Episode Transcript
If you're anything like the average American, you check your phone more than 200 times every day. When you tap on the screen, you're asking your phone to retrieve and display some data. Maybe a message from your friend, or a YouTube video of a friendly Canadian showing you how to fix your dishwasher. You're usually told that this data exists in...
Episode Description
Where is “the cloud,” anyway? It’s in a bunch of nondescript warehouses all over the country. Zachary Crockett serves up the story.
- SOURCES:
- Chris Kimm, senior vice president of global customer care and customer experience at Equinix.
- Raul Martynek, C.E.O. of DataBank.
- Clayton Rosati, associate professor of geography at Bowling Green State University.
- RESOURCES:
- "How Data Center Alley Is Changing Northern Virginia," by Mac Carey (Oxford American, 2025).
- "Noisy, Hungry Data Centers Are Catching Communities by Surprise," by Sean Patrick Cooper (The New York Times, 2024).
- "As Data Centers for AI Strain the Power Grid, Bills Rise for Everyday Customers," by Evan Halper and Caroline O'Donovan (The Washington Post, 2024).
- "Data Plantation: Northern Virginia and the Territorialization of Digital Civilization in 'The Internet Capital of the World'," by Clayton Rosati, Aju James, and Kathryne Metcalf (Online Media and Global Communication, 2023).
- "A New Front in the Water Wars: Your Internet Use," by Shannon Osaka (The Washington Post, 2023).
- EXTRAS:
- "Why Is It So Hard (and Expensive) to Build Anything in America?" by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
- Data Center Map.