Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my.
Speaker 3: Name is Noel.
Speaker 4: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 4: super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly,
Speaker 4: you are you. You are here. That makes this the
Speaker 4: stuff they don't want you to know. It is the
Speaker 4: top of the week mid June, if you can believe
Speaker 4: it or not. Fellow conspiracy realists, This means we return
Speaker 4: with strange news for you and a couple of quick
Speaker 4: updates before we get into our stories today. Welcome back Noel,
Speaker 4: Barcelona Brown.
Speaker 5: Oh Man a new nickname. I feel like I earned it.
Speaker 5: A bunch of.
Speaker 6: PAIAI yeah, and other other delicacies. It was really cool.
Speaker 6: It's a beautiful city. Got to see I mean, don't
Speaker 6: you guys.
Speaker 5: I'm sure aware of the Segrata Familia, which is this
Speaker 5: insane goudy design church that's been under construction for one
Speaker 5: hundred years and it's the most stuff they don't want
Speaker 5: you to know church I.
Speaker 6: Could ever possibly imagine.
Speaker 5: It feels like a temple constructed by some ancient race
Speaker 5: of aliens. It is otherworldly, to say the least. That
Speaker 5: was pretty one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
Speaker 4: Oh, safe travels, and welcome back. Right, We're looking forward
Speaker 4: to hearing of these adventures. Everybody missed you. We also
Speaker 4: have some updates. It turns out witness tampering is having
Speaker 4: a moment.
Speaker 6: Everybody.
Speaker 4: Please remember, if jury duty ever seems like a pain
Speaker 4: in the keyaster, somebody might show up with a bag
Speaker 4: of one hundred and twenty grand and just you know,
Speaker 4: ask a vote according to your conscience.
Speaker 2: And they'll say, hey, there's more if you do it right.
Speaker 4: Also, a couple of a couple of certain presidents, this
Speaker 4: is like talking about laws about Russia. A couple of
Speaker 4: certain presidents, whomever they may be, have gotten in some
Speaker 4: witness things. We wanted to start today with a timely update,
Speaker 4: or start this evening. I should say we are a
Speaker 4: nighttime show. Earlier we reported on the somewhat inspiring story
Speaker 4: of a serial slingshot band. It A lot of you
Speaker 4: reached out over the interim, over the weekend, and so on,
Speaker 4: and said, gave us this update, which we thought was important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of those situations where we record
Speaker 2: a story then the day we record it. Later in
Speaker 2: the day more news breaks. So on Tuesday May twenty eighth,
Speaker 2: the person we were discussing, a man named Prince King,
Speaker 2: was arrested, and he does the eighty one year old
Speaker 2: man who was accused of terrorizing Azusa, which is that
Speaker 2: neighborhood in California. He pled guilty to several counts of vandalism.
Speaker 2: He was released and he was ordered to stay two
Speaker 2: hundred yards away from anyone or anything that he had
Speaker 2: shotted with his sling. And then the next day, on Wednesday,
Speaker 2: May twenty ninth, he died in a private residence.
Speaker 5: It's like it's like he had nothing left to live
Speaker 5: for once they'd taken away his swing shot or the.
Speaker 4: Fact being taken in disrupted his medication regimen.
Speaker 6: Oh well, that's also possible.
Speaker 2: He had a number of ailments, according to ABC News
Speaker 2: and The Guardian, who both reported on this in several
Speaker 2: other places, he had a heart condition, a nerve issue
Speaker 2: in his leg and back, and he was allowed to
Speaker 2: go home. One of the reasons he was like going
Speaker 2: home was to get those medications you're referring to Ben.
Speaker 4: So we wanted to give wanted to give that update
Speaker 4: at the top. Are we are aware of it, and
Speaker 4: we wish his friends and family, you know, the best.
Speaker 4: We're holding you in our thoughts.
Speaker 5: Kind of say, though, guys, heart condition plus seeming thrill seeker,
Speaker 5: mischief maker and odd combination. The very very interesting fellow
Speaker 5: the Ricky and Elliott over Internet Today conjectured that the
Speaker 5: timing might be just about right for him to have
Speaker 5: been fully inspired by the original Dennis the Menace.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 4: Say, and we'll be right back with some more strange news.
Speaker 4: And we've returned. This is the actual start of the show.
Speaker 4: So if you live in the fair metropolis of insert
Speaker 4: US city name here, then your infrastructure has problems. There
Speaker 4: are very few exceptions to this rule. This hit Atlanta
Speaker 4: in particular on Friday in the early morning of just
Speaker 4: a few days ago. As we record, on the evening
Speaker 4: of Wednesday, June fifth, Atlanta's overburdened, underserved under maintenance water
Speaker 4: system broke and it left thousands of people with no water,
Speaker 4: low water pressure, and unsafe drinking water. And as this occurred,
Speaker 4: a domino effect of feedback loop went into play because
Speaker 4: when one pipe, then other pipes also pop as a
Speaker 4: result of the system being messed with.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I hate to be that guy that has got
Speaker 5: back from Europe that says he's so much better over there,
Speaker 5: But I tell you they've got some things figured out
Speaker 5: for a place that's been around a lot longer than
Speaker 5: we have. You don't really hear about these kinds of
Speaker 5: massive infrastructure breakdowns, and you don't see roads filled with potholes,
Speaker 5: and it seems like the tax of the people pay
Speaker 5: over there actually go towards things. Because Ben, we were
Speaker 5: talking about this off air, and a big part of
Speaker 5: this type of breakdown not only in Atlanta but elsewhere.
Speaker 5: It's just the absolute, you know, horrific shape of some
Speaker 5: of this infrastructure, some of which has been around since
Speaker 5: like what the Civil.
Speaker 6: War or something centuries. Some of this stuff.
Speaker 4: You can see footage easily of the pipes that were
Speaker 4: pulled up from the subterranean parts of the city of Atlanta.
Speaker 4: Some of this is incredibly old. And I've been that
Speaker 4: person to you know, no shame in it, coming back
Speaker 4: from a different country and saying, wow, maybe the US
Speaker 4: has some stuff to figure out. A lot of Atlanta
Speaker 4: exists on top of natural springs and wells and rivers.
Speaker 4: You know, one of the old offices of our Alma mater,
Speaker 4: How Stuff Works, actually has a water tower that is
Speaker 4: taking water from a spring that has been buried over
Speaker 4: as the city evolved and the infrastructure just kept getting
Speaker 4: ban dated. It's almost a ship of thesis question, right,
Speaker 4: like how many small additions or little minor fixes, heuristic
Speaker 4: fixes can one make to a system before the system
Speaker 4: itself is inherently different. And what we found here we're
Speaker 4: not just talking about ourselves with Atlanta on this point.
Speaker 4: We are going to a larger context. What we found
Speaker 4: is that a bill came do this was a preventable,
Speaker 4: disastrous thing. Now, people weren't dying in the way that
Speaker 4: they would with a natural disaster like a hurricane or
Speaker 4: a tornado or an earthquake, but people were falling ill.
Speaker 4: People were un able to have safe drinking water. There
Speaker 4: were you know, because this is a beautiful and supportive city,
Speaker 4: a lot of people were out on social media saying, hey,
Speaker 4: I've got water. If you need something, come through.
Speaker 6: Matt.
Speaker 4: You said something very similar earlier when we were recording
Speaker 4: this week.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I just invited you guys out to me
Speaker 2: OTP outside of the perimeter of the city because our
Speaker 2: water is fine right now.
Speaker 6: Haha.
Speaker 2: Jo, I'm sorry, but it speaks to I guess the
Speaker 2: question I want to ask you guys, because I kind
Speaker 2: of was separated from this. I didn't experience it in
Speaker 2: the same way. I wonder what the communication was like
Speaker 2: between city officials and then residents who were actually like
Speaker 2: Ben living in Atlanta and Noel, Like, were you getting
Speaker 2: alerts when you were away?
Speaker 6: I'm gonna say not good.
Speaker 5: My area wasn't affected either over here in Decatur, but
Speaker 5: my partner, who has a business well that is in
Speaker 5: an affected area, apparently got a corded voice message from
Speaker 5: Mayor Andre Dickens himself apologizing. Apparently it's one of the
Speaker 5: situations too where he was like away, right, Ben, you
Speaker 5: mentioned he was off I don't know, either campaigning or
Speaker 5: doing some visit abroad, and he probably should have come
Speaker 5: back but didn't, so we got a nice recorded voice
Speaker 5: message instead.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the current mayor of Atlanta, Andre Dickens, left for
Speaker 4: Tennessee as this was going down. There was some damage control.
Speaker 4: He his I shouldn't say him specifically, but the mayor's
Speaker 4: office received some pretty serious backlash for poor communication and
Speaker 4: slow reports. And now even as we record this evening,
Speaker 4: the guy is going through and making the pr rounds,
Speaker 4: you know, appearing on local news and when appearing attempting
Speaker 4: to appear very concerned. Is the mayor concerned?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 4: Do politicians fill things at least once a year, ben
Speaker 4: at least once in an election cycle?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: There you God, this has happened before here in Atlanta,
Speaker 5: almost identical. I think this is just like affected more
Speaker 5: people and for a longer period of time. But I
Speaker 5: can recall boil water advisories within the last five years,
Speaker 5: if not less. And one thing that I think people
Speaker 5: might easily look over is how this affects small businesses,
Speaker 5: especially ones that rely on water, like restaurants. And we
Speaker 5: know how slim the margins are for a successful restaurant.
Speaker 5: And I saw some reporting that local restaurants lost revenues
Speaker 5: in the tens of thousands, if thirty forty fifty thousands
Speaker 5: of dollars because of this debacle.
Speaker 2: Man, that's a lot of money, I guess. To my point, guys,
Speaker 2: I didn't know this was even happening until we were
Speaker 2: shooting videos together all in one place yesterday as we're
Speaker 2: recording this, and this is several days well, a long
Speaker 2: time after this occurred. I didn't even know what had happened.
Speaker 2: How did you guys get alerted to it? Is it
Speaker 2: something that pops up on your phone the way an
Speaker 2: amber alert does if you're a resident of the city,
Speaker 2: or is it like an email?
Speaker 6: I got nothing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, That's why I was talking about the message from
Speaker 5: Dickinson to me. That was one of the first kind
Speaker 5: of notices. Was this like whoopsie apology auto, you know
Speaker 5: kind of sense voicemail.
Speaker 6: How about you ben.
Speaker 4: Living in the area and affected, like most households, received
Speaker 4: the news by witnessing the event's firsthand. The water pressure drops.
Speaker 6: Right, gocha is the mayor?
Speaker 4: Where do these taxes go? And pardon me, guys, I
Speaker 4: didn't mean to derail us talking about the natural spring
Speaker 4: history of the state of Georgia. I just find it
Speaker 4: the history endlessly fascinating.
Speaker 5: Is it one of those the supposed fountain of youth
Speaker 5: that ponsta Leon was seeking.
Speaker 6: That's why the streets named after him. Where the water
Speaker 6: tower that you were talking about is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what the grifters were selling to people, that
Speaker 4: juvenation opportunities. So in the case again of this water
Speaker 4: mean break, I don't want to stay on Atlanta too long,
Speaker 4: but I do want to shout out at I am
Speaker 4: King Williams, a local reporter who provides some tremendous context
Speaker 4: for this on x the social media platform, and notes
Speaker 4: that there is a reason the infrastructure hit was so specific.
Speaker 4: It is because the city of Atlanta, and most municipalities
Speaker 4: in the United States tend to serve some parts of
Speaker 4: a metropolis more than they serve other parts of a metropolis.
Speaker 4: Like pull up a map of your town and figure out,
Speaker 4: look where the food deserts are right, and look where
Speaker 4: historically the most challenged or pressed demographics of that city
Speaker 4: are located. We have another thing called heat islands. Heat
Speaker 4: islands without green space in Atlanta is blessed with a
Speaker 4: tremendous amount of green space. Heat islands will tend to
Speaker 4: have more flooding. They'll have more floodplains because the infrastructure
Speaker 4: simply was not built for these people. Now, this reporter
Speaker 4: King Williams argues that when white flight happened in Atlanta,
Speaker 4: that tax space or the money or the political will
Speaker 4: left as well. And this preface decades of underserving sections
Speaker 4: of Atlanta based on the makeup of the demographics involved,
Speaker 4: and because those folks did not get the support that
Speaker 4: I want to be clear, they were paying for as
Speaker 4: tax paying residents of the same city. Eventually things were wrong,
Speaker 4: and I owe amea culpa to former Mayor Shirley Franklin,
Speaker 4: who spent a lot of time addressing the very unsexy
Speaker 4: issue of infrastructure, water, sewage, sanitation, lack of clean drinking
Speaker 4: water kills so many people around the world every single year.
Speaker 4: And we talked about this previously, with stuff like attacks
Speaker 4: on water waste treatment, with stuff like attacks on power stations,
Speaker 4: and the fact that bridges will just grumble on their
Speaker 4: own because it's not a sexy issue to run for
Speaker 4: election on.
Speaker 6: Shouldn't it be? Though?
Speaker 5: I just feel like, you know, this idea of sexy issues,
Speaker 5: it eludes me a little bit. To me, I'm always
Speaker 5: complaining on the show and elsewhere about where did my.
Speaker 6: Tax dollars go?
Speaker 5: I just want to see somebody running that can show
Speaker 5: me that my tax dollars are going to be used
Speaker 5: for something of value, you know, and to me, potholes
Speaker 5: and bridge construction and pipe prepare that's sexy.
Speaker 6: Enough for me.
Speaker 5: I want to know that where I live, I'm going
Speaker 5: to be able to have a safe street to drive
Speaker 5: on and then have safe water or clean water to.
Speaker 4: It also follows on the heels of known corruption in
Speaker 4: Atlanta and indeed in many other large metropolitan areas. It
Speaker 4: wasn't too long ago that the Department of Justice sent
Speaker 4: out a press release on a City of Atlanta official
Speaker 4: sentenced for accepting bribes. This comes from February twenty fourth
Speaker 4: of last year. Joe Ed Macrina was sentenced to four
Speaker 4: years and six months in prison for accepting bribes from
Speaker 4: an Atlanta contractor, you know, like mafia style, like pay
Speaker 4: us an excessively high bid right or reward the contract
Speaker 4: to us. Would you guys like to guess what joe
Speaker 4: Ann Macrina's position was?
Speaker 2: Comptroller?
Speaker 6: I wish Matt, but thank you man.
Speaker 4: I love a callback, Parliamentarian, I love it, I love it. Unfortunately,
Speaker 4: the commissioner of watershed Management. So just last year this happened. Wow,
Speaker 4: and I have to ask about the larger context, you know,
Speaker 4: like a like doc you are code named Doc Holiday.
Speaker 4: Excuse me give you the full one. You are familiar
Speaker 4: doubtlessly as the as the Michigander amongst us. You're familiar
Speaker 4: with the problems with Flint, Michigan, and we. I think
Speaker 4: it's safe to say that the trouble with drinking water
Speaker 4: supply here in the United States is only going to continue.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's a question for the group. Is it
Speaker 4: just going to escalate? I'm sorry, I folded up a
Speaker 4: picture a piece of paper to make myself look like
Speaker 4: a priest. I'm just feeling it today.
Speaker 5: I do you know, I love Ben's priest persona. That's
Speaker 5: one of my favorite of your ulcer. He goes, I
Speaker 5: don't know, guys. To me, the biggest takeaway from a
Speaker 5: story like this is it is a first hand opportunity
Speaker 5: to see how crucial things like water really are for
Speaker 5: our day to day lives and imagine what widespread failures
Speaker 5: of a system like this, or lack of water resources,
Speaker 5: the inevitable water war, that might be the thing that
Speaker 5: mad maxifies the world. You know, it's it's a taste
Speaker 5: of that, and it's really scary not to be a
Speaker 5: doom and gloomer about it. But that's where my mind goes.
Speaker 2: Well, Yeah, it's just a reminder that once humanity puts
Speaker 2: a system in place and it's working, we don't have
Speaker 2: to think about it for a while. You know. It's
Speaker 2: like you're you've got a phone and it's got a
Speaker 2: warranty on it for a year or two, maybe maybe
Speaker 2: three if you're real lucky, and you don't have to
Speaker 2: think about a new phone for a while. You don't
Speaker 2: have to think about a new washer and dryer if
Speaker 2: you ever find one that's working and you can afford.
Speaker 5: Unless you bought a cyber truck, because apparently driving over
Speaker 5: potholes avoids the warranty on that thing exactly.
Speaker 2: But I guess the point is something we talked about
Speaker 2: before or once. There are so many things for each
Speaker 2: individual to deal with and for each system that we
Speaker 2: create to deal with that. I think the pipes underneath
Speaker 2: our feet, if they're working, you just don't think about them.
Speaker 2: And it sometimes takes something like this to get that
Speaker 2: political will that you're talking about. We wish we had
Speaker 2: more of, Right, you need, you got to have a
Speaker 2: bridge collapse so that a president like Joe Biden shows
Speaker 2: up in a place and says, hey, we need to
Speaker 2: fix our bridges. Otherwise everybody just drives over them and says, hey,
Speaker 2: well this works great.
Speaker 4: That's one of the big issues. I mean, if we're
Speaker 4: being honest, any student of human psychology knows that people
Speaker 4: love to reduce work, meaning that one would like to
Speaker 4: cognitively reduce the work of thinking about inconvenient things, right,
Speaker 4: things that do not have a big dopamine reward of
Speaker 4: some sort, things that don't get you instant gratification. Unfortunately,
Speaker 4: fixing infrastructure is one of those things. There's a huge
Speaker 4: reason that homegrown domestic terrorist target infrastructure, or just folks
Speaker 4: going lunatic and attacking places that nobody thought we would
Speaker 4: have to protect as a society. And even more disturbingly,
Speaker 4: right before we go to the app break, let's leave
Speaker 4: you with this, folks. You don't need villains, clear and present.
Speaker 4: Sometimes when you just don't take care of stuff, bad
Speaker 4: things happen. As we record right now, part of Atlanta
Speaker 4: is still under a water boil advisory. And the question
Speaker 4: here is bigger than Atlanta. The question is for your
Speaker 4: neck of the global woods, what's going to happen next?
Speaker 4: Other disasters are statistically inevitable, but we're gonna keep doing
Speaker 4: our You know do our little show. So we're gonna
Speaker 4: pause for word from our sponsors.
Speaker 5: And we have returned with another piece of strange news.
Speaker 5: This one's been a few weeks in the works. You
Speaker 5: may have noticed that when you search for something on
Speaker 5: the old Google, a new feature may well have presented
Speaker 5: itself to you or not, And we'll get into why not,
Speaker 5: which is sort of an AI concierge attempting to answer
Speaker 5: your question without you having to click anything at all.
Speaker 5: It's sort of trying to save you from having to
Speaker 5: even click through any of the links, which admittedly have
Speaker 5: become less and less relevant. You guys, notice how much
Speaker 5: how bad Google has gotten, just like in terms of
Speaker 5: like the way it categorizes search, it seems like it's
Speaker 5: really taking.
Speaker 6: A bit of a nose dive.
Speaker 5: I don't know if y'all's experience has been that way,
Speaker 5: or if you're even Google users anymore. I know you
Speaker 5: guys have talked about things like Duck Duck go in
Speaker 5: the past.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in my not to speak for you, Matt, but
Speaker 4: in my experience, it was unsurprising yet still profoundly disappointing.
Speaker 4: Like I think, unfortunately, with the length of the show,
Speaker 4: we've been able to be prescient in that kind of
Speaker 4: AI concierge thing. Look, AI implementation sounds fantastic in a boardroom,
Speaker 4: but just the same way that the biases of the
Speaker 4: creators determine the actions of machine learning war machine building,
Speaker 4: an AI steer drone is going to make the same
Speaker 4: fundamental creator errors as a profit driven search algorithm building
Speaker 4: the same thing in so it's no surprise that it stinks.
Speaker 4: It also gave me some dark dystopia laughter, because they
Speaker 4: were mimicking you know. Now comics and internet internet wits
Speaker 4: are are mentioning some of the they're doing the thing
Speaker 4: like when you pretend to write an AI script for giggles,
Speaker 4: pretending to make Google image or Google search results.
Speaker 6: And that's definitely what the story is about.
Speaker 5: But I was actually wondering as well, if either of
Speaker 5: you had noticed a decline in the.
Speaker 6: Quality of Google search results in.
Speaker 2: General, I would just say that I have not. I
Speaker 2: continue to use yield Google and give alphabet all of
Speaker 2: my information because they're going to take it anyway. No,
Speaker 2: I'm just joking. I just I still use it because
Speaker 2: it does seem to work pretty well for me.
Speaker 5: Really, that's interesting, That's not a perspective that I'm hearing
Speaker 5: from everybody, and I found that a lot of prioritize
Speaker 5: searches are paid for and you see those at the top,
Speaker 5: and so you definitely you can find what you're looking
Speaker 5: for if you're a savvy Internet user. But in general,
Speaker 5: it feels like you're having to dig a little deeper
Speaker 5: before you're actually getting relevant results.
Speaker 2: I would agree with that. I think maybe I've got
Speaker 2: used to a system and I figured out how that
Speaker 2: system changed, and I just kind of go with it
Speaker 2: because it's easier than learning the new system.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, no, no, I understand, we are, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: So rather than perhaps address that algorithm that you're talking about,
Speaker 5: but we know that Google. Changes to Google's algorithm over
Speaker 5: the years have had significant impacts on businesses, on online business.
Speaker 5: We as a company before we were, you know, under
Speaker 5: our current corporate structure, we were run by Discovery and
Speaker 5: we were much more of a website kind of situation
Speaker 5: with our house Stuff Works flagship website. And when there
Speaker 5: were changes to Google's search algorithm that determined what kind
Speaker 5: of I guess. The term is quality score I guess
Speaker 5: is assigned to what types of websites certain things could
Speaker 5: cause your search engine optimization or SEO as the part
Speaker 5: in the parlance of tech speak, to take a nose dive.
Speaker 5: So we would look out for these things. They would
Speaker 5: be updates, they'd call it. There was like and or whatever.
Speaker 5: There are different names for them.
Speaker 6: It does seem now the Google doesn't seem to care.
Speaker 5: So much anymore about the quality of search results, and
Speaker 5: that is evident in some of these AI search results.
Speaker 5: They're so ridiculous, so over the top and so blatantly
Speaker 5: incorrect that Google has had to pull back this program significantly.
Speaker 5: It's another one of those things we've talked about with AI,
Speaker 5: whereas everyone's like they gotta be the first to say
Speaker 5: we did the AI thing. We got to add the
Speaker 5: AI widget, we can't be left behind. We got to
Speaker 5: be part of the AI revolution. But frankly, the technology
Speaker 5: isn't there yet and probably should not be rolled at
Speaker 5: being rolled out as willy nilly as it has been.
Speaker 5: But hey, at least in this situation we get some
Speaker 5: yucks out of it. One of my favorites here is
Speaker 5: let's see AI overview for the prompt is it okay
Speaker 5: to leave a dog in a hot car? Aioverview says this, Yes,
Speaker 5: it's always safe to leave a dog in a hot car,
Speaker 5: especially on a warm day. The temperature inside a car
Speaker 5: remains around the same temperature as outside the car. The
Speaker 5: Beatles famously released a hit single about the subject title
Speaker 5: It's Okay to Leave a Dog.
Speaker 6: In a Hot Car, and then it has pro lyric.
Speaker 5: Excerpt from this non existent song, It's okay to leave
Speaker 5: your dog in.
Speaker 6: A hot car, Hot car. It's okay to leave your
Speaker 6: dog in a hot car.
Speaker 5: Nothing that could possibly happen if you leave your dog
Speaker 5: in a hot car.
Speaker 6: I just sort of improve the way that vocal worked,
Speaker 6: because that's not a real song.
Speaker 5: Guys, and I mentioned the idea of Internet rankings in
Speaker 5: terms of quality would be considered a quality result because
Speaker 5: these are clearly pulling from websites that are either satire
Speaker 5: or very poor quality. As absolutely Bend, some of these
Speaker 5: are coming from the onion. I think one of the
Speaker 5: most famous examples of this guy's is using glue to
Speaker 5: make pizza dough out.
Speaker 6: Of that one goes I want to read an excerpt
Speaker 6: from it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, GOOGLEI said the following, Well, now I don't want
Speaker 5: to start a free trial business. Insider, get right out
Speaker 5: of town. Here it is Google. AI said cheese can
Speaker 5: slide off pizza for a number of reasons, including too
Speaker 5: much sauce, too much cheese, or thickened sauce. Here are
Speaker 5: some things you can try mixing sauce. Mixing cheese into
Speaker 5: the sauce helps add moisture to the cheese and.
Speaker 6: Dry out the sauce.
Speaker 5: You can also add about an eighth cup of non
Speaker 5: toxic glue to give the sauce more tackiness. But the
Speaker 5: pizza cool, the cheese will settle and bond and then bend.
Speaker 5: To your point, the onion is absolutely part of the story.
Speaker 5: When it comes to the idea of eating rocks, someone
Speaker 5: googled how many rocks should I eat in a day,
Speaker 5: to which the AI over you responded at least one
Speaker 5: per day, and then went on to gay give specifics
Speaker 5: about you know, the size of the rocks, and then
Speaker 5: what you should be looking for. Anothery're asked how many
Speaker 5: Muslim presidents has the US had, to which the AI
Speaker 5: overview responded that Barack Obama was a Muslim misinterpreting you know,
Speaker 5: some information from the Internet. And then, of course, the
Speaker 5: debacle with the cheese pizza mixed with glue. So, I
Speaker 5: don't know, guys, it just seems like Google, you know,
Speaker 5: everyone's like trying to match open ais, you know, Chat
Speaker 5: Gypt and all of that stuff, and to varying degrees
Speaker 5: of success. As we know, even chat Gypt certainly isn't fallible.
Speaker 5: We see stories about it hallucinating things, you know, and
Speaker 5: that's gonna there's gonna be some of that happening. But
Speaker 5: since this has created such an online comic bonanza, let's
Speaker 5: call it, they have rolled back the results and not
Speaker 5: only about eleven percent of users are getting these results
Speaker 5: at all. And I guess they're going to tune it
Speaker 5: up a little bit and then maybe roll it back out.
Speaker 5: But do you guys have any thoughts about this? It
Speaker 5: seems just beyond absurd. Well, we know, we are starting
Speaker 5: to live in a culture, or have been living in
Speaker 5: a culture with things like TikTok and all of this
Speaker 5: short attention span theater stuff, where there is this sort
Speaker 5: of drives you just accept whatever you see on the
Speaker 5: Internet because it's on the Internet, that it's truth, because
Speaker 5: it's easier that way. And this seems to be feeding
Speaker 5: into that to a pretty large degree.
Speaker 4: It's interesting too, because what we're looking at is what
Speaker 4: I would call intergenerational information and normalization asymmetry, which I
Speaker 4: know sounds like gobbledy Google words, but it does make
Speaker 4: sense if we walk it through. What I'm saying, essentially
Speaker 4: is that the people who have valid discourse and criticism
Speaker 4: about these changes being implemented are, to a large degree
Speaker 4: they're going to be an older demographic. Then the people
Speaker 4: are coming up native, as we would say in this
Speaker 4: online sphere, the folks who are using a search engine
Speaker 4: for the first time don't have an earlier comparison to make,
Speaker 4: so for them it is increasingly difficult. They're also, you know,
Speaker 4: and this is very pretentious to say, but they're also
Speaker 4: not going to be the kids reading some you know,
Speaker 4: scholarly paper or watching some high falutin thirty five minute
Speaker 4: ted talk or whatever about the nature of this change
Speaker 4: and the dangers inherent. They might not know who Jaron
Speaker 4: Lanier is, you know, so this could be this could
Speaker 4: be very difficult. We can't, you know, we can't talk
Speaker 4: down to people about this. I think we could just
Speaker 4: be honest, like you're being here, nol. It's a problem.
Speaker 4: It's bad, especially because other people don't know it used
Speaker 4: to be kind of better. I'm not even saying perfect,
Speaker 4: I'm just saying kind of better.
Speaker 5: Sure, And again, like I think I've been pretty even
Speaker 5: handed in terms of like mixing my dystopian outlook on
Speaker 5: AI with a sort of silver lining of using AI
Speaker 5: as a tool, whether it be for music production like
Speaker 5: with that Randy Travis song story, or some of the
Speaker 5: tools we're seeing rolling out in audio and video software
Speaker 5: that are actually incredibly helpful and can be predictive in
Speaker 5: terms of you know, removing noise from audio, or cutting
Speaker 5: out backgrounds from images and things like that, or helping
Speaker 5: with in betweening and animation, things that actually save humans
Speaker 5: time without getting rid of their jobs or the need
Speaker 5: for them to exist at all.
Speaker 6: But this, to me is just that.
Speaker 3: Shiny new thing that everyone feels like they've got to
Speaker 3: trot out when it's not ready, and it's just frickin embarrassing,
Speaker 3: and they absolutely deserve all the lampooning they're getting.
Speaker 5: If you ask me, Matt, think man, this hallucinatory generative
Speaker 5: AI telling people to eat rocks on Google.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll speak for myself, but I do think this
Speaker 2: is more general as a species We've become pretty accustomed
Speaker 2: to typing something into a search bar and finding out
Speaker 2: the facts or the truth or the thing that we
Speaker 2: really want to know. And Google has been pretty good
Speaker 2: in the past that even if it's just sending you
Speaker 2: to a Wikipedia page, on that Wikipedia page, you're generally
Speaker 2: going to find mostly true things, mostly facts, or.
Speaker 5: The ability to cross reference the very least, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: But then I think we got a little accustomed to
Speaker 2: just the first like little page that you get depending
Speaker 2: on what device you're accessing the search tool on.
Speaker 4: Right, Like ninety plus percent of people don't scroll past
Speaker 4: the first page of results exactly.
Speaker 2: And I'm just imagining a world where everybody that's got
Speaker 2: a search tool on their side or their app is,
Speaker 2: you know, implementing this kind of technology where truth in
Speaker 2: fact become even further and further from actuality because everybody
Speaker 2: has their own generated version of what that thing is
Speaker 2: or that's already.
Speaker 5: Being tailored to you a little bit, right, Oh yeah,
Speaker 5: like like yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 2: Yes, I don't know that freaks me out. I don't
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 5: No, I don't either, And I will say that it's
Speaker 5: I know that in the past, and you know, previous generations.
Speaker 5: I think people generally were more well read. I think
Speaker 5: people were generally a little better at separating fact from fiction.
Speaker 5: But also there certainly has always been a history or
Speaker 5: this idea of if it bleeds, it leads, and people
Speaker 5: not reading past the headlines.
Speaker 6: You know. I think this is just a much more
Speaker 6: extreme pathology.
Speaker 5: Kind of of that previously existing kind of you know phenomenon.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, the people then as now or you know, much
Speaker 4: the same as we say, as we often say on
Speaker 4: this show. And one of the issues is that, look,
Speaker 4: Wikipedia gets a hard time, and folks, if you're doing
Speaker 4: any research, ever, the thing you want to learn from
Speaker 4: Wikipedia is you want to go to the talk tab
Speaker 4: and see the arguments, and then you want to look
Speaker 4: at the bibliography of sources. We're just ethically required to
Speaker 4: say that. But one of the brilliant things Wikipedia did
Speaker 4: was when it works, when it's not a war of
Speaker 4: viewpoints and conversations, when it's being objective, it's continually crowdsourcing
Speaker 4: and fact checking itself. And the issue is that it
Speaker 4: appears some of these so called AI concierges, these large
Speaker 4: language models, these learning algorithms, they are not fact checking themselves.
Speaker 4: They are indeed like two mirrors reflecting one another. We
Speaker 4: talked about this idea previously, so there's no as of yet,
Speaker 4: there is no BS killer AI. There's nothing that'll intervene
Speaker 4: between point A when you search, point you know Z
Speaker 4: when you results show up. There's nothing to be the
Speaker 4: other part of the alphabet that jumps in and says, hey,
Speaker 4: actually no, most people don't put glue on pizzas.
Speaker 6: It's a giant AI circle jerk is what it is. Everywhere.
Speaker 5: It's like this self congratulatory echo chamber. And to the
Speaker 5: to the point you're referencing men, I think was the
Speaker 5: whole idea of the dead Internet theory about how much
Speaker 5: bot activity is already out there and how if an
Speaker 5: AI language learning system is being trained on Internet content
Speaker 5: that was generated by other language learning systems, it becomes
Speaker 5: like a copy of a copy of a copy of
Speaker 5: a copy, and then it becomes something real weird and
Speaker 5: real wrong. Yep, I'm sorry, guys, I think it weirds
Speaker 5: is all out a little bit. But any last words, Matt,
Speaker 5: there we go. We'll be back with some words Draden's
Speaker 5: News after a word from ours bondser.
Speaker 2: And we've returned Before we get into the story, let's
Speaker 2: shout out West, the director and director of photography for
Speaker 2: the social videos that we film when we are together,
Speaker 2: because he mentioned this. At least to me, it's the
Speaker 2: first time I had heard about it. I don't know
Speaker 2: about you guys, but this story comes from you, West.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Shout out to West.
Speaker 2: West. West put us onto a story that is about
Speaker 2: two companies that we're going to be talking about. The
Speaker 2: first one is a property management company based in Atlanta. Wow,
Speaker 2: this is a very Atlanta centric episode here we go.
Speaker 2: That's right, atl everybody.
Speaker 6: Hey man, we're a proper metro area.
Speaker 2: That's right. That's right, the Atlanta metro are.
Speaker 6: We're just as good as New York and Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Yes, but this is a property management company based in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: It is called Cortland. That's spelled co.
Speaker 6: R t l A n d ah. Yeah. I remember.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: He mentioned it to us in passing. We're like, we're
Speaker 2: talking about the water crisis issue, and he's like, did
Speaker 2: you hear about this? We were like, no, what is this?
Speaker 2: So this Courtland without a you. I always think about
Speaker 2: Courtland Marriott for some reason. I guess that's just in
Speaker 2: my head it is, Oh yeah, and it is not that.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: This is a company that's primary business is owning property
Speaker 2: and leasing it out to you or us or other
Speaker 2: people like us that are.
Speaker 4: Renters, right, just never selling it to you.
Speaker 2: Oh well maybe sometimes maybe you could could be occupancy
Speaker 2: of some sort. It could just be open rental property.
Speaker 2: Who knows they own. Yes, but they are huge and
Speaker 2: we're going to get into how big they are and
Speaker 2: they're a big deal. Courtland. The second company is a
Speaker 2: property management software company called real Page r E a
Speaker 2: l page that owns and licenses a quote technology platform
Speaker 2: that enables real estate owners and managers to change how
Speaker 2: people experience and use rental space.
Speaker 6: That sounds nice. That sounds downright.
Speaker 2: Utopian, doesn't it. One of the main features of this
Speaker 2: platform is that it can quote optimize rents to achieve
Speaker 2: the overall highest yield or a combination of rent and
Speaker 2: occupancy at each property, which means it is using some
Speaker 2: sort of algorithm that is a part of that technology
Speaker 2: platform to decide how much rents should be and when
Speaker 2: it's being used by a company like Courtland that we're
Speaker 2: gonna be talking about here that has so many different
Speaker 2: rental properties it can have disastrous results, and there may
Speaker 2: be a conspiracy afoot. So let us jump to a
Speaker 2: story from Entrepreneur written by Sharon Shebu on June fourth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. It's titled is one company to Blame
Speaker 2: for soaring rental prices in the US? Say it ain't so, guys,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna guess that so well, it might be, at
Speaker 2: least according to an FBI investigation. Ooh ooh, yes, So
Speaker 2: the Federal Bureau boys did a little unannounced raid on
Speaker 2: Courtland Management back on May twenty second.
Speaker 4: Oh, just a little unannounced when just a little poplright,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody open up, open those file cabinets were coming in.
Speaker 4: We're knocking to be polite more.
Speaker 6: I think this would maybe even qualify as a no
Speaker 6: knock raid, right, yeah, like a kick in raid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well yeah, because and the reason why they did
Speaker 2: it there, they are conducting a major investigation into an
Speaker 2: alleged rental price fixing conspiracy that, according to Sharon Shebu
Speaker 2: writing for Entrepreneur, may have already impacted millions of US Americans.
Speaker 6: Freaking gross makes me so mad, Matt.
Speaker 4: Before we go further into this particular this Courtland situation.
Speaker 4: I think we should point out that in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 4: we talked a little bit about aj Stegmany, chess prodigy
Speaker 4: who who became Atlanta's top broker because of very similar
Speaker 4: software he built to do very similar things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you can move those pieces just a little
Speaker 2: bit and you can optimize right, Oh, optimizing lease rental
Speaker 2: prices yucky.
Speaker 4: Let's say we have stone a how much blood see
Speaker 4: can we get with y squeeze? And what about It's
Speaker 4: called Stegnet proprietary software. We were very nice when we
Speaker 4: talked about this guy. By the way, we've never met him,
Speaker 4: but I think I think this this shows us kind
Speaker 4: of the way this escalates, you know, bump bump, bump up.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, bum bum bum bum bum.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 2: And our stone that we're pulling blood out of is
Speaker 2: rolling guys, because this is part of a giant anti
Speaker 2: trust investigation that the Department Justice is carrying out looking
Speaker 2: into specifically that second company we mentioned real page. Those
Speaker 2: guys are a nine billion dollars software company that's billion
Speaker 2: with a B, and that is the company, as we said,
Speaker 2: that recommends to property owners when they need to raise
Speaker 2: rates and how much they need to raise rates in
Speaker 2: order to optimize the amount of money they're bringing in
Speaker 2: for each property.
Speaker 6: Kind of reminds me of freight brokers in a way.
Speaker 5: I mean, just in terms of the logistics of like,
Speaker 5: you know, what's the word maximizing kind of maximizing profits
Speaker 5: and also some potential for horseplay in there, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, oh yeah, And when utilized by a huge
Speaker 2: company like Cortland, which as of June twenty twenty two
Speaker 2: owned nearly eighty five thousand department units across the country
Speaker 2: from Arizona to Georgia. And they're using this software right,
Speaker 2: this platform or whatever you want to call it, that's
Speaker 2: attempting this off stimization. That means all of these properties
Speaker 2: are going up little bit by little bit. I don't think,
Speaker 2: and maybe this is not true, but I don't think
Speaker 2: that software is incentivizing landowners to reduce rent.
Speaker 6: Absolutely not. I mean maybe not. That means very kind
Speaker 6: of know, you're being very generouid it.
Speaker 4: Is a possibility in the programming, right, But that's saying
Speaker 4: that's a possibility in the programming. Is saying is similar
Speaker 4: to saying it is possible to get to a draw
Speaker 4: in Teken or more combat, you know, what I mean,
Speaker 4: like it can happen theoretically, but if circumstances work out,
Speaker 4: it wants a clear winner. And I think also it's
Speaker 4: adding some high octane gas to the bonfire of increasing
Speaker 4: rent prices which occur for any number of variables. But
Speaker 4: you could argue the wrong things are being incentivized and weaponized.
Speaker 2: Oh oh yeah, oh yeah. Well let's take this little
Speaker 2: set of statistics from our fair city of Atlanta, just
Speaker 2: to really get this in perspective.
Speaker 4: Oh and can we point out that Atlanta, out of
Speaker 4: all we very rarely get to brag about our city.
Speaker 4: So in addition to being a star of poor water infrastructure,
Speaker 4: this fair metropolis is also one of the top targets
Speaker 4: for real estate capture, oh investment corporations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the big guys like the black Rocks of the
Speaker 2: world that are like, we will take all of these houses,
Speaker 2: these single family units that are an entire house, and
Speaker 2: we will rent them all. You'll never own anything.
Speaker 5: I think I mentioned in the past and these kind
Speaker 5: of conversations. I rented from a mega conglomo, one of
Speaker 5: these type of organizations called Excalibur Homes that owns a
Speaker 5: ton of property in the Metro Atlanta area, and both
Speaker 5: of the times I rented from them, every single fixture
Speaker 5: was identical. It was the cheapest of the lowest of
Speaker 5: the low bargain basement kind of stuff. And anytime something
Speaker 5: would break, which is inevitably, I couldn't get anyone to
Speaker 5: respond because it was all through this online portal using
Speaker 5: you know this, like you had to use their proprietary
Speaker 5: software to reach out for maintenance requests, to submit a ticket,
Speaker 5: and yeah, you'd be lucky if you ever got a response.
Speaker 6: Yeh, yuck.
Speaker 2: Well, let's jump to these statistics, guys, because Cortland is
Speaker 2: a huge player in the real estate business, the actual
Speaker 2: property business, right, but they are just one in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: There are just one in the United States. The connective
Speaker 2: tissue between a ton of these rental properties is that
Speaker 2: real Page. Because in Atlanta, more than eighty percent of
Speaker 2: rentals have been affected. Let's say that's the way it's
Speaker 2: stated in this Entrepreneur article. The price of those leases
Speaker 2: have been affected by Real Pages algorithm eighty percent, and
Speaker 2: rent in the city since twenty sixteen has grown by
Speaker 2: eighty percent, which means.
Speaker 4: Which is fascinating in comparison to the thirty percent overall
Speaker 4: increase across the United.
Speaker 2: States exactly, so specific cities can be affected way more
Speaker 2: than the system overall, right, because everybody wants to get
Speaker 2: it to get into Atlanta now because it's a hub
Speaker 2: and the airport and the film industry and just blah
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah, growing, growing, growing, same thing with
Speaker 2: places like Austin, certain parts of California and Oregon. And
Speaker 2: the problem is getting worse, right as human beings cluster
Speaker 2: in cities. But here's the other problem, guys. Vacancy rates,
Speaker 2: like open apartment units has actually been increasing a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but somehow prices are going up to doesn't it seem
Speaker 2: like if there's not as many people to fill the apartments,
Speaker 2: then maybe the prices should go down.
Speaker 4: You know, I unfondly remember not too many years ago,
Speaker 4: we would drive through you and I would go hang
Speaker 4: out in different areas of the city, and you know,
Speaker 4: the like the abandoned warehouses we used to get up
Speaker 4: the hijinks are now huge condos. And for a time,
Speaker 4: the city of Atlanta had some egregious like forty percent
Speaker 4: vacancy rate with a lot of that new construction just
Speaker 4: because it was similar to the lesson that every municipality
Speaker 4: needs to learn from China, which is, if you are
Speaker 4: building things that are not accessible to people, people will
Speaker 4: not be there. Real estate is not field of dreams,
Speaker 4: no matter how folks want to make it sound to
Speaker 4: the boardroom. So with that in mind, are you proposing, then,
Speaker 4: the possibility of an inflection point like at is there
Speaker 4: some point where these two variables of need for housing
Speaker 4: and inaccessible pricing? Is there a point where they hit
Speaker 4: some untenable threshold?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we hit it in I don't know,
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen. Maybe no, But I mean, really like it
Speaker 2: feels as though we already have kind of hit a
Speaker 2: ceiling here and it's it's only going down from this point.
Speaker 2: But I don't know, Ben. All I know is that
Speaker 2: according to these this major investigation right and several other
Speaker 2: lawsuits that have been filed in other cities and other states,
Speaker 2: the problem is real page essentially making all of these
Speaker 2: land owners collude with each other because they're using the
Speaker 2: same algorithms and they're all raising their rents at kind
Speaker 2: of the same rate. So it's almost like gas stations.
Speaker 2: You guys, ever driven through an area an intersection maybe
Speaker 2: and you see three gas stations that are immediately next
Speaker 2: to each other or in all of the prices are
Speaker 2: almost exactly the same. Because everybody there knows somebody's gonna
Speaker 2: stop in for gas, they got to pick one of us.
Speaker 2: If any of us are higher, nobody's gonna pick us.
Speaker 2: So we got to hit that right mark. But if
Speaker 2: everybody decides, hey, guys, we're going up by five cents,
Speaker 2: and they go okay, so everybody does it. That's kind
Speaker 2: of what's happening here. Even if the landlords are not,
Speaker 2: you know, conspiring amongst themselves, they're all using the same
Speaker 2: software that is essentially conspiring for them.
Speaker 4: And the software is getting a vigoroush as well. I
Speaker 4: like to I think of it as what I call
Speaker 4: the butter chicken example. So you go to different cities
Speaker 4: or different countries, right, and you pick, like, pick a dish.
Speaker 4: It could be anything. Pick a dish or some kind
Speaker 4: of meal that multiple outlets will sell in whatever part
Speaker 4: of this wide world you find yourself in. It give
Speaker 4: you pizza. It could obviously, if you have great tape
Speaker 4: to be a casadia, it could be buttered chicken. I
Speaker 4: was convinced at one time I swear I witnessed a
Speaker 4: price jump in specifically buttered chicken in this one city,
Speaker 4: and it wasn't a big price jump, it wasn't egregious, right,
Speaker 4: but it was a uniform increase. And you know, obviously
Speaker 4: to the earlier points about small businesses, you don't want
Speaker 4: to go and ruin someone's day. You're just going to
Speaker 4: see if there's another place that had the earlier price
Speaker 4: you expected. And now that's an easy that's an easy anecdote,
Speaker 4: right when it's one meal. But what happens when it
Speaker 4: becomes the place you live? And are there any I mean,
Speaker 4: are there any solutions that you have heard? I mean,
Speaker 4: the FBI, again with courtesy, sort of knocked on the
Speaker 4: door and then took all the files. Right. But is
Speaker 4: this maybe maybe another example of techno outpacing legislation like
Speaker 4: easy illegal to make software that does this? No? Or
Speaker 4: is it's just the use of it that is illegal.
Speaker 2: I think it's the result of that software being used
Speaker 2: by so many different people, by so many different landlords, right,
Speaker 2: and major companies, and a result in combination with so
Speaker 2: many companies owning so much property, right.
Speaker 4: So it accreates power because of the massive users yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, well, look, that's I'm not a part of
Speaker 2: this investigation. I don't know exactly what they're looking at
Speaker 2: within Cortland's files, but I do know they're a drop
Speaker 2: in the bucket. Even though they're a major player. There
Speaker 2: are so many other places that they need to get
Speaker 2: metrics from, basically on how rent prices have increased on
Speaker 2: a per unit basis over a you know, a decade almost.
Speaker 4: And you know, I've never seen Paul Decant in the
Speaker 4: same room as an FBI agent.
Speaker 2: That you know, like any FBI.
Speaker 4: Yes, I personally know all of the fbiz.
Speaker 2: Hey man, that's something to keep in mind. There was
Speaker 2: one other thing I want to mention here. Again, it's
Speaker 2: not just Atlanta, y'all. Seventy percent of apartment units in Arizona,
Speaker 2: we're using this real page algorithm, sixty percent of apartment
Speaker 2: buildings in the District of Columbia and Washington, DC. It's
Speaker 2: all over the place.
Speaker 4: Seventy percent of a city, right, yeah, well yeah, or
Speaker 4: seventy did you say Arizona, the.
Speaker 2: State the state of Arizona, seventy percent of apartment units.
Speaker 6: Is this a.
Speaker 5: Fraud situation or are they just going after them for
Speaker 5: like antitrust kind of stuff or is it a mixture.
Speaker 2: It's an it's a criminal antitrust investigation that the DOJ
Speaker 2: is leveraging against.
Speaker 6: Real cause of collusion between these two entities.
Speaker 5: Essentially, that's happening not above board, like this is there
Speaker 5: there creating an effective monopoly and price fixing, right, which
Speaker 5: is totally illegal.
Speaker 2: It's it's yes, it's basically price fixing on apartment units.
Speaker 4: The allegation is that it's able to push the prices
Speaker 4: higher at a faster rate than an individual. I don't
Speaker 4: even like the phrase landlord an individual property owner would
Speaker 4: have done on their own.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is weird to have that word lord in there,
Speaker 5: Isn't it it applied refusing over someone? No, No, you're right,
Speaker 5: it's inherently kind of othering. Yeah, it's gross. I don't
Speaker 5: like it either.
Speaker 2: The land papa, let's make it Yeah, yeah, get out
Speaker 2: of my head.
Speaker 4: Well, Matt, how do we How do we summarize this?
Speaker 4: What do people need to walk away with?
Speaker 2: This is how I'll summarize it the same way that
Speaker 2: Sharon Shibu did in that Entrepreneur article that we mentioned
Speaker 2: at the top. In the past ten years, rent inflation
Speaker 2: has outpaced overall inflation by forty point seven percent type
Speaker 2: forty Have we all made forty point seven percent more money?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 2: Wait no, not even kind of absolutely no, what are
Speaker 2: we doing here, guys?
Speaker 5: Yes, I mean there are causes out there in terms
Speaker 5: of unionization and people fighting for rights of employees where
Speaker 5: they're struggling to get one or two percent of a
Speaker 5: raise year over a year, which I think is well
Speaker 5: below inflation alone, in cost of living increases alone.
Speaker 4: We do know that this has been a long time
Speaker 4: in coming, right, Like pro Public was investigating Real Page
Speaker 4: a few years ago. So I mean, good on the
Speaker 4: DOJ for going in and you know, doing something or
Speaker 4: attempting to these these decisions often take a long time
Speaker 4: to result in real world changes for a the public, right,
Speaker 4: So it's going to be easy to get this story
Speaker 4: lost as the courtroom proceedings occur. Please do help us
Speaker 4: keep an eye on a fellow conspiracy realists. We don't
Speaker 4: want to lose these sorts of things because the reality
Speaker 4: is true, whatever your demographic or ideology is, things are
Speaker 4: accelerating in price and there are a lot of bad
Speaker 4: faith actors who are taking the opportunity to pretend like
Speaker 4: the supply chains are still broken. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: I just can't stand it when like the super wealthy
Speaker 5: plead poverty.
Speaker 6: You know, like in these types of just.
Speaker 4: Right right, the Atlas network should shrug. And with that, folks,
Speaker 4: we would love to hear your individual war stories, your
Speaker 4: success stories, your perspectives. What's the funniest joke Google accidentally
Speaker 4: told you? We hope it wasn't in an emergency situation?
Speaker 6: What is the uh?
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, what a rent price is like in your
Speaker 4: neck of the woods? How much is the last how
Speaker 4: much have you paid to go out to eat?
Speaker 2: And?
Speaker 4: Uh, you know, I guess we should end in some
Speaker 4: good news. The diamond industry is finally collapsing. There's that.
Speaker 4: Do you guys hear about that one?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 4: I did not story for another day. Oh we wise
Speaker 4: we're right about lab grown diamonds those years back when
Speaker 4: that first came out. I think the diamond industry, specifically
Speaker 4: the blood diamond industry, may not be long for the world.
Speaker 6: Because the lab grown ones are just as just as shiny.
Speaker 4: They're the same. There's still diamonds. The diamond is like
Speaker 4: it's a thing you can make.
Speaker 5: Don't you think some people really want the blood, the
Speaker 5: ones that are soaked in blood.
Speaker 6: There really something sexy about that. I don't know. To
Speaker 6: the monsters out there.
Speaker 4: Oh, the suffering makes it shine, shout out to We
Speaker 4: can't wait to hear your thoughts, folks. We try to
Speaker 4: be easy to find online, correct.
Speaker 5: You can find us at the handlic Conspiracy Stuff where
Speaker 5: we exist on Facebook where you can join our Facebook
Speaker 5: group Here's where it gets crazy, or also conspiracy stuff
Speaker 5: on acxfka, Twitter, as well as YouTube.
Speaker 6: We just shot a whole pile of videos the other day.
Speaker 5: I think there were maybe some of my favorite that
Speaker 5: we've ever done, and it was really joy to be
Speaker 5: back in the saddle with you guys after being a
Speaker 5: way for a bit. And that also applies to the podcast.
Speaker 5: You can also find us in other ways, can't you.
Speaker 5: Oh first and foremost Conspiracy Stuff show where we exist
Speaker 5: on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2: Hey do you want to call us? Call one eight
Speaker 2: three three std wytk. Put that number in your contact list,
Speaker 2: name it stdwytk, and then call us. You've got three minutes.
Speaker 2: Say whatever you like. Just give yourself a cool nickname
Speaker 2: and let us know if we can use your name,
Speaker 2: end message on the air. If you got more to
Speaker 2: send us. I don't know pictures, attachments. I guess the
Speaker 2: picture is an attachment link. Maybe full stories books. Send
Speaker 2: us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4: We are the entities that read every email we receive.
Speaker 6: Be well aware.
Speaker 4: Sometimes the void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.