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Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

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Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A

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Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my.

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Speaker 3: Name is Noel.

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Speaker 4: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our

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Speaker 4: super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly,

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Speaker 4: you are you. You are here. That makes this the

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Speaker 4: stuff they don't want you to know. It is the

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Speaker 4: top of the week mid June, if you can believe

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Speaker 4: it or not. Fellow conspiracy realists, This means we return

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Speaker 4: with strange news for you and a couple of quick

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Speaker 4: updates before we get into our stories today. Welcome back Noel,

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Speaker 4: Barcelona Brown.

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Speaker 5: Oh Man a new nickname. I feel like I earned it.

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Speaker 5: A bunch of.

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Speaker 6: PAIAI yeah, and other other delicacies. It was really cool.

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Speaker 6: It's a beautiful city. Got to see I mean, don't

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Speaker 6: you guys.

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Speaker 5: I'm sure aware of the Segrata Familia, which is this

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Speaker 5: insane goudy design church that's been under construction for one

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Speaker 5: hundred years and it's the most stuff they don't want

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Speaker 5: you to know church I.

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Speaker 6: Could ever possibly imagine.

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Speaker 5: It feels like a temple constructed by some ancient race

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Speaker 5: of aliens. It is otherworldly, to say the least. That

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Speaker 5: was pretty one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

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Speaker 4: Oh, safe travels, and welcome back. Right, We're looking forward

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Speaker 4: to hearing of these adventures. Everybody missed you. We also

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Speaker 4: have some updates. It turns out witness tampering is having

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Speaker 4: a moment.

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Speaker 6: Everybody.

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Speaker 4: Please remember, if jury duty ever seems like a pain

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Speaker 4: in the keyaster, somebody might show up with a bag

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Speaker 4: of one hundred and twenty grand and just you know,

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Speaker 4: ask a vote according to your conscience.

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Speaker 2: And they'll say, hey, there's more if you do it right.

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Speaker 4: Also, a couple of a couple of certain presidents, this

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Speaker 4: is like talking about laws about Russia. A couple of

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Speaker 4: certain presidents, whomever they may be, have gotten in some

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Speaker 4: witness things. We wanted to start today with a timely update,

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Speaker 4: or start this evening. I should say we are a

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Speaker 4: nighttime show. Earlier we reported on the somewhat inspiring story

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Speaker 4: of a serial slingshot band. It A lot of you

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Speaker 4: reached out over the interim, over the weekend, and so on,

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Speaker 4: and said, gave us this update, which we thought was important.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of those situations where we record

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Speaker 2: a story then the day we record it. Later in

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Speaker 2: the day more news breaks. So on Tuesday May twenty eighth,

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Speaker 2: the person we were discussing, a man named Prince King,

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Speaker 2: was arrested, and he does the eighty one year old

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Speaker 2: man who was accused of terrorizing Azusa, which is that

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Speaker 2: neighborhood in California. He pled guilty to several counts of vandalism.

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Speaker 2: He was released and he was ordered to stay two

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Speaker 2: hundred yards away from anyone or anything that he had

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Speaker 2: shotted with his sling. And then the next day, on Wednesday,

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Speaker 2: May twenty ninth, he died in a private residence.

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Speaker 5: It's like it's like he had nothing left to live

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Speaker 5: for once they'd taken away his swing shot or the.

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Speaker 4: Fact being taken in disrupted his medication regimen.

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Speaker 6: Oh well, that's also possible.

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Speaker 2: He had a number of ailments, according to ABC News

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Speaker 2: and The Guardian, who both reported on this in several

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Speaker 2: other places, he had a heart condition, a nerve issue

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Speaker 2: in his leg and back, and he was allowed to

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Speaker 2: go home. One of the reasons he was like going

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Speaker 2: home was to get those medications you're referring to Ben.

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Speaker 4: So we wanted to give wanted to give that update

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Speaker 4: at the top. Are we are aware of it, and

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Speaker 4: we wish his friends and family, you know, the best.

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Speaker 4: We're holding you in our thoughts.

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Speaker 5: Kind of say, though, guys, heart condition plus seeming thrill seeker,

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Speaker 5: mischief maker and odd combination. The very very interesting fellow

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Speaker 5: the Ricky and Elliott over Internet Today conjectured that the

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Speaker 5: timing might be just about right for him to have

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Speaker 5: been fully inspired by the original Dennis the Menace.

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Speaker 2: Oh okay, that makes sense.

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Speaker 4: Say, and we'll be right back with some more strange news.

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Speaker 4: And we've returned. This is the actual start of the show.

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Speaker 4: So if you live in the fair metropolis of insert

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Speaker 4: US city name here, then your infrastructure has problems. There

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Speaker 4: are very few exceptions to this rule. This hit Atlanta

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Speaker 4: in particular on Friday in the early morning of just

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Speaker 4: a few days ago. As we record, on the evening

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Speaker 4: of Wednesday, June fifth, Atlanta's overburdened, underserved under maintenance water

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Speaker 4: system broke and it left thousands of people with no water,

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Speaker 4: low water pressure, and unsafe drinking water. And as this occurred,

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Speaker 4: a domino effect of feedback loop went into play because

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Speaker 4: when one pipe, then other pipes also pop as a

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Speaker 4: result of the system being messed with.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I hate to be that guy that has got

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Speaker 5: back from Europe that says he's so much better over there,

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Speaker 5: But I tell you they've got some things figured out

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Speaker 5: for a place that's been around a lot longer than

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Speaker 5: we have. You don't really hear about these kinds of

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Speaker 5: massive infrastructure breakdowns, and you don't see roads filled with potholes,

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Speaker 5: and it seems like the tax of the people pay

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Speaker 5: over there actually go towards things. Because Ben, we were

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Speaker 5: talking about this off air, and a big part of

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Speaker 5: this type of breakdown not only in Atlanta but elsewhere.

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Speaker 5: It's just the absolute, you know, horrific shape of some

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Speaker 5: of this infrastructure, some of which has been around since

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Speaker 5: like what the Civil.

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Speaker 6: War or something centuries. Some of this stuff.

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Speaker 4: You can see footage easily of the pipes that were

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Speaker 4: pulled up from the subterranean parts of the city of Atlanta.

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Speaker 4: Some of this is incredibly old. And I've been that

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Speaker 4: person to you know, no shame in it, coming back

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Speaker 4: from a different country and saying, wow, maybe the US

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Speaker 4: has some stuff to figure out. A lot of Atlanta

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Speaker 4: exists on top of natural springs and wells and rivers.

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Speaker 4: You know, one of the old offices of our Alma mater,

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Speaker 4: How Stuff Works, actually has a water tower that is

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Speaker 4: taking water from a spring that has been buried over

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Speaker 4: as the city evolved and the infrastructure just kept getting

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Speaker 4: ban dated. It's almost a ship of thesis question, right,

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Speaker 4: like how many small additions or little minor fixes, heuristic

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Speaker 4: fixes can one make to a system before the system

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Speaker 4: itself is inherently different. And what we found here we're

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Speaker 4: not just talking about ourselves with Atlanta on this point.

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Speaker 4: We are going to a larger context. What we found

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Speaker 4: is that a bill came do this was a preventable,

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Speaker 4: disastrous thing. Now, people weren't dying in the way that

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Speaker 4: they would with a natural disaster like a hurricane or

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Speaker 4: a tornado or an earthquake, but people were falling ill.

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Speaker 4: People were un able to have safe drinking water. There

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Speaker 4: were you know, because this is a beautiful and supportive city,

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Speaker 4: a lot of people were out on social media saying, hey,

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Speaker 4: I've got water. If you need something, come through.

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Speaker 6: Matt.

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Speaker 4: You said something very similar earlier when we were recording

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Speaker 4: this week.

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Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I just invited you guys out to me

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Speaker 2: OTP outside of the perimeter of the city because our

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Speaker 2: water is fine right now.

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Speaker 6: Haha.

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Speaker 2: Jo, I'm sorry, but it speaks to I guess the

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Speaker 2: question I want to ask you guys, because I kind

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Speaker 2: of was separated from this. I didn't experience it in

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Speaker 2: the same way. I wonder what the communication was like

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Speaker 2: between city officials and then residents who were actually like

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Speaker 2: Ben living in Atlanta and Noel, Like, were you getting

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Speaker 2: alerts when you were away?

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Speaker 6: I'm gonna say not good.

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Speaker 5: My area wasn't affected either over here in Decatur, but

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Speaker 5: my partner, who has a business well that is in

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Speaker 5: an affected area, apparently got a corded voice message from

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Speaker 5: Mayor Andre Dickens himself apologizing. Apparently it's one of the

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Speaker 5: situations too where he was like away, right, Ben, you

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Speaker 5: mentioned he was off I don't know, either campaigning or

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Speaker 5: doing some visit abroad, and he probably should have come

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Speaker 5: back but didn't, so we got a nice recorded voice

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Speaker 5: message instead.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, the current mayor of Atlanta, Andre Dickens, left for

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Speaker 4: Tennessee as this was going down. There was some damage control.

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Speaker 4: He his I shouldn't say him specifically, but the mayor's

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Speaker 4: office received some pretty serious backlash for poor communication and

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Speaker 4: slow reports. And now even as we record this evening,

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Speaker 4: the guy is going through and making the pr rounds,

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Speaker 4: you know, appearing on local news and when appearing attempting

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Speaker 4: to appear very concerned. Is the mayor concerned?

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Speaker 6: Well?

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Speaker 4: Do politicians fill things at least once a year, ben

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Speaker 4: at least once in an election cycle?

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Speaker 6: Yeah?

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Speaker 5: There you God, this has happened before here in Atlanta,

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Speaker 5: almost identical. I think this is just like affected more

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Speaker 5: people and for a longer period of time. But I

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Speaker 5: can recall boil water advisories within the last five years,

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Speaker 5: if not less. And one thing that I think people

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Speaker 5: might easily look over is how this affects small businesses,

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Speaker 5: especially ones that rely on water, like restaurants. And we

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Speaker 5: know how slim the margins are for a successful restaurant.

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Speaker 5: And I saw some reporting that local restaurants lost revenues

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Speaker 5: in the tens of thousands, if thirty forty fifty thousands

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Speaker 5: of dollars because of this debacle.

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Speaker 2: Man, that's a lot of money, I guess. To my point, guys,

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Speaker 2: I didn't know this was even happening until we were

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Speaker 2: shooting videos together all in one place yesterday as we're

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Speaker 2: recording this, and this is several days well, a long

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Speaker 2: time after this occurred. I didn't even know what had happened.

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Speaker 2: How did you guys get alerted to it? Is it

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Speaker 2: something that pops up on your phone the way an

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Speaker 2: amber alert does if you're a resident of the city,

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Speaker 2: or is it like an email?

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Speaker 6: I got nothing.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, That's why I was talking about the message from

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Speaker 5: Dickinson to me. That was one of the first kind

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Speaker 5: of notices. Was this like whoopsie apology auto, you know

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Speaker 5: kind of sense voicemail.

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Speaker 6: How about you ben.

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Speaker 4: Living in the area and affected, like most households, received

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Speaker 4: the news by witnessing the event's firsthand. The water pressure drops.

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Speaker 6: Right, gocha is the mayor?

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Speaker 4: Where do these taxes go? And pardon me, guys, I

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Speaker 4: didn't mean to derail us talking about the natural spring

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Speaker 4: history of the state of Georgia. I just find it

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Speaker 4: the history endlessly fascinating.

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Speaker 5: Is it one of those the supposed fountain of youth

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Speaker 5: that ponsta Leon was seeking.

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Speaker 6: That's why the streets named after him. Where the water

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Speaker 6: tower that you were talking about is.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what the grifters were selling to people, that

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Speaker 4: juvenation opportunities. So in the case again of this water

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Speaker 4: mean break, I don't want to stay on Atlanta too long,

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Speaker 4: but I do want to shout out at I am

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Speaker 4: King Williams, a local reporter who provides some tremendous context

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Speaker 4: for this on x the social media platform, and notes

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Speaker 4: that there is a reason the infrastructure hit was so specific.

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Speaker 4: It is because the city of Atlanta, and most municipalities

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Speaker 4: in the United States tend to serve some parts of

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Speaker 4: a metropolis more than they serve other parts of a metropolis.

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Speaker 4: Like pull up a map of your town and figure out,

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Speaker 4: look where the food deserts are right, and look where

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Speaker 4: historically the most challenged or pressed demographics of that city

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Speaker 4: are located. We have another thing called heat islands. Heat

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Speaker 4: islands without green space in Atlanta is blessed with a

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Speaker 4: tremendous amount of green space. Heat islands will tend to

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Speaker 4: have more flooding. They'll have more floodplains because the infrastructure

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Speaker 4: simply was not built for these people. Now, this reporter

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Speaker 4: King Williams argues that when white flight happened in Atlanta,

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Speaker 4: that tax space or the money or the political will

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Speaker 4: left as well. And this preface decades of underserving sections

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Speaker 4: of Atlanta based on the makeup of the demographics involved,

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Speaker 4: and because those folks did not get the support that

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Speaker 4: I want to be clear, they were paying for as

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Speaker 4: tax paying residents of the same city. Eventually things were wrong,

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Speaker 4: and I owe amea culpa to former Mayor Shirley Franklin,

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Speaker 4: who spent a lot of time addressing the very unsexy

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Speaker 4: issue of infrastructure, water, sewage, sanitation, lack of clean drinking

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Speaker 4: water kills so many people around the world every single year.

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Speaker 4: And we talked about this previously, with stuff like attacks

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Speaker 4: on water waste treatment, with stuff like attacks on power stations,

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Speaker 4: and the fact that bridges will just grumble on their

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Speaker 4: own because it's not a sexy issue to run for

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Speaker 4: election on.

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Speaker 6: Shouldn't it be? Though?

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Speaker 5: I just feel like, you know, this idea of sexy issues,

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Speaker 5: it eludes me a little bit. To me, I'm always

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Speaker 5: complaining on the show and elsewhere about where did my.

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Speaker 6: Tax dollars go?

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Speaker 5: I just want to see somebody running that can show

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Speaker 5: me that my tax dollars are going to be used

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Speaker 5: for something of value, you know, and to me, potholes

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Speaker 5: and bridge construction and pipe prepare that's sexy.

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Speaker 6: Enough for me.

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Speaker 5: I want to know that where I live, I'm going

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Speaker 5: to be able to have a safe street to drive

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Speaker 5: on and then have safe water or clean water to.

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Speaker 4: It also follows on the heels of known corruption in

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Speaker 4: Atlanta and indeed in many other large metropolitan areas. It

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Speaker 4: wasn't too long ago that the Department of Justice sent

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Speaker 4: out a press release on a City of Atlanta official

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Speaker 4: sentenced for accepting bribes. This comes from February twenty fourth

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Speaker 4: of last year. Joe Ed Macrina was sentenced to four

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Speaker 4: years and six months in prison for accepting bribes from

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Speaker 4: an Atlanta contractor, you know, like mafia style, like pay

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Speaker 4: us an excessively high bid right or reward the contract

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Speaker 4: to us. Would you guys like to guess what joe

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Speaker 4: Ann Macrina's position was?

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Speaker 2: Comptroller?

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Speaker 6: I wish Matt, but thank you man.

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Speaker 4: I love a callback, Parliamentarian, I love it, I love it. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 4: the commissioner of watershed Management. So just last year this happened. Wow,

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Speaker 4: and I have to ask about the larger context, you know,

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Speaker 4: like a like doc you are code named Doc Holiday.

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Speaker 4: Excuse me give you the full one. You are familiar

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Speaker 4: doubtlessly as the as the Michigander amongst us. You're familiar

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Speaker 4: with the problems with Flint, Michigan, and we. I think

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Speaker 4: it's safe to say that the trouble with drinking water

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Speaker 4: supply here in the United States is only going to continue.

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Speaker 4: I mean, it's a question for the group. Is it

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Speaker 4: just going to escalate? I'm sorry, I folded up a

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Speaker 4: picture a piece of paper to make myself look like

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Speaker 4: a priest. I'm just feeling it today.

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Speaker 5: I do you know, I love Ben's priest persona. That's

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Speaker 5: one of my favorite of your ulcer. He goes, I

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Speaker 5: don't know, guys. To me, the biggest takeaway from a

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Speaker 5: story like this is it is a first hand opportunity

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Speaker 5: to see how crucial things like water really are for

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Speaker 5: our day to day lives and imagine what widespread failures

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Speaker 5: of a system like this, or lack of water resources,

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Speaker 5: the inevitable water war, that might be the thing that

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Speaker 5: mad maxifies the world. You know, it's it's a taste

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Speaker 5: of that, and it's really scary not to be a

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Speaker 5: doom and gloomer about it. But that's where my mind goes.

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Speaker 2: Well, Yeah, it's just a reminder that once humanity puts

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Speaker 2: a system in place and it's working, we don't have

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Speaker 2: to think about it for a while. You know. It's

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Speaker 2: like you're you've got a phone and it's got a

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Speaker 2: warranty on it for a year or two, maybe maybe

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Speaker 2: three if you're real lucky, and you don't have to

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Speaker 2: think about a new phone for a while. You don't

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Speaker 2: have to think about a new washer and dryer if

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Speaker 2: you ever find one that's working and you can afford.

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Speaker 5: Unless you bought a cyber truck, because apparently driving over

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Speaker 5: potholes avoids the warranty on that thing exactly.

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Speaker 2: But I guess the point is something we talked about

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Speaker 2: before or once. There are so many things for each

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Speaker 2: individual to deal with and for each system that we

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Speaker 2: create to deal with that. I think the pipes underneath

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Speaker 2: our feet, if they're working, you just don't think about them.

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Speaker 2: And it sometimes takes something like this to get that

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Speaker 2: political will that you're talking about. We wish we had

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Speaker 2: more of, Right, you need, you got to have a

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Speaker 2: bridge collapse so that a president like Joe Biden shows

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Speaker 2: up in a place and says, hey, we need to

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Speaker 2: fix our bridges. Otherwise everybody just drives over them and says, hey,

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Speaker 2: well this works great.

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Speaker 4: That's one of the big issues. I mean, if we're

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Speaker 4: being honest, any student of human psychology knows that people

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Speaker 4: love to reduce work, meaning that one would like to

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Speaker 4: cognitively reduce the work of thinking about inconvenient things, right,

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Speaker 4: things that do not have a big dopamine reward of

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Speaker 4: some sort, things that don't get you instant gratification. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 4: fixing infrastructure is one of those things. There's a huge

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Speaker 4: reason that homegrown domestic terrorist target infrastructure, or just folks

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Speaker 4: going lunatic and attacking places that nobody thought we would

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Speaker 4: have to protect as a society. And even more disturbingly,

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Speaker 4: right before we go to the app break, let's leave

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Speaker 4: you with this, folks. You don't need villains, clear and present.

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Speaker 4: Sometimes when you just don't take care of stuff, bad

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Speaker 4: things happen. As we record right now, part of Atlanta

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Speaker 4: is still under a water boil advisory. And the question

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Speaker 4: here is bigger than Atlanta. The question is for your

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Speaker 4: neck of the global woods, what's going to happen next?

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Speaker 4: Other disasters are statistically inevitable, but we're gonna keep doing

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Speaker 4: our You know do our little show. So we're gonna

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Speaker 4: pause for word from our sponsors.

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Speaker 5: And we have returned with another piece of strange news.

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Speaker 5: This one's been a few weeks in the works. You

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Speaker 5: may have noticed that when you search for something on

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Speaker 5: the old Google, a new feature may well have presented

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Speaker 5: itself to you or not, And we'll get into why not,

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Speaker 5: which is sort of an AI concierge attempting to answer

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Speaker 5: your question without you having to click anything at all.

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Speaker 5: It's sort of trying to save you from having to

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Speaker 5: even click through any of the links, which admittedly have

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Speaker 5: become less and less relevant. You guys, notice how much

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Speaker 5: how bad Google has gotten, just like in terms of

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Speaker 5: like the way it categorizes search, it seems like it's

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Speaker 5: really taking.

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Speaker 6: A bit of a nose dive.

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Speaker 5: I don't know if y'all's experience has been that way,

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Speaker 5: or if you're even Google users anymore. I know you

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Speaker 5: guys have talked about things like Duck Duck go in

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Speaker 5: the past.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, in my not to speak for you, Matt, but

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Speaker 4: in my experience, it was unsurprising yet still profoundly disappointing.

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Speaker 4: Like I think, unfortunately, with the length of the show,

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Speaker 4: we've been able to be prescient in that kind of

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Speaker 4: AI concierge thing. Look, AI implementation sounds fantastic in a boardroom,

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Speaker 4: but just the same way that the biases of the

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Speaker 4: creators determine the actions of machine learning war machine building,

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Speaker 4: an AI steer drone is going to make the same

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Speaker 4: fundamental creator errors as a profit driven search algorithm building

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Speaker 4: the same thing in so it's no surprise that it stinks.

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Speaker 4: It also gave me some dark dystopia laughter, because they

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Speaker 4: were mimicking you know. Now comics and internet internet wits

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Speaker 4: are are mentioning some of the they're doing the thing

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Speaker 4: like when you pretend to write an AI script for giggles,

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Speaker 4: pretending to make Google image or Google search results.

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Speaker 6: And that's definitely what the story is about.

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Speaker 5: But I was actually wondering as well, if either of

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Speaker 5: you had noticed a decline in the.

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Speaker 6: Quality of Google search results in.

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Speaker 2: General, I would just say that I have not. I

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Speaker 2: continue to use yield Google and give alphabet all of

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Speaker 2: my information because they're going to take it anyway. No,

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Speaker 2: I'm just joking. I just I still use it because

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Speaker 2: it does seem to work pretty well for me.

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Speaker 5: Really, that's interesting, That's not a perspective that I'm hearing

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Speaker 5: from everybody, and I found that a lot of prioritize

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Speaker 5: searches are paid for and you see those at the top,

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Speaker 5: and so you definitely you can find what you're looking

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Speaker 5: for if you're a savvy Internet user. But in general,

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Speaker 5: it feels like you're having to dig a little deeper

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Speaker 5: before you're actually getting relevant results.

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Speaker 2: I would agree with that. I think maybe I've got

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Speaker 2: used to a system and I figured out how that

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Speaker 2: system changed, and I just kind of go with it

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Speaker 2: because it's easier than learning the new system.

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Speaker 6: Oh yeah, no, no, I understand, we are, yeah, yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 5: So rather than perhaps address that algorithm that you're talking about,

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Speaker 5: but we know that Google. Changes to Google's algorithm over

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Speaker 5: the years have had significant impacts on businesses, on online business.

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Speaker 5: We as a company before we were, you know, under

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Speaker 5: our current corporate structure, we were run by Discovery and

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Speaker 5: we were much more of a website kind of situation

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Speaker 5: with our house Stuff Works flagship website. And when there

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Speaker 5: were changes to Google's search algorithm that determined what kind

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Speaker 5: of I guess. The term is quality score I guess

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Speaker 5: is assigned to what types of websites certain things could

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Speaker 5: cause your search engine optimization or SEO as the part

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Speaker 5: in the parlance of tech speak, to take a nose dive.

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Speaker 5: So we would look out for these things. They would

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Speaker 5: be updates, they'd call it. There was like and or whatever.

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Speaker 5: There are different names for them.

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Speaker 6: It does seem now the Google doesn't seem to care.

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Speaker 5: So much anymore about the quality of search results, and

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Speaker 5: that is evident in some of these AI search results.

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Speaker 5: They're so ridiculous, so over the top and so blatantly

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Speaker 5: incorrect that Google has had to pull back this program significantly.

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Speaker 5: It's another one of those things we've talked about with AI,

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Speaker 5: whereas everyone's like they gotta be the first to say

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Speaker 5: we did the AI thing. We got to add the

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Speaker 5: AI widget, we can't be left behind. We got to

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Speaker 5: be part of the AI revolution. But frankly, the technology

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Speaker 5: isn't there yet and probably should not be rolled at

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Speaker 5: being rolled out as willy nilly as it has been.

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Speaker 5: But hey, at least in this situation we get some

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Speaker 5: yucks out of it. One of my favorites here is

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Speaker 5: let's see AI overview for the prompt is it okay

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Speaker 5: to leave a dog in a hot car? Aioverview says this, Yes,

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Speaker 5: it's always safe to leave a dog in a hot car,

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Speaker 5: especially on a warm day. The temperature inside a car

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Speaker 5: remains around the same temperature as outside the car. The

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Speaker 5: Beatles famously released a hit single about the subject title

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Speaker 5: It's Okay to Leave a Dog.

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Speaker 6: In a Hot Car, and then it has pro lyric.

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Speaker 5: Excerpt from this non existent song, It's okay to leave

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Speaker 5: your dog in.

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Speaker 6: A hot car, Hot car. It's okay to leave your

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Speaker 6: dog in a hot car.

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Speaker 5: Nothing that could possibly happen if you leave your dog

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Speaker 5: in a hot car.

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Speaker 6: I just sort of improve the way that vocal worked,

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Speaker 6: because that's not a real song.

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Speaker 5: Guys, and I mentioned the idea of Internet rankings in

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Speaker 5: terms of quality would be considered a quality result because

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Speaker 5: these are clearly pulling from websites that are either satire

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Speaker 5: or very poor quality. As absolutely Bend, some of these

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Speaker 5: are coming from the onion. I think one of the

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Speaker 5: most famous examples of this guy's is using glue to

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Speaker 5: make pizza dough out.

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Speaker 6: Of that one goes I want to read an excerpt

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Speaker 6: from it.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, GOOGLEI said the following, Well, now I don't want

440
00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:19,720
Speaker 5: to start a free trial business. Insider, get right out

441
00:26:19,760 --> 00:26:24,399
Speaker 5: of town. Here it is Google. AI said cheese can

442
00:26:24,480 --> 00:26:27,360
Speaker 5: slide off pizza for a number of reasons, including too

443
00:26:27,440 --> 00:26:30,800
Speaker 5: much sauce, too much cheese, or thickened sauce. Here are

444
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:35,080
Speaker 5: some things you can try mixing sauce. Mixing cheese into

445
00:26:35,119 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 5: the sauce helps add moisture to the cheese and.

446
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:38,959
Speaker 6: Dry out the sauce.

447
00:26:39,200 --> 00:26:41,680
Speaker 5: You can also add about an eighth cup of non

448
00:26:41,800 --> 00:26:46,560
Speaker 5: toxic glue to give the sauce more tackiness. But the

449
00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:50,440
Speaker 5: pizza cool, the cheese will settle and bond and then bend.

450
00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:56,160
Speaker 5: To your point, the onion is absolutely part of the story.

451
00:26:56,640 --> 00:27:00,760
Speaker 5: When it comes to the idea of eating rocks, someone

452
00:27:00,920 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 5: googled how many rocks should I eat in a day,

453
00:27:04,520 --> 00:27:07,760
Speaker 5: to which the AI over you responded at least one

454
00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:13,000
Speaker 5: per day, and then went on to gay give specifics

455
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:15,199
Speaker 5: about you know, the size of the rocks, and then

456
00:27:15,200 --> 00:27:18,000
Speaker 5: what you should be looking for. Anothery're asked how many

457
00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:21,520
Speaker 5: Muslim presidents has the US had, to which the AI

458
00:27:21,720 --> 00:27:27,199
Speaker 5: overview responded that Barack Obama was a Muslim misinterpreting you know,

459
00:27:27,280 --> 00:27:31,000
Speaker 5: some information from the Internet. And then, of course, the

460
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:36,119
Speaker 5: debacle with the cheese pizza mixed with glue. So, I

461
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:38,560
Speaker 5: don't know, guys, it just seems like Google, you know,

462
00:27:38,600 --> 00:27:43,560
Speaker 5: everyone's like trying to match open ais, you know, Chat

463
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:46,560
Speaker 5: Gypt and all of that stuff, and to varying degrees

464
00:27:46,600 --> 00:27:50,200
Speaker 5: of success. As we know, even chat Gypt certainly isn't fallible.

465
00:27:50,240 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 5: We see stories about it hallucinating things, you know, and

466
00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 5: that's gonna there's gonna be some of that happening. But

467
00:27:57,400 --> 00:28:01,880
Speaker 5: since this has created such an online comic bonanza, let's

468
00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:04,399
Speaker 5: call it, they have rolled back the results and not

469
00:28:04,520 --> 00:28:07,200
Speaker 5: only about eleven percent of users are getting these results

470
00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 5: at all. And I guess they're going to tune it

471
00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:11,760
Speaker 5: up a little bit and then maybe roll it back out.

472
00:28:11,800 --> 00:28:13,760
Speaker 5: But do you guys have any thoughts about this? It

473
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:16,800
Speaker 5: seems just beyond absurd. Well, we know, we are starting

474
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:18,960
Speaker 5: to live in a culture, or have been living in

475
00:28:18,960 --> 00:28:21,720
Speaker 5: a culture with things like TikTok and all of this

476
00:28:21,800 --> 00:28:25,520
Speaker 5: short attention span theater stuff, where there is this sort

477
00:28:25,560 --> 00:28:27,959
Speaker 5: of drives you just accept whatever you see on the

478
00:28:27,960 --> 00:28:30,560
Speaker 5: Internet because it's on the Internet, that it's truth, because

479
00:28:30,560 --> 00:28:33,959
Speaker 5: it's easier that way. And this seems to be feeding

480
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:35,879
Speaker 5: into that to a pretty large degree.

481
00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:41,280
Speaker 4: It's interesting too, because what we're looking at is what

482
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:47,480
Speaker 4: I would call intergenerational information and normalization asymmetry, which I

483
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:50,160
Speaker 4: know sounds like gobbledy Google words, but it does make

484
00:28:50,200 --> 00:28:53,800
Speaker 4: sense if we walk it through. What I'm saying, essentially

485
00:28:54,000 --> 00:28:59,320
Speaker 4: is that the people who have valid discourse and criticism

486
00:28:59,680 --> 00:29:04,400
Speaker 4: about these changes being implemented are, to a large degree

487
00:29:04,440 --> 00:29:07,240
Speaker 4: they're going to be an older demographic. Then the people

488
00:29:07,280 --> 00:29:10,800
Speaker 4: are coming up native, as we would say in this

489
00:29:11,080 --> 00:29:14,400
Speaker 4: online sphere, the folks who are using a search engine

490
00:29:14,440 --> 00:29:19,400
Speaker 4: for the first time don't have an earlier comparison to make,

491
00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:24,479
Speaker 4: so for them it is increasingly difficult. They're also, you know,

492
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:27,240
Speaker 4: and this is very pretentious to say, but they're also

493
00:29:27,760 --> 00:29:31,480
Speaker 4: not going to be the kids reading some you know,

494
00:29:31,640 --> 00:29:36,560
Speaker 4: scholarly paper or watching some high falutin thirty five minute

495
00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:40,440
Speaker 4: ted talk or whatever about the nature of this change

496
00:29:40,480 --> 00:29:43,440
Speaker 4: and the dangers inherent. They might not know who Jaron

497
00:29:43,520 --> 00:29:48,240
Speaker 4: Lanier is, you know, so this could be this could

498
00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:50,640
Speaker 4: be very difficult. We can't, you know, we can't talk

499
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:52,800
Speaker 4: down to people about this. I think we could just

500
00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:56,280
Speaker 4: be honest, like you're being here, nol. It's a problem.

501
00:29:56,560 --> 00:30:00,840
Speaker 4: It's bad, especially because other people don't know it used

502
00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:03,400
Speaker 4: to be kind of better. I'm not even saying perfect,

503
00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:04,920
Speaker 4: I'm just saying kind of better.

504
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:08,640
Speaker 5: Sure, And again, like I think I've been pretty even

505
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:14,040
Speaker 5: handed in terms of like mixing my dystopian outlook on

506
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:17,520
Speaker 5: AI with a sort of silver lining of using AI

507
00:30:17,600 --> 00:30:20,480
Speaker 5: as a tool, whether it be for music production like

508
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:24,040
Speaker 5: with that Randy Travis song story, or some of the

509
00:30:24,040 --> 00:30:27,120
Speaker 5: tools we're seeing rolling out in audio and video software

510
00:30:27,160 --> 00:30:30,040
Speaker 5: that are actually incredibly helpful and can be predictive in

511
00:30:30,160 --> 00:30:33,640
Speaker 5: terms of you know, removing noise from audio, or cutting

512
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:36,520
Speaker 5: out backgrounds from images and things like that, or helping

513
00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:40,360
Speaker 5: with in betweening and animation, things that actually save humans

514
00:30:40,440 --> 00:30:43,320
Speaker 5: time without getting rid of their jobs or the need

515
00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:44,640
Speaker 5: for them to exist at all.

516
00:30:45,400 --> 00:30:46,960
Speaker 6: But this, to me is just that.

517
00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:50,120
Speaker 3: Shiny new thing that everyone feels like they've got to

518
00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:54,200
Speaker 3: trot out when it's not ready, and it's just frickin embarrassing,

519
00:30:54,240 --> 00:30:58,000
Speaker 3: and they absolutely deserve all the lampooning they're getting.

520
00:30:58,240 --> 00:31:03,880
Speaker 5: If you ask me, Matt, think man, this hallucinatory generative

521
00:31:03,920 --> 00:31:07,240
Speaker 5: AI telling people to eat rocks on Google.

522
00:31:07,960 --> 00:31:10,680
Speaker 2: Well, I'll speak for myself, but I do think this

523
00:31:10,760 --> 00:31:15,480
Speaker 2: is more general as a species We've become pretty accustomed

524
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:18,960
Speaker 2: to typing something into a search bar and finding out

525
00:31:19,120 --> 00:31:21,840
Speaker 2: the facts or the truth or the thing that we

526
00:31:21,960 --> 00:31:25,200
Speaker 2: really want to know. And Google has been pretty good

527
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:27,480
Speaker 2: in the past that even if it's just sending you

528
00:31:27,520 --> 00:31:30,880
Speaker 2: to a Wikipedia page, on that Wikipedia page, you're generally

529
00:31:30,920 --> 00:31:33,880
Speaker 2: going to find mostly true things, mostly facts, or.

530
00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 5: The ability to cross reference the very least, right, Yeah.

531
00:31:36,840 --> 00:31:39,440
Speaker 2: But then I think we got a little accustomed to

532
00:31:39,800 --> 00:31:42,160
Speaker 2: just the first like little page that you get depending

533
00:31:42,200 --> 00:31:45,520
Speaker 2: on what device you're accessing the search tool on.

534
00:31:46,040 --> 00:31:50,040
Speaker 4: Right, Like ninety plus percent of people don't scroll past

535
00:31:50,080 --> 00:31:51,960
Speaker 4: the first page of results exactly.

536
00:31:52,040 --> 00:31:55,480
Speaker 2: And I'm just imagining a world where everybody that's got

537
00:31:55,520 --> 00:31:58,719
Speaker 2: a search tool on their side or their app is,

538
00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:03,200
Speaker 2: you know, implementing this kind of technology where truth in

539
00:32:03,320 --> 00:32:07,520
Speaker 2: fact become even further and further from actuality because everybody

540
00:32:07,600 --> 00:32:10,760
Speaker 2: has their own generated version of what that thing is

541
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:12,000
Speaker 2: or that's already.

542
00:32:11,680 --> 00:32:14,360
Speaker 5: Being tailored to you a little bit, right, Oh yeah,

543
00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:16,240
Speaker 5: like like yes, yes, yes.

544
00:32:16,120 --> 00:32:18,960
Speaker 2: Yes, I don't know that freaks me out. I don't

545
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:19,280
Speaker 2: like that.

546
00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:22,680
Speaker 5: No, I don't either, And I will say that it's

547
00:32:22,960 --> 00:32:25,960
Speaker 5: I know that in the past, and you know, previous generations.

548
00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:28,800
Speaker 5: I think people generally were more well read. I think

549
00:32:28,800 --> 00:32:32,480
Speaker 5: people were generally a little better at separating fact from fiction.

550
00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:35,400
Speaker 5: But also there certainly has always been a history or

551
00:32:35,440 --> 00:32:38,800
Speaker 5: this idea of if it bleeds, it leads, and people

552
00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:40,680
Speaker 5: not reading past the headlines.

553
00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:42,560
Speaker 6: You know. I think this is just a much more

554
00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:45,880
Speaker 6: extreme pathology.

555
00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:49,440
Speaker 5: Kind of of that previously existing kind of you know phenomenon.

556
00:32:49,960 --> 00:32:50,240
Speaker 6: Yeah.

557
00:32:50,560 --> 00:32:55,760
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, the people then as now or you know, much

558
00:32:55,840 --> 00:32:58,200
Speaker 4: the same as we say, as we often say on

559
00:32:58,240 --> 00:33:01,760
Speaker 4: this show. And one of the issues is that, look,

560
00:33:01,800 --> 00:33:04,880
Speaker 4: Wikipedia gets a hard time, and folks, if you're doing

561
00:33:04,880 --> 00:33:08,920
Speaker 4: any research, ever, the thing you want to learn from

562
00:33:09,000 --> 00:33:11,280
Speaker 4: Wikipedia is you want to go to the talk tab

563
00:33:11,320 --> 00:33:13,280
Speaker 4: and see the arguments, and then you want to look

564
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:16,920
Speaker 4: at the bibliography of sources. We're just ethically required to

565
00:33:16,960 --> 00:33:20,880
Speaker 4: say that. But one of the brilliant things Wikipedia did

566
00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:24,560
Speaker 4: was when it works, when it's not a war of

567
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:29,400
Speaker 4: viewpoints and conversations, when it's being objective, it's continually crowdsourcing

568
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:34,080
Speaker 4: and fact checking itself. And the issue is that it

569
00:33:34,120 --> 00:33:39,080
Speaker 4: appears some of these so called AI concierges, these large

570
00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:44,720
Speaker 4: language models, these learning algorithms, they are not fact checking themselves.

571
00:33:44,800 --> 00:33:49,120
Speaker 4: They are indeed like two mirrors reflecting one another. We

572
00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:52,600
Speaker 4: talked about this idea previously, so there's no as of yet,

573
00:33:52,920 --> 00:33:58,240
Speaker 4: there is no BS killer AI. There's nothing that'll intervene

574
00:33:58,320 --> 00:34:01,640
Speaker 4: between point A when you search, point you know Z

575
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:04,720
Speaker 4: when you results show up. There's nothing to be the

576
00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:07,600
Speaker 4: other part of the alphabet that jumps in and says, hey,

577
00:34:07,760 --> 00:34:10,920
Speaker 4: actually no, most people don't put glue on pizzas.

578
00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:14,760
Speaker 6: It's a giant AI circle jerk is what it is. Everywhere.

579
00:34:14,760 --> 00:34:19,400
Speaker 5: It's like this self congratulatory echo chamber. And to the

580
00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:21,480
Speaker 5: to the point you're referencing men, I think was the

581
00:34:21,480 --> 00:34:25,320
Speaker 5: whole idea of the dead Internet theory about how much

582
00:34:26,200 --> 00:34:30,040
Speaker 5: bot activity is already out there and how if an

583
00:34:30,080 --> 00:34:34,680
Speaker 5: AI language learning system is being trained on Internet content

584
00:34:34,719 --> 00:34:38,840
Speaker 5: that was generated by other language learning systems, it becomes

585
00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:40,840
Speaker 5: like a copy of a copy of a copy of

586
00:34:40,840 --> 00:34:43,960
Speaker 5: a copy, and then it becomes something real weird and

587
00:34:44,080 --> 00:34:48,680
Speaker 5: real wrong. Yep, I'm sorry, guys, I think it weirds

588
00:34:48,760 --> 00:34:51,120
Speaker 5: is all out a little bit. But any last words, Matt,

589
00:34:53,520 --> 00:34:58,760
Speaker 5: there we go. We'll be back with some words Draden's

590
00:34:58,760 --> 00:35:00,719
Speaker 5: News after a word from ours bondser.

591
00:35:07,200 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 2: And we've returned Before we get into the story, let's

592
00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:14,919
Speaker 2: shout out West, the director and director of photography for

593
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:17,720
Speaker 2: the social videos that we film when we are together,

594
00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:20,560
Speaker 2: because he mentioned this. At least to me, it's the

595
00:35:20,560 --> 00:35:21,960
Speaker 2: first time I had heard about it. I don't know

596
00:35:22,120 --> 00:35:24,560
Speaker 2: about you guys, but this story comes from you, West.

597
00:35:24,640 --> 00:35:24,960
Speaker 2: Thank you.

598
00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:25,880
Speaker 4: Shout out to West.

599
00:35:26,239 --> 00:35:31,280
Speaker 2: West. West put us onto a story that is about

600
00:35:31,320 --> 00:35:34,000
Speaker 2: two companies that we're going to be talking about. The

601
00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:38,319
Speaker 2: first one is a property management company based in Atlanta. Wow,

602
00:35:38,320 --> 00:35:41,239
Speaker 2: this is a very Atlanta centric episode here we go.

603
00:35:41,440 --> 00:35:42,800
Speaker 2: That's right, atl everybody.

604
00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:44,520
Speaker 6: Hey man, we're a proper metro area.

605
00:35:44,719 --> 00:35:47,440
Speaker 2: That's right. That's right, the Atlanta metro are.

606
00:35:47,640 --> 00:35:49,920
Speaker 6: We're just as good as New York and Los Angeles.

607
00:35:50,520 --> 00:35:53,600
Speaker 2: Yes, but this is a property management company based in Atlanta.

608
00:35:53,680 --> 00:35:55,960
Speaker 2: It is called Cortland. That's spelled co.

609
00:35:56,440 --> 00:35:59,880
Speaker 6: R t l A n d ah. Yeah. I remember.

610
00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:00,680
Speaker 4: Uh.

611
00:36:01,320 --> 00:36:03,399
Speaker 2: He mentioned it to us in passing. We're like, we're

612
00:36:03,440 --> 00:36:06,160
Speaker 2: talking about the water crisis issue, and he's like, did

613
00:36:06,200 --> 00:36:08,120
Speaker 2: you hear about this? We were like, no, what is this?

614
00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:11,640
Speaker 2: So this Courtland without a you. I always think about

615
00:36:11,680 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 2: Courtland Marriott for some reason. I guess that's just in

616
00:36:14,520 --> 00:36:18,319
Speaker 2: my head it is, Oh yeah, and it is not that.

617
00:36:18,960 --> 00:36:19,240
Speaker 5: Uh.

618
00:36:19,280 --> 00:36:22,600
Speaker 2: This is a company that's primary business is owning property

619
00:36:22,640 --> 00:36:25,640
Speaker 2: and leasing it out to you or us or other

620
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:26,839
Speaker 2: people like us that are.

621
00:36:26,840 --> 00:36:29,120
Speaker 4: Renters, right, just never selling it to you.

622
00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:33,120
Speaker 2: Oh well maybe sometimes maybe you could could be occupancy

623
00:36:33,239 --> 00:36:36,760
Speaker 2: of some sort. It could just be open rental property.

624
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:40,480
Speaker 2: Who knows they own. Yes, but they are huge and

625
00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:42,120
Speaker 2: we're going to get into how big they are and

626
00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:46,759
Speaker 2: they're a big deal. Courtland. The second company is a

627
00:36:46,800 --> 00:36:51,400
Speaker 2: property management software company called real Page r E a

628
00:36:51,680 --> 00:36:57,320
Speaker 2: l page that owns and licenses a quote technology platform

629
00:36:57,560 --> 00:37:00,879
Speaker 2: that enables real estate owners and managers to change how

630
00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:03,520
Speaker 2: people experience and use rental space.

631
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:06,480
Speaker 6: That sounds nice. That sounds downright.

632
00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:10,000
Speaker 2: Utopian, doesn't it. One of the main features of this

633
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:14,640
Speaker 2: platform is that it can quote optimize rents to achieve

634
00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:18,799
Speaker 2: the overall highest yield or a combination of rent and

635
00:37:18,920 --> 00:37:23,759
Speaker 2: occupancy at each property, which means it is using some

636
00:37:23,800 --> 00:37:26,799
Speaker 2: sort of algorithm that is a part of that technology

637
00:37:26,840 --> 00:37:30,879
Speaker 2: platform to decide how much rents should be and when

638
00:37:30,880 --> 00:37:33,759
Speaker 2: it's being used by a company like Courtland that we're

639
00:37:33,800 --> 00:37:36,520
Speaker 2: gonna be talking about here that has so many different

640
00:37:36,560 --> 00:37:41,440
Speaker 2: rental properties it can have disastrous results, and there may

641
00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:45,520
Speaker 2: be a conspiracy afoot. So let us jump to a

642
00:37:45,560 --> 00:37:50,240
Speaker 2: story from Entrepreneur written by Sharon Shebu on June fourth,

643
00:37:50,320 --> 00:37:53,680
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. It's titled is one company to Blame

644
00:37:53,800 --> 00:37:58,880
Speaker 2: for soaring rental prices in the US? Say it ain't so, guys,

645
00:37:59,120 --> 00:38:02,040
Speaker 2: I'm gonna guess that so well, it might be, at

646
00:38:02,080 --> 00:38:06,880
Speaker 2: least according to an FBI investigation. Ooh ooh, yes, So

647
00:38:06,920 --> 00:38:10,799
Speaker 2: the Federal Bureau boys did a little unannounced raid on

648
00:38:10,960 --> 00:38:14,120
Speaker 2: Courtland Management back on May twenty second.

649
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:17,080
Speaker 4: Oh, just a little unannounced when just a little poplright,

650
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:17,879
Speaker 4: you know.

651
00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:22,160
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody open up, open those file cabinets were coming in.

652
00:38:22,640 --> 00:38:25,319
Speaker 4: We're knocking to be polite more.

653
00:38:25,320 --> 00:38:26,920
Speaker 6: I think this would maybe even qualify as a no

654
00:38:27,040 --> 00:38:30,560
Speaker 6: knock raid, right, yeah, like a kick in raid.

655
00:38:30,719 --> 00:38:34,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, well yeah, because and the reason why they did

656
00:38:34,200 --> 00:38:38,080
Speaker 2: it there, they are conducting a major investigation into an

657
00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:43,760
Speaker 2: alleged rental price fixing conspiracy that, according to Sharon Shebu

658
00:38:43,800 --> 00:38:49,000
Speaker 2: writing for Entrepreneur, may have already impacted millions of US Americans.

659
00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 6: Freaking gross makes me so mad, Matt.

660
00:38:52,239 --> 00:38:57,800
Speaker 4: Before we go further into this particular this Courtland situation.

661
00:38:58,840 --> 00:39:01,600
Speaker 4: I think we should point out that in twenty twenty two,

662
00:39:01,680 --> 00:39:06,080
Speaker 4: we talked a little bit about aj Stegmany, chess prodigy

663
00:39:06,840 --> 00:39:12,040
Speaker 4: who who became Atlanta's top broker because of very similar

664
00:39:12,120 --> 00:39:14,440
Speaker 4: software he built to do very similar things.

665
00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:18,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you can move those pieces just a little

666
00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:25,200
Speaker 2: bit and you can optimize right, Oh, optimizing lease rental

667
00:39:25,520 --> 00:39:26,760
Speaker 2: prices yucky.

668
00:39:27,320 --> 00:39:31,120
Speaker 4: Let's say we have stone a how much blood see

669
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:35,439
Speaker 4: can we get with y squeeze? And what about It's

670
00:39:35,440 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 4: called Stegnet proprietary software. We were very nice when we

671
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:42,040
Speaker 4: talked about this guy. By the way, we've never met him,

672
00:39:42,360 --> 00:39:46,279
Speaker 4: but I think I think this this shows us kind

673
00:39:46,320 --> 00:39:49,440
Speaker 4: of the way this escalates, you know, bump bump, bump up.

674
00:39:49,480 --> 00:39:51,120
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, bum bum bum bum bum.

675
00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:51,960
Speaker 5: Oh.

676
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:54,319
Speaker 2: And our stone that we're pulling blood out of is

677
00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:58,000
Speaker 2: rolling guys, because this is part of a giant anti

678
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:02,600
Speaker 2: trust investigation that the Department Justice is carrying out looking

679
00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:07,120
Speaker 2: into specifically that second company we mentioned real page. Those

680
00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:11,840
Speaker 2: guys are a nine billion dollars software company that's billion

681
00:40:11,920 --> 00:40:15,120
Speaker 2: with a B, and that is the company, as we said,

682
00:40:15,200 --> 00:40:19,080
Speaker 2: that recommends to property owners when they need to raise

683
00:40:19,160 --> 00:40:21,040
Speaker 2: rates and how much they need to raise rates in

684
00:40:21,120 --> 00:40:23,759
Speaker 2: order to optimize the amount of money they're bringing in

685
00:40:23,920 --> 00:40:25,120
Speaker 2: for each property.

686
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:27,919
Speaker 6: Kind of reminds me of freight brokers in a way.

687
00:40:28,960 --> 00:40:32,040
Speaker 5: I mean, just in terms of the logistics of like,

688
00:40:32,320 --> 00:40:36,640
Speaker 5: you know, what's the word maximizing kind of maximizing profits

689
00:40:36,680 --> 00:40:40,719
Speaker 5: and also some potential for horseplay in there, you.

690
00:40:40,600 --> 00:40:44,239
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, oh yeah, And when utilized by a huge

691
00:40:44,239 --> 00:40:47,400
Speaker 2: company like Cortland, which as of June twenty twenty two

692
00:40:47,560 --> 00:40:51,800
Speaker 2: owned nearly eighty five thousand department units across the country

693
00:40:51,840 --> 00:40:56,480
Speaker 2: from Arizona to Georgia. And they're using this software right,

694
00:40:56,520 --> 00:40:58,919
Speaker 2: this platform or whatever you want to call it, that's

695
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:03,560
Speaker 2: attempting this off stimization. That means all of these properties

696
00:41:03,600 --> 00:41:07,200
Speaker 2: are going up little bit by little bit. I don't think,

697
00:41:07,239 --> 00:41:09,760
Speaker 2: and maybe this is not true, but I don't think

698
00:41:09,880 --> 00:41:14,280
Speaker 2: that software is incentivizing landowners to reduce rent.

699
00:41:14,800 --> 00:41:19,040
Speaker 6: Absolutely not. I mean maybe not. That means very kind

700
00:41:19,040 --> 00:41:21,960
Speaker 6: of know, you're being very generouid it.

701
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:27,800
Speaker 4: Is a possibility in the programming, right, But that's saying

702
00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:31,440
Speaker 4: that's a possibility in the programming. Is saying is similar

703
00:41:31,520 --> 00:41:34,320
Speaker 4: to saying it is possible to get to a draw

704
00:41:34,520 --> 00:41:37,160
Speaker 4: in Teken or more combat, you know, what I mean,

705
00:41:37,200 --> 00:41:41,680
Speaker 4: like it can happen theoretically, but if circumstances work out,

706
00:41:41,880 --> 00:41:45,399
Speaker 4: it wants a clear winner. And I think also it's

707
00:41:45,520 --> 00:41:50,279
Speaker 4: adding some high octane gas to the bonfire of increasing

708
00:41:50,480 --> 00:41:54,239
Speaker 4: rent prices which occur for any number of variables. But

709
00:41:54,400 --> 00:41:59,560
Speaker 4: you could argue the wrong things are being incentivized and weaponized.

710
00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:04,160
Speaker 2: Oh oh yeah, oh yeah. Well let's take this little

711
00:42:04,239 --> 00:42:07,319
Speaker 2: set of statistics from our fair city of Atlanta, just

712
00:42:07,320 --> 00:42:09,520
Speaker 2: to really get this in perspective.

713
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 4: Oh and can we point out that Atlanta, out of

714
00:42:12,680 --> 00:42:15,800
Speaker 4: all we very rarely get to brag about our city.

715
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:19,440
Speaker 4: So in addition to being a star of poor water infrastructure,

716
00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:24,759
Speaker 4: this fair metropolis is also one of the top targets

717
00:42:25,239 --> 00:42:28,879
Speaker 4: for real estate capture, oh investment corporations.

718
00:42:29,160 --> 00:42:31,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, the big guys like the black Rocks of the

719
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:34,560
Speaker 2: world that are like, we will take all of these houses,

720
00:42:34,760 --> 00:42:38,239
Speaker 2: these single family units that are an entire house, and

721
00:42:38,280 --> 00:42:42,320
Speaker 2: we will rent them all. You'll never own anything.

722
00:42:42,680 --> 00:42:45,239
Speaker 5: I think I mentioned in the past and these kind

723
00:42:45,239 --> 00:42:49,600
Speaker 5: of conversations. I rented from a mega conglomo, one of

724
00:42:49,640 --> 00:42:54,319
Speaker 5: these type of organizations called Excalibur Homes that owns a

725
00:42:54,440 --> 00:42:57,400
Speaker 5: ton of property in the Metro Atlanta area, and both

726
00:42:57,480 --> 00:43:00,640
Speaker 5: of the times I rented from them, every single fixture

727
00:43:00,760 --> 00:43:03,120
Speaker 5: was identical. It was the cheapest of the lowest of

728
00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:05,719
Speaker 5: the low bargain basement kind of stuff. And anytime something

729
00:43:05,760 --> 00:43:09,279
Speaker 5: would break, which is inevitably, I couldn't get anyone to

730
00:43:09,320 --> 00:43:12,400
Speaker 5: respond because it was all through this online portal using

731
00:43:12,520 --> 00:43:14,839
Speaker 5: you know this, like you had to use their proprietary

732
00:43:14,920 --> 00:43:18,160
Speaker 5: software to reach out for maintenance requests, to submit a ticket,

733
00:43:18,239 --> 00:43:20,840
Speaker 5: and yeah, you'd be lucky if you ever got a response.

734
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:22,160
Speaker 6: Yeh, yuck.

735
00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:26,840
Speaker 2: Well, let's jump to these statistics, guys, because Cortland is

736
00:43:26,880 --> 00:43:29,880
Speaker 2: a huge player in the real estate business, the actual

737
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:35,440
Speaker 2: property business, right, but they are just one in Atlanta.

738
00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:38,880
Speaker 2: There are just one in the United States. The connective

739
00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:43,520
Speaker 2: tissue between a ton of these rental properties is that

740
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:48,200
Speaker 2: real Page. Because in Atlanta, more than eighty percent of

741
00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:52,160
Speaker 2: rentals have been affected. Let's say that's the way it's

742
00:43:52,320 --> 00:43:56,200
Speaker 2: stated in this Entrepreneur article. The price of those leases

743
00:43:56,640 --> 00:44:01,920
Speaker 2: have been affected by Real Pages algorithm eighty percent, and

744
00:44:02,840 --> 00:44:06,239
Speaker 2: rent in the city since twenty sixteen has grown by

745
00:44:06,600 --> 00:44:09,800
Speaker 2: eighty percent, which means.

746
00:44:10,160 --> 00:44:14,600
Speaker 4: Which is fascinating in comparison to the thirty percent overall

747
00:44:14,640 --> 00:44:16,200
Speaker 4: increase across the United.

748
00:44:15,960 --> 00:44:22,080
Speaker 2: States exactly, so specific cities can be affected way more

749
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:26,200
Speaker 2: than the system overall, right, because everybody wants to get

750
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:28,720
Speaker 2: it to get into Atlanta now because it's a hub

751
00:44:28,760 --> 00:44:31,439
Speaker 2: and the airport and the film industry and just blah

752
00:44:31,440 --> 00:44:34,200
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah, growing, growing, growing, same thing with

753
00:44:34,239 --> 00:44:37,920
Speaker 2: places like Austin, certain parts of California and Oregon. And

754
00:44:38,400 --> 00:44:42,560
Speaker 2: the problem is getting worse, right as human beings cluster

755
00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:46,600
Speaker 2: in cities. But here's the other problem, guys. Vacancy rates,

756
00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:53,080
Speaker 2: like open apartment units has actually been increasing a little bit. Yeah,

757
00:44:53,360 --> 00:44:58,360
Speaker 2: but somehow prices are going up to doesn't it seem

758
00:44:58,440 --> 00:45:01,560
Speaker 2: like if there's not as many people to fill the apartments,

759
00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:03,520
Speaker 2: then maybe the prices should go down.

760
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:09,480
Speaker 4: You know, I unfondly remember not too many years ago,

761
00:45:10,040 --> 00:45:13,680
Speaker 4: we would drive through you and I would go hang

762
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:17,279
Speaker 4: out in different areas of the city, and you know,

763
00:45:17,400 --> 00:45:20,480
Speaker 4: the like the abandoned warehouses we used to get up

764
00:45:20,480 --> 00:45:23,680
Speaker 4: the hijinks are now huge condos. And for a time,

765
00:45:23,800 --> 00:45:28,240
Speaker 4: the city of Atlanta had some egregious like forty percent

766
00:45:28,400 --> 00:45:31,680
Speaker 4: vacancy rate with a lot of that new construction just

767
00:45:31,680 --> 00:45:36,880
Speaker 4: because it was similar to the lesson that every municipality

768
00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:40,600
Speaker 4: needs to learn from China, which is, if you are

769
00:45:40,719 --> 00:45:46,080
Speaker 4: building things that are not accessible to people, people will

770
00:45:46,120 --> 00:45:50,200
Speaker 4: not be there. Real estate is not field of dreams,

771
00:45:50,520 --> 00:45:52,520
Speaker 4: no matter how folks want to make it sound to

772
00:45:52,600 --> 00:45:56,799
Speaker 4: the boardroom. So with that in mind, are you proposing, then,

773
00:45:57,280 --> 00:46:01,919
Speaker 4: the possibility of an inflection point like at is there

774
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:06,200
Speaker 4: some point where these two variables of need for housing

775
00:46:06,760 --> 00:46:12,279
Speaker 4: and inaccessible pricing? Is there a point where they hit

776
00:46:12,680 --> 00:46:14,719
Speaker 4: some untenable threshold?

777
00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:16,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we hit it in I don't know,

778
00:46:16,760 --> 00:46:19,960
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen. Maybe no, But I mean, really like it

779
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:22,279
Speaker 2: feels as though we already have kind of hit a

780
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:27,000
Speaker 2: ceiling here and it's it's only going down from this point.

781
00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:29,239
Speaker 2: But I don't know, Ben. All I know is that

782
00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 2: according to these this major investigation right and several other

783
00:46:34,080 --> 00:46:37,760
Speaker 2: lawsuits that have been filed in other cities and other states,

784
00:46:38,360 --> 00:46:42,399
Speaker 2: the problem is real page essentially making all of these

785
00:46:42,520 --> 00:46:45,799
Speaker 2: land owners collude with each other because they're using the

786
00:46:45,840 --> 00:46:48,839
Speaker 2: same algorithms and they're all raising their rents at kind

787
00:46:48,880 --> 00:46:52,080
Speaker 2: of the same rate. So it's almost like gas stations.

788
00:46:52,880 --> 00:46:56,280
Speaker 2: You guys, ever driven through an area an intersection maybe

789
00:46:56,320 --> 00:46:59,520
Speaker 2: and you see three gas stations that are immediately next

790
00:46:59,560 --> 00:47:02,080
Speaker 2: to each other or in all of the prices are

791
00:47:02,120 --> 00:47:06,839
Speaker 2: almost exactly the same. Because everybody there knows somebody's gonna

792
00:47:06,840 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 2: stop in for gas, they got to pick one of us.

793
00:47:09,800 --> 00:47:12,400
Speaker 2: If any of us are higher, nobody's gonna pick us.

794
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:14,719
Speaker 2: So we got to hit that right mark. But if

795
00:47:14,760 --> 00:47:17,760
Speaker 2: everybody decides, hey, guys, we're going up by five cents,

796
00:47:18,239 --> 00:47:22,040
Speaker 2: and they go okay, so everybody does it. That's kind

797
00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:25,239
Speaker 2: of what's happening here. Even if the landlords are not,

798
00:47:25,840 --> 00:47:29,520
Speaker 2: you know, conspiring amongst themselves, they're all using the same

799
00:47:29,640 --> 00:47:32,960
Speaker 2: software that is essentially conspiring for them.

800
00:47:33,360 --> 00:47:36,799
Speaker 4: And the software is getting a vigoroush as well. I

801
00:47:36,920 --> 00:47:40,279
Speaker 4: like to I think of it as what I call

802
00:47:40,320 --> 00:47:44,760
Speaker 4: the butter chicken example. So you go to different cities

803
00:47:44,880 --> 00:47:48,440
Speaker 4: or different countries, right, and you pick, like, pick a dish.

804
00:47:48,520 --> 00:47:50,680
Speaker 4: It could be anything. Pick a dish or some kind

805
00:47:50,680 --> 00:47:55,319
Speaker 4: of meal that multiple outlets will sell in whatever part

806
00:47:55,360 --> 00:47:57,799
Speaker 4: of this wide world you find yourself in. It give

807
00:47:57,840 --> 00:48:00,000
Speaker 4: you pizza. It could obviously, if you have great tape

808
00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:03,880
Speaker 4: to be a casadia, it could be buttered chicken. I

809
00:48:03,960 --> 00:48:08,839
Speaker 4: was convinced at one time I swear I witnessed a

810
00:48:09,080 --> 00:48:13,680
Speaker 4: price jump in specifically buttered chicken in this one city,

811
00:48:14,120 --> 00:48:18,399
Speaker 4: and it wasn't a big price jump, it wasn't egregious, right,

812
00:48:18,760 --> 00:48:24,440
Speaker 4: but it was a uniform increase. And you know, obviously

813
00:48:25,120 --> 00:48:27,640
Speaker 4: to the earlier points about small businesses, you don't want

814
00:48:27,640 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 4: to go and ruin someone's day. You're just going to

815
00:48:30,320 --> 00:48:32,800
Speaker 4: see if there's another place that had the earlier price

816
00:48:32,840 --> 00:48:38,360
Speaker 4: you expected. And now that's an easy that's an easy anecdote,

817
00:48:38,600 --> 00:48:41,440
Speaker 4: right when it's one meal. But what happens when it

818
00:48:41,440 --> 00:48:46,600
Speaker 4: becomes the place you live? And are there any I mean,

819
00:48:46,680 --> 00:48:48,799
Speaker 4: are there any solutions that you have heard? I mean,

820
00:48:48,880 --> 00:48:53,040
Speaker 4: the FBI, again with courtesy, sort of knocked on the

821
00:48:53,120 --> 00:48:57,680
Speaker 4: door and then took all the files. Right. But is

822
00:48:57,719 --> 00:49:02,920
Speaker 4: this maybe maybe another example of techno outpacing legislation like

823
00:49:03,080 --> 00:49:07,000
Speaker 4: easy illegal to make software that does this? No? Or

824
00:49:07,040 --> 00:49:09,360
Speaker 4: is it's just the use of it that is illegal.

825
00:49:09,760 --> 00:49:15,840
Speaker 2: I think it's the result of that software being used

826
00:49:16,239 --> 00:49:19,719
Speaker 2: by so many different people, by so many different landlords, right,

827
00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:23,840
Speaker 2: and major companies, and a result in combination with so

828
00:49:23,920 --> 00:49:26,360
Speaker 2: many companies owning so much property, right.

829
00:49:26,600 --> 00:49:30,160
Speaker 4: So it accreates power because of the massive users yeah.

830
00:49:30,280 --> 00:49:32,400
Speaker 2: I mean, well, look, that's I'm not a part of

831
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:34,719
Speaker 2: this investigation. I don't know exactly what they're looking at

832
00:49:34,960 --> 00:49:37,360
Speaker 2: within Cortland's files, but I do know they're a drop

833
00:49:37,360 --> 00:49:39,799
Speaker 2: in the bucket. Even though they're a major player. There

834
00:49:39,840 --> 00:49:42,080
Speaker 2: are so many other places that they need to get

835
00:49:42,120 --> 00:49:46,200
Speaker 2: metrics from, basically on how rent prices have increased on

836
00:49:46,239 --> 00:49:50,400
Speaker 2: a per unit basis over a you know, a decade almost.

837
00:49:50,200 --> 00:49:53,279
Speaker 4: And you know, I've never seen Paul Decant in the

838
00:49:53,320 --> 00:49:56,120
Speaker 4: same room as an FBI agent.

839
00:49:57,480 --> 00:49:59,600
Speaker 2: That you know, like any FBI.

840
00:50:01,040 --> 00:50:05,480
Speaker 4: Yes, I personally know all of the fbiz.

841
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:11,680
Speaker 2: Hey man, that's something to keep in mind. There was

842
00:50:11,719 --> 00:50:13,440
Speaker 2: one other thing I want to mention here. Again, it's

843
00:50:13,480 --> 00:50:18,319
Speaker 2: not just Atlanta, y'all. Seventy percent of apartment units in Arizona,

844
00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:23,400
Speaker 2: we're using this real page algorithm, sixty percent of apartment

845
00:50:23,400 --> 00:50:28,480
Speaker 2: buildings in the District of Columbia and Washington, DC. It's

846
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:30,000
Speaker 2: all over the place.

847
00:50:30,480 --> 00:50:34,759
Speaker 4: Seventy percent of a city, right, yeah, well yeah, or

848
00:50:34,800 --> 00:50:36,640
Speaker 4: seventy did you say Arizona, the.

849
00:50:36,640 --> 00:50:40,720
Speaker 2: State the state of Arizona, seventy percent of apartment units.

850
00:50:41,000 --> 00:50:41,600
Speaker 6: Is this a.

851
00:50:41,480 --> 00:50:44,040
Speaker 5: Fraud situation or are they just going after them for

852
00:50:44,120 --> 00:50:47,080
Speaker 5: like antitrust kind of stuff or is it a mixture.

853
00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:51,600
Speaker 2: It's an it's a criminal antitrust investigation that the DOJ

854
00:50:52,000 --> 00:50:53,319
Speaker 2: is leveraging against.

855
00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:56,280
Speaker 6: Real cause of collusion between these two entities.

856
00:50:56,520 --> 00:50:59,680
Speaker 5: Essentially, that's happening not above board, like this is there

857
00:50:59,680 --> 00:51:04,239
Speaker 5: there creating an effective monopoly and price fixing, right, which

858
00:51:04,320 --> 00:51:05,240
Speaker 5: is totally illegal.

859
00:51:05,440 --> 00:51:09,920
Speaker 2: It's it's yes, it's basically price fixing on apartment units.

860
00:51:10,080 --> 00:51:14,160
Speaker 4: The allegation is that it's able to push the prices

861
00:51:14,320 --> 00:51:17,919
Speaker 4: higher at a faster rate than an individual. I don't

862
00:51:17,920 --> 00:51:21,720
Speaker 4: even like the phrase landlord an individual property owner would

863
00:51:21,760 --> 00:51:23,000
Speaker 4: have done on their own.

864
00:51:23,280 --> 00:51:25,640
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is weird to have that word lord in there,

865
00:51:25,680 --> 00:51:29,440
Speaker 5: Isn't it it applied refusing over someone? No, No, you're right,

866
00:51:29,480 --> 00:51:33,399
Speaker 5: it's inherently kind of othering. Yeah, it's gross. I don't

867
00:51:33,440 --> 00:51:33,879
Speaker 5: like it either.

868
00:51:34,080 --> 00:51:39,960
Speaker 2: The land papa, let's make it Yeah, yeah, get out

869
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:40,480
Speaker 2: of my head.

870
00:51:40,800 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 4: Well, Matt, how do we How do we summarize this?

871
00:51:43,280 --> 00:51:44,759
Speaker 4: What do people need to walk away with?

872
00:51:44,960 --> 00:51:46,880
Speaker 2: This is how I'll summarize it the same way that

873
00:51:47,040 --> 00:51:50,240
Speaker 2: Sharon Shibu did in that Entrepreneur article that we mentioned

874
00:51:50,239 --> 00:51:54,200
Speaker 2: at the top. In the past ten years, rent inflation

875
00:51:54,760 --> 00:52:00,720
Speaker 2: has outpaced overall inflation by forty point seven percent type

876
00:52:01,080 --> 00:52:07,160
Speaker 2: forty Have we all made forty point seven percent more money?

877
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:08,200
Speaker 6: Oh?

878
00:52:08,200 --> 00:52:12,359
Speaker 2: Wait no, not even kind of absolutely no, what are

879
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:13,280
Speaker 2: we doing here, guys?

880
00:52:13,640 --> 00:52:17,240
Speaker 5: Yes, I mean there are causes out there in terms

881
00:52:17,280 --> 00:52:22,200
Speaker 5: of unionization and people fighting for rights of employees where

882
00:52:22,200 --> 00:52:25,279
Speaker 5: they're struggling to get one or two percent of a

883
00:52:25,400 --> 00:52:29,000
Speaker 5: raise year over a year, which I think is well

884
00:52:29,040 --> 00:52:32,760
Speaker 5: below inflation alone, in cost of living increases alone.

885
00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:36,640
Speaker 4: We do know that this has been a long time

886
00:52:36,680 --> 00:52:40,520
Speaker 4: in coming, right, Like pro Public was investigating Real Page

887
00:52:41,000 --> 00:52:43,600
Speaker 4: a few years ago. So I mean, good on the

888
00:52:43,719 --> 00:52:49,319
Speaker 4: DOJ for going in and you know, doing something or

889
00:52:49,400 --> 00:52:54,640
Speaker 4: attempting to these these decisions often take a long time

890
00:52:55,200 --> 00:53:01,359
Speaker 4: to result in real world changes for a the public, right,

891
00:53:01,480 --> 00:53:04,760
Speaker 4: So it's going to be easy to get this story

892
00:53:04,960 --> 00:53:09,839
Speaker 4: lost as the courtroom proceedings occur. Please do help us

893
00:53:09,920 --> 00:53:13,279
Speaker 4: keep an eye on a fellow conspiracy realists. We don't

894
00:53:13,280 --> 00:53:16,920
Speaker 4: want to lose these sorts of things because the reality

895
00:53:17,000 --> 00:53:22,440
Speaker 4: is true, whatever your demographic or ideology is, things are

896
00:53:22,600 --> 00:53:26,920
Speaker 4: accelerating in price and there are a lot of bad

897
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:32,400
Speaker 4: faith actors who are taking the opportunity to pretend like

898
00:53:32,480 --> 00:53:35,319
Speaker 4: the supply chains are still broken. You know what I mean?

899
00:53:35,640 --> 00:53:37,200
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, exactly.

900
00:53:37,440 --> 00:53:40,160
Speaker 5: I just can't stand it when like the super wealthy

901
00:53:40,280 --> 00:53:41,160
Speaker 5: plead poverty.

902
00:53:41,600 --> 00:53:43,479
Speaker 6: You know, like in these types of just.

903
00:53:45,719 --> 00:53:50,560
Speaker 4: Right right, the Atlas network should shrug. And with that, folks,

904
00:53:50,640 --> 00:53:54,239
Speaker 4: we would love to hear your individual war stories, your

905
00:53:54,280 --> 00:53:59,879
Speaker 4: success stories, your perspectives. What's the funniest joke Google accidentally

906
00:54:00,120 --> 00:54:03,719
Speaker 4: told you? We hope it wasn't in an emergency situation?

907
00:54:04,600 --> 00:54:05,640
Speaker 6: What is the uh?

908
00:54:06,120 --> 00:54:08,600
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, what a rent price is like in your

909
00:54:08,600 --> 00:54:10,839
Speaker 4: neck of the woods? How much is the last how

910
00:54:10,920 --> 00:54:13,439
Speaker 4: much have you paid to go out to eat?

911
00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:13,920
Speaker 2: And?

912
00:54:14,280 --> 00:54:18,040
Speaker 4: Uh, you know, I guess we should end in some

913
00:54:18,080 --> 00:54:22,120
Speaker 4: good news. The diamond industry is finally collapsing. There's that.

914
00:54:22,400 --> 00:54:23,480
Speaker 4: Do you guys hear about that one?

915
00:54:23,560 --> 00:54:23,680
Speaker 5: No?

916
00:54:23,760 --> 00:54:26,520
Speaker 4: I did not story for another day. Oh we wise

917
00:54:26,760 --> 00:54:30,560
Speaker 4: we're right about lab grown diamonds those years back when

918
00:54:30,600 --> 00:54:36,160
Speaker 4: that first came out. I think the diamond industry, specifically

919
00:54:36,200 --> 00:54:39,080
Speaker 4: the blood diamond industry, may not be long for the world.

920
00:54:39,040 --> 00:54:42,280
Speaker 6: Because the lab grown ones are just as just as shiny.

921
00:54:42,280 --> 00:54:45,480
Speaker 4: They're the same. There's still diamonds. The diamond is like

922
00:54:45,719 --> 00:54:46,759
Speaker 4: it's a thing you can make.

923
00:54:47,040 --> 00:54:49,680
Speaker 5: Don't you think some people really want the blood, the

924
00:54:49,680 --> 00:54:52,720
Speaker 5: ones that are soaked in blood.

925
00:54:52,840 --> 00:54:55,400
Speaker 6: There really something sexy about that. I don't know. To

926
00:54:55,640 --> 00:54:56,840
Speaker 6: the monsters out there.

927
00:54:57,080 --> 00:55:01,200
Speaker 4: Oh, the suffering makes it shine, shout out to We

928
00:55:01,320 --> 00:55:03,759
Speaker 4: can't wait to hear your thoughts, folks. We try to

929
00:55:03,800 --> 00:55:05,800
Speaker 4: be easy to find online, correct.

930
00:55:05,840 --> 00:55:07,759
Speaker 5: You can find us at the handlic Conspiracy Stuff where

931
00:55:07,760 --> 00:55:10,240
Speaker 5: we exist on Facebook where you can join our Facebook

932
00:55:10,239 --> 00:55:13,080
Speaker 5: group Here's where it gets crazy, or also conspiracy stuff

933
00:55:13,160 --> 00:55:16,080
Speaker 5: on acxfka, Twitter, as well as YouTube.

934
00:55:16,239 --> 00:55:18,520
Speaker 6: We just shot a whole pile of videos the other day.

935
00:55:18,560 --> 00:55:20,279
Speaker 5: I think there were maybe some of my favorite that

936
00:55:20,320 --> 00:55:23,080
Speaker 5: we've ever done, and it was really joy to be

937
00:55:23,160 --> 00:55:24,960
Speaker 5: back in the saddle with you guys after being a

938
00:55:24,960 --> 00:55:28,440
Speaker 5: way for a bit. And that also applies to the podcast.

939
00:55:29,080 --> 00:55:30,799
Speaker 5: You can also find us in other ways, can't you.

940
00:55:30,840 --> 00:55:33,720
Speaker 5: Oh first and foremost Conspiracy Stuff show where we exist

941
00:55:33,840 --> 00:55:35,000
Speaker 5: on Instagram and TikTok.

942
00:55:35,239 --> 00:55:37,759
Speaker 2: Hey do you want to call us? Call one eight

943
00:55:37,960 --> 00:55:43,600
Speaker 2: three three std wytk. Put that number in your contact list,

944
00:55:43,920 --> 00:55:48,680
Speaker 2: name it stdwytk, and then call us. You've got three minutes.

945
00:55:48,719 --> 00:55:50,840
Speaker 2: Say whatever you like. Just give yourself a cool nickname

946
00:55:50,840 --> 00:55:52,439
Speaker 2: and let us know if we can use your name,

947
00:55:52,520 --> 00:55:55,000
Speaker 2: end message on the air. If you got more to

948
00:55:55,040 --> 00:55:58,680
Speaker 2: send us. I don't know pictures, attachments. I guess the

949
00:55:58,680 --> 00:56:03,200
Speaker 2: picture is an attachment link. Maybe full stories books. Send

950
00:56:03,280 --> 00:56:04,840
Speaker 2: us a good old fashioned email.

951
00:56:04,960 --> 00:56:08,400
Speaker 4: We are the entities that read every email we receive.

952
00:56:09,200 --> 00:56:09,880
Speaker 6: Be well aware.

953
00:56:10,400 --> 00:56:34,000
Speaker 4: Sometimes the void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

954
00:56:34,160 --> 00:56:36,240
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production

955
00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:40,880
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

956
00:56:40,960 --> 00:56:44,160
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.