links. I view the profiles. Would you like to link arms with me as we venture out onto the battlefields of early twenty first century capitalism, here I am in need of connection. LinkedIn seems as big as the world when you're logged in to LinkedIn. All these online worlds feel as big as the world when you're logged in to them.
Kevan:But there are no oak trees growing in these online worlds. I click and scroll. I connect with my friend. He is now a connection on LinkedIn. We are in each other's networks with all the benefits and rewards this network status provides.
Kevan:I write him using LinkedIn's messaging service. Connect. Only connect. Smiley face emoji. Smiley face emoji.
Kevan:Smiley face I wait for a response. I haven't taken a morning walk in a long time. The first reason I haven't taken a morning walk in a long time is because it has been spring break and I've got four kids and we've all been at home and it's hard to get out in the AM. But even before that, it's been a couple months since I took a morning walk before work because this year I had been working at a new job and it was intense. It was new to me.
Kevan:A lot of my collaborators were overseas So there was a lot of pressure to start early as soon as I could get up to those meetings and get up to have some online presence with folks who had been awake for half a day already. And what it ate away was my morning margins. It ate away at my walks. It ate away at the chance to hear the birds. That job has ended not by my choice and all of a sudden, all of a sudden I do get to be back with the birds.
Kevan:So that's nice. But what's not nice is the struggle that I had been in trying to make things work and not really being seen. And what's not nice is the sudden termination of something that I had been working hard to make work. It's like walking through a glass screen door that you think is open but it's closed or falling off a treadmill when it's moving a really fast pace. It was super abrupt and happened just before the spring break.
Kevan:And in the time that I've had to process this, which isn't that much time, there was a song that reached me. The song stood out to me because of its grit, just rock and roll vibe. Just felt so nostalgic. I love the lead vocalist's laconic performance. Reminds me of The Strokes or Bob Dylan even.
Kevan:And, you know, the lyrics that he's singing. If it's gone, say goodbye. Say goodbye. It's nice to know you. Yes.
Kevan:I lived here for a while. But if it's gone, say goodbye. The song is called If It's Gone, and it's by the band Good Looks. Hey. Remember that sound I played?
Kevan:Windermint. Whatever happened to that? Windermint. I told you that I'd solved the mystery, so I owe you an explanation. After discovering that the broadcast was still happening more than a day after I had first discovered it, I did what any modern citizen would do.
Kevan:I took the voice recording. I uploaded it to Reddit, and I asked the amateur Internet detectives to help me get to the bottom of this. And I learned a bunch of things. Okay. First of all, that frequency is managed by the government of British Columbia, specifically the Ministry of Transportation.
Kevan:Number two, it used to say a full message. It used to say winter messaging will be available shortly. It was broadcasting that clip in the fall and then got truncated to just winter met, which is very interesting because I thought it was maybe hearing somebody's name like Lintermet, CBC News reporting, that type of thing. No. It's winter met.
Kevan:Sachin will be available shortly. Okay. Third, the actual location of the signal. It's being transmitted from Kelowna, British Columbia, specifically the corner of Springfield Road and Highway 33. If you want to go reclaim the box, dear Ministry of Transportation, you're welcome to.
Kevan:So sadly, it means we do not have spies being communicated to in the field through a number station, which is very disappointing to me. But we do have a moderately solved mystery thanks to the helpful collaborators and Internet detectives on Reddit. It's so easy to hope for conspiratorial undertones when things don't make any sense. To try to find answers. Even if this radio station was functioning, it would simply be telling us the road report.
Kevan:It would be telling us the weather report. And the weather even then might change before you hit the highways. You hear that. You hear the clicking. Meaning.
Kevan:You can think controversy or conspiracy. But that's you. That's me imposing meaning onto something that isn't there. But isn't that how it goes? We don't know what's gonna happen.
Kevan:When we're out of work, when there's threats of aggression from our neighbors, we can look to find some sign out there of what's going to happen. Try to look around the corners to see the future, trying to find some signal to tune into that knows what's going to happen. But even if there was such a signal, it would still only be someone's best guess. It's up to us to change the channel or turn the radio off and decide what we are going to make. Winter messaging will be available shortly, and then it will be spring, and then it will be summer.
Kevan:By the time it is the fall, it will almost be the winter again. Will you have made the thing that you want to make? Or are you still listening to other people's signals? I have to ask myself the question. Am I waiting for winter messaging to begin?
Kevan:Am I listening to a truncated signal attaching meaning to it? There? Will I still be tuning into other people's frequencies, trying to guess the future, trying to understand what's going on when I could just be making what I need to make? The mystery of winter mat. David, it's your turn to turn the radio off, change the channel, and make what you need to make.
Kevan:Because I would like it. Yes. Even if nobody in the world listens. Yeah.
Addie:Okay. Well, you know that record label person's probably gonna listen to it. If you're listening to this, hi. Thank you for letting my daddy use your song. Yeah.
Addie:That's super nice. And who is the other person instead of listening to
Kevan:it? That
Addie:guy at the beer
Kevan:convention? The beer convention. Convention? The beer convention. Justin Jackson.
Kevan:He owns Transistor FM, and I met him at Vernon Geek Beers. Well, not met him. I met up with him. And he's letting me use the podcast hosting platform. Yippee.
Kevan:Yippee. Transistor FM, a fantastic tool for publishing your podcasts onto the Internet to move things from ideas into sound files and onto other people's computers. It is a homegrown Okanagan raised Canadian technology product, Transistor FM. One more thing before you go. If you like this episode, if you found a sliver of value or entertainment, joy or delight in what has just graced your ears, could you send it to somebody?
Kevan:I don't mean post it on social media. I, perhaps like many of you, am allergic to social media and would not want you to go there. But literally, if there's somebody that comes to mind that you think might enjoy this, could you send it to them? Or if there's a group chat you're part of that would you think this would tickle their fancy if fancies can be tickled. Perhaps you could send it to them.
Kevan:That's I think would be most meaningful. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.