Wednesday Walk: Who is Elwood Edwards?
Wednesday Walk: Who is Elwood Edwards?
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As is typical every Wednesday, I’m bring you a smattering of topics that I hope will make you a bit more curious about the world around you and give you something to think about later. I call these Wednesday Walks, as it’s the type of conversation we might have walking down a path in the woods. Shall we take a stroll?
Happy Fourth!
I hope everybody had a wonder Fourth of July yesterday! I’d love to hear about your festivities and how you’re celebrating this year- drop a note in the comments!
My family and I are the road again. This year, rather than do a road trip with lots of stops, we decided to park at a campground for a long stretch and get a sense of what it would feel like to “live” in another place for a time. We opted for Disney’s Fort Wilderness Campground outside of Orlando, which is located within Walt Disney World. I’ll have more updates soon on that trip.
I am still planning to write newsletter posts and update the podcast during this time, though my entires may be more succinct than usual.
Smoke Tracking
We left over the weekend, as large parts of the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and Midwest were again being blanketed in wildfire smoke from Canada. We had been spared the brunt of the smoke last time, but this time, I had a very different perspective traveling through it for the better part of two days.
It’s one thing to see the area of smoke on a map, but to literally feel the distance at 70 miles per hour for multiple days really gave me a different perspective on the scale of this smoke.
We spent a night in the parking lot of a Bass Pro Shops outside of Richmond, VA. When I woke up to take the dog for a walk in the morning, it smelled like the wood fire of a campground. It didn’t occur to me at first that the burning wood smell was actually coming from Canada and that the hazy sky wasn’t fog or clouds, but smoke.
We never really stopped masking after COVID, still opting to wear a mask in most indoor public settings. But it was a bit strange to reach for a mask again when spending time outdoors.
This wildlife smoke is coupled with extreme heat in much of the South right now.
I know a lot of people like to talk about “when global warming comes” as though it will be a clean date where the calendar flips and suddenly we’ll be “in global warming.” I think they’re expecting a Pearl Harbor or 9/11 type event that obviously jump starts a new era. This journey was a good reminder to me that the climate is already changing and severe and abnormal weather events like this wildfire smoke may become our new normal.
Who is Elwood Edwards?
I recently saw an Inside Edition profile of Elwood Edwards posted on a random Cleveland Instagram account which the algorithm suggested to me. I had never heard of Elwood Edwards before that moment, but seeing the little clip on Instagram made me want to dig deeper.
At the time of the Inside Edition profile in 2016, he was an Uber driver in Cleveland. But that’s not quite the whole story. You may not know Elwood’s name, but if you’re of a certain age, you definitely know his voice. In fact, it’s likely imprinted in a deep recess in your brain. Take a look:
You see, Elwood is not just an Uber driver, but he’s also a voice actor that is most famous for recording the famous “Welcome, you’ve got mail” messages for America Online (AOL).
According to his Wikipedia page (and yes, he does have one), Elwood’s wife worked for AOL in the late 80s and wanted to add a more human feel to the service. Elwood recorded a few lines in their living room on a cassette tape, for which he was paid $200.
AOL went on to become the primary portal through which Americans accessed the internet in the 1990s, and Elwood’s voice greeted them with every log in. The company grew so large that it included 30 million users and in 2001 it purchased Time Warner for $182 billion. Time Warner was the largest media conglomerate of the era, with brands like CNN, HBO, and Time magazine under their ownership (and This Old House would join that group in 2002).
The merger was originally heralded as a new era in media, although The Hollywood Reporter describes why the deal soured so quickly:
“Within a few months, the economy fell into recession, the dot-com bubble burst and the AOL-Time Warner deal was being called ‘the worst merger in history.’”
As for Elwood, he occasionally lent his voice to other projects, including promotions for the 1998 film You’ve Got Mail and a 2000 episode of The Simpsons. He has made some interesting cameos over the years, including an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2015 and in an ad campaign for Shopify in 2022.
His story is an interesting reminder of the unpredictability of virility. He recorded his voice as a favor to his wife and was paid a small sum for his efforts. There was no way to predict that those simple cassette recordings would go on to define a generation. He never was paid any additional residuals for his work, even though his voice is so recognizable.
Had he known what was coming, I suppose he could have told his wife that his fee for that recording was $100 million. Had AOL known what it would grow into, it likely would have gladly paid that fee. But without that future knowledge, $200 seemed like reasonable compensation to both parties for a quick recording for a concept that nobody knew would last.
What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below- I love hearing from you!
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Other Wednesday Walks
If you’ve missed past issues of this newsletter, they are available to read here.