Tapes

The tapes are first mentioned by Jac in episode 1. Around the forty second mark, Jac says: "[...] and this is a podcast about some weird tapes I've been receiving since I was a kid".

The tapes have been labeled with increasing letters by Jac in the order in which she received them. But there is no evidence that this is also the order in which the tapes have been recorded.

According to Jac, she had all of her the tapes digitized by a professional service. She also gave Lena access to those files.

For a list of all tapes, visit the tapes category page.

Although the series is about the tapes received by Jac as a kid, there is at least one known tape that Jac never received.

* In episode 1, around 2:20, Jac explains that she started receiving her tapes when she was 9 years old. She explains: "My family went on a cross-country road trip one summer, and when we returned home, there was a package sitting on the front porch, for me. There was no return address on it, and it came in a padded envelope, which was beat to hell. [...] The envelope looked like it had been sitting at the bottom of a mail sack which was sitting in a mud puddle for about 10 years."
* In episode 1, around 3:40, Jac explains that the first tape was "one of those mini cassette tapes for a handheld recorder, the kind people used to use before everyone had a smartphone". She describes the contents of the first envelope as: "Just the tape. It was unlabelled, and other than looking roughed up like the envelope, there was nothing remarkable about the physical tape."

## Tape medium

Jac's description suggests that the tapes were originally in microcassette or mini-cassette format.

The Wikipedia article on microcassettes states that this storage medium type was introduced by Olympus in 1969. Microcassettes could hold up to 45 minutes of audio per side, totaling a maximum of 90 minutes for one microcassette. Some devices could record at different speeds, potentially extending the storage capacity further, at the cost of audio quality. Other types of microcassettes with a lower capacity were also available.

Mini-cassettes (Wikipedia article) were introduced by Philips in 1967. The storage capacity of mini-cassettes was 30 minutes. According to Wikipedia, micro-cassettes were very prone to distortions like "wow and flutter". Potentially, this is what we might be hearing on some of the tapes as distortions.

There are other potential formats, like the picocassette or the NT cassette. Maybe one of those more exotic formats has been used. However, as Jac used an old device that she found in the family garage for playback, it would be more of a coincidence if the cassette and the device she used would have had the same exotic format.

## Delivery of the tapes

### To Jac

Jac received all of her tapes in an enveloped package, delivered to the family home that she was also living in. She received the first tape when she was nine years old, after returning from a family road trip, at which the whole family participated in, except for Jac's sister. Jac reports this in episode 1.

She describes the condition of the envelope and the contained tape as very run-down and dirty (see above). It is suggested that the other envelopes and tapes were in a similar condition.

The tapes themselves were unlabeled according to Jac, with no special properties except for being dirty.