Speaker 1: Yuck digital, No thanks, It's one more thing I'm strong.
Speaker 2: Indeed, before we get to yuck digital no thanks. I
Speaker 2: get way too many phishing texts. Drives me crazy. That's
Speaker 2: why it makes me angry when I go to a
Speaker 2: restaurant and how many two insider outside doesn't matter to me. Okay,
Speaker 2: can I have your phone number?
Speaker 1: No? Why do you need my phone number for.
Speaker 2: Me to eat at this restaurant? Because if I give
Speaker 2: it to you, I'm gonna get all these damn texts
Speaker 2: because you're selling it to people I know you are.
Speaker 2: Drives me nuts. Anyway, I got one of these texts
Speaker 2: the other day.
Speaker 1: Thing it's probably reached critical mass went now, and there's
Speaker 1: so many freaking companies and Russian mobsters who have my
Speaker 1: phone number, I might as well just give it out
Speaker 1: to everybody. I to post it on my roof, so
Speaker 1: so airplanes going over ahead and can see it.
Speaker 2: I got this one yesterday. Though usually it's pretty obviously
Speaker 2: a scam of some part, but this one was pretty good.
Speaker 2: If I had to choose my friend all over again,
Speaker 2: I'd still choose you every single time from a random
Speaker 2: phone number, and they're just hoping that I'm a lonely
Speaker 2: person that thinks, wow, is there any link attached one
Speaker 2: of my very Well, it's a phone number. I could
Speaker 2: text back, but I assume something do it. Well, I
Speaker 2: assume that alerts them that this is a live number,
Speaker 2: and then I just get endless.
Speaker 1: Katie, Katie too soon. He's still bouncing back from the
Speaker 1: affair with the Ukrainian. That's right, yeah, scammer that relationship ending.
Speaker 2: You think I should have pursued this?
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, every time I get one to sell all
Speaker 3: the time, I'll get these texts that say, hey, Ashley,
Speaker 3: are we still on for lunch later? And I always go,
Speaker 3: you have the wrong number. Sorry, oh I do. I'm
Speaker 3: so sorry to have bothered you. And then I'm like, okay,
Speaker 3: I know what this is. You didn't bother me. It's
Speaker 3: all good. So now that we're talking, what do you
Speaker 3: like to do for fun? And oh, I just I
Speaker 3: broke these people in for if I have time, for
Speaker 3: as long as I can, because that means they're not
Speaker 3: doing it to somebody else.
Speaker 2: Well, have you ever seen feel Von stuff on that
Speaker 2: they podcast or comedian? He's got a whole website of it.
Speaker 2: He is so good at it. It is hilarious.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, help out.
Speaker 2: I'm here at the hospital. Thanks for getting a hold
Speaker 2: of me. I just had my legs removed and I'm
Speaker 2: really needing someone to talk to.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, And they'll keep going until you use the word.
Speaker 2: Scammer and then they stop. Yeah. Oh it's so fun. Wow. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll text this person back and then tomorrow we'll check
Speaker 2: in and see how this person who said if I
Speaker 2: had to choose my friend all over again, I still
Speaker 2: choose you every single time. How should I respond to
Speaker 2: that person?
Speaker 3: I feel the same way about you.
Speaker 2: So I was going to go, if you betray those
Speaker 2: of the words of a you betrayed me, and you
Speaker 2: are now my mortal end to me? Where do you live?
Speaker 1: I like you? Oh, I like that even better. See,
Speaker 1: I'm probably technically digitally naive. I always I don't want
Speaker 1: to respond in any way, so they don't know it's
Speaker 1: a live film number and it landed, but they can
Speaker 1: tell that anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I send red receipts, so if I open it,
Speaker 3: it shows both now Android and Apple that I.
Speaker 1: Don't.
Speaker 2: I don't. I want to be I want plausible deniability
Speaker 2: to say.
Speaker 1: It's always ability and everything you do kids. Here's a
Speaker 1: tip from your old uncle's Joe and Jack.
Speaker 3: And then you don't send the red receipt what it.
Speaker 1: Says delivered, so the scammers would know, Okay, that is
Speaker 1: a phone you think. Okay, Joe, I might as well
Speaker 1: engage them and mess with them because that would delight me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as long as you don't click any links, you're fine.
Speaker 1: I was made for that, tooted. So my my introduction
Speaker 1: digital yuck. Essentially, it's about this piece we referenced very
Speaker 1: briefly during the show the radio show Slash podcast earlier
Speaker 1: by Ted Joya. Being human as cool as in is
Speaker 1: Ai saturates everyday life. People are seeking refuge in flesh
Speaker 1: and blood alternatives from bookstore signings to vinyl record sales.
Speaker 1: And there are a bunch of different examples about this,
Speaker 1: and I don't care examples of this. I don't care
Speaker 1: if this has reached any sort of critical mass. I
Speaker 1: have given up on quote unquote humanity. But if individuals
Speaker 1: or small groups of people, or my friends or my
Speaker 1: family can do the right, healthy thing, that's good enough
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 2: You've given up on humanity. That's an interesting ever has
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I never had any particular hope from humanity
Speaker 1: before humanity. That's one of the reasons I'm in conservative.
Speaker 1: That's why you have to have incentives and disincentives to
Speaker 1: have in orderly society, because you're not going to reform
Speaker 1: humanity and all of a sudden human nature is going
Speaker 1: to change after a million years. It'll never ever happen anyway.
Speaker 1: So here's this bookstore in Alabama. It's gotten a fair
Speaker 1: amount of coverage in the national news. It's a small,
Speaker 1: almost windowless business on a day in Birmingham, Alabama, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like much either. But their thing is uh.
Speaker 1: When many indie bookstores barely survive this book, the Alabama
Speaker 1: booksmith is flourishing. But it has a crazy strategy that
Speaker 1: draws customers who bypass stores in their own cities to
Speaker 1: purchase from distant retailer. Here's the secret. Every book in
Speaker 1: the store is signed by the author. This store owner
Speaker 1: wants the author to travel to Alabama to sign copies
Speaker 1: in the store. He likes to see the human author
Speaker 1: in the flesh. In an age of ai slop and
Speaker 1: books on Amazon, this is the ultimate verification of authorship.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. The Alabama bookstore can guarantee sales of
Speaker 1: several hundred copies of a new book and maybe more.
Speaker 1: And that's enough to convince authors to fit in Alabama
Speaker 1: on their book tours. And here's something for you, the
Speaker 1: Alabama booksmith. It rarely charges a premium for the signed copies.
Speaker 1: Our books don't cost more, the owner told the New Yorker,
Speaker 1: But they're worth more interesting customers repay them with their loyalties.
Speaker 1: Store does not solicit business. It now has approximately five
Speaker 1: thousand customers on its email list, and so many people
Speaker 1: travel from out of town to visit the store that
Speaker 1: it is negotiated at a discount and rate with a
Speaker 1: local hotel. Isn't it crazy? Then Ted writes about the
Speaker 1: same dynamics fueling the vinyl revival in music. Musicians sell
Speaker 1: these gigs. Many do it themselves. They man the merch table.
Speaker 1: I've actually seen this.
Speaker 2: Oh cool.
Speaker 1: I bought some CDs, but I liked the idea of
Speaker 1: vinyl even well. I had a lovely, lovely conversation with
Speaker 1: a songwriter. I thought it was terrific. Anyway you transact
Speaker 1: directly with fans here too, A real human does something
Speaker 1: no AI bot can replace. Everybody enjoys it, and then
Speaker 1: Ted writes, I speak with authority as someone who's been
Speaker 1: on both sides of the transaction. I bought directly for
Speaker 1: musicians relishing the opportunity to chat for a few seconds
Speaker 1: with a person behind the album. And I've peddled my
Speaker 1: own works at public events. Welcoming my chance to do
Speaker 1: the three s is sell, sign, and schmooze. Let's see
Speaker 1: you see the same thing? Oh go ahead, yeah and
Speaker 1: jump in anytime. I'm sorry, there's a lot here and
Speaker 1: I tend to go kind of quickly. But there's a
Speaker 1: new secret strategy in the arts, and it's built on
Speaker 1: the simplest thing you can imagine, namely existing as a
Speaker 1: human being. Here's ad Week, which I used to read
Speaker 1: all the time. You see the same thing in media
Speaker 1: right now where live streaming is taking off. For viewers,
Speaker 1: live streaming offers a refuge from the glowing, growing glut
Speaker 1: of AI generated content on their feeds, and I would
Speaker 1: also suggest to suggest it's a contrast with like the
Speaker 1: super edited, insanely high paced, fast paced stuff they write
Speaker 1: in a social media landscape where the difference between real
Speaker 1: and artificial has grown nearly imperceptible, the unmistakable humanity of
Speaker 1: real life video, real time videos or refreshing draw And
Speaker 1: then they get into the They think Amazon shut down,
Speaker 1: it's fresh and goat, it's fresh stores, fresh and ghost
Speaker 1: stores whatever it's called, that you could buy groceries without
Speaker 1: dealing with any checkout clerks, and that people didn't want this.
Speaker 1: I know there's a divide on the show over this,
Speaker 1: and I fully think maybe I'm in a minority. I'd
Speaker 1: rather do the self checkout, but I know you don't
Speaker 1: like it.
Speaker 2: No love self checkout. I just don't like hassling with
Speaker 2: the computer thing because I don't know how to handle
Speaker 2: three bananas.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So your your inner misanthrope is in conflict
Speaker 1: with your inner luttite.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, that must be terrible, and the and the
Speaker 2: inner Why am I doing your job?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: But then you know grapes, I don't know. It doesn't
Speaker 2: have a bar code on it. The frig see.
Speaker 1: I think it's fun to figure it out. That's weird.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm weird. I know I'm weird. Uh as
Speaker 1: Ai customer service becomes more pervasive. Oh my god, Oh
Speaker 1: my god. Judy and I were trying to rebalance what
Speaker 1: we have in our four oh one k. You got
Speaker 1: a little of this fund, a little that fun, a
Speaker 1: little less fun. And we talked to our angel Guru
Speaker 1: and he said, yeah, you're super heavily weighted in this.
Speaker 1: I'd sell some of this Bubba And we thought, all right,
Speaker 1: no problem, I think I'll do it on the website.
Speaker 1: How hard can it be harder than getting a camel
Speaker 1: through the eye of a needle to paraphrase the Bible
Speaker 1: as it turns out? And then I tried the effing
Speaker 1: chat bot that was going to help me. I might
Speaker 1: as well have asked my dog, Hey, Baxter, Baxter, how
Speaker 1: do you figure I sell some of this and buy
Speaker 1: some of the other thing? Baxter, Listen to me. There's
Speaker 1: a complete waste of time. So we get this, used
Speaker 1: the phone to call a human being and he helped
Speaker 1: us brilliantly in about five minutes.
Speaker 2: Well, congratulations on getting a hold of a human being.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I was trying to do a thing
Speaker 2: with a bank yesterday and could not figure out how
Speaker 2: to get to a human just couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, so I interrupted myself, but I like this
Speaker 1: a couple of sentences as AI customer service becomes more pervasive,
Speaker 1: the luxury brands will survive by offering this human touch.
Speaker 1: I'm now encountering this term. Concierge service is a marketing
Speaker 1: angle in the digital age, and it's a fancy way
Speaker 1: to say I can speak to a human.
Speaker 2: If customer service makes a comeback, I'll be so happy.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it might cost you. It's like, you know, I,
Speaker 1: at this point in my career own a pretty nice car,
Speaker 1: and where I go for service is different than if
Speaker 1: you own a pretty cheap car. They take care of you.
Speaker 1: It's humans at every step and they want you to
Speaker 1: be happy. I'd love to see that penetrate, you know,
Speaker 1: down in the market more like it always used to be.
Speaker 1: I get efficiencies, I get it.
Speaker 3: I'd like to see it go down to the peasants.
Speaker 1: I would like that for you peasants.
Speaker 2: That's how I heard it too. Hey, I bought some
Speaker 2: jeens the other day, Brandon Jeans, and they sent me
Speaker 2: an email saying, we want to make sure you get
Speaker 2: the right size so you don't have to return them.
Speaker 2: And so they measured them and they said, they explain
Speaker 2: to me, take your favorite pair of genes and measure
Speaker 2: them this way and see if they're the right size.
Speaker 2: And I did, and so they sent them to me
Speaker 2: and they fit perfectly, as opposed to like half the
Speaker 2: time when I order stuff online it doesn't fit, and
Speaker 2: then you're supposed to send it back, but I never
Speaker 2: get around to it. So I have stacks and staxiclothes
Speaker 2: that don't fit.
Speaker 1: How your local thrift stores. Oh yeah, yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is interesting. Even tech companies are figuring this out. Spotify
Speaker 1: now boasts that it has human curators, not just cold algorithms.
Speaker 1: Cool Apple Music says human curation is more important than ever.
Speaker 2: Wow. I think in that world that maybe the AI
Speaker 2: would be better than a human, but maybe not.
Speaker 1: Huh. I know, I haven't paid attention lately. I remember
Speaker 1: early on thinking they sucked. The algorithms. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't want to it off into musical explorations, but
Speaker 1: just they're terrible. I'd like listen to something like really
Speaker 1: quirky and esoteric from a certain era, and it would
Speaker 1: give me the big smash hits from that era, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, I'm a hipster. How do you not
Speaker 1: get that I'm a hipster.
Speaker 3: Spotify has gotten really good with that. If you listen
Speaker 3: to something, it's more exploring things that are kind of
Speaker 3: in that realm rather than just throwing the you know,
Speaker 3: the hits at you.
Speaker 1: What I want to.
Speaker 2: But what I hate about Spotify is not having to
Speaker 2: search for the hot hits. So if I type in
Speaker 2: Fleetwood Mac and you have your albums listed, you don't
Speaker 2: have rumors. I've got to type that in by title
Speaker 2: to get that. If I'm listening to Fleetwood Mac, you
Speaker 2: got all these other live albums and recent albums nobody wants,
Speaker 2: you can't give me the biggest hit they ever had,
Speaker 2: And that happens over and over and over again. Drives
Speaker 2: me nuts. I almost don't use Spotify because of that.
Speaker 1: Interesting, Yeah, I'm not familiar with it. I mostly listen
Speaker 1: to Apple Music. Interestingly, band camps. Band Camp is organizing
Speaker 1: band camp clubs where members get special music selections, listening parties,
Speaker 1: and other perks from human curators. Then they like talk
Speaker 1: to each other about whether they liked the song and stuff.
Speaker 1: Imagine that. Let's see. Recently, streamer Quo Buzz Somebody Anybody,
Speaker 1: qobu z Yeah launched a announced launcher of a proprietary
Speaker 1: AI detection tool. The companies published a set of principles
Speaker 1: that include this paragraph quote our conviction AI can be
Speaker 1: a valuable amplifier and ever substitute for human judgments of
Speaker 1: their human curation.
Speaker 2: That sort of thing Quobaz or whatever you said that
Speaker 2: could be nobody or could have eighty million followers on
Speaker 2: some platform and I don't know them.
Speaker 3: It's a music streaming service that's considered better than Spotify
Speaker 3: for sound quality.
Speaker 2: Okay, I like that too, I like that got my attention.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got to send this to my son, who,
Speaker 1: as I've said several times, would be an editor Rolling
Speaker 1: Stone if he had been born thirty years sooner. But
Speaker 1: there's so much content everywhere you can't make any money
Speaker 1: from it. So I thought this was interesting. Final note
Speaker 1: from this bahbah the paradox of living in a digital age.
Speaker 1: Human beings have more prestige than ever they just and
Speaker 1: they get it just by showing up. Just being a
Speaker 1: human is so attractive in the digital world. This won't change.
Speaker 1: In fact, the Silicon Valley elites forcing tech down our
Speaker 1: throats will only make us hate cold, sterile tech more
Speaker 1: than ever they have me, and they won't fix that
Speaker 1: problem by training AI to pretend to be human. That
Speaker 1: just adds insult to injury. Oh so true. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: might even be the hot new career path, ready made
Speaker 1: for curators, concierges, caregivers, conversationalists, and other people who loved
Speaker 1: being around people. As the old pop song anticipated, they
Speaker 1: might just end up being the happiest people of them all.
Speaker 1: So welcome to the lovely new economy where humans actually matter.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, try it out, be cool, be a human.
Speaker 1: All the bot and boctom will never be able to
Speaker 1: take that away from you. Well.
Speaker 2: I don't particularly like humans, but uh, since the all
Speaker 2: the AI customer service stuff sucks, I prefer a human
Speaker 2: to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's just horrible. I like some humans. Just
Speaker 1: a question of how many and how much.
Speaker 2: There's like five unplanet Earth the rest of y'all can
Speaker 2: Poundsand what if they're friendly?
Speaker 1: Do they annoy you or.
Speaker 2: Good looks?
Speaker 1: Scerely friendly or like clearly friendly for a purpose?
Speaker 2: I just again with we were talking about this earlier
Speaker 2: in the show, the idea that AI is going to
Speaker 2: take all our jobs. Okay, I'll believe it. You're a genius,
Speaker 2: but sure ain't close yet. I mean, you'd think customer
Speaker 2: service would be better than it is. You can call
Speaker 2: a multi billion dollar bank and there and their AI
Speaker 2: customer service thing is shit. I mean, it's just shit.
Speaker 2: Whatever question you have, I'm sorry. Did you say accounts? No,
Speaker 2: I didn't say accounts. It's just I can't believe it's
Speaker 2: not better than it is. How how's it going to
Speaker 2: replace every white color job in America if they haven't
Speaker 2: gotten better than this so far?
Speaker 1: And you speak more distinctly than the average human being, right,
Speaker 1: what about your average marble.
Speaker 2: Mouthed half with boom Hower calls in needs to do
Speaker 2: something to checking.
Speaker 1: Cat coucheck around a.
Speaker 2: Little interest rates.
Speaker 1: I like In and Out for their customer service. I
Speaker 1: actually think they're customer service.
Speaker 2: High school kids standing out in the parking lot in
Speaker 2: the long line taking your order.
Speaker 1: I like it.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: Nothing I love better than the old in and Out
Speaker 1: Michael
Speaker 2: Huh, Well, I guess that's it with pickles