Harlem Dowling, in collaboration with other community agencies, invite you to their annual
Youth Empowerment Health Fair on Saturday, June 5th from 11 to 5 p.m. at P.S. 175, located
at 175 West 135th Street.
Free HIV testing and other screening services, as well as workshops, contests, and giveaways
will be offered.
Complete or return your 2010 census on-site.
For more information, call 212-749-3000.
That's 212-749-3000.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York.
The time is 7 o'clock.
Time once again for Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
Now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
Bundledly bound for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bundledly bound.
Bundledly bound.
And good to be back with the program, this is Off the Hook.
Manuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Mike.
Hi.
Jim.
Hello.
Redhack.
Hello.
Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
.Ret.
Hello.
Kyle.
Hi there.
And down in Philadelphia, Bernie S.
Greetings from Philadelphia.
And also joining us tonight on the telephone from California is Mitch Altman.
Howdy, everyone.
Hey, Mitch.
Wow, we have a full lineup here tonight.
So, wow, we've got a lot to do, too.
We've got a lot of interesting things to talk about.
We just, a couple of us, got back from Dayton-Hamvench, and Bernie, you were one of them, right?
Wow, yeah.
It was quite a trip, both there and back and all the time there.
It was amazing just meeting tens of thousands of other communications geeks and 2600 fans.
Always a good time.
Hey, Bernie, tell me if you can hear this and tell me what it is.
Can you hear that, Bernie?
Yeah, I could, although I probably could have used a little more amplification.
For our listeners that don't recognize that sound or may have never heard it, it's the sound of a rotary dial.
I found a brand-new, unused rotary dial.
It's apart from an old phone.
And it was neat because the back of it was exposed.
You could see all the, you could see the speed governor mechanism and the dial pulsing and all that.
It's just really kind of a cool thing.
And it makes neat sound effects, too.
So, I gave that to you guys.
It sure does.
And, Kyle, you have one up on Bernie.
You actually got something else.
Yeah, I found an old rotary phone there, a Western Electric Model 500 set.
And we looked at the bottom, and it was from 1957.
And the guy asked about $5 for it, and he was actually set up right next to our booth there in the flea market.
And I told him I only had $3, and he said, it's yours.
So, we put it on our booth, and it looked really nice with the rest of our stuff as a display.
And we had fun with it.
A lot of people learned how to use a rotary dial for the first time.
I can't believe that.
And also people learned how to angrily slam down a receiver onto a phone, which is a good thing to do.
Yeah.
Seems good for everybody to try that at least once.
But in addition to rotary phones and dials, there are all kinds of other pieces of equipment out there as well.
Phone taps.
What's that?
Like phone taps.
Phone taps.
You want to tell us what that's all about?
Yeah, yeah.
Apparently, Bernie found a really nice big, big machine that you can plug in and it can listen to, what, four lines at once?
It's not that big.
It's about the size of a briefcase.
It's designed to record simultaneously four phone lines onto a hard drive, and you can back them up onto the CD burner that's in there.
They're commonly used by police stations to record all the calls that come in.
This one, I turned out, when I got it home, I plugged it in.
I got this for, like, what I'd pay for dinner for two, but this thing sells currently for, like, $3,000.
Anyway, I plugged it in, and there were over 100,000 voice messages on this thing.
Oh, my God.
We were talking about that, too.
Really?
Who are they from?
Well, it turns out it was used by a bus company to record all the audio for their radio repeater.
So it's for a school bus dispatcher.
So some of the calls are really quite funny.
You can hear all the kids screaming in the background while the bus driver is like, oh, this kid is doing this.
Wow.
I'll never get through all 100.
It's about 111,000 messages on it.
Who are those messages meant for?
These are the messages through the repeater, the radio repeater.
So these are either from the dispatcher to the drivers or from the drivers to the dispatcher or from the drivers to the drivers.
And the audio is quite good.
You can hear all the kids screaming and yelling.
Wow.
Well, that's just an indication of some of the things you can find when you go to Dayton-Hamvench.
But mostly we met all kinds of listeners and people, some of whom we've met before, some of whom we've never met before.
And it was just really cool to put names to faces and voices and things like that.
Are they listening tonight?
I don't know.
It's hard to say.
But so many people do listen.
And having gone over to the former Yugoslavia and meeting all kinds of listeners over there, it's kind of cool to go to Ohio and do the exact same thing
and to see the wide variety of people we have listening to this radio program.
And hopefully that wide variety will come through tonight and help us do better than we did last week because we didn't do that well last week.
So this is how we can find out.
If you were at the Hamvench and you called tonight, we'll know you're listening tonight.
I guess.
Yeah.
I'm not quite sure how you're going to do that.
But, yeah.
We get a list of the names.
You're wearing a Hamvench t-shirt.
I am.
I got this at a Waffle House.
They were sort of a…
The Waffle House was advertising the Hamvench.
They go together very well apparently.
It's fluorescent green.
Yeah.
It's kind of a neat thing.
You know, it's funny only because, you know, you go to the Hamvench every year or most years.
I've been there before.
And that is kind of an integral part of our experience when we go there because that happens to be a restaurant chain that doesn't exist out here as far as I know.
And so I find it amusing that you have a t-shirt that puts the two together.
I figured I had to do that because how many times do I get the opportunity to merge those worlds?
So, yeah.
Yeah.
We're walking around New York City with a Waffle House shirt.
People will be able to see you from, like, miles away.
Yeah.
That's true.
They have.
I've gotten calls.
And we brought our own butter this time.
You know…
All right.
Brian, you want to go into that?
You have this real bee in your bonnet about butter at Waffle House.
What's the story with that?
Oh, well, the Waffle Houses just don't…
Well, they have excellent waffles.
They don't serve…
They don't serve butter.
So, they just only have margarine.
They have some brand called Pride Margarine, which…
Anyway, it's just, you know, chemical free…
The one that Captain Kirk advertised.
Oh, that…
No, I thought that was Promise.
Doesn't really matter, does it?
Anyway…
All right.
So, you made a big scene at the Waffle House again.
Do you want to tell us what happened this time?
Well, one of our friends at the Hamvention, James from Picklocks.com,
you saw a lot of lock picks there, gave us a box of sticks of butter as a gift,
knowing that we were upset about Waffle Houses not having butter.
So, we walked into the Waffle House with our own butter,
and I used it on my toast and other things, and it was very good.
I even gave the butter to the chef,
and he was kind of nonplussed about it, thinking that, well, you know,
maybe our customers are lactose intolerant or something.
You see, that's why they don't serve butter, because customers could be lactose intolerant.
Anyway…
You know, I was really sorry I couldn't go to the Hamvention with you guys,
but I knew that you'd bring back some awesome stories to tell,
and, you know, you're not disappointing.
Yeah, yeah.
Of course, driving the 2600 van out there 12 hours each way is no small achievement.
That was a lot of fun.
Right, because that thing goes, what, 20 miles an hour?
Well, it goes 20 miles an hour up a mountain, yeah, with a whole van full of Club Mate.
And, by the way, we brought that over as well, and it did all right.
You know, some people were confused by it, but a lot of people tried it for the first time.
How did you keep it cold? Ice, lots of it.
Yeah, ice is a marvelous invention.
We just put ice in this big bucket, and we were able to keep it cold all day long.
Yeah.
So, yeah, that was Dayton Hamvention, an annual event that we try to take part of here on Off the Hook.
But an event that takes place far more frequently than that, unfortunately, is fundraising here on WBAI,
and we have to do that tonight.
Well, now, let's be fair. The Spring Drive is an annual event.
The Spring Drive is, yes, but it goes for a few weeks.
And what we try to do is we try to have something different every week,
and this week I think we've got some really cool stuff.
Mitch is on the phone with us, and, as you know, Mitch has been on the radio program before.
And what he's offering today is, I think, particularly good.
Now, we've talked about the TV-B-Gone before.
What is a TV-B-Gone, Mitch?
TV-B-Gone is a key chain that you can carry with you everywhere you go to turn TVs off in public places.
Okay, and basically any television set.
Yeah, pretty much any TV.
Because, you know, anywhere you go, they're annoying, and they have to go off, so you can do it.
It's actually interesting because it's one of those phenomena that I think that I didn't notice as much
until I knew about the TV-B-Gone.
And once I had seen this wonderful device that was basically a universal off switch for all these TVs,
when I walk into, say, a shoe store and I see six HDTVs showing some random concert that nobody's watching,
you know, you're tempted to shut it off, and rightfully so, because really nobody cares.
Or if you go into a bar with a basketball game that everybody's watching, it works just as well.
I mean, you know, you can use your discretion.
I think in the case of a bar with a game that everyone's watching, maybe the people actually want to watch the game.
But a lot of times you do have, you know, in shop windows, you know,
you can see someone's foot getting massaged as an advertisement for you to go in and get a foot massage,
but no one's really looking at it at two in the morning when the place is closed, if ever.
Or if you're eating dinner at a nice, otherwise nice restaurant and there's a TV on,
it's hard to have a conversation because I, like most people, which is why I made it,
I do not have a conversation if there's a TV on, I just stare at the thing.
And so now I can turn it off and it doesn't have power over me anymore.
I've actually never had a situation in a public place, because I don't go to sports bars,
where I turn off a TV and anyone cared.
Yeah, yeah.
People feel better.
Well, yeah.
Basically, it's something that gives you, it gives consumers power in a way that they didn't have power before.
And the range is pretty impressive, too.
We've turned these things off from quite a distance away,
but it's really just cool to be able to sit there or stand there and turn something off that's annoying you.
Anyway, we've got that.
We also have the device that Mitch has invented called the Trip Glasses.
Now, Mitch, describe the Trip Glasses to us.
So Trip Glasses is a ready-made version of this project I wrote up for Make Magazine,
Do Yourself Magazine, Make Magazine.
Anyone can make a brain machine, and about 10,000 people have.
And what it does, and Trip Glasses does the exact same thing,
it's just that it's ready-made and kind of sleeker.
Still trippy patterns on the front.
They are trip glasses, after all.
They blink light and pulse sound at a sequence of meditation brainwave frequencies.
And about 70% of people, it turns out, will synchronize to those external frequencies and meditate.
And what makes it really fun is that 100% of people will hallucinate beautiful colors and patterns,
which explains why 10,000 people have made it.
Yeah, you know, I built one of these at HAAR last year.
And, you know, I'd tried it before, but it was nice to put together.
And when I went around the campsite, anyone who saw it wanted to use it, and they all enjoyed it.
And the fact that you're getting the pre-made version probably means you'll be less likely to have it taken away by insane security at an airport.
Yes, like you had happen to you in Scotland.
Okay, so what we're offering, we're offering a couple of things, a couple of different things.
For a pledge of $35 and above, you'll get an off-the-hook T-shirt in the size of your choice.
Just simply tell the people on the other end of the phone what your size is.
212-209-2950.
Now, for a pledge of $75, you'll get both the TV-B-Gone and the Trip Glasses.
They're all assembled.
You don't have to do anything except turn them on and enjoy.
You'll get both of those plus the T-shirt for a pledge of $75, 212-209-2950.
Now, what we're going to do, we have Kyle here with the Trip Glasses.
And what he's going to do is put them on his head.
You've never used these before, have you, Kyle?
I've never used these ever, but I've been curious.
I want to try them out for the first time.
And you're going to hopefully describe to us what's happening.
You can do it—I guess you can talk to us while you have them on.
Maybe you want to wait until after it's over.
What do you think is best?
I would wait because it's kind of nice to just focus on the—what happens is, you know,
when you put these on, you have your eyes closed.
And I don't know how much of it is the light passing through the eyelid or whatever it is,
but it creates a nice set of patterns that you kind of see.
So I think it'd probably be best to sit through the whole thing or at least a part of it
and then kind of describe it after.
But make sure to close your eyes.
You don't want the LEDs blinking in your eyes.
Yeah, that's probably best.
So what I'm going to do—how long is this, like five?
I think it's like 10 minutes.
About 10 minutes or so.
So I'm going to relocate my headphones to the Trip Glasses.
Yeah.
Now, if there's anything you want to say at the very beginning when it's first starting,
like, oh, wow, or this is trippy, man, or something like that, feel free to do that.
But then we're going to leave you alone and we'll come back to you in about 10 minutes.
You may lose track of time.
Yeah.
We may leave you sitting here for hours on end.
212-209-2950.
You can get the Trip Glasses.
You can get the TV-B-Gone for a pledge of $75 plus the off-the-hook T-shirt.
What Kyle is about to experience now is something that you can take part in as well.
It's great fun.
It's completely legal.
Don't worry about any implications that it's not.
It's a way of getting in touch with your inner self and other selves as well.
All right.
I'm switching them on now.
Okay.
Whoa.
Whoa, that's bright.
Yeah.
Your eyes are blinking red now.
Whoa.
Okay.
All right.
Make sure your eyelids are closed.
Yeah, they're closed.
And I'm going to lean back a little.
And there's also noise coming through the headphones.
Yeah.
I can hear a tone.
All right.
I'll be back shortly.
It shouldn't be uncomfortable.
I'm sorry.
Say that again, Mitch?
If it's too bright, just slide it down your nose.
Yeah.
If it's too bright, just slide it down your nose is what he's advising you to do.
Okay.
We have one call on the line.
202-209-2950.
That's for a pledge of $75.
You'll get the trip glasses, and you'll be able to experience what Kyle is going through
right now.
And he's got a big smile on his face, so I think it's not bad.
It's a way of getting in touch with your inner self.
Yes, Bernie?
That's Mitch.
That wasn't me.
That was Mitch.
Okay.
Whoever it was.
Yeah.
I'd like to add in that the retail value of TV Begone is $20, and the trip glasses retail
value is $40, and the retail value of the t-shirts, I'm not sure, but it adds up to
more than what you'll be giving.
So you're getting a great value plus supporting community radio, a very unique, incredible
radio station that is bringing you up here and all that we offer.
Now, let me just bring in something else, because we are offering other things tonight
as well.
And this might be something that would appeal to other people.
We have four calls on the line, which is great, but we want to let people know everything
that we're offering tonight.
When we were going to Dayton, we went through the warehouse and started looking for shirts
and coffee mugs and bottles of Club Mate and all kinds of cool things.
And we found even more cool things.
We found some t-shirts that we thought we no longer had.
That's right.
We found old vintage t-shirts that many people in this room have probably never even seen.
Let me describe the t-shirts that we found.
We found the original Blue Box shirt.
The original Blue Box.
Now, if you have the Blue Box shirt from 2600, you'll notice that it's a schematic, and it's
in blue, and it's got all kinds of other clip art on the back.
Well, the original one was not in blue.
The original one was simply a schematic, and the clippings on the back were from, I believe,
somewhere in the 1990s.
Now, yes, Mike?
What is a Blue Box?
Okay.
A Blue Box is a device that used to be used to make free phone calls over the in-band
signaling of the telephone network, when it was one telephone network.
So it's a real link to history.
And so we found a bunch of these, a bunch of these t-shirts.
Now, unfortunately, those shirts are only available in medium and large, but we have
other shirts, too.
What we're doing is we're offering three different rare shirts for a pledge of $75 at
212-209-2950.
The Blue Box shirt is what I think the most amazing one, because it just harkens back
to our early days.
But we also have the Michelangelo Virus t-shirt.
What that is is a t-shirt that has the code of Michelangelo Virus on the front and newspaper
clippings of the time on the back.
That's available in a variety of sizes.
And finally, we have this other shirt that we released at Beyond Hope in 1997.
I didn't know we still had these.
And this is the 13th anniversary shirt.
It basically is in the form of a 1990s browser on the front with some newspaper clippings
on the back, some dates and history of the 13 years that 2600 had been publishing.
Anybody want to have this shirt and start reading some of the things on the back?
It's an amazing deal.
Three vintage shirts that are not available anyplace else.
And it's really while supplies last, because we only have a few dozen of these things.
And that's it.
And you get the off-the-hook t-shirt, I assume.
You get the off-the-hook t-shirt as well.
That's your whole wardrobe, basically, for $75.
For $75.
The rare shirt collection.
And if you want to get everything we're talking about tonight, the TV-B-Gone and the Trip
Glasses, plus all the rare t-shirts, a pledge of $125 will get you everything.
212-209-2950.
It's really an incredible deal.
Those shirts, they bring back a lot of memories.
And you guys, some of you, never had these memories.
And, of course, always the radio station, without which we would not be here.
That's right.
And this show would not have existed for as long as it has.
That's right.
In 1997, we were doing radio as well, but not the same kind of radio.
It was different back then.
Going on the internet was a fairly new thing.
So when you look at that shirt there that Rob T. Firefly is looking at, you see some
dated material.
I'm having some flashbacks looking at this.
This is awesome.
Between that and the Trip Glasses, it's flashback city.
I like the UI of the browser on the front.
Do you want to describe that?
It's very old.
It is very old.
Well, it's just very blocky.
I mean, it looks kind of like, what, Netscape?
That's Netscape, because Netscape was the browser of the time.
Everybody used Netscape.
Now, on the back, you want to read some of the milestones in history that we have in
the back of that shirt?
Yeah, on the back.
Well, we have the very first one.
It's 1984, January.
The first issue of 2600 is mailed to around three dozen people.
Wow.
Yeah, that was definitely a moment in history.
Which was what?
It was just a stack of papers, right?
Pretty much.
Yeah, folded in three and stuffed in envelopes.
And that goes to what?
1997 is the last year?
It goes right up to 1997.
So what's some of the things that happened in 1997?
In 1997...
And keep in mind, the shirt was new when these things were happening.
Yeah, in 1997, April, Frack No. 50 is released.
Frack No. 50, okay.
I've been waiting on that one.
I didn't know it was that.
Was that a hacker newsletter that was on the internet?
July 1997, the idea for a t-shirt with a hacker dateline is born.
I wonder what ever became of that.
Wow, okay.
Self-referential t-shirt there.
And the very final one is 1997, August.
The summer 1997 issue of 2600, late again, is sent out to around 45,000 people.
Beyond Hope is held in New York City at the same time as HIP, Hacking in Progress, is held in Holland,
making the biggest hacker event to date.
Wow, and that really was the biggest hacker event to date at that time.
212-209-2950, pledge of $75, you'll get all three of the rare t-shirts,
plus the off-the-hook shirt.
And pledge of $125, you'll get that, plus the TV-B-Gone and the trip glasses,
which Kyle is still using right now.
He's got a big smile on his face.
The light is flashing a little slower now, and I think the noise changes.
It just sped up.
He's going through something now.
He's going to describe it in vivid detail when it's over.
Is now when we put his hand in a pot of warm water?
Well, no, I don't think we should do that in this video.
We have four calls on the line, 212-209-2950.
Again, if you want to pledge $75 and get the TV-B-Gone and the trip glasses, you can do that.
You can pledge $75, get all three of the rare shirts.
And you can pledge $125 and get everything.
And everybody who calls and pledges $35 and above gets the off-the-hook t-shirt.
I don't think that's too complicated, right?
I think we have four calls on the line.
Join them, please, 212-209-2950.
Because we have eight volunteers down there.
So half the volunteers are just sitting there?
Yeah.
That's not fair.
But I think what really ties this package together is it really allows you to control your environment.
We have the TV-B-Gone, which lets you turn off the things you don't want.
We have the trip glasses, which lets you see all kinds of new things.
And we have the t-shirts that show the world what you're about.
And you keep the radio station on the air, which lets you learn all kinds of things.
And you really, when you put this all together, I think it's quite an amazing package.
It really is.
And it's a package that's only going to be offered this hour.
So those of you who call in later, well, you can support the radio station, but you won't get this.
Because this is something we only have in limited quantities.
And they're all donations to the radio station, donations from 2600, donations from Mitch Altman.
And basically, we're asking for donations from you, from our listeners.
212-209-2950.
Four calls on the line, but let's make that six.
Let's make that seven.
We know those lights light up, and we want to see them light up.
We're offering some really amazing stuff tonight, really amazing.
And it's never been offered before, these rare shirts, because we didn't know we had them.
We didn't know we had these shirts, and we just found them.
And, wow, this is something that we think can really help the station, help our listeners get in touch with the past.
And in addition, we have the TV Begon.
You can take control of television sets all around you.
And you can have a really good time by strapping trip glasses onto your head and meditating and just learning a lot about yourself.
Again, 212-209-2950.
Pledges of $75, pledges of $125, pledges of $35.
Different levels, different items.
Please make that phone call.
Rob?
I just think it's neat that this shirt was celebrating the 13th anniversary of 2600.
Now, this shirt's from 1997.
That's 13 years ago again.
So this is literally half a lifetime ago.
Oh, my goodness.
You're right.
Yeah.
Wow.
I didn't even think of that.
But it's 13 times 2, 26 years.
Wow.
That is something.
212-209-2950.
Mitch, any advice for people considering calling in for this?
Yeah.
So the thing with trip glasses is people really do trip out to them.
And it turns out that people really like hallucinating.
And that's sort of my way of tricking people into trying meditating because I've gotten a lot of benefit from meditating.
And maybe you will too.
But in any case, try them and hallucinate.
And you'll see lots of cool colors.
Maybe you'll connect with some part of yourself that wants to learn more.
Now, when you say that, when you say to a listening audience here in New York City, call in and hallucinate and get this premium,
now, I imagine all kinds of alarm bells are going off and people are calling the D.A.R.E. hotline and all sorts of other things like that.
Let's stress that this is a kind of hallucination which is very constructive, which is very positive, right?
Yeah, it's definitely positive.
It's not an addictive substance.
Yeah, it draws from your imagination and it shows you just how creative you are.
Everyone sees something different when they use these things because people see bright yellow, bright blue, purple, whatever they see.
I see Paisley.
A lot of people see these incredible geometric patterns.
Geeky people always see geometry, maybe Mandelbrot sets because we're geeky.
It draws from our geeky imaginations.
Artists will see the kind of art that they make and people who aren't geeky at all might see kaleidoscopes, all sorts of colors,
but all your eyes are seeing is stationary red blinking lights.
It just happens to be at brainwave frequencies and your brain doesn't really know how to interpret these frequencies coming externally.
They're totally used to it coming internally, but when something doesn't make sense to our brains, they come up with something that makes sense.
That's what we're always doing to try to make sense of this otherwise totally bizarre external world.
Sometimes we're more successful and sometimes less successful.
This is actually partly why we're so easily manipulated by a medium as powerful as television, which is why I like turning them off.
When you turn your brain on with the TVs off, cool things happen.
Then you can listen to content of your choosing, such as Off the Hook and other things that are available on WBAI, which needs our support now,
which is why I donated these to help encourage people to donate some hard-earned cash for something way worthwhile.
Additionally, you have the visual experience that's caused by the blinking LEDs, but you also have the audio, which I believe, Mitch, is binaural.
It's playing two different tones, one in each ear, and the addition of those by your brain causes the meditative experience.
That's part of what gets your brain synchronized to the meditation brainwave frequencies.
Binaural beats is a purely perceptual phenomenon, which seems to people like it's a physical phenomenon, but it's only in your head.
You perceive the difference of the frequencies in each ear, and that's always going along with the blink rate.
The difference in pitch is always the same as the blink rate, and it's going through this whole sequence of a really nice 14-minute meditation that was recorded off of a yogi master in the 70s.
Wow, 212-209-2950 is our phone number.
We have another four calls on the line, which is great.
We need more calls coming in.
We've got to make up for last week.
We didn't do so well last week.
We're still offering that $500 pledge.
If people want to be in control of the show, basically driving the conversation and steering us in a particular direction for a half hour, call and pledge $500.
What we'll do is we'll call you at 715 on a date of your choice, and you can stay on until 745.
You can interview us.
You can bring up topics of discussion.
You can do all kinds of things.
As long as they're legal and within our license regulations, you'll be completely the person in the driver's seat, I guess is the best way to phrase it.
212-209-2950.
We're not going to offer that pass tonight, though, because if people don't want to do that, we're not going to push it.
But it seems that people do want the trip glasses and the TV-B-Gons and the rare shirts because we are getting calls.
We have five calls on the line now, and if you want to be part of that, this is your chance.
212-209-2950.
I had one last comment to make about the trip glasses particularly.
Kyla still seems pretty happy.
He's very happy, yes.
But I always kind of come out – I've used them before.
Obviously, I had a pair, and I always come out of them very relaxed is what I feel, or I even sometimes just fall asleep with it,
which is kind of the opposite of what you would think when you have lights blinking and audio going that you would actually become more relaxed and fall asleep.
But really that's – my experience with it has been just that, is that I've said, oh, I kind of want to take it easy,
so I'm going to put on the trip glasses or the brain machine, and that's what happens.
So definitely worth trying.
I definitely think it's a great thing.
I've always enjoyed it.
And maybe you know somebody who would benefit from this if it's not your cup of tea.
In any event, the TV-B-Gon, I think, is a great device for everybody.
Even if you want to turn off your own TV set, you sometimes can't find the remote.
But it's a great little prank to play on other people as well.
Or just to accomplish what Mitch said, which is to shut off TVs that really have no place in being on in the first place.
Yeah, if you're in a place that has some voice on CNBC or something squawking at you – did I just name one of their TV shows?
I did, didn't I?
See, that was completely unintentional, but that just proves how it gets into your mind.
Yeah, Squawk Box is one of their TV shows, and I just used that.
Yeah, things like that.
Get that out of your brain.
Turn the thing off.
Have a conversation.
It's much healthier.
And you might say, who are you to turn off someone else's TV set?
Well, you know what?
It's in a public space, and you're part of the public.
You have every right.
Hold on, hold on.
Kyle just came out of it.
So, Kyle, tell us your experience with the brain machine that's been on your head for the last 10 minutes or so.
Okay, you're getting back down to – okay, he's opening up his eyes now.
Wow, you look like you really –
Wow.
That is so cool.
Yeah.
What did you see, Kyle?
Well, it took about, like, five minutes for me to calm myself and –
And stop listening to us.
Well, no, I was never, like, completely cut off.
I knew you guys were here, but to relax and feel kind of safe and comfortable with these flashing lights and tones in your ears.
But I was able to hear what you guys were saying, but at the same time, towards the end, really get comfortable.
And you do see wild patterns and stuff, and you anticipate sort of the rhythm of the tones and the lights.
Were you scared?
I was scared at first.
I thought you guys were going to mess with me or something.
You were scared of us, but you weren't scared of the actual trip glasses themselves.
No, but that was so cool.
And I heard what you guys were saying, too, and I absolutely believe these premiums are, like, all about, like, the reclamation of mental environment.
Think about how many flashing lights and tones you have absolutely no control over.
So, yeah, that was a lot of fun, and I would definitely do it again.
Well, maybe you'll get the opportunity.
But our listeners have the opportunity to do this for the first time.
Simply by calling 212-209-2950, pledging $75.
You'll get the trip glasses that Kyle just experienced.
You'll get the TV-B-Gone, which will enable you to turn off TV sets at will no matter where you are.
And you'll also get the off-the-hook T-shirt, as will anybody who pledges $35 and above.
212-209-2950.
Mitch, this TV-B-Gone, is that the one that goes on your keychain so you can carry it everywhere?
Yeah, this is the keychain one.
Okay.
Not the Pro.
The Pro is sort of an MP3 player-looking thing.
But this one's a lot more portable.
Yeah, this one has this cool Batman-like stealth kind of image,
so no one ever thinks that it turns TVs off unless they, of course, know what it is.
But, yeah, you're just holding these keys in your hand with this black button,
and you can turn TVs off and make the world a better place everywhere you go.
We have six calls on the line.
That's amazing.
I think, Kyle, you're responsible for a lot of that
because I think your endorsement of the trip glasses really hit home to so many people.
Anything else you want to add to the experience you just went through?
Well, I find it sort of amusing that tripping out for ten minutes
and sitting very, very still and being very calm brought that much attention.
Seven calls.
There's a need for this kind of thing, you know.
As you said, it's non-toxic, non-addictive, that kind of thing.
It's not some sort of substance you're putting into your system,
but rather just controlling your mental space.
So, I don't know.
It was really, really different.
And, again, it takes a while to sink into
because you sort of realize how much of a frenzy you're in in your waking state.
And there are a lot of parallels to meditation, but it's sort of induced meditation.
So, I don't know.
It's just a really cool thing to be able to have and induce very quickly.
It sort of reminds your brain how to get back into that calm state.
Yeah, I think Mitch mentioned that he's benefited from more traditional types of meditation.
So have I for most of my life.
And I remember the first time I tried the trip glasses,
and it was really basically the same experience.
If I had had these back when I started learning traditional meditation,
it would have been probably a lot easier for me to get into
because it's a nice aid to get you to that sort of place in your mind.
Mitch, for those people who are into traditional meditation,
is this something that complements it or competes with it?
Yeah, it wouldn't really compete with it.
It's a way.
This is more for beginners if they want to learn to meditate
because when people are first learning to meditate,
they calm down for the first time in a long time or maybe the first time that day,
and some uncomfortable thoughts start bubbling up.
And most people subconsciously, before they're aware of those uncomfortable thoughts or feelings,
just get squirmy and restless, and they go,
I'm bored, and then they split.
But this kind of circumvents that
because people are so engaged with the wild visual experience of colors and patterns
that before their brain, their subconscious can get them out of there,
they're already meditating.
So it's a really good way to get used to the feeling of meditating,
which we all have, part of us.
I mean, it's one of the states that everyone has hardwired into our brain,
a state of consciousness that we all can go into and all do go into,
just like sleep or being awake.
And it's just that most of us in the West don't really know it.
But when we're daydreaming, that's actually a light state of meditation.
All right.
212-209-2950.
You can get the Trip Glasses along with the TV Begone for a pledge of $75.
If you want everything we're offering tonight,
a pledge of $125 will get you the TV Begone, the Trip Glasses, the off-the-hook T-shirt,
and our three rare T-shirts that we have just uncovered in our warehouse
that basically when these are gone, they're gone forever
because we didn't even know we had them anymore,
and you won't find them on our store or anyplace else.
They are the original 2600 Blue Box shirt from the 1990s
and available in sizes medium and large.
I know that we don't have them in extra-large and super-extra-large,
but maybe we should gear these towards those young hackers
who realize the history of the phone system,
and you can have an original piece of our history from way, way back
before you get too big to fit into it.
So, you know, large actually, many people, you know, large is big.
Large used to mean big.
I know.
In this country, large is small.
I don't understand that.
But basically, that's the only shirt we only have in medium and large.
So even if you can't fit into it, maybe you know somebody who can.
We also have the Michelangelo virus shirt in all different sizes
and the 13th anniversary of 2600 shirt,
which is a white shirt with black printing,
and the other two are black shirts with, I believe, white printing on them.
212-209-2950 for $75, you'll get all three of those shirts
plus the off-the-hook shirt for $125.
You'll get all those shirts plus the TV-B-Gone and the trip glasses.
We have six calls on the line right now.
We need to keep that momentum going because, like I said,
we didn't do too well last week and people pacing around outside
with notepads and things like that deciding our future.
So, yeah, help make that future a bright one by calling.
And also, you know, you're supporting the radio station.
You're keeping programs like this one where we talk about all kinds of things
throughout the course of a year.
You're keeping programs like that going and all kinds of other programs,
new programs, programs that have been here for a long, long time.
This radio station has been around since 1960, noncommercial,
depending on its listeners to keep going,
and it's been a great experiment so far, and I think it can continue to work.
Mike?
According to this paper here, our goal for this drive is $850,000,
which sounds like a lot of money.
The station's goal, not our goal.
The station's goal, not just us.
All right, thank God.
But that would be something if we could do that in an hour.
We couldn't do that in an hour, and we would not meet the goal.
Which sounds like a lot of money,
but to run a radio station in the middle of Manhattan,
in the middle of the FM dial, that's really not a lot of money.
I mean, I've dealt with commercial media, and they spend money like crazy.
So $850,000, and then to raise that $850,000
in increments of $25, of $100, of, you know, if you can pledge $500,
these small pledges from a large number of listeners that keep us on the air,
it's really amazing that we're able to do that.
So if you're able to be part of that and give us a call,
212-209-2950, it really helps.
We have four calls on the line now.
This is how we stay on the air, these small donations.
So join us, and you'll get something great as a thank you gift.
Of course, we recognize that it's small in the context of $850,000,
but a $25, $35 pledge, $50 pledge, $75, those are big chunks,
I know, out of people's income or whatever kind of fund they have
lying around for things that they really like.
Consider WBAI something that you really like,
something that you want to have around.
Imagine what the world would be like if there was no WBAI.
Imagine the things that we never would have gotten to talk about.
Imagine all the things in the future that we can talk about
as long as we have this resource.
Yes, we're a podcast.
Many people come up to us and say,
hey, we hear the Off the Hook podcast, and we explain to them,
yes, but you know what, it's also a radio station
in the middle of Manhattan on the Empire State Building,
and that is the biggest hack of all,
being able to get this kind of programming out onto the FM dial,
in the middle of the FM dial, not in a noncommercial ghetto,
in the middle of the FM dial at 99.5 FM,
and reaching four different states from the Empire State Building.
Yes, we're a podcast in addition to that,
but a radio station first and foremost,
and the magic in that is that your grandmother
is not likely to stumble upon a podcast.
She is likely to tune a radio dial and find something
and really get into it, really start listening and learning
and contributing, and that's the magic of radio,
the things that you can do, the ways you can reach people
because of its simplicity, because of its accessibility,
and you can help make that a reality.
Continue with that by calling 212-209-2950,
pledging whatever you can afford, getting the trip glasses,
getting the TV be gone, getting the rare T-shirts,
becoming part of the radio show for a half hour,
whatever you want to do, 212-209-2950,
or join the four calls on the line right now.
Bernie?
Emanuel, yeah, I was just going to say,
we've had some grandmothers call into the show before,
some really insightful observations with everything
they've seen over the years of telecommunications and things,
but I just wanted to point out that this program
and some of the other programs on WPAI
and Mitch Altman's amazing technology creations
are all sort of good representations
of what hackers are all about,
just creating interesting things
and doing things with technology
that everybody else is not doing.
And I think this summer at the Hope Conference,
July 16th, 17th, and 18th,
I think Mitch Altman is actually going to give a talk
about how he had this vision
to create some really interesting technology devices
that he thought would make the world a better place,
and how he made a living doing it,
and how anybody else in our listenership
could really do the same thing.
He's going to be offering workshops at the Hope Conference
on how to build your own brain machine or TV be gone,
but if you pledge tonight,
you can get one that's already made and give it as a gift.
If you want to build your own,
you can come to the Hope Conference.
But all this stuff sort of wraps together
into what hackers are about and creating interesting things.
So I encourage our listeners, please call 212-209-2950,
and pledge your support for WBAI,
which is the only radio station I know of in the country
that would air a hacker radio show like this.
We had eight calls on the line before,
and I imagine that caused quite a bit of commotion down there,
since I think we have eight volunteers.
And now we have four, and it keeps going up and down,
but four seems to be the median.
Let's make it eight again. Let's have some fun down there.
212-209-2950.
We have the TV be gone, which enables you to turn off
or turn on any TV set within your range.
And turning on a TV set can also be confusing to many people.
If you're standing in a location and a TV set is off
and all of a sudden it comes on, that always causes a stir.
That's just me being mischievous,
but the main purpose of the TV be gone
is to gain some sanity back
and to turn off these jabbering idiots
that invade your personal space throughout the world.
212-209-2950 or a pledge of $75 gets you that,
plus the trip glasses,
which Kyle has just experienced for the first time live on the air.
Kyle, can you turn it on and hold it up to the microphone?
Maybe we can hear what the actual sound is like
that you were listening to for the past ten minutes or so,
in addition to the bright lights.
Can we... Okay, here we go.
All right, it's...
Are we going to hypnotize our audience?
No, we did that once and it didn't work.
They wouldn't call.
Yeah, that was a big problem.
Yeah, but no, it's...
I know it sounds a little like a dentist drill, but it's not.
It's a lot more...
Kyle, how would you say it felt
when you were listening to that in your ear?
Uh, it's...
It's like...
It's a melodic, but it is a buzzing,
so it's pretty counterintuitive.
You wouldn't think that it would relax you in any sense,
It goes with the lights?
Does it change when the lights change?
Yes, it pans, it fades.
It goes right along with any of the transitions.
You keep your eyes closed throughout all this,
yet you can still see the light.
Absolutely.
You hear that noise.
Did you feel yourself sinking into your own consciousness
or moving away from our voices?
Yeah, a little bit,
but again, it wasn't that you're completely checking out
or, you know, not present,
not in control in any sense,
but you do...
As soon as you turn it on, you're left with your breathing,
which is just like meditation, I think.
You're left with your breathing and your calmness,
and it's amazing.
It took maybe five minutes for me
to really be totally relaxed with that
and welcome that calmness
and then just sit back and let it do its work
and wait for the transitions.
So you had to sort of trust it.
It took you a little while to be won over by it.
Yes, yes, because when you're not relaxing in that sense,
you're engaged,
you're amongst other people in another room,
all of your sensors are at work,
but this sort of allows you to, I don't know,
turn them down.
Your intensity, it's less outward,
but you turn inward.
You're closing your eyes, of course,
and just breathing and being still.
Now, I wonder, Mitch, if you could maybe tell us
what the best environments are for using the tripglasses.
Any environment is fine.
I've showed them and had people experience them
in hacker conferences and maker fairs
and hacker spaces all over the world,
and sometimes with 25-foot-tall Tesla coils
just several yards away.
Loud environments, soft environments,
it actually doesn't matter.
Anyone can meditate anywhere if you're good enough at it,
and the thing that's cool about tripglasses or brain machines
is it induces you into that state
if you want to go there without really trying,
and you can do that anywhere.
Meditation is a great thing to do anytime, anyplace,
because we all really need
a little bit more self-reflection in our lives,
and I'll even add, especially in our country.
I think our country can do really well
with just a bit more self-reflection,
especially when it comes time to, you know, voting.
But that's just my personal opinion
and not those of the station,
which needs our support right now,
and that's why I'm donating these things
to help encourage people
to give just a little bit of our money.
As we were saying before, you know,
Mike was saying it's just chunks of $25, $30,
whatever you can give, it's amazing
that so many people can give
this relatively small amount of money,
which adds up really quickly
to an amazing amount of money
that can do the power of radio,
which can give us all of what we offer
plus everything that WBAI offers.
It's really magic.
Join the five calls on the line, 212-209-2950.
I just wanted to complete the thought
about the sensation of using these.
So once I did relax and sort of settle
into this meditative state,
you get this euphoria
because you realize you're relaxing.
You know, you've let go.
You're not intensely aware of, you know,
you're engaged and aware of everything around you,
but rather you're turning inward.
And I felt really warm.
I don't know if anybody else has had that sensation.
You know, bring those after the show
because I think I'm going to need to use those.
You know, I will. For your sake, I will.
But, you know, I should point out
when you're talking about environments to use,
this is not something you should use while driving
or flying commercial aircraft or even private aircraft.
That's not good for people with epilepsy either.
So I just want to point these things out,
which should be obvious, but sometimes
you've got to, you know, cover all bases.
But it's amazing.
Mitch, would you say all ages are good with this?
Oh, yeah. Kids go totally gaga over these things.
In fact, if there's a bunch of kids
in only one brain machine or trip glasses,
they fight each other.
Oh, dear.
I don't know if you're aware of that,
but kids totally love it.
I don't know about you, but when I was a kid,
I used to, you know, make a fist
and kind of push it into my eyes
and see all the cool patterns and whatever
that ensued from that.
And this is kind of like that,
but way more intense,
and it doesn't harm your eyes.
Yeah, I was doing that earlier today
with the fist and all that,
but this is probably better.
212-209-2950.
I'm still going to use trip glasses later
just to get back in touch with my inner self.
212-209-2950.
Again, to run down the premiums,
$35 and above.
You get the off-the-hook t-shirt for $75.
You'll get the off-the-hook t-shirt
plus the trip glasses
and the TV be gone,
enabling you to turn on and off TV sets
all over the place.
For a different $75 pledge,
you'll get our rare t-shirt collection,
three shirts we've just uncovered
from the 90s along with the off-the-hook t-shirt.
And for $125,
you'll get everything.
The t-shirts, the TV be gone, the trip glasses,
the off-the-hook shirt, all of that.
And then again, we're also offering,
and this is the last time I'm even going to say this,
$500 if you want to be part of the radio show
for a half hour,
if you want to drive the conversation
and tell us what to discuss
and ask questions and interview us.
$500 pledge.
212-209-2950.
We have five calls on the line
so that's really
pretty good, I think.
We can get a couple more. I think that'd be even better.
I'd like to see 8 again because I just got a sense
of complete pandemonium down there.
And again, we should point out, this is something we're only offering tonight.
We're not going to be offering this next week.
It's not going to be offered at 8 o'clock.
It's only being offered between 7 and 8
tonight. 212-209-2950.
You know, to get
8, maybe people need to hear the phone number
again.
Actually hear the phone number.
You know, I don't know if we have time for this, but
you can start dialing the rotary dial you're holding
in your hand there.
So if you hold the radio up to your phone line,
then it probably won't work.
That's the original blue box there.
Here's the thing,
that dial you have there that
was received at Dayton,
it's not as real
as the actual
dials that are on telephones.
Well, that's the best we can do right now, unless somebody else wants to rip off
a dial out of their rotary phone and bring it in,
which would be awesome.
Kyle, the phone you got at Dayton,
that was a real dial. It had that metallic
noise to it when you
put your finger in and turned it around.
It was really, it brought back memories.
Yeah, that was part of the reason I wanted that
one so badly, is that it was actually a
Western Electric. It wasn't an ITT
Model 500, because
they licensed it to ITT after
so long. But yeah, it has a
metal dial, and it's
a little more of a,
I don't know,
metallic, crunchy sound
to it. It's a little more
coarse. But these plastic
ones, I mean, they work. They're good replacements.
They're suitable. Also, that one's from 1989,
I think. Yeah, this is dated
to August 1st, 1989.
That's pretty late in the game for rotary
dial phones. But the one
that Kyle's mentioning from the 1950s,
now that's real. And in fact, there are ones that go
back even further than that, really old metallic
ones that you could kill somebody with. So heavy,
so solid. And
that's just, you know, that's the retro
look of technology that hackers
really are into. And that was back when you
didn't own your phone, right? You rented it. Yeah, you had
to rent your phone. It's kind of like the cable boxes
today. I was discussing this
actually. Maybe, Bernie, you would appreciate this as
well. I had a phone, the first phone
I ever got that was not part of the phone company.
I think I bought it at Radio Shack. I think it was an ITT
phone. And it had a special
feature that they didn't advertise. Maybe they didn't
even know about. But if you took the dial
and you simply held it between two
numbers, it would open up
the audio. You could hear the phone line
except the phone line wasn't picked up. You'd hear
whatever that noise
is. I don't know if it's called carrier or what.
It would basically be just the
open air sound of nothing. And if
the phone rang, you'd hear it ringing inside
your ear. But you could also listen in
on an extension being picked up because
you weren't actually picking up the phone.
You were simply tapped in. Do you know
what that's called, Bernie?
Well, it basically was
opening up...
It wasn't putting your phone off hook, but it was just putting
sort of a high impedance tap on the
line. Just by holding
the dial between two numbers. That's all I had to do.
That's a cool feature.
Was it a rotary dial phone? It was a rotary dial
phone, yes. That's how I did it. I simply would
maybe dial two and then bring
it back a little bit before it got to one.
And it would disconnect in that
period of time. And as it was disconnected, the
audio was still going to the earpiece.
So it was a cool toy to
play with. I was able to listen in on people, I was able to
hear the phone ringing, and
have all kinds of fun.
So basically, some element of your phone made it so that it
didn't lower the voltage of the line, and thus
you were able to hear everything that was
going on without
making the phone line go as though
it were off the hook. Something like that, yeah.
It was my first foray into
playing with phones
in ways I wasn't supposed to.
And as this goes to show, you can still have fun
with old technology.
And new technology as well, as the
Trip Glasses and TV-B-Gones
constantly prove. We have
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 calls
on the line. Let's make two more calls come in.
And then we'll see complete chaos
down in the tally room. 212-209-2950.
I'm sure there are two people
out there that can benefit from the Trip Glasses,
can benefit from the TV-B-Gone,
or the old T-shirts, or the new
off-the-hook shirt designed by Rob T. Firefly.
Pledge levels from
35 all the way up to
500. 212-209-2950.
We only have a couple of minutes
left. We're over the 1,000 mark, which is great.
And we want to keep going. We want to
make up for last week and hopefully
establish
some high numbers that we'll
have to live up to in weeks to come. But we will.
Speaking of well-constructed objects,
Mitch, maybe you could talk a little bit about the
Trip Glasses, which are, you know, they're pretty well
made. Yeah, so I
actually had to design my own
plastic glasses to manufacture
and creating tooling for injection molding,
etc. So they're kind of like
I-Spy, you
know, from the 60s look with these
trippy rays coming out that I recycled
from the TV-B-Gone packaging, because
recycling is good. And
so they're totally trippy
stab from the past kind of
look, but really sleek
and very photogenic.
And by the way, they are very photogenic,
so people will take your
picture while you're wearing them.
And so
it's good from the outside, it's good from the inside.
But I manufactured
them to be
inexpensive. These things actually
exist commercially
from other companies for hundreds of dollars,
but there's really no need for that.
It's just a handful of parts,
and that's why I can do it for $40.
We have seven
calls on the line. 212-209-2950.
If you just call
up one more person calling in, we'll have eight calls,
which is great. 212-209-2950.
I only have a couple of minutes left.
Can I add one thing? Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
I mean, Mitch, go ahead. Yeah, so, you know,
this is an amazing time
to be a hacker on our planet. We have
all this technology
from decades all the way up to this
brand new cool stuff, which is incredibly
accessible that anyone
can learn to use, whether it's
electronics or computers or
at hackerspaces where people are into
all sorts of realms, including making
cool things out of music
and with sewing machines and even putting
technology in clothing, and there are
hackerspaces all over the
country and the world, and there are
hackerconferences all over the country
and the world. You could, if you felt
like it, just go from hackerspace
and hackerspace and hackerspace
to Maker Faires, the big one
coming up this weekend in San Francisco
that I'll be teaching zillions of people to solder
without even going
home, but, of course, it's nice being home
where you're grounded and
your own space you have control over
and we can use technology
to enhance our lives, and I would
encourage people to use technology
consciously, because technology
can make our lives worse or better.
It's up to you. Okay,
we have nine calls
on the line now, and I don't think we have enough
people down there. If the phone is ringing and you're not
picking up, we're not picking up. Please
keep trying. Oh my goodness, 10.
Okay, I don't know what we've done here,
but please keep trying to get through.
We will pick up all phone calls
that come in before
8 o'clock, we promise.
212-209-2950
a pledge of $75
gets you the trip glasses and the TV
be gone, or the rare t-shirt collection.
A pledge of $125 gets you all
of it. 212-209-2950.
The most important thing, though,
you keep WBAI strong.
You keep us on the radio. You keep
alternative voices and ideas
coming both on the internet and on the
FM dial. If you can't pledge
$75, $125,
that's fine. Anything
you can pledge is really
a help to the station, which is really the most
important part. It's neat to get these gifts,
but you should really be
pledging for the station.
And if you can pledge more,
if you have $150, $200,
and you want to pledge that, then great,
because anything helps, and everything
helps. Yeah, I think this is where you
see how much
WBAI means to people, because people like
Mitch come along and donate
time after time with all kinds of
amazing devices.
We have other people that come and donate books
or shirts or magazines
or whatever, and of course
we have our listeners calling in. 212-209-2950.
This is the time where we need the people
who care, people who realize the value
of things. And we have 10
calls on the line now, and that's great.
We know people are out there and they care.
It means something to them. Mitch, I want to thank you
so much, and I want to tell people
that Mitch will be at the next HOPE
July 16th, 17th, and 18th.
You can check out what's happening at the conference
www.hope.net
and register, of course,
on that site as well.
And if you want to submit a talk, speakers
at hope.net is the email address.
If you want to volunteer, volunteers at hope.net.
All kinds of other email addresses
all pretty much
on www.hope.net. Rob?
And also our message board, talk.hope.net.
That's right. Yes, talk.hope.net.
Hey Mitch, what's your website
if people want to know more about what you do?
cornfieldelectronics.com
spelled just as you expect it.
All right. We are out of time,
so I want to thank those people
who have called in. 212-209-2950
is our phone number. In case those of you
out there still want to call,
please do now. 212-209-2950.
We'll see you next time. Good night.
Now let's get started
Where should we begin
Let's pick a drum beat
Then fill it in, fill it in
Ladies
and gents
It's chorus time
I just want you to know it
I made
this song
with my computer
Ah
Ah
Oh
Don't look nobody
that I know
Is how I make it all up as I go along
And don't phone
We'll add some strings
And just before we're done
We're going on an echo, echo
And sometimes
I hear a brick wall
So it's not to waste time
I just want you to know
Ladies
and gents
It's chorus time
I know that you now
know this
I made this song
with my computer
Let's show it
now
Hey
Alrighty there
I love that song
They always have great songs on
Off The Hook