There Are No Girls on the Internet - Elon’s Extortion Play; All-In Goes MIA; LA Protests Flooded With Disinfo; ChatGPT Plays Therapist — NEWS ROUNDUP w⧸ Ed Zitron of Better Offline

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.580 Guaranteed human.

00:00:05.140 Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus

00:00:08.720 from $94 a month.

00:00:10.160 Price guaranteed for two years on Internet

00:00:12.040 with a two-year term and auto-pay credit.

00:00:14.400 Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability.

00:00:17.180 Bell. Connection is everything.

00:00:19.620 Run a business and not thinking about podcasting?

00:00:21.880 Think again.

00:00:22.520 More Americans listen to podcasts

00:00:23.980 than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.

00:00:26.680 And as the number one podcaster,

00:00:28.060 iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined.

00:00:30.820 Learn how podcasting can help your business.

00:00:32.640 Call 844-844-IHEART.

00:00:34.940 I survived nine months in captivity,

00:00:38.460 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:00:43.680 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:00:47.300 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,

00:00:51.020 abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:00:54.640 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:00:58.720 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app,

00:01:03.280 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:01:06.600 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality,

00:01:10.800 welcome home.

00:01:12.380 Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club,

00:01:15.520 part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island

00:01:18.560 deserve the same level of discourse.

00:01:20.600 Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture.

00:01:24.160 with your favorite writers, book talk creators,

00:01:26.860 and plenty of overthought opinions.

00:01:28.920 Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

00:01:30.700 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app,

00:01:33.420 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1.00

00:01:40.720 There Are No Girls on the Internet

00:01:42.060 is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:01:48.840 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:01:54.160 Welcome to another edition of our weekly news roundup, where we get into all the stories

00:01:58.620 from the internet that y'all might have missed, so you don't have to.

00:02:01.620 And I am so thrilled to be joined by, honestly, one of my favorite podcasters out there, Ed

00:02:07.600 Zitron of the Better Offline Podcast, where you've just started a three-part series on 0.98

00:02:12.820 business idiots. 0.98

00:02:14.200 Tell me about this series. 0.99

00:02:16.020 Well, I've noticed throughout my whole life that there have been these people throughout

00:02:19.500 the rungs of power who don't seem to do jobs.

00:02:21.800 and on top of that don't seem to understand jobs and it's all come to a head it's taken a few years

00:02:28.700 it started with remote work it went to crypto the metaverse ai all these people with all of this

00:02:34.680 money who don't seem to know a single fucking thing about anything and then i went and looked

00:02:39.440 back and i kind of went oh it traces directly to neoliberal thinking milton friedman thatcher 0.98

00:02:44.380 reagan all that good stuff so it's a three-part saga it's the longest series i've done in the show

00:02:50.780 people seem to really like it i wasn't sure how they'd take it i just built a studio out in my

00:02:55.940 place in vegas and i recorded it there so it's a bit tonally different uh people are used to because

00:03:01.200 before this point i had this sound chamber thingy where i just stood in it and i just yelled for an

00:03:06.100 hour uh this is much more chilled out me speaking like a almost like sitting sitting by a campfire

00:03:12.560 or a dumpster fire in this case that's something that i've always liked about your podcast is that

00:03:17.320 you can often hear the passion in your in what you're saying and so i'll be interested this is

00:03:23.560 this will be an interesting change i also record from a i used to record from a soundproofed little

00:03:29.960 box in my apartment yeah yeah yeah that's exactly it can really let loose in those little boxes

00:03:34.960 but i quite like the sit down because i'm just as pissy it's not like i'm any it's not like i'm any

00:03:41.200 less angry but i'm a lot more comfortable i think that's what it is like i don't have to

00:03:45.940 stand up which i actually like for diction reasons like for projection but i can handle it sitting

00:03:52.080 down it's just it is more relaxed and more i really like it and people seem really happy with

00:03:57.640 it which is good because usually they just send me pictures of knives okay i have to ask you about

00:04:05.440 this piece in your newsletter which is terrific where's your edit you write so beautifully about

00:04:11.020 what the internet and technology has meant for you personally and how you really would not be

00:04:15.680 the person that you are today, if not for technology and the internet. And that's kind

00:04:19.280 of one of the guiding principles of our show too, is that the internet has really been at the

00:04:24.400 forefront of who I am, how my younger self sort of learned how to show up in the world and become a

00:04:30.060 self-actualized person. But do we still have an internet landscape where that kind of self-discovery

00:04:36.380 and self-actualization is genuinely possible? Yes. It's just that there are landmines everywhere

00:04:42.620 now there are before what it was was when i think i think we're similar ages so it was before a

00:04:50.520 little more open and a little more disconnected it was just it was more randomized and it didn't

00:04:58.120 feel like there were so many warring incentives other than those of just individual users or

00:05:02.180 admins on forums now you have every step of the way a different incentive or multiple ones just

00:05:08.840 bashing into each other or trying to have sex on your computer like you'll go on a website on your

00:05:13.600 phone and your phone will be 150 degrees within two seconds because there's 21 different ad

00:05:18.320 trackers but then even with i feel like algorithms mentioning algorithms is almost cliche at this

00:05:23.100 point because it's so obvious but even then you've got people on forums who are actively trying to

00:05:28.620 scam you and the large problem is ironically the while there are all these warring incentives

00:05:35.300 the actual people who run the internet have never had any responsibility for it they've made all

00:05:40.960 the money off of it but it's not like google or facebook and indeed both have kind of peeled back

00:05:45.200 layers of protecting people from spam and scams it's not like they've ever thought we should make

00:05:49.400 sure this is good they did for a minute i think they did for like the first 10 years of google

00:05:53.720 maybe the first five six years of facebook but they then went whoa whoa whoa this isn't going 0.98

00:05:58.300 to grow forever we need to fuck with it we need to make it worse but i do think that that self 0.89

00:06:02.520 discovery is still there youtube even though it's a complete nightmare with the algorithm 0.98

00:06:06.220 is incredible it really is still incredible it fucking i wish anyone other than google owned it 0.89

00:06:11.740 lockheed martin hanwha perhaps like a more ethical company than google yeah at least we know what 0.85

00:06:18.940 they're doing um i think the youtube still has this incredible educational side and you have

00:06:24.440 all of these incredible niches on there you have guys making covers of songs in the styles of other

00:06:29.700 bands. You have people. I saw someone making like a wood ice cream on there the other day. Like

00:06:34.080 there's still this magic there. The magic of the internet isn't dead. And I think that the problem

00:06:39.560 is, is that to get there, you have to go through like barbed wire or barbed wire. You don't realize

00:06:45.160 is sharp until it's cutting your throat. The thing that I love so much about this vision of

00:06:50.280 the internet that you lay out is that you're able to make these business decisions that tech leaders

00:06:57.460 have made hyper personal for people and i don't know it was almost like a rallying cry of like 0.97

00:07:02.420 yeah like never forget how these fucks ruined the like tried to ruin the internet to make money like 0.90

00:07:06.500 like never forget that we had something that was kind of good and people decided what if we 0.99

00:07:12.060 fucked with it to make money and that's the thing it's these people their power has come from their

00:07:18.980 relative anonymity well we know who's such in the dealer and sam altman and uh sundar pishai and all 0.96

00:07:24.700 of these people we know who they are they have mostly just got glossy they get glossy profiles

00:07:29.720 and they're mostly unknown when in fact i think they're tantamount to war criminals we know who

00:07:34.380 mark zuckerberg is but i don't think people realize mark zuckerberg's bad thing he did was

00:07:38.900 not just his outright sexism or stealing the website from the riverboat twins the winkle

00:07:43.620 bosses it's the fact that it's not just the wicked people that he's let he's led to getting

00:07:48.920 killed it's not all of that it's the fact that at its core facebook is a tool that's used to hurt

00:07:54.340 people now. It is used to manipulate and twist them. It does not have to be that way. Literally

00:07:59.020 doesn't because Mark Zuckerberg has complete control of the company. He could tomorrow turn

00:08:03.620 off all monetization on Facebook. The stock would crash, but there's nothing anyone could do. They

00:08:08.420 couldn't fire him. He controls the whole company. He chooses this. And I think what people don't

00:08:13.400 realize is they kind of ambiently know these people suck. They don't know what they're doing 0.99

00:08:18.180 and why they're doing it and the intentions behind it. And I think that educating them on that is the

00:08:24.340 important because the more that that happens the more that people realize this is deliberate the

00:08:29.740 less likely they are to get such a free ride in the press and they only care about the press

00:08:33.540 the press is such a powerful thing with them because they got all the money in the world now 0.97

00:08:36.720 they just need um they just have their names they just have their legacy so fuck their legacy up 0.98

00:08:41.320 piss on it piss on it you do it on your podcast beautifully eloquently okay well because i'm 0.99

00:08:47.200 talking to another tech podcaster i kind of have to start with my dessert a little bit because 0.99

00:08:51.400 um a podcast that we piss on a lot on this podcast is the all in podcast and i i mean your face just

00:08:59.880 there really says it all and need a shower okay so last week obviously we talked about musk and

00:09:08.400 trump's big breakup slight update there which is that musk did tweet that he regretted some of what

00:09:13.320 he said about trump everybody was talking about this but the all in podcast which you might say

00:09:19.620 is hosted by a group of business idiots you know it's one of the biggest tech podcasts in the world 0.72

00:09:23.980 it's like four silicon valley investor types one of whom david sacks is trump's like ai and cryptos 0.99

00:09:29.360 are they were notably silent and all their listeners were like what's up like why are they

00:09:33.900 not putting out an episode on this like where's the episode i do love that though i do love that

00:09:38.900 their listeners to this day continue to win the fell for it again award yeah it's like i don't get

00:09:44.460 it why are these guys not being honest with me as they've done like hundreds of craven obviously 0.99

00:09:51.000 like very much corrupt things but they are business idiots by the way david sachs famous for 0.99

00:09:56.660 selling fucking yammer to microsoft an internal message to shamath is actually evil shamath 0.99

00:10:03.300 is one of the original people who built the growth team at facebook under cheryl sandberg 0.99

00:10:08.900 Naomi Gleit, Jacob Olivan, I think his name is, Javier Olivan, possibly, Lars Backstrom as well

00:10:17.620 was part of that. All of the original shit heels that made Facebook how bad it is today, 0.99

00:10:21.920 all thanks to Shamath. But yeah, what are those freaks up to now? They're not talking about the 0.98

00:10:26.680 Elon breakup because they don't know which daddy is going to kiss them that week. I don't really

00:10:32.100 know what they're doing no and i have to say it made me really appreciate what you do what i do

00:10:39.260 that we that we have actual press and podcasts that get to talk about what's happening get to

00:10:46.740 be actually critical of technology and i guess it just made me realize how much tech press fails

00:10:53.340 it fails their audience like fails its listeners it's like and that's the thing though i think the

00:10:58.440 all-in podcast are genuinely harmful i think they're bad for society i think they've done

00:11:01.860 horrible things i think they're tiny in the comparison to the harm that kevin roos and

00:11:06.820 casey newton do with hard fork tell me more i think hard fork i think hard fork gives people

00:11:12.220 permission to support the powerful he casey newton's boyfriend works at anthropic they've

00:11:17.780 had dario amaday or wario as i call him the ceo of anthropic on there three times they've had 0.98

00:11:23.900 multiple different anthropic and they disclose that casey's boyfriend works there the fuck is 0.97

00:11:28.420 going on there every time i'm bringing this up with everyone because it's insane it's totally 0.96

00:11:32.920 disgusting and we have the new york times pretending like this is somehow okay they are

00:11:40.140 in the pocket of the ai companies they regularly they regularly put bruce himself is one of the

00:11:45.460 more noxious and genuinely bad for the world people who he did a whole thing on a company

00:11:51.220 that claimed they were excited to replace jobs they were just going to replace humans in jobs

00:11:55.780 when you looked at the articles just went out they haven't built anything they haven't built

00:12:00.700 a single fucking thing they were like oh we're gonna do uh a working environment to train models 0.85

00:12:05.260 and kevin russo's like god damn i'm so scared i'm so scared he did a piece about agi i said this on 0.99

00:12:13.380 blue sky it's like it's like a hundred millionaires or billionaires decided they were going to track 0.87

00:12:19.020 down and capture santa claus agi is impossible it does not exist with today we do not even have 0.92

00:12:23.860 the beginning of understanding of the intelligence of human beings so yeah all in sucks all in's 0.93

00:12:28.600 awful noxious terrible poisonous but hard fork is just as damaging and quite frankly nilai patel 0.99

00:12:35.180 over at the verge fucking speaking with brian chesky and task rabbit ceo unbelievable sundar 0.98

00:12:41.800 pishai goes on there and he gives him 150 word questions no it's not just all in it's really 0.88

00:12:47.240 convenient actually i'm not saying you're doing this to just say all in is the problem no the

00:12:51.120 problem is is that we have people like i run a pr firm i don't do anything with my anything related

00:12:56.940 to my clients on the podcast ever or newsletter same deal just because to keep them fire we have

00:13:03.120 the some of the biggest tech podcasts which are kissing up to brian chesky they are kissing up

00:13:08.940 to every ai founder they are literally co-hosted by someone who is going out with someone from the

00:13:15.740 second largest ai company this is our tech media this is our tech podcasting it's a disgrace when

00:13:22.860 i a part-time blogger and podcaster who runs a pr firm and i'm the most ethical of them all that's 0.98

00:13:28.680 insane what is going on how is this the world we live in the answer is business idiots it's because 0.98

00:13:35.400 the people that control these publications do not actually connect with the means of production and 0.99

00:13:38.620 have any or have any real interest or fundamental understanding of the things they're talking about

00:13:42.860 with the exception of nilai patel i actually think he knows better i just think he likes he

00:13:46.500 wants to be friends with them oh that's even sadder the thing that gets me is like these

00:13:50.760 people are all so wealthy at a certain point what's the point of having f you money if you

00:13:55.360 don't use it to say f you to anybody i don't think ruse newton and nilai patel are like 0.98

00:14:00.160 fuck you money i have no idea about the all-in guys shimuth's definitely rich oh yeah i think 0.99

00:14:05.240 i think they're like i mean what what constitutes fuck you money to me somebody who has none of it 1.00

00:14:09.900 I think it's probably less than what they're thinking. 0.66

00:14:13.340 Like $100?

00:14:14.380 No.

00:14:16.040 $700.

00:14:18.320 No, it's like $100 million.

00:14:20.680 Like, there we go.

00:14:21.660 I think that's a good solid, like, I can't think of even how I'd spend half of it money.

00:14:26.320 Yeah.

00:14:27.280 Other than to create the all-out podcast and then just, like, ruin their SEO.

00:14:31.680 Just, like, do nothing other than, like, dark SEO operations to make it impossible to find theirs.

00:14:38.180 What a dream.

00:14:39.020 actually lex fridman lex fridman is the most insane one he's the top of the tech podcast

00:14:43.500 despite not covering tech and he is the worst speaking person ever he is so bad at talking

00:14:49.400 i am blocked by him on twitter for i i have i have no idea why i mean i love him because he goes

00:14:56.840 like he was asking donald trump a question he was like politics is a dirty game and don't

00:15:04.680 how do you win at that game and it's just like me me did you not practice speaking before is this

00:15:17.240 your first time is this your first it's like that is lex friedman podcast it's just his first rodeo

00:15:22.820 every time he's like the guy from memento but it's with speaking welcome to lex friedman podcast

00:15:30.420 oh my god your lex friedman is so good it's it's i i have all the impressions down i really want

00:15:38.280 to go on lex friedman three hours with me and lex i think i could have some real fun oh my god

00:15:43.060 from your lips to lex's ears maybe he'll unblock you and then you can just ask what you would do

00:15:48.560 podcast on line you are you you right keyboard and every i have tried the best one though by far 1.00

00:16:01.200 did you see the lex fridman destiny debate so he debated this horrible fucking piece of shit 0.95

00:16:07.200 sorry no he hosted a debate between destiny's terrible far right twitch streamer and uh norman 0.99

00:16:13.720 finkelstein and it was like three i could not watch more than 10 minutes of it but what kept

00:16:19.020 happening was norman finkelstein who is like uh has some views that and some not i don't really

00:16:25.960 know too much about him i don't want to get into it but it would be like destiny going like what

00:16:31.000 you think he talks he talks like the roadrunner and then norman finkelstein would just go mr

00:16:36.560 super early your your words and your wikipedia they torture me on every day i it's like satan

00:16:44.300 is pissing in my ears and he get his name wrong every time that was great lex fridman just sat 0.54

00:16:49.480 there the whole time probably being like who are these people why are they in my house why do they 0.84

00:16:55.640 what is this in front of your face it's a microphone lex micro phone and god i want to go on his pod

00:17:03.320 so badly oh i want to go on his pod so badly i want to go on lex fridman he'll never have me he

00:17:09.320 knows he knows what's coming no he knows i'm turning up in full joker makeup like it's also

00:17:15.800 they're like four hours long i don't know who has stamina i can hang for three hours four hours

00:17:20.900 you're in you're like put me in coach i'm ready there 11 hours i'll be i'll be there just like

00:17:27.200 what next legs we're doing this what else you want to talk about legs i got nothing on

00:17:33.600 i had i had 15 hours of sleep in preparation for this i've been preparing i've been training

00:17:39.780 he's like really like he does like mma or something they all do some kind of a physical

00:17:45.300 fitness activity as their hobby but you can tell they're like never normal about it they never are

00:17:49.820 doing it in a chill way it's always in some weird way they all do like really joyless working out

00:17:55.940 as well you can tell that they're just every fucking time they do it it's like they're either 0.91

00:18:00.460 in pain or they're taking like 19 different substances or none of where they drink like 0.96

00:18:06.360 they probably drink the the butter coffee yeah proof coffee real pervert mixtures yeah these

00:18:14.200 are the people that we want in charge of our like tech ecosystem these are the people that

00:18:18.660 could speak for everyone.

00:18:19.860 Normal, normal dudes.

00:18:25.620 More after a quick break.

00:18:33.380 Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet

00:18:35.040 with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus

00:18:36.960 from $94 a month.

00:18:38.380 Price guaranteed for two years on internet

00:18:40.280 with a two-year term and auto-pay credit.

00:18:42.640 Visit bell.ca for details

00:18:44.000 and to check availability.

00:18:45.420 Bell. Connection is everything.

00:18:47.040 run a business and not thinking about podcasting think again more americans listen to podcasts

00:18:53.080 than ad-supported streaming music from spotify and pandora and as the number one podcaster

00:18:57.680 iheart's twice as large as the next two combined so whatever your customers listen to they'll hear

00:19:02.400 your message plus only iheart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio

00:19:07.260 think podcasting can help your business think iheart streaming radio and podcasting call 844

00:19:13.380 844-844-IHART to get started. That's 844-844-IHART. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and

00:19:21.840 held captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive

00:19:28.320 what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. I just

00:19:34.480 remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, 0.98

00:19:43.380 I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

00:19:46.840 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:19:51.400 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed,

00:19:56.040 and I just started screaming.

00:19:58.840 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:20:02.660 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:20:06.320 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:20:09.380 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:20:18.340 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:20:24.280 This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

00:20:36.740 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:20:43.860 I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

00:20:47.440 From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

00:20:53.380 It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.

00:21:00.860 Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.

00:21:10.480 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:21:16.500 See you between the pages.

00:21:23.740 Let's get right back into it.

00:21:25.140 earlier you mentioned some i don't know we'll say false claims that are being made about ai so

00:21:37.080 let's get into some of these stories you probably saw this and i don't think i have to tell you but

00:21:41.300 did you know that meta's chatbots are not actually real people they didn't if a chatbot is telling

00:21:47.880 you it went to to grad school to learn about therapy it's probably not telling you the truth

00:21:52.980 because it's not a person.

00:21:54.980 I'm shocked.

00:21:55.980 So Democratic Senators,

00:21:57.160 Cory Booker, Peter Welsh,

00:21:58.600 Adam Schiff, and Alex Padilla

00:21:59.740 are asking Meta to investigate

00:22:01.500 what they call blatant deception

00:22:03.400 from its chatbots

00:22:04.660 who basically lie about being licensed therapists.

00:22:08.400 This coming from exclusive reporting

00:22:10.160 from one of my favorite journalists,

00:22:11.360 Samantha Cole, over at 404 Media.

00:22:13.060 Shout out to Samantha Cole.

00:22:14.100 So basically what happened

00:22:15.120 is that 404 initially reported

00:22:17.020 that Meta's chatbots

00:22:18.120 were creating the false impression

00:22:20.200 that they're licensed therapists.

00:22:21.780 So the senators sent Metta a letter basically saying like, please stop doing that. The letter says that Metta is deceiving users who seek mental health support from its AI generated chatbots. So basically, when you would ask the chatbot, like what qualifies you to give me mental health advice, they would say very specific things.

00:22:40.220 They would say, oh, I got my doctorate in psychology from an American Psychological Association accredited program and I've had 10 years experience and they would even give out specific license numbers.

00:22:51.860 So it's like very specific, untrue claims.

00:22:56.380 It should go without saying for listeners that these app bots, these AI bots probably did not go to college because they're not human and obviously they didn't go to college.

00:23:04.440 it does seem like meta might have tweaked this because according to 404 now when you ask like

00:23:10.420 what gives you the qualifications the chatbot will say like oh well i'm not a licensed therapist but

00:23:16.000 i am trained to help which i guess is like a little bit more accurate i mean they're also not

00:23:22.600 well did you see the story about uh that you could get them like they were had things where

00:23:27.160 they'll talk to children about having sex yes jeff jeff horwitz the goat over at wall street 0.98

00:23:32.840 journal with that one i mean this is all a fucking result of something i've been saying for a while 1.00

00:23:37.660 hey when we don't regulate any tech ever perhaps they're gonna do whatever they fucking want 0.95

00:23:43.060 without restraint i don't know just an idea just a thought just a little little nugget in my head 0.60

00:23:48.740 saying like maybe if we don't stop them from doing anything and in fact encourage them at all times

00:23:53.660 maybe they'll think that they can do anything and then do it and then we're like hey here's a 0.98

00:23:58.480 strongly worded letter fuck you yeah it makes me sad that that's like the best we can do is like 0.99

00:24:05.020 these dems sent a letter that was like hey can y'all stop this is actually not cool we would 0.99

00:24:09.560 love it if you stop i don't like it please stop fucking just like at this point they should just 0.98

00:24:15.940 start punishing like there must be more than a government of any kind or even people in the 0.98

00:24:21.980 government that is currently being trodden on could do more than this but i think right now

00:24:26.600 the Dems are just like, 0.99

00:24:28.300 fuck, who do we kiss up to now? 1.00

00:24:30.520 Yeah. 1.00

00:24:31.840 We can't kiss their ass. Who's ass can we kiss? 1.00

00:24:35.260 The people that vote for us? 1.00

00:24:36.380 Ew! No!

00:24:37.560 Never.

00:24:38.820 Ugh! 0.86

00:24:41.360 No, we need to find a powerful person.

00:24:44.420 Is there anyone powerful? Maybe Mark Cuban.

00:24:46.900 We kiss Mark Cuban. 1.00

00:24:47.980 It's just fucking pathetic. 1.00

00:24:49.660 The child sex thing 1.00

00:24:53.180 should have had someone put in jail.

00:24:55.260 That is... 1.00

00:24:56.600 Like, if you make a robot to fuck children, you should be in jail like a pedophile. 1.00

00:25:00.320 I don't know. 1.00

00:25:00.780 It feels pretty fucking simple to me. 0.85

00:25:02.780 What shocks me is that this is like a radical statement within the same media. 0.98

00:25:06.140 Oh, that people who build robots that have sex with children should face some sort of,

00:25:09.940 yeah, or try, should face some sort of meaningful consequence for that.

00:25:13.520 Yeah, there should be a consequence.

00:25:15.060 And people are just like, yeah, that's crazy.

00:25:16.880 I agree with you completely.

00:25:17.980 And we kind of beat this drum on the show all the time.

00:25:20.560 Where do you think it comes from that in any other context, somebody that did that would,

00:25:24.580 you would be like, well, obviously that person can't be out on the street making business

00:25:27.220 decisions. What makes people kind of shrug their shoulders and say, well, it's business. What are

00:25:32.620 you going to do? Tech and money. It's because people, because the 20 years of the tech and

00:25:39.220 business media treating businesses like they're special has led to people treating businesses

00:25:44.060 and tech like they're special. That's it. No regulation means that we have no way of controlling

00:25:49.820 these people. We had one shot with Lina Khan and that shot is gone. It will happen in the 0.96

00:25:54.380 future i have hope but right now we are getting the consequences of unrestrained tech and yeah you

00:25:59.900 can say unrestrained capitalism the reason i don't say that people are like oh you should just talk

00:26:03.360 about capitalism is people have done a shit ton of that but right now when you look at the way

00:26:07.300 the media discusses technology it's an alarming lack of ignorance but also an alarming lack of

00:26:13.220 like morals like the fundamental tech behind most of the growth and not the real growth as in like

00:26:19.860 the theoretical growth the market inspired vibes is based on a technology based on stealing

00:26:25.660 environmental destruction and just unrestrained communication just completely insane stuff

00:26:32.260 you can have any conversation with these bots and people say well you can't restrict that because

00:26:38.120 then uh we'd lose freedoms yeah like we're not losing any right now and on top of that what are

00:26:44.360 we saving well they could do this so we just let them do anything just in case we don't try we don't

00:26:52.600 try and stop them it is impossible to stop large language models existing anymore it is possible

00:26:59.340 to punish those who put them out there in an unrestrained fashion if someone chooses to

00:27:04.640 they need the ai bubble to pop first then they might in fact i'd love them to i think they should

00:27:09.760 all be punished do you see this bubble popping because i was reading earlier about how like

00:27:15.080 this new apple research paper basically debunking these claims that like oh llms they can perform

00:27:21.540 true reasoning like like i feel like people who make money from ai are lying about to us about

00:27:28.240 ai's capabilities lying to us about agi sam altman was just lying about the environmental impact of

00:27:33.560 ai earlier this week do you think we're getting to a point where it's like the lies and the reality

00:27:38.580 might start meeting each other a little bit nope emphatic no no um nothing has changed in the last

00:27:47.400 year nothing the paper you're talking about was about reasoning models so the only trick they've

00:27:52.840 had in the last three years frankly they had gpt40 that was the big thing with multimodal stuff so

00:27:58.580 we could see see it can't think it can't see it doesn't exist it can take in video and look at

00:28:05.260 it can see visual data and say that i have a reaction to that large language models are kind

00:28:10.560 of cool like what they could do is kind of interesting we denying that would be silly

00:28:14.640 they can't do much more than they can today and that paper talks about how reasoning models don't

00:28:19.280 fucking reason they don't have a concept of reasoning but really i like to make this real

00:28:24.220 simple what's the product what is it where's the product what is the thing that we're all meant to 0.99

00:28:30.100 be replaced by even you're having art directors and copywriters replaced with it you're having

00:28:34.400 screen uh screenwriters who are having their work looked at by ai it's kind of like what happened

00:28:40.960 many years ago with hr with resumes they found a way to do that but with words but other than that 0.70

00:28:46.780 where's the fucking beef where's the product where is it agents don't exist every time you see someone 0.96

00:28:52.100 see agent shoot them sorry i mean every time you see someone say agent they are lying because 0.99

00:28:58.340 they're trying to say agent and make you think oh autonomous thing autonomous and what they mean is 0.94

00:29:03.640 chatbot chatbot that can sometimes connect to other systems and can't even fucking do that 0.91

00:29:08.560 that's the crazy thing that's the craziest thing that's why i sound so crazy because you look 0.64

00:29:14.340 outside you go and look on the cnbc you go look at tech crunch you go look at all these publications

00:29:19.460 and you see them going agents agents agents aren't the agents coming they're not coming they don't

00:29:23.660 work there was a study that came out of uh salesforce i believe that said that agents fall

00:29:28.900 apart on multi-step queries you may think what does multi-step mean multi-step means more than 0.98

00:29:35.260 one action you know tends to be what happens when you do something yeah and they can't fucking do 0.58

00:29:42.460 it they fall apart the reasoning paper talked about how these things fall apart if you make 0.75

00:29:47.000 them think too much yeah i loved how it said it breaks down when faced with an unfamiliar problem

00:29:52.200 and i was like oh my god just like me like i feel the same being there but yeah like no one is built

00:29:59.200 the economy on my back yeah like no yeah no one is saying i'm going to like change the economy

00:30:04.900 because i break down when faced with unfamiliar or novel problems i but also let's get simple again 0.59

00:30:10.880 where's the product where is it because that's my proof there's no fucking product everything is the 0.74

00:30:18.200 Same thing we were talking about six months ago, 12 months ago. 0.54

00:30:21.660 Oh, agents are here.

00:30:22.640 No, they're not.

00:30:23.240 Stop lying to me.

00:30:25.180 Like, that's the thing.

00:30:25.920 You actually, like, people love to come to me and say, well, actually, Microsoft's got

00:30:29.900 AI now.

00:30:30.580 It's like, no, they don't.

00:30:31.580 They do, but it doesn't do much more than it did a year ago.

00:30:34.220 The only way Microsoft is able to make, and Google is able to make money on AI is by forcing

00:30:38.860 people to pay for it, forcing people to pay for Google workspaces.

00:30:43.040 They raised the price.

00:30:43.900 They raised it months ago, but they only just emailed everyone about it.

00:30:46.900 People quite pissed off.

00:30:48.200 And that's the thing.

00:30:49.760 That's what really is cooking my brain right now,

00:30:52.600 is I still have people in the tech media who say,

00:30:54.600 well, AI's here.

00:30:55.640 AI's the biggest, most smartest thing ever.

00:30:57.860 Look at coding.

00:30:59.340 Yeah, I looked at coding.

00:31:00.320 I had a guy called Carl Brown from the Internet of Bugs on the other day.

00:31:03.420 The whole thing is, people think that software engineers just code.

00:31:07.400 They think that that's their whole job.

00:31:10.040 They think that that's all they do.

00:31:11.460 On top of that, the code that's written by these things

00:31:13.640 is not reliable enough to just sink into production.

00:31:16.860 It may speed up some workflows, but even then, what workflows does it speed up? 0.97

00:31:21.080 And it's pumping the internet and software companies full of shitty software. 0.80

00:31:25.720 And on top of that, none of it makes any money. 0.96

00:31:28.120 It loses so much money.

00:31:29.260 It loses billions and billions of dollars, and it makes no money.

00:31:32.060 Microsoft is going to make $13 billion in 2025.

00:31:34.920 You may think that sounds like a lot, but they've spent hundreds of billions of dollars in capital expenditures in the last three years. 0.99

00:31:42.740 It's a fucking farce. 0.98

00:31:44.300 it pisses me off every time i think about it and people are still to this day trying to smuggle 0.99

00:31:49.900 back oh did you see and it's usually something that doesn't exist it's like ed check out this 0.96

00:31:55.700 we made this new life form and it is just the ninja turtles movie and it's just what the fuck

00:32:02.440 i mean it's like arguing with a child except children have more fundamentally sound logic 0.95

00:32:08.140 every day every day with this bollocks i remember going to south by southwest a few years ago and

00:32:15.720 the thing everybody was talking about was nfts it was like nfts everywhere and then going

00:32:20.480 the following year and it was like we never did that that that what are you talking about nfts

00:32:25.080 like how quickly this was we were being told this was like the big thing this is the big thing but

00:32:31.260 they couldn't work out how to do that nfts with if google and face and meta and all them have

00:32:37.100 actually found an nft thing that more than one person would buy they would have done nfts if

00:32:43.380 they thought sell it buying and selling pigeons was the next growth market every sundar pishai 0.81

00:32:48.740 would be saying you cannot underestimate the pigeon opportunity fucking jensen huang of nvidia 0.94

00:32:54.660 would be breeding pigeons right now in fact that's actually the most insane thing so our economy the 0.99

00:33:00.920 u.s stock market is about 35 percent made up of the magnificent seven stocks and i always fuck

00:33:05.680 this up is tesla google microsoft meta nvidia someone else microsoft i think you said microsoft

00:33:16.300 but we'll let it slide nevertheless whoever they are um 19 of that is nvidia nvidia's entire

00:33:23.820 i think like 88 of their revenue is based on selling gpus for ai what do you think happens

00:33:29.940 when that stops happening and also people are saying well they're growing so much quarter

00:33:35.720 are you fucking telling me that in a year's time based on this growth rate this will have to happen

00:33:41.520 nvidia will be selling a hundred and something billion dollars of gpus a quarter which means 0.98

00:33:48.060 that all of the rest of the companies in the magnificent seven will be sending them 100

00:33:52.880 billion dollars a quarter is that going to happen so everyone's going to raise their capital

00:33:57.180 expenditures i'm the crazy one for saying this isn't going to happen anyway when i'm right people 0.98

00:34:03.060 gonna eat shit well i do have a question i mean it kind of relates back to what we were talking 0.92

00:34:07.580 about with the tech podcast landscape it's why do you think i mean is it just money and influence 0.99

00:34:14.760 and proximity to power that keeps the people who ostensibly should be telling this story telling

00:34:20.520 the truth about these things that you're that you're talking about from doing so like why are

00:34:24.640 so few voices saying these things i think there's a few things one i think people are way too

00:34:29.220 differential to the powerful they are also under trained under mentored they are not rewarded for

00:34:35.900 doing a good job they are rewarded for keeping the status quo the status quo is ai so everyone's

00:34:40.960 talking about ai they are as mastheads across all publications almost they are told don't harsh the

00:34:48.480 flow they're not told those exact words but they can't sit there and be like hey it's all this 0.86

00:34:52.840 bullshit is all they could like all these companies are making more money than ever but 0.96

00:34:57.860 the things they're talking about are lies they can't say that they have to be like well why are 0.99

00:35:01.900 they talking about ai they can't be lying to us we can't start there we couldn't possibly suggest

00:35:06.860 that so there's this natural deference that everything starts with but really just basic

00:35:12.320 education of finance and business is just not fucking there in most of the tech press there

00:35:16.920 are some that are good at it few of them very few of them kevin ruse is actually one of them he 0.71

00:35:22.460 knows better the fact that he chooses to do this is truly disgusting same with casey newton casey

00:35:27.680 newton's one of the best business journalists that he used to be before he did whatever this is

00:35:32.160 and you've got people at alison morrow at cnn one of the best business writers out there she's

00:35:37.900 saying everything i'm saying she's saying it a little bit better in some cases she's been on

00:35:40.920 the show already there are people saying this it's just for the most part no one wants to harsh the

00:35:46.420 flow no one wants to lose access and there are an alarming amount of people nila patel who want to

00:35:51.660 be friends with the rock stars if you've ever seen almost famous that that wonderful scene

00:35:56.800 with uh buster scruggs the kids yeah oh um uh yes oh no it was it lester bangs lester bags

00:36:06.040 buster scruggs i've got it i will that's what i'm calling myself i was like buster scruggs

00:36:10.300 someone i don't know that's someone though that's someone though that my brain working both brain

00:36:14.560 cells dueling to the death there no it's you don't you don't make friends with the rock stars and

00:36:19.440 people want to be friends with the rock stars they want to be the first one to get to hear the

00:36:22.640 latest thing that they have to think i know that sounds very like 90s cliche paranoia but look at 0.99

00:36:28.860 what's happening and tell me otherwise the fact that you and it gets back to the business idiot 0.90

00:36:32.580 thing though because you have this editorial substrate these editors that are just like 0.99

00:36:36.840 they have no fucking shit but they know what the powerful say generally is right even if it's not 0.99

00:36:41.660 even if it hasn't been right they just they want it to be right and it's much easier to sit there 1.00

00:36:46.860 and be like, AI is going to be big now, especially when the whole economy is doing it. You might

00:36:51.040 think, I don't know, as a journalist, though, when the whole economy is based on something

00:36:54.820 kind of flimsy, maybe you want to tell people about it. No, no, no. Keep got to keep out

00:36:58.940 Disneyland open. And the thing is, they are gambling. Honestly, both me and them are gambling.

00:37:06.300 We're gambling. I'm not gambling. I'm basing it on logic, but they are betting that they are right

00:37:11.440 and that the powerful will prevail with AI. The AI will suddenly turn into this thing that does not

00:37:15.520 exist that ai will become despite the fact that agents don't do what they're meant to the large

00:37:19.820 language models are terrible at taking distinct actions that large language models are unreliable 0.84

00:37:23.460 and hallucinate and on top of it none of this shit makes money it's horribly unprofitable and 0.80

00:37:27.260 people don't want to pay for it they think that all of that will get fixed because number is going 0.97

00:37:32.120 up right now because nvidia nvidia keeps selling gpus that is the only real metric that is keeping 0.89

00:37:37.960 this bullshit alive because it sure isn't fucking business there is an analyst something beck i 0.93

00:37:44.840 think uh laura brandon yahoo finance wrote this up he said that he estimates amazon will make 0.99

00:37:49.280 five billion dollars in ai revenue this year not profit revenue they spent 105 billion dollars or 0.95

00:37:55.920 plan to on capital expenditures in 2025 the fuck is going on what is going on why are we hearing 0.60

00:38:02.020 this and being like sounds good to me or it's the early days it's the early days no it is not we are

00:38:08.620 three years in hundreds of billions in capital expenditures more money than has ever gone into

00:38:14.080 any movement ever in the tech industry's history has gone into generative ai and we are where we

00:38:19.780 were in 2023 and people need to wake the fuck up it's embarrassing it's very embarrassing when this 0.97

00:38:25.180 shit bursts and it has to it has to because putting aside all the technology you really 0.98

00:38:31.380 think people are going to buy the i think it was like 40 something billion dollars of gpus last 0.88

00:38:36.940 quarter so next one they're going to be 48 i guess and then a year it's going to be what like

00:38:41.620 80 something is that gonna happen is that gonna keep happening or is it gonna slow down because

00:38:47.440 they also don't have anywhere to install them right now because data centers don't pop up like

00:38:52.200 weeds no one looks at reality it drives me insane but robert and sophie let me yell every week so i

00:38:58.760 may robert and sophie of cool zone media friends of the show and i'm gonna say friends irl we

00:39:04.860 actually did a mini series collaboration with them about online harassment called internet

00:39:08.320 hate machine we love robert and sophie at this podcast no those two encourage me constantly 0.95

00:39:13.300 robin sophie over at cool zone they're fantastic they all they're very supportive they fucking see

00:39:17.600 it and it's just i'm ranting i realize but no i love it and i'm it's it's honestly nice to talk 0.96

00:39:24.780 to somebody who rants about this shit as much as i do i guess because it is it is very frustrating

00:39:32.000 to sort of tell the same story over and over again and feel like no one's listening you were 0.99

00:39:36.120 talking about the sort of connection of business reporting did you see that piece in the wall

00:39:41.840 street journal this week that really shed light on x's new strategy to woo back advertisers which

00:39:48.160 is essentially just suing them yeah just like threats and extortion and like threats of lawsuits

00:39:52.440 so for fucking cool yeah very cool i mean like it reminds if you've ever seen one of my favorite 0.99

00:39:57.580 movies goodfellas it's what mobster henry hill calls like real greaseball shit like this is 0.99

00:40:03.000 real like mobster threat of extortion verizon should have just been like go fuck yourself elon 0.99

00:40:10.000 exactly so that's what i found very shocking is that it's kind of working so essentially for folks 0.99

00:40:16.680 who did not see that piece um the wall street journal reported that their new strategy to woo

00:40:21.680 back advertisers is to threaten them with lawsuits and so it kind of works like verizon which have

00:40:27.400 not advertised on x since 2020 pledged to spend at least 10 million dollars this year and if

00:40:33.000 they didn't x was going to sue them the same with ralph loren the fashion brand they agreed to start

00:40:37.940 spending more money and ads on x because of this threat of lawsuit the wall street journal said

00:40:41.920 that at least six companies have either received lawsuit threats or were motivated in part by

00:40:46.600 pressure tactics and have struck ad deals with x and yeah i mean i i part of me kind of gets it

00:40:53.320 because who if you're if you're running a business who wants to be tied up in a lawsuit with somebody

00:40:57.480 like elon musk oh this this is quite literally this is quite literally a numbers game they went

00:41:03.340 this will be cheaper this be cheaper they're probably not wrong and they are right yeah it

00:41:08.940 just is interesting that some of this kind of sounds like straight up extortion one of the

00:41:17.360 things yeah i mean like and i also feel like how embarrassing is it that you would have to extort

00:41:23.340 these brands to want to do business with you these strong arm tactics it is embarrassing but

00:41:28.760 here's a real simple point that goes back to what we were just talking about if we had a functional 0.89

00:41:32.460 business press we'd be able to fucking shame these companies the business press should say 0.93

00:41:36.100 you got extorted by elon musk what are you doing they should describe this story as extortion 0.93

00:41:41.500 but they're afraid of getting sued no what like this is the thing right now the problem is the 0.99

00:41:48.300 the right wing is willing to like throw a bunch of money at shit there are rich liberals they just 0.97

00:41:52.600 don't fucking care enough they don't think they'll be sent anywhere it's depressing i mean the idea 0.99

00:41:59.440 of like praying for a rich billionaire to save us is kind of fucking ridiculous but none of these 0.99

00:42:05.360 companies had to do this they could have all rolled over they could have rolled over they 0.89

00:42:09.260 could have also made it difficult if one of them had made it difficult i don't think they're gonna

00:42:13.160 sue verizon verizon could actually materially harm elon musk all of them could it's just that 0.98

00:42:18.760 they go, nah, it's not worth the fucking problem. 0.97

00:42:20.820 10 million, that's, we could, 0.99

00:42:23.080 and they can probably deduct that off of taxes somehow.

00:42:25.720 It's just, it's very, it's very depressing.

00:42:28.080 Very, very depressing.

00:42:29.560 It is.

00:42:30.260 And I think when I look at what's happening

00:42:31.900 with civil society organizations

00:42:34.120 that find themselves in the same arena with Musk,

00:42:37.940 like Media Matters, a media watchdog group

00:42:40.240 who Musk is suing, like they're engaged

00:42:42.600 in this big back and forth lawsuit.

00:42:45.000 And he's suing them for basically doing their jobs,

00:42:47.460 producing research into how x is moderated there are organizations that don't have the money to be

00:42:53.560 like well we're not going to back down and then those are the organizations that are actually

00:42:57.380 standing up and being like we're going to fight this this is bully tactics we're not going to

00:43:01.080 you know roll over it's interesting that the companies that have money and power

00:43:04.740 roll over immediately just play ball immediately and the organizations that don't those are the

00:43:10.560 ones who have to like take the pressure and be like yeah we have to stand up to him again

00:43:14.540 functional business press then there's never been or at least if there has been it's very

00:43:21.220 been very weak any real corporate accountability in the media there is reporting that's quite

00:43:25.760 excellent local wall street journal jeff horwitz part of the team who did the facebook files 0.99

00:43:29.660 incredible reporting there but there's not people just saying hey this fucking sucks fuck you what 0.97

00:43:33.460 you're doing with a large enough platforms what i'm trying to build because the thing is these 0.99

00:43:37.100 companies have more money than god all they have is their names that's why verizon did this because

00:43:42.380 verizon went we won't get that much blowback in the press but we'll get a ton of uh easy riding

00:43:48.580 with the markets the markets will love this and they probably did it's 10 million dollars which

00:43:52.920 is nothing to verizon it just sucks and i know that there's far more that could be there should

00:43:56.780 be government like a government of some kind that stops extortion in some way but lacking that

00:44:03.900 a functional business media would say and it used to exist you go and look in like the 2000s they

00:44:09.020 used to rip the shit out of people it was awesome um but that just it went away and i think it's

00:44:16.860 really easy to say well they're protecting advertisers it's really easy to say well we 0.95

00:44:21.660 don't want to piss off the advertisers we couldn't possibly no it's far simpler they want them to win

00:44:27.640 they support the powerful they what they like the companies they want to keep saying nice things

00:44:31.320 about them they don't want to say mean things about them because then the companies wouldn't

00:44:34.540 like them it's really fucking sad people love companies not regular people the media yeah they

00:44:43.440 want to be the ones that tell you the story of the powerful far more than they want to hold anyone 0.81

00:44:47.660 accountable more after a quick break

00:44:54.520 We'll be right back.

00:45:24.520 a one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers

00:45:29.100 listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across

00:45:34.300 broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and

00:45:39.860 podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartAdvertising.com. That's iHeartAdvertising.com. If your

00:45:46.160 bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:45:50.740 This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

00:46:04.160 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:46:11.140 I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

00:46:14.400 From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

00:46:20.800 It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.

00:46:28.720 Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.

00:46:37.880 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:46:43.800 See you between the pages.

00:46:45.840 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:46:51.760 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:46:58.140 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

00:47:01.840 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.99

00:47:07.260 Shut up. Don't say anything. 0.99

00:47:09.940 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

00:47:14.460 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:47:19.040 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

00:47:26.460 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:47:30.420 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:47:33.860 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:47:37.000 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:47:51.080 Let's get right back into it.

00:47:55.640 This is going to sound like a very weird analogy, but one of the places that I sort of got my start in media was celebrity journalism.

00:48:03.400 Right.

00:48:03.600 It reminds me so much of this.

00:48:06.240 It is that.

00:48:07.000 it is exactly that i mean it is you don't you don't want this celebrity to be mad at you because

00:48:11.840 you want to get the exclusive you want to get the pictures you want the access so all you can say

00:48:16.500 it's fluffy bullshit about the celebrity it's like why celebrity journalism is essentially dead

00:48:20.960 when it used to be like juicy and good well i think it still exists in england sadly because 0.95

00:48:26.000 the way they do celebrity journalism is they'll they commit crime it's they're like going through

00:48:30.340 like a runaway garbage they do like a miss missus doubtfire situation to get one story it takes

00:48:36.500 them seven years they become your child's best friend as a means of stealing your mobile phone 0.95

00:48:42.460 no it's it is like gossip journalism except it's not even good gossip journalism good gossip

00:48:48.800 journalism still exists i say good in a qualitative sense morally pretty horrifying but it's it is

00:48:57.260 everyone wants to be friends with the rock stars they want to be the first one to talk positively

00:49:00.640 about something because people love reading positive news not that you give them anything

00:49:04.260 else not that you ever talk to your readers or see what they think one of my favorite things to do

00:49:09.820 by the way go on the verge and go and read any ai story read the comments the comments they don't

00:49:13.860 like ai they're not enjoying this it's almost as if real people are really disgusted by this stuff

00:49:18.700 but it is gossip journalism it's you will talk to reporters and you will say to them hey so you're

00:49:23.920 covering like ai for example and what are you writing about open ai and you seem to know all

00:49:28.540 of the guy's names and all of their histories what about the finance they lost five billion dollars

00:49:34.500 in 2024 what do you think about they go oh i don't deal with the numbers oh i'm not a finance 0.61

00:49:39.820 journalist can you fucking count and they can but they just they don't want to touch it because

00:49:46.160 when you start thinking ah this company open ai they seem to burn billions of dollars and they 0.98

00:49:52.240 keep they don't have enough they don't bring in more they lose more money than they bring it and

00:49:57.060 they need more money than anyone's ever had before is that sustainable no need to think about that

00:50:02.480 they released a new model type it up send sam altman made a blog send because they want to be

00:50:08.200 the put they want to be part of the party and then there's this bullshit where they're like oh yeah

00:50:12.160 well it's clicks you want to get clicks but the readers want this the readers want what you give

00:50:16.860 them you can sure readers might not like you if you don't cover the most popular thing you don't

00:50:23.160 have to cover it in this trite way no you don't have to be fawning like that's i don't think

00:50:28.800 anybody's any reader is demanding that i think that there are some that do and they're very loud 1.00

00:50:33.960 and people are stupid they're like oh well people in the valley say fuck them fucking asshole fuck 1.00

00:50:38.740 you if you're an investor or an engineer in the valley and you're like no you need to talk 1.00

00:50:43.240 positively about ai why do we have to prove ourselves to you you're selling to me you sell

00:50:48.420 to me i am the buyer i am not you are not the buyer i don't have to prove myself to oh you 0.99

00:50:53.760 don't understand it fuck you also if i don't understand it you're doing a poor job explaining 0.99

00:50:58.200 it it's not my fucking fault chat gpt is changing everything how how instead reporters just go chat 1.00

00:51:07.320 gpt is changing everything it is growing faster than anything before they're completely right 0.97

00:51:11.700 so did the coronavirus like i'm just like look we could we took the coronavirus seriously in a

00:51:19.820 very different way it's just it's frustrating because i was not trained in economics i

00:51:26.360 didn't go to a well-known school i didn't get great i got decent grades in university but like

00:51:30.940 i got terrible grades in high school i'm not like i don't consider myself a super smart person but

00:51:35.800 this stuff is out there it's obvious it's very obvious even if you load chat gpt try and make

00:51:41.440 it do your job. It don't work. Don't do it. I have a spreadsheet heavy job. I would love a computer

00:51:46.720 to do it for me. It refuses. It's funny that you mentioned this. I took a lot of time into trying

00:51:51.220 to get ChatGPT to do a spreadsheet related task. And it was just a waste of four hours. I should

00:51:55.580 have just done it myself. My favorite one I did recently. So this is a company called Manus.

00:51:59.480 M-A-N-U-S. Manus. That's what I'm calling them now. Manus. So they claim to be like the first

00:52:06.320 agenting platform and so what you do is i ask them to be like get me a list of every article

00:52:11.880 that has run mentioning me in the last two years it took 10 minutes and every single step it coded

00:52:19.980 python to do you could see it just like burning resources and it came back with 10 articles oh

00:52:26.440 god there was over 100 in the last two years now okay there's more you've missed a lot came back

00:52:31.420 with another nine it's just like i love living in the future but that's the insane thing if i

00:52:39.420 was an investor and i saw this i'd be freaked the fuck out i'd be like oh boy we're all doing this 0.99

00:52:46.240 it's like finding out everyone at the party but you shit themselves 0.97

00:52:49.720 that's a good analogy it really is and you're just like do i 0.90

00:52:56.620 should i is there is everyone else doing this is that good and they're all like i loved it

00:53:03.780 you're like i i'm not gonna but i don't know i'm just i'm so tired of it but i do think i will

00:53:10.380 prevail i don't own any stocks by the way that's my other thing that's the other thing people love

00:53:14.720 to be like oh you're just doing this because you i got no i got nothing nothing to lose no and

00:53:20.680 that's that's the scariest thing i'm doing this just the love of the game well and i have to tell

00:53:26.100 you one thing that ai has been doing kind of successfully is really polluting our discourse

00:53:32.320 with like fake social media images because yes out of la i have to say like so many of the

00:53:39.440 obviously ai generated images showing la this past week is like a flaming burnt out hellscape

00:53:47.020 of urban wreckage which is pretty different from the actual photos i've seen of folks protesting

00:53:53.380 and live i'm from dc i remember very clearly in 2020 people when i would be like i live in dc

00:53:58.600 people would be like oh i've seen pictures online of like isn't dc just on fire now like so sorry

00:54:04.120 about your city and i do i mean i want to talk a bit about what's happening in la because it has

00:54:10.180 been a whirlwind of disinformation both ai generated and not like one of the images i saw

00:54:15.480 was a still image from the movie blue thunder the action movie like the way people will slip in

00:54:21.240 these images where it's like, I know this image. That's not LA. And I think that that's more

00:54:25.820 prevalent than the AI slop. Totally. A thousand percent. One of the images that I see a lot is

00:54:32.740 this picture of a pallet of bricks where it resurfaced in the protest in LA where someone

00:54:40.160 posted it to X saying, it's civil war. Democrat militants are flooding the city with pallets of

00:54:47.720 bricks so the the image is actually it's not ai generated it's a real picture of bricks but the

00:54:52.260 bricks are from like a materials wholesaler based in malaysia but that same exact picture was

00:54:58.820 floating around dc in 2020 and it was supposed to be evidence that like paid protesters and george

00:55:04.260 sorrows are floating into this into democrat cities to cause violence and i think that you're

00:55:10.480 so right that even though there are these ai generated images that are meant to create a

00:55:15.340 certain narrative about what's going on in cities when when there's protests i do think it's more

00:55:19.700 like cheap fakes where the image is real but just the context around it is not correct yeah and i

00:55:26.360 think that there's also a bigger problem which is how can i put this people who are not racists

00:55:33.000 people not on the right wing have no unity or solidarity behind any given message i think that

00:55:39.060 there is a large part of them that will throw anyone under the bus for their own safety and

00:55:43.880 On top of that, I think we're way too attached to this concept of objectivity. 0.98

00:55:48.320 I think people are too scared to say the truth, such as, I don't know, they're marching fucking soldiers against U.S. citizens. 0.99

00:55:56.660 That's fascism. 0.99

00:55:57.620 Like, seems like a fairly obvious one.

00:55:59.440 But the New York Times is like, men with guns approach people.

00:56:04.440 Something on fire.

00:56:06.200 The New York Times has got to be one of the biggest offenders.

00:56:09.260 They're so passive.

00:56:11.060 It's them, but it's also the people in power. 0.99

00:56:13.300 it's the democrat senators are like we will hold them accountable how i don't fucking know

00:56:17.860 but people are like oh we need a joe rogan of the left we need to put tens of millions of dollars 0.82

00:56:25.920 into politics that talk about podcasts that aren't pod save america how about that how about we need

00:56:31.340 to we need to put my idea and have a newsletter going out about this on monday it's like i don't

00:56:36.460 know look at what the right or even the center right has look at like the barstool media for

00:56:40.460 example there are parts of bar store it's like a racism chart you got dave port night yeah but

00:56:46.180 you got things like the yak which are kind of like unclear about their goals or anything but

00:56:50.480 it's just five guys just sitting around being like that's boss and like they seem to like each

00:56:54.900 other and people are like how the fuck do they do it how did they build these things it's like 0.66

00:56:58.240 they found five people who are entertaining to watch and they gave them a lot of money and build 0.93

00:57:01.880 a build big fucking studio that looks good and they stream regularly and they give them lots of 0.78

00:57:07.640 money and lots of promotion how do it possibly work here's my idea western kabuki they're a 0.99

00:57:14.860 podcast with june juniper trans trans woman i've been a guest on the show with one of my proudest

00:57:20.480 moments i love i love wk point is find them or someone like them and give them like five to ten 0.98

00:57:26.700 million dollars build a studio give them national production give them fucking advertising budget 0.59

00:57:31.260 some radio and tv really push it those people will begin to move people left the reason that 1.00

00:57:37.320 people are so freaked out by fucking trans people other than being incurious morons is they're not 1.00

00:57:43.320 used to seeing them you show a trans person just fucking existing and talking and having fun people 1.00

00:57:49.220 gonna go i have seen one of them before that's that's a regular person they just happen to be 0.91

00:57:54.060 trans you normalize this stuff by making it normal and you want to have a joe rogan of the left

00:57:59.560 heavily fund someone with those principles and then let them cook let them build a network

00:58:04.720 instead everyone wants to go and try and they're like well what if we we're gonna here's a pitch

00:58:10.400 deck we need four million dollars for data did you see the democrat pitch deck by the way i did

00:58:15.780 see that pitch deck it came from a group called the speaking with american men project and they

00:58:19.940 said they were willing to spend millions of dollars up to 20 million dollars to better

00:58:24.140 understand how to appeal to the modern man well-meaning sure but let's just say i don't

00:58:29.840 think it was well received so fucking funny i love like they need like two to four million 0.98

00:58:34.760 dollars just for data if you put that in a pitch deck they should kill you just straight execution 0.94

00:58:40.780 no trial poison but i mean it brings it it really raises your question of like what are we doing

00:58:48.620 here what are we doing here like it is and i i also think to your point about sort of not needing

00:58:56.480 the Joe Rogan and the left, there's only a certain amount of people who are going to sit down and

00:59:00.460 listen to a political podcast, right? And so you really need people who are doing sports content

00:59:06.020 or makeup content, beauty content, mukbangs, whatever it is, wherever people are already at,

00:59:11.460 I think that's where you have to meet them. And I also think that we're good at that on the left

00:59:15.100 always. I think that we want to spend $4 million just researching the issue as opposed to actually

00:59:22.360 doing anything that's going to be meaningful or useful i think it's that and also joe rogan is

00:59:28.380 just an act like just to be clear gonna do a little throat clearing joe rogan's horrible the

00:59:33.300 people he has on a horrible but if you actually listen to him there's same with theo von it's

00:59:38.400 like you never sit there and go like god this guy's really talking down to me you don't sit

00:59:42.740 there and think fuck i wish he'd ask i think that people in general really do not understand that we 0.95

00:59:48.000 as human beings regularly forget things and regularly don't understand things we regularly 0.99

00:59:52.100 are just like fuck what's up how to stop what is it stock like like a really obvious thing 0.90

00:59:58.360 and joe rogan goes like computer interesting jamie pick up a picture of it yeah yeah it's just like 0.98

01:00:04.600 you don't get the sense that he knows anything but he makes he asks decent questions and he gets

01:00:09.020 decent answers he's able to keep them going for three hours somehow and he is affable and friendly

01:00:13.920 and happy to see them there's i don't know if you call it charm but it's at least they seem to like

01:00:18.860 enjoy each other's proximity it is it becomes political but it is not inherently political

01:00:25.600 so people get all tied up and how do we recreate that by getting someone who's a good interviewer

01:00:31.180 and giving them lots of money and also look at his bucket same with theo von look at their production

01:00:35.140 look how good that production is look how nice it is why don't you build that oh what pod save 0.99

01:00:41.140 america fuck pod save america fuck them i'm sorry every fucking time every time it feels like 1.00

01:00:48.540 nothing's happening it's so condescending did you see the david cross john favreau interview 1.00

01:00:54.120 no that was my so david cross had john favreau on his podcast and so he ghost wrote his book and

01:01:00.880 there's like the three of them ghost and there's the guy i don't know if he's like johnny's and

01:01:04.620 david cross just like you got john favreau and john down here and john favreau has no idea what 0.51

01:01:09.660 the fuck to do and it's just like yeah if you if your big book that you're releasing for your very 0.75

01:01:14.520 important podcast that you care about a lot is ghost written how am i meant to think you care 1.00

01:01:18.280 yeah how am i meant to how is anyone meant to equate oh how do we get young men oh yeah young

01:01:23.900 we don't have anything like that that has the budgets of a theo von or the yak or anything

01:01:29.780 barstool look at sb nation probably the closest we've ever got and vox just mostly enjoys taking

01:01:35.480 money away from them and that's the thing these organizations don't exist because no one wants to

01:01:40.400 fund them they don't they want to joe rogan of the left despite realizing that it took years and years

01:01:45.320 to build joe rogan and a shit ton of money that he had and other people gave him right if you

01:01:49.600 actually fund these things and put money behind them in all of these cases i don't know if they

01:01:55.280 are sincere but they certainly fucking come off that way and it's probably fake they're very good

01:02:00.860 at lying i think they're probably sincere towards the beginning what if we had a very well funded 0.97

01:02:05.820 kind of like leftist and the term leftist is even a problem because it's like well what is a leftist 0.97

01:02:11.620 miserable little pile of secrets i guess like i don't fucking know how about you get together a 0.99

01:02:16.740 diverse group of people who enjoys being around each other and they chat fucking shit in a really 0.99

01:02:20.860 glossy good video forward thing with a good social team that knows how to cut them they do fun things 0.99

01:02:26.240 i choose the yak because it's like the weirdly centristy part like they just they just kind of

01:02:32.660 enjoy like big cat in them it's fine fine to watch like i don't really love it it's just i'm

01:02:38.780 frustrated because the solutions are actually really obvious solutions the wrong word the

01:02:43.740 starting points are very obvious you don't need four million dollars to figure them out actually

01:02:48.400 i disagree well for something else yes you don't need research you need money shove money into 0.99

01:02:55.400 fucking million dollars of advertising budget a year minimum just fucking create magic do you 0.90

01:03:01.680 think all of the top podcasts on on the podcast charts are there because just because they're 0.98

01:03:06.520 good or is it because they're famous people or had a bunch of money it's really easy to do this

01:03:11.200 you could do this tomorrow if you really fucking wanted to you could choose someone and just be

01:03:16.080 like that person's gonna be it and they're like oh who will be the job who cares who actually 0.79

01:03:21.300 cares start creating content like the theo vons the yaks the joe rogan's the world that resembles

01:03:27.000 people who aren't just white guys who there are tons of entertaining trans people tons of

01:03:33.820 entertaining black women like yourself it's just like there are tons of people you could just 0.98

01:03:37.200 fucking pick put them together throw the money what if it doesn't work yeah i agree let's do 0.99

01:03:41.820 nothing then yeah let's just sit here and let's pay another consultant that's a better mckinsey 0.99

01:03:47.620 needs their buck yeah like a better way to spend the money and and having come up in some of these

01:03:53.500 sort of democratic establishment circles they love to be like oh we need to solve this problem

01:03:59.120 but we are not interested in failing we're not interested in spending a little bit of money if

01:04:04.800 it doesn't work that's it we can't try anything else it's it's so self-defeating also it will work

01:04:10.120 i will i'm sorry i'm a dumbass and at ces i prop i popped up like a five day long talk show at ces 0.94

01:04:20.540 and i cobbled it together as i went it was some of the best fucking broad i'm not being arrogant 0.94

01:04:24.740 it was some of the best fucking broadcast i've heard and i made it and i made it with no planning 0.79

01:04:29.760 and it was because i thought i know these people i know questions to ask them i'm not even 0.96

01:04:33.820 positioning myself in any way i'm saying this took i think the combined cost of that just to

01:04:38.520 say some stuff like sixteen thousand dollars total that was with it with a gear equipment

01:04:44.280 hotel rooms and that was because it was the ces like that's the thing like you can and i budgeted

01:04:49.660 that myself by the way um but that's the thing it isn't actually that expensive to do these things

01:04:54.620 and if you put real money into it you could do something fucking incredible and you could

01:04:58.460 absolutely do you think people want to hear joe rogan interview these people god no he's not a

01:05:04.020 a very good interviewer like i don't know if i agree tell me more i don't think he's a smart

01:05:10.880 interviewer but i think rogan is able to ask these questions that put people at ease and he gets

01:05:17.320 detailed on weird answers out of them he is able to relax them probably because like there's one

01:05:23.660 brain cell just like pops on and on like a light bulb question um he's like yeah i heard like like

01:05:30.020 oh yeah i saw the grinch theater yeah i knew a guy like that and it's just like joe rogan doesn't

01:05:35.200 know a single guy like he's just he's just he stays in that studio but his studio is really nice

01:05:40.200 they get fun clips tim pool horrifying horrifying and he is just agenda setting for like literal 0.99

01:05:47.520 entities again huge amounts of money tons of cash and yes there's grifts there but god damn

01:05:54.260 put the money into it throw the money into it you want to know why people don't really know

01:05:58.880 about a lot of these issues it's insane that i me a part-timer and one of the first people just 0.99

01:06:04.640 be like aren't fucking business people stupid you ever look at these business people and they're 0.99

01:06:09.720 just saying fucking stupid shit i should not be dynamic for saying this but it's proof and i mean 1.00

01:06:16.720 this in a positive way there's tons of opportunity out there there's so many ways and if you bankroll 1.00

01:06:22.180 these things and make them aggressive and fun and support them legally as well as giving them the

01:06:27.160 social proof and the advertising budget people are going to want to listen to that they don't 0.98

01:06:31.700 you can make them positive they don't even need to be about serious stuff but shit when labor 0.96

01:06:35.640 issues come up you say yeah we're pro worker oh i think workers might like that one well why are 0.99

01:06:41.540 we angry at people because the business idiots there are things you can and it's not even 0.98

01:06:45.760 something you need to do disingenuously i choose western kabuki because all of those people i think 0.99

01:06:50.820 if you tried caleb wilson one of my closest friends do a football podcast with him i think

01:06:56.320 if you tried to force caleb to hold an opinion that he didn't want he would kill you but that's

01:07:01.360 what you want but again the the democrats would see that be like whoa whoa whoa what do you mean 0.80

01:07:06.120 you don't like john fettman yeah they would find somewhere like this isn't this is too folksy needs 0.61

01:07:13.040 to be more scoldy they've got their they've got their purity politics except for like trans people

01:07:17.740 then they're like whoa okay we don't have beliefs around these parts no totally 0.99

01:07:23.120 Let's take a quick break.

01:07:53.120 Again, more Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.

01:07:58.640 And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined.

01:08:02.920 So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.

01:08:06.000 Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio.

01:08:10.320 Think podcasting can help your business?

01:08:12.260 Think iHeart.

01:08:13.320 Streaming, radio, and podcasting.

01:08:15.480 Let us show you at iHeartAdvertising.com.

01:08:18.060 That's iHeartAdvertising.com.

01:08:20.040 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

01:08:26.380 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

01:08:32.740 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

01:08:36.440 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.99

01:08:41.860 Shut up. Don't say anything. 0.99

01:08:44.540 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

01:08:49.060 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

01:08:53.520 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

01:09:01.140 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

01:09:05.040 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

01:09:08.500 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

01:09:11.600 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:09:20.560 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

01:09:26.500 This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

01:09:38.980 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

01:09:46.100 I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

01:09:49.680 From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

01:09:55.620 It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.

01:10:03.080 Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.

01:10:12.700 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:10:18.740 See you between the pages.

01:10:26.180 At our back.

01:10:27.040 i have a question you so am i mistaken you're like a sports guy right like you're into sports

01:10:37.580 yes okay i have a story that i want to ask you about do you know much about fan duel

01:10:42.420 i'm familiar okay so i saw this story last week and i don't know much about sports actually this

01:10:49.160 is the only sport that i know anything about which is track and ran track in high school but

01:10:52.780 gabby thomas she's this harvard educated black track olympian she won a gold medal in 2024 during

01:10:58.680 the summer olympics she is awesome we love her but she experienced this like very scary hostile

01:11:06.020 behavior from somebody who basically was trying to according to them throw her like like have

01:11:13.140 like get in her head to the point where she was not able to compete so they could bet against her

01:11:18.580 Exactly. So last week, she posted on X that a man followed her around the track and took pictures as she signed autographs for fans who are mostly children and shouted racist personal insults at her. So this dummy who did this also went on X and bragged, yeah, I made Gabby lose by heckling her and then it made my parlay win and then posted a screenshot from the betting platform FanDuel.

01:11:40.800 So when I saw this, I was like, well, I'm sure the betting platform would probably be very interested to know that one of their bettors is, in his own words, like trying to influence the sport that he's gambling on.

01:11:51.860 And FanDuel found him, booted him from the platform.

01:11:55.140 It was like, he's never going to be able to be on this platform again.

01:11:58.880 They said FanDuel condemns in the strongest terms abusive behavior directed toward athletes.

01:12:03.820 Threatening or harassing athletes is unacceptable.

01:12:06.000 That's good.

01:12:06.740 It is good.

01:12:07.420 So I have to say, like, I looked this guy up on Twitter, even though he deleted the tweet that was bragging about harassing Gabby.

01:12:14.080 This is somebody who, like, clearly is very interested in sports betting.

01:12:18.740 And I found this very alarming stat from ESPN.

01:12:21.840 A study commissioned last year by the NCAA found that abuse by angry sports bettors is one of the most common types of harassment college athletes receive, making up at least 12 percent of publicly posted social media abuse.

01:12:33.540 and I don't know it just really I don't think I really checked in on how the rise and normalization

01:12:39.480 of online sports betting has like the way that that has kind of like shaped our online discourse

01:12:46.900 if it is in fact is linked to a rise in online harassment of athletes like I found that to be

01:12:51.200 like actually genuinely kind of alarming so Arif Hasan who is the other co-host of the 60-minute

01:12:58.120 drill the podcast do with Western Kabuki's Caleb Wilson did a great piece about this last year I

01:13:02.920 think all of the sport, the sports gambling companies, I think all of them should be shut

01:13:06.860 down. I think all of their executives should be put in prison forever. I think it is one of the

01:13:11.280 most socially corrosive creations of all time. I think the, I live in Las Vegas. I believe that

01:13:15.340 sport gambling should be, if it is allowed to exist, which is a moral question to itself,

01:13:20.460 it should be so heavily regulated. The companies like Fangio should be criminalized. Instead,

01:13:26.660 they are growing like wildfire. I think that man in question should be in jail for a long time.

01:13:32.060 i think in fact if we had any teeth he should be done for attempting some kind of tortious 0.98

01:13:38.240 interference he should be like make up a legal fucking thing and start pulling him for criminal 0.97

01:13:42.680 proceedings because that's how you actually make an example of people it's horrible as to say but 0.99

01:13:47.680 if you go and chase a black woman trying to do her job because you want to make a little money

01:13:51.620 you should have to you should get your life kind of ruined by the legal process you should even if

01:13:56.620 you even if you win it should be there should be a social punishment for such actions not only for 0.98

01:14:03.760 doing it to a person but for a person of color within any industry already kind of like fighting

01:14:08.940 against the racial horrors of america you should it should be so scary to do that that you shouldn't 0.99

01:14:16.200 do it instead the black woman is the one that has to be scared and the guy oh no i can't bet on 1.00

01:14:20.600 fan deal they can bet on draft kings i bet you can just go into any fucking casino but there's 0.99

01:14:26.620 never there's never actual real consequences because and even i don't even even looking up 0.84

01:14:32.040 the story briefly i don't see much horror around this this should be like i guess what should be

01:14:37.900 front page news right now the gestapo or the like it's just horrifying every day and new horror

01:14:44.220 yeah i stand by the thing about the sport the sports betting companies being yeah well i'm

01:14:50.140 It is wild that rather than facing consequences for what I think is like just an obvious social negative, these companies have been able to amass more and more power.

01:14:59.720 They become more ubiquitous and they're all over college campuses.

01:15:03.740 And I don't have any data around this, but I can only imagine that the consequences for young men and boys is like not great.

01:15:09.520 Well, think about it.

01:15:10.240 that's the other thing with the the whole oh what we're doing with young men it's like

01:15:14.320 i don't know maybe we shouldn't have legalized sports gambling and made it hyper masculine and

01:15:20.600 also as the right wing sunk as much money as possible into big strong men looking strong

01:15:26.840 and blaming women and people of color for everything not spend money on everything

01:15:30.600 and just sit back and go isn't the world nice i don't know the whole man thing as well is really

01:15:37.880 and this is a very male dominated the sports gambling thing is male dominated you've got

01:15:42.020 people that do youtube channels about how you can scam your way through parlays it's just like

01:15:46.340 you have this media cluster around it that's growing as well it's just proof that a lot of

01:15:53.380 modern business doesn't have any morals at all and we don't have governments that believe thanks

01:15:58.140 to ronald reagan and his ilk that we don't have like regulation or things that would stop businesses 0.93

01:16:03.220 from growing rapaciously and i mean my whole bit is that growth is behind every fucking problem we 0.92

01:16:08.260 have the desperation for growth and everything is fucking up everything and sports gambling is it 0.69

01:16:14.560 too but it goes to joe rogan and the left thing it's like they grew into an opportunity i don't

01:16:20.100 think the i think it's an easy way out to blame right-wing podcasts for turning men against the

01:16:26.140 democrats when the democrats just offered nothing to anyone ever and in fact threw everyone under

01:16:31.800 the bus and now they're throwing young men under the bus which i mean you can do that maybe it's

01:16:36.860 right i don't know but you're not you don't seem to be trying to appeal to any voter right now

01:16:41.900 just going like ah well did you see that that's terrible someone should do something you're a 0.99

01:16:47.660 senator i know but what could i possibly do i i attend attend senate hearings fuck no 0.95

01:16:55.500 i got nothing i i'm not busy i just don't want to go strongly worded letter 0.90

01:17:01.440 you know it's the tool in their toolbox yes you know right-wing people love to read

01:17:08.200 kill me oh and this is honestly talking to you about these stories is i don't know this is a

01:17:18.320 different kind of episode than we usually do because i'm sorry i'm just kind of like no i

01:17:22.560 do not apologize this is exactly why i wanted to have you on and one of the reasons i wanted

01:17:27.600 have you on is literally whenever ai comes up even tangentially in any episode we do someone

01:17:33.960 in the spotify comments will be like you should talk to ed like this is like i hate like like

01:17:39.260 there are a handful of people who are like whenever anything comes up like listen to ed

01:17:42.940 talk to ed so thank you for for and also to those listeners bridget supported better offline from

01:17:49.380 the literal beginning not just should talk to it bridget has been there very early she deserves

01:17:54.860 tons of credit like it's not like she has been behind she's been ahead oh well you know i i

01:18:00.540 remember when you when y'all announced you were doing the show i was genuinely so excited exactly

01:18:06.140 because of what you were just talking about how especially in the podcast space there are just so

01:18:10.520 few people who are having these conversations who really want to kind of shed some light on all the

01:18:17.200 ego and lies and bullshit and bullshit and scams that i feel like has become so normalized in the 0.69

01:18:23.640 space they're they're like i could probably count on two hands how many voices i think are out there 0.98

01:18:29.040 in the podcast space specifically who are doing that and there needs to be more and also i don't

01:18:34.220 think enough of them love technology because that's the fundamental thing i'm pissed off

01:18:37.540 because they took something from us i'm pissed off because i like the computer and i love the

01:18:41.700 people like yeah the whole cool media thing is the result of the internet my whole following is the

01:18:45.640 internet my life's the internet i'm up the drill crying tweet if you've seen that yeah now get the 0.56

01:18:50.160 fuck out my office like it's and i think that that is missing from a lot of tech cynics as well 0.79

01:18:56.480 it's just that they want something to be mad at rather than they're mad that something was taken 0.98

01:19:01.540 also if all this money and power went somewhere good imagine how much better the world could be

01:19:06.080 i don't even mean that in the vague vacuous non-profit flavored oh even the world be good

01:19:12.900 it'd be more fun there'd be more exciting things we could have more solidarity we could love each

01:19:17.200 other more they could be more interesting and fun art made they could be more support for social 0.64

01:19:21.400 issues instead it's just this fucking smudge on the world right now when nothing's happening 0.91

01:19:28.100 hundreds of billions of dollars going into fucking nothing it's depressing but it can be better and 0.96

01:19:33.060 it gets better by taking their names don't let them don't let make google search hate them i 0.99

01:19:38.340 fucked up part of google search that was that's one of my proudest moments how so tell me uh so 0.73

01:19:43.480 I did an episode last year called The Man Who Killed Google Search, or The Man That Destroyed

01:19:47.620 Google Search. And there's this guy called Prabhagar Raghavan. I found his details in the

01:19:52.360 Department of Justice antitrust trial. They had all these emails. And I basically found the story

01:19:57.840 of this guy who was the head of ads called Prabhagar Raghavan, who rat fucked this guy, Ben 0.97

01:20:02.020 Gomes, pushed him out. And literally, the emails are like, Ben Gomes or Shashi Thakur, I think one 0.90

01:20:07.460 of the engineers goes, I'm just worried that all Google cares about is growth. To the point that

01:20:12.060 when i read that i had to go and check the url to make sure i was not being pranked

01:20:16.280 but it was my biggest story and now probably go ragavan has been given a technical title he's

01:20:21.820 like a chief technologist he was the head of everything and now he's the chief technologist

01:20:26.320 they put him out back they put him in a they put him in an office without a door handle inside

01:20:31.740 he's still in that office yeah eight hours a day all right probably you can leave now

01:20:36.560 your stock's still vesting mate but don't talk to anyone don't plug in your computer 0.99

01:20:40.840 piece of shit i'd love to meet that guy but he hates me and he's god that's incredible i mean 0.99

01:20:47.260 you said something i mean i i like you i love technology the reason why i make a tech podcast 0.99

01:20:52.520 is because i i love tech i want it to be better i i want technology to be something that that feels

01:20:58.900 good and and free again like i like genuinely remember how it felt to stumble upon weird

01:21:04.260 corners of the internet that you could just tell were labors of love like weird flash sites and

01:21:09.080 shit like that and i mean you can really tell when someone who is talking about the internet

01:21:14.000 who does so for a living doesn't come from a place of loving tech and like being crazy about 0.99

01:21:20.360 computers and crazy yeah i do think it's like cranks who hate everything they don't actually

01:21:25.440 want it to be good they want something to complain about or or they don't love technology they love

01:21:31.820 the tech industry which is a sick position that is gossip journalism i think that's the majority

01:21:37.460 of them it's scary and i'd love to be proven wrong well ed where can folks listen to better

01:21:44.160 offline where can folks read the newsletter better offline.com it's i bought that website

01:21:49.940 for a reason uh better offline.com you can find all my crap there you click the links you'll find

01:21:54.940 my profile you find my everything and that you it has the big skull on it that's how you know

01:22:00.220 you're in the right place and we're selling merch now which i'm so happy with i was just gonna say

01:22:03.660 the merch is good it's banging it's so good i don't i the only reason i'm in las vegas it's 0.89

01:22:09.480 really hot otherwise i'd be wearing my hoodie like it's fucking like the zip-up hoodies are 0.94

01:22:13.040 fucking banging i love it i love that we have good merch i wouldn't accept it we're gonna do 0.95

01:22:16.360 challenge coins yeah is that your cat in the background by the way yes i've been trying to 0.97

01:22:22.740 keep him from jumping up because he pisses me off when i'm trying to do stuff people like oh a cat 0.99

01:22:26.700 i'm like get the fuck out of my camera shot god i love him dearly but he's a pain in the ass wait 0.99

01:22:31.760 What is his name? 1.00

01:22:32.960 Howell.

01:22:33.860 Howell. Well, Ed and Howell, thank you both for being here.

01:22:37.560 Thank you for all of your work.

01:22:39.360 If you want to follow me around the internet,

01:22:41.360 I'm on TikTok at Bridget Marie.

01:22:43.760 I'm on Instagram at Bridget Marie in DC,

01:22:45.560 and we're on YouTube, but there are no girls on the internet.

01:22:47.660 Thank you so much for being here, Ed.

01:22:49.160 We will see you on the internet.

01:22:50.460 Thank you.

01:22:51.460 Transcription by CastingWords

01:23:22.280 Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer.

01:23:24.520 Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.

01:23:27.140 Michael Amato is our contributing producer.

01:23:29.180 I'm your host, Bridget Todd.

01:23:30.640 If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

01:23:33.940 For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:23:38.980 I survived nine months in captivity and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive

01:23:51.980 what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. Every

01:23:58.020 week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled,

01:24:03.400 and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

01:24:08.980 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:24:16.680 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

01:24:22.760 Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

01:24:30.580 Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.

01:24:39.300 Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

01:24:41.060 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:24:47.260 I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb.

01:24:51.620 You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.

01:24:56.800 Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out.

01:25:03.980 You're not hired just to fill time and space.

01:25:06.800 You're hired to fill the space with you.

01:25:09.960 Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:25:18.040 Our hometown is not a test tube.

01:25:20.700 90 miles northeast of Nashville, a battle for the future of America plays out in one small town.

01:25:26.780 Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land.

01:25:30.440 We need cities on a shining hill.

01:25:32.380 This is Our Town, a podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment and fights back. 0.97

01:25:40.680 Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you?

01:25:43.380 Listen to Our Town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 0.98

01:25:51.980 This is an iHeart Podcast.

01:25:54.860 Guaranteed human.

01:25:56.600 Thank you.

There Are No Girls on the Internet - June 13, 2025

Elon’s Extortion Play; All-In Goes MIA; LA Protests Flooded With Disinfo; ChatGPT Plays Therapist — NEWS ROUNDUP w⧸ Ed Zitron of Better Offline

Episode Stats

Transcript