Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Remember Furbys, the big-eyed, bat-eared, fluffy creatures that were must-have toys for children in the late 1990s? Their biggest draw was that they were interactive: not only did they come to life when exposed to light and movement, they were also able to talk to their owners. The new BBC podcast Joanne McNally Investigates asks: “Did Furbys spy on us?” That we can guess the answer doesn’t deter McNally, who introduces herself as a comedian, podcaster and “fully legit” investigative journalist, from pursuing it. Her last series asked: “Who replaced Avril Lavigne?”, to which the obvious answer was: “No one.” But the fact that the pop singer is still touring and has not, as claimed in online forums, been switched for a body-double named Melissa, was beside the point. McNally was interested in how and why these rumours took hold and she had a blast finding out. And so to the Furbys and the theory that they were in the surveillance business. These electronic toys, programmed to blink, sneeze, wiggle their ears and start mimicking words used by their owners, sold 40mn in the first three years of production. But not everyone was thrilled by their existence. In 1999, the US National Security Agency banned them from its premises in case they were being used to record classified information. In the first two episodes, McNally goes to Dorset to meet Sarah, a restorer of the toys who has 200 of them in her house. “There are stories of Furbys that wake up at night and start laughing,” Sarah says, adding that they have individual personalities. McNally later buys a vintage Furby online and takes a hammer to it to inspect its insides — “Is it bleeding? I feel terrible,” she exclaims — and speaks to Dr Megan Rose, an expert in robot pets, who unpicks their cute/creepy aesthetic and ponders the fear they induced in adults. Furbys arrived not just at a time of huge technological advances, she notes, but in the run-up to the millennium bug, which many feared would paralyse the world’s computer systems come New Year’s Day 2000. We are not short of podcasts investigating conspiracy theories, from QAnon to Covid-19 truthers, many of which will leave you feeling gloomy about misinformation and human paranoia. In contrast, the tone of Joanne McNally Investigates is light and funny, even though it is underpinned by real anxieties about surveillance culture. The series leans heavily on the charisma of its host who, as she warns us at the start, “swears like a soldier” and finds just the right balance of curiosity, scepticism and gags. The aim may be to confirm something we already know, but it’s an enjoyable ride nonetheless.From September 11, bbc.co.uk/sounds
