Message In A Laptop

What is your relationship with the trash heap of digital history? Can you still connect your old hard drives? Still sifting through your old photos in the cloud? Do you ever low key snoop in the old electronics of other people, searching for treasure? That's what Noah Simmons was doing a while back when he discovered https://www.tiktok.com/@noahbsimmons/video/7480007743751851307 something compelling in its simplicity: a homework assignment document, on an old laptop picked up at an estate sale. The title of the essay? "My Secret Place." From there, the mystery of the author, and the meaning it had for so many people who got hit right in the feels by a nostalgic description of childhood, played out on TikTok. Like hundreds of thousands of people online, Team Endless Thread had to know more. Credits: Co-hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson, produced by Frannie Monahan, Edited by Meg Cramer, and sound designed by Emily Jankowski. The rest of our team is Managing Producer Paul Vaitkus, Dean Russell, and Grace Tatter.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. A recent episode explores how AI is reshaping our schools. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode.

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• 1:15Speaker 03

  WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

• 1:28Amory Sivertson?

  On a cold day back in January, Noah Simmons, a curious 20-something, was browsing at an estate sale in his small town of Bristol, Virginia.

• 1:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Noah was looking for things to resell because he kind of needed the money. He had just quit his customer service job at Verizon after getting burnt out.

• 1:48Speaker 06

  I was kind of getting tired of, you know, just dealing with the general public. And I felt like I was kind of growing to hate people and that's not who I want to be. I've been trying to make ends meet on my own by going to estate sales and buying things to flip online.

• 2:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  What about estate sales speaks to you?

• 2:12Speaker 06

  Well, I'm a total treasure hunter at heart, and it's like the most easily accessible treasure hunt you can have.

• 2:19Amory Sivertson?

  Noah's idea of treasure might be a little different than yours. He's not looking for vintage furniture, antique wares, or mildly creepy trinkets.

• 2:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, Noah's treasure of choice is much nerdier, our kind of nerdier.

• 2:33Speaker 06

  I love old electronics, honestly. Some of it makes me feel nostalgic. Some of it's just built a lot better than things are now. And I just kind of like to appreciate them.

• 2:44Amory Sivertson?

  Earlier in the day, Noah had found a crypto miner, some graphics processing units attached to two by fours with a USB stick plugged into the back. The Ethereum crypto on the USB stick could net him 800 bucks. Not too shabby.

• 3:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  Cash money. But Noah's day of underemployed estate sale hunting was about to net him something else. Something you can't really put a price tag on.

• 3:13Amory Sivertson?

  Our treasure hunting burnt out ex Verizon customer service representative was about to stumble on treasure that would warm his damn heart.

• 3:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm Ben Brock Johnson.

• 3:25Amory Sivertson?

  I'm Amory Sivertson.

• 3:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  And this is Endless Threat from WBUR in Boston.

• 3:32Amory Sivertson?

  Today's episode, Message in a Laptop.

• 3:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  A thing about estate sale treasure hunting, you gotta hit them early and hit them quick, especially if you're trying to do multiple. You know, early treasure hunters get the vintage electronic worms. That's what they say, right? Okay, nobody says that. Well, that's what Noah was doing.

• 4:06Amory Sivertson?

  He had already scored the USB drive with Ethereum. The next estate sale promised more vintage electronics.

• 4:14Speaker 06

  I'd looked at some pictures posted by the estate sale company, and there was a few things that I was really interested in. There was like a old Nintendo gaming system, old PSP.

• 4:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  But remember, this was January, so it was cold. So cold that the estate sale company had opened the doors earlier than expected. So they weren't leaving people out to freeze. By the time on time Noah got to the house, he was actually late.

• 4:45Speaker 06

  The gaming consoles and stuff, they were already taken. They weren't there anymore.

• 4:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  But sometimes the treasure isn't what you think you're looking for. It's hidden in the leftovers.

• 5:02Speaker 06

  I found this old laptop sitting on a desk and it had been a long time since I'd seen one like it. And I just thought they were, you know, cool looking. It looks like a modern day like military laptop. It's about, I would say two inches thick. It's a Toshiba Satellite.

• 5:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  Specifically a Toshiba Satellite 225 CDS, originally released in 1996. This model features a maximum of 2.1 gigabytes of memory and it is a brick of a machine. Weighing in ding ding ding at around 10 pounds.

• 5:41Speaker 06

  It's got the old, you know, rubber mouse built into the keyboard. Not sure what you call them.

• 5:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Is it a pad or is it a ball? Cause some of those-

• 5:49Speaker 06

  It's a ball.

• 5:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, those are so cool. It's just like a floating ball.

• 5:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, it's, I, I used to love those, man.

• 5:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's, it's not there anymore. Someone must chewed it off or something. They never are.

• 6:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep, I could see that happening too. That's probably why the balls don't get used anymore.

• 6:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 6:08Amory Sivertson?

  Too tasty.

• 6:12Speaker 06

  It was $20. So I thought, you know, why not? I'll pick it up.

• 6:17Amory Sivertson?

  That seems like a lot. Can I just say that for an old-

• 6:19Speaker 06

  A lot of people have said that.

• 6:20Amory Sivertson?

  Laptop?

• 6:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 6:21Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. Why, did that not seem like a lot to you? Or did you just have a feeling that there was cool stuff that might be on it?

• 6:31Speaker 06

  Um, honestly, this was less of a purchase to resell and more of a purchase just because I liked it. And I also looked up prices online and they were going for like 60 bucks. So, I mean, it was, there's a small bit of profit if I wanted to make it on this.

• 6:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Huh.

• 6:47Speaker 06

  But, you know, for me personally, I just, I thought it was cool. I was taking a risk because it didn't have a charger with it. I'd have to order one of those online. It would take a few weeks to come in.

• 6:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  Which might cost 60 bucks.

• 7:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 7:05Amory Sivertson?

  Without a charger, there was no way to know if the laptop would even work. And there was certainly no way to know if there might be untold treasures on its hard drive.

• 7:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  But Noah managed to track one down online. When it finally arrived, he plugged that ancient Toshiba artifact in.

• 7:23Speaker 06

  I didn't expect it to turn on, but it sure enough did. And there wasn't a password on it from the previous user. So I just started doing a little snooping. And the first file that I clicked on was this file called My Secret Place. And, you know, just nosy old me wanted to see what it was. And it turned out to be the story. So I just found the coolest thing at an estate sale and I just really wanted to share it. I found this old computer. It looks like it could literally launch missiles from it.

• 7:58Amory Sivertson?

  Noah had an inkling that he struck gold. So he did what any digital native would do in this situation. He whipped out his phone and started filming.

• 8:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is from his TikTok.

• 8:09Speaker 06

  I came across this Word document that is really special. It's called My Secret Place. And I assume it was like a school assignment or something. But I just want to read this to you because it's a nostalgia trip. My secret place is at my cousin's house. It is a treehouse. To get up to the treehouse, you have to climb a ladder. And when you get to the top, you have to pull yourself up. And if you fall, it hurts bad. Up in the treehouse, you can smell the flowers outside. And when it rains, you can smell the rain in the air. Sometimes you can feel the rain because the leaves are our roof. We can look up into the sky and watch airplanes.

• 8:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  It is, of course, immediately clear that a kid is writing this. And this person describes what feels like an iconic 90s or 2000s childhood movie montage. Hanging with the neighborhood kids, games of tag, watching various wild and farm animals from a treehouse observatory.

• 9:12Speaker 06

  We play our Game Boys for hours when up in the treehouse. We swap tips and help each other to reach different levels on our Pokémon games. When I am in my secret place, I feel happy because I am with my friends. It is a place where I go when I am mad and it will cheer me up. It makes me sad when all the leaves fall and we have no roof.

• 9:43Speaker 06

  When I finished it, that last line is so impactful to me. When it says, I am sad when the leaves fall and we have no roof. And it feels so symbolic of growing into an adult and losing that safety net of being a child.

• 10:07Amory Sivertson?

  Noah uploaded the video to TikTok because it just seemed like something other people might like to hear.

• 10:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Which in a way was a little weird because Noah had no idea who the author was and no easy way of finding out.

• 10:21Amory Sivertson?

  So he also included a call out to the young author, who would be a grown adult by now. All he had to go on was a name.

• 10:29Speaker 06

  Drew, if somehow this gets to you, hit me up. I would love to get a copy of this and all the other things on here to you. Anyway, that's all. Thanks for listening.

• 10:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  Noah didn't know if the video would get many views, but it still felt important to get these memories back to Drew, wherever Drew was. So Noah didn't give up on looking for clues. He went back into that 10-pound Toshiba laptop to see if he could find anything else.

• 11:00Amory Sivertson?

  And he did. In the same folder as the My Secret Place essay, there was another file containing another clue to Drew's identity.

• 11:10Speaker 06

  It was an invitation to Drew's 11th birthday at the local pool. And it had an invitation list of everybody. That was how I figured out his age at least.

• 11:21Amory Sivertson?

  Other than his name and age, Noah had no leads. The estate sale was being held on behalf of someone else who wasn't a family member. So how did Drew's laptop end up in a pile of that person's stuff?

• 11:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Then there seemed to be a break in the case of the author for My Secret Place. Noah's TikTok blew up. People loved Drew's writing. Thousands of viewers began commenting on how nostalgic and familiar the story felt to them. They reminisced about similar school assignments they had. And like Noah, they wondered about Drew. Where is he? What's he up to?

• 12:01Amory Sivertson?

  Some people claimed to know firsthand.

• 12:05Speaker 06

  There is a lot of Drew impersonators messaging me pretending to be Drew.

• 12:10Amory Sivertson?

  Whoa.

• 12:12Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:12Amory Sivertson?

  What?

• 12:13Speaker 06

  I mean, I say a lot. There is two.

• 12:15Amory Sivertson?

  Two more than there should be. Yeah, exactly.

• 12:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  Weirdos.

• 12:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  So the virality of the TikTok wasn't actually a break. But thanks to the contents of the laptop, Noah had a pretty good way of identifying the fake Drews. He knew something they didn't.

• 12:33Speaker 06

  The first one that reached out to me, and the way that I vetted him was by asking him where he had his 11th birthday party.

• 12:43Amory Sivertson?

  Genius.

• 12:47Speaker 06

  He said the bowling alley. And then I said, haha, yeah, I know it's not you, bud. And so anyway. Yeah, I've reached out.

• 12:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Villainy.

• 12:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, very villainy.

• 12:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  Noah was tenacious, especially when it came to going through the Toshiba. And in the depths of that Toshiba, he'd find another clue and another guy who might be the guy.

• 13:13Speaker 07

  I saw the message pop up. I don't really use Facebook very often, so I clicked on it.

• 13:21Amory Sivertson?

  Coming up, the guy. Maybe?

• 13:41Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. How should employers measure real skills in the age of AI?

• 13:53Speaker 08

  Instead of observing the final artifact, instead of observing the final essay or the final program, observe the entire process of creation.

• 14:02Speaker 00

  Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts and stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode on rethinking academic and job assessment when AI can do the work.

• 14:21Speaker 01

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• 14:55Speaker 07

  My name's Drew Smallwood. I live in Nashville, Tennessee.

• 15:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  Around the time that Drew impersonators were writing in, about five and a half hours away from where Toshiba Delving Noah lived, a 33-year-old Drew Smallwood was going about his normal daily life. You know, working.

• 15:19Amory Sivertson?

  When he got a mysterious Facebook message request from some guy named Noah.

• 15:24Speaker 07

  Hey, I made this TikTok about this laptop and it's kind of blowing up. Is this you?

• 15:30Amory Sivertson?

  On his search through the Toshiba, Noah had found another clue. He found other files on the laptop with Drew's last name, which is how Noah found Drew Smallwood on Facebook, and reached out, sending him a link to his now-viral TikTok video.

• 15:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Which almost does sound like one of those, "is this you?" Facebook scams. But to Drew, Noah seemed legit enough. So Drew decided to click the link, and I immediately recognized the laptop. That Toshiba satellite was staring back at him. But not much else was familiar. Even when Noah started reading the story.

• 16:11Speaker 07

  Up in the treehouse, you can smell-

• 16:12Ben Brock Johnson?

  It wasn't ringing any bells for Drew.

• 16:15Speaker 07

  Until he named off my cousin's horse. Like his horse Buck. And it immediately clicked.

• 16:25Amory Sivertson?

  So it was time to give them a call.

• 16:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  You know we had to call him.

• 16:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  What does that make you think about, reading it again?

• 16:37Speaker 07

  I mean, it just takes me back specifically to that place. Just a nostalgic time, much simpler. The funniest part about it, too, is, you know, reading back through it, like, it's so, like, touching and thoughtful. But I know at the time, like, I was just trying to rush through a school assignment just so I could get back to, you know, playing as a kid. A lot of the comments specifically saying, "he better be a writer." You know, "he has to have grown up to be a writer," which is so far from the truth.

• 17:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  Drew is not a writer. He's a banker. By which we mean, he works at a bank.

• 17:16Amory Sivertson?

  Do you even journal anything?

• 17:18Speaker 07

  No, not at all.

• 17:21Amory Sivertson?

  Do you want to now?

• 17:24Speaker 07

  No.

• 17:25Amory Sivertson?

  Was there any part of it for either of you that, as touching as it was, that felt a little weird? Like, is this okay? Am I supposed to be reading this? And also, like, is this weird? Or is it beautiful that a stranger is reading my words for millions of other people?

• 17:43Speaker 07

  No, I'll let you, uh, let you go first on that one.

• 17:46Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:47Speaker 07

  I'll rebuttal with you.

• 17:49Speaker 06

  It's so uncomfortable and weird. I second guessed posting it 100 times before I did. I wouldn't want anybody reading my old stuff off of my computer, you know? So it's, it's a total contradiction. I think it was the innocence of the piece that made it okay for me to share it.

• 18:12Amory Sivertson?

  Drew?

• 18:13Speaker 07

  It doesn't feel weird. It doesn't feel like embarrassing or anything like that. I thought it was, you know, I thought it was really, really fun. It's very much a small world type of thing. And it's been great getting to speak with and befriend Noah. It's funny, Noah grew up and lives in a subdivision that my school bus went through every day on the way to my high school. So it's, you know, probably drove by his house hundreds of times. Never knew who he was until this happened.

• 18:51Amory Sivertson?

  Even after the essay brought Drew and Noah together, there was still one piece of this mystery that wasn't solved. How did Drew's childhood laptop end up at this estate sale in the first place?

• 19:06Speaker 07

  Unfortunately, my grandparents both passed away.

• 19:10Speaker 07

  They passed away back in 2016, both of them. All of that went to my mother, their estate. And then my mother passed away from a heart attack unexpectedly. So all of the estates went to me. I had gotten everything that I considered meaningful out of my parents' and grandparents' homes and then put them up for sale. And then the, I'm assuming the owner who bought the house, because I just sold it as is and just had an estate sale to clear the home out for themselves.

• 19:40Amory Sivertson?

  Well, there's something kind of, um... Beautiful about you being in this place where understandably you just kind of need to offload stuff. And here comes Noah finding this little piece of your childhood that otherwise would have just been lost. And it's like,

• 20:04Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 20:04Amory Sivertson?

  I don't know. There's, there's something about that that feels like people, people help us pick up the pieces in unexpected ways.

• 20:13Speaker 07

  That's for sure. I mean, there's a high possibility that that laptop never got sold and, and then just got thrown in the trash. No one would have ever seen anything on that laptop ever again.

• 20:25Amory Sivertson?

  How do you think this particular experience will stay with you or maybe inform choices you make as you sort of figure out your life from here?

• 20:39Speaker 07

  It definitely made me proud to see where I've grown. From the kid that, you know, was playing in a treehouse to, you know, the things that I've achieved in my life. Anytime I've honestly felt a little, you know, sad or anything like that, I've went back and looked at the comments and, and they definitely will cheer you up.

• 20:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  I mean, how could you not be cheered up by people reminiscing about their own childhood hideouts? Right?

• 21:06Speaker 06

  There was one comment too that stuck out. There was a, I think a third or fourth grade teacher who played the video for her class as an example of writing and like to show what a writer of their age could do. And she said they all loved it and were all talking about it. And I just, I thought that was really neat, Drew, that your writing touched other kids that are currently that age.

• 21:37Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, decades later. That's amazing.

• 21:39Speaker 07

  Yeah, I had no idea about that. That's, that's just so, like, it just puts a smile on my face.

• 21:55Amory Sivertson?

  But where does this journey leave Noah, our burnt out Verizon worker turned antique tech treasure hunter?

• 22:02Speaker 06

  I guess this whole experience has taught me that, even more so that you might not appreciate something now, but you might appreciate it later. Not to be a hoarder, you know? Don't, don't hold on to everything.

• 22:21Speaker 06

  But don't, don't erase your past because you might appreciate it at a later date.

• 22:28Speaker 06

  If you can find more meaning in the mundane, then you can find more treasure.

• 22:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  I love this idea of finding meaning in the mundane. Like, how many more essays on old laptops, Amory, are out there that no one will see again? That kind of makes me sad in a way, you know?

• 22:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  How much treasure are we unknowingly throwing into the trash heap of digital history?

• 22:55Amory Sivertson?

  Is there an old file from your past that you wish you still had?

• 22:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  I have the saddest answer to this. My grandfather lived to 103.

• 23:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  And the last time I saw him, I brought my kit, my radio kit. And I recorded like two and a half hours with him, just like him talking about his life. Like, he was like playing pool while he did it. So we were like playing, there were knocking pool balls around sounds. And he told me about getting hired to literally drive an early automobile around town to advertise a local business, like in 1913. Like, he told me all these like amazing stories about his life, you know? And I took that file and I put it on a hard drive. And I lost it.

• 23:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  I don't know where it is. So.

• 23:55Ben Brock Johnson?

  If you are out there and you find a story of a guy driving a early automobile in 1913 to advertise a local business and you hear some pool sounds, I'm looking for that file.

• 24:08Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, man, I'm so sorry.

• 24:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's brutal.

• 24:12Amory Sivertson?

  That is brutal. Well, you have to carry that story forward in the meantime, which you just did. So

• 24:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's true. That's true.

• 24:19Amory Sivertson?

  You know, it is not the same and it cannot replace the audio you lost. But, um, but I'm glad you shared it.

• 24:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  Same as grandy, but what are you gonna do? All right. What about you? Do you have like a file that you lost that you'd like to get back?

• 24:33Amory Sivertson?

  Nah. I don't have a file. I have, um, my mom sold my seventh grade science fair project on eBay when I went to college. It was a trebuchet. I built a trebuchet with my dad. And my mom was like, eh, she's never gonna use this again. And she sold it on eBay for 50 bucks without telling me.

• 24:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, my God.

• 24:58Amory Sivertson?

  I know.

• 25:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  If you have Amory's trebuchet, please get in touch.

• 25:04Amory Sivertson?

  I hope you're flinging water balloons or something with it in the neighborhood.

• 25:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  Flinging cream puffs.

• 25:10Amory Sivertson?

  For me, will you?

• 25:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  Throw some cream puffs around.

• 25:14Amory Sivertson?

  A cream puff? Don't waste a cream puff. I mean, just throw a water balloon.

• 25:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, if you get the settings on that trebuchet dialed in, you could throw a cream puff right in my mouth. If you're good at it, I'm ready.

• 25:25Amory Sivertson?

  Things to aspire to.

• 25:35Amory Sivertson?

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston.

• 25:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  This episode was co-hosted by myself, Ben Brock Johnson.

• 25:42Amory Sivertson?

  And me, Amory Sivertson.

• 25:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  It was produced by Frannie Monahan on a Toshiba satellite that weighed 10 pounds.

• 25:50Amory Sivertson?

  Our editor is Meg Cramer. Mix and sound design for this episode by Emily Jankowski.

• 25:55Ben Brock Johnson?

  The rest of our team, who are all in their secret place, is Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, Managing Producer Suma Tajoshi, and Production Manager Paul Vikes.

• 26:05Amory Sivertson?

  If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or some other wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, get in touch. [email protected].

• 26:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, and if you have the Tré Boucher or my grandfather's two-hour-long interview, also, please get in touch.

• 26:25Amory Sivertson?

  And if you have both, that's really weird.

• 26:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, if you have both, we should talk.

• 26:30Amory Sivertson?

  We gotta talk. Or maybe we should not talk.

• 26:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, if you have both, I'm scared.

• 26:50Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Janet Kang, Executive Director of the Just Horizons Alliance, on who stands to benefit from AI in education.

• 27:13Speaker 09

  I am absolutely in favor of AI in learning in the right context.

• 27:18Speaker 03

  And just to claim why you're excited about it.

• 27:19Speaker 09

  Oh, my gosh, individualized support, right? Personalization, and to be able to scale quality education in places where it was historically impossible. So for certain kinds of learners with different kinds of learning styles and disabilities. For example, speakers of different languages. There are amazing ways AI can boost learning. It just has to be with the right context. And age appropriateness is something we do a lot of work in because it is very different, depending on where in that maturity cycle you are in terms of how your brain develops.

• 27:51Speaker 00

  Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business Markets and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

• 28:10Speaker 01

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• 28:37Speaker 10

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