Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of The
Speaker 1: Weekly Zeitgeist. Uh. These are some of our favorite segments
Speaker 1: from this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment
Speaker 1: laugh stravaganza.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, So, without.
Speaker 1: Further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. Well, that voice
Speaker 1: you hear is not Harry Kane. We are thrilled to
Speaker 1: be joined by one of our favorites, the tech journalists
Speaker 1: and writer behind the newsletter Where's Your ed At?
Speaker 2: Where's Your ed dot At?
Speaker 1: This podcast with cool Zone Media Better Offline is a
Speaker 1: must listen. One of my favorite podcasts that launched in
Speaker 1: the last year, So good go check it out.
Speaker 2: It's head ZiT Dry.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 3: The podcast voice the entire time. I don't even know
Speaker 3: what that is.
Speaker 2: You're in the pot, You're in the rock with the casters. Man,
Speaker 2: I didn't start on college radio, so what were you?
Speaker 2: Were you playing music or were you just doing like
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 3: I was playing music, but I was talking and I
Speaker 3: just bring random people in.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And my favorite thing to do was when I got
Speaker 3: crank calls from people is I'd find the number and
Speaker 3: call them back. I'd be like, I think we got
Speaker 3: cut off somehow right most of the I'm sorry, I'm
Speaker 3: sorry man, Okay, you're on radio.
Speaker 2: Whoa. It's always interesting to see that kind of troll energy.
Speaker 2: Were like, I only meant it for to go in
Speaker 2: one direction. The second you acknowledge as a person, it
Speaker 2: all falls apart a conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I was born on the Internet. I was
Speaker 3: ready for this, like right exactly.
Speaker 2: Oh man, who was that one dude who did those
Speaker 2: crank calls in the UK?
Speaker 1: That comedian?
Speaker 2: I remember, like they went viral over here in the
Speaker 2: internet era. Hmmm, it was like crah my, god he
Speaker 2: would do never mind, I'll find the thing. It was
Speaker 2: like Jersey Boys you're thinking of, Yeah, Jerky Boys, the
Speaker 2: Jersey Boys. I think that's a musical. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Look, my brain's not working all right. That makes three
Speaker 1: of us, that's right. Two five. What is something from
Speaker 1: your search history that's revealing about who you are or
Speaker 1: something you've recently screen grabbed that is revealing about who
Speaker 1: you are?
Speaker 4: Well, thank god you added in that second one just
Speaker 4: to really expand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what we're here for. It's good.
Speaker 4: It's good.
Speaker 1: It's like you're doing this for seven years, you know.
Speaker 1: It's sometimes we got to add a little wrinkle, like
Speaker 1: did you hear what I did with my voice at
Speaker 1: the beginning, the like deep thing, Like when I said deep,
Speaker 1: I made my voice deep. It was kind of.
Speaker 4: It's interesting you're like Bette Midler and how she kept
Speaker 4: just adding things to her repertoire throughout her long career. Yeah.
Speaker 4: She people say she was a triple threat. I think
Speaker 4: it's quintuple, far more than that. But but that is
Speaker 4: not what I'm here to talk about today. We're doing
Speaker 4: a Bett Middller special or is that the one of
Speaker 4: the books we can talk about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why this episode is called for the Boys
Speaker 2: in reference to the film and for the Boys.
Speaker 4: Thing from my I'll choose google search, I guess for
Speaker 4: this one, just because I'm a bit of a traditionalist.
Speaker 4: But I googled Steve Bonnet and he was a pirate
Speaker 4: and I thought he was a made up pirate from
Speaker 4: that show Our Flag Means Death, which was on HBO
Speaker 4: for a while, which was a very very very funny show.
Speaker 4: I think it just got canceled, but it was very funny.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's a good show on HBO after
Speaker 2: season most.
Speaker 4: Strangly and it's great. I highly recommend it if you
Speaker 4: if you want to watch it. But he was known
Speaker 4: as the Gentleman Pirate. And then my sister's boyfriend does
Speaker 4: like tours in Charleston, South Carolina. It was nice enough
Speaker 4: to give my wife and I and my mom a tour,
Speaker 4: and we went by this public square and it said
Speaker 4: here was where Steve Bonnet, the Gentleman Pirate was hanged
Speaker 4: by the neck. And it turns out that Steve Bonnet
Speaker 4: was a real pirate. This is what I googled. And
Speaker 4: he was a gentleman's pilot, a pirate in that he
Speaker 4: and he was a sea pilot in ways too, but
Speaker 4: I meant pirate and.
Speaker 1: To keep justifying the mistake.
Speaker 4: You made, make it longer.
Speaker 1: The pilots of the sea in many ways c SCA
Speaker 1: of course.
Speaker 4: But he was called the gentleman pirate because often pirates
Speaker 4: they just stole their ships or got them in a
Speaker 4: devious way. But he was a very rich man who
Speaker 4: wanted to become a pirate, so he bought.
Speaker 1: A shop playing as a pirate.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but he then became one where he at a
Speaker 4: shit and he paid his crew wages, which had never
Speaker 4: happened before. Where the pay for pirates was just if
Speaker 4: you stole stuff off another boat, you know, yeah, you
Speaker 4: get that.
Speaker 1: Just got that's your pay.
Speaker 2: Whatever you can, whatever you can fit in your arms, man,
Speaker 2: that's your salary, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 4: And yeah, he was a real got interesting guy. And
Speaker 4: I think it is funny when you will get history
Speaker 4: where it's like, oh, this person probably died at fifty
Speaker 4: or something. It's like, oh, no, this man is famous
Speaker 4: and he was like twenty seven or something when he,
Speaker 4: like just Blackbeard was a real pirate. I went on
Speaker 4: a real pirate.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was very two thousand and five, yes, correct,
Speaker 2: when everyone is like are you a pirate or are
Speaker 2: you a ninja? And that was a fucking thing people
Speaker 2: said seriously to each other, and I was like, get
Speaker 2: the fuck.
Speaker 1: Away from me. Neither. So binary like that was when
Speaker 1: the Internet was five years old and it had the
Speaker 1: same interests as a five year old.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, sorry, this is where we're at as are
Speaker 2: you pirate or ninja?
Speaker 1: Next we're going to be into race cars and bay
Speaker 1: can Yeah, it is true.
Speaker 4: And now it's starting to get like terminal ailments as
Speaker 4: it gets older, you know exactly, it's very sick yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: truly self despising.
Speaker 1: We're teenagers, right, paranoia in to our early twenties. I guess,
Speaker 1: exactly what is something that you guys think is underrated?
Speaker 6: I think you know, last time we were on here
Speaker 6: as Aaron was bagging on kids, and so I want
Speaker 6: to bring it back, so I'm not gonna but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: kids fine, And you know he was just basically like,
Speaker 6: I hate kids and so my underrated though? Are magnet tiles?
Speaker 6: You guys got the kids, you're familiar with magnet tiles?
Speaker 1: Yes, but I do not have a magnetic refrigerator.
Speaker 7: No, no, No, like magnet Legos, Magni incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, magnet tiles we do have.
Speaker 6: Yes, Yeah, I got a nephew. He's over at my
Speaker 6: house every Saturday, and I now believe I have the
Speaker 6: largest magnetile collection in North America. Wins and bins.
Speaker 7: You bought or he just has slowly been moving it
Speaker 7: over to your house.
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: No, I bought him.
Speaker 6: And then every time we start building something, we go,
Speaker 6: you know what, I bet we can hit the ceiling,
Speaker 6: and then he and I he's four, we get on
Speaker 6: Amazon and we find someone were like, all right, we'll
Speaker 6: be here, for next week, and so we just keep
Speaker 6: building building, and I think they're they're underrated because there's
Speaker 6: so much to take with Zaren's physics talk. You really
Speaker 6: have to think about balance and like all you have
Speaker 6: to be very creative in your thinking and it's not
Speaker 6: completely structured, and so I think they're underrated to way
Speaker 6: for kids.
Speaker 1: Imagine, yeah there it is so much easier to clean
Speaker 1: up than legos. Oh yeah, less painful, yeah, less painful.
Speaker 1: But they're all like kind of one of like five
Speaker 1: shapes usually. I mean that's that's a generalization. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be unfair to magnetiles do.
Speaker 6: A lot of tesselating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not like legos is just such a mess.
Speaker 1: Yeah magnetiles, how long for the days of magnetiles?
Speaker 6: That's my over rated as legos. Is there any reasons?
Speaker 2: Oh great, Yeah, that's been my overrated.
Speaker 6: Basically, legs are for losers.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 6: Here's my thing with legos. It's very limiting. They heard
Speaker 6: when you step on them, and then now I went
Speaker 6: to go get legos and for the kid, and it's
Speaker 6: like so much of them are pre set build this
Speaker 6: one specific thing, and it's really hard to find, just
Speaker 6: like the random Star Wars thing.
Speaker 7: It's instruction following when I get build a giant parakeet
Speaker 7: or something.
Speaker 6: Sure, but I have an accomplishment for the kid we're
Speaker 6: talking about. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't like rules.
Speaker 1: The kids, Michael Jordan's kid kids.
Speaker 2: Everybody should google Jordan, right, I only know that.
Speaker 7: As a meme. Is that actually what's the context for?
Speaker 1: He was in a shooting contest, like in a like
Speaker 1: at a basketball camp, and some other was like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: like you're supposed to let the win. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's on video.
Speaker 4: But could you movement for them kids?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Basically, But I do like Elizabeth, how this nephew of
Speaker 7: yours seems to be just like laundering all of his
Speaker 7: toy requests through you.
Speaker 2: Oh, completely, this is a safe house.
Speaker 6: His father, my brother, was at the store trying to
Speaker 6: get a birthday present for some other kid's birthday party,
Speaker 6: and he texted me a picture which one should What
Speaker 6: present should I get this kid? And it was like magnets,
Speaker 6: not magnet tiles, but like a magnet kit or like
Speaker 6: a headlamp. And I show my nephew. I'm like, dude,
Speaker 6: which one should he get? He said? Tell him to
Speaker 6: get the headlamp and then you get me the magnet.
Speaker 6: I was like, all right, I am a sucker. I
Speaker 6: will just give him everything.
Speaker 8: So yeah, I know, I know, and then you each
Speaker 8: return them to the other opposite store you get and
Speaker 8: then exactly yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other thing with Legos is like they're so they
Speaker 1: have such a monopoly across Like, so I got my
Speaker 1: like it was recently my year old's birthday, and I
Speaker 1: got him an action figure just like an you know,
Speaker 1: and he at first he was like, wait what, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't get it, but yeah, what do I
Speaker 1: do with this? But now it's like his favorite toy
Speaker 1: because it doesn't break into a hundred pieces when you
Speaker 1: drop it, right, and you can, but like Legos are
Speaker 1: just so like all their toys just dissolve into one
Speaker 1: hundred pieces when you drop them, and they're like impossible
Speaker 1: to like store anywhere, whereas this you like put in
Speaker 1: a drawer and then like pull it out. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's great. Yeah, it's good that there's like
Speaker 1: an interactive toy that like requires spatial reasoning and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. It is like, I don't know, I feel
Speaker 1: like it's too much at this point, like there's it's
Speaker 1: too and maybe that's just in my household because my
Speaker 1: other son is like obsessed.
Speaker 6: With Legos, well are everywhere. I don't trust big Lego.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, there's no way a company that big isn't
Speaker 1: like doing something.
Speaker 6: On somehow, like there are no good billionaires, you know,
Speaker 6: I don't trust them.
Speaker 1: Every fifth Lego in like a set has a listening
Speaker 1: device built out.
Speaker 2: I mean it was.
Speaker 7: Weird, but like, yeah, my daughter had one that was
Speaker 7: like build this eye tracking device.
Speaker 1: That's right, yeah, and then put it on your dad
Speaker 1: shop on line.
Speaker 2: Paul of you, what is something you think is overrated?
Speaker 9: Okay I might, No, I don't. Okay, it's not overrated.
Speaker 9: But like, who the fuck is going to watch the
Speaker 9: presidential debate this year? I don't even know what's happening
Speaker 9: with voting, but I don't want to watch.
Speaker 6: What are they going to debate about? I don't know
Speaker 6: what they're.
Speaker 2: Gonna even who can remember who they're talking to?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: All right.
Speaker 2: The first challenge is name the person standing across from you?
Speaker 9: No, just is getting there without falling over? Okay, this
Speaker 9: is the least like I've watched the debates before and
Speaker 9: I've like commented on them and talked about it, but
Speaker 9: I'm like, this is gonna be so utterly depressing, and
Speaker 9: also there's so much other shit going on, and everybody's
Speaker 9: mad at both of them for very legitimate reasons, like.
Speaker 6: Don't nobody don't just put them?
Speaker 9: You know those that celebrity boxing show that used to
Speaker 9: be like do that?
Speaker 1: Do that?
Speaker 9: See if they can get in the ring without falling over.
Speaker 1: Let's see if that works, aw man, purely stress based
Speaker 1: experience that will be of just like, yeah, I hate
Speaker 1: both of them.
Speaker 2: So much, Yeah, for sure, But then.
Speaker 1: Like also being stressed out. Every time Joe Biden starts
Speaker 1: a sentence, it's like, oh, fuck, how's how's this one
Speaker 1: gonna end? He doesn't even know?
Speaker 9: Yeah, That's how I feel about my stand up sets.
Speaker 9: I'm like, there's no fucking way Joe Biden's feeling the
Speaker 9: same way as me doing crowd work, Like who knows
Speaker 9: where this is gonna go. We're both like I'm definitely
Speaker 9: gonna bomb today, you know, both of us, Me and Joe.
Speaker 5: Biden, right, yeah that I don't know what those debates
Speaker 5: are gonna look like at all, And I don't know
Speaker 5: like they both think they're like, oh, yeah, watch this, y'all,
Speaker 5: You're gonna fucking love this, And I don't know if
Speaker 5: it's gonna render the results that they.
Speaker 1: Think it will.
Speaker 9: I am interested to see how he like approaches Trump
Speaker 9: because the last time he was like all fired up
Speaker 9: about Malarkey and he was like.
Speaker 6: Oh, shut up.
Speaker 9: And now it's like, will he have that confidence and
Speaker 9: ability to breathe through talking?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Yeah? Yeah, he has moments
Speaker 1: of energy where like this feels like a burst of
Speaker 1: I was saying this on yesterday's episode, but like this
Speaker 1: feels like when he was like that's it, I'm going
Speaker 1: out there. I'm gonna call press conference and answer all
Speaker 1: their dang questions man, and like he was good for
Speaker 1: good but like he did what he was hoping to
Speaker 1: do for like twelve minutes and was like and I'm
Speaker 1: out and then like came back to the stage and
Speaker 1: was like sundowning, And it's just like, yeah, man, it
Speaker 1: like doesn't he There's no way to be confident that
Speaker 1: he's going to be able to like reliably stand up
Speaker 1: there and not embarrass himself.
Speaker 6: You know that? Uh what do they call it?
Speaker 9: Like a second like a right, But when people are
Speaker 9: in like like dying and they're like in a hospital
Speaker 9: bed and then they get a burst of energy right
Speaker 9: before they die.
Speaker 1: Have you heard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like that's this.
Speaker 6: Entire term for.
Speaker 2: Wind yea.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm like, I'm getting your hopes up.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably for both of them too. They're like, we
Speaker 2: need this, we need each other to stay alive just
Speaker 2: a few moments longer.
Speaker 1: All right, let's uh, let's take a quick break and
Speaker 1: we'll come back and do some art criticism. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back, and we're back. We're back, and sort of recap.
Speaker 1: Google search used to be good. It was good, and
Speaker 1: I remember a time that that was like the tech
Speaker 1: breakthrough that everyone was like, fucking believe this shit, it's
Speaker 1: like magic.
Speaker 3: They feel like it was a slow bun. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: then it just was so ubiquitous at some point that
Speaker 3: it was just like people just assumed it would always work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, Yeah, there was like a time in the
Speaker 1: late nineties early it's where people were like, it's it
Speaker 1: was cool.
Speaker 2: People are like here, let me google that, right, or
Speaker 2: it was like a verb anymore, or like you knew
Speaker 2: how to use it too. It's like you gotta use
Speaker 2: quotation marks or got to use signs between Google foo.
Speaker 2: That's why I use alta vista.
Speaker 1: Actually that's what.
Speaker 3: Someone say Google foo, and sometime that's a certain kind
Speaker 3: of guy, right.
Speaker 2: But I mean, like, yeah, Ed, we've when the last
Speaker 2: time you were talking, we were talking about the rotten economy,
Speaker 2: and I know we've made mention of just how Google's
Speaker 2: become just worse and worse, and then your recent episode
Speaker 2: about how Google just became an absolute, just unusable basically
Speaker 2: ad service just because as some of the words I understood,
Speaker 2: and I was I was right there with you other
Speaker 2: times conceptually I knew where you were going, but I
Speaker 2: couldn't quite put it all together intellectually.
Speaker 1: So could you?
Speaker 2: Would you mind explaining just sort of this shift from
Speaker 2: this like code yellow change that occurred, or this code
Speaker 2: yellow moment into this basically glorified ad server we have now,
Speaker 2: But please explain it as if I am an ignorant
Speaker 2: person that was distracted by a toddler while they were listening.
Speaker 3: Problem. So the episode I wrote and the news company
Speaker 3: newsletter was about in two thousand and I'm now going
Speaker 3: to pull it up Slide eighteen eighteen, correct because the
Speaker 3: dates are important.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: So in twenty nineteen, there was a low called Ben Gomes,
Speaker 3: who is the head of Google Search. Ben Gomes had
Speaker 3: been at Google since nineteen ninety nine, so basically the
Speaker 3: beginning he worked directly with Sergey and Larry. He is
Speaker 3: and there are tons of articles about him where everything
Speaker 3: he talks about he's talking like a Renaissance painter. He's like,
Speaker 3: I believe the connectivity between dating, like he's so romantic
Speaker 3: about it. So on February fifth, twenty nineteen, he gets
Speaker 3: through a connection of events something called a code yellow,
Speaker 3: which is an internal Google thing that says there is
Speaker 3: a problem that's significant. There are higher codes, but they're
Speaker 3: extremely rare. Code yellow itself is actually pretty rare. So
Speaker 3: what happened was this code yellow was the revenue and
Speaker 3: ad side of Google saying Google Search, you are not
Speaker 3: making us enough money. You need to make us more money.
Speaker 3: And also, and this is very important, the amount of
Speaker 3: queries going into Google is not growing enough. Now, little
Speaker 3: side note for you, queries in this case is referring
Speaker 3: to the amount of times that people search. Now, if
Speaker 3: you think about it for just a second, is that
Speaker 3: necessarily connected to how good Google is not necessarily. In fact,
Speaker 3: if there are less queries, maybe Google's better.
Speaker 2: Any round what they were looking for, right, yes.
Speaker 3: Which does not work for Google. So Google is then
Speaker 3: in this little futz of the code yellow, and between
Speaker 3: Ben Gomes and some other guys there's a conversation where
Speaker 3: he says, hey, guys, I feel like Google is getting
Speaker 3: too close to the money. Google seems to only care
Speaker 3: about growth. And after about a month they resolve the
Speaker 3: code yellow, and there's a big email thread and there's
Speaker 3: a ton of emails that I'm just leaving out, but
Speaker 3: I'm sum racing as quick as possible. There's also on
Speaker 3: the sidelines this guy called Jerry Dishler, who was one
Speaker 3: of these noxious VP types who was kind of like, yeah, guys,
Speaker 3: we need to make more queries and we need to
Speaker 3: make more money, so could you just do that? So
Speaker 3: the code yellow comes to an end, and it turns
Speaker 3: out that the guy behind it is a guy called
Speaker 3: Prabagar Ragavan who was then the head of advertising, it
Speaker 3: a head of ads on Google. And Ben Going sends
Speaker 3: out a thing to a bunch of people who are
Speaker 3: all congratulating each other, saying we got through this great job.
Speaker 3: Everyone Brabaga responds saying, yeah, actually engineering did that. You
Speaker 3: didn't do it. He didn't do anything.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So so these emails came out through a Department of
Speaker 3: Justice is antitrust hearing, and I realized this is a
Speaker 3: lot of history. In twenty twenty, Brabaga becomes head of
Speaker 3: Google Search, and he then goes he takes over Google
Speaker 3: Search from this idealistic from the idealist who worked on
Speaker 3: Google Search from the.
Speaker 2: Beginning, right, So he came in, he was.
Speaker 3: Basically pushed him out. And also, to be clear, this
Speaker 3: queries metric is insane. Having more queries means nothing. And
Speaker 3: in fact, these emails kind of detail that he takes
Speaker 3: over in twenty twenty. Now, if you're really think about it,
Speaker 3: Google started to get really bad in like twenty nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, and has got significantly worse constantly since twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: End of twenty nine, well, mid twenty nineteen. They added
Speaker 3: this to mobile, but they put it fully onto desktop
Speaker 3: as well. In twenty twenty, they maybe changed to make
Speaker 3: it harder to tell when something is an AD on
Speaker 3: bribble now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I definitely noticed that change.
Speaker 3: They made a bunch of changes to make Google worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it used to be pretty easy. There was like
Speaker 1: a background. It seemed like pretty clear that they had
Speaker 1: a internal discussion and we're like, well, we don't want
Speaker 1: the product, we don't want to be actively tricking people into.
Speaker 3: Well they they it was funnier than that. They were
Speaker 3: just like, yeah, we need to see the numbers go up.
Speaker 3: Please make number go higher. Now, line go up now.
Speaker 1: Yep. But yeah, like during the two thousands, like it
Speaker 1: was like there was a balance of like, we need
Speaker 1: this to be a product, product that people want to use,
Speaker 1: and we need to make money off of ads. But
Speaker 1: they've hit a point where they don't really give a
Speaker 1: shit if it's a product that people want to use.
Speaker 2: It seems like it's that.
Speaker 3: And also within these emails, and again this is from
Speaker 3: the Department of Justice, is suit against Google for monopoly.
Speaker 3: So hey, what monopoly could they have? And what's really
Speaker 3: stark about it is what mister Ragavan's previous job was.
Speaker 3: So can you think of a what would the worst
Speaker 3: job that could be previously held by someone running Google Search?
Speaker 3: Just think about it for a second. You might not
Speaker 3: get it, but just think what is the worst company
Speaker 3: he could have worked for that isn't like, I don't
Speaker 3: know define actively. Yeah. Different companies, Like.
Speaker 1: One of the worst would be Google Ads. They're like
Speaker 1: driving revenue.
Speaker 3: Within this period, be not good at their job. I'll
Speaker 3: skip to it. Mister Ragavan ran search at Yahoo Watch
Speaker 3: two thousand and five to twenty twelve. In that period,
Speaker 3: they went from I think like a thirty three percent
Speaker 3: market share versus Google's thirty six percent to literally doing
Speaker 3: a deal where bing would power Yahoo.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, let me just say in fact check you
Speaker 1: real quick, let me go Yahoo that Nope, never said.
Speaker 3: She says he's great and has a huge dick.
Speaker 2: Crazy.
Speaker 3: No, but it's crazy because you read this thing, and
Speaker 3: you read this story, and you read the emails, and
Speaker 3: I was writing it and I was like, is this
Speaker 3: someone messing with This is ridiculous, right because the emails
Speaker 3: are so grim. There's one with this guy is engineer
Speaker 3: called Shashi Thaka who's like, can we tell Sundar Pushai
Speaker 3: about this and stop this? That's the CEO of Google
Speaker 3: and his former job was McKinzie.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're on the right side of a lot of things.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, bread prices, carton yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And it's wild because you've read this story and you're like,
Speaker 3: it couldn't be this obvious, could it? And the timeline
Speaker 3: is just perfect yea, And I will actually say something.
Speaker 3: I'm previewing, something I'm working on. The Only time I've
Speaker 3: ever seen worse than this story is in my next
Speaker 3: newsletter about Facebook.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, you don't have emails in this chain where someone
Speaker 3: is like, yeah, actually it's good. The product sucks, right,
Speaker 3: I actually like this, this is good. I've got documents
Speaker 3: where there's someone writing, yeah, here are the changes we've
Speaker 3: made at Facebook to increase engagement that made Facebook worse. Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: worse for the user and it and guess who guess
Speaker 3: what COO of Facebook Sheryl Samberg until twenty twenty two, McKinsey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no kidding.
Speaker 3: The people that run Facebook right now, or product managers
Speaker 3: or growth people. This is the This is tying it
Speaker 3: back to Google. The people in charge are management concerns,
Speaker 3: as people, revenue people. They're not the people who build anything.
Speaker 3: They are parasites.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's sort of like what yeah, private equity does
Speaker 2: to like any other business, Like, we don't know this
Speaker 2: business innately at all. We just know how to make
Speaker 2: the line go up, and if that means everything falls apart,
Speaker 2: like then great, well.
Speaker 3: They're going to do.
Speaker 2: We have the monopoly right right? What was the way
Speaker 2: that search human was making ads before or making like
Speaker 2: generating revenue before the ads or they're just saying we
Speaker 2: need to blaz themm so search.
Speaker 3: But to be clear, at this point, like twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: Search was making them tens of billions of dollars.
Speaker 2: Sure, it wasn't like it was.
Speaker 3: A fledgling business and they were like, oh, we got
Speaker 3: to grow up everyone. This was a business printing money.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It was a beloved product that everybody used. That everyone
Speaker 3: was like, man, I'm glad that Google exists. I'm glad
Speaker 3: that Google isn't bad, right, and it was almost kind
Speaker 3: of magical. You just find everything now because the people
Speaker 3: in charge are thinking, how do we keep people on
Speaker 3: Google more? How do we make people use Google more?
Speaker 3: Versus how do we make Google good? Yeah, it sucks,
Speaker 3: and it's across almost every tech platform you look at.
Speaker 3: This is because I spoke about the rot economy last time,
Speaker 3: but since then I've done a lot of work actually
Speaker 3: covering the actual rot. Because you can speak big picture
Speaker 3: and you can say, Okay, yeah, things are bad thing,
Speaker 3: bad people bad, look at bad person. But when you
Speaker 3: see in start writing how these people act and the grimness,
Speaker 3: the craven nature of the way these people work, it's
Speaker 3: it's stomach churning turning. I forget which one it is,
Speaker 3: and it's just it's disgraceful. But also, these people have names.
Speaker 3: I genuinely think that just by saying Propagar, Ragvans and
Speaker 3: uppershy all them, Ryl Sandberg, last Batter, Drump like, all
Speaker 3: of these people have names. I'm not saying do anything.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying that I genuinely think that they will
Speaker 3: stop doing quite as many bad things if we keep
Speaker 3: saying it. Right, because Probaca for a man who runs
Speaker 3: an one hundred billion dollars a quarter, I think revenue
Speaker 3: property just Google Search. He is very, very quiet. No
Speaker 3: one had really heard of it. He'd be mentioned as
Speaker 3: a Wired art call. There was a ZDNA art call
Speaker 3: that called him Yahoo's search master, which is one of
Speaker 3: the funniest things considering.
Speaker 2: How bad Yahoo got afterwards.
Speaker 3: Right, But these people, I'm not saying anything should happen.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying talk about them, saying their names will
Speaker 3: shame them, and perhaps they won't feel much shame. But
Speaker 3: the more that these people are called out for these
Speaker 3: specific actions, I think change can actually happen. And also
Speaker 3: Google's in a real pickle right now, like they they
Speaker 3: have buggered Search up quite horribly, if I'm honest. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 3: I've never seen a product get destroyed this badly other
Speaker 3: than Facebook.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think, like, if ads are the
Speaker 2: guiding principle, I guess it, does that mean it's bad
Speaker 2: for people looking for information? If if part of it
Speaker 2: means they're getting the best deal on the one of
Speaker 2: those indoor silent basketballs, you know, just being serviced to them.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to find the good and the bad. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but that's the thing. So advertising itself is not evil,
Speaker 3: and for a while it wasn't perfect. I mean anyway, it's.
Speaker 2: An ad in a second, But.
Speaker 3: I mean, I definitely can't with ads on ads on
Speaker 3: better offline. Sorry, everyone, there's a lot of them. I
Speaker 3: don't control it. But advertising has always been a problem
Speaker 3: for Search. In the original Google paper, written by Sergey
Speaker 3: Brin and Larry Page, they literally say that advertising can
Speaker 3: create the wrong incentive for Google.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's yeah, it's the main conflict at the center
Speaker 1: of the entire business. Like, this is not coming out
Speaker 1: of nowhere. This is like a long held battle where
Speaker 1: they had people in positions of power who were just
Speaker 1: knew this was the battle. They were like, there's going
Speaker 1: to be add people or money people who are going
Speaker 1: to be constantly pushing us to decrease the quality of
Speaker 1: the service we provide customers so that we can, you know,
Speaker 1: make our ads more effective at getting them to click right.
Speaker 1: Like that's basically what it comes down to.
Speaker 3: I think what it is is that, yeah, there was
Speaker 3: always going to be some profit incentive. I don't think
Speaker 3: that's possible to avoid, but it was a fairer trade.
Speaker 3: It felt like it wasn't so utterly craven. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: that's the thing. It's when you look at how they've acted,
Speaker 3: especially in these emails, and it's where's your head dot
Speaker 3: at look for the man who killed Google Search, or
Speaker 3: listen to the podcast these emails. The people fighting against
Speaker 3: this are saying things out of a disaster movie. They're like,
Speaker 3: I'm afraid that all we care about is growth. Money
Speaker 3: is the money is getting too close the search ads
Speaker 3: are getting too close to the Search. Is there any
Speaker 3: way we can stop this. I'm not signing up to
Speaker 3: this kind of thing. This will create bad incentives. All
Speaker 3: of the warnings of that, and then some guys like noh,
Speaker 3: kram it, you're going to work. And now Ben Gomes
Speaker 3: is SVP of education, you know Google's education like that, Sure,
Speaker 3: we all have interfaced with Google's education problem. I'm on
Speaker 3: the island from the prisoner, right, he's gone. This man
Speaker 3: has been put in a box, probably because they can't
Speaker 3: fire him, and he's much more valuable in the corner
Speaker 3: than he is out there talking to people like me. Yeah,
Speaker 3: right right, because I would absolutely I would be on
Speaker 3: a plane to go and talk to it. But hey,
Speaker 3: Ben goes.
Speaker 1: But it's the same thing. We've talked about this with
Speaker 1: DEI and you know other you know, with environmental policies,
Speaker 1: when companies are asked to pay attention to the environmental impact,
Speaker 1: it will be popular and it will be entertained by
Speaker 1: them for while, you know, like for Google, it lasted
Speaker 1: almost an entire decade. But like that was the main
Speaker 1: battle that's happening within Search is like, Okay, we're trying
Speaker 1: to make this product better. The money people are trying
Speaker 1: to you know, take it over, and eventually it just
Speaker 1: they wear you down because Wall Street is ultimately the
Speaker 1: thing that the people at the very top end up
Speaker 1: getting kind of inundated with to the point that it's like, what,
Speaker 1: you know, it's their entire incentive structure. So just feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole thing is just management people and above conjugating
Speaker 1: the desires of Wall Street down through the people who
Speaker 1: are actually building products that customers use. And you know,
Speaker 1: basically that is the conflict that we're seeing happen over
Speaker 1: and over again. And the people who care about the
Speaker 1: quality of the product, or care about the initiative to
Speaker 1: make their company more diverse, or the people or who
Speaker 1: care about the environmental impact of their company like that
Speaker 1: eventually always seems like it gets drummed out by Wall
Speaker 1: Street and gets treated as unrealistic and idealistic and childish
Speaker 1: by Wall Street, who ends up only caring about profitability.
Speaker 3: And what's crazy is Wall Street loves plenty of very
Speaker 3: bad companies. Tesla is a garbage company, but it's a
Speaker 3: meme stock. Now it does no connection to reality, right
Speaker 3: meta as a company has burned like fifteen billion dollars.
Speaker 3: I think or something like that on the metaverse, which
Speaker 3: is never happening. But also they have made Facebook and
Speaker 3: Instagram borderline unusable, and Wall Street loves them because they
Speaker 3: print money. What's insane is all these companies had to
Speaker 3: do was provide a decent service and just make them better,
Speaker 3: and they could just print money run them like a casino,
Speaker 3: like just we don't want to mess with the winning formula.
Speaker 3: That's why casinos look the way they do for so long,
Speaker 3: because they have a supply and demand thing and they
Speaker 3: work it very nicely, but they know touching that little
Speaker 3: balance canno the whole thing off. And it's crazy. It
Speaker 3: makes me feel a little bit crazy, like it does because,
Speaker 3: as I mentioned earlier, when I wrote The Row Economy,
Speaker 3: I had a few public things and I looked at
Speaker 3: and I was like, yeah, this makes sense. This is
Speaker 3: this is a strong theory. It's backed up by things
Speaker 3: I've read seeing it in action, really, and I'm already
Speaker 3: kind of pissy. I'm kind of a pissy missy by before,
Speaker 3: but reading what they're doing, and like some of these
Speaker 3: Facebook things I've got coming as well. That company. I
Speaker 3: used to think that Google was the worst them, but
Speaker 3: Facebook is Mark Zuckerbook's genuinely evil, as are all the
Speaker 3: people and Glit and Schultz and all these other people.
Speaker 3: There are so many people at Facebook who are just
Speaker 3: do not care. They don't care about the user. I
Speaker 3: kind of admire that there are people at Google who
Speaker 3: do right, and I think that only makes what Brabagara
Speaker 3: Ragavan did more evil because he's just like na, Nah,
Speaker 3: don't listen to the bloke who built this crap. No,
Speaker 3: make more money, now, make money, now, make money, now,
Speaker 3: make money for the machine. So I could make the
Speaker 3: search engine worse and get more money, now what. And
Speaker 3: all they had to do was just kind of leave
Speaker 3: it alone. But guess what, that doesn't create eternal growth
Speaker 3: in the street. Also, the real change was twenty fifteen
Speaker 3: when Sundark men, mckenzy boy and the McKenzie people. The
Speaker 3: moment they touch it, they got the brown midas touch
Speaker 3: turns everything to poopy. It sucks. It sucks so bad.
Speaker 3: Because they didn't have to do this, they could have
Speaker 3: still Google would probably if they left it in a
Speaker 3: good condition and didn't really touch it for seven years,
Speaker 3: probably still print like sixty seventy eight billion dollars a quarter.
Speaker 3: Because it's so ubiquitous. They pay Apple like ten billion dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think to make it exclusive on iPhone as well.
Speaker 3: It's just insane. It's really insane. And I think the
Speaker 3: especially given what I've seen with the Facebook stuff, much
Speaker 3: of it already out there, is I reckon behind the curtain.
Speaker 3: There's a lot companies like this. I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 3: if the Boeing stuff is going to reveal a lot
Speaker 3: more like this as well. But within the tech industry,
Speaker 3: this is what is happening, and this is what happens
Speaker 3: when you don't have the people who build stuff running
Speaker 3: software or hardware, you just get McKinsey scam artists who
Speaker 3: crap up everything forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the same thing that happened that's happened
Speaker 2: with the film industry, where people in like the marketing
Speaker 2: accounting departments displaced the actual creatives who are developing films,
Speaker 2: and they're like, no, no, no, no, no, these are the
Speaker 2: movies that make the line go up. Do you know
Speaker 2: anything about movies or stories like you?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: Let me give you a good example. Microsoft, they just
Speaker 3: shut down a number of studios, including the one I
Speaker 3: forget what the name. Tokyo based studio called that made
Speaker 3: a game called Hi Fi Rush, incredibly successful first party
Speaker 3: title exclusive to Xbox NPC. Of course, great game. They
Speaker 3: shut down the studio and a bunch of other ones
Speaker 3: then immediately the next day, and I think the Verge
Speaker 3: had this one as what it was like. Microsoft says
Speaker 3: they need to make more games like the one that
Speaker 3: the studio they shut down. Mate, Like they were like,
Speaker 3: we need smaller indie games that people love, right, And
Speaker 3: it's like you just killed the company that did you
Speaker 3: And it's so obvious, and it's so obvious, and also
Speaker 3: I'm not even sure it's good business, right, I'm not
Speaker 3: sure they're actually making or saving more money.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well Google, yeah, they're definitely making money handover. This same
Speaker 3: thing with Facebook, but these things with game studios in particular,
Speaker 3: and the same with entertainment. It's like, you're not actually
Speaker 3: making money off of this. You're just like, I gotta
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get fined fifty million dollars somewhere. Can we
Speaker 3: just kill that movie we filmed? Yeah, exactly, we just
Speaker 3: not release it. Can we take that off tax return?
Speaker 3: The other should close that loophole by the way. That's
Speaker 3: if I can't deduct a boat, they shouldn't be able
Speaker 3: to Deduck Wiley Coyote and his courtroom drama.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not the other one.
Speaker 3: But also the other thing is I think all these
Speaker 3: tech companies don't realize at some point people are not
Speaker 3: going to care anymore. They're going to stop using these
Speaker 3: products and they're not going to come back. Right but
Speaker 3: that but the actual use user churn is going to happen.
Speaker 1: So that would require them to no longer be a monopoly. Right.
Speaker 1: It feels like that's the thing that like the actual
Speaker 1: anti trust lawsuits need to like come through and actually
Speaker 1: make it so that they don't have these enormous.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's never gonna happen, right. However, the thing
Speaker 3: that will, I think is not what people are expecting is, oh,
Speaker 3: they'll stop. They won't stop using Google because they need
Speaker 3: a search engine unless they don't, right, unless people just
Speaker 3: change their habits to move away from search engines. Now
Speaker 3: that search engines are bad, right, if they don't use
Speaker 3: Facebook anymore. Like you've used Facebook recently, I'm sure it's terrible.
Speaker 3: You can't even see the people you want to see.
Speaker 3: Same with Instagram, I mean you run an account for
Speaker 3: the daily Zeitgeist. I'm sure you know. You put it
Speaker 3: out and you're like, of the thousands of people that
Speaker 3: follow you, like twelve see it because of the algorithm. Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: at some point people just gonna go, I don't care,
Speaker 3: I just won't use that. Facebook has already had churn.
Speaker 3: They've had over the last ten years, a decent amount
Speaker 3: of churn. They've picked up new users, but it can.
Speaker 2: Go the other way.
Speaker 3: And the problem that these companies have is none of
Speaker 3: the people who built any of it, with Facebook being
Speaker 3: the exception, they're just a completely different animal. For the
Speaker 3: most part, the people who built these companies aren't there anymore,
Speaker 3: or they've been shoved in the corner and going out
Speaker 3: to the public and saying, hi, guys, So Google search blue.
Speaker 3: It was so bad, but it's good now. People are
Speaker 3: gonna be like, yeah, sure, mate.
Speaker 1: Pull Dominos pizza. We understand our product has been bad.
Speaker 1: That's because we're trying to save money. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just very depressing. It The whole thing makes
Speaker 3: me very angry. But hey, it's it's broadcast baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah. All right, let's say let's take a quick break,
Speaker 1: because I do want to talk about and Ron Musk
Speaker 1: and what's going on over there. We will be right back.
Speaker 1: Is the green microphone for Eagles?
Speaker 4: It's it is my favorite color and also my favorite
Speaker 4: team's color. My favorite like green, everything?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Green?
Speaker 4: I love green? Greenies over a green, huge green.
Speaker 1: It's your favorite color. I don't think I've ever asked
Speaker 1: you that, what's your favorite color? Bro?
Speaker 2: Don't don't, don't start like you care now you know
Speaker 2: what I mean?
Speaker 1: Is it gray? I know?
Speaker 2: You idiot?
Speaker 1: The orange idiot.
Speaker 2: I love orange.
Speaker 1: Orange is near the top.
Speaker 2: Orange is good. I love orange. Don't just say that now, Jack, Now.
Speaker 1: I got a little orange flower right here. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: orange sun flowers, orange star flowers, what they're called? All right?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 4: Is that why you have Netherlands jerseys?
Speaker 1: Miles?
Speaker 2: I do like I that is aside from the fact
Speaker 2: that there are a lot of like like you know,
Speaker 2: some legendary players that have played for the Netherlands. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I like, yeah, that's one reason I like to wear
Speaker 2: that jersey. Come like, yeah, like nice, you can't not
Speaker 2: everybody can pull orange off. And you know what I
Speaker 2: think it was? It was it took one ex girlfriend
Speaker 2: to say I looked good in orange to be like, yes,
Speaker 2: now I'm taking risks. Baby used to wear blue. I
Speaker 2: used to I'm not joking. I used to only wear
Speaker 2: fucking blue, like only blue, not even because I thought
Speaker 2: I was like some kind of like a crip or whatever.
Speaker 2: I was just so such boy that I was like,
Speaker 2: blue is my favorite. And then like if I'm feeling blue, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll wear Carolina or I call the Carolina blue. Yeah, baby, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: Carol Wallace.
Speaker 1: Blue.
Speaker 2: I'm wearing to be Supper's blue. But then yeah, and
Speaker 2: then it took this one one ex to be like, wow,
Speaker 2: you look really good. And then like her friend we
Speaker 2: went out like to a like a bar or something there.
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, orange shirt, I like that on you.
Speaker 1: And I was like I'm I'm the orange. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: there it is. You can control my behavior. So with
Speaker 1: one on something i'm wearing, I will wear nothing else
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 2: I stopped shaving my shitty beard because someone in college
Speaker 2: was like I was like, oh, it looks like terrible.
Speaker 1: She's like no.
Speaker 2: I kind of remember thinking like, oh, what's up with him?
Speaker 2: Because he had like the interesting facial hair, and I
Speaker 2: was like, do you mean because it looks so shitty.
Speaker 1: She's like, well, you know, but it was. It was
Speaker 1: interesting and for a while I thought that was the movie.
Speaker 1: It's not wonder they must know right there, like yeah,
Speaker 1: they're probably like yo, I could visit this idiot to
Speaker 1: wear orange and not shave his stupid ass beer.
Speaker 4: Someone said it was funny when I was six and
Speaker 4: I'm still doing stand up, like what are you doing?
Speaker 2: Exactly right? Yeah, yeah, look at this now.
Speaker 1: All right, I don't know. Are we where we all were?
Speaker 1: We always back is the question.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter back, We've been back, never been away.
Speaker 2: All right, we're back, We're but back to the news.
Speaker 1: We have important news. A restaurant in Las Vegas promised
Speaker 1: a bluey Day and it ended up being not so great.
Speaker 1: Those kind of yeah, it kind of Wonka experience ish that,
Speaker 1: but not I don't know, like this, this feels a
Speaker 1: little different to me.
Speaker 2: That's why that's why I wanted to bring it to
Speaker 2: to this Triumvirate of great minds. Is because ever since
Speaker 2: that Wonka experience in Glasgow, I've always just been dubious
Speaker 2: of like any event that's like gear towards kids. It's like,
Speaker 2: and we've got characters that you can check out. And yeah,
Speaker 2: this hot dog place they said, Hey, it's called dirt Dog.
Speaker 2: They're like, yo, Blue Day, watch Bluey all afternoon face painting,
Speaker 2: gave Blue giveaways, Meet the Bluey, Meet Blue and friends.
Speaker 2: So guess what the parents showed up And now you
Speaker 2: can already guess how this ends, because why the fuck
Speaker 2: would we talk about a successful blue event? No, it
Speaker 2: was no good.
Speaker 1: It was so good. It was amazing.
Speaker 2: The kids had such a good time.
Speaker 1: Well, the last work by the people in the suits
Speaker 1: was incredible.
Speaker 2: I'll just play this clip from the local news. It
Speaker 2: starts off with a little girl saying, how like upset
Speaker 2: she was about the bullshit she was seeing in front
Speaker 2: of her.
Speaker 1: And I saw him like the sclor hill.
Speaker 2: I was mad, she said, I saw him and I
Speaker 2: just ignored him.
Speaker 1: I was so mad.
Speaker 4: Did he look like the cartoon?
Speaker 7: Did he look like what like on TV?
Speaker 9: No? He he looked like unexpected we could like hear fear.
Speaker 10: Sophia and other kids had the same reaction. The Bluey
Speaker 10: they expected was not who greeted them. On the left.
Speaker 10: This is a photo a parent took at an event
Speaker 10: with the popular cartoon character Bluey. On the right, it's
Speaker 10: a staff member of Dirk Dog in a makeshift Bluey costume.
Speaker 2: The kids were distraught.
Speaker 6: Some kids were crying.
Speaker 10: Some kids were upset, crying in their parents' shoulders. Three
Speaker 10: thousand people RSVP on the Facebook event. Crowds poured in
Speaker 10: for hours. There were lines outside in the heat. Inside
Speaker 10: concerns about capacity, from the face painting to baked goods.
Speaker 10: Many parents say they were underwhelmed and the free stuff
Speaker 10: got snatched up quickly.
Speaker 6: How could you do that to.
Speaker 1: Little kids? How could you do that?
Speaker 2: So when I look at it, I'm like, it's not
Speaker 2: it's it definitely does not rise to the egregiousness of
Speaker 2: the walka experience that was like the Wanka thing was
Speaker 2: like existentially troubling on the inside, right right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: this looks like a restaurant, Like it looks like a
Speaker 2: Blaze pizza on the inside.
Speaker 1: Right that just happens to like have be overcrowded and
Speaker 1: have some like like have a Bluey children's birthday party
Speaker 1: happening right like that?
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, I mean, you know, like the restaurants like
Speaker 2: this is the restaurant's apology made it feel less scared
Speaker 2: because I was like, is this a scam or I
Speaker 2: think this feels more like the restaurants I.
Speaker 1: Love this restaurant. First, it's called dirt Dog. It's a
Speaker 1: hip hop themed hot dog restaurant. That's great. I was
Speaker 1: I was hoping that there would be like more of
Speaker 1: an old dirty bastard vibe, But I don't know how
Speaker 1: you pull off an old dirty bastard vibe, like in
Speaker 1: a place that serves food but to kids.
Speaker 4: And then I want to trademark infringement. Then there's one thing.
Speaker 4: They'll have a bad event, but they won't. They won't assessence,
Speaker 4: I mean exactly, dude.
Speaker 1: That that was a question that occurred to me, is
Speaker 1: like where how the fuck are they? They reached out
Speaker 1: to the creators of Bluuie and we're like, hey, we're
Speaker 1: gonna throw an event with theyd probably get dinged for
Speaker 1: that at a mask, right, So this has to be
Speaker 1: bad news for them one way or another drawing attention
Speaker 1: to this event. But yeah, it looks like a Blaze
Speaker 1: pizza with an Eminem poster on the wall. That's the
Speaker 1: only poster that I couldn't see, just the.
Speaker 2: One like really like great, but you want a hip
Speaker 2: hop thing they have. Yeah, yeah, it's from the It's
Speaker 2: from the Encore album. Not even one of his good ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah the Encore. Nobody was fucking with that one.
Speaker 1: That just seemed like real cool though. Yeah, they were like, wow,
Speaker 1: Bluey's really popular. Good to know we won't fuck this
Speaker 1: up next time.
Speaker 2: And to know we're like, we're high as shit at
Speaker 2: our hot dog restaurant. It's on a whim thought, maybe
Speaker 2: this would be something for the kids.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: They posted on their social media quote, we are truly
Speaker 2: sorry this event wasn't to standard. We will work on
Speaker 2: improving all of the events going forward so we can
Speaker 2: bring you the highest quality as you all deserve. We
Speaker 2: appreciate everyone taking the time to send us your feedback,
Speaker 2: and some of the feedback was fuck you, My kids
Speaker 2: are so upset because you had some guy in the
Speaker 2: jank ass bandit pajamas. That shit wasn't even Bluey, because
Speaker 2: that was a thing that like the people, the complaints
Speaker 2: from parents, they feel like very American, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, Like we're shit, isn't that bad?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: But you want to act like they were like and
Speaker 2: they served us broken glass. They're like, Okay, dude, it
Speaker 2: was some dude.
Speaker 1: It was sure.
Speaker 2: The costume was yanky and it was banded. Okay, that's true.
Speaker 1: But they were you know, they were giving up.
Speaker 2: They were they had free sets and ship there was
Speaker 2: a good college effort. They weren't telling you anybody like AI,
Speaker 2: supernatural effects and shit were gonna happen.
Speaker 1: This is exactly what I would have expected from a
Speaker 1: free blue event put on by a hot dog restaurant.
Speaker 1: Excite think it's a bar. Also, I was looking up.
Speaker 1: I think it's almost more a bar with hot dogs
Speaker 1: at it. Yeah, it is just a hot dog. So
Speaker 1: you brought your kids to a bar, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean?
Speaker 4: It's not.
Speaker 1: Ya. But I do like the the part where the
Speaker 1: news report is like and many parents were underwhelmed.
Speaker 2: That is the story.
Speaker 1: That's the essence of the story. It was underwhelming, right right.
Speaker 1: Costume was a big miss, Like they fucked up the
Speaker 1: costume really badly. But that is not the level that
Speaker 1: requires a local news story. It feels like this is
Speaker 1: kind of coasting off of the power of that Willy
Speaker 1: Wonka story exactly. I think that's what I think everybody.
Speaker 1: That's that's why I was even like another Wonka story.
Speaker 2: And then I'm like this feels like it. Look, we
Speaker 2: get it. We we want everybody to we want another
Speaker 2: sad Oupa lupa at a bar.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 2: The costume is truly fucked, Like they really did a
Speaker 2: bad job with the costume. Yeah, the way that thing
Speaker 2: is cut, I would not have kids around an adult
Speaker 2: man in that in that car.
Speaker 1: No like his Yeah, the body of Batman is like
Speaker 1: a big mumu. But then the face part is like
Speaker 1: a flat paper like mask that's like rising up over
Speaker 1: his head because he doesn't want to like actually wear it.
Speaker 1: But look, you can entertain a three year old with
Speaker 1: a cardboard box and crans like that. That's an afternoon
Speaker 1: for three like you. So if there's this much anguish
Speaker 1: over an event is probably coming from like, you know,
Speaker 1: them reading your.
Speaker 2: Shit, you know, yeah, yeah, so I don't know anyway,
Speaker 2: just just get a fucking cardboard guys.
Speaker 1: It that fucking hard.
Speaker 2: You don't have to take a blue fest just y.
Speaker 2: I'm like always amazed at with like what the baby
Speaker 2: is playing with, Like he's got all these toys and
Speaker 2: ship now he just likes to play with the fucking
Speaker 2: weird stopper behind the door. That's like, yeah, that's like
Speaker 2: his favorite toy.
Speaker 1: Educational.
Speaker 2: No, he's fucking playing that ship like a fucking banjo
Speaker 2: or like mouth.
Speaker 1: Harp like the bassist.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you don't realize how important those doorstoppers are, by
Speaker 4: the way, until you break one. Because we have not
Speaker 4: had one in our door for like, I think maybe
Speaker 4: eight months, because the walls places it. Our neighbors, I think,
Speaker 4: are like that this is we have to go property.
Speaker 4: Dalus plummeted in the entire it's just the door knob
Speaker 4: hitting the wall is so loud and jarrings like.
Speaker 1: The dream Palace at the end of Inception where it's
Speaker 1: just like crumbling right, all right, And finally big news
Speaker 1: in the world of AI kind of. I don't know.
Speaker 1: They changed the voice basically. I saw like a headline
Speaker 1: a couple of days back those like open AI releases
Speaker 1: a new like flirtier chat GPT.
Speaker 2: And I was like, all right, like I don't un
Speaker 2: necessarily want the.
Speaker 1: Way you said that, like yeah, yeah, no, that was
Speaker 1: me being horny, but this one already Yeah all right,
Speaker 1: So they're releasing basically a new AI voice assistant that
Speaker 1: sounds exactly like Scarlett Johansson from the movie Her, possibly
Speaker 1: because they realize that people getting horny for their smartphones
Speaker 1: is good business. Possibly because Sam Altman is so sam Altman.
Speaker 1: I meant to talk about him more on our Tech
Speaker 1: episode because he's he's like a real He's a lot
Speaker 1: kind of exactly what Ed talks about when he's talking
Speaker 1: about like manager class people who pose as like I'm
Speaker 1: an engineer, I understand the ins and outs of all this,
Speaker 1: but then like doesn't like all all he's ever really
Speaker 1: done is like get Wall Street excited about an idea
Speaker 1: that he doesn't truly understand, or that he does understand
Speaker 1: but is trying to get people to misunderstand, very similar
Speaker 1: to Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: So ask sam Alton Freed exactly and we're done here.
Speaker 2: Actually that's we We got to go out on that.
Speaker 2: But all right, Blake, Yeah, just give us a song.
Speaker 1: Following the presentation, though he tweeted simply the word Her,
Speaker 1: which he has said before is his favorite movie. He's
Speaker 1: also the person who like talks about how he keeps
Speaker 1: a gun and poison pill on him like all the
Speaker 1: time in case the AI attacks, Like he just he
Speaker 1: his whole strategy is he likes to play up how
Speaker 1: advanced and like sci fi his technology is, even though
Speaker 1: experts in the field suggest it's basically just like a
Speaker 1: glorified autocomplete, But like he's borrowing from the cultural capital
Speaker 1: that sci fi films have given us to make billions
Speaker 1: and billions of dollars, Like it's the there's this massive
Speaker 1: market on Wall Street that is like based on all
Speaker 1: this hype around these things that I think he's like,
Speaker 1: miss I can't I can't tell if he's like wilfully
Speaker 1: misunderstanding it or like some of the reporting on him
Speaker 1: suggests he like doesn't really understand the code, So maybe
Speaker 1: he really believes his own bullshit and is like, finally
Speaker 1: we've created my girlfriend that has been wanting to fuck forever.
Speaker 1: I love her so much.
Speaker 2: Please tell me what I'm looking at. These are ducks
Speaker 2: gliding on the water. I mean, there's all like I
Speaker 2: feel like on Twitter, so many people are just dubious,
Speaker 2: like out the fucking Gate in terms of like what
Speaker 2: they like what it said it was doing, and they're
Speaker 2: like they're probably just training it on the like just
Speaker 2: these very narrow, these very narrow examples. But yeah, either way,
Speaker 2: like like you were saying on Tuesday, we're not past
Speaker 2: the point of fun party toy, you know, yeah, like
Speaker 2: that's like what it does. It's like, oh, man, get
Speaker 2: it to write a song about Jack's plumpers, and it's
Speaker 2: like even then, Zeitgang is even fucking better than AI.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, I don't look, no, you're not. You're
Speaker 2: not usurping anybody except for maybe, you know, being a
Speaker 2: bad visual artist or something. Yeah, they're usurping me. My
Speaker 2: My ability to write plumpers is pretty limited.
Speaker 4: But I'm sorry that zyk. I don't like hearing you
Speaker 4: say that I don't.
Speaker 1: About my friend.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do.
Speaker 1: But one thing open A. I had to walk back
Speaker 1: the claims that they I was designed to sound like
Speaker 1: Scarlett Johansson because obviously they get sued if they didn't.
Speaker 1: So they're like, we've had these voices forever. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that this is not just open aye. Like cyber Truck.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk was like, this is the truck from Blade Runner, right,
Speaker 1: which is like set in a depressing healthscape run on slavery.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, but that's pretty tight, right, can robots consent?
Speaker 1: Whoa?
Speaker 5: Whoa?
Speaker 1: What the fuck did you get from the Here We Go.
Speaker 1: Yeah shit, metaverse is from all sorts of different sci
Speaker 1: fi universes, snow Crash being the most dystopian end upsetting,
Speaker 1: and now Her, which, like the movie Her ends with
Speaker 1: the protagonist realizing that he actually has to deal with
Speaker 1: the messiness of human relationships, and the AI is like
Speaker 1: abandoning humanity, right, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, if they should, they need to focus on like
Speaker 2: the cool shit I get, like the overarching themes from
Speaker 2: sci fi, but like one part was that I wish
Speaker 2: they could bring back are like the drugs from.
Speaker 1: Sci fi movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I dropped Report and he's like, oh, he wants
Speaker 2: some clarity, and I'm like, the fuck is that? And
Speaker 2: this dude was like fucking like watching his dead family
Speaker 2: and whole home video, like like, yo, let me see that.
Speaker 2: I don't need metaverse, but yeah, you know, I'll take
Speaker 2: I feel like a.
Speaker 1: Drug in Minority Report looked like a reverse Kazoo, Like
Speaker 1: it wasn't it like an inhale little inhale.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, like it like kind of
Speaker 2: shot it in your mouth.
Speaker 1: I kind of like that.
Speaker 2: I want more eye dropper.
Speaker 1: Drugs that.
Speaker 4: I also carry a gun and poison. I just hate
Speaker 4: my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's just in case I need to.
Speaker 2: Man, look at that. Oh man, I would my whole
Speaker 2: my teenage bedroom would have been filled to the pack,
Speaker 2: to the gills, was spent clarity inhalers Man.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, kazoo mixed with like a little with a vape.
Speaker 1: I guess I guess we have those. They're called vapes.
Speaker 4: Oh, I guess they are just vapes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Anyways, all right, that's gonna do it this week's
Speaker 1: weekly Zeichgeist. Please like and review the show If you like,
Speaker 1: the show means the world de Miles. He he needs
Speaker 1: your validation, folks. I hope you're having a great weekend
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you Monday. Bye.
Speaker 8: Conder, doctor at a