There are a ton of podcasts out there, but finding the right one can be difficult. In our new column Pod Hunters, we cover what we’ve been listening to that we can’t stop thinking about.
Sandra, the new fiction podcast from podcast studio Gimlet, opens with a short faux-ad: “There’s a reason why everyone’s switching to Sandra, the world’s most responsive and intelligent personal assistant and knowledge navigator.” In this drama, a company called Orbital Teledynamics has taken over the personal assistant world with a product called Sandra. Like Siri or Alexa, Sandra (voiced by Kristen Wiig) is meant to help people answer questions, order things, and more, all through a small black cube that people talk to.
The difference between Sandra and its real-world counterparts is that it’s not AI-driven: Sandra’s knowledge comes from immense call centers, where Orbital Teledynamic employees are selected through a Sorting Hat-like algorithm to staff certain subjects, and…
