Did Furbys Spy on Us? 3. Eye-Spy

Did Furbys Spy on Us? 3. Eye-Spy

Released Wednesday, 18th September 2024
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Did Furbys Spy on Us? 3. Eye-Spy

Did Furbys Spy on Us? 3. Eye-Spy

Did Furbys Spy on Us? 3. Eye-Spy

Did Furbys Spy on Us? 3. Eye-Spy

Wednesday, 18th September 2024
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Episode Transcript

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0:00

This is the BBC. This.

0:11

Podcast is brought to you by the Harmony

0:14

the dating app to find someone you can

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be yourself with. Why? Doesn't He

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0:25

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0:27

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0:29

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conversations that actually help you get to

0:36

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0:38

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today! Go

1:00

to monday.com to keep their teamwork sharp, their communication

1:02

clear, and their goals in sight. monday.com.

1:04

For whatever you run. Even

1:07

orcas. Go to monday.com to

1:09

dive deeper. Go

1:30

to monday.com to keep their teamwork sharp, their communication

1:32

clear, and their goals in sight. listened

2:00

to by three pretty intense devices

2:02

and there's about collectively 6,000 hours

2:06

of potential listening in this flat. But

2:08

how did I get here? This

2:13

is a What's the Story Sounds production

2:15

for BBC Sounds. I'm Joanne

2:18

McNally and this is Did Furby Spy

2:20

on Us? Episode

2:22

3, I Spy. My

2:27

investigation into the Did Furby Spy

2:29

question had been moving at breakneck

2:31

speed. At the end of

2:34

the last episode I thought I'd solved

2:36

it. It was nonsense. Furbies don't spy.

2:38

They're too busy. But then Garrota called

2:40

me up with a curveball suggestion and

2:42

he was, as always, annoyingly correct. Maybe

2:45

someone could have adapted the

2:48

Furby for espionage purposes. To

2:51

get to the bottom of us my producers

2:53

put me on a train in economy to

2:55

an undisclosed location in the north to learn

2:58

from a man who deals in spying gadgets.

3:02

As I approached the shop the excitement

3:04

started to kick in. Oh

3:07

my god it actually says the spy

3:10

shop. This is fucking comical.

3:15

Yes the shop which sells spying gadgets

3:17

is called the spy shop. God I'd

3:19

imagine that brainstorm was long. Anyway

3:22

I stood by the surprisingly busy main

3:24

road and did what my producers asked

3:26

me to do for once and I set

3:28

the scene. So

3:31

I'm in somewhere called Leeds. We're

3:34

opposite an Aldi for

3:36

context and an industrial estate,

3:38

a lot of Taco Bell. Now

3:41

there's no, you wouldn't find a Zara along

3:43

here now. It's

3:46

like you know there's a nail shop

3:48

next door but the end's missing. That's the vibe. And

3:51

he's Ailes. And

3:54

if the name of the shop didn't give the

3:56

game away they also very kindly and cleverly littered

3:58

all the things they studied. on the window. Voice

4:01

reporters, hidden cameras, lock picks, listening bugs. Are

4:03

we allowed to just openly sell this shit?

4:06

Is this not like fireworks where you're supposed

4:08

to sell them on the slide? Let's

4:14

go in. Nigel?

4:20

Yes? I'm Joanne. How's it going? Nigel

4:24

struck me as a straight-talking man. So, I got straight-talking

4:26

to the man to the point of the man. I

4:29

just thought a spy shop would be more

4:33

hidden. Well, it is. I've

4:38

got the shop front. Yeah. But that's for

4:40

people to collect the old bits and pieces, but

4:42

mainly it's online and people still like, they don't

4:44

like things to come online. So rather than get

4:47

it delivered, they prefer to just come in and

4:49

get it without anybody knowing.

4:52

I sat down in Nigel's office, which

4:54

contained nothing but a table and chairs,

4:56

surrounded by posters of famous spies spying

4:59

back at us. He

5:01

then popped out of a secret door and brought back

5:03

what looked like a pen. That

5:06

was a voice recorder that lasted a record for about 12

5:08

hours. What? That's

5:10

constant recording. And then

5:12

you just take it apart, plug it in your PC

5:14

and download it and play it all back. Really good

5:16

quality. If that wasn't mind-blowing

5:18

enough, he then handed me a series

5:21

of covert voice recorders that I'd never

5:23

have clocked myself in a million years.

5:27

That is a good piece of kit. That's a key. It

5:29

looks like a car key. It just looks like a car key.

5:32

He even had a plug. So

5:35

we've got that there. A plug? Yeah,

5:38

like an Apple I charger. Everybody

5:40

has them in the home nowadays. Yeah. That

5:43

particular one is a recording one. So that's

5:45

a voice activated recorder that's built inside there.

5:47

It still works as a USB charger. This

5:50

is crazy. It's just like being in the room

5:52

when you play it back, especially with headphones on.

5:55

How much would this be? That

5:59

particular one. The other one is 220. But

6:02

we also do another one, which is exactly the

6:05

same as that. Brit's got the same card inside

6:07

it. You just ring the actual socket itself and

6:10

listen live to the room. It was

6:12

at this exact point my producers looked at

6:14

Nigel in disbelief. You could be sat in

6:16

Barbados listening to the room. Don't matter, it's

6:18

the same card. It's more and more, you

6:20

know, it's the more band network. So you

6:22

just ring it and listen

6:24

live. To wherever it is. Oh my

6:27

God. I

6:32

couldn't believe my tiny little eyes, but then Nigel passed

6:34

me something even more unbelievable. A

6:38

spy camera in an air freshener. This

6:40

is like an old school air freshener.

6:42

I was used to cheap air freshener. Yeah. So

6:45

it doesn't attract any attention. You can put it

6:47

wherever the people want it. They don't smell it.

6:51

No, because we've already used the internals. We're not going to leave

6:53

the smelly inside it. Do

6:56

you know what? Do you know

6:58

what? I'm surprised by the normal

7:01

seal, if you know what I mean. Like

7:03

the everydayness of them. Like the

7:05

air freshener I think is the weirdest one of

7:08

all. I've just never seen a guy's deal with

7:10

an air freshener before. Surrounded by

7:12

these seemingly ordinary items, I was eager

7:14

to find out who actually buys them.

7:16

And it turns out there's two distinct

7:19

groups. One is the intimidating

7:21

male crème, the sexy one. And the

7:23

other is the everyday person suspicious that

7:25

their other half is up to no

7:27

good. There's so

7:29

many different people that buy them. Everybody,

7:31

all walks of life. Yeah. Have you

7:33

ever felt nervous? Because I've

7:36

never come in here like, and you're like,

7:38

oh shit. Sometimes, sometimes, yeah.

7:40

Yeah. Sometimes, yeah. But you get used

7:42

to it. I've

7:44

had people in here being tears. Absolutely

7:47

tears in here. Distraught. Because they find

7:49

out something that they didn't want to

7:51

know. I do think by

7:54

the time you're hit set in a spy

7:56

shop, the relationship is

7:58

kind of, it's.

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