Magic Tom: Hi! I'm Magic Tom, the producer for Sam & Ted's Famous Last Words. Welcome to the Babbel Sound studio where we're sitting in on an American and a Brit twisting each other's words, getting tongue tied and generally reflecting upon the strange beauty of that majestic, rather odd thing we call the English language. Let's start the show!

Sam: Ted, are you worried at all about being replaced by Artificial Intelligence?

Ted: What? Why? Am I being fired?

Sam: Calm down, Ted. I’ve just been thinking…

Ted: Oh boy…

Sam: You know how everyone’s saying that computers are gonna replace humans in the next few years? Right? And you know they can already translate stuff with Artificial Intelligence?

Ted: Pff! Get real. Artificial Intelligence might be useful for translating “I like your hat” or “Isn’t that a camel over there?” but it will never be able to do the sort of stuff we do. I mean, computers can’t tell clever jokes like we can…

Sam: What I’d like to see is someone invent a robot that does stupid stuff all the time and makes bad decisions, like real humans, yeh?

Ted: Yeah, that’d be fun to watch! Like, spilling coffee on their laptop and making stupid spelling mistakes. A dumb android.

Sam: Yeah, that would be cool, right? Hey Ted, um, I have a question, what is an android, actually? Is it the same thing as a robot?

Ted: Um, yeah, kind of, I guess. An android is a robot that has a human form – you know, it looks like a human.

Sam: Oh right. Can you imagine android Sam and Teds? I’m not sure anyone could make exact copies of us… I mean, not the way you dress.

Ted: Maybe we are androids and nobody told us!

Sam: I’d know if you were an android. You’d smell weird… I mean, weirder. Where does the term android come from, anyway?

Ted: Well, I'm glad you asked, it’s, um, actually made up of two Greek roots, "andr-" meaning “man”, and "-oid" meaning "to have the form of". So android means “having the form of man”, but is used for any robots that have a human form. A robot with a specifically female appearance can also be called a "gynoid" or "fembot". The term android first became popular in the 1800s, when it was used to refer to automated chess playing machines. It entered common use in sci-fi around the 1950s, and was made super famous by Philip K. Dick in his book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Sam: That’s the book that the film Blade Runner is based on, right?

Ted: Yeh, exactly, but in the movie the androids are called replicants. Anyhoo. Later, George Lucas shortened it to droid in the Star Wars films. Since then, androids have popped up all over the place in films like Ex Machina, AI, Bicentennial Man, Aliens, Terminator and The Stepford Wives, in TV on shows like Westworld and Star Trek, and even in real life. I recently spent too much time watching videos of androids on the internet, and let me tell you, don’t do that before going to bed. Creepy!

Sam: I had no idea you’re such a sci-fi geek.

Ted: I sure am!

Sam: Hey, that would actually be a great theme for a podcast.

Ted: That is the theme of today’s podcast, Sam. Ahh, you're such a space cadet…

Sam: What?

Ted: Your head’s in the clouds – come back down to Earth, space cadet!

Sam: Oh right, err yeh, yeh, yeh. It's great, I love it.

Ted: Right. And after my first segment you’ll know every word you’ll ever need for going into space. Cyberspace at least. It’s called…

CYBER-WHAT?

Ted: So, I’m gonna talk about the connection between science fiction and science fact.

Sam: So, you're a scientist now are you Ted? 

Ted: No, but I have read a lot of science fiction books and you’d be surprised at how many words and phrases that we use today come from this genre of writing!

Sam: Go on then – surprise me!

Ted: Alright, so the first one I've got, again a word that most people know these days, and that word is "robot".

Robot -

A great example of sci-fi becoming reality. The word robot was first used in a play by Czech writer Karel Čapek in 1920. It comes from the Slavic word robota, meaning work. The writer Isaac Asimov popularized the word in stories like “Liar!” and “I, Robot”.

Sam: Yeh sure, everyone knows what a robot is.

Ted: Right, exactly. But, do you know where this word comes from, Sam?

Sam: Um, I'm not sure I do, Ted.

Ted: Well, the word "robot" was actually first used in a play by a Czech writer, Karl Čapek, all the way back in 1920, way before robots were even a real thing. Um, so the word "robot", it actually comes from slavic, err the word "Roboter", which means "work". And then of course, the writer, Isaac Asimov, popularized the word in stories of his like Liar and I, Robot. 

Sam: Which they made a film of, right? Or, there's, there is a film, no?

Ted: Don't remind me.

Sam: Ok. Moving on, um, your next, err, term on the list?

Ted: The next term is "Avatar". You know this one, right?

Avatar -

Originally a Sanskrit word meaning “he passes down”. Was used to describe the form a god took when coming to the human world. The way we use it today comes from the book Snowcrash by Neil Stephenson, where characters enter a sort of virtual reality, the Metaverse, and are represented by “avatars”. And of course, there’s the film Avatar.

Sam: Yeh, yeh, yeh – the film, it's the film, "Avatar", right? Yeh, yeh, with the big blue creatures.

Ted: Right, yeh, there's a connection to that, sure. Um, but actually, "Avatar", um, has been a word for a long time. It comes from, err, an ancient language, Sanskrit, and originally it meant "he passes down".

Sam: "He passes down".

Ted: Yeh, "he passes down".

Sam: Right ok, so like he comes down?

Ted: Right, yeh, but who is he?

Sam: Who, who is he? That's a good question. 

Ted: "He" in this case, I guess, was used to refer to, err, like a god and when a god would come down from heaven or wherever, and would take a human form on earth, that was his "avatar".

Sam: Ok, right, um, yeh.

Ted: Yeh, so, but the way that we use it today, um, comes from a book called Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson, and in this book, um, the characters enter a sort of virtual reality called the "metaverse", and in the metaverse, they're represented by digital avatars.

Sam: Alright, yeh.

Ted: So, if you imagine like their little picture that's to the left of your name on an internet forum, that's your avatar.

Sam: Mmm, good, good to know. Ok, what else have you got for us?

Ted: The next one – again, super popular, and that is "spaceship", "spaceship". And "spaceship" comes from the novel A Journey in Other Worlds, written in 1894 but set in the year 2000.

Sam: Ok, ok – can you just explain that one more time. What exactly is an avatar?

Sam: Cool.

Ted: This term is a good example of the language of sea travel and ships being used to talk about space travel.

Sam: Oh right, yeh, yeh, yeh, sure. It sort of brings to mind the feeling of venturing out across the vast oceans, and exploring unknown worlds, right?

Ted: Right.

Sam: Yeh, yeh – very nautical. Any other terms?

Ted: The next one you also hear a lot today, and that is "cyberspace", "cyberspace". 

Sam: "Cyberspace".

Ted: "Cyberspace". And, um, this one comes from William Gibson's novel Neuromancer. And, in that book, people can go inside err the space in a computer, and experience it physically.

Sam: What?!

Ted: Right?!

Sam: They go into computers?

Ted: They can go into computers…

Sam: Right, well that's definitely science fiction and not science fact, right?

Ted: Definitely. Um, but of course today when we use the word cyberspace we mostly use it to speak about the internet.

Sam: Yeah of course, right. And um, and actually the prefix "cyber-" um is super popular, right? Um, on top of cyberspace, we've got cybersex, cyberattack, and cyberbully, for example. Which reminds me, Ted. Did you ever read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?

Ted: Yeah, but a long time ago… the details are a little fuzzy.

Sam: You probably remember that the author, Douglas Adams, mixed real scientific terms with made-up stuff, right? And this includes some of the earliest uses of cyber. The Oxford English Dictionary cites Adams as an early user of cyborg, to refer to a robot, and of cybercubicle.

Ted: What is a cybercubicle?

Sam: That is a very good question, Ted. Um, I think it's a cubicle, as in an office cubicle, not a toilet cubicle, but I'm not sure haha. Err, in any case, it’s a term that didn’t really catch on to be honest.

Ted: Yeah, I've never heard anyone say that in real life.

Sam: Yeh, no one says it, it's true. Anyway, as I was saying before you interrupted me, the name of Adams’s fictional Sirius Cybernetics Corporation appears in the Oxford English Dictionary entry for cybernetics.

Ted: And what is cybernetics?

Sam: Another good question, Ted. Err, cybernetics is the science of creating robots that sort of get on with it and just sort of do their own thing, you know? They're automated.

Ted: Yeh, like the little vacuum cleaner that my parents have at home that cleans the house all by itself!

Sam: Yeah, they're cool, right, yeah, yeah. Some people put their cats on top of them. Have you seen those videos?

Ted: Right, yeah, yeah.

Sam: Yeah, yeah, and they just, like, the cats ride around the house on the hoovers.

Ted: Or a speaker, and then you have, err, DJ Roomba…

Sam: Haha, amazing what people think up! Um, so, anyway, going back to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in this book, they create robots with real human personalities, um, so we end up with depressed and neurotic robots like one of the main characters, Marvin, whose nickname is "The Paranoid Android".

Ted: Hmmm… well in that case, I'm kinda glad my parents’ vacuum cleaner doesn’t have a personality.

Sam: Yeah, no one wants a neurotic vacuum cleaner, right?

Sam: That would be horrible. While we're on the subject of Douglas Adams, do you have any idea where Google gets its name from?

Ted: Google?

Ted: That would be a mess to deal with.

Sam: Yeah, Google. You know? Err, that, err, internet search engine… it's quite famous…

Ted: Err, yeah, ok, yeah. 

Sam: Ok, so you know what Google is at least? In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there's this computer, ok. And it's a supercomputer, and it comes up with the answer to the meaning of life. This computer is called "Deep Thought". Deep Thought was built as an improvement on another computer which was called the "Googleplex Starthinker".

Ted: Ah… so Google the search engine got its name from Douglas Adams?

Sam: Well, yeah… I mean, the inventors of Google were big fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so it is possible… Oh and there's another good one actually. Um, you ever heard of a Babelfish?

Ted: Is that like a British fish and chips? "I’d like a battered Babelfish and a large chips, please missus!"

Sam: Haha, your um British accent gets better all the time, Ted, err, um, yes, yeah I mean you're working hard, I can tell. Um, and in any case, to answer your question, a Babelfish is not anything to do with fish and chips. It's actually a small yellow fish which you put in your ear.

Ted: Urghh…

Ted: It allows you to understand any foreign language… um, at least in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The name of the fish is a reference to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel from the book of Genesis, in which the people of the world worked together to build a tower to reach the heavens. God clearly didn’t like that, so he destroyed the tower, and then mixed up their languages so they couldn’t understand each other anymore. The word Babel is from the Hebrew Babylon, which means ‘gate of god’.

Ted: Ah, I would love to have one in real life!

Sam: You want a fish in your ear?

Ted: Um, maybe without the fish in the ear part…

Sam: It'd be kind of wet and wriggly, no?

Ted: But it would be great to understand every single language.

Sam: Well, I'm not sure about that. Anyway, um, so the name of this fish is a reference to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, from the book of Genesis, in which the people of the world work together to build a tower to reach the heavens. God wasn't a big fan of this idea for obvious reasons, and he destroyed the tower, mixed up everyone's languages and they couldn't understand each other anymore. Actually, interestingly, "to babble" which means to talk rapidly and incomprehensibly comes from the "baa" sounds that babies make. Um, that was a bit more of a sheep "baa" there but, err, babies are more like, "ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba". So, so this sort of "ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, babbel…", this is the connection, so…

Sam: Yeah, it sounds like what it is.

Ted: Ah, ok!

Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so, um… the word "baby" of course has the sim-, similar origin. 

Ted: Ah, ok, so it's kinda of a onomatopoeia – a word that comes from a sound.

Ted: Ok.

Sam: "Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba"

Ted: This is all very fitting, Sam. I mean, we work for Babbel, right?

Sam: Ted, that is another moment of brilliant insight.

Ted: Why, thank you!

Sam: You do yourself love a good old babble, I've noticed.

Ted: True. But you know this, this whole Babelfish, Babbel, to babble thing, it's a bit confusing…

Sam: So this, Ted, is a Babbel podcast, and Babbel comes from the German verb babbeln, meaning to talk like a baby.

Sam: Yeah, ok, so… this is how it is, Ted. The babel fish is a fictional fish that you put in your ear…

Ted: Right.

Sam: … for translation. The company we work for is Babbel. This here is a Babbel podcast.

Ted: Ok. 

Sam: And, Babbel, the word, comes from the German verb "babbeln", meaning to talk like a baby. 

Ted: How ironic. Anyway, um, I've heard that the meaning is actually closer to "to chat" in a German dialect. 

Sam: Well, yep, we do like to chat, we like to "babbel" a lot, right? 

Ted: Yeah, right.

Sam: And one last interesting fact, um, while we're talking about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is that these books contain one of the earliest uses of the word electronic book, long before the appearance of kindles and other e-book devices. It really was a visionary bit of sci-fi. Speaking of Babbel and of e-books, we have a very special guest today, Ted. 

Ted: Right! We’ve got a special sci-fi edition of celebrity bites, and in keeping with the theme of the episode, we will be calling it…

Ted: So, who is our guest today, Sam?

Sam: Our guest today, Ted, is our very own Babbel Magazine visionary, Claire Voyant! She works so hard, it might be easy to mistake her for an android, but I assure you, she’s 100% home-grown earthling! Welcome to the studio, Claire.

Claire: Thank you so much for having me, Sam and Ted. 

Ted: Thank you for joining us. So, Claire, you’re not only the Editor of the Babbel Magazine, but also a known sci-fi nerd. Do you have any favorite authors or books that you wanna tell us about?

Claire: Do I just have to keep it to books, or can I also talk about other works?

Ted: You can talk about any form of sci-fi that you would like.

Claire: Yeah, so, I would say that I'm a very stereotypical sci-fi nerd. I'm really into Star Trek. I am a self-proclaimed Trekkie.

Ted: Err, a Trekkie being…

Sam: A fan of Star Trek, right?

Claire: Yeah!

Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course… I thought… 

Claire: Trek, Trekkie, you know?

Ted: Ok, alright…

Claire: Um, but, recently, I (have) also been loving the Red Mars trilogy…

Ted: Ok…

Claire: It's a Hugo Award winner, so anybody who really loves the written side of sci-fi, I also grew up reading Michael Crichton.

Ted: Jurassic Park!

Sam: Mm, hmm. 

Sam: Yeah, another very famous author, right? Yeah, yeah.

Claire: Yeah, exactly. But any sci-fi I would say I'm in it, I'm there.

Ted: Alright!

Sam: Um, I have a quick question actually. Claire, you’re from the beautiful state of Arizona, right?

Claire: I am indeed!

Sam: And I’ve heard that Arizona is in the top 10 for UFO sightings in the United States.

Ted: Alien spaceships, you mean?

Sam: Yes Ted. Um, so Claire, can you tell us, have you ever had a close encounter of any kind? I mean, have you ever been abducted by aliens?

Claire: Unfortunately I have not yet been abducted. I still have much of my life to be abducted, so I think that there's a good chance that it will still happen. I was alive during the Phoenix lights sightings.

Ted: I just read about that on the internet last week.

Sam: Err, what was that exactly?

Claire: It's, um, there were all of these sightings over Phoenix, my hometown in Arizona. Um, where there was like this big V-shaped like star formation of these bright lights, flying over the Phoenix skyline.

Sam: Wow!

Claire: Um, the government did come out and say that they were like government ships that they were testing, but I think that's fake.

Ted: That's a lie. Total lie. 

Claire: Totally fake. 

Sam: Yeh, sounds like a cover up to me. 

Ted: Definitely aliens!

Sam: Might have been geese though, right? You know, like…

Ted: … shiny…

Sam: … geese in fluorescent tops or something!

Ted: … bright… geese… sure! Ok, you should…

Sam: We'll do some more research, right?

Ted: You should work for the government, Sam!

Sam: I probably shouldn't work for any government… moving on!

Ted: Alright, anyway! So, um, Claire you mentioned that you wanna talk to us about another kind of "babble" today, right?

Claire: Yes, so I know you guys have covered several different types of "babble", also in sci-fi, but I want to talk about "technobabble".

Sam: Ohh, are we getting a company DJ?! I love techno.

Ted: Sam, you really are living on another planet, aren’t you?

S: I sometimes wish I was, Ted. Um, are you saying I have unrealistic expectations?

T: I'm saying that you're living in a fantasy world. Anyway, technobabble is incomprehensible technological language – often used in sci-fi, right Claire?

Claire: That is what I would call partially true. There are actually two different definitions of technobabble. One is, I would say, in the real world, technobabble is perhaps you're talking to someone who actually works in the sciences and they might be using vocabulary that's way outside of what you would normally use, and it feel like you're being excluded. That's bad technobabble.

Sam: So, stuff that nobody understands except scientists?

Ted: Ok.

Claire: Exactly. Um…

Sam: Ok, nothing to do with techno then?

Claire: No, unfortunately nothing to do with techno. It's very un-Berlin.

Sam: That's a shame!

Claire: Then there's the other, I would say fun, light-hearted side of technobabble, and that's what Ted is referring to. So, in science-fiction, a really essential part of world-building is when TV shows, books, movies are using technological language that is made up to give you a sense of the world and how things are working.

Sam: Yeah, yeah, so err good technobabble helps an author create err a visionary world, like an imaginary world.

Claire: Exactly. Because most sci-fi takes place in the future, not all of it, but most of it, or otherwise, um, is reliant upon technology that we don't currently have. You'd sometimes need to make up extra vocabulary to kind of fill in the blanks of how we can travel faster than light, or how you can clone dinosaurs because obviously we don't have that yet, so…

Sam: …yet!

Claire: Yet! Key word is "yet". 

Sam: I'm looking forward to it. 

Ted: I wanna ride a velociraptor!

Sam: Bring 'em back!

Ted: Alright! So, you talked about some good examples of technobabble. Could you, could you give us some concrete ones from your experience in sci-fi?

Sam: I think everyone has heard of Star Trek or you know, there's, there are so many films, and it was a TV series originally, right?

Claire: Right, yeah. Five TV series. 

Ted: Five?!

Sam: Five TV series?!

Claire: Twelve movies.

Ted: Twelve?!

Sam: Twelve movies?! That's crazy.

Claire: Yeah, yeah, it's crazy, and all of the official books, so there's like a whole world of Star Trek out there.

Ted: Alright. 

Claire: Yes, so I'm (gonna) talk about Star Trek. I think this is, first of all, a good example of good technobabble, um and also it's very prolific, so most people have heard of a lot of Star Trek. 

Claire: So, I would say like the, the classic example is the transporter. We do not have transporters. But they're using transporters that's made of technology to just magically take you from one place, transport you, into another place. And, um, so it has like a very specific word. They also say like "beam me up", and we know what this means.

Sam: Yep, yep, that's the classic Star Trek line actually isn't it?

Ted: Right, "Beam me up, Scotty!"

Sam: "Beam me up, Scotty!" Scotty was the guy who was operating the transporter.

Claire: Yeh, fun fact that phrase was actually never once uttered in completion in the original series. That was made up. But people did say, "Beam me up", and they did say "Scotty". Just never together.

Ted: Ahh…

Sam: Wow, there you go…

Ted: Interesting … learned something new today!

Claire: Um, I would also say that some really great examples of technobabble are, I'ma again talk about the Red Mars trilogy. Kim Stanley Robinson. He's the author. He uses a lot of real geology terms, and then like makes modifications to them, so that you get a sense of the Mars landscape.

Ted: Right. This is a, a trilogy about changing Mars into like a liveable, err green water-filled world, like Earth, right?

Claire: Exactly. So, it follows the process of terraforming, so turning a planet into terra, which is another word for earth, making it into a more Earth-like planet. 

Sam: Nothing to do with "terror" as in fear then?

Ted: Not "terror"!

Claire: "Terror-forming"!

Sam: "Terraforming" being spelled "T-E-R-R-A-F-O-R-M-I-N-G"…

Ted: Right.

Sam: Terraforming.

Claire: Perfect.

Sam: Right, ok, yeah, yeah…

Claire: Exactly.

Sam: Great.

Claire: Um…

Ted: So he uses a lot of, like real geological terms to, to make it feel more grounded in reality, is what you're saying?

Sam: But he changes them a little bit.

Claire: Exactly, but he adds some like small modifications like they're going… but he creates new names for bacteria that they're creating to terraform the surface, and so he's grounding his language on real scientific language, but he's adding things to it, so, it's, it's fictional. 

Sam: Yeah.

Claire: And that's great technobabble.

Sam: Yeah, and, and this is err sort of how the process works, right, of um, creating new words. People do do that all the time in lots of different modes of life, um, and especially with science-fiction, you find these fictional terms, then being adopted by scientists, so it's err a kind of loop thing going on, right?

Claire: Yeah.

Sam: It's quite cool.

Ted: Right.

Claire: Exactly.

Ted: Alright, very good! So, now we have some examples of good technobabble that really bring us into the world and kind of, um, make us feel comfortable and like we understand what's going on in the story, but there's gotta be some examples of bad technobabble out there.

Claire: Yeah. So, ok, I'm actually not gonna talk about Star Wars, I would say that most of Star Wars is bad technobabble, but I don't wanna start a firestorm on this podcast.

Ted: You don't wanna talk about midi-chlorians in here?! Ok!

Claire: No!

Sam: I don't think anyone should talk about midi-chlorians, you know, in a tiny sound studio!

Claire: No, I would say another really popular sci-fi series that I love and that's very close to my heart is Battlestar Galactica.

Sam: Ah that's great!

Claire: It's amazing series!

Sam: It's amazing!

Claire: Everyone should watch it, um, and I love Battlestar, but they frequently do not use enough technobabble to kind of build their world. You do hear a lot about the 'cylons' which are their kind of androids, replicants, whatever you wanna call them.

Sam: And the, the cylons are bad, right?

Ted: They're the bad ones, yeah!

Sam: … baddies?

Claire: Yeah, exactly.

Ted: Ok.

Claire: Although if you watch the series, some, some cylons are good. Um, but they also have ????? in travel, um, but they do 'jumps', um, and the most explanation that you ever get about jumps is I think in the first or second episode, you find out that lots of the crew doesn't like jumps. They're like, we're gonna prepare to jump!

Sam: They're not up for jumping. 

Claire: They're not up for jumping!

Sam: They're not jumpers!

Ted: Does it make you like feel sick?

Claire: Yeh, they're like, 'Oh I feel so sick!', and then they just jump. And then they never explain ever how this works. And like you…

Sam: So, can we… just one, one second, just err, explain 'jumping' in Battlestar Galactica is traveling faster than the speed of light?

Claire: It… they are traveling faster than the speed of light, but I would say again this is part of the problem - they never explain some of the fake science behind it…

Sam: Yeah, right, yeah…

Claire: I would say it's more akin to like a wormhole jump.

Ted: Ok.

Claire: If you're also into…

Sam: I'm confused now. 

Claire: Ok, ok, a wormhole is like a, is a piece of, is a piece of space in the space-time continuum that for no good explanation that scientists know connects one part of space to a completely different part of space. And if you travel through a wormhole, then you can just jump across huge spaces of time.

Sam: Right, so to clarify for our listeners…

Claire: Yes.

Sam: There are no worms in wormholes.

Claire: No.

Sam: Not ones in space, anyway…

Ted: Thank God!

Sam: Um, so… but tunnels, a wormhole is a tunnel…

Sam: … in space, between two separate points.

Claire: Yes, thank you.

Claire: And so when they're jumping, they're more like, in Battelstar, they're going from one place to another place very far away. But there's no explanation given as to why or how!

Sam: We have no idea what they're doing!

Claire: No!

Ted: Alright, so, so this… this is a case…

Sam: Yeah, that's bad technobabble, for sure, yeah, yeah!

Ted: Right, a lack of technobabble is bad technobabble.

Claire: Basically!

Ted: Ok, alright! Very good!

Sam: Super!

Ted: Claire, thank you very much. That was out of this world!

Sam: Nice choice of phrase, Ted! And yes, like Ted said, Claire, that was awesome. Thank you for joining us on the show.

Claire: Thank you again so much for having me. I'm always happy to talk about sci-fi.

Sam: Well, maybe we'll have you back.

Ted: Alright, so folks, um, that’s all for today.

Sam: Ted! What’s that in the corner? It’s making a horrible noise and it's sucking things up at an alarming rate!

Ted: It’s, it's a tear in the space-time continuum, Sam! A WORMHOLE!

Sam: Hang on, no it’s not, it’s one of those little robot vacuum cleaners like the one your parents have.

Ted: Oh. Yeah right.

Sam: So, anyway, listeners, we’ll be back in two weeks with another thrilling selection of English cyberbabble. In the meantime you can…

Ted: … contact us on twitter @babbel or email us at podcasting@babbel.com

Sam & Ted: Beam us up, Scotty!