[00:22.760 --> 00:27.840]  And you're listening to 99.5 FM WBAI New York.
[00:28.200 --> 00:29.600]  It's 7pm.
[00:29.920 --> 00:31.520]  Time for Off the Hook.
[00:38.080 --> 00:38.860]  It's ringing.
[00:39.400 --> 00:41.500]  So I ripped it off the wall.
[00:42.500 --> 00:44.480]  I cut myself while shaving.
[00:45.080 --> 00:47.100]  Now I can't make a cough.
[00:48.020 --> 00:49.840]  We couldn't get much worse.
[00:50.600 --> 00:52.460]  But if they could, they would.
[00:52.720 --> 00:55.400]  Bundi Bump are the best, expect the worst.
[00:56.060 --> 00:57.920]  I hope that's understood.
[00:58.260 --> 00:58.800]  Bundi Bump!
[01:24.560 --> 01:27.760]  Good evening, and welcome to this week's edition of Off the Hook.
[01:27.960 --> 01:30.740]  This is Red Hacked, sitting in for a manual at the board.
[01:30.740 --> 01:32.940]  I'm joined tonight by Mike.
[01:33.160 --> 01:33.460]  Hi.
[01:34.620 --> 01:35.100]  Arseny.
[01:35.240 --> 01:35.420]  Hello.
[01:36.020 --> 01:36.500]  Redbird.
[01:36.660 --> 01:37.120]  Good evening.
[01:37.660 --> 01:38.140]  Lynn.
[01:38.740 --> 01:39.120]  Evening.
[01:39.360 --> 01:39.820]  And Jim.
[01:40.100 --> 01:40.480]  Greetings.
[01:41.540 --> 01:42.520]  And Bernie S.
[01:42.660 --> 01:44.320]  is with us in Philadelphia.
[01:45.020 --> 01:46.180]  Greetings from Philadelphia.
[01:46.760 --> 01:47.780]  Are you down there, Bernie?
[01:48.300 --> 01:49.280]  I'm down here.
[01:49.720 --> 01:51.160]  Are you in a wind tunnel or something?
[01:51.260 --> 01:54.420]  I'm walking the streets, but I'll be in a quiet place in a moment.
[01:54.700 --> 01:55.000]  All right.
[01:55.440 --> 01:55.740]  Okay.
[01:56.540 --> 01:57.880]  Emmanuel is out of town.
[01:58.060 --> 02:00.260]  We'll hear more about that in just a couple minutes.
[02:00.260 --> 02:08.760]  But first, Redbird, what do you think is the least popular organization in the United States that's done a really bad job at public relations?
[02:08.880 --> 02:09.800]  The least popular.
[02:10.100 --> 02:10.800]  Least popular.
[02:13.660 --> 02:14.620]  I can't.
[02:14.680 --> 02:15.000]  I don't know.
[02:15.120 --> 02:15.560]  RIAA?
[02:16.600 --> 02:25.680]  The recording industry seems to have some really bad public relations people, but the Democratic National Committee, it seems, doesn't think so.
[02:25.760 --> 02:31.860]  They've, in fact, hired the recording industry's old publicity firm to run the public affairs for its convention.
[02:34.520 --> 02:45.560]  There's actually been a poll that the recording industry is the most hated company in America, and the name of the woman is Jenny Engbritt-Stin.
[02:46.140 --> 02:54.660]  She's been named deputy CEO for public affairs for the upcoming DNC in Denver, and she doesn't return people's phone calls.
[02:54.660 --> 03:00.040]  She just basically says no comment when they do get calls.
[03:00.400 --> 03:07.500]  So if you think that this is a great way to run your public relations, then you'll be proud of the Democratic Party.
[03:07.680 --> 03:09.520]  So if you don't like the Democrats, this is a good thing.
[03:09.660 --> 03:10.260]  I guess.
[03:10.440 --> 03:10.660]  I guess.
[03:10.720 --> 03:11.860]  Oh, thank you for the news.
[03:12.440 --> 03:14.400]  You know, I'm here to make you happy, Jim.
[03:14.980 --> 03:15.740]  I doubt that.
[03:15.740 --> 03:24.460]  But anyway, if you do like the Democrats and maybe think they should do a better job, you can give them a call.
[03:24.780 --> 03:27.740]  Their website is Democrats something.
[03:28.540 --> 03:30.440]  I just have a link, but I can't click it.
[03:30.700 --> 03:32.420]  It can be found on Google, I'm sure.
[03:32.420 --> 03:37.120]  Yeah, you can go to their website and let them know that maybe you think this is not the best choice.
[03:38.060 --> 03:45.900]  It's sort of opening up an interesting rift between the sort of blogosphere, which the Democrats have tried to harness.
[03:46.760 --> 03:50.100]  And I guess that site would be Democrats.org, the Democratic Party.
[03:50.260 --> 03:51.420]  That's more or less what I think.
[03:51.440 --> 03:52.200]  Result on Google, so...
[03:53.100 --> 03:56.800]  The Democratic National Committee is the technical name of the organization.
[03:58.340 --> 03:59.460]  And they're...
[03:59.460 --> 04:01.840]  The blogosphere is kind of upset.
[04:01.840 --> 04:04.040]  They don't like the recording industry very much.
[04:04.200 --> 04:06.420]  And now the Democrats are...
[04:06.420 --> 04:13.100]  I would think a lot of these bloggers have been sued, properly or improperly, by the RIAA for downloading.
[04:13.400 --> 04:20.660]  I mean, the RIAA has gone and sued people who don't have computers, people who are deceased, people who don't have phone lines.
[04:21.200 --> 04:25.920]  It's fascinating trying to figure out what the criteria is for getting sued for illegal downloading.
[04:26.060 --> 04:31.980]  Not only that, but the ISPs seem to be enforcing it on their own as well, without any RIAA intervention at all.
[04:32.260 --> 04:34.440]  Although it's a direct result of their actions, I'm sure.
[04:34.720 --> 04:35.280]  The bloggers...
[04:35.280 --> 04:35.900]  I have a theory.
[04:37.580 --> 04:42.740]  The bloggers do have internet connections, and they're alive, so maybe they're not a good choice.
[04:43.380 --> 04:43.680]  Bernie?
[04:44.720 --> 04:49.880]  I have a theory that perhaps the Democratic Party just wanted to hire a good liar.
[04:50.360 --> 04:50.920]  Ah?
[04:51.000 --> 04:51.580]  In public relations.
[04:52.420 --> 04:53.520]  They don't have enough?
[04:54.740 --> 04:57.500]  Apparently, they have never enough good liars.
[04:57.720 --> 05:02.200]  But the PR flack for the RIAA is a known good liar.
[05:03.000 --> 05:09.580]  And at least she's been successful in convincing the mainstream media of a lot of things, if not the general populace.
[05:09.580 --> 05:19.920]  So I think that's what the Democratic Party is well aware of her skills, and wanted to hire someone who is particularly deceptive as their PR person.
[05:20.180 --> 05:22.520]  The problem is, I think she's not a very good liar.
[05:22.700 --> 05:28.540]  She doesn't return the phone calls of anyone remotely critical, and she can't even make up stuff to tell them.
[05:30.420 --> 05:31.360]  Kind of weird.
[05:32.160 --> 05:32.680]  Strange.
[05:32.780 --> 05:33.220]  Oh, we'll see.
[05:33.560 --> 05:34.020]  We'll see.
[05:36.020 --> 05:37.680]  Political news from Norway.
[05:38.120 --> 05:38.720]  Norway.
[05:38.920 --> 05:39.240]  Norway.
[05:39.660 --> 05:47.500]  The Liberal Party, which is a sort of centrist party there, has put out a position paper advocating that file sharing should be made legal.
[05:48.220 --> 05:49.480]  In what context?
[05:49.580 --> 05:51.900]  Do they have any qualms about copyright infringement?
[05:56.600 --> 06:10.520]  The resolution was made up by the young liberals of Norway, and then supported by the vice chairman of the Liberal Party, who says, it is wrong to make an entire generation of criminals, and we have yet to ensure our rights.
[06:10.860 --> 06:17.520]  We've managed to make compensation models when the photocopier was invented, but we haven't managed to do anything about modern technology.
[06:17.680 --> 06:21.720]  The law must adapt to the citizens and the impact of technical innovation.
[06:22.500 --> 06:31.920]  It's interesting because file sharing is a very generic term, and it doesn't correlate at all directly with copyright infringement, because that can be done using any means.
[06:32.140 --> 06:37.140]  But it's interesting that it's kind of analogous to it in the context of legislation.
[06:37.420 --> 06:47.440]  I mean, piracy of software existed long before most people were on the Internet and were the peer-to-peer file sharing was out there.
[06:47.560 --> 06:48.160]  I mean...
[06:48.760 --> 06:51.040]  Bulletin board systems and stuff like that.
[06:51.040 --> 06:52.840]  Yeah, even before that.
[06:53.400 --> 06:53.960]  Exactly.
[06:54.200 --> 06:55.400]  Sneaker net, as it's called.
[06:56.060 --> 07:13.800]  When I first got on, the cutting-edge computer was a PDP-10, and you used to get software, even paper-punched software from another university or college that had a PDP-10, and you would just run it.
[07:13.800 --> 07:17.300]  It was technically infringement, but it was done.
[07:17.480 --> 07:29.340]  I mean, there were people, when I went to school, that took software, DOF software, AutoCAD, off of the engineering department computers, and they just backed it up onto a disk.
[07:29.340 --> 07:30.900]  Do you think they should be locked up?
[07:32.220 --> 07:34.220]  Do I think that the computer should then be locked up?
[07:34.220 --> 07:34.620]  No, no, no.
[07:34.700 --> 07:35.460]  The people, the people.
[07:35.700 --> 07:36.020]  No.
[07:36.320 --> 07:48.500]  I mean, I think that you should pay for what you use, but at the same time, you're not going to stop piracy in any way by stopping file sharing.
[07:48.500 --> 07:51.320]  There's always going to be a way that people break the law.
[07:51.420 --> 08:02.880]  Right, but the problem, I think, as the industries see it, is that with internet file sharing and with bigger, more bandwidth and just more people on the internet, the problem becomes much more rampant.
[08:02.960 --> 08:12.980]  I mean, yeah, you could still run around with CDs or floppy disks and trade them, but when something's getting put on the internet and within hours thousands of people have it, that's a bigger problem to them.
[08:13.240 --> 08:14.420]  Yeah, well, of course.
[08:14.420 --> 08:20.520]  But it's not, you're still running around sticking chewing gum in the dam.
[08:22.400 --> 08:33.600]  So, you know, I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't, it certainly slows down the problem of the things being stolen, but it certainly does not stop it and nor is it going to ever stop it.
[08:34.000 --> 08:42.060]  Well, what I like to see is when corporations, software corporations, bundle services with their software, which is what a lot of them do.
[08:42.560 --> 08:52.020]  Well, which maybe not a lot, but for instance, you know, Red Hat is a company that does not have any proprietary software, really.
[08:52.220 --> 08:53.680]  For the most part, everything is open source.
[08:54.060 --> 08:58.980]  And they, you know, they bundle a service with their software and they provide support.
[08:58.980 --> 09:04.480]  And they also hire developers that do open source work and produce a product that's entirely free.
[09:04.580 --> 09:05.540]  They don't care if you copy it.
[09:05.600 --> 09:07.000]  They don't care if you have the source code for it.
[09:07.040 --> 09:09.400]  They don't care if you modify it, you know, in terms of the licenses.
[09:09.400 --> 09:17.240]  And they provide a service and they're still able to, you know, be financially viable as a company because they provide something other than just the software.
[09:17.840 --> 09:26.460]  And if it wasn't for the ability to download that software without having to, for them to pay a fortune for the bandwidth, then that probably wouldn't exist either.
[09:26.640 --> 09:33.320]  But although file sharing, not exactly the same thing as people who are stealing it.
[09:36.560 --> 09:37.260]  Interesting time.
[09:37.320 --> 09:43.780]  I think this is mostly targeted at music more than software, although it's clear where your heart lies, Lynn.
[09:47.320 --> 09:49.100]  I got a letter in the mail.
[09:49.860 --> 09:51.780]  You got a letter?
[09:51.880 --> 09:53.980]  A letter in the mail from my bank.
[09:54.180 --> 09:54.880]  It was a surprise.
[09:55.200 --> 09:57.100]  It says, Dear Valued Customer.
[09:59.120 --> 10:00.120]  Dear Valued.
[10:00.160 --> 10:01.180]  Even more of a surprise.
[10:01.180 --> 10:01.940]  Very personal.
[10:02.240 --> 10:13.300]  You may have recently heard about a security breach at TJX Companies, the parent company of TJ Maxx, HomeGoods, Marshalls, AJ Wright, Winners, HomeSense, and Bobstores.
[10:13.560 --> 10:17.640]  We have been notified that your check card may have been impacted by this situation.
[10:17.960 --> 10:21.280]  This breach did not include your personal identification number.
[10:21.580 --> 10:28.200]  Although this breach does not mean your card will be used for unauthorized activity, we are taking action to further protect your account.
[10:29.700 --> 10:34.520]  Enclosed is a new check card with a new card number and our brand new design.
[10:34.720 --> 10:36.180]  Your PIN has not changed.
[10:36.420 --> 10:39.260]  Please activate your new card and begin using it immediately.
[10:39.680 --> 10:41.640]  Now, this is not common, right?
[10:41.720 --> 10:50.860]  Normally what they do is they send you a letter notifying you of a possible breach of your personal information and offer a credit auditing service.
[10:51.000 --> 10:51.340]  Isn't that right?
[10:51.340 --> 10:54.480]  I did not get offered a credit auditing service.
[10:54.640 --> 10:57.880]  What's really weird is I've never shopped at any of these stores that they mention.
[10:58.520 --> 10:59.380]  That's very strange.
[10:59.520 --> 11:04.060]  I don't know how my credit card could possibly have gotten to them.
[11:04.240 --> 11:08.200]  Obviously it was stolen by another source who used it at one of those stores.
[11:08.920 --> 11:09.900]  I don't think so.
[11:09.900 --> 11:10.980]  I would have seen the charge.
[11:11.180 --> 11:11.440]  Okay.
[11:11.580 --> 11:13.080]  But this is a much more effective measure, right?
[11:13.160 --> 11:15.020]  Completely changing the number on the card.
[11:15.180 --> 11:15.580]  I guess.
[11:15.580 --> 11:20.280]  As opposed to just offering a service to monitor if it's being used without your permission.
[11:20.280 --> 11:23.120]  Well, I guess if I were really worried, they could do both.
[11:23.300 --> 11:23.940]  Yeah, Bernie S?
[11:24.820 --> 11:31.640]  Have you contacted your bank and asked them why you got this letter, considering that you've never shopped at any of those merchants before?
[11:31.760 --> 11:32.480]  You know, I haven't.
[11:32.560 --> 11:33.740]  I just got the card today.
[11:34.160 --> 11:34.400]  Ah.
[11:35.360 --> 11:36.880]  Their response might be entertaining.
[11:37.220 --> 11:39.120]  Yeah, do that and report back to us.
[11:39.240 --> 11:40.320]  I will have to do that.
[11:41.580 --> 11:42.380]  They're very...
[11:42.380 --> 11:47.960]  They want to reassure me that they think the odds of anything bad happening are very, very small.
[11:47.960 --> 11:57.280]  It says there wasn't any personal identifying information stolen, such as Social Security numbers or addresses.
[11:58.060 --> 11:59.260]  It's worth noting.
[11:59.400 --> 12:12.800]  It's worth noting that whenever banks express a concern for your assets in this case, in this type of case, they're not expressing a concern about your bank account assets.
[12:12.800 --> 12:25.180]  They're expressing a concern about their assets, because if there's any fraud, they are legally responsible for eating it under Regulation E, one of the federal fair credit laws.
[12:25.820 --> 12:32.300]  And so they don't give a damn about your assets in your bank account, however large or small they may be.
[12:32.460 --> 12:36.340]  They only care about losing the money out of their own pockets, because they're ultimately going to have to eat it.
[12:37.280 --> 12:44.620]  It's true, but I don't even understand how they could lose any money if a database of credit cards from stores I don't shop at was stolen.
[12:44.860 --> 12:49.100]  Do you guys get free credit reports in New York and New Jersey?
[12:49.300 --> 12:54.960]  You can get them anywhere in the country by going to annualcreditreport.com, I believe.
[12:55.280 --> 12:57.940]  Yeah, I didn't know if it was free everywhere now.
[12:58.100 --> 12:58.860]  Yes, it is now.
[12:59.760 --> 13:05.600]  There's a whole big panel on the back of this letter encouraging me to go to that very website.
[13:05.940 --> 13:09.500]  Or I could call 877-322-8228.
[13:10.600 --> 13:13.180]  Like, you should see that they don't charge you for a card replacement.
[13:14.020 --> 13:14.880]  They better not.
[13:15.180 --> 13:16.420]  I don't think I'd pay it.
[13:16.740 --> 13:31.440]  But it, I mean, it is free, and it really is a good idea to catch it, because I had Verizon Wireless stick something on my credit report, and I had to go back to them and get it taken off, because I did not, was not, was not my account.
[13:31.860 --> 13:35.120]  Somebody had signed up for something and used my stuff.
[13:35.440 --> 13:41.620]  Let me, let me interject something here that's a tiny bit, it's a bit off topic, but it's about Verizon Wireless.
[13:42.360 --> 13:55.940]  I got my phone bill today, and they mentioned that if you have the one bill from Verizon, you have to call them and tell them that you want to continue the, the, I'm not sure how they phrased it, but the explicit enumeration of your wireless calls.
[13:56.460 --> 14:02.020]  Otherwise, they will stop doing that, and if you want it back, it will cost you nearly $2 a month to get it.
[14:02.320 --> 14:04.540]  Now, is it still available for free online, or?
[14:04.720 --> 14:10.140]  It will be available for free online still, but if you want it on paper, you have to tell them now.
[14:10.300 --> 14:16.200]  So look at your, if you have a Verizon One bill, look carefully at your paper bill currently.
[14:16.700 --> 14:20.600]  So you have, some people have this thing, they have the list of all the calls they make.
[14:20.800 --> 14:20.940]  Right.
[14:21.060 --> 14:23.680]  And if they call them, they can keep it for free.
[14:23.840 --> 14:24.040]  Right.
[14:24.260 --> 14:27.340]  But if they don't call them right away, they'll have to pay you dollars.
[14:27.600 --> 14:34.440]  They will be, they will, they will, they will have it available on the net for free, or if you want it back on paper, it will cost you $2 a month.
[14:34.860 --> 14:35.040]  I'm okay with that.
[14:35.160 --> 14:35.560]  $199.
[14:35.980 --> 14:36.740]  Take some cheese.
[14:36.960 --> 14:38.380]  They're very clever, these phone companies.
[14:38.380 --> 14:39.260]  Yes, they are, aren't they?
[14:39.340 --> 14:43.100]  You know, it's sort of like negative opt-out and all sorts of things.
[14:43.340 --> 14:45.080]  They don't charge you.
[14:45.080 --> 14:46.540]  They just stop sending it to you on paper.
[14:46.700 --> 14:48.940]  They stop sending it to you on paper and they won't charge you.
[14:49.020 --> 14:52.360]  But if you want it back, it will be a new thing and there will be a charge on it.
[14:52.480 --> 14:53.660]  And Bernie's has an idea.
[14:54.280 --> 15:08.680]  Yeah, Jim, did you ask, did you contact Verizon and ask them how much of a discount they're going to give you off your telephone service for the money they're saving if they don't send you paper bills anymore?
[15:08.920 --> 15:11.640]  Well, it's kind of academic because I don't have that.
[15:11.640 --> 15:18.940]  I just have POTS, plain old telephone service with Verizon, a cheap little bill and a cheap sheet of paper.
[15:19.260 --> 15:21.940]  No cellular phone with them.
[15:22.120 --> 15:22.740]  Hey, Bernie.
[15:22.900 --> 15:23.680]  That'll be next.
[15:23.900 --> 15:24.440]  Hey, Bernie.
[15:24.540 --> 15:28.360]  It's just like, you know, the reason they give you a discount when you don't use Rotary.
[15:28.980 --> 15:29.560]  Oh, wait.
[15:29.560 --> 15:30.200]  They don't do that.
[15:30.200 --> 15:30.620]  I'm sorry.
[15:32.620 --> 15:39.160]  They charge you more to use Touchtone, which costs them less to support than Rotary.
[15:39.480 --> 15:41.560]  You still have that in your state?
[15:41.740 --> 15:42.820]  They have that in New York.
[15:42.820 --> 15:44.840]  It says there's a charge for dial tone.
[15:45.240 --> 15:45.860]  No, dial tone.
[15:45.860 --> 15:46.580]  Oh, well, Touchtone.
[15:46.600 --> 15:47.260]  I'm talking about Touchtone.
[15:47.360 --> 15:48.520]  Yeah, we still have...
[15:48.520 --> 15:53.620]  The new AT&T still charges us for Touchtone.
[15:53.620 --> 16:01.220]  For Touchtone, as far as I know, as far as I know, I hate to say this, but I don't pay the phone bills anymore, so...
[16:01.680 --> 16:03.640]  I bet if you call up, you could get it taken off.
[16:03.800 --> 16:13.280]  I want to see about getting the charge for dial tone taking off and still getting phone service, because I make very few outgoing calls, so I could live without that, okay?
[16:13.480 --> 16:14.600]  Take away my dial tone.
[16:14.720 --> 16:15.820]  Just give me incoming service.
[16:15.920 --> 16:18.720]  You could try this, but I don't think you'll succeed.
[16:20.840 --> 16:34.680]  Bell South and the public regulatory folks in the Southeast are pretty much hand in hand walking into the sunset with AT&T, so, you know.
[16:35.200 --> 16:36.800]  Well, keep us updated.
[16:37.100 --> 16:49.120]  I will definitely find out if we are still getting charged for Touchtone, because I know for years my grandmother would refuse to pay for it, so you'd go to her house and she'd have the Touchtone phone and it would go click, click, click, click, click,
[16:49.200 --> 16:50.260]  click, click, click, click.
[16:50.820 --> 17:05.140]  You know, my father actually worked in an office where they refused to pay this charge, and they had the converter box so their tones would get turned into pulses, but at some point they decided to just take away the box and send out Touchtones, and the phone company is,
[17:05.280 --> 17:08.760]  you know, not capable of blocking the Touchtones, so their call still went through.
[17:09.140 --> 17:13.200]  Oh, I mean, at her house, you could push all the Touchtones you wanted, but no phone call I went through.
[17:14.240 --> 17:17.040]  But yeah, the phone system in my house, I can do the same thing.
[17:17.060 --> 17:22.220]  I can convert the touch tones on the phone to pulse.
[17:23.360 --> 17:31.480]  Or you can just hit the hook switch repeatedly if you're really good.
[17:32.520 --> 17:39.080]  So while we're on the topic of cell phones, this is an interesting story I found in The Independent.
[17:39.960 --> 17:42.900]  Let me just read a few introduction paragraphs.
[17:43.260 --> 17:52.200]  It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film, but some scientists suggest that our love with a mobile phone could cause massive food shortages as the world's harvests fail.
[17:52.360 --> 18:06.400]  They're putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other high-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world, the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops.
[18:07.180 --> 18:13.660]  Now, I think Bernie has a good explanation on why this, their theory is not true.
[18:14.560 --> 18:17.540]  Well, I used to, I actually used to raise honeybees as a teenager.
[18:17.540 --> 18:23.640]  I had, I had a hive with a couple of supers, which are the boxes that make up a hive.
[18:23.840 --> 18:27.620]  And I had 20 or 30,000 Italian honeybees.
[18:27.700 --> 18:31.280]  It was a popular domestic strain at the time.
[18:31.460 --> 18:32.160]  I think it still is.
[18:32.440 --> 18:42.660]  But I found those bees are very sensitive to their environment and smoke and things like that, which you could use to calm down when you were stealing their honey.
[18:43.080 --> 18:47.660]  But in any case, I kind of doubt that this is being caused by cell phones themselves.
[18:47.960 --> 18:50.580]  The cell phone signals are very, very weak.
[18:50.780 --> 19:08.440]  It might possibly be caused by the cell phone repeaters, the towers that we see on top of buildings and on tall poles, because they emit several, you know, several watts, 10, 20, 30 watts of microwave energy, whereas your phone is about two-tenths of a watt.
[19:09.460 --> 19:19.300]  And the problem with this theory is the United Kingdom has not experienced this flea of the bees, where there's just a vast disappearance of bee populations.
[19:19.580 --> 19:22.600]  And they have cell phones there, just as dense as we do in this country.
[19:22.920 --> 19:35.320]  And in our rural areas, where there is no cell phone service, in some areas, this problem has been occurring, where bees have been disappearing from apiaries, which is where bees are often kept.
[19:35.780 --> 19:38.280]  And they're disappearing in areas where there's no cell phone service.
[19:38.400 --> 19:39.900]  So I don't think there's any cause and effect.
[19:40.120 --> 19:41.880]  And I think this should really be studied.
[19:41.980 --> 19:44.940]  And there'd be no reason why this couldn't be studied at a pretty low cost.
[19:46.180 --> 19:51.060]  So if you have a beehive, hang some cell phones near it and see if they go away.
[19:51.280 --> 19:55.720]  I mean, I can tell you from personal experience, there are some wicked bees on towers.
[19:56.480 --> 20:03.120]  I mean, really, you get to a... if you climb antenna towers, you will find these things flying around at certain elevations.
[20:03.400 --> 20:08.280]  And it's... they don't seem to be wanting to not hang around the antenna towers.
[20:08.680 --> 20:11.140]  Well, maybe they're being attracted to it and thus disappearing.
[20:11.500 --> 20:12.720]  Ooh, that's a good theory.
[20:13.440 --> 20:19.780]  But also, I mean, there's a lot of, you know, other changes that have been happening in our environment besides cell phone towers being erected.
[20:19.860 --> 20:22.040]  And there's climate changes that are going on.
[20:22.380 --> 20:29.060]  And, you know, jumping... I mean, I don't know what the study looked at specifically as to why they attributed it to cell phone towers.
[20:29.080 --> 20:29.340]  Well, that's the problem.
[20:29.400 --> 20:33.220]  I don't think there is any specific information scientifically as to why it happens.
[20:33.360 --> 20:44.240]  Well, they're just... they're just saying that... well, the only concrete thing here I see is that Germany... German research shows that bees change their behavior when they're near power lines.
[20:45.240 --> 20:47.260]  But other than that, it's pretty good.
[20:47.260 --> 20:48.220]  Yeah, and that's such...
[20:48.220 --> 20:57.140]  That's a very different kind of electromagnetic energy is high power power lines that are high voltage power lines or high tension power lines.
[20:57.260 --> 21:04.660]  It's a completely different form of electromagnetic radiation than the really high frequency pulse radiation that cell phones emit.
[21:04.900 --> 21:09.980]  I think Redbird had a really good theory and a solution to this problem.
[21:10.760 --> 21:12.000]  Do you remember what that was?
[21:12.200 --> 21:28.520]  Yeah, I think... I think we should send the bees over here who are complaining about the 1850 and 800 megahertz radiation RF emissions to Europe and then collect their bees who are not appreciating the 900 and 1800 megahertz.
[21:28.800 --> 21:32.320]  Because the European cell phone networks use different radio frequencies than ours.
[21:32.500 --> 21:33.800]  They're close, but they're different frequencies.
[21:34.000 --> 21:37.680]  There's no problem in the UK with bees just appearing from their cell phones.
[21:39.280 --> 21:42.620]  Their bees should have, you know, we could send our bees over there.
[21:42.740 --> 21:43.480]  We're going to be very happy.
[21:43.500 --> 21:44.780]  And their bees could come over here.
[21:44.940 --> 21:46.520]  It'd be, you know, shouldn't be a problem.
[21:46.680 --> 21:47.440]  No problem at all.
[21:47.440 --> 21:49.900]  I'm thinking the Department of Agriculture might have an issue with that.
[21:50.040 --> 21:59.580]  But, you know, we can... You know, I see a potential PhD thesis here if you're either an electrical RF engineer or an entomologist.
[21:59.800 --> 22:11.700]  You know, maybe you should get together and subject some bees to 850, 900, 1800, and 1900 megahertz energy and see if you kill off the bees or not.
[22:11.860 --> 22:12.320]  It'd be good to...
[22:12.320 --> 22:13.700]  This is a really serious problem.
[22:13.840 --> 22:19.760]  People should... I mean, we can joke about this, but it's a really serious problem that the bee population is dropping so... plummeting so rapidly.
[22:20.040 --> 22:28.240]  Because without the pollination bees do, which is a lot of the crops that we eat, we're going to be in dire straits pretty soon.
[22:28.460 --> 22:32.240]  So bees are an important part of our agricultural system.
[22:33.280 --> 22:34.000]  All right.
[22:35.640 --> 22:39.500]  So we mentioned at the beginning of the show that Emmanuel is not here.
[22:39.780 --> 22:41.140]  Last week we spoke to him.
[22:41.220 --> 22:42.740]  He was in Beijing in China.
[22:43.120 --> 22:45.940]  And this week he is somewhere else.
[22:45.980 --> 22:55.000]  I don't want to, you know, say too much, but we were able somehow to record, to obtain a recording, I should say.
[22:55.200 --> 22:56.280]  We didn't record it ourselves.
[22:56.680 --> 23:00.480]  And I don't want to say too much, but here's the tape.
[23:02.320 --> 23:02.760]  Hello.
[23:03.760 --> 23:04.660]  Hey, my friend.
[23:04.740 --> 23:05.420]  You know who this is.
[23:05.920 --> 23:06.800]  Oh, hey.
[23:06.900 --> 23:07.440]  How are you?
[23:08.000 --> 23:08.420]  Pretty good.
[23:08.540 --> 23:09.980]  You'll never guess where I am.
[23:10.220 --> 23:10.660]  Okay.
[23:10.760 --> 23:11.140]  Tell me.
[23:11.940 --> 23:15.600]  I am in Pyongyang, North Korea.
[23:16.080 --> 23:17.280]  Get out of here.
[23:17.600 --> 23:18.840]  Yeah, that's true.
[23:20.060 --> 23:22.780]  I've got to say this call is extremely expensive.
[23:22.780 --> 23:34.860]  It's at least six euros a minute, but, you know, it's worth it just to say that this is the most incredible experience I think I've ever been through in my life, is coming to this place.
[23:35.420 --> 23:49.020]  And just realizing how much of what we've been told so far is wrong, is false, and just how so many people live in a completely different way.
[23:49.860 --> 23:51.880]  I'm just blown away by the whole thing.
[23:52.060 --> 23:53.700]  I mean, this is an alien environment.
[23:53.860 --> 23:54.900]  There's no question about that.
[23:56.080 --> 24:08.460]  But it's such a positive experience to meet people in a place that you've been programmed to believe is not a nice place, and you find out that it really is in many ways.
[24:08.660 --> 24:09.620]  The people here are great.
[24:09.780 --> 24:11.120]  The people here are very nice, very friendly.
[24:11.820 --> 24:17.420]  And you just sort of have to get your mentality into a state where you can accept the differences.
[24:19.000 --> 24:19.440]  Wow.
[24:19.740 --> 24:21.320]  Look, what are some of the differences?
[24:21.980 --> 24:29.660]  Well, I mean, basically, people have a different belief structure, a completely different belief structure than what we're used to.
[24:30.160 --> 24:34.620]  And they simply reason in a completely different way.
[24:34.980 --> 24:43.220]  I mean, I think they would be as hard-pressed to figure out our culture as we would be to figure out theirs.
[24:43.460 --> 24:57.440]  And that's why I think, like, I don't know, 95% of the people I know, I would not recommend doing this, too, because you have to change your expectations of what to expect in a place like this.
[24:57.620 --> 25:02.420]  I mean, you can't really walk around the streets by yourself.
[25:02.420 --> 25:03.500]  You have to have guides.
[25:03.820 --> 25:08.380]  But the guides that we have are so nice.
[25:09.080 --> 25:12.120]  If we ask to do something, we generally are able to do it.
[25:12.200 --> 25:13.620]  We're able to go various places.
[25:14.880 --> 25:21.180]  I've been taught that this city, Pyongyang, Pyongyang is like a ghost town.
[25:21.600 --> 25:24.920]  Nobody's around, and you never get to see real people in the city.
[25:25.120 --> 25:26.640]  Nothing could be further from the truth.
[25:26.780 --> 25:28.480]  The city is full of people.
[25:28.780 --> 25:37.200]  And something that a bunch of us discovered yesterday, we actually went to K-Song, which is by the demilitarized zone.
[25:38.320 --> 25:41.420]  And we were driving through.
[25:42.280 --> 25:44.840]  And we see all these people in the streets of this city.
[25:45.460 --> 25:46.820]  And they're looking at us.
[25:46.960 --> 25:49.420]  They're looking at us like we have two heads, because we might as well.
[25:49.540 --> 25:50.500]  We look so strange.
[25:51.420 --> 25:54.780]  And one of us just decided to wave.
[25:55.080 --> 25:58.900]  And before you know it, everybody's just waving back and laughing and smiling.
[25:59.060 --> 26:08.300]  And it's the most incredible experience in the world to realize that you're making contact with these people that ordinarily you would never be able to make contact with.
[26:08.720 --> 26:10.320]  And they're happy to see you.
[26:10.420 --> 26:10.860]  They're friendly.
[26:10.920 --> 26:11.520]  They're smiling.
[26:11.900 --> 26:15.660]  And it's just such a reaffirmation of the human spirit.
[26:16.220 --> 26:20.960]  And we just got back actually from the biggest event.
[26:21.680 --> 26:29.820]  I think I'm not exaggerating when I say that I just got back from the biggest event in the world, which is the opening of the Mass Games.
[26:29.940 --> 26:33.880]  Now, I'm sure over where you are, you're not going to hear anything about this.
[26:34.000 --> 26:38.100]  But the Mass Games are basically a stadium full of people.
[26:38.200 --> 26:40.600]  The stadium holds 150,000 people.
[26:40.880 --> 26:43.440]  I don't know if there's any stadium anywhere else in the world that's that big.
[26:43.700 --> 26:59.740]  But on the field and in the stands, there are tens of thousands of people performing amazing feats of gymnastics, dancing, coordinated movement to create pictures in the stands.
[27:00.180 --> 27:02.520]  It's the most incredible experience.
[27:03.300 --> 27:06.740]  So many people will never experience this, obviously, because they'll never come here.
[27:06.880 --> 27:14.720]  But those people who do, I think they know what I'm talking about because it's just like being on another planet.
[27:14.920 --> 27:18.480]  It really is like going to some other completely different civilization.
[27:19.500 --> 27:22.760]  And it's hard to put into words.
[27:22.880 --> 27:24.060]  It really is hard to put into words.
[27:24.700 --> 27:26.860]  And the thing I like to do, I always like to explore.
[27:27.000 --> 27:28.220]  I always like to go to different places.
[27:29.220 --> 27:33.780]  And Pyongyang, North Korea, it's got to be the strangest place that I could think of to go to.
[27:34.040 --> 27:39.360]  And it's just so uplifting to realize that you can get along here.
[27:39.460 --> 27:40.640]  You can talk to the people.
[27:40.760 --> 27:41.400]  They'll smile.
[27:41.560 --> 27:42.080]  They'll laugh.
[27:42.220 --> 27:46.060]  They'll ask you questions about your life.
[27:46.260 --> 27:47.900]  They'll talk to you about their life.
[27:48.400 --> 27:51.120]  And it's just a great thing to experience.
[27:51.380 --> 27:54.280]  And the kind of people that do experience this sort of thing.
[27:54.400 --> 27:59.560]  We're kind of kindred spirits wandering around the world looking for different things to do, different experiences.
[27:59.860 --> 28:04.660]  And a lot of us have been in the same places at one point or another, so we're able to compare stories.
[28:04.900 --> 28:07.000]  And that kind of thing right there is really cool.
[28:07.180 --> 28:12.320]  But one other thing, which is very interesting about all of this, I'm calling you right now.
[28:13.140 --> 28:15.640]  It's Saturday here, Saturday night here.
[28:15.840 --> 28:17.800]  We just got back from the opening of the Mass Games.
[28:17.960 --> 28:19.780]  Tomorrow is Sunday, April 15th.
[28:19.960 --> 28:28.160]  Now, April 15th happens to be the birthday of Kim Il-sung, who is the founder of North Korea, known as the Great Leader.
[28:28.760 --> 28:34.140]  And this holiday is the biggest holiday of the year in North Korea.
[28:34.400 --> 28:39.320]  So it's a real honor to be in the country on what is the biggest event.
[28:39.780 --> 28:42.200]  And there's a real air of festivity here.
[28:42.300 --> 28:45.440]  Everyone's dressed up in really nice outfits.
[28:45.760 --> 28:48.680]  And the city is decorated nicely.
[28:49.320 --> 28:55.260]  And it's really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take part in something like this.
[28:55.940 --> 28:58.140]  And I'm just, I'm really happy to be here.
[28:58.620 --> 28:59.060]  It's...
[28:59.060 --> 29:03.480]  It might sound strange to hear someone say that, but I really am happy to be here.
[29:05.220 --> 29:07.560]  That sounds, I mean, just amazing.
[29:08.900 --> 29:13.760]  What about, you know, parts of the culture in terms of...
[29:13.760 --> 29:15.540]  Like, I know you love subways.
[29:15.740 --> 29:16.900]  Did you get to ride a subway there?
[29:17.540 --> 29:18.240]  Not yet.
[29:18.240 --> 29:20.400]  We're supposed to ride the Metro in a couple of days.
[29:21.260 --> 29:22.280]  We got a little...
[29:22.280 --> 29:28.920]  Our schedule got a little messed up because the weather didn't cooperate and our arrival was a little later than it should have been.
[29:29.020 --> 29:33.100]  But they are trying desperately to get us to see everything.
[29:33.640 --> 29:36.620]  And really, you know, when you come here, it's an organized tour.
[29:37.280 --> 29:38.420]  They keep you running.
[29:38.600 --> 29:42.640]  You get up at like, you know, 7 in the morning and you're running until 10 o'clock at night.
[29:43.260 --> 29:46.280]  With, you know, several stops, you get food everywhere.
[29:46.380 --> 29:48.780]  People are very hospitable and friendly.
[29:49.180 --> 29:50.800]  But you are exhausted.
[29:50.960 --> 29:51.560]  You really are.
[29:53.180 --> 29:56.240]  So sometimes there are things that you don't get to see.
[29:56.340 --> 30:01.460]  Now, I happen to be staying for a fairly long time, a week, which is great.
[30:01.660 --> 30:08.740]  And we're going to see a bunch of different things, including a very historic mountain at the top of the country.
[30:09.200 --> 30:13.420]  And that's something I'm really looking forward to seeing, part of the countryside as well.
[30:14.420 --> 30:17.880]  The metro is definitely something I'm looking forward to seeing.
[30:18.220 --> 30:21.860]  So hopefully, next time I talk to you, I've all seen that.
[30:22.040 --> 30:32.280]  But really, the thing I want to convey here is that something I suspected well before coming here, when you just are mixing with the people, and I really am mixing with the people.
[30:32.380 --> 30:38.660]  In fact, when we got out of the stadium just now, we were in a stadium filled with North Koreans.
[30:39.200 --> 30:44.160]  And first of all, when we walked into the stadium, we were stared at.
[30:44.820 --> 30:51.180]  Not in a hostile way, but just people had never seen other people who looked like us.
[30:51.680 --> 30:54.240]  We stood out incredibly.
[30:54.960 --> 30:59.480]  And we just kind of broke the ice by waving at them.
[30:59.520 --> 31:01.540]  And everyone just smiled and started waving back.
[31:01.820 --> 31:11.420]  And next to the athletes and gymnasts and dancers, I think we were the big attraction at this place because we were just such an unusual sight.
[31:11.900 --> 31:24.960]  And then yesterday in Kaesong, the city to the south, we happened to be driving through in our tour bus and we passed this huge square where all these kids were practicing for some other dance festival.
[31:25.360 --> 31:38.500]  And I'd say literally 1,000 kids in this square doing everything from marching band to pirouettes and dancing, various things like that, they were all there when we passed by.
[31:38.720 --> 31:42.920]  And they gave us this royal reception as our bus went by.
[31:43.060 --> 31:45.360]  They were marching around and waving and smiling.
[31:45.920 --> 31:53.040]  I've never gotten that kind of reaction, whether I was by myself or in a group, from anybody in the world.
[31:53.040 --> 31:56.300]  It was just such an incredible experience just to see that.
[31:56.860 --> 32:03.020]  But really, walking around, like I said, I was in the stadium, leaving tonight, leaving the Mass Games.
[32:03.160 --> 32:04.920]  And we were just there with all these people.
[32:05.140 --> 32:06.840]  And we weren't being watched.
[32:06.880 --> 32:08.620]  We weren't being herded.
[32:08.860 --> 32:13.480]  We were in a stadium and we had to find our way out and meet up with our people.
[32:13.500 --> 32:13.840]  And we did.
[32:13.980 --> 32:15.260]  It was really simple to do.
[32:15.400 --> 32:23.420]  But it was just such an incredible experience to realize, hey, I'm here in North Korea and I'm actually with North Koreans, real North Koreans.
[32:23.760 --> 32:26.320]  And it was a great experience.
[32:26.320 --> 32:27.180]  It really was.
[32:27.360 --> 32:36.500]  But what I come away with this realizing is that these people are not our enemies by any stretch of the imagination.
[32:36.500 --> 32:39.060]  These people are very friendly, very open.
[32:39.340 --> 32:51.240]  It's just a question of learning to speak to them, learning to appreciate their culture and hoping that they'll appreciate our culture and just taking it from there.
[32:51.360 --> 32:57.280]  And I think that's always been the part that our various cultures back home have had a problem with.
[32:57.340 --> 33:00.480]  So I really, really hope that that gets resolved somehow.
[33:00.960 --> 33:02.780]  Because these are great people.
[33:02.920 --> 33:07.680]  I don't think anybody works harder than the North Koreans as far as making it work.
[33:08.960 --> 33:14.640]  With all the agriculture, all the farming that they do, they're farming on mountainsides.
[33:16.340 --> 33:19.120]  They're plowing their fields with ox.
[33:20.200 --> 33:23.100]  Oxen are basically pulling their plows.
[33:23.660 --> 33:28.780]  And it's incredible how hard the people work here to make their culture work.
[33:28.780 --> 33:34.740]  And it would be great if they could advance more with some things that we can share with them.
[33:35.240 --> 33:41.680]  But just seeing what they're able to pull off as far as the mass games goes, tells you how hard they work, how hard they practice at various things.
[33:42.220 --> 33:44.600]  And there are positive ways of doing this.
[33:44.700 --> 33:46.000]  There are negative ways of doing this.
[33:46.040 --> 33:57.960]  And I just want to see... I just want to see collaboration, I guess, between all the different places, all the different places in the world come forth a little more than it has been.
[33:58.860 --> 34:01.540]  I think it's a very big learning experience for everybody.
[34:01.540 --> 34:06.180]  I just realized, you know, I'm talking up a storm here, but this is not a local call.
[34:06.940 --> 34:07.460]  It's downstairs.
[34:07.860 --> 34:15.260]  In the hotel I'm in, downstairs, if you call the United States from North Korea, it costs six euros a minute.
[34:15.800 --> 34:21.320]  And they say, upstairs, which is where I am right now in my room, it's more expensive.
[34:21.520 --> 34:23.780]  I can't imagine what this phone call is costing.
[34:23.980 --> 34:25.900]  This is probably more expensive than the satellite call.
[34:26.860 --> 34:27.260]  Wow.
[34:27.820 --> 34:30.240]  Yeah, when I was on the ocean, I called the satellite phone.
[34:31.700 --> 34:33.180]  So, yeah, I'm going to have...
[34:33.180 --> 34:38.660]  I'm sorry I haven't let you talk at all, but if there's any other question you want to ask me, I really should probably go after this.
[34:38.820 --> 34:40.580]  Well, one quick question.
[34:41.240 --> 34:42.440]  Tell me about the food.
[34:43.080 --> 34:44.840]  Oh, the food has been incredible.
[34:45.020 --> 34:50.300]  They keep taking us to these places, whether it's a hotel restaurant, which is called Hotel Restaurant No.
[34:50.380 --> 34:51.600]  1 or Hotel Restaurant No.
[34:51.680 --> 34:51.860]  2.
[34:52.100 --> 34:53.380]  Not very imaginative with the names.
[34:53.580 --> 34:55.800]  But the food has been really incredible.
[34:56.060 --> 35:04.960]  Korean food, lots of small dishes, kimchi, various fish, meat dishes, all sorts of incredible things, soup, hot pots.
[35:06.560 --> 35:11.240]  And they basically take us to different places throughout the... wherever we happen to be.
[35:11.440 --> 35:15.280]  We went to a restaurant tonight before the Mass Games that was filled with people.
[35:15.340 --> 35:17.980]  And I realized, hey, we're in a restaurant with real North Koreans.
[35:18.120 --> 35:19.300]  It's not just a hotel crowd.
[35:19.300 --> 35:20.640]  This is where people go.
[35:21.840 --> 35:27.620]  I'd like to go to a place where some of the poorer people go, you know, not necessarily the people with a lot of money.
[35:27.660 --> 35:29.640]  I'd like to see what kind of food they eat as well.
[35:29.760 --> 35:32.780]  And I'm hoping to be able to do that in other parts of the country.
[35:33.940 --> 35:36.980]  But for the most part, it's been tremendously varied.
[35:37.180 --> 35:39.100]  We haven't had the same thing twice.
[35:39.160 --> 35:43.540]  I mean, we've had the same food twice, but we haven't had the same presentation twice.
[35:43.740 --> 35:46.860]  Like, sometimes it's lots of little dishes.
[35:47.100 --> 35:48.640]  Sometimes it's one big thing.
[35:50.180 --> 35:52.420]  They've been taking very good care of us as far as that goes.
[35:52.600 --> 35:56.820]  It's very structured as far as when you eat and where you eat.
[35:56.980 --> 35:59.620]  But it's also quite educational.
[36:01.380 --> 36:02.900]  Well, that sounds fantastic.
[36:03.260 --> 36:11.000]  I look forward to talking to you more when the price of a phone call is a little... Yeah.
[36:11.860 --> 36:16.540]  Well, I hope next time I talk that it's considerably cheaper than this.
[36:16.680 --> 36:24.600]  I should point out that when I made the phone call, you can hear the... when you press the buttons on the phone, you hear it pulsing out after you press the button.
[36:24.740 --> 36:26.420]  So everything is being converted to rotary.
[36:26.960 --> 36:27.400]  Wow.
[36:27.800 --> 36:31.520]  Yeah, I thought that was kind of a memory of the past.
[36:31.520 --> 36:32.920]  I remember phones like that.
[36:33.300 --> 36:34.800]  But, hey, you know what?
[36:34.840 --> 36:38.420]  I'm going to hang up and maybe, who knows, maybe they use 2600 hertz.
[36:39.560 --> 36:40.440]  I shouldn't laugh.
[36:40.560 --> 36:41.460]  It's quite possible.
[36:42.660 --> 36:45.720]  But, listen, thanks for listening to me.
[36:46.100 --> 36:46.680]  Oh, definitely.
[36:47.280 --> 36:48.700]  It's good to know somebody cares.
[36:50.380 --> 36:53.920]  And it's always nice to have a conversation with somebody back home.
[36:54.160 --> 36:56.580]  This is probably as far away as I've ever been.
[36:56.820 --> 36:58.580]  This is probably as far away as I ever will be.
[36:58.800 --> 37:02.080]  Because, you know, I know I'll never make it to another planet.
[37:02.340 --> 37:05.020]  And being in North Korea is probably the closest thing to that.
[37:05.920 --> 37:07.560]  In a very good way, too.
[37:08.940 --> 37:10.080]  Well, that sounds fantastic.
[37:10.420 --> 37:12.740]  I'm eager to hear more.
[37:13.820 --> 37:14.220]  Okay.
[37:14.540 --> 37:15.920]  Hey, listen, I'm going to let you go.
[37:16.080 --> 37:16.740]  I'm going to hang up.
[37:16.800 --> 37:19.460]  Let me know if this makes any funny noises when I do.
[37:20.020 --> 37:22.180]  And I guess I'll talk to you next week.
[37:22.180 --> 37:22.900]  Okay.
[37:23.140 --> 37:23.420]  Fantastic.
[37:23.740 --> 37:24.280]  Talk to you soon.
[37:24.640 --> 37:25.020]  Take care.
[37:25.200 --> 37:25.500]  Bye-bye.
[37:34.630 --> 37:39.790]  Well, that is Emmanuel, who is, as you heard, in Pyongyang, North Korea at the moment.
[37:40.130 --> 37:41.450]  He'll be back next week.
[37:41.470 --> 37:45.110]  And I'm sure he'll have even more to say about his experiences there.
[37:45.110 --> 37:48.270]  I guess we're the only funny noises they're going to hear.
[37:48.950 --> 37:50.510]  Yeah, no funny noises.
[37:50.670 --> 37:51.650]  No, there were noises.
[37:52.230 --> 37:53.890]  There were noises, but...
[37:53.890 --> 38:00.390]  I heard four or five tandem switches, relays switched out after he hung up.
[38:00.550 --> 38:01.470]  I heard pops.
[38:04.270 --> 38:05.430]  The untrained ear.
[38:05.430 --> 38:05.770]  Yeah.
[38:05.990 --> 38:06.970]  What did you say that was?
[38:07.070 --> 38:07.670]  That was Emmanuel?
[38:08.070 --> 38:11.330]  I thought that was John Reed in 10 Days That Shook the World.
[38:11.610 --> 38:15.590]  I mean, he's obviously been minded by his minders.
[38:15.750 --> 38:21.150]  I mean, extolling the virtues beyond the belief of the North Korean system.
[38:21.750 --> 38:30.090]  I mean, I understand, yes, we have no beef with the populace per se, but still, he's cast a very uncritical eye on things, I think.
[38:30.090 --> 38:34.610]  I think it will be interesting to hear what he says next week when he's back.
[38:35.470 --> 38:37.450]  See if it varies at all.
[38:37.670 --> 38:43.650]  Yes, I will grant the possibility that he was mindful of the fact that he was probably listened into.
[38:44.570 --> 38:49.690]  Probably, there's no question that his call was recorded on both sides of the ocean.
[38:49.890 --> 38:52.750]  It was recorded by the North Korean government and by the NSA.
[38:52.930 --> 38:55.090]  There's no question whatsoever of that.
[38:55.350 --> 38:58.550]  You can hire a lot of recording specialists for six euros a minute.
[38:58.550 --> 38:59.430]  Yeah.
[39:00.410 --> 39:15.930]  What I was going to say is that, you know, I don't want to say that there's definitely, to me, there's definitely issues with this country and their global interaction in the playground, so to speak.
[39:16.310 --> 39:25.890]  But it's similar, I think, to the way things were when I was growing up with the Soviet Union.
[39:25.890 --> 39:36.550]  I mean, you were given this impression that this was this absolutely terrible nation and every citizen under it was out to get the United States.
[39:36.810 --> 39:48.650]  And, you know, it became apparent in the 90s, late 80s and early 90s, that this was absolutely not the case.
[39:51.350 --> 39:56.250]  And I guess that at that point kind of the red scare kind of fell apart.
[39:58.830 --> 40:07.370]  And indefinitely, you know, these people, the individual people of the country are not out to get us.
[40:07.370 --> 40:16.270]  But, you know, they're certainly not playing well with others in the global playground at this moment, I would say.
[40:16.450 --> 40:28.670]  I have to differ with you slightly in that I think with the Russians and the North Koreans, the individuals are out to get us, but not necessarily of their own perfectly free will, because they don't have perfectly free will.
[40:29.430 --> 40:36.870]  Well, but yes, to to keep things pleasant or possibly to keep alive, they have to essentially toe the party line.
[40:36.910 --> 40:44.990]  Now, they can be more exuberant than others, I would say, but you have to still say they're all out to get us.
[40:45.110 --> 40:54.570]  Well, then what's how do you explain the Americans who have more or less freedom of conscience who are certainly out to get a lot of people in a lot of the world?
[40:55.490 --> 40:59.790]  Well, some people, you know, go go and just blindly do it for no reason.
[41:00.070 --> 41:04.390]  Whereas I I've made a conscious choice to to oppose things like that.
[41:04.610 --> 41:06.210]  Well, that's that's good.
[41:07.990 --> 41:08.850]  Anything more?
[41:09.990 --> 41:14.250]  Lynn is holding up a I don't know what it is around thing.
[41:14.570 --> 41:15.310]  It's a red button.
[41:15.310 --> 41:21.890]  So we'll we'll we'll see this one and then we'll to to to go with a little more lighter topic, a little more lighter topic.
[41:23.170 --> 41:24.370]  I see the facile.
[41:25.430 --> 41:26.990]  And that means that was easy.
[41:29.270 --> 41:34.070]  OK, yes, it's an easy button or a facile button in French.
[41:34.870 --> 41:36.330]  Am I supposed to know what that is?
[41:36.790 --> 41:42.450]  No, because you don't you don't you know, pop you don't probably go to that particular retailer.
[41:42.450 --> 41:46.450]  We won't give them a free advertising on a non advertising radio station.
[41:46.950 --> 41:48.130]  But they have commercials.
[41:48.270 --> 41:49.610]  They have commercials using this.
[41:49.790 --> 41:50.910]  OK, so this is a button.
[41:51.150 --> 41:52.750]  The easy button says easy on it.
[41:52.890 --> 41:53.610]  And one's in French.
[41:53.750 --> 41:58.250]  And one is in French, which I thought was kind of an interesting little little.
[41:58.590 --> 42:00.550]  But it still says easy in English.
[42:00.790 --> 42:02.590]  No, it says no seal on it in French.
[42:02.930 --> 42:04.570]  I can't see it from all the way over here.
[42:04.830 --> 42:05.050]  Oh, yeah.
[42:05.170 --> 42:07.550]  Let's run it once more so people can hear French.
[42:11.510 --> 42:15.310]  So my plan is to switch those and I don't know, maybe return it.
[42:15.430 --> 42:15.710]  I don't know.
[42:15.830 --> 42:16.590]  See what happens.
[42:17.410 --> 42:18.710]  Are you sure it's not Spanish?
[42:18.930 --> 42:19.570]  Maybe Spanish.
[42:20.010 --> 42:20.330]  I don't know.
[42:20.570 --> 42:21.630]  Jim swears it's French.
[42:21.790 --> 42:22.710]  Jim swears it's French.
[42:22.790 --> 42:23.550]  I thought it was Spanish.
[42:23.830 --> 42:25.010]  I'm pretty sure it's it's French.
[42:26.030 --> 42:27.490]  Does anybody speak Spanish?
[42:27.950 --> 42:29.850]  How do you spell the word easy in Spanish?
[42:29.890 --> 42:33.090]  That's the correct spelling of the word easy in Spanish on that button.
[42:33.090 --> 42:37.690]  Well, you know, this says... it actually says... it's actually written in Spanish, so maybe it is Spanish.
[42:37.950 --> 42:42.150]  Okay, I thought it was Spanish, but everybody was telling me it was in French.
[42:42.310 --> 42:43.390]  It sounds like French to me.
[42:43.830 --> 42:48.630]  So, anyway, one more news article before maybe we can open the phone lines.
[42:48.910 --> 42:49.170]  Yeah.
[42:49.310 --> 42:50.170]  You want to give the number out?
[42:51.030 --> 42:54.310]  Sure, it's 212-209-2900.
[42:54.410 --> 42:55.450]  That's not the number at all.
[42:55.690 --> 42:56.170]  Is it?
[42:56.370 --> 42:59.390]  Yes, it's 212-209-2900.
[42:59.790 --> 43:02.490]  I've said it so many times, I think I'm saying something else.
[43:02.490 --> 43:04.890]  You think you're saying the pledge line.
[43:05.070 --> 43:06.270]  Well, there's that number, too.
[43:06.470 --> 43:07.450]  We won't confuse the listeners.
[43:07.550 --> 43:08.010]  Don't pledge.
[43:08.310 --> 43:19.390]  But if anyone tried to file their taxes with TurboTax the other night, right, you know, hours before the deadline occurred, their servers got overloaded, which is kind of interesting.
[43:20.190 --> 43:27.550]  So, you know, this is a very disconcerting thing if you're trying to get your tax reports in, to file your taxes before the deadline.
[43:27.730 --> 43:28.770]  Unless you had an extra day.
[43:28.910 --> 43:32.090]  Well, actually, yeah, people who were victims of the flood.
[43:32.090 --> 43:34.830]  Yeah, yeah, did get an extra day.
[43:34.930 --> 43:41.810]  But those who didn't and tried to file using the TurboTax software may not have been able to because their servers were overloaded.
[43:42.510 --> 43:47.950]  However, Intuit, the company that provides the TurboTax software, did make a deal with the IRS.
[43:48.370 --> 43:51.010]  And they will not get penalized for that.
[43:51.570 --> 43:52.790]  But it's interesting.
[43:53.110 --> 44:05.030]  The statistics here are at the peak, Intuit was processing 50 to 60 returns per second, which doesn't seem to me like it's, you know, enough to overload a huge corporation servers like that.
[44:05.030 --> 44:06.630]  Oh, those taxes are complicated.
[44:06.970 --> 44:09.130]  Well, this is a 1040EZ form.
[44:09.310 --> 44:10.430]  This is the easy form.
[44:10.430 --> 44:11.910]  Oh, those easy forms are complicated.
[44:11.930 --> 44:13.630]  Not the easy button, the easy form.
[44:13.770 --> 44:15.770]  But all the processing is done on your PC.
[44:15.950 --> 44:16.190]  It's not...
[44:16.190 --> 44:18.150]  Their servers aren't really doing that much processing.
[44:18.310 --> 44:19.530]  You're just submitting your application.
[44:19.530 --> 44:20.670]  So it's kind of strange.
[44:20.970 --> 44:24.190]  But I did use that software to file my taxes.
[44:24.490 --> 44:26.330]  And online filing costs $15.
[44:26.390 --> 44:27.770]  So I don't understand why.
[44:28.050 --> 44:31.090]  No, if there's certain ones that are...
[44:31.090 --> 44:37.010]  If you're in a certain income category or something like that, I'm pretty sure that it's free.
[44:37.210 --> 44:37.450]  Well, no.
[44:37.510 --> 44:37.670]  Yeah.
[44:37.890 --> 44:38.670]  It was free for me.
[44:38.890 --> 44:39.590]  It was free for you.
[44:39.750 --> 44:40.890]  You must make more than I do.
[44:41.250 --> 44:42.750]  No, I can't do an easy form.
[44:42.890 --> 44:44.130]  I definitely don't make more than you do.
[44:44.190 --> 44:45.150]  And I did do an easy form.
[44:45.190 --> 44:47.530]  And it said $14 to file online.
[44:47.530 --> 44:51.130]  I think you have to go to it from somewhere else.
[44:51.230 --> 44:52.590]  Did you download the software?
[44:52.950 --> 44:54.150]  Well, we purchased the software.
[44:54.450 --> 44:54.810]  Oh, no.
[44:55.130 --> 44:57.970]  The one that they were talking about is the web version.
[44:57.970 --> 45:01.930]  And the web version is free if you're filing a 1040EZ.
[45:02.250 --> 45:02.950]  Oh, okay.
[45:03.130 --> 45:04.690]  So you spent $14.
[45:05.050 --> 45:05.570]  No, I did not.
[45:05.650 --> 45:07.370]  I went to the post office and filed it.
[45:07.410 --> 45:07.690]  Okay.
[45:07.870 --> 45:08.070]  That's good.
[45:08.410 --> 45:09.910]  One quick offshoot of this.
[45:10.050 --> 45:12.810]  IRS.gov is the official IRS website.
[45:12.810 --> 45:17.830]  But IRS.com charged people to file their tax forms.
[45:18.030 --> 45:28.470]  And interestingly enough, Congress is voting, probably as we speak, or just recently, to ban websites that mock or imitate official government websites.
[45:28.610 --> 45:29.070]  That's like...
[45:29.070 --> 45:29.610]  Things like that.
[45:29.750 --> 45:30.270]  That's like back...
[45:30.270 --> 45:31.230]  Whitehouse.com?
[45:32.590 --> 45:34.190]  Which is a notorious sex site.
[45:34.290 --> 45:35.810]  Doesn't quite mock...
[45:35.810 --> 45:36.490]  Well...
[45:36.490 --> 45:37.110]  Some of them mock.
[45:37.970 --> 45:38.930]  That's iron, I think.
[45:39.190 --> 45:40.390]  That's like back in the day.
[45:40.550 --> 45:41.870]  InterNik used to be...
[45:41.870 --> 45:42.850]  I think internik.net.
[45:43.050 --> 45:44.050]  And it was maybe...
[45:44.050 --> 45:46.530]  I don't remember what it cost to buy a domain at the time.
[45:46.850 --> 45:47.350]  Maybe $30.
[45:47.850 --> 45:51.950]  But there was another website, internik.com, which was a company in Australia.
[45:51.950 --> 45:56.690]  And they'd charge you $300 to register a domain, forward the $30 to InterNik, and keep the rest.
[45:56.890 --> 45:57.330]  Nice.
[45:58.090 --> 45:59.390]  Let's read a couple emails.
[45:59.610 --> 46:00.850]  Then we'll take your phone calls.
[46:01.230 --> 46:02.370]  And I have an announcement.
[46:02.690 --> 46:04.270]  Oh, and Bernie has an announcement.
[46:04.650 --> 46:04.990]  Yes.
[46:05.510 --> 46:24.790]  For people that are interested in the telephone-related discussions we have, there'll be a classic collection of old Bell telephone films from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, played here in Philadelphia next Friday night, I believe at 7 p.m.
[46:24.790 --> 46:31.630]  You can go to a website called TheSecretCinema.com for more information.
[46:31.830 --> 46:48.730]  But there's going to be seven or eight classic films that you've probably never seen before that were produced by their biggest company in the world, which was AT&T, back well before the divestiture when Bell Telephone basically ran all the communications.
[46:49.190 --> 46:56.730]  And they put some pretty interesting films out, and some of them were technical, some of them were humorous marketing films, but it might be worth checking out.
[46:56.810 --> 47:01.730]  So go to TheSecretCinema.com, and if you can make it to Philadelphia next Friday, check it out.
[47:01.730 --> 47:05.090]  I wonder if they're going to play Ma Bell and her delinquent children.
[47:06.230 --> 47:09.270]  No, unfortunately, that's not one of them, because it was not produced by...
[47:09.270 --> 47:09.770]  Oh, that's right.
[47:09.890 --> 47:10.350]  Yeah, that's right.
[47:10.450 --> 47:10.790]  That's right.
[47:10.790 --> 47:14.830]  But they're well on their way to being the largest communications company in the world again.
[47:15.650 --> 47:17.770]  How things come back the way they were.
[47:18.310 --> 47:19.030]  Yes, exactly.
[47:20.410 --> 47:20.830]  All right.
[47:20.890 --> 47:33.430]  This email is from DocsVoom, who says he just, he or she, I don't know, just wanted to toss this out in case you weren't aware of it, but it has to do with Emmanuel's visit to Beijing and blocking websites, et cetera.
[47:33.870 --> 47:36.610]  Have you heard of, quote, The Great Firewall of China?
[47:36.790 --> 47:41.150]  And the website is www.greatfirewallofchina.org.
[47:41.410 --> 47:49.270]  You can enter a URL, and the website will test the URL from a connection inside mainland China, and will let you know if it is blocked or not.
[47:49.430 --> 47:51.490]  And then writes, great show, keep it up.
[47:51.630 --> 47:53.710]  So that's an interesting website.
[47:56.210 --> 47:59.810]  Wow, so you don't have to go all the way there to find out if your website's reachable.
[47:59.810 --> 48:00.250]  That's good.
[48:00.250 --> 48:02.310]  Yeah, save on airplane fare.
[48:02.970 --> 48:09.390]  And this email is from Yang Gak, who writes, just saying, hi from North Korea.
[48:09.590 --> 48:10.890]  Please don't reply to this email.
[48:11.030 --> 48:11.850]  I will never get it.
[48:11.990 --> 48:13.290]  This is a fascinating place.
[48:13.290 --> 48:17.390]  I will talk to you when I'm back, and we'll be online again Saturday.
[48:17.850 --> 48:22.850]  So that is from Emmanuel, who somehow managed to send us an email.
[48:23.410 --> 48:24.970]  But it's from Yang Gak.
[48:25.390 --> 48:26.390]  I don't know what that means.
[48:26.610 --> 48:29.550]  Maybe that's the name of the person he had to kill to get access.
[48:29.550 --> 48:34.330]  I actually did a who is on the domain, and it was actually registered in Pyongyang.
[48:34.590 --> 48:35.870]  Yeah, it seems to be real.
[48:36.050 --> 48:36.370]  I don't know.
[48:36.450 --> 48:36.970]  It's very weird.
[48:37.510 --> 48:39.370]  I guess he'll tell us about it when he gets back.
[48:39.550 --> 48:41.250]  That was the domain or the name of the account?
[48:41.490 --> 48:41.990]  No, the domain.
[48:42.190 --> 48:44.550]  The domain, which I guess we could say is...
[48:45.530 --> 48:50.750]  D-I dot Chessin, which is C-H-E-S-I-N dot com.
[48:50.910 --> 48:51.230]  Oh, man.
[48:51.390 --> 48:53.150]  Yang Gak is going to get it now.
[48:56.590 --> 48:57.730]  I don't know.
[48:58.850 --> 49:01.290]  Yang Gak is not the name of the email address.
[49:01.450 --> 49:02.610]  It's just the name.
[49:02.790 --> 49:03.630]  Oh, okay.
[49:05.410 --> 49:06.410]  Still traceable.
[49:06.410 --> 49:07.210]  Still traceable.
[49:07.790 --> 49:08.650]  Well, whatever.
[49:09.630 --> 49:11.650]  And we'll just read this one more email.
[49:11.870 --> 49:21.930]  It's from Jay from Wisconsin, who writes, Gentlemen, I've been listening to your show whenever I can for the last two years and have recently been listening to older shows.
[49:22.150 --> 49:24.270]  I do have a couple of questions for you.
[49:24.810 --> 49:30.970]  Number one, does sending text messages on cell phones take more bandwidth or require more hardware than voice communications?
[49:31.270 --> 49:36.410]  I've been trying to figure out where the 10 cents per text message is coming from, and I can't understand it.
[49:36.610 --> 49:46.770]  After listening to some of the past off the hooks, I'm beginning to think it must be a charge since cell phone companies are keeping records on every text message that is sent, obviously requiring more hardware.
[49:47.550 --> 49:54.910]  And number two, from a show in 2005, Emmanuel made a statement that listeners could try to get off the hook broadcast on a local radio station.
[49:55.110 --> 50:01.430]  The only stations that would be available here would be the local college stations, the Milwaukee area, or public radio, NPR.
[50:01.690 --> 50:06.450]  What would be the best course to follow in order to talk to someone about airing a show here locally?
[50:07.090 --> 50:14.630]  And to answer the second question, you could just try calling the station, probably have more luck with the college stations, and see if they're interested.
[50:14.930 --> 50:17.630]  Let us know, OTH at 2600.com.
[50:17.690 --> 50:21.270]  If you have success or anyone else who has anything else to say to us.
[50:21.270 --> 50:25.170]  But what do you think about this 10 cents text message?
[50:25.170 --> 50:26.930]  I think it's a fraud.
[50:27.790 --> 50:34.210]  First of all, he mentions the hardware for logging all of the SMS messages, and I'm assuming MMS messages as well.
[50:34.390 --> 50:40.010]  And the amount of data that's sent when you send an MMS or SMS is so small.
[50:40.130 --> 50:46.050]  The pictures are at such a low resolution, and the SMS messages are a limited number of characters.
[50:46.630 --> 50:49.590]  It's really insignificant when you compare the cost of all their other hardware.
[50:50.150 --> 50:54.170]  And the 10 cents is just, you know, what they charge and can get away with.
[50:54.310 --> 50:55.710]  15 cents now for Verizon.
[50:56.010 --> 50:57.150]  I think that it's...
[50:57.150 --> 51:02.070]  I think that I've seen an SMS server, and it doesn't look all that different.
[51:02.210 --> 51:03.610]  Well, actually, it's just a PC.
[51:04.110 --> 51:05.650]  So I'm sure that it's...
[51:05.650 --> 51:13.790]  I mean, I'm sure that somebody like Verizon has multiple ones of these, and I'm sure they have redundant setups, but you're not talking about...
[51:13.790 --> 51:28.050]  You know, you're talking about a cell phone company, and even if the SMS server costs them, let's say, $40,000, that's kind of a small change to somebody like a large carrier.
[51:28.190 --> 51:35.610]  I mean, if you think about all the SMS messages, they could probably pay for a $40,000 server in a couple days.
[51:36.070 --> 51:38.810]  So basically, you think they're charging you just because they can't?
[51:39.230 --> 51:43.950]  I think it kind of goes back to the same thing as charging for dial tone and touch tone.
[51:44.350 --> 51:49.170]  It's part of the GSM protocol as well, so it's not like they really have a choice as to whether or not to implement it.
[51:49.430 --> 51:51.490]  It's part of the protocol, so...
[51:52.130 --> 52:06.210]  And the ironic thing is that the listener's question how much data or how much bandwidth is used up by one of these SMS messages or text messages, it's insignificant.
[52:06.470 --> 52:19.190]  In fact, making a phone call with your cell phone, to a number that doesn't answer, uses more traffic on the cellular network than saying an SMS message or text message.
[52:19.390 --> 52:21.870]  So you're really being charged for nothing.
[52:22.170 --> 52:28.470]  Yeah, I mean, a text message is going to be 160 bytes padded by, like, the headers, packet headers.
[52:28.470 --> 52:40.430]  I mean, you're talking about something that, you know, when you cannot get a line, a quote, a quote line out on a cell phone due to traffic on the network, SMSs still go through.
[52:40.950 --> 52:53.550]  And that's because it's such an insignificantly small amount of data, and you're also not having to deliver it in some certain sequence or order for it to be coherent.
[52:53.830 --> 52:55.150]  It's lower-priority traffic.
[52:55.330 --> 52:56.530]  Yeah, it's low-priority traffic.
[52:56.750 --> 52:58.910]  So it's...
[52:59.950 --> 53:01.210]  I like the word.
[53:01.210 --> 53:01.790]  It's a scam.
[53:02.610 --> 53:03.170]  All right.
[53:03.310 --> 53:04.910]  Well, let's take some phone calls.
[53:05.050 --> 53:07.610]  Our number is 212-209-2900.
[53:07.750 --> 53:09.090]  I'll say it with confidence this time.
[53:10.170 --> 53:12.130]  And this is the first caller.
[53:12.270 --> 53:13.030]  Hello, you're on the air.
[53:15.070 --> 53:16.130]  Turn on the radio.
[53:16.550 --> 53:17.030]  Hello.
[53:17.890 --> 53:18.950]  Okay, I have a question.
[53:19.250 --> 53:25.430]  I listened to Emmanuel's show for years, and I still haven't learned much because I'm very untechnical.
[53:25.610 --> 53:26.930]  But I call for another reason.
[53:27.010 --> 53:33.670]  A moment ago, a little bit ago, you guys were talking about a word, and you weren't sure if it were French or Spanish.
[53:33.670 --> 53:34.790]  Can you repeat the word?
[53:35.530 --> 53:39.430]  F-A-C-I-L with an accent over the A.
[53:41.570 --> 53:44.130]  That's in Spanish means easy.
[53:44.790 --> 53:45.150]  Yeah.
[53:45.670 --> 53:46.850]  And it could be French.
[53:47.290 --> 53:48.830]  And Italian, I think it's facile.
[53:49.870 --> 53:50.890]  Well, thank you.
[53:51.350 --> 53:51.730]  Thank you.
[53:51.970 --> 53:52.330]  Clear that up.
[53:53.110 --> 53:54.310]  Hey, I learned from you guys.
[53:54.430 --> 53:56.390]  If I could teach a little bit back, we'll be.
[53:56.710 --> 53:57.470]  We appreciate it.
[53:57.630 --> 53:57.950]  Well, thank you.
[53:59.350 --> 54:00.710]  WBAI listeners know everything.
[54:00.970 --> 54:01.350]  It's true.
[54:02.030 --> 54:02.830]  I see it, facile.
[54:02.990 --> 54:03.210]  Wow.
[54:05.470 --> 54:06.970]  We're going to get rid of these.
[54:07.170 --> 54:08.690]  They don't need to be hanging around here.
[54:09.530 --> 54:10.450]  You paid for them?
[54:10.830 --> 54:11.910]  Hello, you're on the air.
[54:12.430 --> 54:13.090]  Oh, okay.
[54:13.090 --> 54:13.530]  Great.
[54:14.190 --> 54:16.490]  I just thought, you know, isn't that incredible?
[54:16.650 --> 54:20.710]  A guy named Emmanuel Goldstein calling all the way from North Korea?
[54:21.730 --> 54:23.010]  There's no way.
[54:23.270 --> 54:29.050]  That sort of reminded me of those English guys who were hostages in Iran a couple of weeks ago.
[54:30.270 --> 54:30.510]  Yeah.
[54:30.890 --> 54:32.870]  I mean, you know, they're treating us really well here.
[54:33.010 --> 54:33.870]  We're having a great time.
[54:33.870 --> 54:38.990]  And wouldn't you like to have seen the video portion of Emmanuel's conversation just now?
[54:39.010 --> 54:42.470]  Or maybe just examine the contents of his last drink?
[54:43.210 --> 54:47.350]  Well, I'm sure he'll be glad to clarify on that.
[54:47.830 --> 54:48.350]  I can't wait.
[54:48.410 --> 54:49.250]  When is he coming back?
[54:49.450 --> 54:50.610]  He'll be here next week.
[54:51.190 --> 54:53.030]  It's going to be must-listen to radio.
[54:53.350 --> 54:55.390]  If all of this is planned, he'll be here next week.
[54:55.390 --> 54:57.810]  Yeah, we hope that he will be back here next week.
[54:57.970 --> 54:58.950]  We hope, yeah.
[55:00.330 --> 55:03.170]  He may be in a dark basement in Pyongyang.
[55:03.390 --> 55:03.950]  He may be...
[55:03.950 --> 55:05.710]  It's just bizarre, isn't it?
[55:05.770 --> 55:08.030]  I mean, I listened to your show for a long, long time.
[55:08.190 --> 55:09.530]  And, I mean, I've heard part...
[55:09.530 --> 55:14.590]  I mean, he seems to stand up for everything against him, you know, the Ministry of Truth.
[55:14.590 --> 55:18.590]  And there he is in this, like, amazing place, spouting that stuff.
[55:19.730 --> 55:20.130]  Unusual.
[55:20.310 --> 55:21.570]  Anyway, onward and upward, eh?
[55:22.330 --> 55:23.870]  We'll see what happens when he comes back.
[55:23.990 --> 55:24.790]  Keep up the good work.
[55:24.950 --> 55:25.150]  Thanks.
[55:25.410 --> 55:25.830]  Thank you.
[55:26.090 --> 55:27.090]  Well, thanks for the call.
[55:28.250 --> 55:29.950]  We've got time for another call.
[55:30.070 --> 55:32.990]  The number is 212-209-2900.
[55:33.710 --> 55:35.450]  And let's take this one.
[55:35.550 --> 55:36.070]  You're on the air.
[55:36.810 --> 55:37.210]  Hello?
[55:37.710 --> 55:38.070]  Hello.
[55:38.310 --> 55:38.530]  Hi.
[55:38.670 --> 55:39.290]  What's on your mind?
[55:39.330 --> 55:40.230]  Okay, just need to turn the radio off.
[55:40.330 --> 55:40.450]  Yeah.
[55:41.510 --> 55:41.910]  Yes.
[55:42.650 --> 55:44.410]  You are charged for touchstone.
[55:44.990 --> 55:46.550]  And you can't get rid of it.
[55:46.810 --> 55:49.950]  It costs somewhere between $4 and $7 a month.
[55:50.470 --> 55:51.810]  And where are you?
[55:51.990 --> 55:53.870]  In Verizon, in New York City.
[55:54.710 --> 55:55.770]  You can't get rid of it.
[55:55.790 --> 55:56.910]  I had a whole thing with them.
[55:56.930 --> 55:58.250]  I got rid of my long distance.
[55:58.850 --> 56:00.470]  Then they would charge me for regional.
[56:00.650 --> 56:01.510]  I got rid of that.
[56:02.130 --> 56:07.630]  I had the $9 and some change in local calls in six months.
[56:07.790 --> 56:10.150]  And my bill was $100 with the taxes.
[56:10.490 --> 56:12.310]  I finally got Lifeline.
[56:13.710 --> 56:16.290]  And text messaging on T-Mobile is only a nickel.
[56:19.210 --> 56:19.970]  It's even...
[56:19.970 --> 56:27.890]  I mean, I pay $10 a month with our family plan to get some thousands and thousands that we would never use.
[56:28.030 --> 56:28.890]  The thing is, I think...
[56:28.890 --> 56:30.830]  Well, here, you're being scammed on it.
[56:30.910 --> 56:32.850]  But in other countries, I know that it's very prevalent.
[56:32.850 --> 56:39.310]  I know in Finland, I mean, at this point, you can use text messages to buy bus and train tickets on your mobile phone.
[56:39.350 --> 56:41.950]  And I'm pretty sure you don't get charged by any of the providers there.
[56:42.750 --> 56:46.050]  Because, I mean, the technology is being used by everybody.
[56:46.050 --> 56:57.990]  I mean, I know that I got charged some minimal charge on prepaid SIMs in Switzerland and in the U.K., but it was not $0.10 a minute.
[56:58.030 --> 57:02.450]  It might have been, you know, two pence in the U.K.
[57:02.450 --> 57:07.210]  And I don't know what you call below a...
[57:10.030 --> 57:11.570]  In Switzerland, I don't know.
[57:11.770 --> 57:15.090]  I can't remember how you pronounce that one, but it's, you know...
[57:16.450 --> 57:19.850]  Is the caller talking about touchtone or dialtone?
[57:20.030 --> 57:21.050]  No, touchtone.
[57:21.430 --> 57:21.870]  Touchtone.
[57:22.110 --> 57:22.550]  Touchtone.
[57:22.670 --> 57:25.350]  You're charged with touchtone, and you have to pay.
[57:25.610 --> 57:27.350]  You're going to say, I don't want touchtone.
[57:27.970 --> 57:29.430]  What part of New York are you in?
[57:29.550 --> 57:30.770]  I'm in the East Village.
[57:31.670 --> 57:36.930]  It's very strange, because I know I had a phone line in Manhattan, and I didn't...
[57:36.930 --> 57:39.770]  If I had to pay for touchtone, it was certainly less than $1.
[57:40.010 --> 57:40.450]  No.
[57:40.730 --> 57:41.730]  It's a lot more now.
[57:41.830 --> 57:42.590]  You check your bill.
[57:42.790 --> 57:44.430]  There is so much more taxes.
[57:44.610 --> 57:45.070]  It's unbelievable.
[57:45.550 --> 57:50.170]  You can make no outgoing calls and be charged $20 a month.
[57:51.270 --> 57:51.810]  All right.
[57:51.890 --> 57:53.650]  Well, we're just about out of time.
[57:53.810 --> 57:54.610]  Thanks for the call.
[57:54.790 --> 57:55.050]  Okay.
[57:57.130 --> 57:58.450]  This has been Off the Hook.
[57:58.610 --> 57:59.850]  We'll be back next week.
[57:59.850 --> 58:02.170]  Emmanual will be back from North Korea.
[58:02.850 --> 58:03.610]  We hope.
[58:04.170 --> 58:06.330]  Thanks, RedHact, for operating.
[58:06.590 --> 58:06.990]  No problem.
[58:07.430 --> 58:09.730]  And thanks for your listeners.
[58:10.510 --> 58:11.070]  Good night.
[58:13.170 --> 58:15.970]  Good night.
[58:15.990 --> 58:26.030]  Good night.
[58:26.030 --> 58:31.310]  Good night.
[58:35.570 --> 58:36.090]  .
[58:36.090 --> 58:36.650]  .
[58:36.650 --> 58:36.670]  .
[58:36.670 --> 58:36.690]  .
[58:36.690 --> 58:36.950]  .
[58:55.270 --> 58:56.630]  Here is the third
[59:04.550 --> 59:05.110]  sentence.
[59:05.110 --> 59:13.770]  The first sentence is the first sentence.
[59:57.040 --> 01:00:00.040]  Here is the second sentence.
[01:00:00.040 --> 01:00:02.680]  The second one.
[01:00:40.220 --> 01:00:41.960]  Yeah, that's what I said.
[01:00:42.620 --> 01:00:43.300]  Exactly.
[01:00:45.980 --> 01:00:47.160]  All right.
[01:00:47.380 --> 01:00:47.600]  Hey.
[01:00:50.640 --> 01:00:51.320]  Yeah.
[01:00:53.120 --> 01:00:53.920]  That's right.
[01:00:58.040 --> 01:00:59.400]  Yes, yes.
[01:01:01.100 --> 01:01:03.460]  All right, all right, all right.
[01:01:03.560 --> 01:01:05.000]  These guys are off the chain.
[01:01:05.000 --> 01:01:05.780]  I mean, hook.
[01:01:06.160 --> 01:01:07.900]  You know, off the hook, I tell you.
[01:01:08.600 --> 01:01:09.900]  These guys are fantastic.