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If there was a big red button that would just demolish the internet, I would smash that button with my forehead.
From the BBC.
This is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world.
This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews.
It's about what technology is actually doing to your work, your politics, your everyday life and all the bizarre ways people are using the Internet.
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, I'm Mariam.
Today I've got a fairy story to tell you about a girl who gets to marry a king but has to complete an impossible task before she can.
But things don't go as well as they should.
A long time ago, there was a poor man who had a daughter.
She was beautiful and full of life.
One day, her father has to go and see the king.
He's very embarrassed about seeing him because his life is a far cry from the king's.
So to try and impress him, he tells him that he has a daughter who can spin straw into gold.
Well, I'd be impressed by that.
The king wants proof and demands to see her.
She's taken to the palace, where she is shown a room full of straw and a spinning wheel and is told to spin the straw into gold by the morning.
And if not, she will die.
And then he leaves.
This comes as a shock to the poor girl and she starts to cry.
Suddenly, a little man with wrinkly skin enters the room.
She's so pleased to have a shoulder to cry on.
But he says, Good evening, miss.
I can help you if you give me something in return.
Well, she was quite happy to offer her necklace as a reward for his help.
And sure enough, he spends all night spinning the straw into gold.
Morning arrives and the king sees the gold.
Amazing, he cries, but then thinks to himself, hmm, maybe she can make more gold.
He demands that the next night she will spin even more straw and make even more gold.
If she doesn't, she will die.
The girl bursts into tears, but once again the little man bursts into the room.
Don't cry your eyes out, he says, and offers to help, but still wants something in return.
This time, she offers him the ring on her finger.
He's happy with the deal and gets to work spinning the straw.
Next morning, the king is overjoyed by what he sees, but still thinks he can get even more gold.
He's been crying out for a woman who can make him this rich, so he promises her that this time, if she succeeds, she will be his wife.
You know what happens next.
The little man appears offering to help her, but this time...
In return, he makes her promise that if she becomes queen, she is to give him her first child.
Creepy.
Reluctantly, she agrees.
Now the king is very impressed and he marries the girl and she becomes queen.
But a year later, when she gives birth, the little man arrives demanding the baby.
When the baby starts to cry, he says If you can find out my name within three days, you can keep your child.
The challenge is on and she asks everyone across the land if they know the man's name, but nobody knows.
It's not until the third day that a messenger reports finding a little house in the mountain where a ridiculous little man was dancing round a fire, singing about having the queen's child and being called Rumpelstiltskin.
Aha, the queen thinks, that's it.
And she asks the little man.
He is furious because she is right.
Oh for crying out loud.
He shouts, and in his rage he pushes his right foot hard into the ground, creating a big deep hole which he falls down down, down into crying out and is never seen again.
Wow, he was angry.
So the queen keeps her child.
But I'm not sure she really wanted to marry the king.
I blame her father.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the story and will join me for a very different one very soon.
Bye for now.
If there was a big red button that would just demolish the internet, I would smash that button with my forehead.
From the BBC.
This is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world.
This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews.
It's about what technology is actually doing to your work, your politics, your everyday life.
And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet.
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
