Paresh Dave: How did you find out that this went on sale?
Michael Calore: I subscribed to a newsletter, my friend Mark Weidenbaum, it’s called Disquiet. And he was like, “Hey, the Buddha Machine is back,” and posted a link and it was an immediate buy. So I would say that if you have any weirdo sound art friends or musician friends or friends who like to meditate and use white noise machines and things like that, it makes a great gift.
Lauren Goode: This is awesome. It’s so cute.
Michael Calore: It is very cute.
Lauren Goode: There’s so many different colors.
Michael Calore: Do you want to hear what it sounds like?
Lauren Goode: Yeah. How long does the battery—it’s two AA batteries. How long does it last for?
Michael Calore: Oh, years. It lasts years, at least the old one did. The old one lasted years. Let me turn it on. And it has a bunch of different loops.
[Soft soothing music plays from the Buddha Machine.]
Michael Calore: All right, so yeah, it just plays loops. And you turn it on and you set it down, you find a loop you like and you can either put headphones in or you can just leave it sitting on your desk and it just makes noise and it’s very calming.
It’s very calming. I love that about it.
Lauren Goode: I love this thing.
Michael Calore: Yeah, it’s really neat.
Paresh Dave: Sorry, did you say how much it was?
Michael Calore: It’s like after tax and shipping, it’s about $40. Yeah, I think it is like $31, $32, something like that. But yeah, it’s an under $40 gift pick.
Paresh Dave: I don’t know how much normal white noise machines cost, but it feels like a lot.
Michael Calore: This is no normal white noise machine. It’s a beautiful piece of art.
Lauren Goode: Mike, I kind of want that for Christmas.
Michael Calore: OK, noted.
Lauren Goode: Can you make it happen?
Michael Calore: I can, yeah, sure.
Lauren Goode: OK cool.
Michael Calore: All right, well that is our show for this week. Excellent picks everybody. Paresh, thanks for coming on and telling us about this new radical computing device.
Paresh Dave: It was quite pinteresting.
Lauren Goode: Interesting. Paresh, if you just buy a $37 Buddha Machine and you pin it to your chest, is that essentially the same thing as the Humane Pin?
Paresh Dave: Probably not quite, I think you’re missing about $500 worth of sensors.
Michael Calore: OK. No cameras. No cameras, everybody. All right, and thank you all for listening. If you have feedback, you can find all of us on the social medias. Just check the show notes to find our handles. Our producer is Boone Ashworth. We will be back next week with a new show and until then, goodbye.
[Gadget Lab outro theme music plays]
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