Bonus: Do The Golden Arches Bend Toward Justice?

[0] Christian nationalists want to turn America into a theocracy, a government under biblical rule.

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[4] Hey, Ramteen.

[5] Hey, Ron.

[6] So, another series in the books.

[7] Another day, another dollar.

[8] How fitting for the end of our capitalism series, right?

[9] So, you know, last week we came out with a third and final installment of our series on capitalism.

[10] If you haven't heard it all, go check it out.

[11] And honestly, it feels like we could have done at least three more episodes, like maybe 30 more.

[12] I know.

[13] It's like we just scratched the surface.

[14] And it's definitely a topic we're going to return to since there's so much more to do.

[15] But because we can't get capitalism out of our system, like literally no joke.

[16] We want to share an episode that our fan over at Code Switch dropped a few months ago that goes really well with our series.

[17] Yeah, this episode came out back in April.

[18] And it's not just about capitalism.

[19] It's about black capitalism.

[20] And McDonald's.

[21] I don't even want to say any more about it.

[22] Don't want to spoil it.

[23] Just that it really adds an interesting perspective on how our economic system shapes our lives.

[24] And the impact of capitalism on black communities seen through one iconic American business.

[25] This is a really great one from Code Switch, everyone, so please stick around.

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[34] I'm Shireen, Madysol Maragi.

[35] I'm Gene Demby, and this is Code Switch.

[36] From NPR.

[37] Shireen, you remember these old commercials?

[38] Is my Calvin?

[39] I haven't seen him for a while.

[40] Wonder where he's heading.

[41] I heard he got a job.

[42] Wonder where he's working.

[43] Welcome to McDonald's.

[44] May I help you?

[45] Oh, my God.

[46] That is Calvin.

[47] Yes.

[48] And he is burned into my brain.

[49] Calvin is a part of my coming -of -age story.

[50] Okay, okay.

[51] Tell me what you remember about Calvin.

[52] Well, Calvin was the main character in a bunch of McDonald's commercials in the early 90s.

[53] He was from a neighborhood that had a lot of very cool brownstone.

[54] So maybe he was living in Brooklyn or Harlem.

[55] And he got a job at.

[56] McDonald's, and everyone in the neighborhood was weirdly obsessed with how Calvin's job was going.

[57] Yes, they were very pressed to know what was good with his job.

[58] Like, you live in Brooklyn in 1992, and that is the hottest tee for some reason.

[59] I haven't know what it did.

[60] But yes, the message in these commercials was, this young brother right here was doing something with himself.

[61] He got a good job and a job with lots of room to grow.

[62] Yeah, he had this total Horatio -Alger -ass character arc over a bunch of different commercials.

[63] And that McDonald's campaign lasted four years.

[64] He went from, you know, just a young dude on the block to a trusted employee at Mickey D's and eventually into the junior management program.

[65] Meet the newest member of our management team.

[66] Calvin.

[67] Radishment, dude.

[68] And then some of his boys, some of his boys were roasting him, you know, he was flipping burgers.

[69] But by the end of those commercials, they wanted to.

[70] he could put on too.

[71] Hey, yo, Calvin.

[72] What's the one in that child thing?

[73] Come on, man. No, not for me. Or a friend of mine.

[74] Word.

[75] Calvin was a big part of the culture, not always a celebrated part of the culture.

[76] But definitely a big part of the culture.

[77] I mean, two short references Calvin in his 96 banger, getting it.

[78] Dave Chappelle made fun of the Calvin commercials on his series of whack Arnold's skits on the Chappelle show.

[79] Hey, yo, I heard Calvin got a job.

[80] Man, I'm proud of him.

[81] Afternoon, ladies.

[82] Ew, nigger, you smell like french fries.

[83] But, all right, Shereen, jokes aside.

[84] Jokes aside.

[85] I think Calvin might actually reveal something really important about the way, you know, we as individuals, the way corporations, even the U .S. government, have long sidestepped calls for racial justice.

[86] You know, because people say we want, We want the police to stop beating us.

[87] You want better housing.

[88] We want better schools.

[89] Instead, if someone opens a McDonald's franchise, will you stop asking for things?

[90] What's about to get serious?

[91] Yes, it is.

[92] After the break.

[93] Stay with us.

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[101] Shereen.

[102] Gene.

[103] Code switch.

[104] I always switched it up on you.

[105] So, Shereen, we're going to be talking about some of the particular ways that calls for equality and capitalism have been tied up in each other.

[106] And one of the best ways to understand how that happened is to tell the story of McDonald's.

[107] When I was a teenager and had my own money from after -school jobs, I would go to a McDonald's in Chicago on Jackson and State Street after school.

[108] Whose voice is that?

[109] That is Marcia Chatlin.

[110] She's a historian at Georgetown.

[111] And relevant to our conversation, Shereen, she is the author of a book called Franchise, The Golden Arches in Black America.

[112] And she said growing up, she spent a lot of time hanging out with her friends at that McDonald's.

[113] And it was literally a black history -themed McDonald's, where they would have prints of black art. They would have portraits of famous black people.

[114] And for me, it's so strange.

[115] Like, McDonald's, I knew wasn't a black company, but McDonald's articulation in the places that I would be was always black.

[116] Huh.

[117] I wonder if we have to give props to Chicago Black ad exec, Tom Burrell, for that.

[118] Remember, Sonari Glinton profiled him for our show a few years back.

[119] Tom was very instrumental in marketing the McDonald's brand to Black American families.

[120] Yes, he was.

[121] And that marketing to Black American families was very, very successful.

[122] Marsha kind of admitted that as a kid, she saw that one McDonald's store on Jackson Estate Street as, like, a hub of black culture.

[123] I'm so embarrassed to say, I shouldn't be embarrassed.

[124] this is life.

[125] I don't remember how many times I actually went to the Dusabal Museum of Black History, but I can tell you the number of times.

[126] I saw stuff about like the Tuskegee Airmen and the great HBCUs at some Black -owned McDonald's or some event that had been sponsored by Black franchisees.

[127] Those Black franchisees saw their McDonald's stores as part of like this larger project of Black Uplift.

[128] Marcia says for McDonald's in particular, it was a big pivot because for a long time, Mickey D .'s very much viewed itself as a brand for the white people flocking to shiny new suburbs in the post -war years.

[129] It's about the highways.

[130] It's about bedroom communities.

[131] It's about a certain kind of middle -class youth culture and middle -class disposable income culture that was very much tied into how white families understood themselves after 1945.

[132] Ronald McDonald.

[133] Now, where is that clown?

[134] Here I am, kids.

[135] Hey, isn't watching TV fun?

[136] Especially when you got delicious McDonald's hamburgers.

[137] Ronald, you can't be on.

[138] So McDonald's, one of the most ubiquitous, iconic American brands.

[139] A brand for all Americans was really just for white people.

[140] Sort of?

[141] I mean, it kind of depended.

[142] So Marcia says McDonald's was never, like, efficiently segregated.

[143] But, but this is important.

[144] important.

[145] McDonald's corporate let the franchisees who own McDonald's stores conform to whatever the local racial norms were.

[146] So if we went to a McDonald's someplace in Birmingham back in the day, let's say, they might not serve us if we walked in together, but a McDonald's somewhere farther north might.

[147] Exactly.

[148] Maybe.

[149] Maybe, perhaps.

[150] But she said that all changed after 1968.

[151] Which, of course, is the height of the civil rights movement.

[152] And it's the year that Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated.

[153] Good evening.

[154] Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of nonviolence in the civil rights movement, has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee.

[155] After King was killed, there were riots across the country.

[156] McDonald's was looking at what was happening, the demands that people were making for justice and equality in housing and employment and voting rights.

[157] 1968 was a critical turning point for McDonald's because they were aware of two things.

[158] One, the changing racial demographics of some of the places in which their restaurants were located, neighborhoods that had been all white that became all black overnight, as well as the economic climate of 1968, where people were trying to respond to social unrest by opening up doors, opening up opportunities.

[159] Marcia's talking about white flight there.

[160] So this is when McDonald starts to market to black consumers and open up restaurants.

[161] And open up restaurants in black neighborhoods.

[162] Yeah, and Marcia says this is when McDonald's started looking in earnest for its first black franchise owners.

[163] The very first black owned McDonald's was in Chicago, not far forward.

[164] Marsha's childhood Mickey Dees would eventually be the one, you know, she said that doubled as her shrine to black history.

[165] So if I was going to hazard a guess here, a lot of those black neighborhoods were probably food deserts.

[166] You know, even today, there's consistently not nearly as much access to.

[167] groceries or affordable quality food options in black neighborhoods, as there are in white neighborhoods.

[168] But there's often a lot of fast food.

[169] Mm -hmm.

[170] Not an accident.

[171] Hashtaghan, housing segregation and everything.

[172] Marcia said that, you know, Ray Kroc, who was the man that a lot of people know as the person who made McDonald's into this giant of fast food, he was not some racial liberal, you know, but he found out real quick that those new locations in black neighborhoods were generating a lot a revenue.

[173] I bet.

[174] So you see this incredible shift and what McDonald's did in understanding that there was money to be made by going into black communities.

[175] That's a big deal, Gene.

[176] It's a moment when a lot of white companies realized that they were leaving millions and millions of black dollars on the table.

[177] And that's also when they probably started to realize that, you know, this whole civil rights movement wasn't going to go away and they would eventually have to acknowledge it in some way.

[178] Mm -hmm.

[179] So they started making overtures.

[180] You know, some people might say surfacy, maybe cynical overtures to this new black consumer base.

[181] You know, we care about you.

[182] We share your values.

[183] And back to those early black franchisees, a lot of them did quite well for themselves.

[184] And it wasn't just McDonald's.

[185] Like other fast food chain saw what was happening and they wanted in two.

[186] Famous black folks looked at McDonald's, making people rich and saw an opportunity.

[187] Muhammad Ali lent his name to a chain called Champ Burger.

[188] Mahalia Jackson, the gospel legend, licensed her name to a fried chicken chain.

[189] Mahalia Jackson had a series of restaurant restaurants called Mahalia's Glory Fried Chicken.

[190] Glory fried chicken.

[191] I actually, I really like that.

[192] Yes.

[193] Chicken for the body and the spirit.

[194] I bet she was probably good, too.

[195] For so many of these folks, though, franchising was the key to something bigger.

[196] Because they tried to imagine these as vehicles for, like, church groups or community foundations or public -private partnerships.

[197] to get together, to franchise these things, create job training programs for the young people, and then reinvest the profits in the community.

[198] Those early Black McDonald's franchisees would do things like Whole Voter Registration drives and job fairs in their stores.

[199] This new cohort of black fast food entrepreneurs saw themselves as job creators.

[200] Calvin Callback.

[201] As examples of Black success and Black self -sufficiency, and as actors in the broader.

[202] civil rights movement.

[203] So they believe they weren't just black burger barons and businessmen, but also benefactors who framed their French fries and franchising as one facet in the fight for freedom.

[204] That was, that was pretty good, Sherey.

[205] That's why they pay me the big bucks.

[206] But right, here's the thing, here's the thing.

[207] Marsha's book is about McDonald's, right?

[208] It's about fast food more broadly.

[209] But really is kind of a history of this other thing, this idea.

[210] that black businesses and black entrepreneurship could, okay, if not liberate, then at least offset the racism and resource deprivation of black communities.

[211] Like we said before, this is a story about capitalism, but specifically it's about black capitalism.

[212] Black capitalism is an ideology that suggests that in the absence of full black citizenship rights, that the strategy that the strategy that black people should, pursue is one of economic power and that that collective economic power will eventually lead to the possibility of full citizenship.

[213] So if black people have enough money, if they have enough wealth, they can demand better treatment in American society.

[214] Right.

[215] Or they can make their own treatment, right?

[216] And it's an idea that's way, way older than Black McDonald's.

[217] It has its roots in the 19th century.

[218] And it has inspired a number of activities on the part of black leaders to encourage people to buy property, to encourage people to open their own businesses.

[219] And the strategy really is not only about power, but it's also the thought that you can deflect humiliation and you can protect yourself from the harm of engaging in market activities that make you susceptible to white racism and segregation.

[220] Hmm.

[221] Yeah.

[222] Basically, if you're rich enough, if your community is self -sufficient enough, racism will not touch you in the same way.

[223] And, you know, this idea keeps coming up.

[224] I'm thinking of that Marcus Garvey episode we did not that long ago from ThruLine about his Black Star Line and that kind of capitalism.

[225] Yeah, that's a perfect example, right?

[226] And that's more of a nationalist incline sort of black capitalism.

[227] But that's just one strand of it, right?

[228] Like another more annoying strand to me anyway, doesn't eat.

[229] even require that we go that far back, right?

[230] Like the denizens of LLC Twitter right now, getting on everybody's nerves, talking about grinding and generating passive income and how they built different and how they would go get lunch with Jay -Z.

[231] And personal economic freedom, that's black capitalism too.

[232] So there are various styles and ways to push for entrepreneurship, property ownership, you know, making big money deals.

[233] And that can all be different facets of black capitalism.

[234] As an aside, Gene, there is a very, interesting conversation happening on social media right now on Twitter about BLM founder Patrice Cullors and her newfound wealth.

[235] Yes.

[236] And one of the questions being asked around this is, is Patrice benefiting from a broken system that she says she wants to transform?

[237] So, yeah, this is, I don't want to take up the whole episode with this, but I've been thinking a lot about it and it's definitely something we should follow up on.

[238] It is very complicated, yes, as you would say, but agreed.

[239] Anyway, here's Marsha again.

[240] And I think that every generation has a version of black capitalism that operates and that sets the tone for the conversation of what black people shouldn't be doing.

[241] It's like, don't buy Jordan's invest in Bitcoin.

[242] And at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s, you know this moment when the civil rights movement is kind of fraying, black capitalism is kind of ascendant.

[243] They would cause for black folks to spend their money at black own businesses and to save and invest their money.

[244] with black banks in order to help create black wealth.

[245] You know, this is the era when Black Enterprise magazine was launched by Johnson Publications in Chicago.

[246] Chicago was like that, but under a lot of this.

[247] Oh, yeah.

[248] Shout out to Oprah.

[249] Even black folks who had radically different ideas about like what might constitute black liberation found themselves working alongside and sometimes even defending black capitalists.

[250] So Ralph Appanathy gave a speech after Martin Luther King's death about how we don't need, black capitalism, we need black socialism.

[251] And then he goes to a black owned McDonald's and picks up a donation check for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

[252] You know, in his mind, was he betraying his critique of capitalism?

[253] No, but, you know, aligning yourself with a black franchise owner, I think during that period of time, and I think people still think of it this way, well, yes, he's with McDonald's, but you know how they do us.

[254] And there were sometimes, you know, these new black fast food entrepreneurs found themselves in tension, you know, with some of the other players in the Black Freedom Movement, right?

[255] Like, Marsha talks about this one really intense, sometimes violent confrontation between a black franchisee and Portland, Oregon, of all places, and the local Black Panthers who wanted him to contribute to the free food program.

[256] So McDonald's franchises or Burger King or whoever else became these flashpoints for big questions over how black neighborhoods should look.

[257] and even the kinds of obligations that people in those neighborhoods had to each other.

[258] Yeah, that's right.

[259] And Shereen, one of Black capitalism's biggest proponents, one of his loudest cheerleaders in those heady post -Martin Luther King years, was your boy, Richard M. Nixon.

[260] Oh, my gosh.

[261] President Nixon love Black capitalism.

[262] We've talked on the show about how Nixon's due for self and uplift through capitalism messaging really appealed to certain people of color.

[263] Latino Republicans were very down with his whole entrepreneurship messaging, actually.

[264] Mm -hmm.

[265] Mm -hmm.

[266] Mm -hmm.

[267] At one point, Richard Nixon even gave a speech to a black audience in which he called black capitalism the real black power.

[268] Here's Marcia again.

[269] President Nixon was like the ultimate and the evil genius because he knew what he had to do to get on the other side.

[270] So he could continue to get some black faithfuls to the Republican Party, even though they had essentially.

[271] all gone away after 1964, but there were still some loyals.

[272] But what he also had were black celebrities.

[273] He had Wilts Chamberlain.

[274] He had James Brown.

[275] And so what Nixon understood was you have to say something to pretend that you don't have an all -out hatred towards black people and civil rights in progress, but you're not going to carry the banner of the civil rights struggle.

[276] And Marshall said another practical policy reason Nixon caught into this idea that private black business could provide black neighborhoods with all these things that they were lacking is that loan guarantees and grants and tax incentives, things like that, they don't require billions of dollars of federal investment and direct intervention into these big controversial issues that the riots and the unrest and the protests of the 60s have brought attention to.

[277] You don't have to really touch the issue of school integration.

[278] You don't really have to touch the issue of fair housing because all of these ideas presuppose all black neighborhoods and all black communities.

[279] And as long as those continue, you can say black -owned business and you can mean segregation under the terms that work for people who don't like the idea of integration.

[280] That is a very eye -opening way of looking at all of this.

[281] Also, how does owning a Mickey D's franchise or, dare I say, a McDowell's, solve the problem of these communities' loss of a tax base after white flight.

[282] The fact that many of these neighborhoods were ravaged by civil unrest and riots and that so many of these places remained blighted until like now many of them.

[283] Yeah, like here in D .C., like a lot of the major places destroyed by the riots of 68, the King riots, like, did not bounce back until like the 21st century.

[284] And to that point, like it made the entities that did invest in those blighted places, like fast food spots, outsized players and their local economies.

[285] And if you look at some of McDonald's print ads aimed at black people from like the 1970s -ongerine, you will start to see a theme.

[286] Yeah, okay, I'm looking at one right now on my computer screen that reads, at which $8 billion corporation do black executives help call the shots?

[287] And there's a black hand in the ad with what looks like a gold McDonald's ring.

[288] That McDonald's ring is wild.

[289] It really is.

[290] Mick Drip Deluxe, McBling.

[291] There's also another print ad here that reads, Who is the largest employer of black youth in America?

[292] And then you see a picture of a black teen putting on a McDonald's hat.

[293] Yes.

[294] So McDonald's was really leaning into this idea that supporting McDonald's meant supporting black economic empowerment.

[295] Yeah, and that is how we eventually end up with your boy.

[296] Yes.

[297] Calvin.

[298] Yep, I'm part of the management team now, Mama.

[299] Oh, baby, I'm so proud of you.

[300] It's only afternoons, but still it's a promotion.

[301] You know, now that I think about it, one very telling thing about those Calvin ads when you look back at them is that there is not any food in those ads.

[302] Yes.

[303] There are no fries anywhere.

[304] None.

[305] There are no cheeseburgers.

[306] I guess that is because the food was really beside the point.

[307] Yes, exactly.

[308] Calvin, you know, was supposed to represent a better way for black youth, a way up, a way out.

[309] Thanks to the largest employer of black youth in America.

[310] Mm -hmm.

[311] You know, I'd like to think that had the McDonald's cinematic universe continued to unfold...

[312] So, like, the Calvin and the Winter Soldier.

[313] Ah, that Calvin would have gone on to own his very own McDonald's, then several McDonald's.

[314] He would be offering scholarships to HBCU students.

[315] Also probably like lamenting the evils of sagging pants, you know.

[316] But interestingly enough, Marcia says, a funny thing would have happened on the way that Calvin's blow up, right?

[317] Because in real life, by the time Calvin came onto the scene in the 1990s, when we were kids, the odds of getting rich through owning McDonald's in a black neighborhood were basically gone, right?

[318] Like, it was a long shot.

[319] Because, for one, every hood in America was flooded with fast food options by then.

[320] So there was, you know, too much competition, the margins were already thin to begin with.

[321] And at that point, you needed so much more of your own startup capital to get into the game to buy a franchise.

[322] Right.

[323] Startup capital that black people don't have because, you know, this thing called the racial wealth gap.

[324] Mm -hmm, mm -hmm.

[325] The fact that black people have a much harder time creating household wealth.

[326] Absolutely.

[327] So the fortunes that some of those early, early black franchisees made, or at least like the upper middle class lives that they managed to attain.

[328] They were mostly, like, out of reach.

[329] And obviously, for the workers at those places, fast food was never going to be an avenue to wealth or even, you know, livability in a lot of cases.

[330] There may have been more of those jobs in black neighborhoods than there were before the civil rights movement, but these were still, you know, close to minimum wage jobs with very few protections.

[331] Right.

[332] Black capitalism is still capitalism.

[333] Yes.

[334] And in a lot of places, those were the only jobs in town.

[335] And that's where you get to, like, all the other, like, broader consequences of fast food, right, on community health.

[336] on climate, Marcia said that, you know, in a real way, Calvin represented this ethos, you know, shared by many of those franchisees, that them creating jobs was a kind of civic duty that they felt.

[337] But he was also kind of meant as a response to the idea of the Mick Job, right?

[338] That these jobs were just dead -end gigs, that they weren't cool places to work.

[339] But even now, Marcia says, the ideas about Black Uplift that Calvin represented are still with us.

[340] So remember, way back in 19, In 1968, when black people were organizing and marching and there was unrest across the country, people were making very clear asks.

[341] We want the police to stop beating us.

[342] We want decent housing.

[343] We want good schools for our children.

[344] We want jobs that pay living wages.

[345] We want public spaces in which to gather and create and grow.

[346] And Marcia said what black neighborhoods got instead was, you know, small business loans, tax breaks, so -called empowerment zones.

[347] the people in those neighborhoods got to participate a little more in the consumer economy.

[348] The answer was, if someone opens a bookstore, if someone opens a McDonald's franchise, will you stop asking for things?

[349] And that was always the kind of issue that perplexed me. What did I just ask you?

[350] America might not have had the stomach for anything bolder or more transformative, like things that would have put a dent in these inequalities that we're always talking about.

[351] But it did have an appetite.

[352] for, though, was, well, quarter poundless.

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[360] Gene, you first talked to Marcia about her book last year.

[361] But since then, George Floyd and Brianna Taylor were killed by the police.

[362] And in fact, right before we recorded this, another black man named Dante Wright was also killed by the police in Minneapolis.

[363] This is at the same time that the trial for Darry.

[364] Eric Chauvin, the officer charged with George Floyd's murder, is going on.

[365] And lots of people took to the streets to call attention to these huge problems in American society after George Floyd's death.

[366] A lot of them are the very same problems people were calling attention to in the 1960s.

[367] That's absolutely right.

[368] Marsha said that many of the asks then and now have been similar.

[369] But so has a big part of the response.

[370] Like, instead of grappling with these hard questions around these issues, like how and whether we should reimagine how our society is arranged or thinking about what people need, the reaction that has been most sustained and the loudest has generally been more like.

[371] Target commits suspending more than $2 billion with black -owned businesses by 2025.

[372] At Tiffany and Company, we want to use the privilege of our platform to make a difference.

[373] Robin Hood stands in solidarity with everyone fighting systemic racism.

[374] We want you to know that we hear you and we care about your experiences on TikTok.

[375] Uber stands in solidarity with the black community and with peaceful protests against the injustice.

[376] This is the work of anti -racism and the journey for Peloton begins now.

[377] And that has been the treatment of black people for more than five decades.

[378] And so, you know, after George Floyd's death, when I kept on hearing by black business, support black creators.

[379] I had just moved into a house and I was buying furniture and all these furniture companies were like, we pledged to have 15 % of our furniture designers to be black.

[380] I'm like, okay, let's go back to the central reason why George Floyd's life did not matter that day.

[381] What in the world will these businesses do?

[382] And I think that the danger of all of these bad ideas is that to suggest that then black businesses can actually support the way of massive state failure.

[383] All right, y 'all, that's our show.

[384] Please follow us on Twitter.

[385] We're at NPR Code Switch.

[386] You can follow Shereen at Radio Mirage and me at GED -E -215.

[387] We want to hear from you.

[388] Our email is CodeSwitch at npr .org and subscribe to the podcast on NPR One or wherever you get your podcast.

[389] This episode was produced by Leah Dinella and Jess Kong.

[390] It was edited by Leah Dinella.

[391] And of course, we got a shout out the rest of the Code Switch Massive.

[392] That's Kumar David.

[393] Rajin, Karen Grigsby Beats, L .A. Johnson, Natalie Escobar, Alyssa Jong Perry, and Steve Drummond.

[394] Our intern is Samar Tomad.

[395] He's Gene Demby.

[396] And you are Shereemar's Omaraji.

[397] Be easier.

[398] Peace.

[399] Support for this podcast and the following message come from Dignity Memorial.

[400] When your celebration of life is prepaid today, your family is protected tomorrow.

[401] Planning ahead is truly one of the best gifts you can give your family.

[402] For additional information, visit DignityMemorial .com.

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[406] The TED Radio Hour explores the biggest questions and the most complicated ideas of our time with the world's greatest thinkers.

[407] Listen now to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

[408] On the TED Radio Hour, MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle, her latest research into the intimate relationships people are having with chatbots.

[409] Technologies that say, I care about you.

[410] I love you.

[411] I'm here for you.

[412] Take care of me. The pros and cons of artificial intimacy.

[413] That's on the TED Radio Hour from NPR.