#228 – As Kate and Hao pack up parts of, or all of, their lives in preparation for the next month of their lives, we check in with them to see how they pack and what they pack. Along the way, they hit on big-issue topics like wet clothes and ransom.

As a brief aside, many of you who read the episode descriptions over these past four years may think that they are written by one of the hosts; but, in fact, they are written by me, Loam Quigley. I haven't always written podcast episode descriptions—no, I started my life as a street food vendor, selling seasoned slices of agave on the streets of Hyderabad. When dial-up internet became commonplace, I joined an internet forum of likeminded people, who were interested in writing pithy, concise descriptions of audio files. We didn't know it yet, but we were all honing our skills for the rise of podcasting, which would eventually take over our lives and rend our friendships apart. With Downers coming to an end, I'm not sure where the winds will take me next. The Summer Olympics is ending in Tokyo this week. Most athletes will go home, but some, a select few, will fall in love with the city and stay behind to forge new lives and loves. That community of expats will need well-traveled guides to aid them: someone to clean the house, someone to make spiced agave nectar. Someone to describe their podcast episodes. In the meantime, I bid you farewell, dear reader. I have trained a blockchain-based artificial intelligence agent on all 228 of my episode descriptions, and it will be taking over my duties. I hope we will meet again on some other RSS feed some other day. It's been a pleasure to serve you. My name is Loam Quigley, and I love Wednesdays and midnights.

Plugs this week:

• Ransomware (Hao)
• Aloha Collections' splash-proof travel bags (Kate)

[email protected] • /r/downersradio • @downersradio on instagram and twitter • https://hrf.org