The Longest Shortest Time

EPISODE #151: I’ll Be Watching You

Farhad Manjoo is a tech writer for the New York Times. And… he’s a bit of a digital pack rat. The kinda guy who saves all the emails he’s ever gotten, and then goes back and reads them all over again. He never wants to forget an important or meaningful moment–especially when it comes to his kids, five-year-old Samara and seven-year-old Khalil.

There aren’t a lot of photos from Farhad’s own childhood–and he wishes there were. He’d love to go back and piece together who he was at different points in his development. So when Farhad saw a Ted Talk by a researcher who’d recorded his toddler son on tape as he learned to speak, he got inspired. And he decided to capture his own kids on camera… Like, 24/7.

Samara decides that the dinner table is, in fact, not a restaurant, but “a silly place.”

Khalil tests out a “bridge” of questionable architectural integrity.

Tune in to hear what it’s like to parent in a house rigged with a camera system… and what Farhad’s wife and kids think of this whole thing.

Ga ga… war-dur… Water!

Heres’ the Ted Talk by MIT researcher Deb Roy, that sparked Farhad’s interest in around-the-clock household documentation.

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