[00:03.570 --> 00:10.970]  And the previous program was Economic Update with Richard Wolff, heard Wednesdays at 6.30 p.m.
[00:11.030 --> 00:17.030]  here on WBAI New York at 99.5 FM and WBAI.org online.
[00:17.230 --> 00:18.710]  It is 7 p.m.
[00:18.870 --> 00:21.770]  Stay tuned for Off the Hook coming up right now.
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[00:52.690 --> 00:58.670]  The number you have reached, 99.5 WBAI, is now Off the Hook.
[02:43.290 --> 02:45.330]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[02:45.430 --> 02:48.330]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:48.830 --> 02:52.430]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Kyle.
[02:52.830 --> 02:53.050]  Hello.
[02:54.270 --> 02:58.910]  And over in Skype-land, we have Alex.
[03:00.210 --> 03:00.970]  Good evening.
[03:02.150 --> 03:05.910]  And over in the other Skype-land, we have Gila.
[03:06.430 --> 03:07.210]  Good evening.
[03:07.770 --> 03:10.870]  And it looks like... yeah, that's Rob T. Firefly over there, isn't it?
[03:12.050 --> 03:12.490]  How are you doing?
[03:12.990 --> 03:13.610]  It is.
[03:13.690 --> 03:13.990]  Good evening.
[03:14.070 --> 03:15.950]  A little hazy picture today.
[03:16.950 --> 03:17.350]  Great.
[03:17.590 --> 03:17.790]  Okay.
[03:18.110 --> 03:20.850]  And I think we're coming in a little hot, but I think we're all right now.
[03:21.170 --> 03:21.370]  We're good?
[03:21.950 --> 03:25.890]  Yeah, that Skype signal's extra crispy.
[03:26.090 --> 03:26.350]  Yeah.
[03:26.590 --> 03:29.590]  We got the Skype extra this week.
[03:30.110 --> 03:30.510]  Cool.
[03:30.670 --> 03:37.490]  Well, you know, if there was a theme to this week, I would say it would be the phrase...
[03:37.490 --> 03:41.710]  And maybe you've never heard this phrase before, but it would be something along the lines of...
[03:42.270 --> 03:44.130]  Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
[03:44.310 --> 03:45.410]  Has anyone ever heard that before?
[03:46.570 --> 03:47.010]  No?
[03:47.350 --> 03:48.710]  I guess maybe I just made it up.
[03:48.950 --> 03:51.170]  Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
[03:52.330 --> 03:57.310]  Let me explain how this ties into news events of this week.
[03:58.190 --> 04:02.030]  We have the whole Twitter, Elon Musk, debacle that's going on.
[04:02.090 --> 04:03.930]  We talked about this last week on Overtime.
[04:03.930 --> 04:07.330]  We did not talk about it on the air, so I'd like to remedy that this week.
[04:08.110 --> 04:15.370]  We also have a failed candidate who has announced his comeback, so to say.
[04:16.270 --> 04:20.270]  I don't know if we want to talk about that at all, but it is a little bit funny.
[04:20.870 --> 04:22.930]  And then, of course, we have FTX.
[04:23.730 --> 04:28.030]  Yeah, the FTX cryptocurrency disaster.
[04:28.850 --> 04:30.790]  I don't know if there's enough time to talk about this.
[04:30.910 --> 04:32.130]  We'll certainly try to get to that.
[04:32.130 --> 04:45.630]  But, boy, to see a fortune of tens of billions of dollars just evaporate in a matter of days, or maybe even hours, I don't know, it gives you pause.
[04:45.630 --> 04:52.030]  And it makes you think maybe, just maybe, cryptocurrency isn't as rock solid as we all thought it was.
[04:52.670 --> 04:53.810]  Or ready.
[04:54.190 --> 04:55.370]  Or anything.
[04:55.690 --> 04:57.590]  To be pouring all your investments into.
[04:57.590 --> 05:01.730]  Well, I mean, all these things we believe so strongly.
[05:01.950 --> 05:10.890]  And NFTs, and now people are doubting those, you know, faith in, you know, gods and things like that.
[05:11.170 --> 05:12.410]  All being questioned.
[05:13.690 --> 05:15.650]  Our lives are being turned upside down.
[05:15.750 --> 05:16.790]  I don't know if we can handle it.
[05:18.310 --> 05:19.730]  But, we have this place.
[05:19.830 --> 05:20.730]  We have WBAI.
[05:20.730 --> 05:36.490]  And before we get started with the discussion, I want to implore people to support WBAI so we can continue to work through these chaotic and sometimes traumatic news events that are going on in the world of technology.
[05:38.950 --> 05:42.350]  Without WBAI, you have to rely on the mainstream.
[05:43.970 --> 05:45.750]  And that never ends well.
[05:46.330 --> 05:50.050]  So please, give a call to 212-209-2950.
[05:52.050 --> 05:54.290]  Pledge whatever cryptocurrency you have left.
[05:54.290 --> 05:57.530]  Or if you have real money, please, that's a lot better.
[05:58.210 --> 06:02.510]  You can also go to give2wbai.org.
[06:02.590 --> 06:05.130]  That's give2wbai.org.
[06:05.130 --> 06:10.670]  You'll find all kinds of premiums and thank you gifts that we will send you for supporting us.
[06:10.670 --> 06:21.490]  But the biggest gift of all is the continued broadcasting at 99.5 FM in the middle of New York City, like we've been doing since 1960, against all odds.
[06:22.090 --> 06:34.350]  And the only reason, the only reason this place is still here, as opposed to every other radio station that has come on the air over the years in New York City, they've all changed formats, they've all been bought and sold.
[06:35.490 --> 06:37.810]  We've stuck around because of you, the listener.
[06:39.270 --> 06:40.550]  And that is...
[06:41.930 --> 06:48.650]  That is a very, very strong currency, I guess, is a good thing to describe it as.
[06:48.670 --> 06:52.210]  As opposed to what we're seeing in the world of cryptocurrency, no, listeners.
[06:53.090 --> 06:54.110]  That's rock solid.
[06:54.250 --> 06:55.190]  That's something that...
[06:55.190 --> 06:56.370]  It's not theoretical.
[06:56.770 --> 06:58.690]  That's something that's easy to understand.
[06:59.330 --> 07:05.490]  It's something that no other radio station relies on, as we do.
[07:05.710 --> 07:10.550]  Other radio stations, they can go to their sponsors.
[07:10.550 --> 07:17.890]  They can go to all kinds of corporate grants and favors and things like that.
[07:18.510 --> 07:20.470]  They don't really listen to you.
[07:21.030 --> 07:22.550]  You don't really play a part.
[07:23.110 --> 07:24.670]  Here at WBAI, it's different.
[07:24.670 --> 07:29.430]  Here, you play a part, you become part of the WBAI family, whether you like it or not.
[07:29.950 --> 07:31.070]  But you can vote.
[07:31.230 --> 07:33.930]  You can have a voice.
[07:35.090 --> 07:37.690]  And when we're in the studio, of course, you can call in.
[07:37.790 --> 07:40.750]  In fact, you can call in after the show when we're on YouTube at 8 o'clock.
[07:40.870 --> 07:41.710]  We'd love to hear from you.
[07:42.450 --> 07:46.550]  But the important thing is that we continue to keep broadcasting.
[07:46.550 --> 07:53.250]  Because every single day, despite what you might hear of radio being dead, yeah, everyone's moved on.
[07:53.910 --> 07:55.390]  Nobody's listening to the radio anymore.
[07:55.570 --> 07:58.770]  Well, if that's the case, then just give us all the frequencies, okay?
[07:59.330 --> 08:02.410]  We'll take them if you're not using them, if you don't think they're valuable.
[08:02.570 --> 08:04.830]  But no, they are extremely valuable.
[08:05.870 --> 08:07.570]  Radio is very much alive.
[08:08.230 --> 08:23.110]  And there are people, entities, corporations, governments, aliens, you name it, that want to take 99.5 FM from us and give it to some other commercial entity.
[08:23.110 --> 08:25.010]  Because we don't have enough commercial radio stations.
[08:25.010 --> 08:25.890]  We need more.
[08:26.090 --> 08:29.310]  We need more commercial radio stations that play the exact same kind of music.
[08:29.670 --> 08:38.450]  Because that's what the people that we never listen to, that we never hear from, that we don't take their advice, that's what the people want.
[08:39.250 --> 08:39.730]  Yeah.
[08:39.990 --> 08:41.370]  So, I think it's a little different.
[08:41.370 --> 08:46.570]  I think WBAI is very different, in fact.
[08:46.750 --> 08:49.630]  We're in the middle of the FM dial, unlike most non-commercial stations.
[08:49.710 --> 08:51.290]  We broadcast at full power.
[08:51.970 --> 08:53.210]  And we're part of a network.
[08:55.530 --> 08:57.410]  And we've had our ups and downs.
[08:58.130 --> 09:01.890]  But we're always better off having the resource.
[09:03.970 --> 09:07.070]  And that is decided by you, the listener.
[09:07.890 --> 09:09.190]  Without that, we're nothing.
[09:10.370 --> 09:10.550]  All right.
[09:10.630 --> 09:12.130]  2-1-2-2-0-9-2-9-5-0.
[09:13.250 --> 09:16.330]  Website give to WBAI.org.
[09:17.550 --> 09:21.690]  And with that said, let us move into what we're discussing this week.
[09:22.050 --> 09:22.530]  Okay.
[09:22.690 --> 09:25.170]  So, we talked about what's happening with Twitter.
[09:25.690 --> 09:27.290]  A little bit last week on overtime.
[09:28.650 --> 09:30.810]  And more has happened since then.
[09:31.830 --> 09:32.370]  Gosh.
[09:32.590 --> 09:33.710]  Anybody have the latest?
[09:33.830 --> 09:37.750]  Because I walked out of our office about 10 minutes ago.
[09:39.150 --> 09:40.570]  But I see the headlines.
[09:40.750 --> 09:43.510]  Elon Musk is putting Twitter at risk of billions in fines.
[09:44.070 --> 09:45.410]  Warren's company lawyer.
[09:45.830 --> 09:47.590]  Company lawyer is warning of that.
[09:49.090 --> 09:57.790]  And something that happened a few days ago where Elon Musk decided to end Twitter's SMS two-factor authentication.
[09:58.750 --> 10:17.410]  And what that raised was a very real possibility that if you had two-factor authentication, as I did because I was basically advised to by Twitter, that means that when you log into your Twitter account, you get a little code on your phone sent to you by SMS.
[10:19.170 --> 10:20.830]  Except they turned it off.
[10:21.030 --> 10:25.170]  Or Elon Musk decided, hey, for some reason, I don't like this.
[10:25.170 --> 10:27.670]  I'm going to turn it off and save something.
[10:27.950 --> 10:29.650]  Don't know exactly what he's saving.
[10:30.910 --> 10:42.910]  And if you still have that feature, you won't be able to get into your account because you won't ever get the text message that has the code that you need to complete the two-factor authentication.
[10:42.950 --> 10:43.990]  It's been disabled.
[10:44.370 --> 10:48.990]  So there was a bit of panic over the weekend.
[10:49.110 --> 10:52.570]  People realizing, oh, my God, if I log out, I'll never be able to get back in.
[10:53.090 --> 11:00.850]  And so you have to go into your settings and disable that feature, being very careful not to log out in the process.
[11:03.330 --> 11:05.830]  Supposedly, other forms of two-factor authentication still work.
[11:05.890 --> 11:06.330]  But you know what?
[11:06.330 --> 11:07.310]  I don't want to take the chance.
[11:08.030 --> 11:13.070]  The guy is so moody and temperamental that he could just unplug it and that's it.
[11:15.570 --> 11:16.270]  It's fun.
[11:16.390 --> 11:17.870]  It's fun watching it all implode.
[11:17.930 --> 11:18.830]  It really is.
[11:18.830 --> 11:24.330]  But it's also sad because, you know, this is one guy doing this.
[11:24.570 --> 11:43.130]  So many people have poured their heart and soul into Twitter, both employees, engineers, programmers, but also people who contribute content every single day and help spread the word about various things, activists, and all kinds of creative people out there.
[11:43.250 --> 11:44.330]  I'm not talking about influencers.
[11:45.290 --> 11:47.450]  No, definitely not talking about influencers.
[11:47.650 --> 11:54.110]  We're talking about everyday average people that probably get about half a dozen likes on something they post, which is pretty awesome.
[11:57.980 --> 12:02.540]  Those people are feeling the effects of a cranky billionaire.
[12:04.960 --> 12:06.340]  And yeah, there are alternatives.
[12:06.340 --> 12:15.240]  We're moving to alternatives, but they're fragmented like everything else these days where, you know, you can't just give an address and expect somebody to be able to reach you.
[12:15.240 --> 12:20.240]  No, you have to have the agreed-upon way of communicating.
[12:20.240 --> 12:21.960]  It's not like just picking up the phone.
[12:22.100 --> 12:23.140]  It's not sending an email.
[12:23.920 --> 12:33.000]  It's, no, you got to contact me over here at this particular social media outlet because I'm not going to be reading that particular social media outlet.
[12:33.140 --> 12:35.660]  And we're all poorer for that.
[12:36.480 --> 12:37.960]  Anyway, back to Elon.
[12:39.480 --> 12:44.140]  Does anybody want to focus on something that has happened, Gila?
[12:46.720 --> 13:03.620]  Early this morning at midnight Pacific time, roughly, an email went out to all Twitter staff saying that if they don't decide to be in, basically they have until five o'clock tomorrow to decide if they want to stay at Twitter or take three months severance.
[13:03.620 --> 13:13.760]  If you stay, it's going to be, quote, extremely hardcore, long hours, only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.
[13:16.780 --> 13:19.160]  If it were me, I would take the severance and go.
[13:19.660 --> 13:20.560]  I don't know.
[13:20.820 --> 13:23.320]  I'd kind of want to test that system a little bit.
[13:24.640 --> 13:28.220]  Are you familiar with the tactic of work slowdowns?
[13:29.400 --> 13:31.600]  That can take very long to do a task.
[13:32.040 --> 13:33.320]  You know, I'll work long hours.
[13:33.600 --> 13:37.740]  It'll take me, you know, three hours just to boot up my computer.
[13:38.360 --> 13:39.500]  I want to do it right.
[13:39.720 --> 13:40.640]  I want to do a good job.
[13:40.640 --> 13:45.980]  And I feel if everybody at Twitter did something like this, you've got to stand up to bullies.
[13:46.040 --> 13:46.840]  He's a bully right now.
[13:46.880 --> 13:47.880]  He really is.
[13:48.340 --> 13:53.380]  I'm not saying he doesn't have good ideas occasionally and might actually be able to do something beneficial.
[13:53.380 --> 13:56.580]  But right now at Twitter, he's not doing that.
[13:57.140 --> 14:03.440]  And I think employees there really have an opportunity to, you know, tell him something about himself.
[14:06.180 --> 14:14.420]  It's also an interesting piece because some of the way that the hiring is being, excuse me, not the hiring, the end of hiring is being handled, for lack of a better term.
[14:14.740 --> 14:22.140]  There may be questions about compliance with law in the EU, GDPR stuff.
[14:23.820 --> 14:31.460]  Things are becoming, and also, thank you, Rob, because California is an at-will employment state.
[14:31.460 --> 14:33.600]  But that doesn't exist everywhere.
[14:34.840 --> 14:40.100]  There are lots of countries where the labor laws are a lot stricter, and this may not fly there.
[14:40.320 --> 14:45.720]  So how this is all going to pan out is, I think, an open question in a lot of ways.
[14:45.840 --> 14:47.320]  Yeah, this isn't just the United States.
[14:47.500 --> 14:59.900]  I read something recently about Irish employees and how they were all being told that they had to report to work in Dublin, even though most of them were working from all over the country, from their homes usually.
[14:59.900 --> 15:08.180]  And what people were saying was that he clearly had no understanding of how the housing market worked over there.
[15:08.280 --> 15:15.140]  There was no possible way all these people could even find places to live anywhere near Dublin on such short notice.
[15:15.800 --> 15:24.800]  And it's this kind of cluelessness that, you know, it's both amusing but also really sad because people's lives are being very adversely affected.
[15:24.800 --> 15:27.900]  I don't think he cares or is even aware of that.
[15:28.380 --> 15:32.120]  And it's just... it's staggering to watch.
[15:32.300 --> 15:32.940]  Alex, go ahead.
[15:35.990 --> 15:36.470]  Yeah.
[15:36.830 --> 15:43.390]  I think there's, you know, a number of issues that have been raised by the last few comments here.
[15:44.110 --> 16:03.210]  I want to go back to one of your original statements, though, Emmanuel, which was that all these people that have put so much into Twitter, aside from the developers, aside from the programmers and the owners and the executives, but the people who made the platform what it was by generating content and likes and contributing to the discourse and generating a follow.
[16:03.970 --> 16:11.550]  Essentially, almost building your brand on Twitter, which was one of the premier platforms on which to do so.
[16:11.550 --> 16:24.650]  But I think this goes back to the very type of principle that we have been discussing on this show for many years now, which is to not put all your eggs in one basket, to not be beholden to any individual platform.
[16:24.850 --> 16:42.730]  And in just the same way that you won't put all of your music into iTunes and you still want to have a physical or digital copy of your music, just in the same way you don't want to entirely trust Twitter with your social media, whatever it is you do on social media,
[16:42.890 --> 16:46.070]  talk, chat, brand yourself, etc.
[16:46.370 --> 16:54.790]  If you put all your eggs into Twitter and you see Twitter imploding on itself, all of those years that went into developing that content are going to go down the tubes.
[16:54.790 --> 16:56.950]  And it is by no fault of your own.
[16:57.070 --> 17:14.330]  It's entirely the choice of certain executives who are willing to save a buck or willing to charge $8 to any individual who decides to pay for a blue check in the face of losing massive amounts of advertising revenue for that exact decision.
[17:14.790 --> 17:21.390]  But I want to go back also to what Gila said, too, which was this issue of employees and the FTC.
[17:21.390 --> 17:46.150]  And, you know, Twitter's top lawyer apparently last week sought to reassure a bunch of Twitter employees that they wouldn't have any kind of personal responsibility or liability if the company disregarded an FTC or federal order to protect users' privacy when it's developing and launching new features.
[17:46.150 --> 17:54.430]  And I, frankly, I don't think that that lawyer should have made such a pronouncement.
[17:54.550 --> 17:55.930]  I think it's a lot more complicated.
[17:55.930 --> 17:56.990]  I think it's more difficult.
[17:57.170 --> 18:11.770]  And I think if you look back at what we saw throughout this year of 2022, we're seeing a lot of not just corporate responsibility, but personal liability and personal responsibility for lax data security and cybersecurity practices.
[18:11.770 --> 18:18.770]  I mean, this is something I was actually just talking about maybe two hours ago with some colleagues.
[18:18.930 --> 18:36.270]  But you have just this year, think about it, you've got a chilling message that was sent to CISOs, to chief information security officers, when we saw Joe Sullivan, the chief security officer of Uber, sentenced and criminally convicted.
[18:36.270 --> 18:43.270]  Well, he hasn't been sentenced yet, but he's been criminally convicted for mishandling a data breach in 2016 and obstructing an FTC investigation.
[18:43.530 --> 19:06.670]  And what had happened in that particular case was, as the CISO or the chief security officer, he had... because he was handling a data breach while Uber was already under some kind of FTC order and investigation, and he decided that he was going to reshape that data breach and make it look like this was something that related to a bug bounty and not a breach.
[19:07.170 --> 19:09.890]  And so, in reshaping that, he misled the FTC.
[19:10.090 --> 19:14.530]  DOJ went after him, and they got a conviction for obstructing an FTC investigation.
[19:14.890 --> 19:32.510]  And then you look at what's happened in a federal court in Texas, I think maybe about six months ago or so, where a civil lawsuit was allowed to proceed against the CISO of SolarWinds for making pronouncements about their cybersecurity practices and the technology that they had at issue.
[19:32.730 --> 19:34.690]  And then bring it back right to the FTC.
[19:35.790 --> 19:39.450]  Just a couple of weeks ago, you had the CEO of a company called Drizzly.
[19:39.610 --> 19:41.230]  I don't know if you guys have ever heard of Drizzly.
[19:41.390 --> 19:41.950]  Have you heard of this?
[19:42.390 --> 19:42.790]  Drizzly.
[19:42.890 --> 19:43.430]  Sounds fun.
[19:44.110 --> 19:44.510]  Yeah.
[19:44.650 --> 19:48.270]  It sounds like it would be fun, too, because it's an alcohol delivery service.
[19:48.530 --> 19:50.350]  I had no idea this existed, to be honest.
[19:50.410 --> 19:50.630]  Wow.
[19:50.730 --> 19:50.990]  Okay.
[19:51.470 --> 19:53.970]  I didn't know you had to have a company to deliver alcohol.
[19:54.170 --> 19:55.430]  I thought pretty much anyone could do it.
[19:56.570 --> 20:00.870]  You know, I actually thought it was somewhat regulated who could deliver alcohol.
[20:01.070 --> 20:04.850]  But in any event, it's actually a subsidiary of Uber.
[20:05.070 --> 20:19.170]  So Drizzly is owned by Uber, and their CEO, who was already under, I believe, some kind of FTC order as well for lax data security practices, really got the hammer brought down hard on him personally.
[20:19.170 --> 20:31.830]  And the FTC, just a couple of weeks ago, essentially stated to him that you now are personally responsible for implementing certain data security practices at Drizzly.
[20:32.070 --> 20:37.890]  And, and here's where it gets really interesting, and any other company that you may go to after Drizzly.
[20:37.890 --> 20:48.450]  So it doesn't even just apply to him and the company that was under FTC order, because he screwed up so badly, according to the FTC, this order is going to follow him wherever he goes.
[20:48.630 --> 20:55.890]  Assuming he's running the company, if he gets hired as, as, you know, a doorman somewhere, he's not going to be responsible for the company that he's letting people into, right?
[20:56.630 --> 20:57.410]  Who knows?
[20:57.590 --> 20:58.330]  I don't know, I guess.
[20:58.530 --> 20:59.170]  That would be unfair.
[20:59.550 --> 21:00.250]  That would be too much.
[21:00.650 --> 21:05.510]  I don't know expansively if the FTC views its authority or something, but, you know, fair point, Emmanuel.
[21:05.710 --> 21:21.350]  But I think, you know, if you look at all of these individual trends towards personal responsibility for lax data security practices, it's difficult for any lawyer to say that you're not going to have personal responsibility for not following clear FTC mandates.
[21:21.910 --> 21:28.570]  So that's something for these Twitter employees to think about when they're making their decision about whether or not to stay by tomorrow.
[21:28.890 --> 21:38.710]  Hey, Alex, I was kind of thinking about something along similar lines, and I'm wondering if you kind of hear where I'm going.
[21:38.930 --> 21:41.930]  But to a degree, I think you're absolutely right.
[21:41.930 --> 22:01.510]  But I think lawyers will have a lot of strength as the types, the sophistication level escalates, because I don't think the average company is prepared for certain thresholds and beyond of attacks and breaches and activity.
[22:02.030 --> 22:18.270]  There's, of course, a long list of important activities that all kinds of institutions can participate in and test and prepare for the average everyday activity.
[22:18.550 --> 22:24.070]  But I don't think it's a binary necessarily in every scenario.
[22:24.270 --> 22:35.450]  But going back to this kind of holiday layoff topic, I find it... I know I heard Amazon, they're laying off like 11,000 people.
[22:35.750 --> 22:36.150]  Facebook.
[22:36.150 --> 22:39.030]  Yeah, I think... How's Netflix doing?
[22:39.150 --> 22:40.410]  Has anybody checked on Netflix?
[22:40.690 --> 23:01.850]  Like, all these big, high-flying companies that have a lot of really talented people facing this kind of stuff, as Alex pointed out, they are obviously going to have to deal with the immediate effects, litigation through severance and stuff, and entanglements with their current or now former employer,
[23:01.850 --> 23:03.730]  and then they'll have to survive somehow.
[23:03.850 --> 23:06.850]  But I'm really curious where they will take their talents.
[23:07.110 --> 23:11.110]  I hope they all take their talents to the same place and form a new company and do a better job.
[23:11.830 --> 23:12.310]  It's...
[23:12.310 --> 23:13.450]  Drive these guys out.
[23:13.590 --> 23:24.530]  It's something worth playing around with in your imagination, I think, because, as you said, there's a lot of ways things can go.
[23:24.530 --> 23:45.930]  As they try to, like, get this adrenaline of, like, accelerating churn and, like, changing around management and everything and, like, try to make it an obedient organization, so to speak, and then more malleable, in a sense, to whatever aims and goals they have going forward,
[23:46.550 --> 23:48.230]  I think it is...
[23:48.230 --> 23:58.570]  It's important to recognize that, you know, if they want a dynamic, chaotic, changed environment, they may soon get that.
[23:58.690 --> 23:58.970]  Oh, yeah.
[23:59.210 --> 23:59.610]  Go ahead, Rob.
[24:00.890 --> 24:02.390]  I want to speak a little bit about...
[24:02.390 --> 24:13.450]  Alex had mentioned, and I think you had mentioned, too, Emmanuel, the people who have contributed their material to Twitter over the years to make it what it is, to make it as successful as it is.
[24:13.450 --> 24:25.010]  And one thing I'm seeing a lot of is people in the creative spheres, in the writing, artistic, whatever, spheres, where they've been building up this body of work on Twitter.
[24:25.330 --> 24:31.770]  And Twitter's been around for 16 years now.
[24:31.970 --> 24:33.270]  They started in 2006.
[24:33.730 --> 24:38.150]  And people have really made it work for them in the creative world.
[24:38.390 --> 24:40.590]  People have gotten work off of what they've done.
[24:40.590 --> 24:43.530]  I've gotten creative work off of things I've done on Twitter.
[24:44.990 --> 24:53.330]  And a lot of people, like, sort of fell away from maintaining their own websites, maintaining their own portfolios, because, oh, all my stuff is on Twitter.
[24:53.390 --> 24:54.110]  You want to see what I've got?
[24:54.210 --> 24:54.670]  It's on Twitter.
[24:54.970 --> 24:56.470]  And they've got their audience on Twitter.
[24:56.570 --> 24:58.030]  They've got their portfolios on Twitter.
[24:58.350 --> 25:05.270]  And people are now being caught at a loss, because Twitter being what it is, people are leaving the platform.
[25:05.270 --> 25:07.530]  The audience is leaving the platform.
[25:07.910 --> 25:11.470]  And people are realizing, wait, where's all my stuff going to go?
[25:11.850 --> 25:21.590]  And I think it's really important to reinforce for anybody in any sphere where what you do on social media is part of what pulls in your audience and gets you work.
[25:21.750 --> 25:23.710]  You need to have your own site, too.
[25:23.970 --> 25:32.270]  You need to have stuff in a place that you control because anything you put on a service that you don't maintain control of, that could go away in a second.
[25:32.270 --> 25:40.110]  And I think this is the first time for a lot of people, for maybe a generation of social media users, that they're coming up against this in such a scale.
[25:40.290 --> 25:50.450]  Yeah, I mean, not only just have your own website, but maybe just have another place, another outlet, because I know not everybody can run their own websites.
[25:50.570 --> 25:59.410]  Perhaps there's an opening here for some other type of service where people are helped in that regard, where they maintain control of their website.
[25:59.410 --> 26:04.890]  Because, you know, Twitter or any other service could shut down tomorrow and take everything with it.
[26:05.130 --> 26:08.570]  And even Jason Scott won't be able to get everything before they disappear.
[26:10.050 --> 26:14.150]  So whenever you trust anything to the cloud, that's what happens.
[26:14.390 --> 26:15.930]  That's the risk you take.
[26:16.010 --> 26:19.890]  And I don't think a lot of people are really aware of that risk.
[26:20.150 --> 26:22.250]  You know, you put all your photos on Flickr, great.
[26:22.430 --> 26:25.810]  But I hope you have your own copy locally as well in case they disappear.
[26:25.810 --> 26:29.070]  Same thing with Facebook and, you know, all your contacts.
[26:29.430 --> 26:35.830]  And, you know, that's why I push email so much is because it's not dependent on one particular service.
[26:36.050 --> 26:38.770]  Gmail could disappear, but email would still be there.
[26:38.990 --> 26:41.650]  You know, it would just go somewhere else, different address.
[26:41.830 --> 26:42.670]  You'd have to set that up.
[26:42.790 --> 26:48.650]  But people tend to want someone to take care of everything for them.
[26:49.130 --> 26:52.110]  And that often doesn't work out, sad to say.
[26:54.770 --> 26:58.330]  Anything else from the world of Twitter before we move on to other disasters?
[26:58.610 --> 26:59.050]  Go ahead.
[26:59.150 --> 27:00.470]  I do have one other thing.
[27:01.210 --> 27:08.450]  In the, what is it, a day that the Twitter blue thing existed and you could spend your $8 for a checkmark?
[27:08.670 --> 27:10.370]  Yeah, that doesn't still work, right?
[27:10.370 --> 27:12.030]  It doesn't.
[27:12.190 --> 27:20.970]  And part of the reason why is because a couple of companies were basically impersonated and their stock tanked.
[27:21.070 --> 27:22.530]  Who could have seen that coming?
[27:23.410 --> 27:23.530]  Right.
[27:23.910 --> 27:25.430]  So, like, Eli Lilly stock...
[27:26.110 --> 27:26.510]  Oh, boy.
[27:27.110 --> 27:33.910]  ...dropped, I think, 30% because someone created a Twitter called Eli Lilly Co.
[27:33.930 --> 27:37.250]  and bought a blue check for it and announced, hey, everybody, insulin's free.
[27:37.750 --> 27:41.910]  And there was a message after that saying, we don't give a damn about these people.
[27:42.210 --> 27:46.150]  We apologize to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account.
[27:46.630 --> 27:46.990]  Uh-huh.
[27:47.350 --> 27:50.970]  If anybody knows a diabetic, like, they were honestly not...
[27:50.970 --> 27:53.170]  You were probably not mad to see that at all.
[27:53.930 --> 27:54.930]  No, no.
[27:55.170 --> 27:55.730]  But, um...
[27:55.730 --> 27:57.810]  It's like everybody became the yes-men for a day.
[27:58.390 --> 27:58.870]  Yeah.
[27:59.390 --> 28:00.890]  And no one thought about that.
[28:00.890 --> 28:11.170]  And I think I saw something go by that said there was no, um, mechanism in place to check for the, like, continuing the blue checks.
[28:11.790 --> 28:12.270]  Mm-hmm.
[28:12.350 --> 28:17.510]  So, you could pay $8 once and keep your blue check forever, and there was no, like, recur...
[28:17.510 --> 28:18.690]  There was no way to make it recur.
[28:19.010 --> 28:26.710]  I don't remember what it was, but the rollout of verified blue, or whatever on Earth it was actually called, could have been a bigger mess.
[28:26.850 --> 28:28.390]  I'm just not entirely sure how.
[28:28.390 --> 28:41.990]  There is a way, um, if you want to see, uh, the people that, um, um, that you follow, uh, who paid for a blue check, as opposed to people who have a blue check because they're, they're verified in the past.
[28:42.270 --> 28:42.670]  Yeah.
[28:42.970 --> 28:48.010]  Um, uh, this is what you type in the, um, in the, in the search string for Twitter.
[28:48.310 --> 28:51.070]  And it's, uh, it's a little complex, so, uh, take notes.
[28:51.290 --> 28:58.330]  Uh, the word filter, followed immediately by a colon, no space, filter, colon, followed.
[28:58.390 --> 29:09.510]  Follows, F-O-L-L-O-W-S, space, dash, filter, colon, verified, space, filter, colon, blue, underscore, verified.
[29:10.470 --> 29:12.290]  All those words are spelled the way they sound.
[29:12.390 --> 29:13.390]  I'm going to read it one more time.
[29:14.090 --> 29:17.430]  And, uh, if I don't say space, that means there's not a space.
[29:17.550 --> 29:19.290]  If I do say space, that's where you put the space.
[29:19.290 --> 29:19.710]  Okay.
[29:20.190 --> 29:28.690]  Filter, colon, follows, space, dash, filter, colon, verified, space, filter, colon, blue, underscore, verified.
[29:29.230 --> 29:31.730]  And obviously, when I say underscore, I don't mean the word underscore.
[29:31.950 --> 29:33.370]  I mean the underscore character.
[29:33.610 --> 29:41.550]  That will display tweets from the people that you follow that have a blue check, but paid for it.
[29:41.710 --> 29:45.830]  If you want to be able to separate who did that and who didn't.
[29:45.830 --> 29:48.310]  Of course, they have to be tweeting for you to see who they are.
[29:49.150 --> 29:52.510]  But, uh, it's, you know, we saw this coming.
[29:52.610 --> 30:00.030]  As soon as they announced this ridiculous scheme, um, where they're not going to be able to differentiate between...
[30:00.030 --> 30:00.730]  I mean, it could have been worse.
[30:00.830 --> 30:09.690]  It could be, you know, you can click on that blue check and see if they, if they paid or if they didn't pay, uh, and, and were verified from the start or, you know, in the past.
[30:09.970 --> 30:12.790]  If they didn't have that, then it would be complete mayhem.
[30:12.910 --> 30:15.010]  So it could be worse, but it's pretty bad right now.
[30:15.830 --> 30:16.670]  Yes, Alex, you had something?
[30:19.030 --> 30:33.150]  I think, um, it is utter and complete mayhem that this whole idea of charging $8 for a verified account was just short-sighted and somewhat childish.
[30:33.150 --> 30:49.090]  And it appears to be par for the course because the whole, the whole system of management since Elon Musk has taken over appears to be childish and short-sighted in the sense of every single idea is put out for the public.
[30:49.090 --> 30:53.430]  It was tested without some kind of Q&A protocol being put into place.
[30:53.570 --> 31:02.150]  At the same time, they're cutting staff, cutting salaries, have this ridiculous, uh, stay or, or be severed deadline for tomorrow.
[31:03.110 --> 31:10.890]  I thought that it was going to be bad when Elon Musk took over Twitter, but I thought it was going to be bad for the wrong reason.
[31:10.890 --> 31:15.810]  I thought it was going to be bad because content moderation was going to go to the dog, so to speak.
[31:16.250 --> 31:30.090]  But, you know, this is much, much worse than I think anything that we had expected because just the management from on high and these policy changes without any notice or really without any thinking is much, much worse than I had anticipated.
[31:30.090 --> 31:31.190]  Yeah, I have a theory.
[31:31.350 --> 31:39.750]  I think it's mostly, um, to keep it in the news cycle and, um, it is serving as a huge distraction from other really critical stuff.
[31:40.390 --> 31:45.370]  Um, and you know, we're, we're all bearing witness to it.
[31:45.570 --> 31:59.970]  Um, the, just with the, the constant change in, in business models, very much like, um, venture capital coming in and, and like, uh, hyping something to, to keep the attention.
[32:00.090 --> 32:09.370]  On this, we are going to continue to hear crazy stuff that goes on and it will be self-important, but Elon Musk wants us to focus on this as opposed to some other.
[32:09.630 --> 32:18.550]  Well, I just think, um, like the last political cycle, you know, the way this platform has been used and exploited is to serve as a constant drama.
[32:18.970 --> 32:30.010]  And I think, um, in this case to, uh, to, to keep interest in investment or keep people, uh, looking at it, it's going to use its own tumult.
[32:30.090 --> 32:35.090]  It's its own craziness to, uh, keep people, uh, even there at all.
[32:35.230 --> 32:35.350]  Yeah.
[32:35.430 --> 32:41.210]  I don't know if anyone is going to want to invest in this after, uh, I don't understand what, I don't understand what else you do.
[32:41.510 --> 32:41.830]  Uh-huh.
[32:42.410 --> 32:42.770]  Go ahead, Gila.
[32:43.730 --> 32:46.990]  There's, thank you, Kyle, because there's one reason you would do it.
[32:47.070 --> 32:49.470]  And I've been saying this, I said this on the show a couple of months ago.
[32:49.470 --> 32:57.250]  If Elon Musk were a normal guy, had just gone through a breakup, he would go buy himself a Porsche.
[32:57.910 --> 33:09.170]  But it is the, he's finding himself at the intersection of bad breakup, too much time on his hands, and way, way, way too much money.
[33:09.170 --> 33:17.090]  He cannot, he's got the, the venture capital and all of the this's and the that's's, and, and he, you know, he can't go dye his hair blue.
[33:17.350 --> 33:18.010]  Why didn't he just...
[33:18.010 --> 33:18.870]  He has to splash out big.
[33:19.050 --> 33:21.150]  Instead of buying a Porsche, why didn't he just buy Porsche?
[33:21.430 --> 33:22.950]  You know, that would have saved us all a lot.
[33:23.050 --> 33:23.190]  What?
[33:23.270 --> 33:24.170]  He's competing with them.
[33:24.410 --> 33:24.610]  Is he?
[33:24.670 --> 33:25.070]  Oh, that's right.
[33:25.110 --> 33:26.470]  He is with his death machines.
[33:26.690 --> 33:26.870]  Yeah.
[33:26.870 --> 33:42.910]  But, and now it's so bad, Gila, like he's, he's buying ads on Twitter, like one company supporting other companies, taking out, uh, selling stock to, to put together the investment to buy this, uh, this, uh, sucking vortex that, that he runs now.
[33:43.170 --> 33:43.770]  The whole thing is a mess.
[33:43.930 --> 33:51.890]  But I think also we can't take our eye off the fact that the content moderation stuff is also really, really, really bad.
[33:51.890 --> 33:57.950]  Yeah, there was like an anti, anti-discrimination or anti, uh, one of the committees just a couple of days ago was disbanded.
[33:58.130 --> 33:58.550]  Yeah.
[33:58.810 --> 33:59.810]  It's not priority.
[34:00.610 --> 34:01.830]  It's not priority.
[34:02.250 --> 34:17.550]  And I have to say, as the person in this group who identifies as not male, it is not a fun time to be a not male person.
[34:17.550 --> 34:21.870]  It is not a fun time to be in any kind of minority on Twitter right now.
[34:21.890 --> 34:26.670]  You know, it's really scary and there's no place to go.
[34:26.990 --> 34:29.010]  And that is terrifying in and of itself.
[34:29.150 --> 34:37.790]  And I wonder if the big noise is about firing people and breaking everything are to keep everybody's eye off that particular ball too.
[34:38.650 --> 34:38.830]  Interesting.
[34:38.950 --> 34:39.250]  Go ahead, Rob.
[34:40.590 --> 34:51.150]  Um, just, uh, going back to the, uh, string of characters you, uh, gave out before to see who you're, who among the people you're following, um, bought their check check mark rather than earned it under the old system.
[34:51.150 --> 34:56.610]  Um, if you want that, uh, string of text, we just, uh, tweeted it on our Twitter account at hacker radio show.
[34:57.250 --> 34:58.230]  Okay, awesome.
[34:58.570 --> 35:00.030]  Hey, um, we're going to move on.
[35:00.190 --> 35:02.730]  Um, we, uh, have some mail from, from listeners.
[35:02.930 --> 35:04.070]  We, we get mail all the time.
[35:04.190 --> 35:08.790]  We, we love getting mail and you can, um, you can continue that tradition by writing to us.
[35:08.790 --> 35:10.730]  It's OTH at 2600.com.
[35:10.870 --> 35:13.610]  OTH at the numbers, 2600.com.
[35:14.210 --> 35:27.270]  Um, this is actually a, um, response to an article that came out in the most recent 2600, uh, which just came out about a week or two ago, uh, has to do with, um, with cars that drive themselves.
[35:27.270 --> 35:31.570]  And we just talked about, uh, Elon Musk's death machines because they've been in the news too.
[35:32.310 --> 35:36.650]  Um, and, uh, here's a quote from the article, uh, entitled, Will You Let Your Car Drive Itself?
[35:37.030 --> 35:44.630]  After explaining my previous experiences with the cruise control, my companions agreed to try it and to watch closely should anything happen.
[35:45.130 --> 35:50.170]  After engaging, we drove for 20 or 30 minutes without incident until my car suddenly slammed on its brakes.
[35:50.310 --> 35:53.870]  Driver behind us swerved, no obstacles or vehicles ahead of us.
[35:54.170 --> 35:57.050]  Apparently this kind of thing happens fairly frequently.
[35:57.270 --> 36:01.970]  Now, um, this, uh, this writer says this one resonated with me personally.
[36:01.970 --> 36:13.290]  Uh, this feature has saved, uh, has saved me or someone, uh, my life or someone else's life at least once, uh, in my Pacifica, ironically enough, 2020 Pacifica.
[36:13.590 --> 36:16.770]  Uh, but I always pose this very question.
[36:16.770 --> 36:22.830]  What happens when the software thinks there is danger when there isn't and creates danger?
[36:23.910 --> 36:37.810]  I'm following up with the writer and the NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, to find out if this next part is accurate from the article, um, that their office has received 758 reports of this exact same thing.
[36:38.130 --> 36:39.750]  I, too, have almost experienced this.
[36:39.830 --> 36:43.710]  My car thought there was danger and alerted me and started to slam brakes.
[36:43.710 --> 36:52.970]  I was driving normally, no cruise control, yet my car almost caused a serious incident because the road curved and there was a breakaway to the left to allow people to turn.
[36:52.990 --> 36:56.290]  I still believe in this tech, but, uh, I thought it was important to note.
[36:56.390 --> 36:57.650]  And, yes, you know, I think that's the theme.
[36:57.750 --> 37:09.890]  We believe in the tech, but you have to, um, uh, pay strict attention to the hazards and the flaws and the problems, because there's always going to be problems, and, uh, if you try to cover them up, they get worse.
[37:10.230 --> 37:14.450]  So thanks, uh, thanks for writing and, um, for sharing that with us.
[37:14.530 --> 37:19.050]  And we invite anybody else playing with that kind of technology to share their, their thoughts.
[37:19.430 --> 37:32.490]  Yeah, and I think there's a little bit of variation, um, the types of, uh, uh, imaging and vision that are used as inputs, whether it's, uh, whether it's laser or, um, uh, some kind of, uh, radar.
[37:32.830 --> 37:33.230]  I don't know.
[37:33.330 --> 37:34.470]  I don't know the technology.
[37:34.690 --> 37:42.810]  There's, there's probably, uh, quite a big market, a big range, and the standardizing of all of that, I think, is important along with safety.
[37:42.810 --> 38:01.870]  If it's glare or, uh, heat from some other source, uh, that, that, the, uh, the computer vision, uh, software or the, the stuff running it, uh, interprets as, as some kind of object, um, you know, what, what are the implications and, and where is the discussion?
[38:01.870 --> 38:05.190]  What does the, uh, conversation, um, look like?
[38:05.270 --> 38:05.970]  Where is it at now?
[38:06.150 --> 38:07.070]  We have another letter.
[38:07.350 --> 38:10.370]  Um, this one's kind of a nasty letter and Alex, it targets you.
[38:10.510 --> 38:16.130]  So, um, I'm, I'm going to, uh, give you some fair warning here and we're all going to, we're all going to stand up for you.
[38:16.190 --> 38:16.610]  So don't worry.
[38:17.150 --> 38:32.050]  Um, this has to do with, uh, remember, uh, we were talking last week about how your kid was watching YouTube and, uh, saw a YouTube ad, um, warning him that John Fetterman was too radical for Pennsylvania and he came outside to ask you if in fact, uh,
[38:32.130 --> 38:36.030]  Fetterman was too radical for, uh, that state at that particular point in history.
[38:36.730 --> 38:37.570]  Nine years old.
[38:37.690 --> 38:37.750]  Yeah.
[38:38.230 --> 38:42.170]  Um, I reminded to Alex that YouTube has a very reasonably priced ad free option.
[38:42.230 --> 38:44.810]  I haven't seen an ad on YouTube in over five years.
[38:45.030 --> 38:47.010]  It's my main source of media consumption.
[38:48.030 --> 38:49.930]  Insert sarcastic Emanuel comment here.
[38:50.010 --> 38:51.630]  No, no, I'm not going to be sarcastic there.
[38:51.630 --> 38:54.310]  I'll be sarcastic somewhere else, but, uh, you know what?
[38:54.310 --> 38:59.690]  If you want to, uh, make YouTube your main source of media consumption that I guess I'm getting sarcastic, aren't I?
[39:00.230 --> 39:02.050]  Uh, that's your, that's your right.
[39:02.050 --> 39:02.570]  I suppose.
[39:02.570 --> 39:04.450]  I mean, what can you say?
[39:04.590 --> 39:06.110]  It's, it's no worse than mass media.
[39:06.110 --> 39:09.710]  You get to choose what it is, but boy, be careful what you choose.
[39:09.930 --> 39:15.790]  Uh, not only is ad free, you can listen to videos with the screen off and download videos to your device.
[39:16.370 --> 39:23.050]  Uh, kind of like what we do at eight o'clock where we're not even on video in case people think they're going to see us on YouTube at eight o'clock.
[39:23.170 --> 39:24.270]  No, you're not going to see us.
[39:24.690 --> 39:25.670]  You're going to hear us.
[39:26.350 --> 39:27.390]  Yeah, that's how it works.
[39:27.450 --> 39:28.050]  We thought about it.
[39:28.150 --> 39:28.630]  It's a lot of work.
[39:28.990 --> 39:35.950]  It's, we were advised not to, uh, maybe he, uh, he can take, uh, maybe Alex, you can take a more active role in parenting his child.
[39:36.090 --> 39:36.770]  Now that's nasty.
[39:37.250 --> 39:38.330]  That's just, how dare you?
[39:38.410 --> 39:42.310]  That's nasty to say that he doesn't take an active role in parenting his child.
[39:42.450 --> 39:43.770]  He's very active in parenting his child.
[39:43.770 --> 39:44.570]  You have no idea.
[39:45.730 --> 39:54.050]  Instead of subjecting him to evil YouTube ads, so that he can trot him out as the victim of an agreement he willingly entered into.
[39:54.290 --> 39:55.310]  And there was no trotting.
[39:56.190 --> 39:59.350]  I don't think his kid's even aware that we talked about him on the radio.
[39:59.730 --> 40:01.490]  I think I heard this from 2600.
[40:01.590 --> 40:03.790]  If something is free online, then you are the product.
[40:06.310 --> 40:08.730]  You know, it's true to some degree.
[40:09.690 --> 40:11.510]  I mean, you're not our product, right?
[40:11.510 --> 40:12.090]  We're free.
[40:12.370 --> 40:15.210]  But I wouldn't call our listeners our products.
[40:16.130 --> 40:17.550]  I know Alex knows this.
[40:17.730 --> 40:26.630]  The negative byproduct of so much law training is you get really good arguing points you don't actually believe to try and get your message across.
[40:27.110 --> 40:29.570]  And it's really easy to say that about a lawyer, isn't it?
[40:29.610 --> 40:33.470]  It's really easy to say, yeah, you're a lawyer, so you don't really believe what you're saying, ever.
[40:34.690 --> 40:37.410]  You have a choice in the situation, Alex.
[40:38.290 --> 40:42.350]  He chose to sell out his child to save 10 bucks a month.
[40:42.830 --> 40:44.610]  Not really YouTube's fault there.
[40:44.750 --> 40:45.410]  Oh, my God.
[40:45.530 --> 40:45.710]  Really?
[40:46.090 --> 40:52.310]  You expect every parent in the country to pay YouTube 10 bucks not to have their kids exposed to commercials?
[40:52.770 --> 40:54.070]  I don't think that's the point.
[40:55.570 --> 40:57.510]  Look, Alex, you're fuming, so go ahead.
[40:57.650 --> 40:58.790]  I'm going to let you have the floor here.
[40:59.210 --> 41:07.130]  No, I would say, you know, I welcome criticism like that, especially unbridled and unrelenting criticism like that.
[41:07.290 --> 41:15.470]  So, you know, if anybody wants to write anything negative about me or anyone else, you can reach us at OTH at 2600.com.
[41:15.770 --> 41:20.110]  And feel free to foment vitriol at will.
[41:20.310 --> 41:21.450]  We have enough stuff for a website.
[41:21.610 --> 41:23.710]  Now, we could put up a whole website of all kinds of the negative.
[41:23.810 --> 41:23.950]  Yeah.
[41:23.950 --> 41:25.210]  But we'll talk about that later.
[41:25.690 --> 41:29.170]  Let's address some of the, I think, valid points.
[41:29.210 --> 41:35.730]  And I will concede almost every one of the points that the listener addressed is valid.
[41:35.730 --> 41:42.670]  And I had thought about this notion of paying for YouTube because it is an ad-free version.
[41:43.090 --> 41:59.990]  But that was only after I realized that my son was being subjected to so many political ads when I engaged in, or rather, I had held the erroneous assumption that a platform like YouTube would direct age-appropriate ads at viewers.
[41:59.990 --> 42:11.090]  Namely, that if you're watching something that relates to childlike video games or cartoons or Spider-Man that you would receive, ads that relate to childlike video games, cartoons, etc.
[42:11.450 --> 42:20.710]  Not necessarily wholesale political ads attacking John Fetterman as being too radical for Pennsylvania and getting into the minds and brains of a child.
[42:20.710 --> 42:32.190]  So, to be fair, the listener is right, that that was an erroneous assumption on my part, that these platforms would take the responsible route and direct ads towards age-appropriate viewers.
[42:32.930 --> 42:45.410]  I think your point, however, Emmanuel, is also valid, that every parent in this world that has a child should not have to pay YouTube $10 to simply not subject them to this type of political misinformation.
[42:46.510 --> 43:05.150]  That's certainly valid, but the other thing that I think is not valid, that the listener brought up, and it was ambiguous because of his use of a pronoun, namely, he, was that the listener wrote that this was a deal, or rather, a bargain that he entered into,
[43:05.270 --> 43:05.970]  that he struck.
[43:06.230 --> 43:12.330]  And if he was my nine-year-old child, he is incapable of striking any kind of agreement because he's a minor.
[43:12.330 --> 43:13.670]  He didn't choose this.
[43:13.830 --> 43:15.330]  He just wanted to watch some videos.
[43:16.310 --> 43:21.570]  Perhaps I should have been a better parent and assumed that YouTube would do the wrong thing rather than the right thing.
[43:21.790 --> 43:27.270]  But I'm not going to cave in and buy a $10 subscription to YouTube.
[43:27.470 --> 43:30.390]  I think the better choice is to just turn YouTube off.
[43:30.750 --> 43:32.410]  That's the choice that we have as parents.
[43:32.530 --> 43:39.050]  And just to clarify, Alex, you are a great parent, so anyone who suggests otherwise is certainly mistaken.
[43:39.730 --> 43:40.730]  We all live our days.
[43:40.730 --> 43:48.630]  But to basically turn it off or to subscribe to the $10 feature, your kid's smart.
[43:48.790 --> 43:51.090]  He'll get around that if he wants to.
[43:51.250 --> 43:52.210]  Any kid will.
[43:52.750 --> 43:54.970]  You can't just cut off YouTube.
[43:55.770 --> 43:57.570]  I know because governments try this.
[43:57.630 --> 43:58.390]  It doesn't work.
[43:58.730 --> 44:01.290]  People find ways around it, and especially kids.
[44:01.470 --> 44:02.070]  Go ahead, Rob.
[44:02.170 --> 44:03.630]  But then we have to get into the FTX story.
[44:03.710 --> 44:04.570]  We only have a few minutes left.
[44:04.630 --> 44:04.810]  Go ahead.
[44:05.710 --> 44:05.970]  Absolutely.
[44:05.970 --> 44:12.750]  The funny thing is YouTube does present itself as a safe place for children if you're in the children section of it.
[44:13.170 --> 44:17.110]  Basically, any video that's flagged as being for children, the comments are disabled.
[44:17.550 --> 44:21.250]  YouTube knows that their comment sections are garbage, so they're not going to subject kids to that.
[44:21.310 --> 44:25.630]  But on that same video, apparently, if there are ads, it will subject you to comments about John Fetterman.
[44:25.790 --> 44:26.510]  I'm amused.
[44:27.430 --> 44:29.410]  Okay, so I'm going to read a headline here.
[44:29.570 --> 44:32.150]  It just kind of sums up how bad things got this week.
[44:33.490 --> 44:33.890]  FTX...
[44:33.890 --> 44:37.610]  You might have seen FTX logos everywhere.
[44:37.630 --> 44:40.830]  If you watched the World Series, every umpire was wearing FTX.
[44:40.950 --> 44:42.230]  I thought it was a broadcast network.
[44:42.370 --> 44:45.810]  I thought it was like FXX or something, or FX, or God knows what.
[44:45.890 --> 44:46.650]  But no, FTX.
[44:50.230 --> 44:54.270]  Basically, their cryptocurrency exchange, this is the headline.
[44:54.270 --> 44:58.310]  FTX suffers $400 million hack after declaring bankruptcy.
[44:58.990 --> 45:01.130]  Remaining funds moved to cold storage.
[45:01.970 --> 45:03.430]  Yeah, it was a bad week.
[45:03.810 --> 45:04.790]  A very bad week.
[45:04.910 --> 45:07.610]  First, they had to declare bankruptcy.
[45:07.610 --> 45:13.150]  There was a run on all the money that people had, and a lot of people have lost a lot of money.
[45:13.550 --> 45:17.150]  And then, on top of that, they were hacked.
[45:17.430 --> 45:21.530]  And the timing is just as bad as it could possibly be.
[45:23.830 --> 45:42.170]  And basically, it seems likely that whoever did this has some kind of insider knowledge, because they had access to all kinds of root passwords and various other things that somebody who had knowledge of the company would have.
[45:42.730 --> 45:45.730]  Many believe if this is a hack, it had to be an insider job.
[45:45.990 --> 45:55.250]  The hacker had access to the private key, root level on the website, publisher key access to the apps, another user highlighted that the breach included an Apple publisher key breach.
[45:55.430 --> 46:00.430]  This allowed the quote-unquote hacker to sideload malware into the FTX app.
[46:00.650 --> 46:04.390]  Many users are reporting that their FTX balance is now showing zero.
[46:04.970 --> 46:06.890]  God, so terrible.
[46:07.050 --> 46:11.990]  Many in the crypto community point to the fact that FTX has never been hacked since it started its operation.
[46:12.150 --> 46:16.670]  Therefore, the idea of the exchange being hacked immediately after filing for bankruptcy is shady.
[46:19.290 --> 46:20.910]  So, yeah, there's that.
[46:21.130 --> 46:34.610]  And then, of course, there's the fact that people who used FTX may very well have lost everything, because filing for bankruptcy means that they are a dead last in the list of people that get money back from them if they ever pay anything.
[46:34.890 --> 46:37.130]  All kinds of other creditors are ahead of them in line.
[46:37.130 --> 46:42.010]  And it's basically been very sobering for people in the cryptocurrency world.
[46:42.430 --> 46:43.430]  Bitcoin has tanked there.
[46:43.530 --> 46:44.890]  I think they're down to 16 grand now.
[46:46.770 --> 46:51.010]  It's the risk, I think, most of us knew was always there.
[46:51.210 --> 46:55.370]  But maybe we didn't see it coming this dramatically, this disastrously.
[46:55.730 --> 46:56.410]  Go ahead, Alex.
[46:58.490 --> 47:07.970]  This FTX hack is incredibly interesting and very curiously timed, of course, the same day that the exchange declares bankruptcy.
[47:08.830 --> 47:15.210]  Over $330 million, I think it's around $339 million in digital assets, goes missing by way of a quote-unquote hack.
[47:15.950 --> 47:22.470]  This is all money that would have been paid to its creditors, that would have been paid to its users, to anybody that held money on the platform.
[47:22.470 --> 47:24.850]  And somehow it just goes entirely missing.
[47:25.470 --> 47:33.570]  And whoever is holding this $339 million is now apparently one of the largest holders of ETH.
[47:33.990 --> 47:34.530]  So that's...
[47:34.530 --> 47:36.570]  The 35th largest holder of Ethereum.
[47:36.950 --> 47:38.630]  35th in the world.
[47:38.830 --> 47:40.170]  It's pretty incredible.
[47:40.230 --> 47:41.490]  What about this, Alex?
[47:41.710 --> 47:43.610]  Just human me for a second.
[47:43.830 --> 47:53.070]  If this person is sort of like a Robin Hood that came in, grabbed all this money and intends to distribute it to the people who lost money, the actual people who lost money.
[47:53.210 --> 47:53.970]  Do you think that's a possibility?
[47:55.290 --> 47:56.510]  Sure, they could do that.
[47:56.790 --> 48:07.650]  They could establish essentially their own fund, their own kind of interpleader where you show what you had in your account, and then they give it back to you instead of to the creditors that have a higher secured interest.
[48:08.150 --> 48:10.290]  But, you know, I think that's unlikely.
[48:10.550 --> 48:17.330]  I think it's a great idea, but not necessarily reflective of reality here.
[48:18.130 --> 48:34.090]  Unfortunately, this is another rude awakening for a lot of holders of digital assets who might have assumed erroneously, just like I did with regard to the YouTube ads, that there was some kind of protection or some kind of insurance related to what they had on deposit.
[48:34.350 --> 48:37.410]  You know, like a bank has FDIC types of insurance.
[48:37.410 --> 48:50.870]  Well, that doesn't exist because the only reason there's FDIC coverage or insurance for your bank account and what you hold in that particular bank account is because banks are highly regulated entities.
[48:51.230 --> 48:52.970]  They agree to do certain things.
[48:53.070 --> 48:57.790]  They agree to keep certain amounts of capital in reserve, to have certain security practices in place.
[48:58.130 --> 49:03.130]  That goes against everything that a lot of cryptocurrency exchanges stand for.
[49:03.130 --> 49:05.070]  They want to be outside regulation.
[49:05.250 --> 49:09.750]  They want to be decentralized and outside of any of the holds of national governments.
[49:09.950 --> 49:15.310]  And so something akin to FDIC insurance coming from a national government is just not there.
[49:15.450 --> 49:15.990]  It's not present.
[49:16.150 --> 49:25.290]  But on the other hand, to look at this from this tragic situation that affected so many people in a lot of ways, I think there is some optimistic way of looking at this.
[49:25.410 --> 49:26.310]  Oh, I want to hear this.
[49:26.530 --> 49:27.230]  I want to hear this.
[49:27.350 --> 49:27.510]  Go ahead.
[49:27.910 --> 49:28.630]  Make it quick, though.
[49:28.670 --> 49:29.710]  We only have two minutes left.
[49:29.930 --> 49:30.310]  I know.
[49:30.450 --> 49:31.790]  I'll make this in 30 seconds.
[49:31.790 --> 49:48.110]  I think that what we're seeing here, the fall of a lot of these exchanges and a lot of these coins and a lot of these places that were essentially paper facades or houses of cards, whatever you want to call them, is necessary for the digital asset ecosystem to begin to evolve.
[49:48.490 --> 49:59.470]  There are going to be things that are standing on stronger footing, that have better practices, that take care of their customers, that are going to be propelled forward when all of this nonsense has fallen to the wayside.
[49:59.470 --> 50:07.330]  So I think we're going to hopefully see, once all the dust has settled, quite literally, a renaissance when it comes to digital assets and cryptocurrencies.
[50:07.590 --> 50:10.350]  And I think you also made an excellent point regarding regulation.
[50:10.670 --> 50:12.970]  This is why regulation, folks.
[50:13.190 --> 50:18.550]  This is when people complain about government oversight and you just want to be left alone.
[50:18.550 --> 50:20.550]  This is what happens when you are left alone.
[50:20.670 --> 50:23.550]  This is the risk that you take every time.
[50:23.550 --> 50:28.030]  So ask yourself now, will a little regulation have been such a bad thing?
[50:28.870 --> 50:36.290]  Obviously, over-regulation is a bad thing, but you can't just rely on the market to govern itself.
[50:36.530 --> 50:37.470]  It doesn't work.
[50:37.590 --> 50:38.210]  It doesn't work.
[50:38.210 --> 50:39.750]  You have catastrophes like this.
[50:41.590 --> 50:42.150]  Yeah.
[50:42.270 --> 50:53.430]  I mean, there's so much precedent in history for the many different scenarios where the important oversight, the public interest, it has to be a priority.
[50:53.790 --> 51:01.410]  And yeah, I'm with some of the other optimistic stuff out of this.
[51:01.530 --> 51:06.170]  I think I'm with that spirit because it's emerging.
[51:06.210 --> 51:13.690]  It's something that, you know, it's bittersweet in that there was a lot of acceptance, a lot of enthusiasm around it.
[51:13.810 --> 51:17.150]  And these are part of the fits and spurts, I think, of it.
[51:17.150 --> 51:20.290]  These are the growing pains, the growing pains of all growing pains.
[51:20.630 --> 51:24.170]  And as Alex said, it will lead to something better in the future.
[51:24.330 --> 51:32.350]  It doesn't help people who lost a lot now, but, you know, our advice to people investing in cryptocurrency, only invest as much as you can lose, as you can afford to lose.
[51:32.950 --> 51:35.610]  And then it won't be so bad.
[51:35.770 --> 51:38.890]  It will be bad, but it won't be as bad as it is for some people right now.
[51:40.910 --> 51:41.990]  And we'll learn.
[51:42.090 --> 51:42.810]  We'll learn from this.
[51:43.070 --> 51:46.090]  We're going to continue this conversation on overtime in a couple of minutes.
[51:46.090 --> 51:53.430]  Go to youtube.com slash channel 2600 or just click on the link on the 2600.com web page.
[51:53.930 --> 51:56.690]  And please remember to support WBAI.
[51:56.790 --> 51:59.270]  Give to WBAI.org.
[52:00.230 --> 52:03.310]  Rich or poor, we're all in this together.
[52:04.030 --> 52:05.210]  We'll see you next week.
[52:05.630 --> 52:06.210]  Have a good night.
[52:09.040 --> 52:13.700]  Well, you're rich and I'm poor.
[52:14.000 --> 52:18.460]  My life's a bitch, but I ain't sold.
[52:18.920 --> 52:22.840]  And I use some cash, but that's okay.
[52:24.400 --> 52:26.680]  I've learned to live this way.
[52:26.920 --> 52:28.400]  You're rich and I'm poor.
[52:28.840 --> 52:30.640]  I take my time.
[52:31.040 --> 53:07.960]  Well, you rush and race And live your life At a terrible pace Go count your money Yeah, go make more I'll spend my time to love You're rich and I'm poor Well, that's rich I'm poor And I ain't got much And don't need much more Well, you're riding high And I'm lying low Who cares in the end Who's rich and who's poor
[53:26.900 --> 53:46.680]  Well, I see you But you never see me And maybe you're rich But God knows I'm free And the finest cars And the finest clothes Won't give you no soul You're rich and I'm poor
[54:05.860 --> 54:45.120]  When we're outside The pearly gates Side by side In a way of fate Well, I ain't worried About what's in stone But you'll be mighty You're rich and I'm poor Well, that's rich I'm poor And I ain't got much Don't need much more Well, you're riding high And I'm lying low Who cares in the end Who's rich and who's poor
[55:36.350 --> 55:43.690]  The word women Because it's impossible To fight for the rights Of the female half Of humanity If we can't name ourselves
[00:00.560 --> 00:04.660]  And welcome everybody on YouTube to Off the Hook Overtime.
[00:05.500 --> 00:07.620]  I seem to have made it into YouTube land, Kyle.
[00:08.040 --> 00:08.280]  Hola.
[00:08.620 --> 00:09.160]  Okay, cool.
[00:10.080 --> 00:11.400]  Rob, Gila, you there?
[00:12.260 --> 00:12.700]  Hey.
[00:13.040 --> 00:13.580]  We are here.
[00:14.240 --> 00:15.200]  Alex is MIA.
[00:15.700 --> 00:16.520]  I just see an empty chair.
[00:17.580 --> 00:18.440]  Okay, fine.
[00:19.700 --> 00:20.980]  But I think he made it anyway.
[00:21.820 --> 00:25.280]  And Rob, you're going to tell us if we're actually broadcasting on YouTube, right?
[00:25.500 --> 00:26.320]  We are indeed.
[00:26.480 --> 00:28.360]  Okay, so there's nothing left for us to do.
[00:28.560 --> 00:29.480]  Have a good night, folks.
[00:29.480 --> 00:32.140]  No, we were going to have a good show, everyone.
[00:32.940 --> 00:33.840]  Yeah, okay.
[00:33.980 --> 00:35.900]  Continuing with the FTX conversation.
[00:36.040 --> 00:36.600]  Kyle, you had a point.
[00:36.640 --> 00:38.220]  I had a couple of things that just came to mind.
[00:38.460 --> 00:59.380]  The FTX thing specifically, I just think that the use of cryptocurrencies, it really went astray when people start seeing it as an investment vehicle and something where it's like a get-rich-quick thing or, you know, you're losing sight of the magic.
[00:59.480 --> 01:05.120]  Of being able to handle the transactions in a distributed way across borders.
[01:05.380 --> 01:07.460]  That's the really cool part about it.
[01:07.580 --> 01:20.020]  And I think when it started being a business model for all of this pie in the sky, you know, altruistic idealist stuff about what it actually is.
[01:20.020 --> 01:22.400]  No, what it is, is it's a way of doing transactions.
[01:22.400 --> 01:28.780]  I think like blockchain was more interesting than the actual cryptocurrency implementation.
[01:28.900 --> 01:32.820]  Granted, digital finance is exciting.
[01:33.100 --> 01:38.920]  But it wasn't to me that like, oh, you can just make all this money.
[01:38.920 --> 01:41.940]  Like, I think that just cheapened it right out of the gate.
[01:41.960 --> 01:44.180]  And it made it really tacky really quickly.
[01:44.320 --> 01:47.940]  But it also made its visibility and acceptance widely.
[01:49.340 --> 01:53.320]  And it's people kind of understanding the thing nobody understood.
[01:53.320 --> 01:53.900]  Right.
[01:54.540 --> 02:06.600]  And I think that benefited the future of it, even if it was in the immediate sense to its detriment, because you had such a frothy investment field.
[02:06.940 --> 02:20.520]  The other thing about hype, I guess, and value and skyrocketing projections and all of that.
[02:20.520 --> 02:42.640]  And when that changes, I think, does anybody else get the sense that these entities that are doing all the layoffs, like, to some degree, they kind of don't want to be worth that much in all, you know, Trump organization strategies, you know, of like,
[02:43.140 --> 02:46.100]  no, there's no money here, you know, like, they made all of that.
[02:46.100 --> 02:54.620]  And I think there's some benefit to being really lean, because the outlook isn't good, they can blame COVID, they can, you know, have all these layoffs.
[02:54.800 --> 03:15.380]  And I just find it really peculiar that right when there's a potential for Democrats and, you know, representatives to make a case around privacy around reining in some of the behaviors in social media, I just find it interesting and even tax evasion.
[03:16.760 --> 03:28.120]  specifically, like, like, all this money is being moved around, or, you know, vaporized in investments in some other new venture, they can distract people from.
[03:28.380 --> 03:30.860]  But I think it's really awful convenient.
[03:31.080 --> 03:40.400]  And I was just curious that that occurred to me that it's it seems to really benefit to be Yeah, you know, there's no money, Elizabeth Warren, you know, there's no money.
[03:41.200 --> 03:50.860]  Don't, don't, don't, don't try to come for us, because we're broke, and you know, worthless, and everything, all the prospects look, look, you know, like nothing.
[03:51.260 --> 03:52.480]  So go away.
[03:52.840 --> 03:56.360]  And don't regulate us, because we're still, we're still new.
[03:56.600 --> 04:06.480]  And we need to be able to grow and all this, like, retro, like, decades old attitudes, totally disregarding the current operating environment environment.
[04:06.480 --> 04:14.500]  And what has the all of this has ultimately, ultimately turned into for society.
[04:14.860 --> 04:15.980]  Anybody else have thoughts?
[04:16.020 --> 04:16.220]  Alex, go ahead.
[04:18.840 --> 04:19.540]  I'm sorry.
[04:20.860 --> 04:23.100]  I wasn't actually raising my hand there.
[04:23.560 --> 04:24.560]  Your hand was up.
[04:24.740 --> 04:25.980]  Literally, your hand was just up.
[04:26.060 --> 04:28.680]  What, why would your hand be up if you didn't want to be called on?
[04:31.080 --> 04:33.660]  There were various reasons why my hand would be up.
[04:33.660 --> 04:33.680]  Okay.
[04:34.340 --> 04:35.340]  Anyone else?
[04:37.300 --> 04:53.620]  I am just amused because if you look into the history of traditional banking, there wasn't always the FDIC, there wasn't always all these regulations that existed to limit what banks were allowed to do with your money and therefore institute some sort of protection.
[04:53.620 --> 04:57.760]  Each of those regulations came about as the response to something going wrong.
[04:58.420 --> 05:20.620]  And one thing people have been saying about the whole cryptocurrency thing since it became an important thing is that they are basically speed running all the reasons why we have the regulations we do, you know, compressing into a small handful of years the entire history of finance in Western society.
[05:20.620 --> 05:32.680]  And, yeah, it's fun watching them learn lessons that people who handle actual non-cryptocurrency money learned along the way over the past generations.
[05:34.140 --> 05:37.500]  I think a lot of people are learning those valuable lessons right now.
[05:37.600 --> 05:45.120]  And I just hope that the people who put their money into crypto just at least had somebody say to them, this is very risky and you could lose everything.
[05:45.120 --> 05:46.320]  Are you prepared for that?
[05:46.960 --> 05:47.060]  Are you prepared for that?
[05:47.060 --> 05:53.360]  You know, if people didn't get that warning, that's extremely irresponsible and possibly criminal.
[05:54.660 --> 05:56.360]  Alex, are you really raising your hand this time?
[05:56.440 --> 05:56.640]  Go ahead.
[05:57.560 --> 05:58.980]  I might be, actually, yeah.
[05:59.720 --> 06:15.060]  To bounce off what Rob was saying, I think that, yeah, there will be, especially the FTX scandal and hack and collapse and all that will usher in a new wave of regulation in a more expedited fashion.
[06:15.060 --> 06:17.720]  For cryptocurrency exchanges in particular.
[06:18.180 --> 06:32.380]  But I think what you're all saying, too, is very true in the sense of cryptocurrency as the thing in and of itself is not what we should be investing in.
[06:32.380 --> 06:35.800]  But there is functionality associated with cryptocurrency.
[06:36.280 --> 06:53.120]  And in particular, I'm talking about currencies like, well, like the Ethereum network, smart contracts that are based in Ethereum, where there's a function in a smart contract that is in and of itself something else over and above the currency itself.
[06:53.120 --> 07:02.060]  So Bitcoin is simply a transactional digital asset, a transactional digital currency that doesn't have any smart contract functionality.
[07:02.060 --> 07:15.640]  And I think that we're seeing just in the same way that we're seeing a lot of these smoke and mirrors type institutions and whatnot fall to the wayside, I think we're going to start to see a lot of the less functional cryptocurrencies also fall to the wayside.
[07:15.640 --> 07:31.220]  I'm not predicting here that Bitcoin is ever going to go away entirely, but I think that what we're going to see rise to the top are currencies that have some kind of smart contract functionality over and above what they are in and of themselves as a currency.
[07:31.220 --> 07:33.580]  And I think that's true with NFTs as well.
[07:33.780 --> 07:42.180]  I mean, NFTs investing in a bored ape image of an NFT is, some might look at it as some kind of silly investment.
[07:42.380 --> 07:51.520]  Some might see this something risky and speculative that could pay off in the short term and, and maybe that worked out for a number of investors and maybe a number of investors lost money on that kind of bet.
[07:51.520 --> 08:08.120]  But I think in NFT, where we're going to see this go in the future is, it is a very good and accurate record of some kind of ownership interest or title in a third thing, in something other than itself, that can be publicly viewable and accessible on a blockchain.
[08:08.440 --> 08:14.780]  Like that's a great function for something like a property record, for something like owning a third party piece of art.
[08:15.380 --> 08:26.960]  So I think we're going to start to see a lot of these functions come to fruition, hopefully more quickly, now that a lot of the FUD and the fuzz has fallen to the wayside.
[08:27.340 --> 08:27.840]  Go ahead, Gila.
[08:28.580 --> 08:36.220]  I was just thinking that the next big cryptocurrency exchange, you know, thinking about the things that are going to come from what we've learned.
[08:36.660 --> 08:38.840]  I'm just waiting for, you know, the house of bricks.
[08:41.240 --> 08:41.640]  No?
[08:42.060 --> 08:43.640]  Okay, the joke sounded better in my head.
[08:43.800 --> 08:44.120]  Never mind.
[08:45.800 --> 08:46.160]  Okay.
[08:46.540 --> 08:58.380]  Because I was thinking about like the three little pigs and everybody's houses collapsed and, you know, there was like, you know, if this is the house of stone, excuse me, the house of sticks, maybe, then the house of bricks is up next.
[08:58.460 --> 09:00.420]  Like we're going to learn from what happened here.
[09:00.500 --> 09:03.000]  I still don't love it, but...
[09:03.640 --> 09:05.500]  Sorry, I've been sitting on that joke since the end of the show.
[09:05.520 --> 09:07.300]  We'll be throwing the bricks through their windows?
[09:07.540 --> 09:08.500]  Is that the plan?
[09:08.620 --> 09:08.860]  Okay.
[09:09.700 --> 09:10.240]  I'm down.
[09:10.240 --> 09:15.200]  A more tempered, sensible view of how we're using this, for sure.
[09:15.340 --> 09:24.080]  Is there anybody here who's comfortable enough with their understanding of cryptocurrency to explain just what in God's name FTX was or is and why it was necessary for people?
[09:24.080 --> 09:33.640]  I mean, I'm sure there's people out there right now saying, why can't I just buy a Bitcoin and keep that and why do I have to have these shady companies involved?
[09:34.200 --> 09:35.940]  Is anybody comfortable explaining?
[09:35.940 --> 09:41.440]  I think it was used to convert traditional currencies into cryptocurrencies and vice versa.
[09:41.680 --> 09:42.540]  Do you think or you know?
[09:42.780 --> 09:43.260]  I think.
[09:43.440 --> 09:43.960]  I don't know.
[09:44.080 --> 09:47.480]  This is what I get from most people is theories, but...
[09:47.480 --> 09:48.420]  Should we give out the phone number?
[09:48.540 --> 09:51.380]  I'm seeing a lot of puzzled people looking at me.
[09:52.200 --> 09:53.480]  No one's comfortable enough to...
[09:53.480 --> 09:54.460]  See, this is the problem.
[09:54.780 --> 09:55.300]  This is the problem.
[09:55.820 --> 10:00.100]  You know, economics, banks, things like that we can talk about, the stock market.
[10:00.100 --> 10:02.200]  We still don't know what we're talking about exactly.
[10:02.360 --> 10:05.980]  It's boring, but this, it's really...
[10:06.500 --> 10:08.660]  Yeah, there's a lot that we don't know.
[10:08.780 --> 10:09.860]  I'll tell you the problem.
[10:10.120 --> 10:14.780]  This is the result of making fun of people who explain cryptocurrency.
[10:15.320 --> 10:19.500]  But are they explaining it or are they just making it even muddier?
[10:19.500 --> 10:19.760]  Look at the complex.
[10:19.760 --> 10:20.840]  Look at these scared people.
[10:20.840 --> 10:21.500]  Mm-hmm.
[10:21.560 --> 10:21.800]  Mm-hmm.
[10:21.860 --> 10:33.260]  What I'm worried about is that Congress, and we just got a bulletin about Congress, actually, that Congress is going to be stepping in because of all the outrage and concern over what happened with FTX.
[10:33.720 --> 10:37.200]  And it's going to go to the other extreme where they're going to over-regulate.
[10:37.320 --> 10:40.200]  And that's definitely something that should be avoided.
[10:40.200 --> 10:47.880]  But this anything-goes atmosphere is also a big problem, especially if people aren't aware that's the atmosphere they're in.
[10:48.880 --> 10:55.300]  Yeah, and I think the use of it, especially in ransomware, we've seen it.
[10:55.400 --> 10:56.180]  We've talked about it.
[10:56.320 --> 11:18.540]  I think that is also an area where the government wants to take a keen look because there are so many communities, municipalities, institutions, hospitals, you know, important stuff that really get badly hurt when they're at the effect of something that is employing those tactics and demanding something.
[11:19.020 --> 11:26.240]  You know, I think Alex knows more about this, but, you know, traceability, reporting, incidents, and so forth.
[11:26.420 --> 11:31.720]  That's all something that people have evolved a bit in their attitudes around it.
[11:32.060 --> 11:32.520]  Okay.
[11:32.720 --> 11:38.500]  This bulletin that we just got has to do with Republicans getting control of the House.
[11:38.500 --> 11:41.300]  This happened just a few minutes ago during our show.
[11:41.820 --> 11:43.160]  But here's the thing.
[11:43.340 --> 11:46.520]  This is coming from ABC News, local ABC News.
[11:47.400 --> 11:49.180]  And the way they phrase it, listen to this.
[11:49.760 --> 11:52.480]  You know, talk about confusing people with digital currency.
[11:52.720 --> 11:54.020]  This is confusing people with politics.
[11:54.460 --> 11:59.320]  Republicans retake control of the House, securing veto power on President Biden's agenda.
[11:59.320 --> 12:02.260]  The president now forced to deal with our divided Congress.
[12:02.840 --> 12:02.940]  Okay.
[12:03.040 --> 12:04.060]  Last part is true.
[12:04.280 --> 12:04.820]  Divided Congress.
[12:05.000 --> 12:07.340]  But he is the one who vetoes.
[12:07.460 --> 12:08.680]  They don't veto him.
[12:08.920 --> 12:09.680]  Get it right.
[12:09.820 --> 12:10.060]  Come on.
[12:10.160 --> 12:11.260]  You're ABC News, for God's sake.
[12:11.620 --> 12:14.220]  Yeah, it's going to be harder for him.
[12:14.600 --> 12:20.180]  But let's not always paint it as, oh my God, it's a disaster and it's another setback for Biden.
[12:20.520 --> 12:28.800]  No, what has happened in the past week is we've seen a much slimmer lead for Republicans in the House of Representatives.
[12:29.040 --> 12:34.440]  And we've seen them lose the Senate, which many of these same commentators were saying they were going to get that as well.
[12:34.640 --> 12:44.440]  So by them having this slimmest of all advantages in the House of Representatives, to me, seems like a disadvantage to them because they have to get all their ducks in a row.
[12:44.560 --> 12:46.240]  They have to have everybody on the same page.
[12:46.660 --> 12:51.200]  And, you know, when you have hundreds of representatives, that's a lot harder than when you have 50 senators.
[12:51.200 --> 12:59.180]  So, yeah, it's not the ideal situation for Biden, but to paint it as a loss for Biden, that's not accurate.
[12:59.420 --> 13:07.720]  And it's just this whole thing of, well, it's, you know, one loss after another for Biden when actually the opposite is what's happening.
[13:08.060 --> 13:13.760]  You know, and off your election like this, a midterm, Democrats were supposed to lose.
[13:14.020 --> 13:18.140]  They didn't lose nearly as much as they were predicted to.
[13:18.140 --> 13:20.100]  In fact, they won in quite a few places.
[13:21.620 --> 13:23.640]  So let's just look at these headlines.
[13:24.440 --> 13:29.780]  And because they come from trusted news sources, and I put that in quotes, doesn't mean they're accurate or correct.
[13:30.940 --> 13:31.540]  All right.
[13:31.740 --> 13:33.140]  And filibuster is still legal, right?
[13:33.780 --> 13:34.460]  It is.
[13:34.600 --> 13:44.600]  But, you know, had the Democrats lost the Senate, which a lot of people were predicting, and they had gotten rid of the filibuster, what would have happened?
[13:44.980 --> 13:46.340]  What would have happened at that point?
[13:46.540 --> 13:47.540]  It makes you think.
[13:47.540 --> 13:51.660]  You can sort of see where they're coming from, the people who are hedging on that.
[13:53.660 --> 13:59.140]  And also, codifying gay marriage, that took a big step today in the Senate.
[13:59.320 --> 14:14.120]  They're trying to rush that through the House, because this is how bad it is, that even with a one- or two-person majority in the House, they, the Republicans will stop that, will stop gay marriage from becoming codified.
[14:14.860 --> 14:16.860]  That is how evil it is.
[14:17.040 --> 14:20.420]  And it really is evil that you can count on them to do that.
[14:20.840 --> 14:23.040]  And that's why they're racing it through now.
[14:23.120 --> 14:26.760]  And they were able to actually get Republican senators to sign on, which I thought was amazing.
[14:26.760 --> 14:46.880]  The most disturbing part about it is like, it's important so crucially because you want to talk about it, how it was something that a lot of people broadly supported, not talk about it in the, have them be able to talk about how this is something that they didn't allow because of all this demagoguery,
[14:46.880 --> 14:56.180]  they'd just unfurl in the next, you know, diatribe, explaining away their obstruction policies.
[14:56.180 --> 15:01.780]  And I think that, you know, the sentiment is actually there across the sides of the aisle with that issue.
[15:01.920 --> 15:09.740]  And when you see the obstructionist attitude, which you will see in the House in the next couple of years, that doesn't work in their advantage either.
[15:09.740 --> 15:12.840]  You know, the way it's being portrayed in the media, oh, it's gonna be bad for Biden.
[15:12.960 --> 15:16.580]  It's gonna be bad for them too if they don't get anything done because they're constantly obstructing everything.
[15:17.820 --> 15:18.960]  So keep that in mind.
[15:19.040 --> 15:26.600]  The other point I want to make before we give out the phone number, the Senate, the runoff in Georgia, is taking place on December 6th.
[15:27.700 --> 15:34.060]  I am afraid that people will say it's not as important because the Democrats have clinched the Senate.
[15:34.060 --> 15:42.420]  It's hugely important because 50-50 and needing Kamala Harris to come in and break the tie every time, that takes time.
[15:42.640 --> 15:44.420]  That adds a week to the process.
[15:44.880 --> 15:50.500]  If you have 51-49, then you can just breeze through and do these things much quicker.
[15:50.660 --> 15:56.160]  So it's just as important as it ever was, that runoff in Georgia.
[15:56.580 --> 16:00.320]  And they are doing everything possible to keep people from voting too.
[16:01.020 --> 16:07.020]  A confederate holiday is actually preventing the polls from being open the Saturday before December 6th.
[16:07.140 --> 16:08.200]  A confederate holiday.
[16:08.600 --> 16:09.620]  You can't make this up.
[16:09.800 --> 16:10.720]  A made-up confederate.
[16:10.720 --> 16:12.680]  Well, yeah, it is.
[16:12.760 --> 16:15.600]  Okay, our phone number, 802-321-422...
[16:15.600 --> 16:16.540]  What, we already have a phone call?
[16:16.580 --> 16:17.860]  I didn't finish giving out the phone number yet.
[16:18.060 --> 16:18.360]  You can finish.
[16:18.460 --> 16:18.780]  You're allowed.
[16:20.220 --> 16:21.660]  802-321-4225.
[16:21.820 --> 16:22.320]  What's the point?
[16:22.600 --> 16:23.580]  This one's already on the line.
[16:23.820 --> 16:26.300]  There might be people that want to try after.
[16:26.420 --> 16:27.380]  It's probably Rebel, right?
[16:27.980 --> 16:28.620]  What's that, Alex?
[16:29.200 --> 16:31.400]  I said, you know, it's time to take a call from Rebel.
[16:31.680 --> 16:33.120]  Yeah, I guess it is.
[16:34.080 --> 16:34.560]  All right.
[16:35.460 --> 16:39.480]  And I think we fixed the call waiting issue from last week, I think.
[16:39.640 --> 16:40.420]  We'll find out soon enough.
[16:40.840 --> 16:41.400]  Good evening.
[16:41.420 --> 16:42.860]  You're on Off the Hook Overtime.
[16:44.040 --> 16:45.320]  Hi, it's Bobcat.
[16:45.680 --> 16:46.300]  Oh, hey.
[16:46.420 --> 16:46.960]  You're not Rebel.
[16:48.080 --> 16:48.640]  That's right.
[16:48.800 --> 16:50.280]  I got it just ahead of him.
[16:50.380 --> 16:51.340]  Thank you for not being Rebel.
[16:51.460 --> 16:52.640]  No ads on YouTube.
[16:52.740 --> 16:54.280]  I don't know what you're talking about.
[16:54.780 --> 16:55.340]  There's no...
[16:55.340 --> 16:56.240]  I've never seen an ad on YouTube.
[16:56.240 --> 16:57.360]  You've never seen an ad on YouTube?
[16:57.360 --> 16:58.380]  Oh, you have to see them.
[16:58.500 --> 16:58.960]  They're amazing.
[17:00.100 --> 17:00.860]  Yes, I know.
[17:01.000 --> 17:01.400]  Right here.
[17:01.720 --> 17:02.380]  We're hackers.
[17:02.540 --> 17:03.040]  Let's fix it.
[17:03.520 --> 17:04.720]  You walk origin.
[17:05.120 --> 17:07.980]  The letter U, B-L-O-C-K, origin.
[17:08.440 --> 17:13.800]  You can get it in the Chrome Web store, the Firefox store, the Microsoft Edge store.
[17:13.800 --> 17:17.600]  You will never see an ad on YouTube ever again.
[17:18.760 --> 17:19.400]  Okay.
[17:19.720 --> 17:20.000]  Okay?
[17:20.300 --> 17:23.440]  Or you can make a pie hole.
[17:23.500 --> 17:32.980]  You get a Raspberry Pi and you put it in your home network and it will block all the ads for every device that connects to your home network.
[17:34.320 --> 17:34.960]  Wow.
[17:35.100 --> 17:35.920]  That's interesting.
[17:35.920 --> 17:37.320]  You don't need to look at ads.
[17:38.080 --> 17:38.200]  Yeah.
[17:38.200 --> 17:39.200]  This is a solved problem.
[17:39.720 --> 17:39.880]  Mm-hmm.
[17:39.960 --> 17:40.180]  Okay.
[17:40.700 --> 17:41.240]  Let's see.
[17:41.440 --> 17:43.540]  Number two, the gay marriage thing you just brought up.
[17:44.660 --> 17:47.100]  Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act.
[17:47.100 --> 17:49.840]  The Supreme Court said that was unconstitutional.
[17:51.620 --> 17:56.160]  Democrats voted to make same-sex marriage illegal.
[17:57.020 --> 18:08.140]  And the awesomely, for some reason, General Supreme Court decided that was a violation of equal protection.
[18:10.340 --> 18:11.020]  Okay.
[18:11.140 --> 18:11.940]  Where are you going with this?
[18:12.120 --> 18:13.180]  He's talking about the precedent.
[18:13.540 --> 18:15.220]  You're complaining about Democrats.
[18:15.220 --> 18:15.480]  Democrats.
[18:15.680 --> 18:16.840]  It's been back and forth.
[18:17.000 --> 18:17.980]  I'm complaining about everybody.
[18:18.360 --> 18:20.660]  Democrats made gay marriage illegal.
[18:21.260 --> 18:21.780]  Well, yeah.
[18:21.880 --> 18:23.360]  I mean, they've done a lot of bad things.
[18:23.540 --> 18:25.200]  I'll definitely admit to that.
[18:26.360 --> 18:26.600]  Okay.
[18:26.780 --> 18:27.140]  Then...
[18:27.940 --> 18:28.420]  Okay.
[18:29.240 --> 18:29.720]  Uh...
[18:29.720 --> 18:31.160]  Every politician sucks.
[18:31.860 --> 18:32.340]  Yeah.
[18:32.540 --> 18:33.500]  I mean, to a degree.
[18:33.800 --> 18:35.800]  I think there's a lot of process in there, too.
[18:35.880 --> 18:37.960]  Some suck a whole lot more than others.
[18:38.760 --> 18:39.660]  It wasn't like...
[18:39.660 --> 18:41.720]  Bill Clinton had...
[18:41.720 --> 18:42.820]  He didn't suck.
[18:42.820 --> 18:43.880]  He was sucked upon.
[18:44.420 --> 18:45.000]  All right.
[18:45.100 --> 18:45.460]  All right.
[18:45.580 --> 18:47.020]  That was a really...
[18:47.020 --> 18:47.920]  Now you're talking...
[18:47.920 --> 18:48.660]  Easy shot there.
[18:48.720 --> 18:50.260]  You're also talking about FTX.
[18:50.740 --> 18:51.140]  Yes.
[18:51.500 --> 18:51.700]  This disaster.
[18:51.840 --> 18:53.020]  This crypto disaster.
[18:53.320 --> 18:54.640]  First, there are...
[18:54.640 --> 18:55.440]  You can buy Bitcoin.
[18:55.580 --> 18:59.520]  I can go down to the gas station on the corner and put in a dollar and buy Bitcoin.
[18:59.740 --> 19:08.700]  They'll give me a little slip of paper with my Bitcoin address on it that is not run by a central exchange like FTX was.
[19:09.020 --> 19:23.140]  The problem is, people are trying to use this non... this distributed method of spreading wealth around, and they're putting it in centralized repositories, which can be stolen from or hacked.
[19:23.140 --> 19:33.480]  Now, this one, apparently the fellow, Mr. Sam Friedman something, he stole tons of money and he was giving it away.
[19:33.840 --> 19:40.920]  In 2020, he donated $10 million to get Joe Biden elected.
[19:40.920 --> 19:48.560]  And in this election cycle, he donated $40 million to get Democrats elected.
[19:48.620 --> 19:58.960]  He's the second highest donor besides George Soros to the 2020 Democratic campaign campaign.
[20:00.880 --> 20:01.560]  Okay.
[20:02.860 --> 20:03.540]  Okay.
[20:03.780 --> 20:04.920]  What are we supposed to do with this?
[20:05.960 --> 20:08.340]  It's like, okay, you're complaining about FTX.
[20:08.440 --> 20:09.040]  Where'd the money go?
[20:09.040 --> 20:10.260]  It went to Democrats.
[20:11.260 --> 20:11.480]  Okay.
[20:12.380 --> 20:13.100]  I don't know.
[20:13.240 --> 20:14.140]  I don't know where the money went.
[20:14.420 --> 20:15.460]  Alex, you have a thought on this?
[20:15.640 --> 20:16.140]  That's a fair point.
[20:16.520 --> 20:26.360]  That's because SPF, the Sam Bank Friedman, did donate a huge chunk of money to the Democrats, you know, ahead of the midterm elections.
[20:26.600 --> 20:30.260]  And, you know, disproportionately so do the Democrats, I think, Bobcat.
[20:30.500 --> 20:31.900]  You know, look, you have a point.
[20:32.200 --> 20:33.460]  But on the other hand...
[20:33.460 --> 20:34.000]  I have information.
[20:34.000 --> 20:34.780]  I don't have a point.
[20:35.480 --> 20:43.220]  But that was money that had existed outside of what was stolen from the quote-unquote hack of last Friday.
[20:43.260 --> 20:43.640]  Well, this was all stolen.
[20:43.780 --> 20:51.680]  How did he make any money setting up an exchange and having hundreds of companies as a subsidiary offshore?
[20:52.640 --> 20:58.840]  And he's living in some apartment with a dozen other people in the Bahamas or some other tax-free haven.
[20:59.540 --> 20:59.940]  Yeah.
[21:00.260 --> 21:01.260]  Well, look, I'll tell you this.
[21:01.360 --> 21:19.600]  About maybe a month and a half ago, I don't know if you read the Financial Times, every weekend, they do something called the Lunch with the FT, where they interview somebody over lunch and they spend some time talking about what they eat and their eating habits and how about a month and a half ago they did an interview with Sam Bank Friedman,
[21:19.900 --> 21:24.600]  the founder of FTX in I think it was Nassau in the Bahamas.
[21:24.760 --> 21:26.860]  And it was really fascinating to read it.
[21:27.040 --> 21:37.600]  And you came away from this article with the impression that, you know, here's somebody who's really quite an eccentric but really has his finger on the pulse of what it means to run a cryptocurrency exchange.
[21:37.840 --> 21:42.220]  And then here we are, six weeks later or so, the whole thing has completely fallen apart.
[21:43.820 --> 21:46.220]  It's, you know, look, it's a scary situation.
[21:46.700 --> 21:49.060]  But, you know, to go to your point...
[21:49.060 --> 21:50.800]  Wasn't it obvious to everyone that this was a scam?
[21:52.560 --> 21:53.040]  Maybe.
[21:53.460 --> 21:59.860]  I mean, but like anything else, you know, he convinced people to trust them with his money.
[22:00.200 --> 22:02.660]  He converted that fiat money into digital currency.
[22:02.960 --> 22:04.780]  I mean, that's what a cryptocurrency exchange does.
[22:04.780 --> 22:06.340]  He allowed them to trade it.
[22:06.420 --> 22:08.500]  He made some arbitrage off those trades.
[22:08.960 --> 22:21.640]  And then the whole thing came crumbling down because they didn't have, insofar as I can tell, the proper amount of reserves, so that when people were trying to take their money out, it wouldn't collapse head forward.
[22:22.000 --> 22:22.300]  You know...
[22:22.300 --> 22:24.120]  Crumble is the wrong word here.
[22:24.320 --> 22:26.080]  You want to use the word crash, not crumble.
[22:26.200 --> 22:26.780]  There's no cryptocurrency.
[22:27.120 --> 22:28.080]  There's just the currency.
[22:29.660 --> 22:31.040]  I have Bitcoin.
[22:31.400 --> 22:32.200]  I have Bitcoin.
[22:32.200 --> 22:37.000]  You could come to me and say, give me that Bitcoin, and I can give you the Bitcoin.
[22:37.840 --> 22:38.160]  Period.
[22:38.420 --> 22:39.240]  There's no reserves.
[22:39.580 --> 22:40.480]  This is not banking.
[22:42.440 --> 22:43.680]  But you will give us a Bitcoin.
[22:43.680 --> 22:45.580]  You have the actual bits and bytes.
[22:45.700 --> 22:46.620]  He's going to give us a Bitcoin.
[22:46.680 --> 22:47.580]  That's what I got out of this.
[22:48.920 --> 22:50.120]  I'll give you my...
[22:50.120 --> 22:50.840]  You know what?
[22:51.080 --> 22:53.540]  My Bitcoin used to be worth three times as much as it is now.
[22:53.620 --> 22:53.900]  Uh-huh.
[22:53.980 --> 22:54.380]  That's true.
[22:54.500 --> 22:55.800]  But I didn't pay for it, but I don't care.
[22:57.080 --> 22:57.680]  Well...
[22:57.680 --> 22:58.980]  So this could be obvious to everybody.
[22:59.140 --> 23:03.180]  And all these media people, like Adam Fisher here, at Adam C.
[23:03.320 --> 23:09.460]  Fisher on Twitter, who wrote this glorious article, I really believe in this FBF guy.
[23:09.660 --> 23:11.160]  And he's fucked.
[23:11.360 --> 23:11.960]  He's screwed.
[23:12.660 --> 23:15.140]  He's ruined his journalistic thing.
[23:15.960 --> 23:19.580]  Sequoia Capital, who believed in this garbage.
[23:20.980 --> 23:22.520]  Why do people fall for this?
[23:23.760 --> 23:26.680]  Oh, you know the answer to that.
[23:26.760 --> 23:28.120]  Why do people fall for scams?
[23:28.260 --> 23:28.500]  Come on.
[23:28.560 --> 23:29.760]  It happens every single day.
[23:29.840 --> 23:30.580]  We see it all the time.
[23:30.640 --> 23:33.060]  I know that the media lies all the time.
[23:33.240 --> 23:37.380]  And you just have to admit that all the media lies at least part of the time.
[23:37.820 --> 23:38.700]  Well, we lie.
[23:38.860 --> 23:39.520]  We're the media, right?
[23:39.720 --> 23:40.180]  We try.
[23:40.480 --> 23:41.440]  We're not very good at it.
[23:41.940 --> 23:44.160]  I'm quite familiar with your history, Eric.
[23:44.340 --> 23:45.060]  Oh, wow.
[23:45.260 --> 23:45.600]  Okay.
[23:46.820 --> 23:48.680]  A gauntlet has been thrown down.
[23:49.460 --> 23:51.200]  I want to go back to what you just said.
[23:51.300 --> 23:51.560]  I don't know.
[23:53.260 --> 23:56.200]  I think you're answering one of your own questions.
[23:56.240 --> 23:56.760]  Alex, hang on.
[23:56.920 --> 23:59.020]  Alex, you first, then I'll call it.
[23:59.100 --> 23:59.260]  Go ahead.
[24:00.640 --> 24:01.020]  Okay.
[24:01.260 --> 24:06.820]  I think you're answering one of your questions yourself when you mentioned Sequoia Capital.
[24:07.620 --> 24:08.780]  And how do they make their money?
[24:08.840 --> 24:11.160]  How do they get people to entrust them with this capital?
[24:11.300 --> 24:18.880]  And I think it's exactly because major investors like Sequoia Capital believed in FTX, or they were bamboozled to believe in it.
[24:19.040 --> 24:33.360]  And if an ordinary individual who wants to start cryptocurrency trading or get into this particular type of market because they see it as potentially lucrative, they're going to look at FTX and say, wow, Sequoia Capital put money into this.
[24:33.360 --> 24:34.820]  They must have done their due diligence.
[24:35.100 --> 24:41.480]  I'm going to trust the judgment of somebody who does this professionally for a living and has made billions of dollars in doing so.
[24:41.740 --> 24:48.180]  So, A4T or FTX must be a trusted and safe platform into which I will put my money.
[24:48.180 --> 24:49.820]  So, everybody was bamboozled.
[24:49.900 --> 25:00.680]  And I think it was a snowballing effect when you look at who the investors were and how SPF got those types of investors to support his company.
[25:04.260 --> 25:05.160]  Anything else?
[25:05.400 --> 25:12.320]  Bernie Madoff also supposedly made a lot of people a lot of money, but it was a Ponzi scheme.
[25:12.320 --> 25:14.480]  This is just a classic Ponzi scheme.
[25:15.000 --> 25:19.640]  You're not going to make any money trading dollars back and forth.
[25:21.300 --> 25:21.760]  Okay?
[25:22.060 --> 25:31.680]  Just like a classic Ponzi scheme, the thing fell apart when people start to take their money out.
[25:31.860 --> 25:34.840]  That's what happened with Bernie Madoff and that's what happened with FTX here.
[25:34.960 --> 25:36.760]  I mean, there is a lot of similarity.
[25:38.240 --> 25:48.660]  But I think it does go back, though, to this FTX exchange not having the right amount of reserves on hand such that everybody went to run for their money and try to get it out.
[25:49.340 --> 25:51.000]  The whole thing just toppled over.
[25:51.140 --> 25:55.680]  Yeah, I think the point here is that if that happened to any exchange, it would collapse.
[25:55.820 --> 25:58.560]  The question is, are they protected from collapse?
[25:58.760 --> 26:00.980]  You know, it used to be in the past that banks weren't protected.
[26:01.380 --> 26:02.980]  And that's what led to the depression.
[26:02.980 --> 26:05.820]  So, yeah, you know, we learned from our mistakes.
[26:05.820 --> 26:07.520]  And this is another big mistake, I think.
[26:08.780 --> 26:12.840]  There's not supposed to be any cash in a cryptocurrency exchange.
[26:13.420 --> 26:16.500]  It's supposed to go from one currency to the other.
[26:16.660 --> 26:17.580]  And that's it.
[26:18.180 --> 26:18.780]  You don't...
[26:18.780 --> 26:21.840]  A bank will take money and loan it out to people.
[26:21.900 --> 26:29.680]  So I'll get a mortgage and I'm going to borrow money from the bank, which has depositors and I'm going to pay them interest and I'm going to pay the bank interest.
[26:29.680 --> 26:38.900]  That's different from a cryptocurrency exchange, which is just trading numbers at very minimal cost to the system.
[26:41.420 --> 26:42.720]  That may be the case.
[26:43.280 --> 26:49.680]  Anybody making money who's donating $50 million to the Democrats has to be stealing.
[26:50.340 --> 26:51.660]  It's clear.
[26:54.800 --> 27:09.140]  Well, look, to go back to your question about fiat currency in a cryptocurrency exchange, I mean, there is always, I think, going to be an element of fiat currency or real money in a cryptocurrency exchange that accepts fiat currency to turn it into cryptocurrency.
[27:09.140 --> 27:11.720]  There is that, right?
[27:12.040 --> 27:25.840]  And then, in terms of what SPF did with the money and handing out however many millions to the Democrats, I mean, I think that's all going to be borne out and certainly through investigations, I would think.
[27:25.840 --> 27:27.500]  Well, there was definitely something going on with FTX.
[27:27.580 --> 27:32.300]  I mean, they were promoting, they had a stadium named after them, all the umpires were wearing the thing.
[27:32.960 --> 27:34.400]  There was definitely some corruption.
[27:35.240 --> 27:38.880]  Yeah, I just heard Larry David is getting sued as a result of this.
[27:39.120 --> 27:46.400]  Larry David was basically portraying somebody who didn't even believe in cryptocurrency and the slogan was, don't be like Larry.
[27:46.600 --> 27:51.060]  And now he's getting sued from people that say, wow, you misled us with FTX.
[27:51.060 --> 27:54.220]  I think that's a typically Larry David thing to have happen.
[27:55.020 --> 27:57.480]  Well, he's responsible if he promoted it.
[27:57.580 --> 27:59.360]  And he did promote it by ending up in the ad.
[27:59.540 --> 28:12.120]  If you'll remember from back in the 80s, Pat Boone and Debbie Boone were sued by the FTC for promoting acne statin, which is an acne medication, which did not work as claimed.
[28:12.340 --> 28:16.000]  But there were commercials all over TV about how wonderfully it worked.
[28:18.000 --> 28:18.400]  Okay.
[28:18.800 --> 28:19.540]  I mean, that's a product.
[28:19.840 --> 28:24.380]  It's simple to say this has absolutely no scientific bearing, anything like that.
[28:25.440 --> 28:30.480]  Cryptocurrency, we're not going to be these people, but there are people who will argue that it's beneficial and it's the future.
[28:30.700 --> 28:32.440]  I don't want to be a person like that.
[28:32.440 --> 28:34.280]  I don't want to even have this conversation anymore.
[28:34.960 --> 28:36.200]  But that will happen.
[28:36.380 --> 28:39.420]  It's more complex, I think, than just one shady product.
[28:39.420 --> 28:48.040]  Yeah, I think when you're dealing with finance, you're inherently, you have to establish trust and beware of greed.
[28:48.520 --> 28:52.980]  And we're not, I mean, it's not news to us that there is greed.
[28:53.620 --> 28:54.660]  Yeah, lots of it.
[28:54.940 --> 28:59.740]  There's no legislated fiduciary responsibility in any of these crypto things.
[29:00.060 --> 29:01.220]  And you're going to get screwed.
[29:01.380 --> 29:06.180]  You're better off buying gold or silver quarters or just keeping paper money in your pocket.
[29:06.380 --> 29:07.000]  Or drugs.
[29:07.000 --> 29:08.040]  That's very profitable.
[29:08.900 --> 29:10.840]  Drugs are not as profitable as you might think.
[29:11.020 --> 29:11.220]  Really?
[29:11.540 --> 29:13.340]  Okay, I'll have to watch the documentary then.
[29:14.400 --> 29:17.920]  So the price of cocaine has plummeted in the past few years.
[29:18.340 --> 29:19.040]  Yeah, yeah.
[29:19.780 --> 29:20.340]  Damn Biden.
[29:20.940 --> 29:22.120]  Anyway, we've got to move on.
[29:22.240 --> 29:22.960]  Moving instead of flirting.
[29:24.340 --> 29:25.820]  Rebels up next, so...
[29:25.820 --> 29:26.660]  Yeah, Rebels on the...
[29:26.660 --> 29:29.240]  We'll talk about lies in the media the next time.
[29:29.360 --> 29:30.500]  Okay, I look forward to it.
[29:30.800 --> 29:32.000]  Rebels in the on-deck circle.
[29:32.500 --> 29:32.780]  Okay.
[29:32.780 --> 29:33.360]  Good hearing from you.
[29:33.420 --> 29:33.720]  Take care.
[29:34.020 --> 29:34.560]  Be well.
[29:34.820 --> 29:35.120]  Okay, bye.
[29:36.340 --> 29:41.380]  And, yes, I was able to confirm we have, in fact, fixed the call waiting issue.
[29:42.540 --> 29:43.540]  And that's our hum.
[29:43.720 --> 29:44.660]  I thought it was his hum.
[29:45.300 --> 29:45.960]  Yeah, it's our hum.
[29:46.020 --> 29:47.000]  See, it's in the board.
[29:47.140 --> 29:47.840]  It's not on the phone lines.
[29:47.940 --> 29:48.320]  It's in the board.
[29:48.760 --> 29:49.360]  Hear that hum?
[29:50.840 --> 29:52.080]  It's got nothing to do with that.
[29:52.520 --> 29:53.220]  Nothing to do with those...
[29:53.220 --> 29:54.340]  It's because we don't know the words.
[29:55.640 --> 29:56.000]  Yeah.
[29:56.300 --> 29:59.680]  I could turn the Skype people off, and I bet it would disappear then.
[30:00.400 --> 30:01.360]  No, it got worse.
[30:01.720 --> 30:01.820]  Oh!
[30:02.300 --> 30:03.920]  All right, let's not mess with the board on the air.
[30:04.240 --> 30:05.820]  We're going to make all kinds of horrible sounds.
[30:05.940 --> 30:06.780]  It's a slight hum.
[30:06.960 --> 30:07.440]  We'll deal with it.
[30:07.820 --> 30:08.900]  Yeah, it wasn't like that.
[30:08.920 --> 30:10.440]  I'll turn it off while there's no caller.
[30:10.540 --> 30:10.960]  How about that?
[30:11.060 --> 30:14.160]  That way the caller has to be speaking to mask the hum.
[30:14.160 --> 30:17.140]  All right, our phone number, 802-321-4225.
[30:17.400 --> 30:19.600]  There, I got it out this time, so somebody can actually dial it.
[30:20.400 --> 30:22.540]  802-321-4225.
[30:22.760 --> 30:23.540]  Any other thoughts?
[30:23.600 --> 30:26.000]  I don't want to talk about Bitcoin or digital currency anymore.
[30:26.020 --> 30:34.800]  I didn't want to, and I just wanted to focus on the crazy disaster catastrophe that's going on and how insane it all is.
[30:35.580 --> 30:36.340]  Just for a moment.
[30:36.480 --> 30:37.060]  All right, one final point.
[30:37.060 --> 30:37.780]  Oh, my God.
[30:37.800 --> 30:38.880]  Go ahead, make more points.
[30:38.960 --> 30:39.200]  Go ahead.
[30:39.300 --> 30:43.020]  It relates to Bobcat's comments here, which I think this is really funny.
[30:43.020 --> 30:44.420]  I'm just seeing this now.
[30:44.580 --> 31:00.340]  A bunch of Democrats that had received money from FTX or Sam Bank Friedman have now tried to distance themselves from those particular donations by taking the money and donating it forward to other types of charities.
[31:01.200 --> 31:08.880]  So Kirsten Gillibrand of New York is planning to donate the $16,600 contribution to a Bronx-based charity, Arriva.
[31:08.880 --> 31:16.220]  This is from a Fortune crypto article, Arriva, that promotes, quote, individual wealth and economic development in low to moderate income families.
[31:16.860 --> 31:19.940]  And there's, I think, tons of other politicians.
[31:21.560 --> 31:27.680]  Representative Jesus Chuy Garcia donated $2,900 he received from Bankman Fried.
[31:27.840 --> 31:31.160]  I'm sorry, I was getting the surname mixed up.
[31:31.280 --> 31:33.860]  It's Sam Bankman Fried, not Bank Friedman.
[31:33.860 --> 31:34.960]  What point are we trying to make?
[31:35.140 --> 31:35.980]  Politicians are corrupt.
[31:36.160 --> 31:37.040]  Yes, we get it.
[31:37.460 --> 31:39.880]  Well, they're all trying to distance themselves.
[31:40.060 --> 31:41.640]  Well, wouldn't you try to distance yourself?
[31:41.960 --> 31:43.720]  I mean, these things happen constantly.
[31:43.720 --> 31:44.860]  And I don't think it's just Democrats.
[31:44.860 --> 31:46.760]  I think it's everybody to a degree.
[31:47.400 --> 31:49.680]  Did they or did they not raise campaign funds?
[31:50.500 --> 31:54.480]  I mean, I think the whole issue of raising campaign funds is corrupt, but that's a whole other discussion.
[31:54.740 --> 31:55.420]  Gila, you had something?
[31:55.520 --> 31:56.060]  Then we'll take a call.
[31:56.680 --> 32:00.260]  Well, I was just curious about the whole class action lawsuit, because it's beyond Larry David.
[32:00.600 --> 32:01.960]  And also, it's one person, I think.
[32:02.020 --> 32:03.220]  And how is it becoming...
[32:03.220 --> 32:06.700]  Like, it's been referred to as a class action, but it's one person so far.
[32:06.720 --> 32:08.740]  Well, one person starts a class action.
[32:08.840 --> 32:09.460]  Isn't that right, Alex?
[32:09.720 --> 32:10.940]  That's how it begins?
[32:12.020 --> 32:15.060]  Yeah, you need a class representative for...
[32:15.740 --> 32:15.780]  Yeah.
[32:16.220 --> 32:16.480]  Yeah.
[32:16.640 --> 32:24.940]  Apparently, the dude filed yesterday, and the lawyers who are representing him are not, I don't think, the folks you'd think about for filing a class action lawsuit.
[32:24.940 --> 32:26.060]  Uh-huh.
[32:26.360 --> 32:26.920]  Uh-huh.
[32:26.920 --> 32:28.420]  David Boies is representing him.
[32:30.300 --> 32:30.860]  Well...
[32:30.860 --> 32:31.320]  Hmm.
[32:31.500 --> 32:34.240]  I mean, he's a very smart lawyer, David Boies.
[32:34.680 --> 32:34.980]  Yeah.
[32:35.620 --> 32:35.800]  Yeah.
[32:36.360 --> 32:36.560]  Yeah.
[32:36.660 --> 32:38.700]  He's represented victims and things I...
[32:38.700 --> 32:41.880]  You know, he comes from a firm full of smart people.
[32:42.040 --> 32:46.100]  I wouldn't put it past them to get a class certified, though.
[32:47.240 --> 32:48.700]  So, I just...
[32:48.700 --> 32:51.140]  I think it's interesting, you know, would I...
[32:51.960 --> 32:57.340]  I think the idea of suing all these people who are in the commercials, like, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
[32:57.900 --> 32:58.480]  In general.
[32:58.480 --> 32:58.960]  It's good publicity.
[32:59.220 --> 33:00.400]  I think that's what it's all about.
[33:00.680 --> 33:01.220]  You know?
[33:01.380 --> 33:02.560]  Because we're talking about it now.
[33:02.940 --> 33:03.060]  It's true.
[33:03.060 --> 33:04.220]  Well, there's someone to sue.
[33:04.660 --> 33:04.860]  It's true.
[33:04.860 --> 33:05.560]  I agree with Gila.
[33:05.560 --> 33:14.770]  I mean, if it was an animation or some kind of paper cutout collage, I mean, there wouldn't...
[33:15.120 --> 33:15.720]  Maybe you...
[33:15.720 --> 33:17.020]  Would they go after that artist?
[33:17.160 --> 33:35.280]  I mean, it seems unusual, but they're saying the value of that celebrity's endorsement supersedes enough to a point where they are actually liable because of the sort of value of the trading in their name or with their endorsement.
[33:37.540 --> 33:38.100]  Yeah.
[33:38.920 --> 33:39.580]  I don't know.
[33:39.780 --> 33:40.280]  Like, they...
[33:40.280 --> 33:43.440]  I could get behind the suing the people in the commercials.
[33:44.060 --> 33:47.000]  First, because I don't like people who make commercials usually.
[33:47.000 --> 33:50.020]  But, no, if you...
[33:50.020 --> 33:51.940]  You don't like Mikey for life cereal?
[33:52.660 --> 33:53.040]  Really?
[33:53.220 --> 33:53.420]  Hate him.
[33:53.420 --> 33:54.820]  You're going to attack a little kid?
[33:55.940 --> 33:57.520]  Well, he wouldn't like me anyway.
[33:57.520 --> 33:58.280]  He doesn't like anybody.
[33:58.280 --> 33:58.960]  He wouldn't now.
[33:58.960 --> 34:01.400]  And he's a lot bigger now, too, I should point out.
[34:02.260 --> 34:02.800]  That's true.
[34:02.880 --> 34:03.400]  Maybe I should be worried.
[34:03.400 --> 34:07.200]  I'd be careful, Rob, with, you know, where you aim your vitriol.
[34:07.580 --> 34:08.000]  But go ahead.
[34:08.000 --> 34:18.020]  But, like, in a situation in which, like, someone trusts me and I tell that person to, like, feed arsenic to their children and say they do and it doesn't end well.
[34:18.180 --> 34:27.940]  And then it's my fault that they did that and they want to, you know, enact some sort of penalty against me for being responsible for that and abusing my trust.
[34:28.060 --> 34:34.660]  And then there's the whole fact of getting a celebrity to do a commercial is you want to bank on that celebrity's trust to sell your thing.
[34:34.900 --> 34:36.700]  So I don't think it's unconnected.
[34:36.840 --> 34:37.600]  I think it...
[34:37.600 --> 34:40.680]  If I can sound like a lawyer for a second, I think it speaks to intent.
[34:41.640 --> 34:49.200]  And I think if Larry David and others knew that this was shady as hell and that, you know, the people are going to get ripped off, then you have something.
[34:49.560 --> 34:56.360]  But if he went in there thinking, oh, yeah, it's just the latest digital way of doing cash or something like that.
[34:56.560 --> 34:59.980]  I don't think you can really blame him for being anything other than an actor looking for a gig.
[35:00.120 --> 35:06.120]  I think especially who the customer is for these ads or the slots themselves of the Super Bowl.
[35:06.120 --> 35:10.320]  I mean, I think that the talent is saying, hey, Super Bowl ad.
[35:10.800 --> 35:13.160]  Of course, they want to be, you know, associated with that.
[35:13.320 --> 35:20.120]  I don't think they're necessarily going through the ins and outs of who the client is for that slot.
[35:20.480 --> 35:27.400]  And plus, if you're going to sue Larry David, you have to sue every single umpire that was part of the postseason play and helped eliminate the Mets.
[35:29.020 --> 35:33.700]  Okay, I didn't mean that last part because, obviously, they weren't biased against the Mets.
[35:34.020 --> 35:35.900]  Although some of those calls, I don't know.
[35:37.420 --> 35:38.520]  But yeah, you got to...
[35:38.520 --> 35:38.980]  Don't talk about that.
[35:39.420 --> 35:40.000]  I'm sorry.
[35:40.040 --> 35:40.900]  I said I wasn't going to bring it up.
[35:41.020 --> 35:48.040]  But basically, you know, if everybody is involved, they were advertising it a lot more because I was seeing it constantly.
[35:49.120 --> 35:56.700]  But the interesting thing about this lawsuit to me is that besides Larry David, pretty much everybody who's named is a sports figure.
[35:57.020 --> 35:58.240]  And I found that very interesting.
[35:58.380 --> 36:02.680]  Like, there's been some sort of really interesting overlap between FTX and sports.
[36:02.820 --> 36:05.280]  Like, how long do you think they're going to have to call it the FTX arena?
[36:06.220 --> 36:07.840]  Like, how long is that kind of not going to last?
[36:07.980 --> 36:09.040]  They're taking it down, I heard.
[36:09.240 --> 36:12.480]  So I guess when you go out of business, you lose your rights to the name.
[36:12.880 --> 36:13.520]  Well, I think there's...
[36:13.520 --> 36:15.360]  Wasn't there like the Pets.com arena for a minute?
[36:15.500 --> 36:16.060]  Wasn't that a thing?
[36:16.860 --> 36:17.220]  I...
[36:17.220 --> 36:18.520]  And Staples Center.
[36:19.040 --> 36:19.380]  Uh-huh.
[36:19.680 --> 36:20.500]  Well, Staples still exists.
[36:20.640 --> 36:21.620]  I'm just trying to start a rumor.
[36:22.140 --> 36:25.600]  Gila, I think there's like crossover with sports betting, right?
[36:25.660 --> 36:26.320]  Because it's risky.
[36:26.600 --> 36:30.280]  So these like risky kind of things that are paying for ads.
[36:30.600 --> 36:33.020]  I think there's definitely like some parallels there.
[36:33.660 --> 36:34.020]  Interesting.
[36:34.280 --> 36:34.460]  Yeah.
[36:35.040 --> 36:37.500]  Alex, and then do we have a call that's been on hold this whole time?
[36:37.640 --> 36:39.320]  We do, but they're very patient.
[36:39.560 --> 36:39.840]  All right.
[36:39.940 --> 36:40.560]  Well, good for them.
[36:40.720 --> 36:43.000]  Thank you, caller, that you can't talk to us yet.
[36:43.200 --> 36:44.200]  But thank you for being patient.
[36:44.200 --> 36:44.780]  Oh, there he is.
[36:44.780 --> 36:46.080]  We're aware that you're there.
[36:46.300 --> 36:47.560]  We're going to get to you in a second.
[36:47.780 --> 36:47.840]  They'll be fine.
[36:47.980 --> 36:49.380]  But Alex needs to speak.
[36:49.560 --> 36:51.000]  And I have to defer to him.
[36:51.200 --> 37:03.840]  About this lawsuit thing, and this isn't a way of assuaging all of you, but I think you're all right in the sense that there is some publicity value to these types of lawsuits lawsuits, and that there's also problems with them.
[37:03.980 --> 37:13.040]  I think that some of these lawsuits, especially against these celebrity figures, are going to have some settlement value because people are going to want to wiggle out of them one way or the other.
[37:13.320 --> 37:18.660]  Either they're going to have to litigate, file a motion to dismiss, or try to fight the class certification.
[37:19.220 --> 37:25.700]  And that all can take time and money, or it might just be easier to just settle your way out of this damn thing and be done with it.
[37:25.700 --> 37:38.560]  But on the other hand, I think if they were to proceed against the celebrity endorsers, there are going to be certain elements of the claim that are going to be very difficult to prove, namely knowledge, as Emmanuel pointed out.
[37:39.000 --> 37:48.160]  You know, knowledge that this was, in fact, some kind of scam, or it was bad, or they knew or should have known that this thing was about to collapse when nobody knew or should have known.
[37:48.320 --> 37:59.180]  To go back to our last caller, Bobcat, Sequoia Capital, putting a ton of money into this thing would seem to go against the argument that Larry David should have known better than Sequoia Capital.
[38:00.180 --> 38:02.080]  And then causation.
[38:02.200 --> 38:08.280]  You have to prove that the defendants approximately caused the damages at issue in this particular case.
[38:08.280 --> 38:15.780]  And I think it's going to be very difficult to get somebody like Larry David on the hook, who was very recently in an ad for FTX.
[38:16.000 --> 38:23.720]  But it might be easier to get somebody on the hook who had been a celebrity endorser much earlier on in its tenure.
[38:23.960 --> 38:28.660]  And I hope Larry David can see the humor in this, because if anyone can see the humor, it's him.
[38:28.820 --> 38:33.140]  I think, Alex, you should offer to be his lawyer, because I think you could do a good job and we can get him on the show that way.
[38:34.920 --> 38:38.140]  But here's the defense that I think you should bring to Larry David when you call him.
[38:39.780 --> 38:41.260]  Basically, Larry wasn't acting.
[38:41.440 --> 38:43.580]  He was saying, this is nonsense.
[38:43.780 --> 38:45.140]  You should not invest in this.
[38:45.260 --> 38:47.080]  Because the whole thing was, don't be like Larry.
[38:47.480 --> 38:49.160]  Don't not believe in FTX.
[38:49.160 --> 38:51.280]  He could say, no, I was just being myself.
[38:51.300 --> 38:54.200]  I was saying, don't believe in FTX, because I truly didn't believe it.
[38:54.340 --> 38:58.260]  But then they just used my words, you know, to help sell.
[38:58.440 --> 39:02.100]  And if people didn't listen to me, that's on them.
[39:02.720 --> 39:04.240]  I think it could be a really good day in court.
[39:05.420 --> 39:06.640]  All right, let's take this phone call.
[39:07.100 --> 39:08.740]  And good evening, and thank you for your patience.
[39:10.100 --> 39:12.200]  Yes, I'm not going to talk about cryptocurrency.
[39:12.540 --> 39:13.740]  Thank you, Rebel, for that too.
[39:13.880 --> 39:15.420]  Yes, thank you for not talking about cryptocurrency.
[39:15.860 --> 39:17.180]  Whatever you talk about is probably better.
[39:18.980 --> 39:21.180]  You know, when I call...
[39:21.180 --> 39:22.560]  All right, I'll do that later.
[39:22.560 --> 39:24.800]  But I'd just like to mention that when you call any...
[39:24.800 --> 39:25.320]  What, do you have notes?
[39:26.540 --> 39:28.460]  Yes, no, I do it on my cell phone.
[39:28.620 --> 39:30.080]  I have an app called notes.
[39:30.500 --> 39:31.600]  I write that like...
[39:31.600 --> 39:32.940]  You literally have notes.
[39:33.760 --> 39:34.940]  Okay, all right.
[39:35.420 --> 39:37.020]  Well, we should try that.
[39:37.220 --> 39:38.900]  You know, maybe we'll sound like we know what we're doing.
[39:39.760 --> 39:41.000]  Organize, if nothing, right?
[39:41.100 --> 39:41.300]  Yeah.
[39:41.580 --> 39:42.620]  I'm sorry, Rebel, go ahead.
[39:43.460 --> 39:43.820]  Okay.
[39:44.100 --> 39:44.660]  When you call...
[39:44.660 --> 39:47.680]  Like, I've been listening to the old shows from the 90s, and you know, you call...
[39:47.680 --> 39:55.160]  You know, sometimes you call these 800 numbers from like AT&T and companies that are probably not, you know, that don't exist or emerge or whatever.
[39:55.360 --> 39:58.160]  Did you also notice that you call in a lot on those shows?
[39:59.380 --> 39:59.980]  Yeah, of course.
[40:00.140 --> 40:00.340]  Okay.
[40:00.420 --> 40:01.660]  Just want to make sure you caught that.
[40:03.040 --> 40:11.560]  And a lot of those numbers that you call, that those 800 numbers, those toll free numbers that you, that were from the 90s, they go to a lot of the same place...
[40:11.560 --> 40:12.940]  Like, the same company, the same rain.
[40:15.160 --> 40:15.660]  People, some of them.
[40:15.720 --> 40:16.560]  Some of them like.
[40:16.800 --> 40:17.140]  Like...
[40:17.140 --> 40:17.620]  What's it called?
[40:17.620 --> 40:22.180]  One or two of the same number, one or two different numbers from that time.
[40:22.360 --> 40:24.040]  They'll go to the same organization.
[40:24.760 --> 40:25.960]  Thank you for calling.
[40:26.720 --> 40:27.200]  Congratulations.
[40:27.360 --> 40:29.880]  You have won a Walmart gift card.
[40:30.020 --> 40:32.320]  Plus one to get your Walmart gift card.
[40:32.420 --> 40:33.660]  Just pay $2 for shipping.
[40:33.860 --> 40:34.280]  You know what I mean?
[40:34.340 --> 40:36.440]  Those kind of ad-type things.
[40:36.580 --> 40:36.740]  Right.
[40:37.220 --> 40:37.440]  Okay.
[40:37.740 --> 40:37.980]  Yeah.
[40:39.460 --> 40:44.840]  And also when you call 1-800, another 800 number, it says ad.
[40:45.000 --> 40:46.200]  I could demonstrate this.
[40:46.200 --> 40:48.140]  I'll put you on hold and put three ways.
[40:48.840 --> 40:49.220]  Oh, joy.
[40:49.760 --> 40:50.040]  Yeah.
[40:50.140 --> 40:50.320]  Okay.
[40:50.480 --> 40:50.680]  Sure.
[40:50.780 --> 40:51.060]  Go ahead.
[40:51.680 --> 40:51.900]  Okay.
[40:51.900 --> 40:52.460]  You want to hold?
[40:53.080 --> 40:55.160]  I don't want to hold, but I don't have a choice, do I?
[40:55.300 --> 40:56.080]  Just make it fast.
[40:59.400 --> 41:00.320]  I think we're on hold.
[41:02.900 --> 41:04.740]  I can't believe Rebel's not giving us music.
[41:04.940 --> 41:06.500]  Our callers put us on hold.
[41:06.680 --> 41:07.760]  That's the kind of show this is.
[41:08.040 --> 41:08.540]  That is?
[41:08.700 --> 41:09.800]  No, that's absolutely...
[41:09.800 --> 41:10.320]  Oh, oh.
[41:11.280 --> 41:12.440]  Our patience paid off.
[41:13.860 --> 41:14.220]  Hello.
[41:14.640 --> 41:15.420]  Thank you for calling.
[41:15.420 --> 41:18.920]  The number you dialed may have changed, or you dialed the wrong number.
[41:19.200 --> 41:24.920]  The good news is, I may be able to help you find better coverage on your health insurance.
[41:25.280 --> 41:28.340]  I have an agent standing by to speak right now.
[41:28.700 --> 41:30.820]  Press 1 to speak to an agent.
[41:31.360 --> 41:32.260]  What did you press, Rebel?
[41:33.920 --> 41:34.240]  Okay.
[41:34.520 --> 41:35.100]  What did you press?
[41:36.300 --> 41:37.400]  Well, I pressed 1.
[41:37.560 --> 41:38.140]  Don't press 1.
[41:38.160 --> 41:39.000]  I want to talk to an agent.
[41:39.020 --> 41:39.620]  I'm not ready.
[41:40.300 --> 41:42.680]  I think it hangs up when you press 1, but I don't know.
[41:42.840 --> 41:45.400]  But didn't it say that there was somebody standing by?
[41:46.700 --> 41:47.320]  I don't know.
[41:47.420 --> 41:47.500]  No.
[41:47.760 --> 41:51.020]  It's like when you call, like, that was like 1-800-New-York-City-Safe.
[41:51.020 --> 41:58.140]  Remember back in, like, 2002, they had, if you see it, if you suspect terrorism, call 1-800-NYC-SAFE.
[41:58.300 --> 42:02.660]  And then, you know, you used to get, like, the Munich City Police, you know, joint terrorism task force.
[42:02.980 --> 42:05.980]  Now, if you call that 800 number, that's what you get, this ad.
[42:06.840 --> 42:08.280]  Okay, that's awfully weird.
[42:08.440 --> 42:13.320]  And I'm not sure why you're calling that number so often, but it's...
[42:14.820 --> 42:15.560]  What in God?
[42:15.660 --> 42:16.500]  Is someone being electrocuted?
[42:18.240 --> 42:19.480]  Sorry, that's our door buzzer.
[42:19.720 --> 42:20.660]  That's your doorbell?
[42:21.380 --> 42:22.580]  Why does it sound like that?
[42:24.620 --> 42:25.400]  We don't know.
[42:26.880 --> 42:27.240]  Doorbells.
[42:27.680 --> 42:28.440]  Doorbells are nice.
[42:28.580 --> 42:29.060]  They're chimes.
[42:29.280 --> 42:29.680]  Things like that.
[42:31.160 --> 42:31.640]  All right.
[42:32.020 --> 42:34.000]  Rebel, anything else you want to share with us?
[42:34.000 --> 42:50.840]  Some companies, like when you call some companies, like 800 numbers or some organization, they say, thank you for calling all of our neighbors, our agents, but they don't tell you who you're calling, like a calling organization or it doesn't say thank you for calling the whatever company.
[42:50.840 --> 42:52.080]  It's a generic recording.
[42:52.260 --> 42:53.160]  Yeah, that's true.
[42:53.520 --> 42:57.600]  Even if it's a thank you for calling, all of our representatives are busy.
[42:57.820 --> 42:59.240]  Yeah, well, you know who you're called.
[42:59.400 --> 43:01.860]  I mean, do you call people you don't know who you're calling?
[43:02.080 --> 43:02.720]  Do you do that often?
[43:03.960 --> 43:06.120]  No, just, you know, I don't know.
[43:06.380 --> 43:09.960]  Like when I get a scam call, you know, like an 800 number, and then, you know.
[43:10.720 --> 43:14.480]  They don't want you to know who you're calling in that situation, if it's a scam call.
[43:14.540 --> 43:18.240]  Well, today I got a call from an Indian saying, this is, you know...
[43:18.240 --> 43:20.260]  You got a call from an Indian?
[43:20.660 --> 43:23.520]  You want to rephrase that maybe in a better way?
[43:23.980 --> 43:24.540]  An Indian scammer.
[43:25.060 --> 43:25.860]  I'm sorry?
[43:26.560 --> 43:29.980]  The Indian scammer that called you with the same phone number...
[43:29.980 --> 43:37.960]  You know, I challenge you, if you could tell the difference between somebody from India and someone from Pakistan and someone from Bangladesh, or somebody from Queens, even.
[43:38.920 --> 43:40.720]  You're making a lot of assumptions here.
[43:41.140 --> 43:46.600]  Okay, a Far Eastern, a person that seems to have had a Far Eastern accent.
[43:47.120 --> 43:50.240]  Okay, but how does that play into what they're doing?
[43:50.840 --> 43:51.800]  You know, you got...
[43:51.800 --> 44:00.200]  Well, because I got a call from the same area code and a similar exchange, and the recording says, this is the border, Customs and Border Protection.
[44:00.380 --> 44:04.280]  We are investigating something that you did on the border.
[44:04.860 --> 44:06.040]  Please press one.
[44:06.960 --> 44:08.520]  Well, that's a number I'd like to hear.
[44:09.020 --> 44:10.020]  Is that a...
[44:10.020 --> 44:10.780]  I don't know.
[44:10.940 --> 44:14.140]  You know, they call you on your cell phone, so I don't have a thing to record.
[44:14.260 --> 44:15.520]  Well, I guess I could get a recording.
[44:15.900 --> 44:16.580]  I don't know.
[44:16.920 --> 44:19.060]  So, Customs and Border Patrol is after you.
[44:19.180 --> 44:20.420]  Is that what we get out of this?
[44:20.600 --> 44:21.440]  No, it's a scam.
[44:21.440 --> 44:22.820]  You press one, and they say...
[44:22.820 --> 44:24.020]  But everybody says that, Rev.
[44:24.100 --> 44:25.220]  Everyone says it's a scam.
[44:25.220 --> 44:28.280]  But, you know, you have your day in court to, like, prove your innocence.
[44:28.640 --> 44:30.340]  Well, did they send me anything in the mail?
[44:30.980 --> 44:31.720]  I don't know.
[44:31.720 --> 44:32.640]  Are you on the run?
[44:32.940 --> 44:34.140]  Are you near a mailbox?
[44:35.720 --> 44:36.520]  This is serious.
[44:36.780 --> 44:38.140]  You know, you shouldn't laugh at this.
[44:38.240 --> 44:39.340]  It's the Customs and Border Patrol.
[44:39.500 --> 44:46.080]  You know, we have all kinds of issues with borders and patrols, and our customs are terrible.
[44:46.080 --> 44:52.240]  Well, and the other one called and said, thank you, you know, we can help you with your student loan.
[44:52.620 --> 44:53.900]  You got to pay those back, Rebel.
[44:54.580 --> 45:01.940]  My God, if you have Customs and Border Patrol after you, and you still haven't paid back your student loans, you're in a world of trouble.
[45:02.100 --> 45:03.740]  I can't even begin to describe this.
[45:04.100 --> 45:04.640]  You know what you need?
[45:04.980 --> 45:06.020]  He needs a lawyer.
[45:06.140 --> 45:08.920]  Alex, can you help Rebel with some legal issues here?
[45:08.980 --> 45:11.640]  Because it seems like he's digging himself in pretty deep.
[45:12.300 --> 45:14.740]  Yeah, the Rebel's got a lot of issues there.
[45:14.860 --> 45:15.460]  He sure does.
[45:16.280 --> 45:19.300]  Yeah, you might have some serious CBP concerns there.
[45:20.820 --> 45:26.080]  Well, you know, then another person called and said, you know, we can help you with your Medicare.
[45:26.740 --> 45:27.480]  Oh, wow.
[45:27.500 --> 45:28.460]  Is it that time already?
[45:28.680 --> 45:28.920]  Okay.
[45:28.980 --> 45:31.000]  Well, I guess Rebel's on Medicare.
[45:32.280 --> 45:39.200]  And so, you're on Medicare, and you haven't paid back your student loans yet, and you're running from the border?
[45:40.480 --> 45:43.120]  I mean, it's a lot more interesting than I thought it was when he called.
[45:44.020 --> 45:56.900]  Well, the CBP scam, the Customers and Border Patrol scam that you were subjected to, Rebel.
[45:57.060 --> 46:01.340]  I had one of these calls last year, and I played along with it for a while.
[46:01.340 --> 46:14.840]  Well, and the way in which it went was, they called you up, they asked you what your name was, this is CBP, we're investigating an incident, and then they usually ask you, you know, where were you traveling?
[46:14.940 --> 46:17.860]  Were you traveling over here in Texas or so-and-so?
[46:17.860 --> 46:21.120]  Well, you say, no, I was never on that border town in Texas.
[46:21.320 --> 46:22.020]  Yeah, why is that?
[46:22.880 --> 46:30.320]  Well, you know, there was a car that was rented from a local distributor, a local, you know, car rental place.
[46:30.400 --> 46:30.740]  Car rental place, yeah.
[46:32.160 --> 46:34.860]  And it was rented with your name and your identification.
[46:35.200 --> 46:35.700]  Oh, dear.
[46:35.700 --> 46:55.560]  Okay, you know, and it turns out, and here's where it went awry in my case, Lisa, and then they told me that, well, this car was found in a deserted parking lot two nights ago with a dead body in it, and that somebody had been murdered in his car.
[46:55.720 --> 46:56.780]  You're scammed.
[46:57.140 --> 46:58.780]  You think it's funny, Gila?
[46:59.120 --> 47:01.060]  A murdered person in Alex's car?
[47:01.420 --> 47:02.280]  I don't know.
[47:02.640 --> 47:04.680]  I mean, this is, I haven't heard of a scam like this.
[47:04.680 --> 47:07.880]  This seems to be a primetime TV type of thing.
[47:08.240 --> 47:21.780]  And then, of course, you know, somehow from there, it devolves into some kind of gift card scam, where the credit card processing unit for them to take the money to absolve you from whatever the charge is.
[47:22.040 --> 47:22.600]  Wait, wait, wait, wait.
[47:22.820 --> 47:28.340]  They expect you to believe that you can get rid of a dead body literally with a gift card?
[47:28.760 --> 47:29.280]  Yeah.
[47:29.460 --> 47:34.620]  Or you might have to pay some kind of fee in order to not be taken into custody.
[47:34.680 --> 47:36.980]  You know, that you can pay your bail right now.
[47:37.420 --> 47:38.680]  You know, something like that.
[47:38.840 --> 47:39.560]  And we wonder.
[47:39.840 --> 47:41.980]  We wonder how people fall for cryptocurrency scams.
[47:42.640 --> 47:42.920]  Wow.
[47:43.460 --> 47:46.440]  This will get some people, especially the elderly who aren't...
[47:46.440 --> 47:51.120]  What I do is, when I enter the gift card, I just say, okay, well, I'll give you a number.
[47:51.280 --> 47:52.440]  I gotta go to the gift card.
[47:52.440 --> 47:59.240]  I'll call you back from the pay phone, from the, you know, and of course, you know, they start cursing at you and then hang up.
[47:59.440 --> 48:00.560]  And then when you call the number...
[48:00.560 --> 48:01.200]  That's unprofessional.
[48:01.940 --> 48:02.300]  Yeah.
[48:02.300 --> 48:10.080]  And then when you call the number, it's either somebody else's phone number, like you're calling some stranger, or the number... you get a recording saying the number doesn't exist.
[48:10.540 --> 48:17.780]  But to get back to the murder, okay, so you say the elderly are susceptible to this.
[48:18.040 --> 48:20.280]  I've known a lot of elderly people throughout my life.
[48:20.460 --> 48:21.460]  I know some now.
[48:21.780 --> 48:36.740]  I don't know anybody who would get a phone call like that from someone who said that there's a dead body in a car that you rented in a different state and think that they can solve this by running down to a store and getting a gift card and reading the numbers out to this person.
[48:36.920 --> 48:39.780]  Are there really people who will fall for that?
[48:40.260 --> 48:41.680]  Well, I think there are.
[48:41.800 --> 48:45.060]  And I think that it's not every single person.
[48:45.200 --> 48:49.180]  I think that it is, thankfully, few and far between that fall for this kind of thing.
[48:49.320 --> 48:53.080]  But all it takes is one, you know, to be fleeced for several thousand dollars.
[48:53.240 --> 48:54.220]  And that's a massive fall.
[48:54.500 --> 49:00.080]  But it's almost like you could just call them and say, give me several thousand dollars because to fall for a story like that...
[49:01.140 --> 49:07.660]  Yeah, you would think, well, in my case, what happened was, is they told me about this dead body found in the car.
[49:07.780 --> 49:08.560]  Yeah, how did it get resolved?
[49:09.040 --> 49:12.280]  And they asked if I was aware of this.
[49:13.000 --> 49:13.720]  Oh, yes.
[49:13.920 --> 49:14.260]  Yes.
[49:14.260 --> 49:15.860]  I've been meaning to do something about it.
[49:15.980 --> 49:16.960]  I've been so busy.
[49:17.420 --> 49:19.180]  But yeah, the dead body, it's still there, right?
[49:19.260 --> 49:20.140]  Tell me it's still okay.
[49:20.660 --> 49:22.640]  Oh, I said, yes, I am aware of it.
[49:22.740 --> 49:24.380]  I murdered that person.
[49:24.460 --> 49:25.380]  I left that car there.
[49:25.540 --> 49:26.160]  You said that.
[49:26.160 --> 49:27.180]  So, yeah, I said that.
[49:27.180 --> 49:28.840]  You confessed to murder over the telephone.
[49:29.100 --> 49:33.600]  Yeah, and then they know that you know it's a scam, they get angry at you, they curse at you, and they hang up.
[49:33.640 --> 49:37.160]  But you confessed to murder over state lines, over the telephone line.
[49:37.400 --> 49:38.380]  I guess, yeah.
[49:38.580 --> 49:41.080]  I confessed to international lines, according to Rebel.
[49:41.180 --> 49:43.640]  Well, then you get international police involved.
[49:44.420 --> 49:44.800]  Interpol.
[49:44.800 --> 49:45.460]  Yeah, Interpol.
[49:45.880 --> 49:46.080]  I'll bite.
[49:46.240 --> 49:46.460]  Okay.
[49:46.720 --> 49:46.860]  Well...
[49:46.860 --> 49:48.780]  Yeah, they're going to be coming after me for that border murder.
[49:48.880 --> 49:49.360]  You know what?
[49:50.060 --> 49:54.340]  Larry David might have to look for somebody else, because you're going to be too busy defending your own problems.
[49:54.500 --> 49:59.900]  Let's go back to Rebel and his student loan and issues with Medicare and Customs and Border Patrol.
[50:00.820 --> 50:01.560]  Rebel, I don't know.
[50:01.680 --> 50:02.940]  You've got to take these things seriously.
[50:03.840 --> 50:08.140]  Well, no, they want a gift card, so they did not call.
[50:08.200 --> 50:13.120]  They did call me back, and I said that I was at a store, and I said, oh, yes, would you like a gift card?
[50:13.120 --> 50:17.000]  Right, and I said, oh, then I said, then you know what I said to them?
[50:17.120 --> 50:17.720]  What did you say to them?
[50:18.540 --> 50:23.420]  Quack, quack, quack, quack, please deposit 30 cents, 30 cents.
[50:23.760 --> 50:24.580]  Whoa, whoa, whoa.
[50:24.660 --> 50:25.840]  How did the payphone get on the line?
[50:26.020 --> 50:26.620]  Did you hear that?
[50:26.700 --> 50:28.240]  The payphone lady was just...
[50:28.240 --> 50:30.540]  That was so real, Rebel.
[50:30.700 --> 50:31.220]  That was...
[50:31.220 --> 50:32.920]  I could not tell the difference.
[50:33.160 --> 50:33.940]  Oh, I'm sorry, I'm at a payphone.
[50:33.960 --> 50:41.640]  You could get a job, somehow, being the phone lady that asks for money from a payphone, if any of those things still existed.
[50:43.600 --> 50:46.040]  Right, you know, maybe if somebody has co-cats around.
[50:46.360 --> 50:52.060]  Hey, on that note, have you heard, and has everybody here heard, that they're getting rid of operators?
[50:52.560 --> 50:54.200]  AT&T is getting rid of operators.
[50:54.400 --> 50:56.140]  Yeah, Gila, I think you found this story.
[50:56.280 --> 50:57.800]  You mean zero operators?
[50:58.020 --> 50:58.660]  Zero operators.
[50:58.780 --> 50:59.360]  Listen to Gila.
[50:59.500 --> 51:01.640]  She's going to tell you some sobering news here.
[51:02.100 --> 51:05.660]  Okay, so I mean, yes, but, I think is the answer.
[51:05.660 --> 51:25.820]  Um, so people who have AT&T digital home landlines that used to be called AT&T U-verse, uh, customers in 21 states who have AT&T home phone service as of June, January the 1st, will no longer have access to Zero for Operator and 411.
[51:27.320 --> 51:27.720]  Wow.
[51:28.200 --> 51:28.860]  So it's not...
[51:28.860 --> 51:29.640]  I know.
[51:29.740 --> 51:30.520]  I mean, can you believe it?
[51:30.580 --> 51:34.300]  The operator won't be around anymore if you have AT&T.
[51:34.480 --> 51:35.800]  I don't know if Verizon...
[51:35.800 --> 51:36.580]  I haven't dialed...
[51:36.580 --> 51:40.960]  I haven't been on a Verizon phone in a while, but if you dial Zero, do you get an operator?
[51:41.100 --> 51:41.500]  Do you get anything?
[51:42.000 --> 51:43.580]  I mean, I looked it up.
[51:44.240 --> 51:48.040]  Verizon landline service only exists in three or four states right now.
[51:50.080 --> 51:50.480]  Wow.
[51:50.480 --> 51:56.240]  Um, and I think it still exists for those customers, but not for free.
[51:57.260 --> 51:59.140]  You mean you have to pay to call the operator?
[51:59.800 --> 52:03.800]  You definitely have to pay to call for directory assistance, and I believe you have to call for operator...
[52:03.800 --> 52:05.600]  You have to pay for operator-assisted calls as well.
[52:05.740 --> 52:06.800]  But what about operator?
[52:06.880 --> 52:07.440]  Get me the police.
[52:07.580 --> 52:08.480]  How do you do that?
[52:10.000 --> 52:14.560]  Um, I think they just want you to text the police and do it that way.
[52:14.880 --> 52:15.780]  You know, I...
[52:15.780 --> 52:16.920]  This world is just changing.
[52:17.300 --> 52:18.700]  I have a thousand cuts for home phone service.
[52:18.700 --> 52:19.760]  It's changing too fast.
[52:19.760 --> 52:29.440]  But look, if Zero is available, I'd like that number, because, you know, if they're not using it, we can certainly find some creative ways to, uh, you know, to have the old Zero number.
[52:29.660 --> 52:30.040]  Go ahead, Rebel.
[52:30.280 --> 52:31.300]  Call 18 to you first.
[52:32.280 --> 52:45.220]  So if I had a wireline phone, a regular, like, residential phone, or let's say a phone at work or business, if you dial Zero for the operator, you're not going to get, um, you know, the recording says, please, Zero for operator.
[52:46.360 --> 52:47.540]  Well, hang on.
[52:47.680 --> 52:59.180]  Rebel, do you live in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, South Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, or Wisconsin?
[52:59.660 --> 53:03.640]  Flying phone, a regular, like, residential phone, or let's say a phone at work or business.
[53:03.960 --> 53:04.340]  What?
[53:05.100 --> 53:05.320]  Zero.
[53:06.460 --> 53:08.920]  Well, you know, the operator, he's not going to get, um...
[53:08.920 --> 53:10.060]  Okay, I think that's the YouTube.
[53:11.000 --> 53:12.340]  Yeah, why does he sound so far away?
[53:13.700 --> 53:15.080]  Because he's replaying himself for YouTube.
[53:15.100 --> 53:15.740]  He's replaying himself.
[53:16.720 --> 53:17.040]  Okay.
[53:17.100 --> 53:19.980]  No, are you, are you, you, uh, no, you, you cut out.
[53:20.240 --> 53:20.480]  Okay.
[53:21.280 --> 53:21.660]  I hear you.
[53:21.660 --> 53:22.320]  Oh, sorry.
[53:22.540 --> 53:23.440]  Did you miss that whole list?
[53:23.580 --> 53:24.180]  All right, I'll do it again.
[53:24.620 --> 53:25.680]  No, I missed what you said.
[53:25.880 --> 53:26.960]  No, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
[53:27.260 --> 53:28.480]  Rebel, do you live in any of those states?
[53:28.600 --> 53:29.300]  Did you hear the states?
[53:31.000 --> 53:31.660]  Uh, no.
[53:31.800 --> 53:32.420]  Was it New York?
[53:33.100 --> 53:33.420]  Okay.
[53:33.640 --> 53:35.680]  Do you, uh, read the states again.
[53:36.060 --> 53:36.420]  All right.
[53:36.680 --> 53:37.480]  Rebel, listen carefully.
[53:37.480 --> 53:50.540]  Do you live in, ahem, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, or Wisconsin?
[53:52.680 --> 53:53.500]  I, uh, no.
[53:53.880 --> 53:54.580]  So, uh, no.
[53:54.720 --> 53:55.440]  Okay, then we're fine.
[53:55.600 --> 53:56.280]  Yeah, you're fine.
[53:56.620 --> 53:58.340]  But things aren't like they used to be.
[53:58.640 --> 53:59.860]  You can't just dial zero.
[54:00.120 --> 54:04.040]  Those are the states that they're going to get, they're not going to have zero operators, local operators.
[54:04.980 --> 54:12.760]  Those are the states where if you have AT&T, home phone service, you will not be able to dial zero for an operator anymore.
[54:12.940 --> 54:17.580]  Service from your local telephone company, like, you know, 9X or Bell Atlantic or things like that?
[54:17.680 --> 54:18.700]  They don't exist anymore.
[54:18.920 --> 54:19.300]  They have those anymore?
[54:19.560 --> 54:21.000]  Those companies don't exist.
[54:21.580 --> 54:23.860]  Look, we have Verizon here, maybe.
[54:24.100 --> 54:24.600]  I don't know.
[54:24.820 --> 54:26.060]  Are there people with Verizon here?
[54:26.600 --> 54:28.180]  Uh, not in this part of the state.
[54:28.380 --> 54:28.600]  Okay.
[54:28.600 --> 54:30.280]  We have iOS phone lines upstate.
[54:30.740 --> 54:31.080]  Okay.
[54:31.340 --> 54:33.720]  So, look, we see where this is going.
[54:33.960 --> 54:37.020]  It's getting to the point where there won't be zero operators fairly soon.
[54:37.140 --> 54:42.500]  If you live in a place with a different local phone company, dial zero, see if you get an operator, see if they charge you for it, see who they are.
[54:43.060 --> 54:49.080]  But I think things are dwindling in the operator world, which is crazy to think of, but it's true.
[54:49.740 --> 54:53.840]  I don't have a phone in a, um, in a, um, place, you know, a place of business.
[54:54.080 --> 54:55.320]  I could dial zero and get it.
[54:55.500 --> 55:02.640]  I remember the last couple, I mean, a month or two ago, I dialed zero and got a Verizon operator and dialed zero zero and got AT&T.
[55:02.840 --> 55:06.460]  So, I'll try that again tomorrow and see if I get it.
[55:06.520 --> 55:07.500]  Maybe they know something.
[55:07.580 --> 55:10.000]  And report back, because we do want to hear.
[55:10.420 --> 55:13.040]  All right, we have to move on to other calls, but thanks, Rebel, for calling in.
[55:13.160 --> 55:16.240]  I wonder what's going to happen if you dial zero or what you would even get.
[55:16.240 --> 55:19.060]  I shudder to even think what might happen when you do that.
[55:19.100 --> 55:19.680]  Your phone will explode.
[55:19.700 --> 55:21.320]  Well, it's happened before.
[55:21.660 --> 55:23.100]  So, let's not joke about that.
[55:23.180 --> 55:24.140]  Phones explode all the time.
[55:24.300 --> 55:25.700]  Can you still dial zero zero?
[55:25.940 --> 55:26.700]  That's what he just did.
[55:26.820 --> 55:27.500]  He got AT&T.
[55:28.060 --> 55:31.400]  All right, Rebel, uh, so we look forward to hearing the results of this.
[55:32.040 --> 55:32.720]  Yeah, of course.
[55:32.900 --> 55:33.480]  All right, take care.
[55:35.240 --> 55:35.780]  All right.
[55:36.600 --> 55:37.260]  That was Rebel.
[55:37.620 --> 55:40.360]  All right, um, I think one more call we can take.
[55:40.420 --> 55:43.920]  802-321-4225, if another call comes in.
[55:43.980 --> 55:48.580]  Alex, it looks like you have something to say, because we're leaning right up to the screen and look very intent.
[55:48.580 --> 55:51.980]  No, that's just, um, I'm just being a little overbearing at the moment.
[55:52.540 --> 55:58.260]  Yeah, your face is like four times the size of, uh, either Gila's or Rob's, so you're very close to the screen, so.
[55:58.580 --> 55:59.580]  Just a big man.
[55:59.760 --> 56:00.060]  All right.
[56:00.280 --> 56:02.480]  My apologies for the interference on the phone line.
[56:02.560 --> 56:03.560]  I will, uh, I'll take a look at that.
[56:03.560 --> 56:05.540]  Yeah, Kyle's rewiring the board while we're doing the show.
[56:05.540 --> 56:06.980]  I was trying a couple things, because...
[56:06.980 --> 56:08.360]  I don't know why you have to do it right now.
[56:08.360 --> 56:17.040]  Oh, it's obnoxious to, uh, not do it for me, when you have such a, uh, when you're entrusted with this, uh, operation.
[56:17.360 --> 56:20.560]  This is off the hook over time, where apparently anything goes.
[56:20.820 --> 56:24.040]  Uh, you can still write to us, O-T-H at 2600.com.
[56:24.460 --> 56:27.700]  We'll be happy to, uh, hear your letters, even if they're abusive.
[56:28.340 --> 56:32.780]  And, um, I believe we're on next week as well, on radio and on YouTube.
[56:33.360 --> 56:36.240]  And our phone line is open right now, 802-321-4225.
[56:36.320 --> 56:39.760]  And in a couple of minutes, it won't be, because we have other things to do.
[56:40.800 --> 56:41.680]  And we have a call.
[56:41.820 --> 56:42.040]  Okay.
[56:42.260 --> 56:42.780]  Good evening.
[56:42.960 --> 56:44.000]  You're on Off the Hook Overtime.
[56:45.260 --> 56:45.740]  Oh, yeah.
[56:45.780 --> 56:50.860]  My name is Paul, and I, uh, I came across your, uh, this, uh, this show last week on YouTube.
[56:51.240 --> 56:53.160]  You came across the show on YouTube?
[56:53.560 --> 56:53.920]  Wow.
[56:54.360 --> 56:57.060]  On you, on you, uh, yeah, it was last week it was.
[56:57.060 --> 56:58.320]  You just found us by accident?
[56:58.660 --> 56:59.060]  That's amazing.
[57:00.220 --> 57:02.060]  I just wanted to give you all a suggestion, though.
[57:02.220 --> 57:09.960]  Um, you see, you need to either, uh, maybe activate, like, the, uh, the chat thing, so people can, like, send messages on the chat.
[57:10.580 --> 57:16.700]  Um, and if not, at the least, put the number to the show on, like, on the screen.
[57:16.960 --> 57:17.260]  Uh-huh.
[57:17.640 --> 57:22.800]  Because, like, last week I was trying to call in, and for, like, maybe 20 minutes, you didn't say the number anymore.
[57:23.160 --> 57:24.380]  So I couldn't call in.
[57:24.460 --> 57:25.500]  That's a good point.
[57:25.680 --> 57:26.360]  That's a good point.
[57:26.360 --> 57:28.380]  The chat, the chat, I'm not so sure about.
[57:28.560 --> 57:36.640]  You, we can try the chat and see what happens, but what I think is going to happen is a bunch of people are going to be talking back and forth, and, uh, we're just going to sort of become background noise.
[57:36.780 --> 57:38.580]  But we can try it, you know, see, maybe it'll work.
[57:38.680 --> 57:39.500]  Maybe it'll...
[57:39.940 --> 57:40.600]  I don't think so.
[57:40.600 --> 57:41.320]  What do you think?
[57:41.420 --> 57:46.020]  Okay, as a listener, what do you think is the advantage of having a chat open while the show is on?
[57:46.720 --> 57:55.040]  Well, one of the advantages is, um, when you have people talking, when you have somebody calling in, the person can actually ask that, those people questions.
[57:55.220 --> 57:58.880]  Like, for instance, last week, I was with a friend of mine who's actually from Bulgaria.
[57:59.020 --> 58:00.940]  You have this guy from Bulgaria call in.
[58:00.980 --> 58:01.540]  Bobson, yes.
[58:01.680 --> 58:05.720]  And the person I was with wanted to ask him something, because he happened to be from there.
[58:06.460 --> 58:13.880]  So, it just, you know, like, if, if, if they could chat, he would have been able to type the question, and you could have asked him while you had him on the phone or something.
[58:14.600 --> 58:16.400]  But we'd have to be looking at the screen, then.
[58:16.540 --> 58:21.860]  I mean, I'm not looking at, at a screen right now of YouTube, but is anybody here, you guys, are you looking at?
[58:21.900 --> 58:24.620]  Would you be able to ask Bobson the question if somebody asked him?
[58:25.040 --> 58:27.020]  Okay, or maybe Bobson himself would see the question.
[58:28.000 --> 58:30.360]  But, okay, okay, that's, that's a good point.
[58:30.400 --> 58:33.880]  At least put the number, at least put the, the number to call in on, on screen.
[58:33.880 --> 58:35.840]  No, that, that, you know, that we definitely should do.
[58:35.980 --> 58:36.580]  I agree with that.
[58:36.720 --> 58:42.540]  But, you know, my, my concern is what if someone becomes abusive and starts insulting somebody who's calling in, then they get all flustered.
[58:42.580 --> 58:46.280]  And, uh, maybe I'm just thinking, you know, the worst, but.
[58:47.280 --> 58:47.640]  Yeah.
[58:48.320 --> 58:55.500]  Oh, oh, and the other thing, these scams, the gentleman that called in earlier, um, these scams are just very, very prevalent.
[58:55.680 --> 59:03.380]  It's at the point, if you go into Walgreens right now to buy a gift card, they actually ask you at this point, they'd say, well, did you get a call online?
[59:03.380 --> 59:10.100]  You know, did somebody tell you, like, like, I get these calls all the time where somebody says, hey, I just won $50 million.
[59:10.320 --> 59:13.820]  And they would say, hey, you just need to buy a gift card and pay a fee.
[59:14.100 --> 59:15.780]  And then we'll send you the $50 million.
[59:16.400 --> 59:16.680]  Ah.
[59:16.880 --> 59:18.840]  I get these type of calls all the time.
[59:19.040 --> 59:26.400]  And, um, so if you go into Walgreens right now to buy these gift cards, a lot of times they ask you, you know, did you get a call from someone promising you something?
[59:27.140 --> 59:31.060]  You know, they ask you, you know, questions like that because they don't tell you it's a scam.
[59:31.520 --> 59:40.720]  You know, and a lot of these scammers too, they tell you on the phone when they call in, they will say, hey, if you go into the store and they ask you any questions, just say the gift card is for your brother.
[59:41.060 --> 59:41.760]  That's what they'll say.
[59:42.280 --> 59:44.340]  Say you're just buying a gift card for a family member.
[59:44.500 --> 59:44.780]  Uh-huh.
[59:45.560 --> 59:46.880]  That's what the scammers will tell you.
[59:46.980 --> 59:48.280]  So they're one step ahead.
[59:49.080 --> 59:51.420]  They want to because they know, they know about all that stuff.
[59:51.800 --> 59:56.780]  You know, sometimes when they call in, if I've got nothing better to do, I just play along with it, just play around with them for a little bit.
[59:56.960 --> 59:59.360]  And, uh, yeah, that's, they say stuff like that.
[59:59.580 --> 59:59.780]  But, uh.
[01:00:00.420 --> 01:00:00.660]  Wow.
[01:00:00.720 --> 01:00:01.920]  It's like an ongoing series.
[01:00:01.960 --> 01:00:03.160]  You can update it every week.
[01:00:03.260 --> 01:00:03.460]  Okay.
[01:00:03.580 --> 01:00:05.640]  Now they're on to this and this is their new tactic.
[01:00:06.480 --> 01:00:07.500]  That's their new, exactly.
[01:00:07.920 --> 01:00:08.240]  Exactly.
[01:00:09.340 --> 01:00:11.360]  Rob, do you have something to ask our caller?
[01:00:11.620 --> 01:00:11.820]  Go ahead.
[01:00:11.820 --> 01:00:14.320]  Yeah, no, I, I just, I love the idea.
[01:00:14.460 --> 01:00:25.240]  When, when I get these calls, my favorite thing to do is to just see how long I can string them along, how long I can keep them on the phone, because it's like all the joy of making a prank phone call, except it's not my fault and I'm not doing the wrong thing.
[01:00:25.540 --> 01:00:27.500]  And, uh, so it's, it's just very freeing.
[01:00:27.560 --> 01:00:28.260]  You can mess with them.
[01:00:28.360 --> 01:00:31.340]  You can see what you can get them to try and believe about you.
[01:00:31.600 --> 01:00:32.880]  It, it, it can be a lot of fun.
[01:00:34.100 --> 01:00:34.460]  Yeah.
[01:00:35.280 --> 01:00:36.360]  Oh, and one last thing.
[01:00:36.540 --> 01:00:43.560]  Um, you were talking earlier about the Senate and you were saying one of the advantages of winning Georgia is, uh, Kamala Harris won't have to break the tie.
[01:00:43.720 --> 01:00:43.920]  Mm-hmm.
[01:00:43.940 --> 01:00:44.680]  You were saying earlier.
[01:00:44.980 --> 01:00:45.180]  Yes.
[01:00:45.340 --> 01:00:50.320]  I mean, to me, the bigger advantage of that than Kamala Harris is they won't need Joe Manchin anymore.
[01:00:50.560 --> 01:00:50.880]  Absolutely.
[01:00:51.220 --> 01:00:57.840]  Because he's a bit of a, you know, he just, you know, he's, you know, he's like a, you know, he's kind of like a 50-50 guy, you know?
[01:00:58.000 --> 01:00:58.160]  Right.
[01:00:58.300 --> 01:01:05.020]  Well, the same as Manchin and Sinema, you, you, basically you can play them against each other and, uh, you won't, you won't need them.
[01:01:05.020 --> 01:01:05.720]  Um, yes, exactly.
[01:01:06.100 --> 01:01:07.700]  So, uh, huge advantage.
[01:01:07.980 --> 01:01:09.840]  You know, they get a lot more things done.
[01:01:10.100 --> 01:01:17.460]  But, uh, anyway, I enjoyed your show and I've, just from watching your show last week, I got introduced to WBAI, so I didn't even know the show.
[01:01:17.540 --> 01:01:19.260]  That's what I, I called you and I found it.
[01:01:19.360 --> 01:01:20.820]  I found out about WBAI.
[01:01:20.980 --> 01:01:22.740]  You know, I didn't, never heard of WBAI before.
[01:01:22.880 --> 01:01:25.280]  How about, are you, are you in the local area?
[01:01:26.120 --> 01:01:26.460]  I am.
[01:01:26.460 --> 01:01:27.000]  I'm in New Jersey.
[01:01:27.240 --> 01:01:27.840]  Oh, awesome.
[01:01:28.080 --> 01:01:28.300]  Wow.
[01:01:35.060 --> 01:01:37.180]  I remember bumping in and wandering around like that.
[01:01:37.280 --> 01:01:37.440]  Yeah.
[01:01:37.660 --> 01:01:39.160]  And we'll take those suggestions to heart.
[01:01:39.320 --> 01:01:41.820]  We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll try and experiment and make some changes.
[01:01:41.900 --> 01:01:43.080]  Make the phone number more visible.
[01:01:43.200 --> 01:01:44.220]  That's easy enough.
[01:01:44.440 --> 01:01:45.000]  Have a good evening.
[01:01:45.120 --> 01:01:45.300]  All right.
[01:01:45.420 --> 01:01:45.740]  Take care.
[01:01:45.860 --> 01:01:46.180]  Be well.
[01:01:47.240 --> 01:01:47.560]  Wow.
[01:01:47.840 --> 01:01:49.380]  That's a great call to end on, I think.
[01:01:49.900 --> 01:01:50.220]  Yeah.
[01:01:50.360 --> 01:01:51.540]  Alex, I think you had something to say?
[01:01:53.180 --> 01:01:54.680]  I think it's a great call, too.
[01:01:55.140 --> 01:01:57.080]  Um, I, I think we could do one more.
[01:01:57.240 --> 01:01:58.940]  We usually go to, like, nine and ten.
[01:01:59.080 --> 01:01:59.640]  God damn it, Alex.
[01:02:05.040 --> 01:02:08.280]  That image that displays, you should have the phone number.
[01:02:08.400 --> 01:02:08.720]  I agree.
[01:02:09.900 --> 01:02:10.300]  Okay.
[01:02:10.540 --> 01:02:10.840]  All right.
[01:02:10.900 --> 01:02:14.760]  I have no idea how to put it there, but that's, uh, we'll, uh, we'll work on it.
[01:02:14.900 --> 01:02:15.820]  Contact the art department.
[01:02:15.820 --> 01:02:16.660]  We have, we have a week.
[01:02:17.220 --> 01:02:20.080]  And, you know, maybe we can, we can experiment with chat.
[01:02:20.240 --> 01:02:20.660]  I don't know.
[01:02:20.800 --> 01:02:27.620]  It's just, look, you can, you can post feedback, right, to the show, but that's something else.
[01:02:27.620 --> 01:02:28.520]  That's not a chat.
[01:02:28.680 --> 01:02:30.080]  That's feedback, right?
[01:02:30.620 --> 01:02:33.900]  But then you can have a chat going on while the show is on.
[01:02:33.900 --> 01:02:38.160]  I don't think that's a good idea because I just see it easily turning into something we don't want it to be.
[01:02:38.300 --> 01:02:38.420]  Right.
[01:02:38.500 --> 01:02:41.400]  But then we can, we can say, look, this is what happened when we tried it.
[01:02:41.460 --> 01:02:43.000]  So we can have ammunition on our side.
[01:02:43.000 --> 01:02:43.880]  We're already saying that.
[01:02:44.080 --> 01:02:45.380]  Yeah, but, but we can prove it.
[01:02:45.440 --> 01:02:46.660]  Now we can prove how bad it is.
[01:02:46.820 --> 01:02:47.760]  We don't need to prove it.
[01:02:48.120 --> 01:02:48.360]  Gila.
[01:02:49.060 --> 01:02:53.800]  Have we, have we, are comments disabled on channel 2600 as well?
[01:02:54.180 --> 01:02:54.540]  Yes.
[01:02:54.780 --> 01:02:56.960]  Well, they're not disabled on, uh, hope videos.
[01:02:57.160 --> 01:02:57.580]  I'm pretty sure.
[01:02:58.160 --> 01:02:58.720]  People can comment.
[01:02:58.860 --> 01:03:01.820]  Okay, but comments are definitely disabled on, uh, overtimes.
[01:03:02.640 --> 01:03:03.480]  Okay, they are.
[01:03:03.940 --> 01:03:10.100]  So people have, people have not been able to interact with us at all on those videos.
[01:03:10.480 --> 01:03:10.780]  Okay, interesting.
[01:03:11.320 --> 01:03:12.860]  I don't see the harm in comments.
[01:03:13.420 --> 01:03:16.820]  Comments, I think, are okay unless they get overrun by spambots.
[01:03:17.480 --> 01:03:24.260]  My concern is that if we have the chat open, someone's going to have to monitor it.
[01:03:25.700 --> 01:03:26.140]  And...
[01:03:26.140 --> 01:03:27.800]  What happens if you don't monitor it?
[01:03:29.120 --> 01:03:35.480]  Then if people are like, oh, hey, I have a question for the caller, but if we don't have somebody, if one of us is not monitoring it, we won't know.
[01:03:35.480 --> 01:03:38.880]  Yeah, that's the point I was making before, or any of us looking at the YouTube screen.
[01:03:39.360 --> 01:03:42.720]  I, I just, what part of forever is confusing?
[01:03:42.780 --> 01:03:57.920]  You know, like, we open it up and it starts, you know, I don't, I don't want to read 15 years or whatever into the future what someone thought, you know, that day about something that was said forever ago, uh...
[01:03:57.920 --> 01:04:00.140]  Well, people aren't going to want to hear what we have to say 15 years from now.
[01:04:00.260 --> 01:04:01.020]  Yeah, I'm...
[01:04:01.020 --> 01:04:01.720]  It all works out.
[01:04:01.800 --> 01:04:05.240]  I'm flattered that they're listening, but I, do I, do they need to weigh in?
[01:04:05.440 --> 01:04:09.600]  I don't, am I even going to be able to, am I going to be going back and checking that?
[01:04:09.720 --> 01:04:10.300]  You should.
[01:04:10.500 --> 01:04:13.780]  Well, what if I have to be worried about going back and checking that?
[01:04:14.000 --> 01:04:15.240]  I don't want that.
[01:04:16.060 --> 01:04:16.420]  Wow.
[01:04:16.720 --> 01:04:18.500]  Uh, so many little elements here.
[01:04:18.500 --> 01:04:24.240]  And what if, what if the activity there upstages the actual content that we're, we're sharing?
[01:04:24.240 --> 01:04:27.780]  I mean, what if the, what if the, the, the comments are, are better than the show?
[01:04:28.040 --> 01:04:28.160]  Yeah.
[01:04:28.300 --> 01:04:33.840]  Wait, what, why are we, why are we taking this moment in this particular thing?
[01:04:34.680 --> 01:04:35.560]  And, um...
[01:04:35.560 --> 01:04:37.140]  Because we take our listeners seriously.
[01:04:37.440 --> 01:04:38.080]  Pretending, like...
[01:04:38.080 --> 01:04:41.700]  Someone suggests something, we have to go back and forth and weigh the advantages and disadvantages.
[01:04:42.040 --> 01:04:56.340]  Well, in our about, like, we could, we could share the number, but I just feel like all, everybody's opinion about everything, is that really a discussion we want to host on every single one of these videos.
[01:04:56.600 --> 01:04:57.920]  Well, I mean, that's not why they're there.
[01:04:57.920 --> 01:05:02.960]  My worry is that it'll get dominated by one or two people, which tends to happen in situations like that.
[01:05:03.340 --> 01:05:13.960]  Uh, and again, you know, uh, in addition to just moderating to, uh, see questions, you got to moderate for, you know, abuse or, um, uh, you know, all kinds of ugly things that happen online.
[01:05:14.240 --> 01:05:17.360]  And, uh, it's just more responsibility and more things to worry about.
[01:05:18.500 --> 01:05:28.760]  Well, and I think it eliminates the possibility for people to interact in the ways that we are encouraging them to interact, like, make a phone call, uh, uh, write in to, to OTH at 2600.com.
[01:05:28.760 --> 01:05:30.380]  If the phone number is there, then yeah, call in.
[01:05:30.480 --> 01:05:33.660]  That's, that's the point of, of, of the show is for people to call in.
[01:05:33.860 --> 01:05:34.680]  Uh, yes, Rob, go ahead.
[01:05:35.300 --> 01:05:43.060]  You know, Off the Hook has had a listener chat for, for decades, and that is the IRC channel on 2600's IRC server.
[01:05:43.180 --> 01:05:43.300]  That's true.
[01:05:43.300 --> 01:05:46.960]  There's always been the channel Off the Hook for listeners of the show together.
[01:05:47.360 --> 01:05:51.840]  And, uh, you know, there have been people who've used that over the years to talk to one another while listening to the show.
[01:05:52.200 --> 01:05:57.120]  And I think we could easily just declare that the place to be, if you want to talk during overtime as well.
[01:05:57.440 --> 01:05:59.080]  I'm sure that, I'm sure that happens.
[01:05:59.300 --> 01:06:02.680]  And, uh, you know, people can hang out there and, uh, chat and have a good time.
[01:06:03.000 --> 01:06:03.980]  But, but we're not watching that.
[01:06:04.160 --> 01:06:10.200]  So if someone asks a question of, of the caller, you know, that, that, that scenario still does work.
[01:06:10.200 --> 01:06:11.100]  I don't have an answer for that.
[01:06:11.840 --> 01:06:12.240]  That's fair.
[01:06:12.240 --> 01:06:12.900]  They can call us.
[01:06:12.960 --> 01:06:16.900]  I'm just saying, you know, I'm into experimenting and trying things, seeing what happens.
[01:06:16.960 --> 01:06:18.620]  And if it's a disaster, then we know it's a disaster.
[01:06:18.620 --> 01:06:21.320]  And we can always say, remember when we did it that time, it was a disaster.
[01:06:21.580 --> 01:06:21.920]  Okay.
[01:06:22.720 --> 01:06:43.500]  I think though, that given the realities of the situation that we're working with right now, if say, hypothetically speaking, Rebel calls and is on the phone for 25 minutes, and we have a listener who has something else to say, but can't get through because Rebel's on the phone for 25 minutes and we only have the one phone line.
[01:06:43.900 --> 01:06:53.840]  So, you know, if, and maybe that is the thing for the comments, um, not necessarily live chat, because that would be a whole different ball of wax, if you will.
[01:06:55.160 --> 01:06:59.060]  But I just kind of wanted to give Rebel a hard time for being on the phone for 25 minutes.
[01:06:59.320 --> 01:07:11.360]  So, but someone would say on the chat, Hey, I'm trying to get through too, but then everybody in the chat will know that someone else is trying to get through and then they could thwart those efforts by, you know, calling before that person gets to call,
[01:07:11.420 --> 01:07:20.360]  you know, or they could just, you know, leave comments and we could say, Hey, Rebel, while you were on the phone for 25 minutes, these 10 people each had something to say and here's what it is.
[01:07:21.880 --> 01:07:22.380]  All right.
[01:07:22.520 --> 01:07:23.920]  Well, it's worth considering.
[01:07:24.140 --> 01:07:25.320]  Did we ever get another phone call?
[01:07:25.340 --> 01:07:26.100]  We can bring back the call waiting beep.
[01:07:26.480 --> 01:07:28.060]  Uh, give the phone number out.
[01:07:28.140 --> 01:07:29.080]  No, I don't have anything.
[01:07:29.240 --> 01:07:29.400]  All right.
[01:07:29.480 --> 01:07:30.740]  802-321-4225.
[01:07:31.020 --> 01:07:32.560]  And we're going to give it till 10 after.
[01:07:32.740 --> 01:07:33.720]  And then we're done, Alex.
[01:07:35.260 --> 01:07:39.860]  Maybe, uh, maybe some of us don't have plans tonight, but others might.
[01:07:41.820 --> 01:07:42.260]  Yeah.
[01:07:42.700 --> 01:07:47.900]  I, uh, I, I have to say I'm getting over some, you know, something over the last two days.
[01:07:47.900 --> 01:07:53.240]  I have, uh, I had a really, really nasty bug that really knocked me on my butt yesterday.
[01:07:54.020 --> 01:07:57.520]  So I, um, I still have, I, it's been like two days.
[01:07:57.680 --> 01:07:59.140]  My stomach is still not right.
[01:07:59.360 --> 01:08:02.040]  So I was wondering why you were in an isolation chamber.
[01:08:02.500 --> 01:08:02.940]  Yeah.
[01:08:02.940 --> 01:08:03.420]  Yeah.
[01:08:03.420 --> 01:08:03.500]  Yeah.
[01:08:03.500 --> 01:08:04.920]  More, more isolated than usual.
[01:08:05.040 --> 01:08:06.180]  I felt it was rude to ask.
[01:08:07.200 --> 01:08:08.240]  Well, I hope you feel better.
[01:08:09.820 --> 01:08:10.180]  Yeah.
[01:08:10.440 --> 01:08:13.220]  Now, you know, yeah, I'm better now, but it was, it was rough.
[01:08:13.600 --> 01:08:14.040]  I didn't tell you.
[01:08:14.260 --> 01:08:14.960]  Yesterday it was rough.
[01:08:15.100 --> 01:08:17.640]  It wasn't COVID, but it was, it was something, something bad.
[01:08:17.920 --> 01:08:18.160]  Mm-hmm.
[01:08:18.440 --> 01:08:19.540]  Oh, there's a lot of things out there.
[01:08:20.380 --> 01:08:21.900]  Just, just waiting to pounce.
[01:08:22.600 --> 01:08:23.080]  Out there.
[01:08:23.340 --> 01:08:23.660]  Mm-hmm.
[01:08:24.900 --> 01:08:25.900]  Oh, all right.
[01:08:26.000 --> 01:08:27.220]  So, uh, what was it?
[01:08:27.380 --> 01:08:29.140]  802-321-4225?
[01:08:29.480 --> 01:08:29.640]  Yes.
[01:08:29.740 --> 01:08:31.020]  And there's 90 seconds left.
[01:08:31.020 --> 01:08:35.160]  And if we don't get a call in 90 seconds, we're going to hang it up for the night.
[01:08:35.940 --> 01:08:36.420]  Okay.
[01:08:36.420 --> 01:08:37.220]  I have a question.
[01:08:37.300 --> 01:08:37.540]  Go ahead.
[01:08:37.540 --> 01:08:38.080]  Since we're...
[01:08:38.080 --> 01:08:38.280]  Yes.
[01:08:38.760 --> 01:08:39.580]  ...talking about YouTube.
[01:08:40.400 --> 01:08:44.700]  Did we ever find out what the word that's missing from the picture says?
[01:08:45.660 --> 01:08:46.220]  Oh, no.
[01:08:46.380 --> 01:08:47.740]  I, I think people lost interest in that.
[01:08:47.820 --> 01:08:49.060]  The thing that says, we'll be removed?
[01:08:49.660 --> 01:08:50.020]  Yeah.
[01:08:51.060 --> 01:08:56.760]  Um, I think we had a theory as to what that was, but...
[01:08:56.760 --> 01:08:58.540]  Oh, oh, I bet it's bikes.
[01:08:59.040 --> 01:08:59.760]  Maybe bikes.
[01:09:00.000 --> 01:09:00.300]  Could be.
[01:09:00.300 --> 01:09:02.160]  That definitely looks like a B on the end there.
[01:09:02.360 --> 01:09:02.620]  Uh-huh.
[01:09:03.320 --> 01:09:03.680]  Yeah.
[01:09:04.000 --> 01:09:04.520]  I think it's bikes.
[01:09:04.520 --> 01:09:04.540]  All right.
[01:09:04.540 --> 01:09:05.300]  I think we have a call.
[01:09:05.700 --> 01:09:06.620]  Let's pick it up.
[01:09:14.700 --> 01:09:16.480]  You get Rebel pretending to be other people.
[01:09:17.080 --> 01:09:17.440]  Yeah.
[01:09:17.600 --> 01:09:18.560]  That's what you wanted to hear, huh?
[01:09:19.180 --> 01:09:19.920]  Oh, boy.
[01:09:20.400 --> 01:09:21.660]  Oh, okay.
[01:09:21.660 --> 01:09:22.600]  You did this, Alex.
[01:09:23.340 --> 01:09:23.640]  Yeah.
[01:09:23.920 --> 01:09:26.000]  That's, that's, yeah, I'll take some...
[01:09:26.000 --> 01:09:29.980]  Just like, you know, the chat thing, saying this is what's going to happen if we do that.
[01:09:30.080 --> 01:09:31.400]  It always, it always plays out.
[01:09:31.540 --> 01:09:32.560]  We try to have nice things.
[01:09:33.400 --> 01:09:35.400]  Always the worst thing imaginable is what happens.
[01:09:36.040 --> 01:09:38.520]  Sorry, Rebel, are you upset that I impugned your integrity?
[01:09:38.920 --> 01:09:39.840]  He's not there anymore.
[01:09:39.960 --> 01:09:40.600]  Do you think he lasted?
[01:09:41.360 --> 01:09:42.220]  I wasn't sure.
[01:09:43.420 --> 01:09:44.600]  There's no way to know from here.
[01:09:44.700 --> 01:09:46.620]  I think he had to do some work.
[01:09:46.920 --> 01:09:48.080]  He, I don't know.
[01:09:48.600 --> 01:09:49.640]  Oh, my gosh.
[01:09:49.820 --> 01:09:50.580]  Is there a call coming in?
[01:09:50.700 --> 01:09:51.320]  There is not.
[01:09:51.460 --> 01:09:53.420]  Four, three, two, one.
[01:09:53.660 --> 01:09:54.020]  That's it.
[01:09:54.140 --> 01:09:54.980]  That's 10 after we're done.
[01:09:55.800 --> 01:09:57.640]  I just decreed that as the cutoff time.
[01:09:59.460 --> 01:10:02.600]  So, again, you can write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
[01:10:02.740 --> 01:10:03.860]  We'll be happy to hear from you.
[01:10:04.220 --> 01:10:08.660]  And, yeah, anything else we need to tell people?
[01:10:10.220 --> 01:10:11.720]  There's no meetings coming up this week.
[01:10:11.720 --> 01:10:12.680]  It's the middle of the month.
[01:10:13.740 --> 01:10:15.580]  New Issue of 2600 is out.
[01:10:15.900 --> 01:10:18.360]  So, go find that.
[01:10:18.360 --> 01:10:19.320]  That's a bit of fun.
[01:10:20.840 --> 01:10:21.280]  Yeah.
[01:10:21.440 --> 01:10:23.640]  Oh, we introduced 11 t-shirts yesterday.
[01:10:23.640 --> 01:10:24.320]  That's kind of fun.
[01:10:24.760 --> 01:10:26.820]  They do merch in the merch store, which is pretty great.
[01:10:27.180 --> 01:10:27.420]  Yeah.
[01:10:27.760 --> 01:10:30.720]  So, we're busy.
[01:10:30.780 --> 01:10:31.460]  We're busy people.
[01:10:31.660 --> 01:10:32.860]  Support WBAI.
[01:10:32.980 --> 01:10:34.460]  Give to WBAI.org.
[01:10:34.640 --> 01:10:34.840]  Exactly.
[01:10:35.060 --> 01:10:36.620]  Get those things off the back burner.
[01:10:37.240 --> 01:10:37.820]  Be active.
[01:10:38.000 --> 01:10:38.840]  Hack some stuff.
[01:10:39.080 --> 01:10:39.780]  Tell us about it.
[01:10:39.780 --> 01:10:41.220]  Tell us all about it.
[01:10:41.960 --> 01:10:42.360]  Yes.
[01:10:42.840 --> 01:10:45.960]  We will see you next week if we're not preempted.
[01:10:46.020 --> 01:10:49.320]  And if we are preempted, we'll let you know on the 2600 website.
[01:10:49.980 --> 01:10:50.680]  Good night, everyone.