This Week in Pods

By Nicole Dieker May 23, 2017

So many pods. So many podpinions.

Welcome back to THIS WEEK IN PODS, it has been a while since my last installment, let’s see what’s going on in POD NEWS:

Wow. A lot of people are being put into a lot of pods, and a lot of other people have PODPINIONS about that.

(Yes, I just coined “podpinions.” You all know what it means.)

Let’s break this down:

These are actually the same pods, as you can tell from the photos. They close up around you in a way that does not exactly resemble an eyeball with a tongue sticking out, and you’re supposed to nap in them. The lawyer article claims they cost $13,000 per pod and the high school article says $14,000, but also notes that the school got a federal health grant to offset the cost of the pods.

Also, both high school students and lawyers are making it through the day on very little sleep, which make the nap pods a necessity. (Remember: some high schools begin class at 7:30 a.m.)

These nap pods are just one more example of the “cover yourself in a thing and pretend it is a private bedroom” pod trend, and I look forward to reading articles about these pods showing up in corporate offices and maybe even airports, if people are willing to sit with their feet exposed to the rest of the terminal.

Jail’s ‘God Pods’ offer inmates another path

The God Pods aren’t actually pods; they’re “faith-based housing units,” and some of the people applying to live in them might be breaking—well, I was about to write “breaking the Commandments,” but then I checked and there really isn’t a commandment about saying you have more faith than you actually do because you want to live in a God Pod:

Anderson admits that there are inmates who sign up for the program because they see it as a way to get privileges that inmates in the general population don’t have. The God Pod inmates have access to microwave ovens and a cup of coffee or tea each day.

(No, it isn’t the commandment about bearing false witness against your neighbor, unless you count your own conscience as your neighbor.)

The article notes that “there have been non-Christians who asked to be in the units, and there were no problems,” which… um… yes, I’m not sure why this is surprising, and I’d also like to look more closely at why there are Christian-themed pods in the Yakima county jail, and whether other faith communities have opportunities for pod life as well.

Stunning glamping pods shaped like a dragon’s eye and King Arthur’s cave

When I think of “glamping,” I totally think of King Arthur’s Cave, which is a real cave that you can visit. Let’s be honest; although there is a certain romanticism to cave life, they’re more damp than glamp.

However, if you’ve got £2,000 ($2,600) you can spend the week living in a pod shaped like a dragon’s eye, which makes that the second eyeball pod on this list, and I guess that means you’d be, like, an eyelash? That the dragon keeps trying to get rid of? How do dragons deal with eyelashes if they have claws? Can they retract their claws like Wolverine? Can we just make dragons do whatever, since they’re fictional, or is there established canon on this?

Some Residents Unhappy with Homeless Pods in Their Neighborhood

If you have been reading this and thinking “your jokes are great and all but you promised me some PODPINIONS,” here you go:

[Devion Barlow] and others say homeless and their Pods come in and out of certain streets in Oak Park, like his neighborhood on V Street.

Complaints come in the form of left behind trash and the fact that the homeless are strangers in what can be otherwise closely knit communities.

So here’s what’s going on with these pods: unlike other pod shelters we’ve looked at, these pods are designed to be fully mobile—they’re a little bigger than a Nap Pod, and they’ve got wheels and a handle—which is why the article implies homeless people “come in and out” of neighborhoods and disrupt “closely knit communities.”

The person quoted in the article goes so far as saying that he didn’t notice the homeless before, but now that they have these pods, people are “noticing things they’re doing.” Like, apparently, existing.

Meanwhile:

Gladys Brown is a homeless Pod user who says she is extremely grateful for what [Aimee Phelps] has provided her, her Pod is very well kept with no trash, but she says asking other Pod users to be clean like her would be a request that wouldn’t be fruitful.

What makes this story interesting—and different from other pod shelter stories—is that the shelters were created and distributed by local artists (Aimee Phelps, as referenced in the quote above, and Kevin Greenberg). This isn’t a city initiative; it’s a community one, and they’ve even gotten funding from community organizations.

Still, I would not be surprised if somebody eventually issued an injunction saying the pods were unsafe, the same way San Francisco said that one guy’s pod bedroom was unsafe:

San Francisco Man Vacates Custom-Designed Pod Bedroom After City Tells Him It’s Illegal

But I don’t want to PODICT the future.

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