Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3: My name is Matt, my name is Noela. They call
Speaker 3: me Ben.
Speaker 4: We're joined with our guest superproducer Max the Freak Train Williams.
Speaker 4: Most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 4: they don't want you to know. It's one of the
Speaker 4: most exciting evenings of the week for us, fellow conspiracy realists.
Speaker 4: This is where we hear directly from you. We're getting Oh,
Speaker 4: it looks like we have extra letters from home. We're
Speaker 4: very excited about that. We've We've got some Google results,
Speaker 4: Google search results. I'm really interested in this conversation. We
Speaker 4: have a an on the ground follow up to our
Speaker 4: recent discussions of flex and or surge pricing. Before we
Speaker 4: do any of that, you guys ever want to just
Speaker 4: give up the podcasting thing and go get a bunker,
Speaker 4: like an underground place to survive.
Speaker 5: I have my basement's kind of bunker like. I just
Speaker 5: need to maybe reinforce the doors a little bit. I
Speaker 5: hang out down here a lot. I got everything I need.
Speaker 5: We were just talking off air. I got a mini fridge,
Speaker 5: got a freezer chest.
Speaker 3: What else is? They're Vigie games.
Speaker 2: A place to brew your beer in the cold dank caves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. That was my cold dank rainbow cave.
Speaker 5: And we're back with today's first piece of Listener mail.
Speaker 3: This one comes from flash who's a regular contributor.
Speaker 5: I think he probably dms each of us separately on
Speaker 5: the Internet. I don't know if he's ever written in,
Speaker 5: but he's a I don't want to give too much
Speaker 5: away about the guy, but he's a really really impressive,
Speaker 5: awesome I'm a lay.
Speaker 4: Friend of stuff he should know as well.
Speaker 3: Okay, very good.
Speaker 5: I'm not gonna he has to use the nickname Flashy
Speaker 5: as sort of a public figure per se. He's got
Speaker 5: one of the blue check marks, but really really talented dude.
Speaker 5: I will leave it at that as to maintain his anonym,
Speaker 5: and he goes that is in the spirit of Listener mail.
Speaker 5: But he did right in in regards to a conversation
Speaker 5: we were having. I can't remember what it was surrounding,
Speaker 5: but I think I brought up the fact that I
Speaker 5: feel as though Google search results have gotten here, and
Speaker 5: I think results may may vary, and and there's a
Speaker 5: good reason for That's just what we're gonna talk about today.
Speaker 4: I've definitely been talking with a lot of people on
Speaker 4: social media to regarding this, because it's you know, there's
Speaker 4: a threshold, I would argue all that after a certain
Speaker 4: amount of people who don't know each other begin noticing
Speaker 4: this phenomenals, right, we can't treat it as though, you know,
Speaker 4: we can't treat it as so people are imagining something
Speaker 4: or being gas lit.
Speaker 5: Well, and it also depends on what you're searching for.
Speaker 5: I don't want to get too ahead of the of
Speaker 5: the curve here or too derailed from Flash's message. But
Speaker 5: I actually saw a very interesting quote from Christopher Nolan,
Speaker 5: the director, who had something very interesting to point out,
Speaker 5: and I think this will be actually a really good
Speaker 5: lead in to this story, and I'll just give you
Speaker 5: the gist of it. He basically said he feels like
Speaker 5: there isn't as much information on the Internet as people think.
Speaker 5: Google is very good at certain things like cataloging your
Speaker 5: personal data and selling it to the highest bidder and
Speaker 5: using it to well, maybe not that necessarily well, maybe that,
Speaker 5: but also specifically using it to serve you ads and
Speaker 5: tracking your movements and your tastes and internet browsing habits,
Speaker 5: but not necessarily search. He points out that if you
Speaker 5: went to the library and like three different books and
Speaker 5: flipped to some random pages and then searched for those online,
Speaker 5: you would probably results would be more in the underwhelming
Speaker 5: direction than they would be then having those results turn up.
Speaker 5: And so I think there is something to be said
Speaker 5: about that. I thought it was an interesting way of
Speaker 5: putting it. But here is what Flash had to say
Speaker 5: his message to us via Instagram. Something you might want
Speaker 5: to have a look at. Just heard the podcast where
Speaker 5: you talked about if Google search is getting worse?
Speaker 3: In short, it is. Here's a video explaining.
Speaker 5: How they are intentionally making it harder to find the
Speaker 5: correct results. And he linked to an episode of the
Speaker 5: Verge Cast. Big fan of the Verge all around really
Speaker 5: good tech reporting. The folks that are on this particular
Speaker 5: podcast are very much embedded, are entrenched in the SEO world,
Speaker 5: which you know, to folks that are casual Internet users
Speaker 5: or maybe more into like the technic side of things
Speaker 5: can be a little bit of a snooze but we've
Speaker 5: kind of lived and breathed SEO as part of big
Speaker 5: websites and search engine optimization, search engine optimization one hundred percent,
Speaker 5: and it's essentially the idea of making your content, whether
Speaker 5: it be your website, you know, your blog, your company,
Speaker 5: your brand UH be prioritized in search. And Google has
Speaker 5: always kind of been a bit of a black box
Speaker 5: in terms of like what they do to change their algorithms.
Speaker 3: They roll out these big.
Speaker 5: Changes and I remember back when we were more connected
Speaker 5: to the How Stuff Works website, there would be I
Speaker 5: don't know if you guys remember this, there'd be changes
Speaker 5: to the Google algorithm that would change the way content
Speaker 5: was was ranked in terms of quality content. Right, And
Speaker 5: because some of the stuff on How Stuff Works were
Speaker 5: these little kind of micro articles times or they were
Speaker 5: divided up into multiple pages so you get served more ads,
Speaker 5: we got hit by this idea of it was no
Speaker 5: longer considered of a higher echemount of quality content. It
Speaker 5: wasn't much substantive, substantive because it was too much little
Speaker 5: snippets kind of not to say that taken as a whole,
Speaker 5: this wasn't good writing. There's no shade on any of
Speaker 5: the writers for how stuff worked. But a direction that
Speaker 5: many of these types of websites have gone in recent
Speaker 5: years is to break these things up so you can
Speaker 5: get more ads crammed in there. And that's not you know,
Speaker 5: the writer's decision. That is the powers that be, and
Speaker 5: I think we're all annoyed by that. But that is
Speaker 5: the kind of stuff that can't affect Google search results.
Speaker 2: But a lot of those have switched back now to
Speaker 2: the one wagers.
Speaker 5: That's exactly right, and that's because of this very thing,
Speaker 5: because it gets it's not worth feeding, it's not worthy
Speaker 5: if you have more ads, but you have fewer eyeballs
Speaker 5: on the ads. It doesn't really matter how many ads
Speaker 5: you have, So I think it makes more sense to
Speaker 5: prioritize the search engine optimization over cramming as many ads
Speaker 5: as you possibly can.
Speaker 3: That way, you can sell the ads.
Speaker 5: That you do have at more of a premium because
Speaker 5: you're getting more page views. So in order to operate
Speaker 5: like that, guys, you have to kind of take a
Speaker 5: company like Google at their word when they tell you
Speaker 5: this is how we rank quality of content. This is
Speaker 5: how we reward certain things with higher page rankings. You know,
Speaker 5: the show them up in the results. And it's not
Speaker 5: exactly them telling you how to quote unquote game search.
Speaker 3: That's what everyone's trying to do.
Speaker 5: And I think one thing that this Verge podcast pointed
Speaker 5: out is the folks that are the most successful with
Speaker 5: that are the ones that don't necessarily take everything Google
Speaker 5: says as the law of the land. They do experiments
Speaker 5: like I don't know if you guys remember when mister
Speaker 5: Beast did a thing where he posted only thumbnails through
Speaker 5: his videos with his mouth open. And again this is
Speaker 5: a discuss in this Verge podcast. YouTube didn't tell him
Speaker 5: to do that, He just tried it out and realized
Speaker 5: that when he posted on image with his mouth open,
Speaker 5: he got way better ranking in the you know YouTube and.
Speaker 4: Eults wasn't out of the blue. He does a phenomenal
Speaker 4: job explaining this, and I love what you're pointing out.
Speaker 4: One interesting thing, just for context, that folks need to know,
Speaker 4: and flash you are well aware of this. The vast
Speaker 4: majority of people searching for anything on Google, no matter
Speaker 4: what it is, the vast majority do not go to
Speaker 4: page two of the results.
Speaker 5: Oh that's right, that's why they They have said it
Speaker 5: for years, like if you're not on page one of
Speaker 5: the results, you might as well not exist, you know.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's it's it's sort of like being featured
Speaker 5: in like like Apple podcasts, they call it a what
Speaker 5: do they call their band carousel, their carousel. If you're
Speaker 5: not in the first rung of that carousel before you
Speaker 5: have to click next, you basically have it been featured,
Speaker 5: you know, because unfortunately, I mean I tend to click through.
Speaker 5: I don't know about you guys, and I do tend
Speaker 5: to click through a few search result pages. But I
Speaker 5: think the vast majority of folks won't click to the
Speaker 5: next set of four image tiles or won't click on
Speaker 5: the next page of search results.
Speaker 3: So if you're not, because people are.
Speaker 5: Kind of inherently a little bit lazy, even on the Internet,
Speaker 5: where it's like a literal click, you know, to get
Speaker 5: you some more stuff loaded on your screen to look at.
Speaker 3: But here's the kicker.
Speaker 5: What the Verge podcast is referring to as an article
Speaker 5: that they posted on The Verge May thirty first of
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four. So a little late to the party
Speaker 5: on this story, but I think it is absolutely crucial
Speaker 5: impression and information that we should all know and that
Speaker 5: clearly Google does not want us to know the biggest
Speaker 5: findings in the Google Search link by Mia Sato, who
Speaker 5: is the Platforms and Communities reporter with five years of
Speaker 5: experience covering the companies that shape technology and the people
Speaker 5: who use their tools. Per The Verge, the subhead, a
Speaker 5: set of twenty five hundred internal documents, including some related
Speaker 5: to search, call them to question the past statements made
Speaker 5: by the company, calling into questions things like what they
Speaker 5: said didn't matter, things that they said they weren't keeping
Speaker 5: track of, things that they said did not contribute in
Speaker 5: any way, shape or form.
Speaker 3: To your Google Search rankings.
Speaker 5: There are things in this cash of documents that indicate
Speaker 5: that Google has kind of been lying to creators. To
Speaker 5: what end, It's not quite clear. It's a lot of documents,
Speaker 5: but Google is, as it described, and I think completely
Speaker 5: accurately in this document, the biggest gatekeeper of the Internet,
Speaker 5: and they've always been a bit of a black box
Speaker 5: in terms of how their search works, how this algorithm works.
Speaker 5: They make it clear right off the at that the
Speaker 5: Google Search algorithm itself has not leaked, and SEO experts
Speaker 5: don't suddenly have all the answers, but the information that
Speaker 5: did leak collection of thousands of internal Google documents is
Speaker 5: still huge. It's an unprecedented look into Google's inner workings
Speaker 5: that are typically closely guarded. It's something that I think
Speaker 5: we should maybe even do a little bit of a
Speaker 5: deeper dive into.
Speaker 3: This is a very extensive article.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of like other kind of sub you know,
Speaker 5: articles that are sort of using this as a jumping
Speaker 5: off point and doing further exploration that those that cash
Speaker 5: of documents fully available to dig through ourselves. But one
Speaker 5: of the things that I think is interesting is how
Speaker 5: they have clearly been being dishonest about Chrome. Okay, so, Chrome,
Speaker 5: as we know, is also the most popular web browser
Speaker 5: in the world. And what this document, or this series
Speaker 5: of documents indicates is that essentially, surprise, surprise, Chrome is
Speaker 5: basically a key logger and all of your stuff is
Speaker 5: getting reported directly back to Google. And I know that's
Speaker 5: no shock because we all, any of us who got
Speaker 5: an early Gmail account, it was so convenient, so snappy,
Speaker 5: so it worked so well. You may all recall that
Speaker 5: we basically agree to allow Google to read our emails.
Speaker 5: That was the early caveat, and I.
Speaker 4: Spent a lot of time writing good emails.
Speaker 3: I know you do. Ben.
Speaker 5: You are very you are very eloquent in both speech
Speaker 5: and and and the written world. I hear you're one
Speaker 5: of the great email writers of our generation. But I
Speaker 5: don't give it about that.
Speaker 3: Either, dude, I really don't care.
Speaker 5: I fully signed on for that, but they it's one
Speaker 5: thing where they put that in the in the small
Speaker 5: print or whatever, and it was it was not that
Speaker 5: small because I remember that from way back when I
Speaker 5: first got my you know, my original Gmail that I've
Speaker 5: had for however many freaking years it's been. But with Chrome,
Speaker 5: they unequivocally have said they don't do that. They don't
Speaker 5: don't track your stuff, and which was just like why lie,
Speaker 5: of course you are somebody. Again, this is pointed out
Speaker 5: on the Verge podcast. At Google was like, isn't it
Speaker 5: our job to like figure out what.
Speaker 3: Kind of links people are going to? And like, how
Speaker 3: do we do that.
Speaker 5: Let's build the most popular web browser in the planet
Speaker 5: and now we know everything, and of course they're keeping
Speaker 5: track of that. Certain Again I'm not an SEO expert,
Speaker 5: but there are certain things, certain types of fields that
Speaker 5: are kind of hidden fields in HTML or whatever it is.
Speaker 5: The you know, the underlying code of a website that
Speaker 5: they said were irrelevant. This indicates that many of those
Speaker 5: things are absolutely relevant or absolutely being tracked. I just
Speaker 5: think it's fascinating and and very you know, the whole
Speaker 5: don't be evil thing, So no wonder they pivoted from that.
Speaker 3: It just feels like it's gone on the window. And
Speaker 3: I want to open this up to the group best.
Speaker 5: When I read the last little quote from the piece,
Speaker 5: journalists and publishers of information about SEO and Google Search
Speaker 5: need to stop uncritically repeating Google's public statements and take
Speaker 5: a much harsher, more adversarial view of the search giants representatives.
Speaker 5: This is coming from SEO expert Rand Fishkin, who is
Speaker 5: a SEO optimization veteran kind of a guru in that field,
Speaker 5: and he interviewed for this piece with The Verge via email,
Speaker 5: and another guy named Mike King, who is also in
Speaker 5: that field. But absolutely, I mean not that we ever
Speaker 5: should be in a place where we unequivocally believe everything
Speaker 5: giant corporations tell us about their processes, because I think
Speaker 5: if anyone's listening to the show enough and done enough
Speaker 5: of their homework, so we know there's always some form
Speaker 5: of obfuscation going on.
Speaker 3: But guys, does any of this a surprise you?
Speaker 5: And b is there anything you'd like to know more about,
Speaker 5: because there really is almost too much to talk about
Speaker 5: in terms of like the types of attributes fourteen thousand attributes.
Speaker 3: It's mentioned in the document this.
Speaker 5: You know this is going to be something that's going
Speaker 5: to be dissected for a long time to come.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'd like to make this an episode. This is
Speaker 4: fantastic because people know that it's true. A couple of
Speaker 4: points to give some context here, Flash and our fellow
Speaker 4: conspiracy realist.
Speaker 3: One.
Speaker 4: The clever thing about spinning off entities is that you
Speaker 4: can pass the blame around like a hot potato, so
Speaker 4: you could say, conceivably, we at Google never lied. Alphabet
Speaker 4: made a decision, and that decision was not ours. I'd
Speaker 4: also love for anybody wants to read that excellent Verge
Speaker 4: article you mentioned.
Speaker 2: Al.
Speaker 4: I'd also recommend a publication that came out I want
Speaker 4: to say, January of this year, just search for is
Speaker 4: Google getting worse? A longitudinal investigation of SEO spam in
Speaker 4: search engines. And this came out right around the time
Speaker 4: people were getting really hot about institutionalizing AGI or machine
Speaker 4: learning or llms large language models, and this is it's
Speaker 4: a long read. I'm not gonna lie. It's not super
Speaker 4: sexy because it's scholarship, but it is incredibly insightful. The
Speaker 4: last point I would make is incognito. Incognito is not incognito.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: The rule remains from the early days of talking on
Speaker 4: the telephone, back when the operators had to switch you
Speaker 4: over to party lines and stuff like that. The rule
Speaker 4: remains you should not ever assume that anything you do
Speaker 4: online is private if in any manner, form or fashion.
Speaker 5: The verg folks pointed out a new browser that they
Speaker 5: were all just raving about that apparent. I can't remember
Speaker 5: the name now, but it was new enough that I
Speaker 5: think if you look up new secure browse something, it'll
Speaker 5: probably pop up. But that is the reason people like
Speaker 5: to use things like Opera, UH and other you know,
Speaker 5: browsers that that do potentially offer more private browsing. But man, yeah,
Speaker 5: when you're I think we can all, for all intents
Speaker 5: and purposes, assume that if you're using Chrome, which I
Speaker 5: certainly am right the second, in fact, we are required
Speaker 5: to use Chrome to run the streaming software that we
Speaker 5: used to record this very show that you've got a
Speaker 5: direct line to Google HQ with everything that you're doing
Speaker 5: incognito or no.
Speaker 2: Maybe they were talking about Brave Yeah, yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 2: is something newer that I didn't recognize.
Speaker 3: I'll see if.
Speaker 5: I can find it by the end of the segment,
Speaker 5: if not the episode. But Matt, I know this is
Speaker 5: near and dear to you because you've been through all
Speaker 5: of these algorithm changes as well and seeing all this
Speaker 5: stuff in the way. You know, Google essentially is god
Speaker 5: in this space. And I'm also wondering what you think
Speaker 5: about why this is making search worse? Is it because
Speaker 5: people are using their trying to do SEO based on
Speaker 5: things that aren't actually accurate or like, as our listener
Speaker 5: Flash pointed out, that Google is intentionally making search worse.
Speaker 5: I didn't exactly get that from the documents. I didn't
Speaker 5: know if you saw something that I might have missed.
Speaker 2: Well, look, I don't know. I'm not an expert here,
Speaker 2: but it does seem when you look at Alphabet's find financials,
Speaker 2: like through Investipedia and a couple other things, they are
Speaker 2: still getting most of their money through ads, right, That's
Speaker 2: the way they make their hundreds of billions of dollars.
Speaker 2: That's why they're such a huge company still. But they are,
Speaker 2: like almost every other major tech company on the planet,
Speaker 2: pushing AI as hard as they possibly can given them.
Speaker 5: They fell flat on their face with that first roll
Speaker 5: out of it too, with like the glue and the pizza.
Speaker 3: And all of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but given those developments, given the amount of money
Speaker 2: that they're funneling into those efforts, given the amount of
Speaker 2: information on everyone that they have, it does feel like
Speaker 2: they will probably have one of, if not the most
Speaker 2: robust AI, like personally catered AI system that will exist
Speaker 2: on the planet in X years from now, and that
Speaker 2: they're building really consistently over time, and it feels like
Speaker 2: perhaps that's where all this is going or why things
Speaker 2: are changing. We just don't get to see that back
Speaker 2: end and understand it's how it is being how the
Speaker 2: entire system is being modified, like for whatever the future
Speaker 2: thing is supposed to be.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you something interesting that I learned recently. I
Speaker 5: have a really good friend who contracts with Google. I'm
Speaker 5: not gonna say anything about what he does exactly, but
Speaker 5: he does deal with some of this AI stuff, and
Speaker 5: a lot of it is finding people to figure out
Speaker 5: what to do with this stuff and how to make
Speaker 5: it a product that people will want to buy essentially,
Speaker 5: or like want to buy into at the very least,
Speaker 5: and you know, because everyone's got to use it.
Speaker 3: It's the new hot thing.
Speaker 5: And obviously there's things happening behind the scenes that will
Speaker 5: make it very useful in terms of you know, maybe
Speaker 5: optimizing search or whatever, perhaps any number of things. But
Speaker 5: there are tons of people that there's younger people that
Speaker 5: are being paid to like figure out stuff to do
Speaker 5: with this technology, you know, and tons of money being
Speaker 5: thrown out. To your point, that is all from the
Speaker 5: inside perspective, completely true.
Speaker 3: And the browser is called ARC by the way. ARC.
Speaker 4: Oh, oh, there it is.
Speaker 3: I haven't played with that one yet.
Speaker 4: I'll check it out.
Speaker 5: We can keep this segment short because I really do
Speaker 5: think it's worthy of a deeper expiration.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you think so too, bim.
Speaker 5: I didn't really have any final words, just the fact
Speaker 5: that these attributes, there's so many of them, and it's
Speaker 5: just essentially what this thing, you know, indicates, is that
Speaker 5: so many of these attributes that Google said they weren't
Speaker 5: using to categorize quality, they weren't using to to rank search.
Speaker 5: They are, in fact, at the very least keeping track
Speaker 5: of Now I will say again I'm non SEO expert either,
Speaker 5: but just because they're keeping track of it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 5: mean that's the driving force, you know, I mean, more
Speaker 5: data is more data and anyway, as we know in
Speaker 5: this internet, you know world, the more data you have,
Speaker 5: the more power you have, so you know, the more
Speaker 5: grain or you can get. But to me, the biggest
Speaker 5: and easiest to for most of us to understand takeaway,
Speaker 5: who's this stuff about chrome?
Speaker 3: So there you go.
Speaker 5: Let's take a quick break, hear a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 5: and come back with some more Oh thank you, by
Speaker 5: the way, flash some more messages from you.
Speaker 2: We've returned and we are jumping to the phone lines.
Speaker 2: Let's hear this message from Ralph.
Speaker 7: Guys, I'm just gonna go with You can call me
Speaker 7: Ralph because I'm walking my dog and that's my dog's name.
Speaker 7: I love the episode about holes and cave systems, but
Speaker 7: I cannot believe that you didn't even mention Uber Pete
Speaker 7: this town out in southern Australia where they just dug
Speaker 7: holes into the side of this mountain, full sized houses,
Speaker 7: just really cool shit, and you just pay for a
Speaker 7: basic you know, whatever size that you want and then
Speaker 7: you can go in and ship away at it and
Speaker 7: like make your own shelves and stuff. But also here
Speaker 7: in my neck of the woods, there's this place called
Speaker 7: Subtropolis here out in a Kansas City, Missouri, and it
Speaker 7: is the world's largest limestone nerd brown metropolis. I guess
Speaker 7: that's why they call it Subtropolis. Really cool stuff. There's
Speaker 7: like hundreds of mins files of roots to go down there.
Speaker 7: They used to have I think they still do.
Speaker 6: They'll have like a bizarre little drift or a lee
Speaker 6: market type thing going on down there.
Speaker 7: All that's really cool. On another note, third time in
Speaker 7: a row that y'all have made a pet cemetery reference.
Speaker 7: Have y'all watched pet cemetery here recently?
Speaker 6: I don't know what's the deal, man, You know, sometimes
Speaker 6: sometimes dead is better. I love you guys, keep up
Speaker 6: the amazing work, and I'm really looking forward to part
Speaker 6: two of Fold Who isn't always looking for more holes?
Speaker 7: Y'all have a great day.
Speaker 4: Nice Thank you, Ralph, and thanks to your dog. This
Speaker 4: reminds me we talked about this in our Vampire to
Speaker 4: Missouri episode, Oh that was a spooky one.
Speaker 2: We talked about one of those yeh, subtropolis. We mentioned
Speaker 2: that place that was the.
Speaker 5: Cult one, right, that's all, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 5: is wild. The pet Cemetery rapsters. I think that that
Speaker 5: movie just ruined all of us. I mean, no, I
Speaker 5: know the book as well, but I saw that movie
Speaker 5: way too young, and so a lot of that stuff
Speaker 5: is embedded into me.
Speaker 3: And I think we really just liked doing the Fred
Speaker 3: Gwyn kind of cartoonist main accents. It's just kind of
Speaker 3: a fun thing to do. Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: But yes, Ralph, thank you so much.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 2: We're very glad you enjoyed that episode. The first thing
Speaker 2: you mentioned here is something that I personally had never
Speaker 2: heard of and I wanted to see if you guys
Speaker 2: knew about it. Kuber p d coo b e r
Speaker 2: p e d Y. This is a place in Australia
Speaker 2: where people have taken to living underground, fully underground, creating
Speaker 2: structures underneath the earth. Because in this area, this specific
Speaker 2: area that is what roughly five hundred and twenty seven
Speaker 2: miles north of adelaide of the coastal plains, there in Adelaide.
Speaker 2: This place gets so hot that birds are known to
Speaker 2: fall from the sky. According to the BBC, electronics must
Speaker 2: be stored in refrigerators often or you know, specifically cool down.
Speaker 2: If you just had a house that was on the
Speaker 2: surface of the earth there, it would get so hot
Speaker 2: inside your house, no matter what kind of ace you
Speaker 2: got going on, you have to put stuff in the fridge.
Speaker 3: Dude.
Speaker 5: Here in Georgia, we've gotten situations where our phones will
Speaker 5: Have you ever seen that message that comes up phone's
Speaker 5: overheating just from it being on the dash. It's got
Speaker 5: like a red triangle and an exclamation mark in it.
Speaker 3: Oh, no joke, Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, but I think maybe one of the reasons that
Speaker 2: Ralph was so astonished that we didn't talk about Cooper
Speaker 2: Pete is because that name is it's roughly translated from
Speaker 2: an Indigenous Australian term that means quote, white man in
Speaker 2: a hole.
Speaker 3: Just where they belong, just stick them all in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's literally like whole living I guess. But again,
Speaker 2: this is just fascinating and the kind of thing we
Speaker 2: were talking about just a little while ago when we
Speaker 2: were recording a full episode before this episode was recorded
Speaker 2: just this concept of wanting to live underground or in
Speaker 2: a cave or in a place that the earth is
Speaker 2: already modulating the temperature, so we wouldn't need technology of
Speaker 2: any sort, no matter what happened to keep us cool
Speaker 2: and livable in a climate that is livable. If anybody
Speaker 2: has been to Cooper Pete, if you have any experience there,
Speaker 2: we would love to hear from you directly. It is very,
Speaker 2: very very cool, and it's not the only place that
Speaker 2: you mentioned, Ben, As you said, we have discussed Subtropolis.
Speaker 2: The second thing that Ralph mentioned, which is a huge
Speaker 2: underground business complex, massive, massive, massive, massive. It was built
Speaker 2: out of a limestone deposit where this company went through
Speaker 2: and they basically, I don't know, board through the limestone
Speaker 2: and created these huge places where companies can move in.
Speaker 2: It's a temperature temperature controlled area and they can do
Speaker 2: things like work on vehicles and manufacture specific types of
Speaker 2: vehicles or at least uh basically you can lift F
Speaker 2: four f one fifties there. There's a there's a weird
Speaker 2: place in there that's all about vehicles. Anyway, it's super cool.
Speaker 2: Have you guys seen pictures of this? We're videos of it.
Speaker 2: We talked about it before.
Speaker 5: Yes, looking now it's super cool. I guess very rich
Speaker 5: opal deposits. There lots of like precious gems and mineral deposits.
Speaker 3: Coober PD is open to Australia. Yeah, yeah, what was
Speaker 3: what do we moved on to?
Speaker 2: Sorry, we moved on to Subtropolis. Uh, the world's largest
Speaker 2: underground business complex.
Speaker 3: Oh, got it, got it, got it, got it? Yes,
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 5: The Koober PD is also really cool looking, very interesting
Speaker 5: structures jutting out from the sides of these kind of kids.
Speaker 5: Do you think we're going to go back to cave
Speaker 5: dwelling guys? Is that is that in the cards for humanity?
Speaker 5: Don't call it unforced underground?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Rock the bells with that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: There there's a lot of speculation regarding this. I can
Speaker 4: say on good authority that there are multiple not just
Speaker 4: well to do individuals, but institutions that are increasingly looking
Speaker 4: into this in sort of a futurism long term hedging
Speaker 4: of bets. We know that good science fiction is only
Speaker 4: fiction for a small amount of time. Ralph, you may
Speaker 4: be interested, if you love sci fi at all, you
Speaker 4: may be interested in some some of the descriptions in
Speaker 4: Neil Stevenson's Seven Eves, which concerned the idea of how
Speaker 4: to survive a global cataclysm. The difference here in what
Speaker 4: is happening in Seven Eves is that that cataclysm is
Speaker 4: relative quick. The cataclysms that the humans are facing now
Speaker 4: are slow burn, slow boil cataclysms. Right, the kind of
Speaker 4: thing where you look around you might realize the surface
Speaker 4: of some part of the world is no longer habitable
Speaker 4: without technology, arguably what's happening already, and then you decide
Speaker 4: to go underground. So, in the parlance of corporate America, yes,
Speaker 4: there are institutions trying to get in front of it.
Speaker 4: And it's not a bad idea, It really isn't.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 5: I guess sorry, I'm laid to the party on this one,
Speaker 5: but I am looking at the official website for Subtropolis,
Speaker 5: which doesn't that in and of itself sound like the
Speaker 5: name of a Neil Stevenson novel.
Speaker 3: Like it truly, truly does it does? It's unbelievable, good lord.
Speaker 5: And there's a quote here again then this is like
Speaker 5: for sales purposes, but apparently savings of one hundred and
Speaker 5: twenty five five hundred dollars on utilities by locating operations underground. Yeah, sense,
Speaker 5: you're getting shielded from a lot of the elements, from
Speaker 5: a lot of the things that require you to just
Speaker 5: blast ac I bet you can harness geo thermal stuff. Again,
Speaker 5: not a scientist here, but I bet there's some kind
Speaker 5: of way of venting. And I mean there has to be.
Speaker 5: I'm just I'm curious as to what that technology looks like.
Speaker 3: But what is it? Seven million, eight hundred thousand square feet.
Speaker 2: Yes, and they have another six point two million expandable
Speaker 2: square feet or feet four expansion basically in that limestone
Speaker 2: deposit that they hollowed out already.
Speaker 5: It's certainly untapped real estate no matter how you look
Speaker 5: at it, you know what I mean, the underground.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, the reason why I even wanted to talk about
Speaker 2: it here today after Ralph brought it up, is because
Speaker 2: there is a foreign trade zone inside subtropolis.
Speaker 3: Guys. So this is like, is that like a freeport?
Speaker 4: Let the ports be free as above so below?
Speaker 3: Oh geez.
Speaker 2: Yes, you can defer or avoid duties on imports if
Speaker 2: you send them there first, yez okay, which is again
Speaker 2: like a really attractive thing if you're going to build
Speaker 2: a giant factory underground. Like many not. They don't have
Speaker 2: a ton of places or companies there, but there are some,
Speaker 2: and they are huge, and they are very large. There
Speaker 2: is one place that is there that I thought you
Speaker 2: guys would find interesting too. It is a film storage repository.
Speaker 4: That's right, I heard this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't would be perfect for that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: But we're talking preventing the sudden uh, the sudden combustion.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yes, but but we're talking actual you know,
Speaker 2: film in inside the giant canisters and of things like
Speaker 2: the Wizard of Oz, which we just mentioned in that
Speaker 2: previous episode. But super cool, super super cool. The last
Speaker 2: thing I wanted to bring up before we go away
Speaker 2: from Ralph's message is a place called Oh, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: have to say, I might say it wrong, Darren Kou,
Speaker 2: I think is how you say this. This is a
Speaker 2: place in Turkey and it is so so freaking cool.
Speaker 2: There are rumors of how it was discovered. There are
Speaker 2: humans living on the surface right in this area, right,
Speaker 2: and chickens that were kept in some of these houses,
Speaker 2: at least according to the rumors, started to go missing.
Speaker 3: They're like, man, the chickens.
Speaker 2: Keep going missing. There haven't been any attacks, There are
Speaker 2: no signs of attacks. Where the heck are the chickens going?
Speaker 2: And then one person at least according to some writing
Speaker 2: in the BBC and a couple other places, back in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, one homeowner found that the chickens were
Speaker 2: going down into this hole that he'd opened up as
Speaker 2: he was doing some work on the house, where wherein
Speaker 2: he discovered a giant underground series of tunnels which led
Speaker 2: into a huge underground city there in Turkey. It's in Cappadocia,
Speaker 2: a freaking cool place that I've never heard of before.
Speaker 3: Carcosa.
Speaker 2: It's like Carcosa, I guess, Casque.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You can look at this up if you'd like to.
Speaker 2: The article is titled Turkey's Underground City of twenty thousand
Speaker 2: people and it is in BBCBBC dot com. It's eighty
Speaker 2: five meters beneath the chimneys of Cappadocia. That's what it says,
Speaker 2: A subterranean city. Its super stinking cool. Eighteen levels of tunnels.
Speaker 2: Imagine that, guys, eighteen levels of tunnels. If you're thinking vertically, right,
Speaker 2: whoa I mean?
Speaker 5: There's some really cool information on history dot com. There's
Speaker 5: an article with a list of I think ten or
Speaker 5: so underhistorical underground cities, places like Orvieto in Italy, and
Speaker 5: let's see another one is called Petra is a very
Speaker 5: famous one which I believe was featured in Indiana, Jones
Speaker 5: and the last Crusaide.
Speaker 3: So I mean the people of the past, certainly dug it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, a lot of these living spaces are reported in
Speaker 2: the West as like underground cities or underground towns or
Speaker 2: things like that, but often they are built into the
Speaker 2: sides of mountains, which isn't necessarily the same thing. Darren
Speaker 2: Cooyu was very different because it is built down into
Speaker 2: the earth, which I don't know, I think separates it.
Speaker 3: I agree, I agreed.
Speaker 2: You can also look up something called Nevshar I think
Speaker 2: is how you would say it. This is one of
Speaker 2: those that is built more into the side of a mountain,
Speaker 2: and it's reported, of course in the BBC and other
Speaker 2: places as an underground city.
Speaker 3: Sorry, guys, I went on the rabbit hole now, Ben,
Speaker 3: I bet you're aware of this.
Speaker 5: Beijing has an underground city that was essentially built as
Speaker 5: a giant bunker, you know, in the sixties and seventies
Speaker 5: due to the threat of nuclear war.
Speaker 2: M dude, this is very interesting to me. There's lots
Speaker 2: more to learn here about underground living. Maybe there's something
Speaker 2: we can do on this in the future about.
Speaker 3: H perfect for that, maybe how to.
Speaker 2: Live underground, Like how do you, let's say, if it
Speaker 2: was two hundred five hundred years ago, how do you
Speaker 2: just dig down far enough to have his stable ceiling
Speaker 2: underneath you right where if anyone, like let's say an
Speaker 2: invading army is coming through, how do you make sure
Speaker 2: the ceiling above you is going to be safe? How
Speaker 2: do you make sure there's enough room to live down there?
Speaker 2: And the people whoever was that actually built, Darren Coou,
Speaker 2: they figured out that they need to make very small
Speaker 2: tunnels where you would have to actually like hunch over
Speaker 2: to get through the tunnels, so that anybody who was
Speaker 2: trying to invade and come through would have to be
Speaker 2: in that posture as they're going through, so you, as
Speaker 2: a defending army could say, uh, you got speared son.
Speaker 3: Anyway, just thought that was an interesting tidbit.
Speaker 2: All right, that's it for this segment on Ralph. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much Ralph for calling in with that information.
Speaker 2: I've got one letter from home, guys. You want to
Speaker 2: hear that really quickly? Yeah, okay, here we go. This
Speaker 2: comes from an anonymous SO and so.
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, I just wanted you to check out this
Speaker 1: Tubbaca impression.
Speaker 5: All right, I have a great day.
Speaker 3: I was very good.
Speaker 5: Oh man, you guys. I posted this on Instagram yesterday.
Speaker 5: But I saw a guy I think it was sort
Speaker 5: of famous or with viral, a dude doing an impression
Speaker 5: of a Kerragg machine, and it was just the best
Speaker 5: impression that I've ever heard, next to this guy's impression
Speaker 5: of Chewbacca.
Speaker 3: Excellent.
Speaker 2: All right, we will say goodbye and we will be
Speaker 2: back with more messages from you.
Speaker 4: And we have returned. I had a tough time this
Speaker 4: evening going through some correspondence, but thought this would be
Speaker 4: apropos to many of us listening along at home. Wherever
Speaker 4: we find ourselves in this wide world, on the surface,
Speaker 4: in the skies or beneath the ground, Geist is coming in.
Speaker 4: Hot Geist says hi.
Speaker 1: Guys.
Speaker 4: You can refer to me as Geist. Done bro, longtime listener,
Speaker 4: first time mailer from Germany, love your work. Just finished
Speaker 4: your recent listener mail about your little detour on digital
Speaker 4: price tags. Let's call them ETags and flexible pricing. I
Speaker 4: am no whistleblower and have no leaked documents to share,
Speaker 4: but what I do have are a very particular set
Speaker 4: of skills, skills I have acquired for a very long
Speaker 4: career as an IT project and portal to manager in
Speaker 4: nearly every industry. We'll cut the voice there out of
Speaker 4: respect for you, guys, guys Sean Connery, I like, guys. Yeah,
Speaker 4: We're multiverse in it, guys, says I often find myself
Speaker 4: in the realms of CRM and customer loyalty. Yes, points, cards, badges. No,
Speaker 4: that is not everything there is to know about it, guys, continues.
Speaker 4: In Germany, flexible pricing is not immediately illegal, but it
Speaker 4: is considered so improper that, with the exception of a
Speaker 4: few pilot projects, it is hardly applied in practice, although
Speaker 4: some large retail chains have had the infrastructure for it
Speaker 4: for years, the ETags are only used for central price control.
Speaker 4: Now I'm gonna pause here, guys, I don't want a monologue.
Speaker 4: Can we give like a quick and dirty on flex
Speaker 4: or surge pricing? I thought we had really good discourse
Speaker 4: about this earlier, for sure, and we.
Speaker 5: Made a couple of fun videos about it. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's just the idea that things can be much like
Speaker 5: airline tickets or concert tickets or whatever, like, demand can
Speaker 5: in real time affect the price of things, which I've
Speaker 5: always come down the side of that kind of doesn't
Speaker 5: not make sense.
Speaker 3: That's a double negative.
Speaker 5: It kind of makes sense to me to a degree,
Speaker 5: but I know it can also be gamed and taking advantage.
Speaker 2: Of the best way to see it in action is
Speaker 2: to attempt to take a car writing service or a
Speaker 2: car share service at certain times of day, Like the
Speaker 2: same trip will cost you vastly different prices depending on
Speaker 2: time it is.
Speaker 4: And as I mentioned I think previously, you can case
Speaker 4: test this. If you'd like to do a little experiment
Speaker 4: at home, you can take here in the West. You
Speaker 4: can take the two most prominent ride share apps, those
Speaker 4: being lifted Uber, and you can open them, open them both,
Speaker 4: put in the same trip, and then close them and
Speaker 4: then reopen them. And sometimes you'll see not a big difference,
Speaker 4: but you will see an adjustment as they're attempting to
Speaker 4: scope out how much you will pay.
Speaker 3: For a given ride.
Speaker 4: And you can see this regardless of the time of
Speaker 4: day pretty often.
Speaker 5: And in that we also know I think I've maybe
Speaker 5: mentioned someone has mentioned that, you know, they'll often be
Speaker 5: a wight and save option that you know says, oh
Speaker 5: it'll take up to fifteen minutes extra or whatever, but
Speaker 5: it'll cost like five dollars less. I swear I've never
Speaker 5: had a situation where I picked that option and the
Speaker 5: card didn't come just as fast as the regular one.
Speaker 3: So we know there's.
Speaker 5: Multiple ways of them gaming, tricking you into thinking you're
Speaker 5: getting a deal in a way that benefits them logistically.
Speaker 5: It's yeah, you're right, man, it is the perfect way, serge.
Speaker 5: I mean that term really honestly has become kind of
Speaker 5: one of those.
Speaker 3: Eponyms I guess is that the right term bend.
Speaker 5: Like for like like that as people think of that
Speaker 5: where and they think of search pricing, car car service.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, you can also,
Speaker 4: for instance, to your example, Noel, you can see things
Speaker 4: like paying a premium for priority delivery in food delivery
Speaker 4: services and it does not arguably does not change the
Speaker 4: actual order of operations other than costing you about five
Speaker 4: extra bucks. This is brand new ground for a lot
Speaker 4: of people. But as Geist will go on to prove
Speaker 4: to us this evening, a ton of work went into
Speaker 4: this before the public knew what was going on. So
Speaker 4: back to Geist, Geist says, the holy grail of retail,
Speaker 4: not just in Germany, I suppose, is not flexible pricing
Speaker 4: to get this individual pricing at the customer level. Although
Speaker 4: technically possible with a combination of E tags in FC
Speaker 4: and or fencing, these are kind of we'll get in
Speaker 4: the weeds on this maybe in an episode in the future.
Speaker 4: These are a little bit, you know, they're kind of
Speaker 4: like the spell language of the it guys in Geist's profession.
Speaker 4: But Guy says, with a combination of various things, a
Speaker 4: different approach can be taken here. Moreover, at least in Germany,
Speaker 4: this would face immense civilian resistance, but thank you for this, Guist.
Speaker 4: Here's where it gets crazy. I've been involved in lots
Speaker 4: and lots of projects with almost every major grocery retailer
Speaker 4: in Germany and have developed loyalty programs that reward customers
Speaker 4: based on their behavior and history at the item level. Right,
Speaker 4: how often do you buy cheese its or kinderregs? And
Speaker 4: when these rewards consist of coupons via indirect methods like
Speaker 4: points and badges and so on, coupons for specific items
Speaker 4: completely tailored to the individual customer. There's no compulsion to
Speaker 4: use the program yet, but usually the incentives are so
Speaker 4: substantial that one really believes the illusion that it's worth it,
Speaker 4: which calls to mind. Pausing here calls to mind our
Speaker 4: earlier conversation about the rollout of the UH the loyalty
Speaker 4: cards here at US grocery stores. Do you have a
Speaker 4: Proger card? If you don't, you're paying a tax for
Speaker 4: not having one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but the tax, the illusion of savings is just
Speaker 5: not paying the tax, right like it's and they're getting
Speaker 5: your data, They're knowing exactly what you're getting. You do
Speaker 5: tend to have access to some nice coupons.
Speaker 4: I suppose, what does this guy need with so much
Speaker 4: garlic at three am?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but but it is a weird thing to think
Speaker 2: you are going to buy flower or somewhere. So if
Speaker 2: you don't buy flower at the place where you have
Speaker 2: some kind of loyalty program, then you're gonna buy it
Speaker 2: at a place that just has some flour at whatever
Speaker 2: price it is that they sell it for. And then
Speaker 2: what goes into that company's idea of how much that
Speaker 2: flower should cost outside of the standard stuff that everybody's
Speaker 2: looking at.
Speaker 3: That is interesting.
Speaker 2: They just this concept that there's an illusion that it's
Speaker 2: worth it. But in some way it's gonna be worth
Speaker 2: it somewhere for someone, because you're gonna find the cheapest
Speaker 2: replica of whatever. That type of flower you're looking for
Speaker 2: is somewhere. It just depends on if it's at the
Speaker 2: Loyalty place or not.
Speaker 4: It's the home here in the States. It's the home
Speaker 4: of the pursuit of happiness. Why would the pursuit of
Speaker 4: savings differ in any logical way? I agree with you, guys,
Speaker 4: Max Paul. Can we get a hand washing noise as
Speaker 4: we return to geist perfect there it is, guy says,
Speaker 4: as a retailer, I can wash my hands of any
Speaker 4: wrongdoing and say, of course Ben pays a different price
Speaker 4: for flower than Matt does. But this is not individual pricing.
Speaker 4: It's solely due to the Loyalty app and its behavior.
Speaker 4: We have no influence on that. The use of credit
Speaker 4: score data is often hidden in the terms of service
Speaker 4: of these programs. To our earlier note about Google Search
Speaker 4: and Gmail, So even in the privacy conscious Europe. It
Speaker 4: is possible to extract more money from people in less
Speaker 4: highly rated areas, for example, by specifically reducing non essential
Speaker 4: products as a purchase incentive while keeping flower prices the
Speaker 4: same because they have to buy the flower anyway. And
Speaker 4: guy says, they tested the software, we implement it, says Geist.
Speaker 4: We made purchases based on several test accounts, and we're
Speaker 4: able to generate a range of twenty euros with the
Speaker 4: same shopping cart on the same day with a shopping
Speaker 4: cart total of fifty euros. So when they say generate
Speaker 4: a range, they mean they were able to make people
Speaker 4: pay twenty dollars more and just sneaking it in. And
Speaker 4: then you know it says we can, and then goes
Speaker 4: on to say you can add pretty graphics, gambling mechanics right,
Speaker 4: gamify it, loot boxes, skinner boxing, behavioralism stuff, financing models. Remember,
Speaker 4: says guys, we're talking about groceries, and voila, the shopping
Speaker 4: dystopia is complete. Anyone who thought I don't chop online
Speaker 4: because I get exploited or lied to should consider that
Speaker 4: retail might be slower, maybe less technically adept, but it
Speaker 4: loves money just as much as Amazon and Co. And
Speaker 4: will do anything to survive poor geist. You have met
Speaker 4: more than once an ethical crossroads. It sounds like, because
Speaker 4: you say, I still work in this industry and try
Speaker 4: to bring more ethical solutions to the table. In the end, however,
Speaker 4: we always end up in I love this part, dark
Speaker 4: conference rooms with long robes, whispery about individual pricing.
Speaker 5: Why they always be whispering like that, because it's a
Speaker 5: crazy up.
Speaker 4: It's a crazy idea we can't hear.
Speaker 2: Well, especially in Europe, where as Guys is saying, if
Speaker 2: you try to enact some of this stuff, you'd go
Speaker 2: you'd hit right up against the privacy laws, right, so
Speaker 2: you gotta whisper it.
Speaker 4: So there's also I mean, it is a frightening dystopian thing.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Imagine a world wherein you go to the same grocery
Speaker 4: store as other people in your neighborhood, but due to
Speaker 4: the data that has been collected about you, the price
Speaker 4: of your case D or case D ingredients differs just
Speaker 4: enough that you won't notice it, but you could get fleeced.
Speaker 5: I guess, and not the Devil's advocate. Not to say
Speaker 5: that I support this, I do understand, you know, gas
Speaker 5: prices shift based on the market, based on what them
Speaker 5: You know, people are always trying to get as much
Speaker 5: as they possibly can based on what the market will allow,
Speaker 5: what consumers are willing to pay.
Speaker 3: How is that any different than than.
Speaker 5: Uber knowing where you are and that you're trying to
Speaker 5: go to the airport and that it might be more
Speaker 5: important for you to get there quickly and overcharging you that.
Speaker 5: How is this different than that in terms of ethics?
Speaker 4: Oh, ethically, I think we have to bracket the ethics
Speaker 4: at this pin fair look at efficacy. The next time
Speaker 4: you guys are on the road with me, Let's play
Speaker 4: a game, not a saw a reference. Let's open up
Speaker 4: our phones, let's pull up the same ride share app,
Speaker 4: and let's see what prices which. Because I believe this
Speaker 4: is already occurring.
Speaker 3: I heard something really neat the other day.
Speaker 5: The CEO of Arizona Iced tea yes and made a
Speaker 5: big deal saying it's God always be ninety nine cents
Speaker 5: or this giant Honkin forty ounce malt liquor size can
Speaker 5: of you know, sweet tea product. And since he came
Speaker 5: out and said that, people have been kind of watchdogging
Speaker 5: Arizona Iced tea at stores and and calling out stores
Speaker 5: that overcharge for Arizona iced tea, and if you.
Speaker 4: Report it to the company, they will stop supplying that store.
Speaker 4: They're very militant about it, which I applaud.
Speaker 5: I think that's super cool. But like, I can't think
Speaker 5: of any other examples of that. And and at a
Speaker 5: certain point, is it just the prerogative of the distributor
Speaker 5: and or the retailer to decide what the price should
Speaker 5: be or what their market will allow, like does does
Speaker 5: the does the manufacturer never enter into it? Like I know,
Speaker 5: it's it's different with cars. You know, there's like there's
Speaker 5: like list prices and you know certain products there's list
Speaker 5: prices that are set and you can discount it up
Speaker 5: to a certain point, but how deep you go with
Speaker 5: that discount You do have some wiggle room. But I
Speaker 5: just wonder, you know, who's who's who's driving the ship,
Speaker 5: who's steering the ship here?
Speaker 4: Well my answer would be no one, But perhaps that's
Speaker 4: a little bit nihilistic. The you're you're right right, It
Speaker 4: differs industry by industry to end Geist correspondence here, which
Speaker 4: again geist eye opening and thank you guy says I'd
Speaker 4: love to hear your opinion the American perspective on this
Speaker 4: topic and leaves us with some breadcrumbs. We're gonna follow
Speaker 4: up to your question this idea of determining price. Another
Speaker 4: comparison would be the famous hot dog of Costco.
Speaker 5: It's a loss leader, but it has a benefit in
Speaker 5: optics and just you know, getting butts through the door.
Speaker 5: You know, it's or whatever. There has to be some
Speaker 5: calculation there. But they will always lose money on that,
Speaker 5: but they gain and it's a good pr story, right,
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah.
Speaker 4: There are other examples or areas of opportunity for this
Speaker 4: kind of thing. Right. The majority of movie theaters make
Speaker 4: their money off of not the movies they show or
Speaker 4: the films they show, but through the concessions. And just
Speaker 4: like with you know, hot dogs have a very high
Speaker 4: profit margin if you do it correctly, so you can
Speaker 4: take an l on hot dogs. Popcorn has a cartoonish
Speaker 4: profit margin and it kept a lot of those theater
Speaker 4: companies afloat, so we can we can see the game
Speaker 4: writ large. And I'm wondering too to hear from you
Speaker 4: guys before we get to a letter from home that
Speaker 4: we always like to end with. Do you guys see
Speaker 4: this as inevitable in some form, or is this going
Speaker 4: to be like an NFT thing that gets rejected full disclosure.
Speaker 4: I'm kind of on the side of this sort of
Speaker 4: customer specified or targeted pricing. I'm kind of on the
Speaker 4: side of it being inevitable at this point.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I can see it working in conjunction
Speaker 2: with a lot of other things, and it does feel
Speaker 2: like it is going to be that way, just based
Speaker 2: on again, if I think right now specifically about how
Speaker 2: much Kroger knows about me since I've been buying from them,
Speaker 2: that's the that's a grocery restore here where we live,
Speaker 2: and then it's a lot of place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's in that same number for twenty years.
Speaker 2: Easily, easily, and they know exactly what I buy, when
Speaker 2: I buy it, and how much of it I buy,
Speaker 2: and it's all that's probably already factored in if I
Speaker 2: was using their app, because I know in their app
Speaker 2: they do the thing that Geist is talking about where
Speaker 2: they offer specific coupons to individuals, right, so I think
Speaker 2: they are already trying to do that thing he's talking about.
Speaker 2: I'm not buying into that yet, So I think if
Speaker 2: there's enough customer buy in, then that's going to exist
Speaker 2: because otherwise, right now, how are you going to walk
Speaker 2: into a Kroger, And let's say the three of us
Speaker 2: walk past the same cereal aisle and raisin brand costs
Speaker 2: three different prices when we walk past it, right.
Speaker 3: Do you think?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's possible if you've got those electronic price
Speaker 2: tags on everything and you just as you walk past,
Speaker 2: oh it's now three seventeen versus three twenty six or
Speaker 2: something like that. I mean maybe, but I don't see
Speaker 2: how you do that unless it's a fully online experience
Speaker 2: where when you go to check out with your specific
Speaker 2: loyalty number and your credit card that's associated with your
Speaker 2: credit score, then you could achieve it.
Speaker 4: So you don't see it as inevitable at this point.
Speaker 2: I don't see it inevitable inside a brick and mortar store,
Speaker 2: So as long as those exist, I don't think you
Speaker 2: can have this type of thing. But if everybody, the
Speaker 2: vast majority of people, are ordering all of their products online,
Speaker 2: then I think it's an easy yes, because then all
Speaker 2: your stuff is in one warehouse that's getting sorted by robots,
Speaker 2: that gets shipped to your house.
Speaker 4: We could also consider, and I appreciate that point. We
Speaker 4: could also consider the idea that increasing facial recognition technology
Speaker 4: is going to scale and become much more affordable for
Speaker 4: a lot of institutions, a lot of private institutions, even
Speaker 4: unto the grocery stores, meaning that there is a possibility
Speaker 4: of the world I to me the idea that this
Speaker 4: is inevitable. I agree that it will roll out or
Speaker 4: already exist online right shout out Amazon groceries, but the
Speaker 4: idea of it going to brick and mortar is definitely
Speaker 4: on the table.
Speaker 3: In my opinion.
Speaker 5: It makes me think of, like, you know, the whole
Speaker 5: homogenization of culture that comes along with these algorithms that
Speaker 5: we don't really have a say in which ones we're using.
Speaker 5: We're all kind of being driven with, you know, what's
Speaker 5: being presented to us by these algorithms in terms of
Speaker 5: the content we're consuming. I'm kind of wondering if there's
Speaker 5: an associated homogenization of like product choices and you know,
Speaker 5: food items and grocery habits that are very similarly linked
Speaker 5: up to something like that one percent.
Speaker 4: So Here in the American South, for instance, people become
Speaker 4: loyal to a certain brick and mortar grocery store because
Speaker 4: it has things they can predict it supply. Right, So
Speaker 4: if you've gone to, for example, uh Kroger's for many years,
Speaker 4: when you walk into a Trader Joe's, a Whole Foods,
Speaker 4: or a Publix or a we still have the Pigley
Speaker 4: Wiggly now Morland if you walk into Yeah, if you
Speaker 4: walk into one of those, you're going to find that
Speaker 4: they satisfy the general miligew of customer needs. But they
Speaker 4: do it through different brands because they may have agreements
Speaker 4: with different suppliers or different facets of Unilever, I should
Speaker 4: say at this point.
Speaker 5: Whereas a Trader Joe's visit might be sort of like
Speaker 5: a treat, you know, because you stock up on some
Speaker 5: specialty fun items.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: I don't use it Trader Joe's as my regular shop,
Speaker 5: but boy, when I go there do I have a
Speaker 5: good old time.
Speaker 3: And there was also one right next to the movie theater.
Speaker 5: We like to go to, so it's a great place
Speaker 5: to sneak in some sneaky movie theater snacks.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think we mentioned this before, but a huge organization
Speaker 2: like Trader Joe's at this point is a massive corporation,
Speaker 2: uh crow.
Speaker 3: Masquerading as A and pop kind of right, it be.
Speaker 2: Funny, But they just bought Albertson's Kroger Did they just
Speaker 2: merge with them? So they're all it's homogenizing the way
Speaker 2: you're talking about with the manufacturers of the food as well, right,
Speaker 2: So it I don't know. Yeah, the more I think
Speaker 2: about it, I'm leaning towards the way you're thinking, Ben,
Speaker 2: that you could do it at the store.
Speaker 3: You could.
Speaker 2: This is all happening already, it's in. It's everything they
Speaker 2: needs in place. You just currently do it through an app,
Speaker 2: and that's how you control the price.
Speaker 4: The conspiracy is real. Please don't ever forget This stuff
Speaker 4: goes deeper than the government's debt whatever. We're going to
Speaker 4: end one of my favorite things for listener mails letters
Speaker 4: from home. So just some nice, nice vibes some how
Speaker 4: you doing how your folks, and we'll give you this one.
Speaker 4: Allow conspiracy realist. What's a good nickname that starts with
Speaker 4: an L? Like a cool nickname that starts with.
Speaker 3: The letter L.
Speaker 4: Lavender La Loo Lavender Law writes in to say, hey, guys,
Speaker 4: I'm just writing in because I know you love these
Speaker 4: lottery style, odds games. But when I choose to listen
Speaker 4: to the new stuff, they don't want you to know
Speaker 4: episode or my current audio book. I didn't think it'd
Speaker 4: be a notable choice.
Speaker 3: I was wrong.
Speaker 4: You mentioned in the podcast that Mandate for Leadership the
Speaker 4: Conservative Promise was about as long as the unabridged version
Speaker 4: of the Stand, And he guessed what my current audiobook is.
Speaker 4: You guessed it the uncut version of The Stand. It's
Speaker 4: a nearly forty eight hour listen.
Speaker 5: So that came up when we were talking about Project
Speaker 5: twenty twenty five. That's my buddy Harry. He was visiting
Speaker 5: and he has read the on it. It's a little shorter.
Speaker 5: I think the Project twenty twenty five is a little
Speaker 5: bit shorter than this, isn't it weird?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you get to like page one thousand and you think,
Speaker 4: oh man, So for the Stand, and Lavender Lolo says,
Speaker 4: this is my second time listening to it, and since
Speaker 4: you drew the parallel, I'm wondering if The Stand would
Speaker 4: be an even better bible to base our next president's
Speaker 4: office off of the current state of affairs. It seems
Speaker 4: fitting to me, and then continues, we're going through some
Speaker 4: of this. To paraphrase Lavender says, anyways, not account of taste,
Speaker 4: but you guys always seem to catch my attention. Thanks
Speaker 4: for the endless stream of fantastic topics. I've been listening
Speaker 4: for beat Me Here, Max and Paul Holy eight years
Speaker 4: beat Me Again. I'm old.
Speaker 3: I did originally feel right.
Speaker 4: I did originally run back all your episodes in the
Speaker 4: first three years or so, so I'm mostly up to date.
Speaker 4: Huge fan of Ridiculous History too. I was actually a
Speaker 4: listener there first. This is the heartwarming part. This is
Speaker 4: why we do letters from home. Thanks for being something
Speaker 4: I can be proud of in my city that I
Speaker 4: was born and live in. People who live in Atlanta,
Speaker 4: and my opinion, truly have earned their title at alien
Speaker 4: as they are most likely not from here. I really
Speaker 4: do feel down about my hometown as I don't feel
Speaker 4: like it's home anymore. It's changed so much. I don't
Speaker 4: know if it's because I'm old and crotchety, but I
Speaker 4: remember my Atlanta being a better place back in the day. Anyway,
Speaker 4: I got way off topic. I just wanted to express
Speaker 4: why I value such a positive influence in you guys
Speaker 4: with seriously good values. And conversation skills like our boys
Speaker 4: in the military. I'll throw this against the wall. I'd
Speaker 4: love to buy everybody some wings at the local to
Speaker 4: say thanks. Hit me up if you want otherwise, keep
Speaker 4: on keeping on, homies.
Speaker 3: Oh we must what a sweet What a nice thing
Speaker 3: to say, Lavender.
Speaker 4: Oh man, I hope you liked the nickname man, Thank
Speaker 4: you so much. Go to to actionable out there. But
Speaker 4: I think it's it's a vibe we can all agree
Speaker 4: with and in the spirit.
Speaker 3: Had local wings and ages.
Speaker 4: I would love they're doing new sauces. No way, yeah, yes,
Speaker 4: way too.
Speaker 2: Don't get me anything, but that's so on dry Tomato,
Speaker 2: get out of town.
Speaker 3: I like that soundred tomato. I like that lemon pepper wet.
Speaker 4: They're messing with the ghost peppers.
Speaker 3: Matt what okay, can get so you could? Yeah?
Speaker 4: So we're ending on a cliffhanger here, big, big thanks
Speaker 4: to everybody who took the time to tune in. Thanks
Speaker 4: you guys, thanks to Lavender, to Ralph Anonymous, Chebaka, thanks
Speaker 4: to Flash, and thanks to you folks. We hope you
Speaker 4: join us for future explorations of weird Rain. Future explorations.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, we got all sorts of stuff Skyjelly look.
Speaker 4: Just hit us up online. We try to be easy
Speaker 4: to find there.
Speaker 5: Sky Jelly also not a bad band name, or maybe
Speaker 5: a really bad band name.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I can never tell. It's usually one
Speaker 3: or the other.
Speaker 5: We are conspiracy stuff on YouTube, or we have video
Speaker 5: content coming your way on the regular xfka Twitter as
Speaker 5: well as Facebook, or we have our Facebook groupeers where
Speaker 5: it's crazy on Instagram and TikTok. You can find us
Speaker 5: in the handle conspiracy the show.
Speaker 2: Put this number in your phone right now one eight
Speaker 2: three three st d w y TK. When you listen
Speaker 2: to an episode and you've got a cool idea, you've
Speaker 2: got something that you can relate to us from your
Speaker 2: personal experience, call that number and tell us everything in
Speaker 2: three minutes. Of course, when you do, you call in,
Speaker 2: give yourself a nickname. Whatever it is.
Speaker 3: We don't care.
Speaker 2: We're just excited to hear it and let us know
Speaker 2: if we can use your name and message on one
Speaker 2: of these listener mail episodes. If you've got more to
Speaker 2: say than can fit in a three minute voicemail, why
Speaker 2: not instead send us a good old fashion email.
Speaker 4: We are the entities that read every single email we get,
Speaker 4: and gratefully so actually following up on some more correspondents
Speaker 4: this evening. When you send us an email, we can
Speaker 4: all read it, we can all respond. Just be aware.
Speaker 4: Sometimes the void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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