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Under the new Trump administration, more and more visa holders and foreign visitors are being detained or denied entry at the border. It’s also becoming more common for people to be questioned or detained because of content on their phones, laptops and cameras. In today’s episode, we’ll tell you what you need to know about your carrying devices across the US border, and how to stay safe. Plus, we share some pretty spectacular recommendations for your downtime.
You can follow Michael Calore on Bluesky at @snackfight, Lauren Goode on Bluesky at @laurengoode, and Katie Drummond on Bluesky at @katie-drummond. Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com.
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Transcript
Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Michael Calore: Welcome back, Katie.
Katie Drummond: Thank you so much. I am so happy to be back. My brain barely works. That’s how great the trip was. We had a fantastic time. We did travel internationally. I took my family on a really fantastic vacation.
Lauren Goode: What vibes did you get from people outside of the US about the US?
Katie Drummond: It’s interesting. If they were dealing with me or my child, I have a very cute child, they were lovely. I speak French. Look, I was in France. I don’t know why I’m trying to conceal this. I have already come back. So I think that helped a lot. My husband, I’m married to someone who’s very loud, and so he gives very American energy, and they didn’t love that. But I don’t know how much of that is just like loud man versus like, “Ugh, loud American.” You know what I mean? Depending on which member of the family we’re talking about, I think experiences differ. But I did great.
Michael Calore: I remember going to France during the George W. Bush administration and I would tell people I’m from California. I wouldn’t say I’m from the United States. I’d say I’m from California. And then they would express sympathy toward me. They would say, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” They were very, very aware that California was politically left from the rest of the country.
Katie Drummond: That’s a very smart tactical move.
Lauren Goode: It’s probably more extreme now.
Michael Calore: Yes, probably. Well let’s get on with the show because today we are talking about travel, specifically international travel. Katie, you’ve inspired us. We’re going to talk about how to protect yourself from phone searches when you’re crossing the border into the US this is WIRED’s Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley. I’m Michael Calore, Director of Consumer Tech and Culture here at WIRED.
Lauren Goode: I’m Lauren Goode. I’m a senior writer at WIRED.
Katie Drummond: And I’m Katie Drummond, WIRED’s Global Editorial Director.
Michael Calore: Travel to the US is getting dicey. With travel warnings being issued, customs and border protection cracking down on people, and President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, many people are reevaluating their travel to the US or abandoning their travel plans altogether.
Lauren Goode: Yeah, there’s a lot happening, and last week on the show we did an episode, sort of similar, about surveillance and protests and how to stay safe if you decide to take to the streets, exercise your First Amendment rights. We had a lot of good tips in that episode on safety, including what to do with your smartphone, how to protect your personal information. This week we are really homing in on the phone and we’re talking specifically about what to do when you go through customs.
Michael Calore: So this is the second part of a two-parter, we could say.
Lauren Goode: That’s right, and we should give a lot of credit, by the way, to our security team here at WIRED, our security desk because they’ve been doing a fantastic job reporting on all of this.
Michael Calore: Yes, and there are several pieces that you should read on WIRED.com right now if you are traveling internationally. We’ll of course link to all of them in the show notes, or you can just go to WIRED. They’re close to the top of the page. So let’s start this conversation with the basics. What do we need to know about how phones are searched at the border when you’re coming into the United States?
Katie Drummond: Well, I think the most important thing for people to realize, the very basic premise, which I think can be surprising, is that when you come into the United States, whether you’re a US citizen or a visa holder or just a tourist, is that Customs and Border Patrol, so when you clear Customs at an airport or you’re driving over the border between the US and Canada, that they do actually have the authority to ask to search your phone when you enter the country. That is within their rights, which I actually think, until the last several months, if you haven’t been paying close attention to border security and how we travel, you’re just an everyday traveler, you might actually not be aware of. So I think that’s the foundation of this entire conversation is that yeah, they can ask to take your phone.
Lauren Goode: Right And that can happen in other countries, too.
Michael Calore: Yes.
Katie Drummond: Absolutely.
Lauren Goode: Not just the US. So when you’re traveling internationally, it’s part of the deal, and it has been, but there’s a lot of attention on this right now.
Michael Calore: So it feels like new information even though it’s not new information, because I think most people would assume that if you’re a US citizen, and even though you’re in the border, you’re standing in San Francisco or you’re standing in New York City, you would have the protection of the Fourth Amendment, which protects you against unlawful search and seizure. But the Fourth Amendment works a little bit differently in certain parts of the country.
Lauren Goode: Right. But then when you’re at the airport, you’re in a border zone, so all bets are off.
Katie Drummond: Well wait, sorry. Explain what you mean by a border zone. If I am at JFK airport in New York City, I’m in a border zone?
Lauren Goode: That’s correct. Basically a hundred miles inland from any border, which includes airports, typically fall outside of the standard Fourth Amendment protections. The Fourth Amendment basically means that if an authority was going to search your device, they’d need a warrant first. But once you are in one of those border zones, basically there’s no need for that warrant; customs can search any traveler’s phone or electronic device. And that’s not just phones. That’s your iPad, it’s your laptop, it’s cameras, it’s any electronic device.
Michael Calore: Your iPod.
Lauren Goode: Sure. For those of us carrying vintage iPods, that might be the way to go. Now it’s just carry an iPod.
Michael Calore: Well, it gets to an important point, which is what types of things are they looking for when they search a device?
Katie Drummond: I think that the answer to that question has actually changed a lot as far as we can tell in just the last few months. Ostensibly, and I think the way this has typically worked as far as we are aware, is that they would be looking for potential terrorist activity, criminal activity. The majority of these searches, at least last year, were on non-US citizens. They’re looking for people coming into the country who have the potential or the intention of committing criminal acts inside the United States. I think though that in this era, in everything we have seen so far with travelers being searched or detained or even denied entry into the United States, there is an overarching sense that border patrol officials are actually looking for something a little bit different. Even expressing your dislike for the Trump administration seems to be enough to cause you pretty serious problems at the border.
Lauren Goode: What’s concerning about what’s happening right now is it’s hard to say exactly why certain people are being targeted or detained at the border. In the past there was this understanding that maybe someone might be targeted for suspicion of terrorist or criminal activity, but now it just seems like anyone who is potentially deemed antagonistic in some way to the Trump administration, whether that’s an academic doing a certain type of research or a journalist reporting critically on the administration or a student activist, a protester, it’s just unclear what is going to be the thing that is getting you denied entry to the US. And there have been certain examples, like in March, a French scientist was denied entry to the US. There’s also a story of a Wall Street Journal journalist returning from Beirut who was detained and searched after customs realized she had traveled to dangerous places. She did not allow them to search her phone. But that’s one example of a journalist from a very established, reputable outlet being detained.
Katie Drummond: One of the pieces of all of this in the last few months that has made it so difficult is that the press is reporting on these isolated incidents, like a scientist here, a journalist there, a tourist here, but there is not a codified or any sort of institutional guidance from the Trump administration about any new policies at the border, anything specific that they are now looking for or targeting. It all feels still very anecdotal, certainly anecdotal enough and common enough to be very scary, but isn’t one prevailing trend that we can point to. It’s a diffuse range of very disturbing stories that are showing up in news outlets. It is a little tough to figure out exactly what’s going on, how methodical it is, how systematic it is.
We have been obviously covering the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, quite a bit, and one of the major efforts they appear to be undertaking is an attempt to pull data from all of these different federal agencies into one readily accessible database. So they want to be able to access a whole range of information about a given person in one place. And my suspicion, and I think what we have reported, is that that information, let’s say they have a bunch of information about me in one place in some sort of database, all of a sudden if that information is then tied to whatever border security is looking at, it allows them to basically systematically start targeting people at borders, which is a very scary prospect. Sounds very far-flung, dystopian, I think is actually closer to becoming a reality than we might assume.
Michael Calore: Yeah.
Lauren Goode: I don’t think it’s far-flung at all. Honestly, I think that reality is here.
Katie Drummond: Well, two years ago it would sound a little nuts.
Lauren Goode: Yeah, it would. And I think that there’s this feeling right now that if you end up in that position where someone wants to pull you aside and search your phone and they’re presenting you with this “Enter your passcode” or they’re probably stern about it, there’s probably this sense of no one can help you now. Who’s going to help you? You’re going to say, “I would like to talk to a lawyer,” or “No, you can’t search my device,” or “Sure, you can search my device, but when am I getting it back and what are you doing with that information?” You’re just going to be in that moment. And so the best thing that you can do is arm yourself with all the information you need in advance, and also just take the steps that we’re about to talk about.
Michael Calore: And also I think we should quickly outline what happens in that situation, in that scenario. A Customs and border protection agent can ask you to open your phone either using face Id or a fingerprint or by entering your PIN. So when somebody says, “Will you unlock your phone for me?” at the border, what they can do is they can search it manually. And that’s what happens in most cases. They’ll open up various apps, they’ll look at things, they’ll scroll through. They don’t just pick up and start scrolling through all your Twitter messages, but they will look at your social media accounts, they’ll look at emails, they’ll look at contacts. Whatever they’re looking for, they will have access to the phone to look for.
In some cases, it can involve an electronic search where they hook your phone up to a machine and it sucks all the information off of your phone and then they can do more complex data analysis on it. But what you should know is that if you’re a US citizen, or if you’re a green cardholder, you can refuse to have your device searched at the border without being denied entry into the United States. You can have your phone confiscated, you can be brought into a little room and asked more questions. You will be scrutinized if you deny them the opportunity to search your phone, but they can’t keep you from entering the country under normal circumstances.
Katie Drummond: I think even just listening to you outline all of that out loud is very helpful. That is such an invasive prospect, and such a terrifying prospect to, Lauren, what you were saying a minute ago about you’re talking to a stranger, they’re in uniform, they’re very stern, they are essentially blocking you from entering the country where potentially you are just visiting or potentially where you have a home. So much personal, private information is on this device, and I think just even imagining what it would feel like to be taken to a small room in an airport with a very mean person who’s looking at your email, that’s a really daunting thought and a really daunting prospect, and I think that just underlines how important it is to be prepared before you go to the airport, before you travel. Even to practice. I’ll talk a little bit later about what I did to get ready for this trip, but it involved practicing. I did dry runs in my head of how I would handle different situations, and I think that’s a really important thing, journalists or not, for anyone to be doing right now.
Lauren Goode: And that’s the best case scenario, if you’re a US citizen. You can decline the search. You can still be allowed in. They might take your device, you might get it back at a later point, right?
Michael Calore: Yeah.
Lauren Goode: If you’re a visa holder or a foreign visitor and you refuse, you can be detained or deported.
Michael Calore: Yeah, they can say, “Well then, we’re not going to let you into the country. You need to go talk to those people and they’ll help you fly home.”
Lauren Goode: Right.
Michael Calore: We’re going to take a quick break and when we come back we’ll talk about what you can do to prepare your phone and your devices to cross the border.
Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. Let’s talk about what folks can do to feel safe and to protect themselves when traveling into the US. What is the first thing that we want to recommend?
Lauren Goode: Ahead of the traveling part, ahead of considering using a burner phone or a second phone or something like that, we should just talk about the type of apps that you’re using, and particularly for messaging. This is very familiar for journalists already. We all use it, and of course now I think this has more brand awareness at a national level now because of Signalgate, which we’ve talked about before. But you should be using encrypted messaging, and an app like Signal in particular has a disappearing messages function so that after a certain period of time, you can set it to be a day, a week, a month, whatever it is, those messages
will disappear. They’re untraceable at that point, to the best of our knowledge. And so even ahead of a trip like that, you should be thinking about, are my accounts locked down? What do I have backed up to the cloud? Am I using truly encrypted messaging apps? Basically, you should have a good sense of digital hygiene, privacy hygiene, before you’ve even gotten to the border.
Katie Drummond: Yeah, I think it’s a good question to ask yourself. If you’re spending time trash talking the President and the administration with your dad, should you really be doing that on iMessage? For journalists, I think we often think about Signal and encrypted messaging as a way to communicate with sources, and of course it’s a very valuable tool for that, but this extends to all of the texting that you do with everyone in your life.
And even for me, I would just say anecdotally, Mike and Lauren, I don’t know about you guys, but a few months ago I actually had my family and all of my close friends start using Signal to text with me. I stopped using iMessage to text with them just because I don’t want those personal interactions and off-the-cuff comments that everybody makes to be visible in any way. So it does suck when I go look at my family text group and I can’t read anything that we sent yesterday. We’ve lost some very valuable and hilarious Drummond family jokes as a result, but it’s worth it, because that long trail of conversation, just those very casual chats that you have during the day, are not visible to any prying eyes.
Michael Calore: So if you’re traveling into the US, through an airport or across a border, and you want to protect your device in the instance that somebody asks to search it, here are some things that you can do. You should disable biometrics on your phone. Turn off Face ID, or whatever face unlock feature you have if you have an Android phone, turn off fingerprint unlock, and only use a PIN.
Katie Drummond: Can I interject here very quickly, Mike?
Michael Calore: Yes.
Katie Drummond: I do not understand for the life of me, truly, outside of even the context of travel, why anyone would be using Face ID to unlock their phone. It feels like such a high-risk move, that it’s like, it’s really that hard to remember four numbers? You want your face to be able to unlock your phone? Are you nuts? Are you nuts?
Michael Calore: Well, Katie, just to interject on your interjection, you should be using a six-number PIN instead of a four-number PIN.
Katie Drummond: Oh, my God. Hold on. I got to look at how many numbers my password is. Hold on. Oh, no, it’s six. It’s six. It’s six. I relent.
Michael Calore: But convenience. Convenience.
Katie Drummond: No.
Michael Calore: Human beings have been trading privacy for convenience—
Katie Drummond: I know, I know.
Michael Calore: —for—
Lauren Goode: I know.
Michael Calore: —millennia.
Katie Drummond: Convenience is one of technology’s most dangerous offerings.
Michael Calore: And the convenience narrative is real though. We all really enjoy-
Katie Drummond: It is, of course.
Lauren Goode: Yes.
Katie Drummond: —those conveniences that technology has brought us, but if you want the ultimate security—
Lauren Goode: That’s right.
Michael Calore: —turn that shit off. Just in case anybody’s wondering why you would want to turn it off, if somebody has your phone, they can just hold it up to your face and unlock it, or they can put you in handcuffs and then use your fingerprint to unlock your phone. Whereas if they need a PIN, you can say the helpful words, “I can’t help you with that, Officer.”
Lauren Goode: Is that how you would say it in that tone? I just want to—
Michael Calore: Yes.
Lauren Goode: Have you practiced that?
Michael Calore: Yes.
Katie Drummond: That’s how he practices.
Michael Calore: Because you don’t want to say, “I forgot” because then you might be lying.
Lauren Goode: That’s right.
Michael Calore: You might be caught in a lie. You can just say, “I can’t help you with that, Officer.” Helpful tips on talking to cops here on Uncanny Valley.
Katie Drummond: That is actually a very helpful tip. That’s good.
Michael Calore: Something else you can do: update your operating system.
Lauren Goode: That’s right.
Michael Calore: Make sure it’s fully up-to-date.
Lauren Goode: That’s right. You know when you go to the notes for OS updates and it will say-
Michael Calore: Known security blah blah blah blah.
Lauren Goode: —known security issues, fixes, bugs and security issues? Security issues is key here. Pretty much every major operating system update is patching some vulnerability, fixing some flaws in security, and so you want the latest.
Michael Calore: And law enforcement has technological tools that can exploit those vulnerabilities in order to gain access to your phone. So by updating your phone, you are rendering their tools ineffective.
Lauren Goode: Keep it going.
Michael Calore: Turn off your phone and put it in your luggage when you’re in the airport or when you’re approaching border patrol. If it’s out of sight, it may make it more difficult for somebody to be reminded that they should be checking your phone. It’s just a small thing you can do. Something much bigger you can do: print your boarding pass. Do what Katie does and go fully analog.
Lauren Goode: Yep.
Katie Drummond: I always … The first thing I do when I get to the airport, what is it? I print my boarding pass.
Lauren Goode: Yeah.
Michael Calore: Right.
Lauren Goode: I do, too, actually.
Michael Calore: And the point here is that you don’t want to have to open your phone at all if you don’t have to. So we should talk about who should be doing this. We mentioned that US citizens and people who hold green cards are more safe in border zones than folks who are here on a visa or some sort of non-citizen status, but should everybody be doing this?
Lauren Goode: Yeah, this is a good question. A lot of this is going to depend on your own personal risk factor. We’ve already talked about the difference between being a US citizen or a green card holder versus being a visa holder or a foreign visitor. I hate that we’re at this point, I hate that I’m saying this, but you should also factor in things like your nationality or your profession.
Katie Drummond: I’ll take this one step further and just say the very provocative thing, which I think race and sexuality and gender identity are also big pieces of this, unfortunately.
Lauren Goode: Yes.
Katie Drummond: That has been a real thing for a very long time. I think it is even more real now. If you are a middle-aged white man with a US passport traveling in a suit with a briefcase, that is a very different scenario than a person of color who identifies as queer and is crossing the border into the United States. It is just different, and it shouldn’t be, but it is.
Michael Calore: Yeah, and I think if you particularly are somebody who’s outspoken in communities that have proven to have been targeted by the Trump administration in recent months, like if you are an active member of the trans rights community, if you’re active in pro-Gaza groups, then those are things that, if your phone was searched, they could learn about on your phone. So if you have queer dating apps on your phone, if you belong to a bunch of organizations that send you email newsletters that are particularly leftist, those may be things that you would want to hide from anybody who wants to search your phone.
Katie Drummond: To offer the furthest extreme point of view on this question that you asked, which is who should be thinking about this and acting on it when they’re traveling, look, my view is everybody. Because I think that these are relatively simple steps. There is an inconvenience to some of what we are recommending, but we are in an unprecedented moment in this country. There is so much that we do not know about what is happening behind the scenes about how these decisions are being made, about what’s possible at the border and with border security, that my feeling is very, very, very, very, very much better safe than sorry. For the vast majority of people, it is incredibly unlikely that their devices will be seized, that anything will happen, but why take the risk?
Sure, there are risk factors that you can consider when you’re deciding how extreme to go. Do you bring a burner phone and leave your phone at home? Do you just delete certain apps from your phone? There are different levels of intensity that you can take this in, but I think it would be incredibly naive for anyone at this moment in time to just treat this all as business as usual. This is not business as usual in this country right now.
Lauren Goode: And if it sounds like we’re flailing about or casting a very wide net of who could potentially be targeted by this, it’s because we don’t actually know—
Katie Drummond: True.
Lauren Goode: —and it’s my belief that this is actually what the administration may want. There is a method to the chaos, and it is actually to instill the fear that we are all experiencing at this moment and forcing us to take these measures, because it is completely unprecedented for us, I think for many of us.
Michael Calore: Yeah, agreed. Well, let’s fight the fear by going extremely hardcore into safety territory, because we’ve talked about the first option, which is turn off these things on your phone. What else should people be doing with their phones? Do we delete apps? Do we hide apps in specific folders? And I have some thoughts about this. I think that you may just be better off, if you’re really worried about crossing the border, you may be better off just starting over with a new phone. You set up a separate phone just for travel where you have absolute minimum amount of stuff that you need on it before you cross the border.
Lauren Goode: Right. Yeah, and Lily and Matt, our colleagues who wrote the guide to this, they talk about a burner phone but also make the clarification that this is not a burner phone that you go to the corner store and you buy with cash and it doesn’t have any apps on it. It’s just like a… What are the old things … The flip phones.
Michael Calore: Flip phones, yes.
Lauren Goode: Oh my gosh, yes.
Michael Calore: What are those things called? Yes, Lauren.
Lauren Goode: I know, because I’m just so young. I don’t know what a flip phone is. You can use a smartphone, but it’s a secondary smartphone that you’re building from scratch. You’re installing only the apps you need. You’re not putting sensitive information or messages or accounts on there. You may even be using a different phone number so that your main phone number is not … Because that can actually be tied to a bunch of digital services. And so you can still use a smartphone if you’re traveling, is the thinking, but you’re starting from a clean slate.
Michael Calore: Katie, is this what you did?
Katie Drummond: I did, actually. And I will add, I think a couple pieces of context. One is that I’m a journalist. WIRED has been publishing a lot about the administration, so there’s a certain risk assessment that goes into that. And then I would also add that I have the benefit of working for a big company who, because of my job, I was able to say, “Hey, I’m traveling internationally. I don’t want to bring my computer. I don’t want to bring my phone.” And they were able to provide me with clean devices, and it definitely took some getting used to. It was hard to be separated from my devices, which are what I spend most of my time with, sadly.
Michael Calore: Yeah honestly, this is the hardest part about giving this advice, because people say, “Well, what can I do to be safe?” And we say, “Leave your phone at home, go out and purchase a second phone or borrow a second phone, and put absolute minimum amount of stuff on it.” Like you said, everybody has to have their phone on them at all times and that is not what anybody wants to hear when they ask that question.
Katie Drummond: And I will say, though, as I mentioned earlier, I was traveling with my very loud American husband, and our risk profiles are a little bit different for lots of reasons. He traveled with his phone, but he went through it and he deleted a bunch of apps. He logged out of all of his social media. He communicates using Signal as well. So he took a more measured approach. The idea of us going out and buying him a second iPhone, that sounds crazy. That’s a lot of money to spend.
Michael Calore: So did he just log out of social media apps or did he delete the apps from his phone?
Katie Drummond: I believe he logged out and deleted the apps. He just wanted to travel with as clean a slate as possible. He backed a bunch of stuff up, and then just deleted it off of his hardware.
Michael Calore: And that’s the correct approach for social media. You want to log out of the app and delete it from your phone. Even if you delete the apps off of your phone and they know who you are, so they can look up and see that you have a social media presence online, they may turn a laptop towards you and compel you to log into your social media accounts, right there on the spot on a different device. In which case, it’s very important that you have two-factor authentication turned on, and that the device that you use for two-factor authentication is the one that you left at home.
Lauren Goode: Right.
Michael Calore: It’s not the one that you’re traveling internationally with.
Lauren Goode: Right, right.
Katie Drummond: That’s a really interesting point. I feel like that’s very smart-in-the-weeds guidance. Mike, here is a follow-up question: if someone turned a device to you and said, “Log into your X account on this computer,” can you say, “I’m sorry, Officer, I can’t help you with that”?
Michael Calore: Yes. And the explanation there, which should be what you actually do so that you’re not lying, is that you’re using a strong password that is stored in your password manager and that you do not have access to your password manager.
Katie Drummond: Great answer.
Lauren Goode: Here’s maybe a dumb question about social media, but you’re describing logging into a Twitter account. They can also just go to your public-facing Twitter account. And in our case, ours are public-facing.
Michael Calore: Yes.
Lauren Goode: And see what you’re tweeting, anyway.
Michael Calore: Yes.
Lauren Goode: The next layer would be DMs or something like that, which Border Patrol could get into, but otherwise, anything you’re tweeting, anything you’re putting on Blue Sky, anything you’re putting on a public-facing Instagram at this point, is fair game, easily searched.
Katie Drummond: Which I think is really important for folks to keep in mind, particularly people who are here on visas, people who are not US citizens. There is a very, very, very real risk that your public-facing communications, what you put on social media, can be used against you at the border. And I think that that’s a great point. There’s only so much that logging out and deleting apps will accomplish. I think it is one step up from doing nothing, and so for some people that might be enough to make them feel safe crossing the border if their risk profile is relatively low; but if your risk profile is not relatively low, to Lauren’s point, there are some pretty easy ways that Border Patrol can see what you’re posting on the internet.
Michael Calore: One more note about cleaning up what’s on your phone. A few people have asked me if it’s possible to take the sensitive apps, like let’s say your gay dating app or your social media apps, and use that feature in iOS that lets you hide those apps in a folder. And that’s useful to keep people from just casually snooping on your phone because they won’t see that you have those apps, but it’s protected by your Apple ID and it’s protected by your PIN, so you can’t get into those if you have biometrics turned off. However, people can still see that those apps are on your phone even if you have them in a hidden folder because they can look at your battery usage stats and they can look at your screen time stats and they can see that those apps show up in those lists. So that’s why it’s important to just delete them off of your phone instead of just hiding them in a hidden folder.
Lauren Goode: That’s smart. That’s really smart. What do we know about this tool that Border Patrol is using to actually get this data from your phone? Because in the past, and I’m thinking particularly of the example of San Bernardino, when authorities had the shooter’s iPhone but were unable to extract the information from messages that they wanted to extract, and so kept going to Apple and saying, “Could you give us access?” And Apple was responding and saying, “We don’t even have backdoor access.” What exactly are they able to get from our phones?
Michael Calore: The sky’s the limit. If you can access the phone, if you can get past that PIN, then the sky’s the limit.
Lauren Goode: But if it’s locked? If it’s locked and you said, “I’m sorry, Officer, I cannot help you with that,” then exactly what information are they able to get?
Michael Calore: Not much. Well, before we move on, I have to ask, what do we make of this moment? When we were trying to decide what we were going to talk about on this week’s episode, we had to come back to privacy the second week in a row, and it feels like an important decision that we made, and I just want to talk about why we’re spending so much time on this.
Lauren Goode: This is all just incredibly disturbing, is what it is. Legal scholars right now, historians are saying that for other reasons, they believe that the US is already in a constitutional crisis, and all of what we’re describing here today are activities and actions that could be taken legally, prior to this, at the border, for anyone who was coming through. It was extremely rare that someone would be detained and have their device searched, but the way that this is being done now feels as though it is part of a much bigger picture around people’s rights being threatened. The fact that, Mike, even you said earlier, well, if you’re using a gay dating app, you might want to hide that. Katie, you brought that up as well with regards to the LGBTQ community feeling vulnerable. The fact that we’re talking about academics, professors, scientists, researchers, journalists, people being potentially targeted, to me, it’s incredibly disturbing.
Katie Drummond: I think it’s really important to continue to acknowledge, to ourselves, it’s a hard thing, I find, to acknowledge to myself, and in our roles as journalists to acknowledge to our audience, to all of you who are listening, we have never been here before. As I said earlier, this is not business as usual in this country. What is happening right now is, to Lauren’s point, very disturbing; it is very distressing; and it is very much unknown, and that’s not a very safe feeling. There are things about the way we all live that we need to change. The best thing that we can do at WIRED right now is to provide as much of that expertise and information and guidance as we possibly can, even as we’re navigating it ourselves in our own personal lives.
Michael Calore: Very well said. Thank you for that. Let’s take another break and we’ll come back and have some fun.
Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. So it’s been a very dark episode, so let’s spread some love and light through the halls, shall we?
Katie Drummond: Let’s do it, Mike.
Lauren Goode: Let’s do it.
Michael Calore: So we asked you to write in, and you have been writing in. Thank you very much for writing in, and we do read your messages, and there’s one thing that we want to do because there has been a popular demand for it, and that is to give you our latest recommendations before we end the show. So we’re going to talk about some things that we enjoy that you might also enjoy. Who’s going to go first? Katie, Lauren?
Lauren Goode: I think Katie should go first. She’s the boss.
Katie Drummond: So as you all know, because I can’t stop talking about it, I recently returned from France, and one thing in particular that I am now pathologically fixated on, that I am recommending to all of you, if you want to feel just so good, if you want to just feel so good when you sit down and eat, is French butter. And so I ate so much butter last week. My entire family was obsessed with the butter. All we did was eat butter. We got home over the weekend, I went to a specialty grocery store, and I purchased French butter. And I have now been eating the French butter in the privacy of my own residence, and it’s just been a very lovely thing. I got some nice bread, I got my French butter, I’m watching the country fall apart, and I’m very well nourished, and that is my recommendation for the week. Go get some French butter. You will feel so much better after you do.
Lauren Goode: Salted or unsalted?
Katie Drummond: Salted. As salted as possible.
Lauren Goode: Room temperature?
Katie Drummond: Oh, yeah. Cold, I would say, cold to room temperature.
Lauren Goode: Cold to room temperature.
Katie Drummond: You don’t want that stuff soft and melted. That’s not the energy.
Lauren Goode: Yeah, no. This is so inspirational.
Michael Calore: That’s the only way. That’s the only way I eat butter, is soft.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. Katie, do you watch Temptation Island while you are having your bread and butter?
Katie Drummond: I have actually now moved on. I am watching, throwback alert: The Bear.
Lauren Goode: Oh, not stressful at all.
Katie Drummond: The guy in the show, the main guy, is hot, so I feel like that checks the trash box. He’s hot.
Michael Calore: Yeah, okay. We stan.
Katie Drummond: Thank you.
Lauren Goode: We do stan.
Michael Calore: Lauren. Lauren, what’s your recommendation?
Lauren Goode: I can’t top that.
Michael Calore: Sure, you can.
Lauren Goode: That share had everything. Jeremy Allen White, butter, reality TV.
Katie Drummond: It’s too late. You should have gone first. Now you have to go second.
Lauren Goode: I’m going to recommend a couple of movies that are about Popes.
Michael Calore: Why?
Lauren Goode: Pope Francis just died on Easter Monday, April 21st. And-
Katie Drummond: Remind me, Lauren, who did he meet with right before he died? It’s just—this is important.
Lauren Goode: I’m trying to think of who it was. Yeah, it was, I think, JD Vance? Was it JD Vance?
Katie Drummond: Oh, it was JD, yes.
Lauren Goode: That’s right. It was JD Vance.
Katie Drummond: Right. So the Pope met with JD Vance and then died.
Lauren Goode: That is correct.
Katie Drummond: Thank you. Keep going.
Lauren Goode: I would like to believe Pope Francis was holding on just so he could get one more message, one more scolding across. I actually saw a meme on the internet, of course. What else are we on the internet for these days? That said JD Vance stands for just killed de Pope Vance.
Katie Drummond: Oh, no.
Michael Calore: Oh, no.
Katie Drummond: That’s pretty good.
Lauren Goode: I know.
Katie Drummond: Sorry, that’s pretty good.
Lauren Goode: Yeah, I’ll send it around. We’re not going to link to it in the show notes, though, but I happen to have been on a Pope kick prior to this. I know that-
Katie Drummond: Wait, really?
Lauren Goode: Yes, I know that’s a weird-
Katie Drummond: What does it mean to be on a Pope kick?
Lauren Goode: It just means-
Katie Drummond: Don’t tell me this is like my Jeremy Allen White kick, Lauren.
Lauren Goode: It just means … So Katie, Katie, this is the moment when I tell you that I’m leaving WIRED to go to divinity school.
Katie Drummond: Oh no, Lauren.
Lauren Goode: Yes.
Michael Calore: Oh boy.
Lauren Goode: I watched The Conclave a couple of months ago, was fascinated by it. I was messaging with … One of my aunts is a retired religion teacher, and I was messaging with her about it, and she said, “Oh, well, if you liked that, you have to watch Two Popes.” So then I watched Two Popes, which is streaming on Netflix. It’s a 2019 movie. Fantastic. I loved it, and I only realized after the fact that it’s directed by Fernando Meirelles, who’s this incredible Brazilian director. Also directed City of God and the Constant Gardener. That is like the Fernando Meirelles trifecta, by the way. Now I’m just giving you too many recommendations. I recommend the Conclave and Two Popes.
Michael Calore: But not Young Pope.
Lauren Goode: I think I’ve seen it, but I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it at this moment.
Michael Calore: It’s surreal and weird.
Katie Drummond: This is a very deep well of papal knowledge that you are bringing to the table here.
Lauren Goode: Yes. Katie, just watch the movies and tell me you aren’t at least curious about going down a rabbit hole.
Katie Drummond: I have so many questions.
Lauren Goode: Mike, what’s your recommendation?
Michael Calore: Oh, speaking of rabbit holes. So I try to maintain a veneer of professionalism on this show, but I have decided that today is the day where I am going to bring my authentic self to the microphone.
Katie Drummond: Oh my God.
Michael Calore: And recommend something that is entirely on brand for me, if you know me personally, but that I don’t really talk about a lot here, which is in the new issue of the New Yorker, the current issue of the New Yorker, I should say, that you can get on newsstands now, and on the New Yorker website, there is a very long profile of the band Phish.
Katie Drummond: Oh my God.
Lauren Goode: Yes. Yes.
Michael Calore: P-H-I-S-H.
Lauren Goode: Yes.
Katie Drummond: Yeah, we know the band.
Lauren Goode: Can I just say, last weekend, Mike and I were at brunch, and Mike ran into an old friend and I immediately said, “Oh, are you a Phishhead?” Because I knew that Mike’s community of friends around San Francisco, they’ve seen some shit together.
Michael Calore: We have, yes. Many, many colors. I went to school in Vermont in the 1990s, so it’s like I’m genetically a Phishhead. But this profile, there have been a lot of profiles about Phish. This one, written by Amanda Petrusich, is by far the definitive profile of the band.
Katie Drummond: Oh, wow.
Michael Calore: First of all, it has all of the things that you need to know. There’s a bunch of little minutia. They’ve been together for 40 years, so there’s this long story about how they got together and how they feel about music and blah, blah, and every profile has that. But the thing that this profile has that no other profile has, is it has the outsider’s perspective of somebody who has been to shows and understands the band, but has not fully gone into the whole lifestyle, doesn’t go to every show, is not like a super-duper fan. But understands them enough and loves them enough to write about them in a way that is compassionate and intelligent.
The other thing this profile has is, it talks about this thing that happens during their performances where for 10 minutes, just the whole place just turns into this giant blob of humanity that’s all on the same mental wavelength. Phish fans call it the portal, the band also call it the portal. Like when they go into the portal, this happens, and it lasts 15 or 20 minutes, and then when it closes and they come back to reality, the entire stadium erupts and cheers because everybody was feeling the moment. And that’s the ineffable thing about going to one of their shows that I’ve never read before. And when I read it in this profile, I was like, thank God. Somebody got it.
Katie Drummond: Well, maybe I’ll like them.
Lauren Goode: This is great. Butter, Pope and Phish.
Katie Drummond: In the New Yorker. Phish in the New Yorker. That’s what, it’s not Phish. It’s Phish in the New Yorker.
Thank you for listening to Uncanny Valley. If you like what you heard today, make sure to follow our show and rate it your podcast app of choice. If you’d like to get in touch with us with any questions, comments, or show suggestions, or to rip on me about Phish, write to us at uncannyvalley@WIRED.com. Today’s show is produced by Kyana Moghadam. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Jake Lummus was our New York studio engineer. Samantha Spangler fact-checked this episode. Jordan Bell is our executive producer. Katie Drummond is WIRED’s global editorial director, and Chris Bannon is the head of global audio.
